M4400 cooling issue ?

First, hello to everyobdy
I recently purchased a 2nd hand M4400 and I'm having issues with the cooling. The machine runs quite hot on demanding tasks.

When I recieved it, the first thing to do was to open it and remove the dust balls from the radiotors and the way arround the airflow cycles.

It's with the latest A25 bios.

Are those temperatures normal or should worry and try applying new thermal compound on both the cpu and the gpu ?

regards

 

Yes it is hot under load and the temperature is "normal". There are several ways to overcome that. Non destructive method would be using cooling pad at the bottom. Slightly risky way is undervolting the CPU and GPU.

Applying thermal compound will only help if there is existing problem with contact between heatsink and chipset.

For me, I open the bottom case and add 1 cooling pad at the bottom at home. If outside, i try not to load the system.

 

are those temperatures under load?

use orthos or a similar software to stress your CPU. If the M4400 cooling system is properly design you should see max temperature in the region of 85c. With good quality thermal past and undervolting you should see temperature in the low 70c.

 

the problems with the M4400 are quite widely discussed on this forum.

check this thread, for example which is still on the first page:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/dell-latitude-vostro-precision/605560-m4400-fan-question.html

 

Those are under load exactly with orthos running, stressing the gpu itself takes it to 90C and above.

The thermal emission are pretty noticable over the surface(under load). I'm asking myself if the fan could be an issue itself.

I just refuse to accept that a machine from the highest class with the lowest cpu and gpu from it's series can run under those temps when loaded.

The cooling pad is a solution but I rather leave it because I have to carry it with me everywhere I go.

From what I saw in the other threads, similar machines with higher components keep lower temperatures than mine does.

I will order some Artic MX-4 tomorrow and hope for some improvement, otherwise I will replace the fan with a new one.

 

i think you'll be wasting your time. i got a 10*c drop on my m4400 when i replaced the paste with MX-3 but it still hit crazy high temps when under load and throttled in spite of several replacements. dell obviously realised the issue because for the M4500 they added more ventilation and thicker heatpipe, but it still barely enough. wiht the M4600 series they finally switched to a dual-fan solution, with no shared heatpipe and heatsink

i really like the M4400, but its a shame about it being unable to perform under sustained load.