M4400 - Fan question

Hello, I bought a refurbished M4400 in 2009, and it is still under warranty. It has a T9400, Quadro 770m, and a WUXGA non-LED screen. I was having some heat problems while playing Starcraft 2, it is lagging when on the "low" graphic settings after playing for less than an hour. I updated everything - bios are A25, latest nVidia drivers from nvidia.com, and all the other drivers from Dell. I saw one thread saying that A02/03 is better than A25, but that was a post from 2010 while the A25 release date was 6/2011, so I wasn't sure about that.

When I opened the M4400, the first thing I noticed was the lack of dust. The second thing was that there seem to be screws missing around my fan. This is the first time I opened the back case, the only other hardware maintenance I had to do was replace the keyboard when I first got it, so nothing on the bottom of the computer. I've attached a picture of the fan, with arrows pointing to the empty screw holes. Other pictures show the holes having screws in them, so I feel like mine isn't right. What do you guys think?

 

yes, there definitely should be screws there. i dont know how you're going to explain this to dell though. they might claim its your fault.

sadly, while i really liked my M4400...it did have serious heat issues. the single heatsink for both the CPU and GPU just isnt capable enough for sustained load. you can try repasting the CPU but thats all you can do.

 

M4400 is not able to play SC2 even with T9900 (3.06Ghz) and FX1700m. The game will starting lagging at 1/3 of the game.
Heating issue, what you can do is put a cooling pad beneath.
For me, I open the bottom case and jack it up at the rear side with book or what ever item i can find. This does help the heating issue and the temperature dropped by 10C.

 

Afhstingray, thank you for the response. I'll contact Dell tonight and post with what how they respond. Does the fan sit on the heatsink, or is the heatsink connected to the fan? If the heatsink is connected to the chip (I'm hoping that's the case), then I'll have to think about repasting. If the heatsink is connected to the fan, and the screws are supposed to hold everything to the chip, then I will defiantly repaste. Do people have good luck with repasting? I saw post where people say they were going to, but never saw how it turned out for them.

Iieeann, why do you say it's not able to play SC2? It meets the minimum specs, so are you referring to the heat issue? I have a passive cooling pad, but I haven't tried opening the bottom of the case. After I get the fan issue resolved, I might try it. Thanks for the suggestion!

 

SC2 on M4400 is pathetic, at screen with high number of units it will lag. That happens normally close to half game.

Opening bottom case is actually not recommended, something goes inside may damage the laptop. I am lazy to bring cooling pad along with me so i did it that way.

 

Yeah that's a good point. People say the cooling pad with fans do well, so I might look into one of those.

I just got off the online chat with Dell support. The support guy said he would send a tech to switch out the motherboard, GPU, and fans. I was hoping he would just send the screws and be done with it, but he's having me run the hardware diagnostics (F12 at boot) and then we're going forward from there. How's everyones experience with techs? It's probably a ridiculous concern, but the computers running fine and I don't want to have to worry about a tech messing something up. I should probably be more concerned about the heat.

 

I have good experience with Tech from Dell. My M4400 became new machine after they come. They replaced the mainboard, CPU, RAM and heatsink althought i knew exactly that the only faulty part was CPU (I damaged it with throttlestop zzz...).

In your case, just hope that they replace some new things. Too bad they will take all dismantled part back.

Whatever it is, having everything done will not help your gaming experience and heat issue. M4400 is hot because the heatsink and fan need to support both CPU & GPU. When the temperature goes over 75C (around that), the system will automatically throttle the CPU speed down and that is where the already laggy game become even worse.

Cooling pad will help, but to what extend i can't tell because the air slots at the bottom case is not much. At home i will open the bottom case, plus 1 cooling pad at the bottom. Both going at same time and CPU speed no longer throttle down because of over heating.

 

i hate it when they dismantle the M4400. ask them to send a replacement palmrest as well. it is near impossible to remove and reinstall the palmrest like it was originally as it is snap on. usually it will never be as flush as it was new, and will make creaking noises.

its really a lottery what kind of tech you will get. i had some really excellent ones and some real rubbish ones. one of them even snapped my wifi card in half and damaged some other parts- i was promptly on the phone to dell and they sent me a brand new system

as for the heat, all i can suggest is; repaste, undervolt, and use the latest BIOS

 

Wow what a tech you got there... luckily i never met rubbish from Dell. I only call the tech twice, and both experience was good.

For the heat issue, repaste won't help because i have new heatsink with new paste. Undervolt, could be a solution but that have to be done on both the CPU and graphic card, not too many people know exactly how to do it. Bios is always the latest.

 

Thanks for the help iieeann and afhstingray. The Dell chat support was great, and the tech will contact me once they receive the parts. I mentioned that the rubber pads along side the speakers next to the keyboard fell off a while back and have caused small cracks in the screen bezel, and they are sending those pieces along too. I talked to a coworker who also had an M4400 motherboard replaced, and he said the tech was very methodical about disassembling and reassembly, so hopefully I have a similar experience.