Precision M4400 Owner's Lounge

Hi guys,
I have followed this forum since October, so I like to thank everyone who has sheared their knowledge throughout this time.

As mentioned before, the laptop has severe heat issues…my started downclocking by 85c when I played Race driver – grid, so I started with replacing the cpu/gpu coolingpads with a thin layer of AS5 paste. When I later on started it up, it nearly instantly downclocked. So I took of the gpu heatsink again, I noticed that less than a quarter of the processor surface were covered with the paste (no wonder it downclocked). The gap between the heatsink and gpu on the upper right corner where 0.8mm off!

I have applied a cheaper paste on these pictures to show the footprint of the gpu.

The first picture shows the footprint with a thin layer of paste (the surrounding (violet) cooling pads has been removed so it won’t be able to interfere with my measurements). Have a look at the gpu, only one corner has got contact.



I noticed that if you pressed down the top right corner, the footprint improved.



The solution to this problem was obviously to ad a distance to the screw on the top right.



Here’s a pic of the final footprint, I wasn’t able to get completely covered up, but it’s the best I could do.



This lowered my idle temp from 57c to 51c.

But it still downclocked, so the next step was obviously to use a laptop cooler.
I’m really into building stuff =P…so I bent a piece of aluminium and added a “Zalman ZM-OP1 slim” to it. It was connected directly to the usb (5v), the current at that voltage is 67mA, so the usb has no problem running it.





This lowered my idle temp to 44c.
Conclusion: USE A LAPTOP COOLER!

 

Here's another of many many articles on Nvidia manufacturing problems relation to HEAT:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/703/1028703/nvidia-g84-g86-bad

Among the many, the HP DV series notebooks had some serious Nvidia/heat issues.

and APPLE:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10063844-37.html

EDIT: Yes....I've never used this m4400 without a cooler...nor my Asus's. If your GPU is throttling down while not hot, I'd get it replaced. I personally believe to be an Nvidia problem, but others here have tried to relate it to DELL which doesn't make sense, to me anyway.

 

thanks for the info. though i consider a laptop this expensive to be able to run under full stress (cpu AND gpu) without overheating and downclocking - that is without an external cooling device.
basically you're using a laptop to have the flexibility to carry it arround, another cooling device of allmost the laptop size makes this feature quite useless.

 

I know what you're saying, but i wasnt sure if i could get it replaced after changing the thermalpaste, (have anybody been able to get it replaced in this state?)...obviusely, im only using the laptop cooler at home when playing, but it works fine to run solidworks/catia without the cooler.

 

are you sure it was the GPU that was downclocking?

a few of us had issues where the CPU was refusing to run at more than 50% max frequency

 

ony my end yes.
the cpu works fine, clockwise and speedwise comparing to other q9300. the gpu though downclocks after comming to arround 105C.

 

I have no problem with the cpu....when i'm playing, the cpu is not going above 65c while the gpu is at 85ish.
And im using the A09 bios because i cant use the A02 and A03, the left and up key dosent work simulatiusly when i using those versions =S.

 

Just an update my friend had his motherboard replaced in his M4400 and everything went back together perfect. I just wanted to report the good news.

 

another update:
today the motherboard got replaced again. this time correctly back to a fx770m instead of the fx1700m. though a little improvement, it still downclocks. next replacement is due on monday.
this time they're trying to replace it with a non refurbished part.

we'll see..

 

I have a similar insomnia issue - look at the event log and see if you are getting a driver issue with the Broadcom driver returning an error code as it is trying to sleep causing it to abort. I haven't tried updating the driver yet (I always do a complete backup before updating drivers), and am hoping that will fix it.