Precision M6400 Owner's Lounge

That hasn't been my experience at all and I'm curious why. I don't generally work the thing too hard but I've been flying an F-16 around for a couple of hours and show a CPU temp of 102 (or 39Celsius) and the hottest piece, as always is the GPU which is now showing 116 Farenheit. Sorry but I've lived outside the U.S. for 14 years and while kilometers and meters is what i think in and can convert either way easily, the temp. thing is something I've decided I'll never get used to.

I always have a Zalman pad under my laptops but while they help I don't think they're as effective as the ads say. This new 2000 model is lilke it was built with the 6400 in mind, there's about 1/8 inch showing on the sides and the front. How hot is hot to you? I've read some temp. figures on various forums that sound impossible. I thought stuff started to melt around 80 Celsius, but I've read lots of complaints about temps that high. Yikes.

 

Well I was seeing GPU temps of 65c which seemed reasonable.
One thing is the clearance underneath the laptop is extremely small.
I don't know why Dell don't build longer legs on them.
For now I have the back raised and system has been running stable all night.
When it crashed twice system was being pushed hard GPU wise playing BF2/COD4/GRID.

 

I've tried all 3 185s from Nvidia and got the same result: washed out screen with vertical stripes. I guess these drivers don't like LED screen like the previous poster stated.

 

Have you tried blowing some compressed air into the vent holes to see if any dust come out?
The M6400 is pretty easy to open up (from the bottom) and blow out the dust (if there are any).

 

Yeah..took it completely apart already..
And one thing...you should never blow compressed air into your laptop.
The force of the air can damage the fans and even ruin the bearing on them.
You're much better off taking it apart and cleaning it with a small brush for heatsinks.
For fans just blow gently on them to remove the dust.

 

RGB LED = fail with most new drivers.



-James

 

Hi,
i have the same problems with new drivers. i am running windows 7. the build in driver is okay but the new nvidia driver dimms the screen.

 

Out of curiosity I used one of those laser temperature readers - highest reading from the docking connector = 107.4F
Laptop (Quad core Covet with 8GB RAM) sitting on desk running on 130W power supply with 2 Windows 2003 Server VM's (one is a Domain controller but both are basically idling), 1 XP VM (also idling), Windows 7 (using latest Dell Video driver) host running Firefox, Evernote,VMWare Workstation 6.5 (with listed VM's)...
What app are you using to measure CPU/GPU? (sorry I know it is said in this forum but I don't see the post now)

 

I use EVEREST Ultimate. Link:
http://www.lavalys.com/

I use those compressed air can they sell for cleaning computers and it does a pretty good job getting dust out of the heat sinks. I do use a toothpick (or paperclip) to keep the fan from moving. Thanks for the cautions.

 

At least 179.50 from Dell (or 182.10 dox optimized) works with Windows 7 and the RGB-LED screen.