Tired of DELL not handling the throttling/fans/overheating issues; what are my options?

GoodBytes I have to disagree. I alerady have Dell E6400 with Intel GMA X4500 and I do not have problems watching YouTube - even 1080i which I lately checked... True is that laptop fan is spinning up faaast when HD Flash (AND ONLY FLASH) content is played, but it works. It is not case of Intel but it is wrong design of DELL.
I mentioned this sooo many times - you (dell) should not put on ONE heatpipe for cooling two parts! And this is what they did! GPU is in the middle and CPU is on one end of heatpipe - this has an effect of GPU heating up CPU! In NVidia model ... there are one bigger Heatpipe (still stupid idea) and in precision M2400 they DID put TWO heatpipes. One is for CPU+chipset second for GPU! This is soooo lame from them to 'cut corners' with E6400! They even put foam-like heat transporter GMAX4500 - it is designed to not transfer all heat! and therefore avoid slowing down CPU! THis is outrageous, but it's true! That's why GMA is not subject to copper mod, and it's also not recommended.

 

Chris, I feel your pain; trust me.
Go download BIOS 19; it obviously wont change anythinng for you from a structural perspective but it will provide a workaround for many of your problems.

 

I ABSOLUTELY AGREE! But until that happens.....

Have you guys heard about that lady who launched an internet campaign against Volvo recently? She has a Volvo with a defective transmission that has already been replaced once. Then they tried to stiff her with the cost of replacing it the second time....so she put on a Viking hat and started a crusade to force them to fix their product!!!

So what's the Dell Latitude equivalent of a Viking hat with horns on it ???

 

well we can always try and get publicity via the online blogs etc, then refer mainstream press to it (press nowadays seem ok with using blogs as sources) and pressure dell into replacing/solving issues that way.

 

I did flash new A19 BIOS. It works, more here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=440415

 

ban Intel GPU's....that's hilarious.

 

Dell does not have any clue over problems they have with their machines

They sent me a desktop a few years back with a mouse displacement (the point would point at one thing but once clicked it click to the top left of the pointer by a half an inch)
Dell blamed it on my mouse... seriously... the mouse...
anyways sent it back to dell thinking it was the video card and they sent me a new one which had the same problem...
anyways... i fixed the problem by updating the driver for the video card... the driver that came preinstalled with the machine was faulty...
call dell told them how i fixed the problem the same day
next week comes around and I wonder if dell knows how to fix this problem and so I call again
give them the same problems and guess what? I'm in luck because DELL discovered this problem in their labs and fixed it by putting new drivers on their website
LMFAO... wasted around 10+ hours on the phone for this computer and then they go off stealing my solution lol....

anyways dell has good enough customer service, seeing how they'll send you another machine

 

Actually Stupidcha... I would have pass through the same diagnostic... I would have replaced the mouse first, and then the GPU and then the drivers. If the problem would not be solved I would suggest malware, OS re-installation, and finally motherboard.

The reason why I would suggest the GPU before the drivers, is that putting myself in the situation of the technician at Dell, you know to told that every drivers release by Dell has been deeply tested against problems and test against conflicts. I guess that someone at Dell responsible for driver release decided that "testing" is something that can be skipped.In any company, even if you run yours, you'll always fall with some employee that does a half job.

So to be fair, saying that Dell doesn't know their system is harsh.

 

well said, personally i won't buy any machine with this kind of thermal design. Dell had very weak thermal design in many recent models.

 

Is this correct? I always assume that the northbridge was under the small heatsink at the end of the pipe and the CPU under the big heatsink in the middle.

http://www.notebookreview.com/picture.asp?f=36452
(Picture from my E6400 review).

However, using thermal pads may avoid the need to get the pipe and heatsinks to sit tightly on bot components but worsens the heat transfer performance.

John