Vostro 1700 hot CPU?

That's one of the best photos I've seen of a clogged heatsink.

John

 

Not exactly a good thing John.

In any case, try undervolting your T7500 and see a further decrease in temperatures.

 

The dust problem is a good thing to know about. I think my HP laptop was damaged due to lint absolutely packed around the fan. I cleaned it up and and repasted the CPU but it remained unstable, subject to occasional lockups.

As an aside, I took apart my Thinkpad today. It had fewer operations than the Vostro but some parts were incredibly fiddly to get back together. I found no dust blanketing the cooling fins. I did repaste the CPU and southbridge (?.) I'm halfway through transcoding a DVD and the temp has risen to 70° C where it seems to be holding. It rose to 93° before.

I'm coming to the conclusion that CPU repasting is something that needs to be done periodically or the process and/or materials used at the factory are not adequate. I'd consider both Dell and IBM (perhaps Lenovo?) to be among top quality manufacturers and found the need for this on both laptops.

I'm looking into undervolting. There is apparently support to do this in Linux as well as Windows.

thanks,
hank

 

Hank,

Thanks for posting those pictures. I got a good laugh with your clogged fan. I don't know what sort of pets you have in your household, but they should be referred to Dell's R&D department.

As for the CPU compound, this doesn't surprise me at all. Believe it or not, my T5270 looked worse when I replaced it. As you noticed (as did I), the Artic Silver provides a big difference in performance.

 

I've completed this cleaning, repasting and undervolting both the Dell Vostro and Thinkpad T500. Both benefited greatly from from repasting. The T500 (build date 11-2008) had no dust bunnies but also benefitted from repasting.

The benefits of undervolting are apparent at idle but seem to disappear at high loads. I've put some information up about this at Random Thoughts and other interests: Keeping your cool

best,
hank

 

Well that's a pretty significant drop. By the way you didn't list your testing ambient room temperature?

 

Yes, the results were pretty significant and confirm that both laptops really did need attention.

Testing was done at 68° F (20° C.) (I added that to the blog too.)

thanks,
hank

 

LOL that's what my Vostro 1500 looked like on the inside when I took it apart.

Hey OP I also use IK8fanGUI and run the fan in low speed to keep things running cooler.