DELL XPS 15 Fan working OVERTIME!

I wanted to start this thread because I saw several users here mentioned that the fan on their XPS 15 will not stop running, even when barely anything is running.

I just received my XPS 15 i7-740 6GB ram,Nvidia 435 , and im quiet annoyed that this fan is making my left palm rest pretty hot and heating up my room at the same time.

I got this computer from Dell as a replacement for a SXPS16 so I'm already pretty experienced with overheating notebooks.


I would like for everyone else with the same problem to please use this thread to discuss this issue. thank you!

 

I have the same problem. The fans run even if the computer is at idle. Runs for sometime, then stops, then after sometime.....

 

I have this with my XPS 14.

 

mine just doesnt stop at all

My battery life is about 2 hours on a brand new 9 cell with wifi turned on and 1 browser window.

 

Ditto, getting mine exchanged. Posted about it in the Owner's Lounge thread. I wouldn't be that bothered about it, but I do think running fans drain the battery and I need all the hours I can get from my 9 cell. Currently averaging 3-5 with fan constantly on and touchpad + left of touchpad always warm.

I have an i5 560 with the GT420 (which I keep disabled).

 

how do you go about getting yours exchanged?

 

How are you getting it replaced? You send in the old one and they send you a new one?

 

I get 3.5 to 4, you're doing something wrong with your settings.

 

I'll let everybody know how the exchange process works. I spoke to tech support and told them I'd like an exchange instead of repair since its brand new. She said she would call me Monday because she can't authorize anything because of it being a holiday weekend. So, I'll post an update here once I hear back about it and clarify how it works. I'm hoping they can send me one and once I receive it, I can send this one back (assuming the replacement is better).

 

Not having any of these problems. Palm rest getting hot? I have never experienced such a cool palmrest.. Compared this to the MacBook Pro of my bro and the Toshiba laptop of my mom, this one is so cool.

When I'm doing stuff on the laptop (playing music, browsing the web) from my bed (lower fans are blocked by the sheets), everything still runs on a maximum of 50 celcius, and I don't feel the palmrest getting hot at all. Can't even hear the fan running, because it's not.

In conclusion, I have no idea what you guys are talking about..

My setup:
i7 / 435MGT / 6 cell / 1080P screen


(off-topic PS: Damn I love waking up like this, playing some good old Moby over those awesome speakers in my bed, lovely!!)

 

I'd try to avoid blocking the air intake with anything, or get a notebook cooling pad. Don't want to kill your XPS early, do you?

 

What do your power settings look like? Try changing to balanced or power saving, while on battery power and see if that fixes your problem.

 

Even something as simple as placing a book under the laptop would work, but you're right, blocking the fan intake is the quickest way to an early laptop death.

 

My experiences reflect yours man, this is a very cool running notebook. Even when gaming and the CPU/GPU are cranked up and the fans are blowing, the only hot part is the air coming out the side. The rest of it stays cool.
Especially compared to the aluminum MBP, my old one was hot!

 

Ok just got done talking to dell support through live chat. they are sending me a brand new system replacement in 10-14 days. The other option was to get the heatsink replaced and get my subwoofers/speakers replaced (they made popping sounds)

 

Nah it isn't like TOTALLY blocked, but different than on a desk, you get the idea.

Indeed!! Love it.

 

Reapplication of thermal paste. Under load 66c for CPU both cores, 60c for GPU.


Before: 87c under load for CPU and 69c for GPU.

Now i'm going to run it for an hour or two.

The service manual neglects to mention you have to remove the optical drive to get to the last 3 screws to finish tearing down the laptop, and you literally have to completely tear it down to get to the heat sync.

Mine had WAY too much paste. It was a very sloppy job. I also noticed they coated the end of the heatsync with some kind of black material (so it's harder to see the heatsync through the vent on the side) No doubt this is not helping with thermal issues either.

But just to give you an example, there was so much paste on the CPU/integrated GPU and nvidia GPU that it was literally encased in it. There were thick ridges surrounding each die where the paste had been squished out. It took forever to clean.

 

Seems like I'm going to have to search for my Arctic Silver 5 I have laying around somewhere here then..

 

I've heard a few people mention heat problems and then when i ask them to show me a pic of their laptop i never hear from them again (funny that). Lets face facts its a new model,being massively distributed at present and problems will occur. Just hopefully not with mine as i am only in the UK for 4 weeks after it is expected to be delivered so even 1 problem and i am in the S**t.

 

Well let's see, I had to tear it down while also entertaining my 3 year old because the wife is sick. I'm so sorry I didn't have time to upload the before pics. or for that matter take pictures of the reapplication. :/

Sheesh.

 

Shocking. Dell should be made aware that the person who does the pasting is f-ing up. Do they have a complaints department?

 

I doubt it was a person at all. my guess is the machine that squirts the paste on was mis-calibrated and Q.C. didn't catch it.

I'm guessing that's what the hold up was for a lot of people on getting their notebooks.

This same issue popped up for apple when the Macbook Air was first introduced, way too much paste was causing the Macbook Air to overheat and throttle back.

 

I have a xps 15 i5 560 4gig ram 1080pfhd and the rarely runs
and the palm rest is barely warm ... must say dell did a good
job on cooling on the xps15.

sounds like maybe a quality control problem installing the heatsink on some laptops?

 

I have the fan issue, my laptop has been sitting idle with the default Dell install of Windows minus a few uninstalled programs and the fan is CONSTANTLY on.

I have the XPS 15, i5-460, 4gb RAM, FHD, 500gb hdd.

It's plugged in and I have the 9 cell battery which means the rear is elevated and it's sitting on a hard desk so there's nothing blocking its air vents so there's no reason for the fan to be on if NOTHING is running. What are people using for temperature tests? I'll run some.

 

Sorry you misunderstood me and it was in no way aimed at you or anyone owning one just a dig at the people that think every laptop gets hot because they are so pro desktop gaming (should have made it more clear). hope your laptop comes good and more important your wife gets better.

 

Your fan is suppose to run all the time...you ever here of a desktop unit that completely shuts the fans down? My 1 year old Asus X83VP (P8700 ati hd4670) runs all the time and I don't think anything of it....I had a hp laptop before that and it really ran all the time...amd cpu...

It should quietly purr along at idle or light web browsing, rev up some watching vids, and really kick in whist playing a game...etc..

Now if it going like a bat outa hell at idle you may have issues...why don't you guys that are having trouble download and run CPUID and paste your temp results in this thread so we can see if they are running hot or not.

If there really is a problem, I'd like to know about it as I just ordered a xps 15 a couple of days ago and you're kinda spooking me a little with these heat accusations ...tia

 

Sad to hear that.. I use HWMonitor and Everest Ultimate Edition to see the temperatures.

I wonder what your temperatures are!

 

Hey there, I got the same problem with my XPS15. When I first turn it on, the fan is running but at its lowest speed, doesn't bother me at all. However, even while doing nothing it would just ramp up and blows for approximately 1 minute...then quietens down again.

Specs: 740qm, gt435, 4gb ram, full hd screen, 9 cell

Idle temps: 52C for the cpu, 42C for the gpu
10 mins Stress test temps : 87C cpu, 94C gpu

I dont think this is normal compared to what others have said...and I'm leaning towards renewing thermal paste. Anyone can tell me if it's hard to disassemble the system? (I have very good knowledge of desktop pcs)

 

Thanks. I installed HWMonitor and I'll leave it running for the next few hours. My main issue is the fan noise. I ordered the i5-460 due to it's low power draw which I thought should make the battery last longer and laptop quieter due to needing less of a fan.

Anyway, the fan is constantly on and I can hear it which is really annoying as I like my computers to be as silent as possible. When it goes into high gear I can REALLY hear it.

Now these initial readings are just with the laptop on 5 IE 9 windows, task manager and HWMonitor.

Fan speed:
Low - CPU: 48 to 57C; GPU ~50C (+- 1-2)
High - CPU: 38 to 41C to start then 35 to 38 near the end of its cycle

Now if the fan really needs to run on low constantly is there any aftermarket fans that we can buy that are silent? I'm thinking if that's a setting even applying thermal paste will cause the fan to run on low no matter what the temperature. It's just this is kinda annoying as I have the 9 cell battery which causes the end of the unit to lift and not plug any vents.

 

this is my HW monitor at idle.

 

No worries, believe me I would have rather not had to open it up at all and I am glad that others aren't having this issue. That just tells me it was a Q.C issue and not a design fault of the notebook itself. I'm quite happy with how it runs now, the fan is almost never on now unless i'm transcoding video or doing other cpu/gpu intensive work.

And thanks for the well wishes.


As a side note: I think I'm going to open it up one more time to clean up the heatsync some. I didn't have time to do it saturday, tomorrow i'm off and wife is well enough to go to work, and daughter to daycare. so I'll have some time to do it again.

 

hey dk, I'm happy you got your heat issues resolved. That's somewhat reassuring news. If you open it up again and you have a camera, some pics of the innards would be very much appreciated...and if I'm not being too much of a pest, some post-stress-test temps would be nice....tia

 

Got the Arctic Silver kit coming in Wednesday that has the Arctic Silver cleaning compound and the AS5 to remove the Dell stuff and replace with AS5.
Hopefully I can get it done this week, otherwise it will have to wait until next Tuesday after a final.

 

So.. did you get the AS5 paint job done ? Wud be GREAT if you could share some pics if possible....

 

Got my XPS 15 today, the fan has run ever since i turned on. Temps are running 88- 90 degrees C.


XPS 15/Intel Core i5-460M 2.53GHz / 6GB,DDR3/NVIDIA GeForce GT 420M 1GB graphics/ 7200 RPM SATA 500GB Hard Drive/ 15.6 hdTLF LCD / 9 cell batt

 

Yup, painted it all over my laptop, now my lid is a metallic silver color...

 

A repaste should bring max temps down to mid 60's or so. Just finished transcoding gladiator. Took a while to do. Maxed out at 67c. Before the repaste I was hitting low 80's.

 

That is great to hear! After 10 minutes of gaming I am hitting mid-80s, idling around 40-45.

dkwhite - what are you using to monitor your GPU temps? I have a i5-560M like you and every temp monitor I try doesn't show anything for the GPU, just the CPUs and hard drive.

Besides following the service guide, any gotchas when taking it apart? I think I am going to do mine this weekend because I really hate fans and heat is really important to me since I pretty much always use the laptop in my lap.

 

The sensors tab on GPU-Z shows the GPU temp. CPUID Hardware Monitor shows all the temps.

 

CPUID HW monitor v 1.16 It shows the GPU fine. (Nvidia GPU) it doesn't show the intel gpu.

 

Yes there is actually. If you go straight to removing the heatsync and follow the steps there from start to finish, you'll realize they leave out removing the optical drive and the 3 screws you have to get to after the optical drive is removed. (The Optical Drive just slides out once the retainer screw is removed. You don't need a special tool to push the drive out).

Beyond that, use a credit card or your driver's license to remove the palm rest. I used my MCSA card, but anything will work (An iPhone screen removal tool will work well here as well). I don't recommend using a screwdriver as it will end up leaving scratches and nicks. Once you get it worked in between the palmrest and the base, you can just work it around the palmrest to get the tabs to release. This is probably the most time consuming part. Removing the display is easy. as is the heatsync itself.

 

Got it! I was using CPUID, but apparently if you open it when you aren't running anything using the Nvidia GPU, when you start something it doesn't refresh and add it as a temp monitor. You have to start something that uses the GPU and then re-open CPUID and the temp will show up.

Thanks for the info on the teardown, dkwhite. Unfortunately my local Microcenter didn't have any arctic silver tpday so I am going to have to wait for a newegg order to come in.

 

well this laptop is like day and night difference with xps 16.The chasis is so damm cool that i can now game for hours and still my palms are dry(xps 16 caused sweat on my palm in about 30mins)
BTW oc'ed gpu max 92C and non-OC is like 68-70C
CPU is 62C
DEfinately okiash!

 

so my REPLACEMENT xps 15 is getting delivered tomorrow!!

 

Sir, You are lucky, hope it turns out just fine!

 

CKhurana, your plight is giving me pain. My XPS 15 is in transit and would be delivered anytime soon. Keeping all the fingers crossed. Hope Dell India sends me a good one and it does not arrive with a litany of issues.

 

I'm very pleased with my XPS 15 but I'm encountering one problem. When I'm just surfing on the internet (or just typing in Word) my fan is audible but not annoying. When I start up a youtube movie the fan kicks in and is clearly noticeable (quite annoying really). Do other users also experience this or is this not normal? I thought that playing movies om youtube doesn't stresses the notebook!

I'm using the XPS 15 with the i5-460m processor btw.

 

Yea, same problem.

 

well im glad i got the xps when they had the 1080p screen dell is sucks not to offering it

 

Tested it for you, got the same on i7 740M.