Dell XPS M1330 - Motherboard Replacement

My Dell XPS M1330 died on Friday (06/20/2008) due to overheating. It initially started with memory parity errors and windows recovering from various video errors. As the overheating continued, windows crashed with BSOD/black screen. The serious errors included green/pink display artifacts followed by colored/black and white vertical lines followed by a completely white/black screen. I could even catch an extremely short burning smell somewhere in the above process. Finally the notebook could not even boot.

I downloaded HWMonitor 1.09 after the overheating and errors began and found the temperatures, in Centigrade, around 100 for GPU and 70 for CPU when idle.

I do not play games or run GPU intensive tasks. Further, I do not tweak my notebook and stick to Dell and Microsoft Windows Update provided drivers. It is even well ventilated at all times. Therefore, I am surprised to see my notebook die due to overheating!

I called Dell at noon on Friday (06/20/2008). They made me start my notebook with Power + D keys combination to rule out problems with the LCD. The LCD test passed and they decided to send me an engineer to replace the motherboard:

Part Number: CX062
Description: SERVICE KIT..., ASSEMBLY..., PRINTED WIRING ASSY..., PLANAR (MOTHERBOARD)..., DISCRETE..., M1330
Quantity: 1

I found that Qualxserve had received the part around 9:00 am on Monday (06/23/2008) morning from the DHL tracking but the engineer from Qualxserve called me to inform that they are awaiting part from Dell to service my notebook.

On Tuesday (06/24/2008) morning, the engineer called to fix an appointment between 3:00 to 5:00 pm but later cancelled the appointment at 2:30 pm stating the part had not arrived. I called Dell to know what was going on. They informed me that the part was in the Qualxserve office and not with the engineer and Qualxserve will contact the engineer to pick up the part and service my notebook by Tuesday evening. The engineer called back only to inform that the part was not in their office despite what DHL says and therefore cannot service my notebook until the part is found.

I called up Dell again on Wednesday (06/25/2008) morning and informed them what was going on. They found out that the part was in the Qualxserve office but not with the engineer as the engineer could not find the part. Dell decided to resend the part if the engineer did not find it by the evening. I also called up Qualxserve and informed them what was going on. Immediately the engineer called up to inform that the part was found and my notebook will be serviced between 4:00 to 6:00 pm.

The engineer turned up at 6:15 pm and was angry that I had complained to both Dell and Qualxserve about the happenings. It seemed to me that the engineer liked to do things at sweet time and pace and delaying work in general for personal reasons.

Dell had sent a refurbished A04 revision motherboard, a center control cover which looked new and a BIOS firmware upgrade disc. The engineer was in a hurry but good at the job and took about 45 minutes to complete the replacement. However, no exhaustive tests were conducted to ensure that the notebook was assembled back correctly, heatsink fan was not cleaned, thermal paste was not applied and BIOS firmware was not upgraded from A8 to A11 revision using the provided disc.

After the motherboard replacement, I found the temperatures, in Centigrade, around 70 to 75 for GPU and 80 to 85 for CPU when idle. I was not happy with the processor's temperature and suspected that the problem could be due to the engineer not properly spreading the existing thermal paste, or applying new thermal paste, between the old processor and the old heatsink fan when my notebook was serviced.

I called up Dell on Thursday (06/26/2008) morning and informed them what was going on. They decided to send me an engineer to replace the motherboard and the processor:

Part Number: CX062
Description: SERVICE KIT..., ASSEMBLY..., PRINTED WIRING ASSY..., PLANAR (MOTHERBOARD)..., DISCRETE..., M1330
Quantity: 1

Part Number: TN953
Description: SERVICE KIT..., PROCESSOR..., T7500, 2.2, 4MB, CMER, G0
Quantity: 1

However, when I found the fan failing (the engineer had yanked out the fan connector with a screw driver and this resulted in loose contact cutting power to the fan at times) and contacted Dell again, they decided to send me an engineer to replace the heatsink fan:

Part Number: MM911
Description: ASSEMBLY..., HEATSINK..., NOTEBOOK..., MEROM, DISCRETE VIDEO..., M1330
Quantity: 1

Part Number: UP755
Description: PAD..., COOLING..., POWERSTRATE EXTREME..., 18X18X0.2, CENTRAL PROCESSOR UNIT..., PORTABLE...
Quantity: 2

I found that Qualxserve had received the parts around 9:30 am on Friday (06/27/2008) morning from the DHL tracking. Surprisingly, this time the same engineer from Qualxserve called me to inform that the parts have arrived from Dell and my notebook will be serviced between 3:00 to 5:00 pm.

The engineer turned up at 3:15 pm with a refurbished processor and a refurbished A01 revision heat sink fan although Dell had sent a lot more. The engineer was good at the job and took about 15 minutes to complete the replacement. However, no exhaustive tests were conducted to ensure that the replacement was done correctly.

So far, everything seems to be working fine. HWMonitor 1.09 reports that the temperatures, in Centigrade, are around 70 to 75 for GPU and 50 to 55 for CPU when idle.

 

Man, this is unbelievable stuff. I installed Everest Ultimate as soon as I got my XPS so I have been monitoring my temps at all times. So far so good here. Laptop is about 5 months old.

Hope everything works out for you.