Dell XPS M1330 - nVidia GeForce 8400M GS - Copper Mod

What do you think about modding also a chipset.?

I'm prepering to do the mod on GPU, and because my pad on chipset is bit broken I'm thinking about also modding it same time.

thx for answers

PS: sorry for my poor eanglish

 

I downloaded 18X.XX you recomend a 16X.XX I will try that. Still I have a few problem with this, like I cant overclock the core clock with rivatuner and the nvidia system monitor always says CPU temp in 105C (It no is true)

 

167.45 makes a difference, i have 169.28 before and 167.45 are cooler. Your control panel will say 169.28because is the "name of the modded inf" but "real driver will be 167.45", that´s the way to set-up a non specific driver.

Chipset was without thermal pad in my pre-modded lap and is still like that. Regards.

 

You can overclock your GPU with this driver w/o problems

 

I used HWMonitor to count the temperature, this is the screenshot of HWmonitor after i coppermod my XPS M1330, with picture on left side is without cooling fan, and on the right side is using cooling fan :

XPS full load :

Spoiler

XPS idle :

Spoiler

note : i tested it using the same program and game running on both before coppermod and after coppermod, but sorry i don't have the screenshot before coppermod, but the GPU temperature is about 102C (full load) and 68 (idle)...

 

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Believe me, just clean it, it´s easy and fan has a lot of dust even if you don´t notice it, specially in the air entry. Bolts are downside and video shows them upside, but it´s the same procedure than 1530 showed.

Cleaned, coppermodded, overclocked gpu and undervolted cpu my lap is 56 cpu 57 gpu showing this video which is more than remarkable for a t7500 intel core duo cpu, i have a t9300 series from my wife and cpu works around 40 degrees or even less and normal load, so keep in mind your temps depends on your CPU series. . It will be useful to post your cpu series when you post your temps. If your cpu is belongs to a hot series, your whole system will be hotter.

My wife´s 1330 is not copper modded and it also has a 8400 gs series working at 66 degrees normal load, but you don´t feel overheating issues at your fingers, working with more or less same gpu temp, but with at least 15 degrees less in cpu which is perfectly understandable, so perhaps overheating issue also depends on cpu series

 

I'm farily certain he meant 82C... :-/

I had similar results - I say "similar" because 59C is pretty cool, when you think about it

Here's a 3DMark05 bench. Before (104C = throttling point!)


And after the CUmod (72C )

 

what if i also coppermod the chipset in the middle? is there anyone have tried this? and is there any improvement? here the screenshot (the chipset that i mean is in the middle without arrow pointing it)

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?p=5175004&highlight=chipset#post5175004

 

what the meaning of "degrades performance of the cooler (increases chipset temp, doesn't decrease any other temps)" i have a bad english could someone translate it for me?in easy understanding english,..Thanks...i have a bad english thought.

 

Is true that modding with Coppermod will rise chipset temp. That is because the cooling system will run more hotter because catch more heat form the GPU than before. A hotter cooling system have less "Heat caught rate" so the chipset heat is caught in a lower rate and this up the temp.

Is simple thermodinamics.

 

Hi, I was impressed about the work you've done, both the theoretical research regarding this problem and the practical aspect of the problem. It's a clean work, but not entirely effective in my opinion. I'll post now my observations:
1. I think that pressing the GPU with a nonflexible mechanism that should allow thermal expansion and contraction is at least dangerous for the chip itself and for the MoBo too.
2. Putting a 1.4x1.4 cm2 Cu foil between GPU and that alloy (probably some antimony alloy) brings very little, because that support has nothing to do with the Cu heat pipe.
I'm thinking to apply this method described by you in a slightly different way, to my M1330 notebook. First I will not eliminate the thermal material from the GPU and the NB, in order to keep the flexibility for thermal expansion. Second, I'll use 1.5 mm thick Cu foils, placed between the chips and the flexible thermal material, but much larger in area, let's say one of 3.5x3.0 cm2 for GPU, eccentrically mounted, and another of 2.5x2.5 cm2 for NB. Both Cu sheets will be pressed in place using the original thermal conductive material. If the GPU and NB are both at the same level I will use only one common Cu layer for both chips. Up to now I couldn't find 1.5 mm thick Cu layer, but I'm still looking for. Once I will get it, I will proceed to this modification.
Extremely effective for my notebook is to place under its bottom a very thin USB cooler with 3 fans that works permanent. In this way it has a cold surface all the time and I can stay with it in my lap how long I wish without any danger of overheating.

 

GPU cooling has everything to do with the CPU cooling pipe, the alloy cooling unit from the gpu to the cpu is one unit with the heat pipe and exhaust fins one unit fixed onto the whole cooling heat sink.
So when the GPU heats up where does the heat travel??? alone the cooling unit and heat pipes,exhaust fins alone with other parts of the laptop.

 

HxA I dont know your study of thermodynamics neither the MOD creator's studies but this MOD is thermodinamically correct. Im not a thermodynamics master but I took Engineer physics and knows about the problem. The solid copper sheet not help a lot in touching the two sides (GPU and cooling system) but you use it with thermal paste. The thermal paste touch almost all the surface of the copper and the GPU and the other side of the copper and the cooling system. This make a good connection for heat transfer. A good conduction heat transfer need 2 things: big touching area and good conductive material (low especific heat). Still all the good thing ends with the alloy material in the cooling system. I think that they make that because not want that the CPU runs hot. If all are made of copper the CPU will run hotter because the GPU will make the cooling system hotter and if the cooling system temp. is more close to the CPU temp the heat transfer will be lower making the CPU more hotter. Maybe this is a little confuse because heat not is visible but in a nano scale the atoms in solid are in vibration. That vibration is the heat. So more heat, more vibration, so heat is atom's cinetic energy. If I can make a solid Copper conection between the GPU and the copper tube the GPU temps will lower more. Still this will make the Cooling system hotter and finally the CPU will run hotter. This can be solved with more fans or heatsink (convection). The cooling system can be upgraded but I only reccomend heavy mods to people that knows how it works. Trying to make it cooler if you dont know you can make it hotter!!!

This MOD only change a material for other more Heat conductive, not change touching area or better heat convection. Still works great, 15C lower in idle is a good deal! also you can get 30C lower on load.

Now I can play my games without get the fan to 100%

 

This is a good point that hasnt been mentioned. The die on the CPU and GPU are bare silicon, which can easily crack. There's no protective metal casing such as with an Intel 775 chip. The 4 screws apply equal force on the CPU, but the GPU die is to the side where the force applied by the heatsink might not necessarily be equal/consistent. Whether this could pose a problem in the future, who knows.

 

My mod works perfect, but a after clean the fan inside, even with same temperatures laptop feels cooooooooooooooooooooooooooler. Do it

 

I think that the heat espansion is veryy low to be a problem. If you plan to have the PC for 10 years maybe this can be a problem. I will check that thermal expansion.

 

Heat expansion is absorbed by the thermal paste between GPU and Cu w/o problems. And Cu-Cu contact is not so important, Al. has lower heat conductivity, but is not a closed circuit and i can assure you heat evacuation is good because Cu sheet is in fact joined to heatsink, almost immediatly after mod, if you dissasemble the lap again you will see it, thermal paste over GPU is not completely dried, and Cu sheet is united with heatsink firmly, so the heat is being transfered right.

And if you doesn´t change the heatsink design (impossible), you finally have narrower Cu contact surface near GPU, so perhaps arrow shape has sense after all (heat must conducted outside by the fan). Conclusion: the mod is perfect or almost perfect and it´s going to be dif. to improve it significantly.

CLEAN AIR ENTRANCE FINS BELOW YOUR FAN PLEASE!

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yeah i have overheating issues like 2 months ago. FAN HAVE A TON OF DUST!

 

I think you're using too much thermal paste in that case... Remember, the purpose of thermal paste is to fill the "porous" surface of the metals, no more, no less.

There's still a spring-tensioned screw holding down the side of the heatsink closest to the GPU. As long as you don't over do it, this spring should provide a margin of safety for any possible expansion...

 

Thanks Brian for your ample answer. I do have some basic knowledge regarding thermodynamics, while I’m a physicist too. My point was this: while the alloy is not so good thermo conducting material as the Copper, always it’s better to try to eliminate the heat from the chips (GPU especially) as fast as possible using larger sheets of Copper and good thermal compounds, of course; this is a basic principle in a cooling down process. It can be achieved in these specific conditions by increasing the surface of the Copper that is in direct contact with the chip’s surface and then let the natural convection to bring its small contribution to the temperature decrease inside the chip. So, a small part of the heat will be dissipated in the internal volume of air inside the notebook and the bigger part of it will be managed by the system’s fan thru the alloy support and the Cu heat pipe. I wished to keep the original thermal polymers only because mechanical considerations in order to protect the chips integrity in time. Of course, if I will figure how to compensate the mechanical expansion due to the warm-up, I will be glad to renounce completely to the thermal polymer’s services. Probably the idea screw + spring is a good one, with the condition to calibrate the spring in a proper way.
Concerning the chipset, the only way to decrease its temperature is to add a larger sheet of Cu and keep the thermal polymer too, because three rigid couplings with pressure applied in only two external points of the system is a mechanical impossibility.

 

Metal expansion due to 40 º degrees increase in a 1.6 mm sheet is not important, i used to know how calculate it, but i forgot it a long time ago.

 

guys will this work on M1530?
was thinkin about it, but havent had the opportunity to open the board yet..

has an1 done it on their M1530? thx in advance?

 

Yes and Yes all posted within forum.

 

Finally I did it! It's better to prevent than to run later into troubles... I made the Copper Mod for both nVidia and chipset. For the nVidia chip I used a 27x36x1.9 mm3 Cu layer and for the chipset I used a 27x36x1.6 mm3. Compared with the original example, in my M1330 the heat pipe was modified by DELL, by separating the nVidia heat sink from the rest. This was good, because I was able in this way to tune very fine the distances between alloy and the Cu sheets for a proper pressure and alignment (this operation has been done with clean surfaces, without any Arctic Silver compound). Be careful if you have this design, on the alloy's surface that press against nVidia chip are two "L" marks in relief, that must be erased for a proper thermal contact with the copper sheet. The spring around the big screw close to the video chip did the rest of the job in a proper way, after adding the Arctic Silver 5 compound.
In the PDF file you can see the values I've got running 3D Mark test with all the options enabled, with the notebook on a table, without any other supplementary external fan. The temperature inside the room was 26 C. The wireless and bluetooth were active all the time and the notebook was connected to the main power supply. I have to mention that I used two "no name" Cu pieces, homemade, because I couldn't find a certain type of Copper.
Good luck.

 

I need to do the mod. I bought a new mobo to replace my original with a completely toasted NV GPU. Does anyone have a left-over 1.5mm 14mmX14mm shim for sale? Shipping from metaloffcuts is severely delayed because of the volcano dust.

Thanks much.

 

Here`s a video that i made regarding this problem
How to avoid nVidia failure on xps M1330

 

I dont understand yet, the problem is in the chip or the solder?

cuz if the problem is in the solder, the solution will be a Reballing using spheres with lead, here in Colombia a lot of people do that with success.

bye

 

Hey nartus,
According to my research this and this articles. THe problem is in the chips not in the solder. May be this is some temporarily solution.

 

1. ogntang , here in notebookreview there are some people with not Faulty 8400M GS?

2. And here in Colombia is normal see a lot of dead laptops with Geforce 6150, 7150, 8600, so is not only for the 8400 GS.?

3. If the problem is caused by possibly weak die and packaging, that means if I try to run the laptop at lowers temperatures or run it with lower heating cycle (average temp const), the GPU can survive. Im right?

 

Hello,

I've had my XPS for over a year now. I knew of this mod when it first came out, put was always on the move, so never did anything about it. My M1330 was getting hot a couple of weeks back so I took of the rear cover and stuck the vacuum cleaner on it. it seriously reduced the fan cutting in.

Now I have some time I was planning on doing this mod and am currently reading though the pages.

I've ordered my copper and was wondering if this Akasa AK-455 Thermal Compound AND Heatsink Cleaner Kit was any good for doing this?

Akasa AK-455 Thermal Compound & Heatsink Cleaner Kit : Thermal Compound : Maplin

Thanks

 

Hi, Folks, I just had a question about the replacement boards. The extended warranty ran out on my latpop xps 1330 about 2 months ago and when I rang dell they offered to replace it for me for the tidy sum of 500 pounds(even though I'm in Ireland and we have euro here). Very nice of them.

So, I'm going to do this myself.

The original video card on the laptop was the:

128MB nVidia® GeForce® 8400M GS

Is this the same as some of the ones that are on ebay?

such as this one:
eBay.ie: GM848 Motherboard For Dell XPS M1330 1330 Laptop (item 280502746248 end time 04-Jun-10 20:48:13 BST)

However, I see on this one it doesn't mention nvidia chipset so it maynot be the right one. I'm going to mail them and find out. Has anyone bought a replacement motherboard and nvidia chipset and carried out this operation? If so where did you buy the motherboard from?

Thanks guys, I'm soo fuking pissed off that this has happened. One of the lads told me to replace it a while ago while it was under warranty in case it happened. I didn't and now look what fuuking happens. Their relucatance to accept any responsibility for this kills me. I understand that it is the chipset that is faulty but they are replacing boards like this left right and centre and because I'm two months out of warranty they're refusing to help me out in any way. I will never buy dell again.

Thanks.

Martin

 

That is not the right one, if you look closer, you'll notice only one chip and one socket on it, those are chipset and cpu socket. It should be one with integrated video. Look for the one with two chips on board, like this one:
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/...&cs=19&sku=K984J&mfgpid=192266&chassisid=8463

There is one more thing to know (but that's something someone else should confirm): there are two editions of 8400M GS, the new one appears to be more "heat resistant', it has red dots aroud the chip (like the one above).

 

That's sweet. Thanks for that man. I'm going to search for this part around and see if there's somewhere I can get it cheaper. At the minute I would rather wash my face with acid than hand over that amount of money to dell for a laptop I paid €1500 for. It's killing me. Honestly. If anyone knows where I can pick one up cheaply I appreciate it. thanks guys.

 

There are working laptops with 8400GS?

Can you post time of working?
Copper Mod or not
Chip Revision

 

Hello,

I bought my M1330 in November 2008 in the UK, it was refurbished. I guess due to a graphics failure. So my 12 month Full Warranty expired in Nov 2009 and I guess my "Limited Warrany" expires in Nov 2010

I've been running it almost everyday, although I dont play games on it so didn't stress the GPU. However it still run really hot.

So its been running 1.5 years with no failure.

I vacuumed it the other day and fitted the copper mod, now it runs a lot cooler and the fan hardly ever goes on full speed.

I called Dell yesterday and enquired about extending the warranty, I also enquired about the "Limited 12 month Extention".
I was told that within 12 months of my Warranty expiring I could take out a 3 year extention for £160. Which I am considering. The sales guy was less informative about the "Limited Extention" and tried to get me to buy the 3 year extention.

Time of Working: 1.5years
Copper mod: Yes (Since 3 days)
Chip Revision: Don't know, I only read the first half of the tread when I did the mod, although I wish I checked now. since I bought it in Nov 08 I guess its not the latest one.

 

Nertus, It is matter of time these chips to fail! The problem is in the chips` architecture. Did you read the articles I posted?

Of course They will tell You to get the 3year warranty. That is marketing strategy! If you are not replacing your laptop in the next 2 years you can take the 3 year warranty but this is a long time for this peace of sh*t. About the sales guy.. only few people know about this "warranty upgrade" for XPS M1330.
I sent Dell dozens of emails, called them many many times, and after 3 months.. voila A guy come to my house and replaced my mainboard.

 

Well I figured that I'll still get 2.5 years cover even after the limited cover has expired.

Does anyone know when Dell will run out of spare parts for the M1330?

 

Regarding my "new" mainboard I can say they don`t replace your mainboard with new one. They repair them.
I mean it is actually new but it is repaired .

 

I opened up my M1330 and have now notice that the shim that i purchased is too large. It's measurements are about 18mm x 19mm and about 1mm thick. Do you guys think this is okay or should I stop and get another piece?

I've already diassembled my laptop so if someone knows and could tell me asap, that'd be great!

My heatsink is the "newer" model like HxA's (post #1326 pg 133)

How am I suppose to "erase" and do so without damaging the rest of the surface? I'm absolutely stumped here.

 

That piece should work. Just make sure that it will be fully covered by heatsink when in place.

You can just use a small file to remove them. Don't be scared to scratch the surface, it's not so smooth anyway and if you do, you can always polish it later. But I think if you'll proceed carefully you'll easily remove these Ls without any damage.

 

Thanks for the quick response frippi. I just did a "dry" run and my piece of copper appears to be too thin. It slips out without much difficulty even when I've screwed everything down.

EDIT: As I removed the blue factory thermal pad, it ripped about halfway down the middle. I'm assuming this is okay to still use?

Bought my piece from chips2481. I DON'T recommend others buy from. It won't fit...
ebay link: Dell XPS M1330 GPU Copper Pad Shim With Thermal Paste - eBay (item 250630067143 end time Jun-08-10 12:03:21 PDT)

 

Yes. 1mm might be too thin, most recommend 1.5mm. I've bought mine from metaloffcuts: Dell M1330 Copper Shim Heat Sink Modification - eBay (item 110450580301 end time May-25-10 02:37:00 PDT)

Should work.

 

If you're getting an new shim ... buy a new pad as well if you can find one. The rip could compromise the ability of the pad to evenly distribute the heat.

 

Thanks again frippi. I definitely do regret not finding that company first ~_~.

Is this necessary? The copper shim is going to replace the blue pad, isn't it? I've been using it so far right now and I do think my temperatures have gone a couple degrees higher. It worried me at first (sort of the opposite of what I intended for when I started), but its not too bad and only temporary I guess. My idle CPU temps used to be ~35C and now ~40C. GPU temp used to be ~57C and now ~62C.

 

I build this and trust me the result it's more then great
I will provide more details later on...

 

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So I did the copper mod and was running fine until today.

My warranty expired last year, but I sneaked in under the 12 month extension offered by Dell. So here's my question...

Has anyone done the copper mod and sent their laptop in for depot repair under warranty? Did you remove the copper mod? ...and no, I didn't keep the purple pos

Thanks in advance..

 

my m1330 ( coppermoded ) gpu die last week after playing tomb raider underworld. I have highest temp. only 66C.

then I tried to reball the gpu chip and now its working again
I like it