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

Try disabling Dwm.exe (Desktop Windows Manager), it takes around 7% of CPU and is running all the time. At least 2 degrees less in CPU. Google it to know how to do it.

 

I request advice from users with similar experiences:

My m1330 froze twice yesterday, leaving a frozen image with a murky yellow tint over the whole screen until I turned it off. I turned it on once since then but shut it down shortly after since I do not want it to overheat and damage components.

Basically I want to know if (a) the fact that this is happening means it's already too late for the copper mod to save me, or if (b) these symptoms are simply signs of initial failure, but since it does still boot up, there is likely no permanent damage, thus I should just do the copper mod to prevent future overheating...

Thanks!

 

It's not dying because of overheating.
It's dying because of a faulty GPU packaging.
This mod won't save you, nor anyone from failure.
It might delay it, but it won't prevent it. Period.
If it's not booting up, the damage already *is* done.
Why don't people read?

 

My post said that my laptop " does still boot up". So your response is hilariously stupid, but your question is a good one: why don't people read??

Obviously my question is simple: Once the display problems start, is it too late for the copper mod to help me. In other words, is the copper mod merely a preventative measure to prevent what has perhaps already happened to my laptop. I personally did read about this issue for a good while and never found a clear answer. You didn't answer my question, and you misread my post, because you are too busy worrying what kind of sarcastic response to come up with? Are you seriously so pathetic that you have been posting on this specific thread for 2 YEARS and you are not even interested in helping people?

So, anyone who is not a completely useless and pathetic human being, who actually does feel like answering my simple question (warning: basic literacy skills are required to answer my question. Severely retarded people may misunderstand), feel free to respond!

 

He, actually, did answer your question. If you've read this thread, then you should know that Hep! is the best expert on the issue (and I do believe not only that). Anyway, here are rephrased answer:

THE CHIP WILL DIE NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO.

Copper mod will only prolong it's life, even if it's applied the day you buy laptop. Once you've started having display issues chip degradation will go faster (we're speaking of days here, not weeks). Copper mod MIGHT still help you to make it work longer.

In my case it also started will random issues that could be resolved by reboot, but it died completely on the third day.

 

Dear jesse888,

(actually, hep! really knows his stuff on this)

my understanding (and my understanding is limited) is that, if you are already experiencing problems, then it is too late and the copper mod will not help you - there are already cracks in the die caused by heating-cooling cycle, and this is the cause of the problem.

That said - your symptoms did not seem to be the paradigm symptoms of this problem which is typically an array of vertical lines.

There is a fix for the gpu problem: baking your motherboard (or using a heat gun round the gpu). You might want to try this and see if it helps - but I gather the fix is only temporary - 2 or 3 weeks before relapse.

On the question of whether the copper mod can prevent breakage altogether on a healthy gpu, this seems doubtful as its heating-cooling cycle that appears to be causing the cracks, though there is evidence that it can delay the problem. I had also heard that, if you can keep your gpu below 60 - which the copper mod will do provided you don't stress the computer - then the problem won't arise: it's only above 60 that the heating-cooling cycle begins to cause cracks. But I don't know whether this is true.

Unfortunately, Dell and nvidia have not been that explicit about the problem - it's in Dell's interest to convince us that everything is all right with the later versions of the motherboard, and it's easier to do this if they don't tell us exactly what was causing the problem in the first place.

Hope this helps.

 

Dear all.

Here is the link for those of you, who haven't yet read my post about 'How to cool down the XPS M1330'. May be, some of the ideas can help you.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...ng-gpu-cpu-temperature-rmclock-i8kfangui.html

PS: We have summer now in Europe and it gets quite hot. I could observe that a laptop cooler like the Zalman ZM-NC 1000 is doing a quite good job. When it gets really hot, dT is almost -10°C.

Good luck,

Regards.

 

Another successful story about the XPS 1330 copper mod. The entire procedure took about 30 minutes, and the results are concrete - 5 to 8 degrees reduction under load.

My thanks to everyone who contributed on the subject.

 

frippi and yossell, big up, thanks for the respect and thank you for explaining exactly why this fix is not about preventing a GPU from dying.

jesse888, this mod is about making an otherwise unusable GPU usable [until it dies]. Since the mod does not prevent your GPU from dying, if you are already experiencing issues consistent with GPU failure, it is virtually impossible for this mod to revert your chip back to normal function. The only way to revert a dead GPU back to a functional condition is to reflow the BGA on your GPU. This can be done with a heat gun, a tea candle tin filled with isopropyl alcohol, or my preferred method, the oven trick, which has been posted about many times on this forum as well as others, link here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...r-your-dead-graphics-card-your-alienware.html
Admittedly, the added pressure does sometimes temporarily solve issues, but since the cracks in the solder we are talking about repairing are very, very small, simply melting and allowing the solder to cool at a slow rate is usually a much better and much longer lasting solution. Of course, proper care of your GPU afterwards (such as this mod, watching temps and not allowing them to exceed 80C, not overclocking the GPU if you don't need to, not letting the GPU cool or heat up too rapidly. For example, starting the computer, going straight to a game, then shutting down straight after the game will cause the time it takes for the temperature to quickly rise and fall to be very short. Just 5 minutes of warm up/cool down on each side can help tremendously, I have been periodically baking the 8600M GT out of my Vostro 1500 and giving more time has seemed to help lessen how often I need to bake it.
As for me posting in this thread for two years, you're right. In fact, if you've done your research, you'll know that I'm one of the founders of this mod, if not for myself foraging into my system and attempting to solve problems for myself, and documenting the process and the reasoning, this guide would never have been written. I did this because I wanted to help people, and I'm thrilled at how many people have benefited as a result. I post in this topic to continue to attempt to help people, but also, for two years I have been answering the same dozen questions over and over. 99% of the questions asked here are fully answered in the first 5 pages of this topic. You are right that I did misread your post SOME in that I did think you said that the system didn't boot, however, that doesn't mean my post didn't answer your question. If you are experiencing signs of GPU failure, then the GPU is failing. Plain and simple.
But really, all I've done now is repeat the posts of yossell and frippi, which are really just reposts of things myself, others, and likely yossell and frippi have posted themselves multiple times in this topic. You didn't need to come to the last page to ask a question if the answer is already given in the original posts.

 

The Thermal Pad on my chipset is torn and there is some Thermal Compound on it. But I've nothing else and still use it. Will it harm? Because standard there wasn't a Thermal Pad at all on the chipset (only 1 on the GPU, so used that one). I had reversed the copper mod, because my laptop had a repair and now the only Thermal Compound I had is torn and dirty. Can I just leave it this way, or do I have to buy a new one? Because I can't find the same one on ebay.

 

Hi guys. I thought I'd share my own experience, as something of a novice in laptop modding. My M1330 went autistic a few months ago, after several years of being lovely to me. Everything seemed fine, but there was no signal to the screen, and it stopped driving external monitors. The GPU was obviously not working.

I was aware of the copper mod due to this smashing and venerable thread and now rather regretted not having a go at it - but it was a bit intimidating. After desperately lurching around the net for a while it became apparent that it was possible, at least in theory, to reflow the solder (the video I saw first was this YouTube - Fixing a Failed nVidia GPU on Dell XPS 1330, which I'm sure has been posted on this thread before). Not having a hot air rework station, and also being a complete miser, a couple of days ago I decided to use the soldering iron that I do have.

I hovered the soldering iron around the edges of the GPU for around 2 minutes. Then, not in expectation of anything happening, but really just because I already had the bits, I did the copper mod as well - so that if the reflow worked, there would be better cooling.

The machine booted - it was miraculous. I phoned people and told them. A bit later, as I was glumly watching the inexorable rise of the GPU temperature, I realised that I'd forgotten to reconnect the fan, and the video blew again as I despairingly tried to attach the connector. Might have cursed, a little.

The soldering iron has since failed to repeat its initial success.

I realise that I'm on a hiding to nothing here, but I love this laptop, and it really bothers me that in this throwaway society the whole machine is ruined by one component. It could easily perform the tasks I ask of it for another five years. In the meantime I am typing this using a machine put together for games, which probably uses eight million watts.

So I have a few questions.

- For future ref, did I do anything stupid?

- Hep, I think, mentions using a tea light with isopropyl alcohol to reflow. Presumably you'd put this on the GPU and set light to it (with an effigy of nVidia's quality control management team atop it) for a few minutes?

- Does anybody know where to find a pinout of the nVidia 8400GM's hidden underside? It seems to me that knowing where the pins are would be useful.

- Has anyone attempted to replace the GPU?

Apologies if these questions have already been answered in the thread. I have been through most of it, but it took a long, long time

cheers

 

- Heating chip with soldering iron is not a good idea as it might crack due to temperature differences when you heat one side, while other is cool. Using oven is more recommended.
- Here is the pin-out of 9300M which should be identical to 8400M:

- I've seen a series of photos somewhere describing video chip replacement, basically you should:
-- Heat chip and remove it.
-- Clean chip "socket" with soldering iron of excess solder.
-- Place a new chip and heat everything so it'd reflow. If you're planning on installing used chip, you should check if it has all solder balls in place, otherwise you'll have to restore them.

And, of course, please accept my condolences for your loss.

 

The Thermal Pad on my chipset is torn and there is some Thermal Compound on it. But I've nothing else and still use it. Will it harm? Because standard there wasn't a Thermal Pad at all on the chipset (only 1 on the GPU, so used that one). I had reversed the copper mod, because my laptop had a repair and now the only Thermal Compound I had is torn and dirty. Can I just leave it this way, or do I have to buy a new one? Because I can't find the same one on ebay.

 

xileS, you definitely need a new thermal pad as leaving chipset working without one would do no good. I think you can use any thermal pad you find on ebay, so don't look for 1330 specific ones, just make sure that it's thick enough.

 

@frippi - Thanks for the picture, advice and observations and particularly for the condolences.

By the time I'd read your post I had already attempted the soldering iron once more, and it brought the laptop back to life long enough to finish doing some updates before the video failed again. There's still life in the old girl, though as you say I have chosen an unsafe method to artificially resuscitate her.

The fact that the video blew again, even with the copper mod in place, is discouraging and indicates to me that a new GPU is probably necessary (a brand new yet equally flawed GPU, I presume). My next task becomes, then, sourcing one of these. I will certainly have a look for the video card replacement photos that you mention.

Though of course very frustrating, this has at least been an excellent learning experience.

cheers

 

mandicoot, you should at least consider to try baking your motherboard with current chip. Look for Hep!s description of a process. It might be that soldering iron created weak connection between chip and motherboard and because of that it failed again so fast. It's just a theory but I think it's worth a shot.

 

also look into the heat gun trick YouTube - Fixing a Failed nVidia GPU on Dell XPS 1330

 

I do have a thermal pad on the chipset, but that one is a little torn and nasty from the thermal compound, because I had reversed the copper mod. I didn't have any problems yet. Here is a screenshot from Hardware Monitor for the temps I got:


Do I still have to replace it? My idea was to get the same one as Dell has, so they won't notice if they need to fix something.

 

Hey Frippi, thanks for the encouragement. Your last post forced me to stop stalling and get baking.

To Hep and everyone else on this thread, many thanks for making the effort to share your information and experiences.

I got my mobo workin', got my mobo workin'

I removed the motherboard - as usual, a heart-stoppingly worrying exercise, the first time around. After that it becomes fairly routine, like open-heart surgery.

To anybody else who is considering this, in order to remove the mobo I had to remove a total of (approximately) 33 screws, including a couple from the CD drive and a couple from the PC-Card bay. I pre-heated the oven to an indicated 200 C and put the mobo in, sitting on four scrunched-up aluminium foil balls atop a baking tray also covered in foil.

The process was a failure the first time, after a six-minute bake followed by leaving it to cool in the oven with the door open; but the second run of eight minutes was successful.

The one casualty was some sticky insulating plastic sheet, which was partially melted. I have removed this, as it seems to have had little function other than to indicate where DIMMs and the like should go.

The machine has now booted several times into Linux, under which sensors-applet reports a GPU temperature of around 62 degrees C - this is with the copper mod installed. Didn't (and don't plan to!) try anything GPU-intensive. (Unfortunately I haven't been able to see how it copes under Win7 yet, as the frequent blind rebooting due to the GPU problems caused that OS to become corrupted, but that's entirely fixable).

The M1330 might fail again tomorrow, but if it doesn't I shall take it for a romantic holiday in Scotland next weekend. Just me and it, sat by a loch, ready for some emergency water-cooling.

 

mandicoot, that's great! My congratulations. I hope it'll last longer this time.

 

Can anyone point me in the right direction as where to find the copper or aluminum plate for mod?

 

Dell M1330 Copper Shim Heat Sink Modification - eBay (item 110450580301 end time Aug-23-10 02:37:00 PDT)

 

I got mine from True Value. It's .025 x 4 x 10 inches. I had to use 4 14x14mm pieces to get the proper thickness to make contact with the heatsink. My GPU temps at idle have dropped to around 65°C from 80°C without the mod. It's nice and quiet now and the fan rarely spins up. Should save on battery life too without that fan running all the time.

 

The fan is always a good antivirus, when something is wrong in your task manager cpu load is increased and your fan turns on ...try to look at the fun side .In my case this is my 7th day downloading "Lost" without rebooting and is working w/o problem and cool in a 30 degrees spaniard summer.

Undervolting and overclocking causes continous and random rebooting and i have to uninstall RivaTurner and all the software included in that thread.

 

That's not entirely true. Undervolting experience is extremely individual, it depends on properties of the exact CPU you have installed. If done properly - it helps a lot. Just follow The Undervolting Guide and do test your system after each step.

 

Is there anyone in the Los Angeles that does this for others or is willing to? Please let me know

 

Just reflowed the GPU in the oven, 10 mins at 210C and working great. Temps still a bit high so ordered the bits needed for the copper mod. Thanks guys for the heads up on the solder issue.

 

Hi everyone,

FYI: A couple of weeks since oven-work and my M1330 is still bringing me joy. I bought a twin-fan USB laptop cooler from Cooler Master for around a tenner, and currently have left the fan cover removed. With the copmod, under Win7 I'm currently running at a reasonable 57 C. It seems to run even more coolly under Ubuntu.

cheers

 

What about buying new 8400M gs and having it installed

 

My M1330 seems to have died and I can't find the thermal pad I removed Does anyone happen to have theirs still and want to sell it to me so I can get my laptop warrantied? (note: my system dying has nothing to do with the GPU). Thanks in advance!

 

New Mod on this mod!

I've discovered taking this one step further really improves things!! More copper.. but only 1 cent worth; and I'm not talking pennies

I started a new thread.. check it out!

My PressureEdgeFix Mod Mod​

 

RE: obtaining Copper plate
If you are having trouble try this:
A friend of a friend heard I was looking for flat copper and he took a short piece of copper pipe and flattened it ( using a bench vice I assume). I had tried the same thing and couldn't get it flat enough... but what he did differently was to NOT cut along the pipe -just squish the round pipe flat ( you may want to put some heat conducting paste in first - I never bothered to separate the halves ). I sanded it down a bit for perfection but it was nicely flat already.

ps... see my additional mod - I'm pretty happy with it!
http://forum.notebookreview.com/del...ureedgefix-nvidia-gpu-mod-dell-xps-m1330.html

 

I noticed it ran better with the bottom cover On ( drawing more air past the GPU I assume). But with the twin fans underneath that may be different.

Check out my other comments here for my own hack...

 

In my opinion that's not the best thing to do. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that you PC is working again, but I think that you never should have used blow torch to heat GPU in the first place, oven is much more controlled and stable environment to reflow GPU.

If you getting 90+ degress (we're speaking about Celsius here, right?) then something is wrong. I never get more that 75 on GPU under any load. You should try using solid copper shim as now what you have is actually two pieces of copper not linked with thermal paste which is might be a reason for such high temperatures.

 

Yeah.. I had gotten lazy with the torch and got a bit too close occasionally ( I took early chances as I got the laptop cheap "for parts") . Hopefully no more torching! I couldn't be bothered to take my motherboard out to put it in the oven though - you've only had to do that once?

Thanks too Frippi for the feedback. It's good to know my temps need work. After my successful wire experiment I replaced the old thermal paste and temps improved. I'm rendering as I write this and it's bouncing between 70C and 80C with a few odd spikes to 85C. Still need to get that down to your temps though... I'll try new copper soon.

 

BJustJ, good to hear that your temp is going down! I myself did not had a chance to try oven. When my chip died I replaced it through warranty and only then applied copper mod. Had no problems since then (I hope there would be no in future!).
Hep! on the other hand "bakes" his motherboard from time to time. You can find his messages everywhere on this thread.

 

Frippi, I would be interested in hearing how far Hep can push things before he has to re-bake.. and if he's still not happy.. his take on the square wire pressurefix mod I've had such good results with. Hep? Let me know if/when you are ready to give it a try!

 

I abandoned this POC computer months ago because of the constant problems. My Mom recently asked me about giving to my sister, and I said that it would just end up breaking again if I asked Dell to fix it. So here's what you can do to get around the GPU issue:

1. Call Dell and tell them you want a motherboard with the Intel graphics.
2. They will proceed to tell you that they cannot order a part different than what came with the computer. Their system will "not allow it". Tell them to do it manually.
3. They then will tell you that you that if they order the motherboard, there will be "physical incompatibilities". They are referring to the heatsink being different. Explain to them that when the tech comes to do a mobo replacement, he replaces the heatsink anyway. Ask if they can order the Intel compatible heatsink. He will fumble around a bit, may even call his supervisor, but this SHOULD work.

Tada! You now have an Intel motherboard, and should be freed from all Nvidia woes. I realize most looking at this thread deliberately chose their Nvidia, but I'm just putting this out there.

 

I've been reading up on this thread for a few days now and it seems that only a couple of people have tried to do this mod with the inspiron 1420. being an owner of one of the early 1420 models (2007) i'm trying to give this old machine a little bit of a tweak to last a few more months

I recently opened up the laptop and there was literally a layer of carpet-like dust particles covering the heat sink fins from the inside, cleaning that did help a bit.

What bothers me right now is that the GPU fails (screen freezes and everything gets covered by random lines) as soon as it reaches or goes slightly over 70 degrees C. It currently idles at about 55-56 degrees with just light internet browsing.

Upon examining the cooling assembly of the GPU I was pretty dissapointed at how little respect DELL has for their products.

This is how the GPU cooling is set up in layers:

-Aluminum-colored heat sink running to the fan.
-blue colored spongy thermal pad
-a very thin layer of copper (looks like they were too cheap to use just one piece of thicker copper)
- another thinner thermal pad
- GPU

Now I may be no physicist but the concept of using so many layer seems absolutely ridiculous for transferring heat.


I have a couple of questions

1. Anyone have recommended dimensions for the 1420 GPU? (GeForce 8400m GS)
looks like metaloffcuts has 0.9mm and 1.5 mm
2. How much does such a piece of copper expand? is it enough to literally shatter the GPU?

i've added a picture of the motherboard, let me know what you guys think.

 

It looks like the heatsink is attached to the motherboard with spring tensioned screws. If so then the "play" in such a mechanism should allow the copper to expand safely. It's all trial and error though.
Looking up the thermal expansion coefficients it says 17x10−6/°C which for a change from 15 to 70°C results in an expansion from 1.5mm to 1.502mm. Should be safe to assume the spring would allow that much extra movement over and above the existing design's expansion - no?

As far as the thickness of the copper I usually see comments saying "just thick enough to NOT move around". From your picture it looks like your copper thickness is a bit more critical than on the m1330 ( with it's long armature and large spring). I'm sorry I don't have any suggestions for getting an accurate measurement.

Have you baked the motherboard ( or used the heat gun.... or if you are willing to risk it as I did.. using a mini-torch ).

 

I have to send my M1330 in for warranty repairs and I lost the damn thermal cooling pad. Any ideas or suggestions? I've been looking on the internet for one but I can't find it. Any help would be much appreciated! Thank you.

 

I've got my thermal cooling pad ( the little blue one) right here... but it's got a bit of a tear in it. Get your address to me and I'll put it in a letter to you if you want it.

 

Thank you so much! I sent you a private message.

 

My results Now mind you, the Before Copper Mod was where I was running AS5 w/o any pads. Yeah, you heard me, I had ripped off the pads and just replaced it with a big dollop of AS5 thinkin that'd do the trick, lol. Then I found this thread and other mentions of the Copper Mod on the internets

Before Copper Mod:
GPU Min - 80c
CPU Min - Didn't measure

GPU Max - 104c!!!
CPU Max - Didn't measure

After Copper Mod:
GPU Min - 56c
CPU Min - 42c

(10 min of Orthos)
GPU Max - 72c
CPU Max - 72c

After Copper Mod + IDA + Undervolt (1.075v on a T7250 (C2D 2.0Ghz))
GPU Min - 53c
CPU Min - 38c

(10 min of Orthos)
GPU Max - 70c
CPU Max - 68c

So there you have it, $6.50 in copper and ~3 hours in modding I have decreased my GPU temp by 27c and actually gained 200hz (2.0 to 2.2ghz) on the CPU side

 

hi guys.

well... unfortunatelly after almost a year of work my gpu died again (copper mod applied).

tonight I'm going to bake the board again, however I have a question... how many times do You recon we can ressurect this faulty mobo? I mean, if it's second time, will it fail quicker?

worst case scenario I might just buy an intel gpu mobo, as I really like my m1330 and I don't want to swap it for anything else just yet.

[EDIT]

well... I did it again. it works and temperatures are even a tad lower than before. cpu idling at 37°C - 40°C per core and gpu 52°C - 54°C.

... but will it last another year? :/

 

Is this right that the people have started to bake their main-boards in an oven, also for the M1330?

Funny! So this will happen with me in future, oh dear ... .

 

Hi! I'm new here and I have a question about the copper mod.

I got a new mobo but the northbridge and the gpu already have copper shims attached to them with silicone pads on top. Should I keep those on and add the copper shim with a silicone pad to my cpu once I install it or should I remove the silicone pads from the copper and use the Arctic Silver 5 paste on all 3 instead? Also the copper shims are slighly thinner (one being .5mm and the other being 1 mm). Does this make a huge difference? What size should I put on the cpu?

Thanks for your help

 

Can you post a picture of these shims that you say are already on the northbridge and GPU?

 

LaPalida, the whole point of coppermod is to get rid of thermal pads. Using both thermal pads and copper shims will only slightly improve thermal performance of cooling assembly as pads will still be there and they conduct heat worse that thermal compound.

You want to keep shim as thick as possible because copper transfers heat a lot more efficient than any thermal compound or pad. Thicker shim will leave less place to fill with thermal compound. For example, Arctic Silver 5 specifications are provided for 0.001 inch (0.0254 mm) layer. On the other hand shim should not be too thick as it may break chip due to thermal expansion (that's why thermal assembly has those springs near CPU and GPU).

As we already know (thanks to everyone) 1.5 mm works fine for shim thickness, so if you have 1mm shim, that leaves about 0.5 mm of extra space to fill. Some of this space may or may not be compensated by thermal assembly itself, thanks to the springs again, but still this will worsen thermal conductivity.

Also see FAQ#9 for using copper shim with chipset. Using shim for chipset will allow it to "dump" more heat into cooling assembly, thus making it hotter and less efficient for GPU, so GPU will be hotter itself.

I'd advise to buy new shims and redo copper mod.

 

Thanks for the answers guys. Here are some photos of the said mobo and shims:

IMG_1337 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

IMG_1336 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

This last one is a shot of some loose silicone pads and shim that was sent to me for the cpu:

IMG_1340 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!