Dell XPS M1330 WLAN and VIDCARD Temperature Issues

I've recently noticed that area on the bottom of the Laptop directly below the Touch pad seemed to be producing and absurd amount of heat , I don't remember if it always was this hot or if it just happened recently, I've never had any freezing or stability issues so I may have just ignored the excessive heat.

I turned the laptop over and noticed that the expansion card slot was directly below the touch pad, so while the laptop was running I removed the cover and touched the Dell Wireless 1505 Draft 802.11n WLAN Mini-Card it was incredibly hot. To give you an idea of what I mean by incredibly hot, placed my finger on top of the WLAN card and within 2-3 secs I was forced remove my finger from the card.

Clearly this is unacceptable and I'll need to contact Dell about replacing the WLAN Card, but while i was searching for information about WLAN card Temp issues (I didn't find anything), I came across several issues about the 8400M GS and its Temperature. I had suspected my 8400M GS was under performing, as I wasn't getting the FPS in certain games that I thought I should have. I had read about the Nvidia announcement regarding defective laptop GPUs, and i was waiting for Nividia to clarify what they planned to do about it.

Then I read some of the posts on this forum and immediately upgraded my BIOS to A12 (I had A6 before) for the improved thermal controls update and at the same time upgraded my Video card drivers to the latest Dell released ones (A08_R190091). In the future I plan to record my Idle GPU temps in accordance to this thread http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=266624 , and see if my GPU is also experiencing Temperature issues.

My 1 year warranty runs out in September so I want to contact dell soon, so I was wondering if Dell was replacing the GPU heat sinks upon request and if those new heat sinks fix the problem that Nvidia alluded to in their announcement? Also does anyone know if i could could just remove and ship just the WLAN card to Dell to be replaced, or does Dell always require the whole laptop to be sent in for repairs regardless of the problem?

I'd appreciate any Ideas or suggestions people may have on how to deal with this situation.

Thanks.

 

I have the exactly same system configuration on my m1330. And as you mentioned, my touch pad is also considerably hot. I am also concern about the warranty thing since mine will expire in September too. *sigh* If anyone knows about the matter, please let us know. I don't really feel like buying warranty for Dell/Nvidia's hardware design problem, but I also worry about the possibility that my laptop would die someday and they ask for a fortune to fix it. I remembered reading a post on Dell's forums that someone said he/she contacted Dell technical support and asked about it, and the representative told him/her not to worry about this. If it's Dell/Nvidia's design problem, they will still replace it. However, since there's no official announcement regarding this, I am afraid it really depends on who we talk to...

 

Is there a chance that you could test to see if the source of the heat is coming from the Dell Wireless 1505 WLAN Mini-Card ? While the computer is running you would just need to flip the Notebook over, pop the cover off, and touch the sticker on top of the card, it should be quite hot to the touch. I would just like to confirm that its that particular WLAN card that causing all the heat.

If any one has a M1330 with the alternative Intel Wireless N card, could you please post your finding about how hot your card runs while the computer is idling.

Also if any other m1330 owners with Dell Wireless 1505 WLAN Mini-Cards could post about their cards temperatures, it would very helpful in determining if there cards are actually defective or just a very poor design choice on Dell's part.

 

I have an intel card and the same area on my laptop is also extremely hot

 

I'm using the Intel Wireless N Card, and although my touchpad doesn't get hot, the panel with the headphone/mic ports gets really hot.

And of course the 8400M GS gets hot, but everyone knows that.

 

LOL !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

So it seems that its Wireless N Cards in general (or at least the ones that dell sells) that run incredibly hot. I've never come across any computer component that would run as hot as these Wireless N cards and not have Heat sinks attached to them, unless dell thought using the touchpad as heat dissipater was a smart idea.

The cards seem to function fine despite the intense heat, but all that spent heat requires a fair bit of energy which is being drained from the batteries decreasing their runtimes.

I Hope Nvidia and Dell will eventually get around to fixing the faults with the 8400M GS cards, so at least they'll be one less heat source to worry about on the notebook.