Dell XPS M1730 Owner's Lounge, Take 2

90 is very hot and 100 is very very hot (next to failing)...

Keep a eye on it! Might need some new cards soon.

 

And I already use the zalman cooler... Maybe I should flash the video Bios with a newer one?

 

What games are you playing? Is your VCs OC'd to your sig? That could be an issue.
I have a similar setup and at 3.2Ghz here what I am getting. Idle, game load( Playing CODWaW for about 1.5hrs MP) and GPU throttle. From the GPUz you can see I am still running a very early ver of bios.

 

I play lots of games. At the moment I play C&C Red Alert 3. Red Alert 3 has huge slowdowns every 5 minutes. Yes cards are OC'ed like my sig but when I use the standard clocks, it still throttles. The worst game is UT3. Throttles in 5 minutes and I have to shut the laptop down.

 

I doubt mucking around with your card bios will do any good - in fact I would advise against it (problem factor can creep in when flashing your GPU bios).

Have you given the beast a good shot of air lately? If not, try that. Also, I suggest trying the 186.18 driver. See if that helps. Be sure to lock your fan blades in place before shooting them with compressed air - use a paper clip. This will prevent the fans from spinning at an unsafe RPM. No sense in risking damage to the fan itself.

 

The fans are locked to 100%. And 186.18 is a quadro driver? What is so good about a quadro driver?

--> Added an image in previous post.

 

When you say your fans are locked what do you mean? Are you using 1k8fan (or whatever its called) to set the fan speed? Because as I and others have found out that only sets the RPM for two of the three fans.

 

No, i use ntune to lock the speed and in nibitor the speeds are also at 100%.
But it's weird that i can't change the throttling temperatues in nibitor. Also have a look at the second image. I have edited the throttling speeds to the 3d speeds to prevent throttling. But it seems not to help.

 

If you dont use ntune and nibitor, does the temp still build up to 100'c?

 

Yes i have just tested it and it still goes up to 100°C and then throttles.

 

Pbly its the best to call dell then. Cos 100'c is not good, anything above 90'c is troubling for the cards.

 

Funnily enough I played ArmA 2 straight after my last posts (great great game BTW) and the cards got up to 95C! But it was without a cooler on a wooden desk. I've the back raised up 3cm's now and temps are back down to 85C. Amazing difference the extra air space makes.

 

I use the zalman cooler. But in fact i don't think it does a lot...

 

Try running it on a wooden desk -v- Zalman on (low or high) setting, there's a huge difference.

 

GPU-Z and other monitoring apps will ALWAYS report the fans of the 8800M GTX as @ 100%. It is best to leave the fan control to the BIOS and NOT attempt to control it. The BIOS does just fine @ managing the GPUs thermal cycle.

Try uninstalling Nibitor and remove the NTune settings relating to Fan Speed based on Temps and see what happens.

Not trying to start a back and forth here, but I have never used a cooler nor attempted to control the fans - my max temp has NEVER exceeded 76c on the GPUs. My laptop is sitting on a Logitech Alto stand which angles the lappie @ almost a 45 degree angle so the back is well raised off the desk. Maybe I'm just lucky.

 

Oh. My. Gawd. LOL. It was what I suspected. It's a good thing I asked because if powermizers are disabled and it STILL downclocks, it is a temperature issue. I used 185.xx and Nvidia's 186.03 and I managed to disable powermizer and there was no throttling. But that's for my system though.

And... when was the last time you maintained your M1730? And when I mean maintenance, I mean opening up the entire machine, clean its fans, heatsinks from dust, opening the GPU boards reapply thermal paste onto your 8800 cores?

Anyway, I feel for your cards. Man, you may also want to get Dell on their feet and ask them for a replacement unit.

For my standards, if I ever hit just 80*C I get shivers. 90 - 100*C is NOT good.

Good luck man... I'm glad that you told us about this issue. It's not gonna be healthy for your cards.

 

The last time I opened my lappy was back in the winter. Applied new thermal paste. But then I broke my motherboard a bit and it i must order a new motherboard for +- 600$ !!! That's the reason I don't want to call dell. Also my warranty is expired...

 

Sending away M1730 on Wednesday. Whats better than having a good old little Thinkpad T41 (Intel 725 @ 1.6Ghz, 768mb RAM, 40GB hdd, ATI 7500MR), after owning one of the most powerful laptop around? lol

Though its a great ride, making $400 profit as well... But didnt see the point of keeping it, when I only web serve and play CS. 8800m GTX is way too overkill, and its value will depreciate rapidly this summer.

Think my way next, is either a SXPS 16 with 4670, pure quality multimedia, or a Sager 9280, for a powerful CPU, and good GPU. Or perhaps find myself another topend M1730 deal with X9000.

 

how often should we open our beast and clean them?gonna upgrade cpu at same time any tips on which one i should get.

 

4-6 month? I guess it depends on surrounding, and air quality.

 

Just when you get the first symptoms of heat issues.
I cleaned mine after a year. I discovered a little higher temps while doing some tests.

 

Just sort of bringing back a question that I believe some people missed, has any one successfully gotten their bluetooth to work under windows 7 64bit?

AND! While the $50 home premium win7 upgrade is availabe to purchase, how do we get DELL to give us a 64 bit vista disc? Do we simply call them and ask or are there special procedures we have to go through to get there? I'm sure somebody out there has managed to get one, if so, please share! =)

 

Guys, the problem is solved. I decided to open my laptop and dust it out. There was A LOT OF dust in CPU and GPU cooler. Unbelievable! I was most surprised when I saw the temperatures: CPU: 30°C, GPU: 49°C (idle). CPU: 60°C and GPU: 70°C (max. load) So everyone with heat problems or throttling problems, dust your laptop out. You will be surprised with the ammounts of dust. And thx everyone for your help!

 

You got it, simply give them a call or request via online chat. I got mine and upgraded about a month ago thru online chat with no issues. Got MD 3.5 also.

 

Good to see you got it sorted.

 

I guess now my question is, will the windows 7 upgrade work with our 32bit/64bit vista dell discs? My initial response would be a "why wouldn't it?" but you know common sense doesn't always work with technology.

Edit: @Gadgetboy
Why don't you have your x9000 at 3.4? Starting at 3.2 the fans are at full blast anyways, so may as well squeeze in that extra bit of power. Just curious.

 

^ This.

I also did the online chat. Pretty easy though be prepared to have the person take forever to look up your info, ask you silly questions, and make sure you understand that not all programs will run under 64-bit windows, yadda yadda yadda.

 

I go back and forth on it, for COD4 and CODWaW, I see no difference in performance, so mostly I run at 3.2.

 

Well, I just chatted it up with dell tech support and a copy of vista 64 bit is on its way. Remember to check your bios for your service tag. It was a hassle free experience, so go get it!

@GadgetBoi (again)
What's your voltages at for 3.2 and 3.4? I have them at 1.2000 and 1.2500 respectively. Pretty stable so far although no real noticable difference from 3.0. Fans constantly at full blast is loud but at least keeps temps down. 40C gpu and cpu idle woot.

 

My 17.0x multiplier is at 1.3750 @ 3.40 ghz (perfectly stable). With 1.3500 I got bluescreens.

 

Do you have any problem with the Laptop being on the Logitech Alto stand? I see the weight limit and from the feel of the XPS it seems a bit heavier.

 

Blue screens? How long did you stress it with orthos (or whatever program) before getting the blue screen? I did my 17x at 1.2500 for like 30 minutes with no problem. Not sure if that's long enough.

 

Not at all - its actually very sturdy and has no issues. It's a great stand. If you are in the market for it, I suggest the Alto Cordless package. It includes a full size wireless keyboard and wireless mouse.

 

72 -- under options I have Show Tray-Icon and Start with Windows checked. Splash screen isn't checked. However, nhancer does not run the profile for my game unless I double click the tray icon before-hand and wait for the loading bar in the top left corner to load (usually takes 35 seconds).

 

After 3 minutes with orthos... But it depends on CPU per CPU. You're lucky that 1.2500 is stable for you. I really can't go lower than 1.3750. (30 minutes is more than long enough)

edit: Lol, tried 1.2500, when I click apply in RightMark, immediately a Blue Screen

 

anyone know why every time i run ntune i get bsod?

 

lol poor you chester. =(

 

I clean my M1730 every 3 months. Weather is always very humid, and hot here in Singapore with temperatures reaching to 32*C ambient. There is no summer, autumn, spring or winter. Generally dusty and dry, that's why maintenance is little more over here on my end due to these factors. So much for our island lying directly under the equator.

LOL. Finally, I'm glad that it's solved. Dust is always the problem when cleaning notebooks and can cause temps to rise dramatically. Kudos.

I got mine UV'ed to 1.2625v @ 17x multiplier, it'll BSOD anything lower than that - But mine is a QS 174 chip I bought from ebay. This seller called 'extremeprocessor' sells good and reasonably priced CPUs.

 

Hmmm ok. Would this work maybe? Menu; "Tools" --> "Write all profiles to registry"

 

For 3.2 I am at 1.2675v and at 3.4 I have to run at 1.3750 or above, just figured the 3.4 setting was a side effect of an ES CPU.

 

Yes, I am. Thanks for the suggestion. The stand looks great and I see TigerDirect has it locally. I'm going to drop in there and check it out in person.

Any suggestions on a laptop cooler.

 

Hey there, is there any common solution for the yellow fever problem with 8700 SLI card? As far as I am out of the country right now I am not able to ask for replacements and I ve been searching the whole forum about that but I couldnt manage to find a proper one? So can anybody help me about that?

 

Can't you get on to Dell's online chat???

 

Has anyone used any of these five;

http://lifehacker.com/5303067/five-best-free-system-restore-tools

I'm thinking of using Paragon Drive Backup Free in addition to Windows Ultimate Back-Up. Is that over kill?

I want a solution that will allow me to restore the entire hard drive image in the case of a catastrophic failure - i.e. bullet through the hard drive, so the image can go on the new replacement hard drives.

 

Ended up using Paragon Drive Backup Free. I liked the interface which included the master boot record so hopefully can restore the hard drive(s) image from complete failure.

Also it has Recovery Media Builder: builds a new "recovery media" to boot from in case of an unbootable system which would be handy for a complete failure.

 

72oo - I have been using the built in backup utility in Vista Ultimate and I like it it backs up everything, I had no problems at all restoring my computers with that so far. Ultimate and Business editions of Vista have this utility built in.

 

So you've actually used it to restore? That's interesting, I've never had the need thankfully.

What caused you to use the restore function?

 

72 - Acronis all the way. Does the emergency boot sector and everything.

 

I like Acronis as well. I have used it to fix a bad RAID 1 to RAID 0 conversion. The restore was simple. Then I figured out how to do the conversion correctly.

 

And it happens again.

The VGA cards have stopped working, and I can only use windows in safe mode.

Last night, after days of not even running a proper 3D application, I decided to play a bit of Chronicles of Riddick. Two-hours-in, and the screen shut down and the machine rebooted. Ever since then, I get one of those nvk display driver B.S.O.D. errors and I can only use the machine in safe mode. I thought it was was something wrong with Vista, so I just opted for my backup Win 7 OS, and I got the same error. So it seems pretty obvious: The cards don't work any longer. Nice.