Hardware troubles with refurbished XPS M1730

Recently I bought refurbished XPS M1730. It was second hand refurbish i.e. no Dell warranty.

During normal work with CPU temperature ~~ 50-60°C some loud fan(s) kicks in. It never switches off nor changes its RPM. Even if CPU temperature reads 42°C.

Secondly T9400 CPU is throttled to lowest multiplier (6x vs. 12.5x max) and almost never goes up, regardless of CPU temperature.

Haven't notice any problems with GPUs. Air intakes: open. Room temperature: cool. Windows power savings settings: max performance. Latest BIOS, drivers etc. and so forth.

Would you say there's nothing wrong with this machine? The company that did the refurbish just told me so.

Second question. Using RMClock I locked highest CPU multiplier and got around 6.5K in 3DMark 06. Is this right for M1730 with T9400 and 2x8800gt sli?

*edit* 3DMark is in native resolution 1920x1200

 

Im not an expert on this but I would advise you to resell that computer.

 

It would be a good idea to run ThrottleStop in monitoring mode while you are gaming or running a benchmark or two. A long list of Dell laptops have some serious throttling and performance issues when trying to use the CPU and GPU at the same time. When you go with SLI, the chance of problems increases.

http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/3/3/1794507/ThrottleStop.zip

Make sure the CPU multiplier isn't sagging down when you are trying to game and also make sure clock modulation isn't being used to slow down your CPU internally. That's a nasty trick that Dell uses on a wide variety of their laptops including their expensive Alienware series. Not good.

If you're not sure what the log file is telling you then upload it to SendSpace and post a link here and I'll help you out.

There are a lot of problems with inadequate power supplies being shipped. How many watts DC is your adapter rated at?

 

Unclewebb, I used your ThrottleStop and any other CPU monitoring software I found in web search. Just to be sure. I did read a lot on the internets about Dell throttling issues as well, and while this problem consistently appears in some models I could not confirm if it affects XPS M1730 too. Sadly I cannot run any more tests as I RTB-ed the laptop. I post here since they don't acknowledge my complains. Basically they said there's nothing wrong with it. So I look for any experience how M1730 is supposed to run.

I haven't used any logging to record my findings but I've made some observations using LED display. One of the soft I used dumps all the info there. From what I gather, this most likely has something to do with wrong reaction to temperature. When I ran the laptop in cold environment I almost saw it running perfectly -- for a brief while. Unthrottled, SpeedStep changing multiplier on the fly based on CPU usage. But it was in winter. Nowadays I don't need to employ GPU intensive stuff, nor even CPU intensive. The darn things seems to throttle right off the bat. Or to be specific, it locks the lowest FID.

Still, might connected to power adapter. If it was, shouldn't running from the battery solve the problem?

Anyway. Thanks kindly for any help. I feel so stuck. There's a word on the street that many manufacturers throttle down CPUs and GPUs in their laptops -- just to look better than the competitions on the "Teh Specs" page

 

I would like to know what temperatures you're getting with your 8800s?

Just a side topic, you've a T9400 @ 2.53GHz 1066Mhz FSB CPU in an M1730? Don't you mean a T9300 @ 2.5GHz 800Mhz FSB? A T9400 or any other 1066Mhz FSB processor is never compatible with a PM965 chipset especially the M1730 which it apparently uses. Run CPUz and check to see if its a T9300 instead or a T9400.

 

Idles are in lower 40's, average gaming is between 60 and 70°C. With max stress Furmark I got 80°C.

Well spotted. Obviously I meant T9300.

 

it looks like your score is a bit low. i have 12800 at native resolution 1920x1200. even with one card disabled I have slightly better score than you. I run my rig with CPU OC-ed at 3.6 consonantly (fans at full blast but it does not bother me) with CPU Temp abut 65C max and not OC-ed GPU 8800m GTX in SLI with temp max 58-60C. If I run x9000 at stock speed the GPU temp jumps to 75-79C quiet often. CPU runs hotter as well so I always prefer to run my xps with CPU at 3.6.

 

The reason I ask is that I keep seeing that 12k-ish figure. But you have x9000 instead of T9300 -- may it count for the difference? Basically I'd like to know for sure what score I should expect...

Also have anyone heard of fans failing to slow down regardless of CPU temperature?

 

For your CPU you should expect something close to 10K for sure

 

Might be obvious, but have you checked your power settings to make sure you're allowing your processor to run at 100%?

Also, are you running the latest BIOS?

 

Well, since it's obvious, obviously I did make sure it's neither bios nor windows power settings feature. As I stated in OP