Help regarding performance of Dell Studio XPS 16

Hi...
I have a Dell Studio XPS 16 which was bought a year back. Its configuration is Intel Core i7 720qm, 6 GB ddr3 ram, ati 5730m and 500 gb hard drive. Recently the temperatures of the system have been very high. Real temp reports it to be around 77-80C on an average and 90+ when gaming. The system then throttles and shuts down. This happens with almost any game i run on it. Could someone help me out on this

 

If you live in dusty environment then it is quite possible that air circulation in your laptop is inadequate. It is a common problem. Can you try to clean the air vents? You can use an air blower.

 

Will i have to open the laptop for it? I am not sure how to do it. Any guides regarding that? Will calling DELL help me anyway?

 

Calling dell will most likely get you nowhere, unless you have all day free. Short of them sending a tech round, there's not much they can do.

You best bet is to simply clean it yourself. There are ten screws on the bottom of the laptop, unscrew them all and the base plate will come off. Using an air duster or whatever blast out the dust through the heatsink, making sure not to let the fan spin up. Then make sure the intake on the base plate is free of dust and then you can simply screw it back on again. Make sure to do all of this while it's turned off though, it's not the best idea ot do these things when a computer is turned on.

 

Are those temperatures your CPU ior GPU? CPU you might be in trouble, GPU it is hot but not alarming. Also what is your ambient room temperature in C? You can try to Chat with Dell, I find this much easier than calling them up. Also you can view Dell's Service manuals to see how to open up and clean your unit. The Studio XPS 16 shouldn't be too hard, the main access door should give you easy access to fan/heatsinks and for a repaste.

 

These are CPU temps. Actually my brother bought this laptop for me from US. I am presently in India. Here it is around 10C now.

 

I opened the laptop. Cleaned the dust from the fans. Did a factory image reinstall. The laptop now runs cool. Around 55C average. But after the fresh install, the CPU usage sometimes spikes up and the sound crackles....any help regarding this?

 

Have you tried updating the sound drivers from Dell's website?

 

the sound crackling is a result of throttling and the 16xx series has serious issues with heat and throttling because of power + heat constraints. The newer bios revisions alleviated the throttling due to insufficient power but the problems with overheating remained. My 1645 would do the same thing as yours after 3 heatsink replacements, 2 mobo replacements I finally just got dell to give me a different system. That's likely going to be the only permanent fix. 90+ temps when gaming were the norm for me.

 

I have experienced your exact issue with my laptop which has the same config as yours with 8GB of RAM instead of 6 and a Core i5 540m instead of the i7. The first thing I discovered was that the factory applied thermal paste had somehow glazed over. I cleaned the factory thermal paste and applied some thermal paste from Antec. That took care of my issue and the laptop rarely pushes past 60C even under heavy load.

NOTE: There is a correct way to apply thermal paste. It is possible to apply TOO MUCH. If that happens, then the thermal paste begins to act much like a thermal insulator instead of a thermal conductor which is a bad thing. Google it or reply here and I can post some instructions on how to apply thermal paste to the SXPS 16 model.

Also, the design of the SXPS 16 line(not sure about the SXPS 17's) has a thermal exhaust related "flaw." The lower edge of the laptop's lid extends far enough over the exhaust vent that it can direct some of the heated exhaust air back underneath the laptop to be sucked up by the intake fan if the LCD panel is angled too far. If your laptop is working hard, it may not be getting enough cool air depending on how much of the heated exhaust is making it back underneath the laptop. A remedy is to try and keep the area around your laptop free of any obstructions and to also keep the angle of your LCD panel to about 90 degrees in relation to the keyboard.

As far as dust goes, with the laptop powered off, use a can of compressed air and make sure that the fins on the exhaust heat sink are free of dust. I've discovered that the exhaust fins have to almost be surgically clean to work well. Also, you might need to remove the access plate on the bottom of your laptop and check the fan directly. I don't know if it's the fan design or what but I've pulled more than a couple dust bunnies out of the fan housing itself in the year I've had my SXPS 1647.