How to: Improve your XPS M1330 Cooling

Did the mod on my newly arrived m1330 a few hours ago and got good results with a piece of aluminium.

Didn't take any pictures, but noticed my HSF was different from the two alternatives I've seen posted here earlier - mine has a continuos cast piece under the heatpipe all the way from the fan to the gpu, with cast spikes on the narrower part along the gpu/northbridge.
Also the 'L' shapes around the gpu are recessed and NOT raised on mine.
Didn't do much good though.. idle temps were ~60/75 cpu/gpu with the delivered bios A06, upgraded to A11 and it got 4-5 degrees lower.
Tried 3dmark05 and aborted the run after the first test when I saw the gpu had raced to 107 (celsius!).

After finding a piece of aluminium of the correct thickness, three times the size of the gpucore to make better contact with the hsf, and lapping this with 2-600grit I mounted the hsf again with AS5 after a thorough clean (left the NB pad).

With the A11 bios my idle temps was now 40/43 (cpu/gpu - ambient 20) and I'm very pleased!

A full run of 3Dmark05 gave a max gpu temp of 69 from hardware monitor, 76 from PC-Wizard. Cpu was <56.

Temps were measured with PC-Wizard from cpuid.com/panopsys, this reported steadily 7-10degrees higher temps than 'hardware monitor' from the same company (gives same temps as gpu-z btw.).

The fan constant on/'tempfix'/ from the A11 bios actually annoyed me a little with my new idle temperatures.. so I configured a cpu/gpu activated profile in I8kfan to let the fan rest until the gpu reaches 58 degrees/cpu at 55 and now it just kicks in on low every 6-8 minutes.

I think this is how the m1330 SHOULD be working from the beginning!


*config*
crimson T7500, 3GB, Led backlit, 8400m, 4965wlan, 355BT, XP, Samsung HM160HI in ahci mode w/Intel 8.2 drivers, fingerprint reader, 6-cell.

- Thanks a million for making me aware of this problem with the m1330!!
..usually it's not my first task on the list to start monitoring temps when a new laptop arrives, thankfully nothing got fried

 

Good thinking and congrats on your guts to do the modd on a brand new laptop. I had no problems doing it, but I saw a few guys wondering if they should do it.

 

And yes... 10 days ago first had symptoms... purchased in december 07... few days ago I posted here... bios A11 and modified laptopvideo2go drivers helped me out a few days, now it's dead...

Dell's tech is coming over monday for a new mobo. On the phone they were well aware about the issues.. although they said it doesn't happen too that many m1330's and internet forums always exagerate....

anyway; I won't have a copper sheet by monday but will order it asap.
I guess a few days without Cu mod but with new mobo will be ok as long as I don't load the m1330 too much.

so add me to the famous list

 

Thanks, and it really wasn't any big deal - cheap refurb in mint condition, tested all was ok except from cooling and did it with aluminium I already had lying aroung.
Thickness was more crucial than I first believed though, especially with my cast hsf - there is no give and no possibility to bend it to shape if you have a near match. This is in addition amplified by the fact that the hsf have to press down preferably evenly on three chips perfectly flat.

Cut and drymounted a piece first which was 1.3mm, tilted the laptop with all screws tightened on the hsf and it just fell out!
If it had been 'attached' with sticky AS5 though, it probably would have fooled me to think it was ok for a while..
Ended up with a flat piece from an old heatsink which was 1.7mm, and got cut to ~2x2.5cm to mate better with the hsf. This seemed perfect for me, YMMV.

Anyhoo.. no matter how much modding, the cooling solution is ineffective,with too little circulation, cooling area, and a compromise/weak link in the design of this laptop. I would guess it was developed with integrated graphics in mind, possibly an x1400 but the 8400 got added as an afterthought at a late party with the Nvidia team :SLEEP:
______________________________________________________
Is fairly ok now, but I've noticed the fan has been on full tilt now for a brief 4-5 hour testsession of HalfLife 2 on this tiny lappy, but I still managed to hear the integrated speakers! GPU was steady at ~80-85 degrees with all settings to max, 6xAA and native res. but the sun has been shining for many hours now and ambient has rised to almost 28 degrees *phew* Time to get oudoors without the crowbar

 

it really pissses me offf this is what online chat said...

"But whatever part which we use in our laptops are tested and only then used on our models."

"Before shipping it out to our customers."

"You can be rest assured that these graphics card which we use, will perform to the best of its potential."

"We put our laptops to the ultimate test. You are talking about 1 hour games we use it for hours and hours together."

"It is not just the lab testing"

 

Heh..hijacker - have you ever tried to 'chat' with other notebook manufacturers? Or try to explain a problem to Microsoft f.i.?
The record is exactly the same - 'Our product is working fine!'.
That said, from many years of experience with Dell, they really go out of their way to make things right and the service is professional.
They've never meant to make a bad product just to turn a profit, and really - the consumer and budget laptops aren't THAT far apart from the business models like the story is with many other brands.
From my impression the consumers of their "$499" bargain pc's really gets the full benefits of the international support network and technicians, some random lines from a supportchat even without listing the meaningful(?) questions in advance doesn't make me think otherwise ;o

 

Oh please, a pic, I need a pic... to add to my collection pleeeeeease!

Oh wow, that GPU idle temp is fantastic... maybe the best we've seen so far! Is that a HWMonitor figure?

 

that was a really smart idea from you to do a dry run* - wish I had thought of that too. As I mentioned elsewhere, I was unhappy with the angle that my HSF hits the Cu shim ( as seen here).

Did you try to "wiggle" the 1.7mm during the dry run...? Any play detected?

*Definitely worth a rep 'cause I'll use it on my next attempt

Sidebar:
What graphics settings do you use when playing HL2 on the 1330? I've been "testing" with everything on high, but that is of course not really playable on the 1330 - not in sp and certainly not a dm, lol ;-) Even more odd - HL2 "recommended" my current high settings (denoted with a "*" next to the option). Btw, OCing the 8400M GS to 450/650 got me a few frames more but it wasn't worth the effort to start up RivaTuner (lol)

 

Definitely hope that I get a heatsink without the raised L's so that I can use a larger piece of copper to spread the heat to the heatsink and heat pipe quicker. In my opinion, they should have used an all copper heat sink assembly and a bigger heat pipe.

 

@traveller Ok, I'll send you a picture, but it'll be another day/week when i can locate the charger for my proprietary olympus battery, or buy a new cam

- The idle temps weren't actually labresults, it was observed the first hour while doing nothing on a cool evening (19-20C ambient) flat on a hard surface with the 6cell battery, and bios was updated to A11 before the mod - so the fan were constantly at 3000rpm from power on.
It would have been nice to have a small overview of the 'thermostat-settings' with the different bios revisions, but that is massive work.. Do I remember correctly the A10 bios keeping the fan off until gpu reached ~80c? (from posts here)

- The drymount was a quick & dirty solution as i was sceptical of the retainer screw for the gpu-end. It only has ~3mm of threads to set, and the tiny spring action on it should do the hold-down. Will probably redo the mod later with Cu and a feeler gauge to get within .1mm correct thickness as I suspect it's a little off now (cpu temps raising too quick when stressed).
There is definately no play with the 1,7mm piece, but as said, my hsf is cast all the way in the bottom, you don't see the heatpipe from the bottom as in your fine pictorial. Guess the openings and thinner castings will give a little more flexibility, and you could even attach a lip of the cu piece with AS adhesive directly to the heatpipe if you like tinkering..

- For HL2 : Format to 16:10/1280x800, Model, Texture, Shader, Shadow is on High, 6xAA (only not recommended), Trilinear filtering, Dynamic range to full, and water detail is reduced to 'reflect world'.
Color correction and vsync disabled.
No counting of framerates, just playing and never noticed any lags except when loading new levels
Platform is Windows XP pro Sp3, and vga bios is 60.86.45.00.40 with driver 6.14.11.5683.


@johnny13oi - If the L's are there, just find someone with a drehmel + a small grinding stone to remove them. Could also do it by hand with a smal diamond file (dont file the entire surface! o) -or lap it, like we did in the old days on a glass plate with small grit paper.
They really should have used the solution from the m1530, instead of leaving the gpu last in line to get it's heat dissipation removed.. (and THEN added a 8600GT option!

 

...and...a Full HD Screen...

I wonder if M1330 had everything we wanted, what would have been M1530's fate?

PS: Some of my friends called up Dell and asked which XPS model they would buy? They always seem to say M1530 with 8600GT! Did any of you try asking such questions?

 

Nah.. I really don't think you would notice the difference actually.. userfriendly 720p material looks perfect on this size screen, and with so few m1330's with the blueray option out there(think it was avail. just a few months) it would take ages to transfer a few movies through the 10/100 nic (a letdown).

m1530 seems like a good system placed between the m1330 and m1730, no surprise it's recommended

 

In the search to find an answer as to why my M1330, with the NVIDIA GeForce 8400M GS, runs cooler than (it would appear) average, I've noticed in GPU-z that it comes up as an "A2" hardware revision. Is that the same for the rest of you?

 

Same rev. A2 here, have you stressed you graphics? And what's your temperatures?
- for me there are great differences in the reported temperatures from different monitor applications. 'Hardware Monitor' from www.cpuid.com gives me the lowest(same as Gpu-z) and PC-Wizard from the same company gives me the highest..running WinXP.

 

Without any modifications, I have the A2 revision 167.43 drivers from laptopvideo2go and running on idle I get about 55C in both CPUID hardware monitor and GPUZ. Is there something wrong, seems a little low. And underload I have about 80-88C. 88C inside Unreal Tournament 3 for about 10 mins and 80c in Quake Wars for about 30 mins.

 

Sounds ok, but I'm not really sure - I did the mod based on the worst temps reported, by 'Pc Wizard', which gave 103C after the first test in 3DMark05 (88-90C in Hardware monitor). Aborted run when I noticed the reading to avoid the fried gpu/MB so many others here have exerienced on my newly arrived m1330.
If your 55C idle on the gpu is with bios A11 (fan constantly running), it's a bit high if your ambient temp isn't 30 - especially from Hardware Monitor/GpuZ.

 

I am using Nvidia System Monitor. The GPU temp is about 60-65C during normal usage (no gaming). I am using copper mod. Before the copper mod the GPU temperature was in 70's during normal usage (no gaming)

 

I have a question

My system is 2 months old and I have been playing some team fortress 2, pucshing my temps up into the low 80Cs

I have the copper and arctic cooling mx-2 sitting right here. Should I do the Cu mod? I'm worried that if nvidia starts repairing 8400s, I will be out of luck for doing the mod. Should I go ahead with it?

Also if I have played say 10 hours of games on my m1330, have already done any damage to the gpu or motherboard?

thanks

 

If you have not experienced a vertical rainbow color, then you are OK. To avoiding GPU thermal failure, copper mod is a good preventive method. Also you might want to upgrade your BIOS to A11.

 

Hey all...I had the same vertical lines issue after exactly 11 months...the Dell technician replace my M1330's Mboard (A01) with another A01 and updated the BIOS to Rev 11. Anyhow my idle temps are still 67-72C.

Will run 3D Mark today b4 and after the copper mod and update here. By the way, I'm from India, and here I found 2 plates (total thickness is 1.47mm) and I'll be using OCZ Freeze compound, which they claim is better than Silver based compounds....well I guess we'll find out!

Would 3D Mark 03 be fine or should I run 06?

 

I don't think it matters which 3DMark you use. Go ahead and then post the results here.

 

haha...sorry i just went for it without testing...was running out of patience with 3D Mark downloading....speeds are 10-12k/s so i gave up on that....

Post mod, temps have dropped from 72 to 61 immediately. I'll update again tomorrow....

 

@reptile abhi
Iam also from India...
My Gpu idle temperature stays around 60-65 C..(Using GPU Z)
The moment i start playing games it reaches to 90-95 C....with dell's new drivers ->July 1st ones....

i use laptopvideo2go 174.74...its the coolest drivers....& gaming performance is best so far...its peak is around 90 C

i tried overclocking wid 174.74...& got a base score of 4.5 n gaming score rose frm 4.8 to 5.1...

the gaming has got lot smoother....& now peak temps are around...90-95 C....

the clock frequencies i used are 500/1000/750...i tried crysis for 3 hrs..then assasins creed for 1 hr..no issues uptlil nw with overclockin...bt i want the temperature to be lil down//around 85 C....

Whats the safe limit & max i could go ?

 

These are some results using 3DMark 03...dont have the latest one....hope this would do....
I have attached...around 3-4 drivers..& also overclocked figures...

See the Fps boost in overclocked scenario....

 

well i'm not too sure about using the M1330 for intense gaming - getting the motherboard replaced after 11 months was quite a disheartening experience...

I'd say keep ur M1330 for strictly business...from my own personal experience...

As far as temps are concerned..I'm getting sustained 60-66 now...it goes up to 66 then the fan cools it back to 60-61...These values used to be 69-74 for me earlier...so its roughly an 8 degrees drop....perhaps the compound is still setting?

 

Like I said in reply to your post here, a screwdriver and 5mins of your time might provide the answer...

...which could be of benefit to us all, so how's about it?

 

I was in Gurgaon for a wedding two years ago; it was the beginning of Oct. and I wanted to do some jogging but between the temps & amazing amount of dust, I gave up.

So I certainly hope you're using your 1330 strictly indoors and preferably in an air conditioned building...

 

I am going to sue dell for royalties if they are implementing this now.

 

Have added new results from four days later, all other specs being equal. Others have reported, but I needed to see it with my own eyes: the more AS cures, the more temps are continuing to drop. I wonder where I'll be at 200 hours....

 

I hope I get similar good results after the mod; AS5 and Cu sheet ordered on friday.

Today the Dell tech came in... replaced mobo with a refurbished A01 revision.........

temps are equal or higher now... just running services, outlook and explorer now... cpu is about 60 degrees and gpu 68 degrees...

When parts arrive I do the mod, until then I'm not loading the laptop with anything heavy...

Dell tech said it was not necessary to re-apply thermal compound when removing heatsink and cpu and so ...... great techs.....

keep you guys posted when I have done the Cu mod and applied AS5 to the cpu aswell.

THM_ temperature = northbridge I guess in HW monitor is also quite hot... 60 degrees, is the Cu mod also 14mmx14mm and 1,5mm thickness for that?

 

Where on earth(well, in India), did you find the copper sheet required? I haven't been able to find a single place so far that has given me a satisfactory piece. It's either slightly curved while cutting, or not polished enough. Do pm me the dealer/retailer from whom you sourced the piece...

 

Well u are talking about replacement in 11 months....just see below what all trouble this laptop gave me...
1. LCD replaced - 5 Months
2. Tuxedo black cover - 2 times 1st time colour came off 2nd one didnt fit properly & also palm rest had lot of scratches so that also was replaced(lid was hitting it when closed)- 5 Months
3. LCD bezel 3 times - engineer himself broke 2 - 6 Months
4. Motherboard - once in 6 Months
5. Dvd rom - once 9 months
6. Touch sensitive Media buttons panel - once 11 months
7. Battery - once 11 months..
8. Remote also went off got repaced the battery & started working
9.Camera also stopped working in the middle but had loose connection & got fixed without replacement ! I guess nothing more is left.....

And now iam getting the error again "display driver stopped working & has recovered"....this is the same issue when 5 months back the gpu crashed..

just got my warranty renewed....well had enough from this laptop...

I downloaded 3d mark vantage but its not even running it...its getting 0-2 FPS..!!!!!!!

Dont you think placing the copper sheet would void the warranty?

 

Wow what a result, ordered the part on the UK site on thursday after 5pm. Received in Spain this morning!

All fitted and the difference, how quiet it is! The fan stays off!!

CPU on load never changed much but the GPU on load Swat 4 runs at 70 deg, used to be 99 degrees!!!

Thanks guys!

 

1. Sorry to hear of your 1330's horrific track record...
2. 3DMark Vantage's min requirement includes 256MB dedicated ram for the GPU. The 1330's 128MB does not qualify.
3. Of course, it will void the warranty. Considering the amount of times you've had a rep visit you, I'm not even sure it makes sense to do it, since you would have to "reverse" the process prior to his/her visit... (but it is reversible!)

 

Have a link?

 

Ya changing the copper sheet again & again for techie's visit may damage the chip. As only very small static electricity could easily damage the chip. I tried changing the CPU with another but the thermal paste & all needs to be replaced after its removed once, thats why didn't try it.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/NVidia-GeForce-8400M-GS.3709.0.html

here in this link you could find our Nvidia card class, Dell could have also gone upto 8400M GT as it can also be installed in a thin & light laptop.Check the category the cards are installed on. All benchmark scores are also there.

 

Someone did it well before you though and posted it publicly.

 

As if!!! A 8400GS overheats this thing.. With a GT, there would be videos of 1330 owners with melting lap(top)s

 

http://www.metaloffcuts.co.uk/

 

Yip, but I bought it off their ebay site:

http://stores.ebay.es/metaloffcuts

Just finished testing some more and the temp has not passed 72 on the GPU. Well impressed!

 

I'm sure this has been mentioned before, but just in case to be sure, what dimension does the copper sheet need to be? Do they have this size in stock since you mentioned getting it off ebay?

 

I have a question. I removed the heat sink assembly and the silvery thermal paste like thing above the CPU, I know I am supposed to clean that off and apply my own thermal paste but my question is that once I clean off the original silvery paste like thing and apply my own, will that void the warranty? I am not talking about the rubbery thermal pad but rather the paste. If there was a problem and I had to send it back for warranty, I would clean the paste I applied off and return it correct? But they would see that the silvery paste is not there anymore. Would I encounter any problems with Dell?

 

well i just did this mod and used artic silver and everything and i am not seeing much in the way of decreased temps..

 

Wait until the Arctic Silver has had more time to cure and see if your temperatures go down.

 

See Sinstoic's Cu Mod thread. He's (also) done a great job documenting the process

 

No, unless of course, you forget to add your own after cleaning the original, hence frying the CPU, 'causing a rep to be called on site & noting that there's like no paste (grease)...

B-U-S-T-E-D ! ! !

 

See Chelet's comment but, also be aware that idle temps will not necessairly decrease enormously: the real test is to load the GPU. my 3DMark06 max temp dropped 25C(!) while idle GPU dropped only by about 5~7C... .

 

this is a mod aimed specifically at tackling heat problems when the gpu is stressed. Wait a week for the arctic silver to cure and then play a game for an hour or so. Quite out and THEN look at your gpu temp. You'll be impressed

anyway, I'm still waiting for my copper - I'll keep you guys posted

On a side note, I"ll be using arctic cooling mx-2. Anyone else use this for the Cu mod?

 

I also ordered arctic cooling mx-2 compound.

I also got several pieces of coper both 101 and 110 with various thicknesses. I'm going to use both my digital caliper and my feeler guage to figure out how big the gap is then try several sizes of copper "dry" and see which gives me the best cooling. Then I'll add the thermal compound. I don't want to add the thermal compound before testing each thickness because that's an extra variable and will be a mess and require too much time and cleanup.

I'm also going to lap the copper with up to 2000 grit sandpaper and maybe give it an acid bath

 

Obviously you're no novice to the modding world and although chances are good that you won't fry anything w/o paste (for a short time), I still wouldn't recommend running it w/o paste...