L702x heat at left palm rest

Hello,

Has anyone tried to eliminate a heat during heave load/gaming on the left hand side of palm rest. This area gets very hot during gaming - I think it normal with l702x however it's very annoying. The temperature of my laptop during gaming is average after reading forums so I believe everone has the same problem.

I've opened the palm rest yesterday and noticed only 2 small chips underneath - I'm not sure if they heat up so badly or whether this is the heat from processor not directed out properly.

Has anyone tried to cover this area? any tips

 

If you open up further, you will find that under the left palmrest area is the GPU and CPU, along with the GPU RAM chips and heatsink for all of these. These are obviously the source of nearly all the heat in the laptop, which is why the palmrest itself can get warm. That said, it never gets too hot to touch, but yes, uncomfortable is a fair description.

 

This, yep the left palm rest is where the gpu is located which explains the heat. But as matt said it shouldnt be 'hot' to touch just very warm and "uncomfortable". if you want to check your temps, this program is pretty good CPUID - System & hardware benchmark, monitoring, reporting

 

Thanks, I thought that GPU might be somewhere there - but I do not believe that 2 chips are GPU.

Is gpu underneath the motherboard or is it covered by something else? I would expect to see some heat sink on GPU

I do not think that you can test the heat of palm rest unless you will use room thermometer or so

 

Sam was referring to the chip temps themselves, the palmrest temps will be substantially lower than them. The chips you saw might have been the GPU memory chips, it's been a while since I tore mine down so I don't recall the exact position of them. The heatsink is under the cover you show in your picture (silverish keyboard tray).

 

GPU is on to other side of the PCB, nearly sure those are two ram chips you are looking at.
GPU has a heat-sink with heat pipes on it leading up to the fan area.
I often have my Nvidia graphics disabled altogether, as I don't game much on the laptop.

 

ahh fair enough matt. Yeah the palm rest temp wont get anything near to what the gpu, cpu are getting to. Op where you highlighted those chips in yellow, the square with the metal bracket around it above the chips is the nvidia gpu, there is another ram chip to the top left of it.

Heres some pics courtesy of Scott_RC-Tek

 

I got the below screenshots from the L702x Repasting thread

It shows the CPU & GPU heatsinks, note this shot is of the laptop upside down.



I done a repaste of both the CPU & GPU yesterday. Doesn't take long to take apart the laptop and do it. The only problem I had was the CPU IHS (Integrated Heat Spreader) is a very strange shape, it's rectangular and I'm used to square IHS's. So I could have made a mess of the CPU application, currently getting idle temps of mid 50's but not overly worried as that's not exactly melting temps. GPU is down to a max of 67 degrees during a run through of Furmark, so I'm very happy with that.

Other than a repaste there is one mod which is actually easier to do and doesn't require you to purchase Thermal Compound.
If you turn your laptop over and look through the fan grill (top right of this photo) you will see a mesh on the inside. Removing this mesh improves airflow so helps reduce the heat a little, but has the side effect of letting more dust into the fan so depending on where you use your laptop you might have to clean out the fan fairly often. To remove this filter you have to disassemble the laptop down the the same point of the image above.

One other thing I have been thinking about is cutting off some of the (not sure what to call these) plastic cross bars/grills on the fan grill. I would leave the dust filter on on the inside since I use my laptop on my knees and sitting on duvet covers a lot so dust would be an issue for me. I would hope doing something like this should help the airflow quite a bit. Haven't decided on if I will go ahead with it yet, but it would be a fun adventure
Here is a photoshopped image of what I mean

 

This would explain why left palm rest gets so hot,
I wander it putting a thin card board below palmrest would do help in anyway

 

On top of the palmrest yes but underneath it no, i wouldnt put any foreign objects inside the laptop. Fire risks etc. Maybe put a thin piece of rubber over the left palmrest which will grip better and absorb some heat, note the speaker will get a bit muffled.

 

I made a small plate with some kitchen foil and heat resistant foil which I found on another laptop. I did much testing but I have figure out is that a fan during light using (browsing) did not kick in even once (a16 bios)

I played Battlefield 2 for about 30 min and the palm rest was cooler then usual - however I think I will never be able to isolate the heat as the aluminium made palm rest will transfer a heat from above the fan

 

Hi
Ive had my dell xps 17 l702x for a year now, and in gaming the left hand palm rest became extremely hot. For much of the year I just made a gaming power profile, in which i limited the MAX cpu processor to 80% (anything up to 99% should stop it overclocking). That significantly reduces cpu temperatures, however the palm rest still got quite hot.

I just had my motherboard replaced under warranty, for a battery charging issues, and while the chappy was replacing it I asked him to use some arctic silver thermal paste on the cpu and graphics card (gt 555m) instead of their standard heat pad. On gaming now the temps are vastly reduced, and i can actually use the palm rest during gaming. It gets warm but not hot. overall temperatures are around 10 degrees less now.