Not sure if I caused heat damage

I have a concern about possible heat damage to my Dell XPS 1530. I had my laptop in its case, turned off, in a metal locker at work. When I came to work one day they had been having problems with the heating system in the building, and my office was very hot, probably about 100 F. I don't know how long the office had been that hot, but possibly all night. The locker may have gotten even hotter, since it's near the radiator.

When I took my laptop out of its case, it was very warm to the touch. I stupidly turned it on and began using it while it was still warm, in the hot room (although I had opened the window and the room was starting to cool down). I read afterward that it should only be operated in an environment up to 95 F. Now I'm worried that I might have damaged it, although it seems to be working fine. How can I tell if any damage was done? The laptop is a Dell XPS 1530. (This all happened a few days ago.)

Would it be worthwhile to have it inspected to see if any damage was done? Or would it be better just to continue using it and see if any problems pop up?

 

With the machine off, the internal temperature of your room will never reach the kind of temperatures that will kill anything in your laptop. Even in a hot locker next to a radiator. At 95F, yes, it might not be a good idea to load your machine too much, but unless you turned it on and instantly began doing some heavy Folding, I wouldn't worry too much about it.

 

I aggree with Commander Wolf. You didn't get near the temperature needed to cause damage. Your machine under load will produce much more heat all on it's own, and those temperatures affect the overall system temps.

If your ambient temperature is 95f AND you are beating the machine to death with some serious gaming, then maybe it would be possible to damage something. But no damage could occur from what you were doing.

That spec that you read about is an ambient temperature that the manufacturer knows is too hot put the machine under full load under. Unless you were doing something serious, you have nothing to worry about.

 

Thanks for the feedback. I wasn't doing any gaming, only surfing the web and e-mailing.

What is the danger of putting the machine under a heavy load when the ambient temperature is too high? Is it that it makes it harder for the fans to cool the machine? Considering that, from what I've read, the core of the laptop can get into the mid-100s (F), it wouldn't seem that the temperature of the room would be an important factor at all.

 

Yes, you have the right idea. You will notice that if you run, for example, 3Dmark and the ambient temps in your room are 90f, your max temps would be a bit higher than if you ran the same benchmark while the room was 60f.

In extreme cases where your environment is say 100f, and you put the machine under full load, it's going to have a very hard time cooling itself. The rules are, basically, that a chip can never be any cooler than the ambient temperature of the environment it opperates in. And in reality the chip will never be as cool as the ambient temperature, but you can get close with some extreme cooling. In desktops you can get within about 12f of the ambient temperature with a good heatsink and good case fans, while the machine is idle.

 

Let me ask another question in this area. What part of the computer is most susceptible to heat damage? Is the chip the first thing to go bad from heat damage? Is the hard drive more vulnerable? And how does does heat damage show itself? (All right, that was several questions.)

Thanks to everyone for all the helpful feedback I've been getting.

 

When the solder runs out of the bottom of the case, you know the machine was too hot.

 

I think you are much too worried about this. People have done much, much worse and gotten away with it (I can include myself in that group).

Let's put this in perpective. These are all based on notebook temps.

Hard drive typical - max 41c/106f
CPU typical - max 70c/158f
GPU typical - max 78c/172f

As you can see all of those temps are higher than the temerature you describe - 38c/100f. Those afore mentioned temps are very common in a notebook. And those machines continue to run fine.

I would be shocked if something were damaged on your machine due to a temperature of 100f.

 

I dont think this amount of heat can cause you any trouble, 95 or 100 F is not a big deal, if it is in Celcius then yes

 

Brilliant :]