Other ways of cooling an M1330 apart from the copper mod?

What other things can i do to prevent overheating? I can't do the copper mod as it will be under warranty.

Depending on temps when i get it i will probably change the thermal paste with some arctic silver. I'll also undervolt the cpu and the gpu but will this be enough? I'm also looking at a cooling platform and i have a griffin stand which will get some air underneath it. Depends how hot it gets under load but are there any other tweaks i can perform or mods to improve cooling that wouldn't void the warranty?

Cheers.

 

Everytime I feel like my m1330 is getting a little too warm I take off the back panel and blow some compressed air through the heatsink, you'd be suprised how much dust collects in that thing and how it effects the cooling capabilities. I'd also recommend undervolting the CPU I lowered my temps by around 12 degrees C and improved my battery life.

*Edit:
I also believe that if you change your thermal paste at all that voids your warranty, but you could probably get away with it without Dell ever knowing

 

Very good point about the warranty. I'll see how it goes anyway. I'll get one of those Zalman coolers if anything and if temps do become an issue then i will look at replacing the thermal compound. Cheers.

 

I did that and the mess was pretty obvious. Dell didn't seem to care though.

 

I was told that removing the battery helps a lot, have you tried that? Have you been able to undervolt the gpu as well?

 

Removing the battery seems like a bad idea, although it depends where you use the laptop. Don't do that if you use it near other people because having to crash from the power cord being bumped wouldn't be good.

As far as cpu undervolting, check out flipfire's guide, it's really helpful and goes through every little step. Gpu undervolting involves vbios flashing, unless there's a program failed to find that can do it through software.

 

Don't just guesss at stuff. Dell is extrememly lenieant with their warranty and what they consider customer serviceable. I've had them send me both a motherboard and a heat sink on separate occassions during warranty and both were considered customer serviceable when I just said my tech level was high and i've done that sort of stuff before.

 

I'll only remove it if significantly reduces temps when i'm doing anything intensive. That's why i'm asking, i'll be using it for games, video and music. I asked someone with an m1330 that they upgraded recently (T9500, 4GB ram) about temps and they said whenever things got too hot they put it on an nc1000 and that sorted it out. But they haven't had any problems in two years and they've used it for gaming etc. Could the nc1000 be solely responsible for that?!

I think i've used that guide if it's the one that involves rightmark and I8kfan. As for gpu underclocking i came across something yesterday but i can't find it now.

Cheers.

 

Not exactly. The heat issue with the M1530/M1330 could make mine crash, and doing all this cooling stuff helps that, but many of these models have had gpu failures even when people do very little to stress the gpu.

It's really hard to predict when these gpus will fail. I played games on my 8600m GT, often keeping it at 89 Celsius for hours at a time, and it didn't fail even after a year of doing so.

 

Well it's under warranty and i figure if i have loads of problems with it i'll potentially get it replaced. Thought i'd have a look at mobo prices on ebay and came across this: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Dell-XPS-M133...Twebdev_GL?hash=item4a9f5c2bbf#ht_2499wt_1165

Wonder if anyone's tried something like this. Hell of a lot cheaper than some of the repair prices i've seen quoted by Dell anyway. I'm assuming there's an issue with this as it's the first time i've heard of it but if you're warranty has run out and you can get your XPS fixed gotta be worth a try hasn't it?

 

I would try to extend the warranty. Also, if you have serious heat problems complain to Dell and see if they'll replace the machine with a new model.

 

I'll check out the warranty options. Afaik i will be covered by the limited extended warranty for another 12 months. Atm it's under the 3 year complete care warranty so my a$$ is covered.

 

Nobody mentioned another easy fix - get a laptop cooling pad. They're usually $30ish and require no assembly.

Finally you can download i8kfangui (just google for it) its a dell-specific fan control utility. You can set the exact temps for each piece of hardware when you want the fan to kick in.

FYI Copper mod knocked my GPU temps down to high 50's from low 70's (not gaming / video), to the point where fan doesn't kick in (that happens around 65C). When I watch HD videos or game fan will occasionally kick in for 5-10 seconds.

CPU undervolting on my pc did nothing for avg running temps when not gaming (they are in 42-50 C range). When gaming / watching HD video, the peak CPU temperature dropped significantly (from 75C to about 63C)

 

I mentioned it in my first post.

First I'll see what temps are like but a cooling pad would no doubt be a good investment. Are you using a pad? What sort of temps do you get? Is modding necessary on top of cooling? I'll ask Dell if i can do this while under warranty...

Gotta see if i can find the gpu undervolting info but it was software based and i think it involved riva tuner and another nvidia utility. Iirc some sort of hack was used to make the voltages available in the app.

 

Considering you're under warranty, and the Nvidia 8xxxm will die eventually, just contact Dell and see if they can give you a replacement; you shouldn't have to deal with something that's Dell's problem.

Don't risk losing the warranty!

 

So I just took my first foray into undervolting. It seems to be the best thing you can do for heat.

I went from a temp of 77c under full load to 53c under full load. That's a difference of 24 degrees. Ridiculous.

 

What cpu/system was that undervolt on?

Good job by the way.