XPS 1640/1645/1647 heat vent issue

So yes I have no cred and I am relatively new but I think we can all agree the direction of the heat vent on the XPS 16XX series needs to be changed to face downwards at least, so that the heat isn't dicipated directly onto the screen!

There doesn't seem anywhere available to add a secondary vent, so at least the primary vent needs to be improved.

I will send this to Dell_Bill_B as he requested in the throttling forum, and he said he would take this issue up at the next conference call!

I guess share your opinion on the matter, so that it is clear how much of an issue this is for everyone.

thanks!

 

Does anyone noticed any consequences in the screen, because of the heat that goes directly in there?

 

Just a thought..If the heat is directed downward, isn't the hot air going to be sucked up by the intake vents on the bottom?
I woud think this would compound the problem of cooling.
Only realistic solution is a laptop cooling pad, which should be provided by Dell as compensation for their poor design !

 

The heat will not cause any issues for a LED screen. MacBooks are built and designed exactly the same way.

 

I personally don't think so. At least with the 1645 you have 9cell battery which effectively blocks this flow-in.

Talking about the 9cell battery - this could be the reason the exhaust is the way it is. If you point it downwards it will blow onto the battery.

Which one's better, on the screen or battery? Not a good choice either way if you ask me.

 

I don't remember who/when but somewhere in the 2nd 300 page throttling forum, someone "claimed" that the heat was beginning to yellow the screen.

Dell changed the heat vent format on the XPS1340 before it was put into the no longer for sale category, so even if it won't mess up the screen hardcore in the long run, maybe it will help general system cooling, with allowing greater air outflow?....just speculating

 

I think they should open up the vent some more so it's better able to exhaust onto the screen when the laptop all the way open. The laptop gets much hotter when the top is all the way open. They could also make the slats thinner.

 

One has to assume that the 1340 was modified for a good reason. I would like to have the confidence and peace of mind that this won't be an issue for the 1645.

 

Just confirming the M1530 didn't have this block vent problem? Because my friend has the M1530 at it has plenty of clearance. I only ask due to my lappy is still in production...

 

All I can say is if you are playing a game or anything that makes the fan spin up, try putting your knuckles on the bottom left corner.

When in a game, I notice when it goes black, (like between cut scenes) I can see that the lcd is a mustard color radiating up like an oil spot from the point of the fan. When the screen shows colors you can't see it.

 

the 1530 did not have the problem as the screen design is a bit diffrent, the bottom of the lid only went as far as the edge of the base of the laptop, why they did not do this with the 1640 design as well i dont know, but i have not experinced any adverse problems thus far

 

Yes. Exactly. Today I was playing COD and I noticed that in the loading scenes and missions briefs. Thats exactly what Im seeing, a yellowish-black in the left low corner of the screen, in fact, if I touch that zone of the screen is very hot, Im afraid that the heat blown from the vent can bring some issues in the future...

 

I can back up zimmy on his statement. I also saw that post in the longggg 1645 throttling thread and that was when I really started to get worried about this vent issue. Honestly I don't want to search through that longggg thread looking for the exact post , but it'd be greatly appreciated if anyone stumbled upon it and put it up on this thread (I'll try to search later).

I also agree with you zimmy. I'm pretty confident that it would improve circulation as more hot air would be expelled away from the system in general. As the open screen sits now, it blocks a large portion of the vent causing the hot air to just be blown onto the screen. This means that the temperature in that region is higher than it would be if there was no blockage there (or the vent was redesigned to point lower). This higher temperature in that area would probably cause some feedback throughout the whole system making temps. generally higher than they would be. It's sort of like the weak link in the chain.

I agree I touch that area of my screen a lot, and it's always hotter than even the middle of the screen. Now I'm no engineer nor am I the manufacturer of these screens, but I hypothesize that that heat cannot really be good for the screen in the long run. As that random poster that zimmy mentioned said his was actually starting to yellow a bit in that region (if i remember correctly). So unless Dell can confidently say to us that the screen can handle these temps. with no long-term effects, I don't think that prolonged heating (and cooling) like this can be good for the screen...

 

Ill have a NC2000 zalman cooler and for me it works out really well
My lappy never gets that extremly hot any more!

 

Thought I would post some screens from Real Temp regarding the heat and a game. Just so everybody is clear, the game was Clive Barker's Jericho set a 720p with Maximum settings.

 

Heat starting to yellow the screen? LOL! Sorry but one person saying that out of how many laptops is bs seriously. That heat isn't hot enough to bother a thing.

 

As you can see in my post, I wrote "claimed" not saying that this was necessarily the case but that it may be true.

Why are you getting so aggresive?

Anyways, there must be something to the heat vent issue - if it was changed on the XPS1340. It doesn't seem like it would be that hard to just help the cooling of this laptop....and I don't think any of us would complain if it ran cooler without needing to buy a cooling pad.

 

I was the one that originally brought up the issue with the vent causing issues with the LCD in the throttling thread.

You can clearly see it when the screen is on but is displaying a black screen, my concern is 2 fold.

1) How long the screen will last before it’s damaged by the heat from the exhaust.

2) Due to the blocking of the vent, the laptop reaches a thermal limit on the GPU causing it to down clock and slow performance, in which case you either need to use an external cooling source or, Riva Tuner to circumvent the down lock.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I don’t want to hook a laptop cooling pad up to my laptop - I want it to do its best, on its own, to dissipate heat. Besides, we are only allowed 110W AC-side on this laptop with a 130W adaptor as it is, anything you hook into the laptop is going to take away from that.

 

Dude... seriously??? You are comparing a Macbook to the Dell Studio XPS???? Intel Core 2 Duo(presently i3) to an i7???? Man that is insane.....

My roommate has a macbook and there is hardly any hot air coming out of it... But on the dell when you touch the part of the screen blocking the vent.... Man it is hot!! And since i am in INDIA i can expect that part to just melt away in the SUMMER when temps are around 40deg Celcius.

In my opinion i think the best spot for the vent would be the left side like in the STUDIO 14 series and there will be nothing blocking it and hence much better air flow....

 

Does it stay the same way once it is cooled down????

 

Nope not a one. Does it warm the screen up, yeah but just that, warm. It doesn't interfere with the air blowing out and it doesn't get anywhere near hot. I don't see this as being an issue at all.

 

Dude.. seriously?
I dont know what macbook you used, but I had the newest macbook pro 15, the unibody one, and damn it got hot. Much more than the SXPS, all I did with that lappie was surf the web, IM, music, some photos and I couldnt stand it sitting in my bed or couch... the heat was very annoying, and until now I only feel the same heat (or maybe just a little more) in the SXPS by playing a game.

@stormwerks: Ok, thanks for the feedback

 

Thankfully it does not stay like that when off or cooled down. But only time will tell if it starts to.

 

This is a pointless thread. The vent pushing the exhaust onto the screen deflects the heat upward. Being as heat has a tendency to rise it moves away from the intake, I think this is an amazing setup. And NO it does not hurt the screen.... lets close this thread.

 

The MACBOOKs have a similar design of the vents. That is why I am comparing them. I had a Macbook Pro, and there was a lot of hot air coming out of mine in that same area.

Sony F series put's it on the left as well, and it really cooks coming out of that vent.

 

I don't believe this to be a pointless thread. I have some serious questions regarding the heat put off by this laptop. As for the screen deflecting the exhaust upward that is false. The vent is slightly angled down and when the screen is open pretty much causes a 90 degree angle that the exhaust hits. If you want you can even measure the difference in air that is able to escape when the screen is up or down.

The testing that I have done was to play the same game once with the screen at a normal angle and then play that same game with the screen at another position to allow for free flow of the air vent but keep the screen on. (I used HDMI to clone the image to another screen at the same resolution.)

My results were that when the vent was blocked vs unblocked pretty much indicated a 12-15 degree Celsius difference.

Please don't discount this problem simply because you don't agree with it. There are many of us who are seeing the issue appear which is good enough for us to have a discussion on how to solve the problem or have dell repair the issue.

 

I hate to close this thread. This is serious issue as the hot air is blowing on small part of the screen eventhough it has a glass cover.

I am thinking about putting a tape or some sort of cover between the bottom of the screen and top of the vent to deflect the air behind the screen.

I have bought his as refurb, and spend quite a bit of money, and still within 21 days. Having difficult time deciding if I need to keep a product with poorly designed vent? Love the screen so much.. By far the best I have ever seen.

 

Ok... . Unless you are a Dell engineer and can confidently say that this will cause no problems in the long run (for the screen and the machine, and general heat circulation), then you are just being overly-dismissive. I don't think Dell would have issued an exhaust redesign on the xps 1340 if this didn't have some side-effect. Krashkource's test also indicates that heat circulation is being hampered...

Wow, well done running that test. 12-15 degrees C!!! That's a considerable difference. I knew there'd be a general increased heat feedback thorughout the system but ~15 degrees is big. Heat circulation is seriously being hampered by this screen blocking the vent in that case...wow...I might have to run that for myself...wow

 

The yellow color is NOT caused by heat. I had a similar yellow color on the bottom of my screen and it was across the whole bottom in 7 or 8 blotches. It was only really noticeable on low brightness at first but got worse(visible on high brightness). Mostly seen when something white is in front of it. I got my screen replaced because of this and I first saw it after owning the laptop for about 6 days. I highly doubt it is caused by heat because I had this problem (probably) from day 1.

 

From what I have seen, under load (Crysis, Bioshock 2, etc...) the temperature can reach up to 91 Degrees Celsius. When the vent is unblocked the temperature stays around 78 Degrees Celsius. I am currently running a test with several scenarios to confirm this.

Screen Up - No Plastic Cover
Screen Closed - No Plastic Cover
Screen Up - With Plastic Cover
Screen Closed - With Plastic Cover

From my test with OCCT with the screen up the temperature exceeded the maximum allowed temperature of 80 Degrees Celsius. I will post the results in about 30 minutes when the final test is concluded.

 

Sorry that is a poor excuse. They could have redesigned it simply because the CPU or GPU in that location is moved slightly to a different location due to motherboard design. I seriously DOUBT it has anything to do with HEAT.

 

I've been playing crysis for the last 15 minutes. GPU temp was 74-76 and cpu was 67-71 (I applied AS5 on Monday). I then closed the screen enough to make sure the exhaust port wasn't blocked and continued to play that way for another 5 minutes. GPU temp was 73-76 and cpu was 67-71.

So making sure the screen was out of the way didn't really make a difference for me. But I still want to know if the heat will impact the screen.

 

I game by hooking the laptop up to the big screen and I've noticed a significant drop in temperatures when doing this because I keep the screen angled down to keep a clear flow from the vent. I haven't done any specific tests but I will do when I find a moment.

 

No offense, but you have no way of knowing if the screen will be affected in the long run by this or not. Myself, I'd prefer that the option of being affected wasn't there in the first place.

 

I have not checked the temps but I know mine is much cooler when the screen is down. I also find it annoying that I have dust all over the left side of my screen from the vent. I have also noticed that the bottom of mine 1645 is much hotter now after going to A07 than it was with A03. My temps with the screen open and not doing much other than surfing the web and listening to music are in the high 50's to low 60s for the CPU and GPU. I think this is way to warm. I was in the low 40s before.

 

I personally don't have any problems with how the vents are set up on my 1645, my laptop usually stays relatively cool, and even with heavy gaming, I haven't noticed anything wrong with the screen afterwards.

 

Do anyone notices that screen flickrs ever gently from slight darkness to brightness back to darkness.. I keep my screen about 40% brightness level.

Is this considered as issue with the screen? It seems like backlight constantly flickering. I have 24ich dell monitors at work, and I don't notice them going in and out like I do notice my 1645.

I have bought it as refurb, and love the laptop, but man.. don't know what to do...

 

if you still have warranty on it they'll come out and replace the screen if it can't be solved through a phonecall to dell. You just have to put up with the scripted steps they make you go through when you call.

 

The plastic won't melt, and the electronics will not be harmed by these temperatures as far as I can tell.
But when it comes to the the screen coating, how do we know it won't affected over a longer period? I'm not to familiar with these kind of material.

 

Do you think I have flakey screen?

 

Possibly, I had some dead pixels on mine and they replaced it under warranty. I've never noticed any flickering going on with both of the screens I had.

 

This is all speculation on our parts, so your doubt is understandable. But I asked Bill from Dell about this issue before (during the throttling debacle PM period, before A07 was released) and look at what he said below. Now I don't think Bill minds that I use this because he's said it before on the 1645 Throttling Thread.

As per what he replied, it seems like heat was the main motivation behind the redesign. He even had to pop his vent off because he had the same problem. Now I know that XPS 16 is a bigger machine than the XPS 13, meaning it has better heat management and probably a better cooling system. However, that doesn't mean that the XPS16 cannot be plagued by the same issue to some extent. Krashkource's test show the screen causing a 12-15 C temp. increase when its open and obstructing a majority of the vent, compared to when its angled or closed (not obstructing the vent). So as per Bill's reply looks like the vent redesign was related to a heat issue, and I do believe there is that same issue on the xps16, the bigger size just makes it less noticeable. Though the size doesn't mean that its not an issue up for strong consideration by Dell.

 

BUMP so that this isn't forgotten. Bill please, are there any updates on this yet or are you yet to have your conference in which you can discuss this issue? Thank you.

 

I touched the bottom left of my screen after reading about this and i must say that its pretty hot. I wouldnt be surprised if this resulted in pretty bad long term effects for my screen

 

You screen is defected, there was a bad batch of screens Samsung ones that were later replaced with LG ones because of the defects. Get your screen replaced and tell them to put an LG screen. Took them 4 replacements 2 months ago to figure this out. Flickering should happen on low brightness on dark colors.

 

Well the engineers are back from vacation this week, so I wouldn't expect to hear anything from Bill until later this week, or even next. Luckily, the heat should destroy the laptop in a week or 2....and if it does, that is where dell's warranty comes into play!

 

Can you point me to where i can read more about this new design?

 

The 1645's also have an improved vent format. My 1640 vent only have 4 seperate rows, while the 1645's have one additional at the bottom that enables more air to escape when the screen is open. I would like to get this improved vent for mine 1640.

 

I am not sure how this design is an improved design as majority of the airflow is directing towards the screen. This is a major design flow as when you open the lcd, it is blocking the vent cover..

Once can choose to run laptop cooler, but it is just sinking more money into already nice expensive laptop..

 

Guys, I also have severe GPU throttling.. I just received my 130W adapter and started testing some GTA4. It was still throttling so I downloaded throttlestop to log. According to the log my multiplier never goes below 13 (it did on the 90W adapter) so it wasn't my cpu.
I then downloaded GPUz and found this:



Obvious downclocking.. Whenever it goes below the maximum temperature, it clocks back up. It's pretty linear.
According to the GPUz log it downclocks to 300/500mhz.
I attached both logs

Ran furmark, it will go up to 84 before it will downclock to 300/500mhz. The temperature will go down and it will go back to normal speeds...Then back to 84c to downclock again.. /loop