XPS 17 Repaste Step by Step

The mesh has small holes.
If you remove the mesh, now you have big holes.

More air flow, and more volume of air passing through the heat sink copper fins mean more heat dissipation.

Removing HDD and RAM meshes could affect the flow of air to the vent.

You need to test to see which one is better.

But based on the fan which is designed to suck air from the mesh right below it and pump it out to the side vent(very short distance), I would assume opening up the mesh near the HDD/RAM would contribute little if not null.

It seems to me in this laptop the HDD/RAM were designed for passing cooling while the CPU/GPU are forced cooling.

Any thoughts, comments?

 

Correct. And fairly typical in laptops.

 

Right, this is exactly my understanding. I was just wondering, if removing HDD/RAM meshes would improve their (passive) cooling and hence lower the overall system temperatures. But I agree, it would be hardly noticeable.

 

i did like this thread and my laptop heat went down :-
Scratch: [Project] Gizmo - Super Thin AIO AMD system - Updated 7/28: Assembly begins - Overclock.net - Overclocking.net

 

Just wondering, is there an easy way of getting the mesh off, or you you still need to strip the laptop down as per the guide?

 

Unfortunately, no other solutions than that in view of its position. You basically need to remove the underside, so technically not a full strip down of the laptop, but still something that will take 10 minutes or more.

 

I was noticing how hot my 502x was getting under the mousepad area, so I took off the mesh under the intake grill directly beneath the mousepad. I left the mesh covering the ram intake on though. My fan seems to have been a bit less jumpy, though I kind of figure this might be more to do with heat being better able to ventilate naturally out of the intake rather than it helping to draw more cool air in.

Can't qualify this with science though!

 

I repasted my XPS (L702X) last night. While the l701x writeup is pretty accurate for my model, I would recommend leaving the monitor on (but taking out the hinge screws). It still works just fine, and you don't have to risk messing up the LVDS cable or the antenna cables.

I used the IC Diamond 7 Carat paste. It is tricky to apply, but seems to be really neat stuff... it pushes out of the tube easily enough, but it almost becomes a solid once it hits the processor pad. I found that rather than spreading it, short glancing blows can sort of push it around without causing it to stick to your spreaking tool.

The heatsink covers the bridge chip (north?), the GPU, and the CPU, but it's also got 8 other thermal pads that touch various chips (gpu ram, etc). I only had enough IC Diamond to cover the three main items, so I removed the flimsy thermal pads on the others and used some left-over Arctic Silver Alumina compound. It is MUCH easier to apply, but I fully believe that the IC diamond is a higher quality product.

I also went ahead and removed the mesh vent covers while I was doing this. I was a little concerned that it might cause future problems with dust accumulation, but with the mesh out, it will be very easy to blow some air in to clean the fan. The only place where dust will possibly be a problem (heat-wise) is on the fan itself or in the side vent. With the mesh out, both will be easier to clean in my opinion than with the mesh in place... so if anything, I see this as a cleaning upgrade.

I only used it for about an hour after doing the repaste and mesh, but it definitely made a difference in temperatures. It's not scientific, but the idle temp dropped from low to mid 40's down to 32. The left palm area stayed cool to the touch all through a quick game of battlefront 2. The fan also sounds a little quieter to me. I think it may be because it doesn't have to struggle to pull air through the restrictive mesh. The fan also wouldn't come on at all during web browsing... it just didn't need to.

I'll do a little more burn in later, but I'm quite pleased so far, and it wasn't all that difficult to do. I think the thermal pads that dell uses are pretty bad... almost foam like (which makes me think insulation, not heat transfer). The hardest part of the whole process was figuring out how to spread the IC Diamond compound.

I ran several rounds of the current Passmark test after I did this and got some curious results. The memory and video card tested the same as before, but the scores on the CPU (2760QM) are way up (over 8300 on average). Based on the Passmark rankings, this is a full 10% higher than the average 2760QM. I'm guessing that the improved cooling is allowing the cores to turbo longer... ? The SSD drive that my OS is on was also off the charts at over 4000 (it's a Patriot Wildfire 120GB). I don't know if it is benefiting from the CPU performance, but that score (which I repeated several times) is about 12% higher than the Passmark average for that drive which is already near the top of the pile.

I of course did a clean install of Windows 7 with the new SSD, so I'm assuming it's benefiting from being a fresh, stripped-down install. Nonetheless, I'm quite pleased with my L702X.

 

Amazing guide thank you , my temps are very good now but when the time comes to clean the heatsink from the dust i will repaste to .

 

... just an update on my repaste and mesh-removal. The 32C idle temp I experienced right after must have been a fluke, because the idle has settled back in the mid 40's, essentially the same as it was before. The fan does seem to come on less ... essentially never when I'm surfing the web.

I ran a Prime95 torture test for an hour maxing out all 4 cores at 100% with 8 threads; the cores initially turboed to 3.1Ghz and then ran consistantly at 2.7Ghz after the temps leveled out. The max temp was on core 2 (which always runs a little hotter on mine) which hit 74C degrees right at the start. The other cores maxed out at 70C. After an hour, the temps had settled between 66C and 69C for three of the cores and 69C-71C for the #2 core. I was hitting mid 80's before, so this is a nice drop.

I played Battlefield2 (max res, all settings high, AA 2x) for an hour after that to see if I could get the GPU warmed up too. The max temp for the cpu was 70C, and the GPU leveled out at 54C. I didn't test the game temps before the repaste/mesh, but subjectively it seems to be better. Besides, I find 70C for the cpu max to be very acceptable for a laptop. The left palm area still gets pretty warm if I play long enough, but it's not as hot as it was before.

I do still think that the fan sounds quieter overall. Again, that's subjective. I'll update again if I notice anything else.

 

Hi, I am very new to all these repasting stuffs I wish to know will the 5g Arctic silver 5 lube be enough for repasting both CPU and GPU??

And is the process safe? How thin should I keep the layer?

 

I recently repasted my XPS 17 with the before and after pictures of the CPU, GPU, and Heatsink.

My temperatures currently are 39 for GPU, 42-44 for CPU.

If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask!

Repaste XPS 17 - Imgur

 

Nice temps! they used far to much thermal paste on yours before you repasted.

 

Thanks, I'd also like to note that I took out the grate from the fan even before the repaste. This seemed to really help my temps stay low, I believe the Arctic Silver takes 400 hours or so to settle so it may take a while for results on the CPU and GPU.

In the end I'm very happy with how it turned out, the process of taking apart the laptop and putting it back together is a bit grueling if you don't have magnetic screwdrivers (some of those screws are terribly small...).

 

Finally decided to repaste my L702X.

When I first got the laptop, load temp would frequently be 90-92c, but after a year that rose to 96c.
Repasted a couple of weeks ago with Arctic MX-4 (prepared CPU/GPU with ArctiClean which is great for dissolving the paste in hard to get places), and cleaned out the crap that had gathered on the inside of the exhaust (which would account for the extra 6c). Now it never goes over 78c under load (my room is always pretty warm, so those temps are quite good for me).

Must say, the paste job in the first place by Dell was absolutely terrible, enough paste in there for 3-4 CPU's, it was everywhere (certainly worse than most others I've seen on here).

I'm going to clean out the exhaust every 6 months to prevent temps from rising any more in the future.

 

Good plan, when i had mine i hoovered the vents out every two weeks to prevent dust build up. Which over the year i had it, the temps never raised at all.

 

Thinking about repasting because my CPU and GPU reach highs of 90 without OC.

Would this void my warranty though? I have a 4 year warranty.

 

Yes it will be plenty, its safe as long as you dont break anything, follow the guide carefully and slowly and you'll be fine. I personally dont spread, just use a pea sized blob and let the HS spread it for you.

No it wont void it unless you remove any warranty stickers (dont think there are any) or break anything. If you break a part/plug of a component im pretty sure you wont be covered. If you do break something I just wouldnt go shouting to dell you repasted your laptop and they might fix it.