XPS M1210 Heat/Temp Question

For the past 2months I've noticed that my m1210 would get really hot despite my cooling pad. I literally can feel the heat through the cooling pad at times. So basically after a month of monitoring my temps with I8KFanGUI and forcing my fan speeds to high.

CPU
Idle 60-70 C
Moderate 70-85
High 85-98

So far my peaks have averaged between 94-98 never over 100C.

GPU(Go 7400).

Idle 70-80
Moderate 80-90
High(Gaming, Media Center)- 90-100

Peaks average 97 and I've seen it peak to 101C.


The reason I'm suddenly worried now is that I'm noticing that my CPU usage is spiking with minimal multitasking. And when the laptop gets really hot.....its crawls until either the Display drivers crashes and recovers or I get a blue screen asking me to restart. I have re-installed vista to make sure it isnt software related.

Should I be worried? I've called dell and they've told me to update the bios and that to not worry because the CPU would power itself down if it overheated.

Thanks!

 

Have you cleaned out the vents with compressed air? That is too high for your CPU to be idle at.

 

Yeah, they seem to be kosher and the fan is working cause I can feel air which at times is unbearable hot.

Using process explorer I was able to see which process usually causes the grind downs and it was almost always Aero(DWM.exe). I'm thinking that the GPU might be getting affected by the heat.

 

Any advice on how to get Dell to understand my situation instead of giving me the script. I know its older version but all their info is about m1330 and NVidia 8xxx chipsets.

Am at risk basically?

 

Are you calling the XPS support phone number? Is this product still in warranty?

 

weedmonk,
You've described exactly what is happening to my xps m1210. Were you able to get dell to do anything about it?

 

This is what happened to my M1210 before it died, a month out of warranty. Now I have a thousand dollar+ paperweight. What pushed my M1210 over the edge was a failed video card.

If your computer fails to boot, but will power on, it's your video card, and you are experiencing the same problem as many others. Just hope you're still under warranty, but even if you are, the M1210's faulty design will cause it to die in the future anyway.

 

My M1210 is about 10-15 c below yours and i am full loaded and running 77 tasks on start-up. I have had newer one single problem in the last 2 years and i can tell you that the M1210 is running 6-8 hours per day under full load playing games and doing multitasking .It must be definitly be a hardware problem and i think that this specific laptop is worth the money for a service .So don't wait to burn your laptop and give it to dell service .I am sure they will fix the problem with minimun expenses.
But consider another oppinion about your problem : I think the M1210 was shipped initialy only with xp pro and it was vista ready but another thing is vista ready and another thing are current laptops with has vista preinstalled.
So it maybe the OS the problem and your drivers for the grafic card which is heating to high .
Just my opinion /
Regards
Chris

 

Sorry for the bump, but I felt obligated to share.


Dell ended up sending me a heatsink and new fan after I finally convinced a tech that heat was unbearable. Two weeks after that the GPU died and I had to get a ANOTHER mainboard.

Needless to say I found myself out of warranty by about 2 weeks to my dismay. I had to pay about $90 out of warranty extension fee on top a 1yr $156 warranty extension. I'm sure this was better than paying for an out warranty repair.

The tech came and installed it but this time they did not send a thermic paste/glue and so when he removed the heatsink off the old GPU/mainboard he replaced it w/o anything. I noticed this and pointed it out but he tried to BS me and said to just clear out the vents every month.

Once he left I fired her up and taxed the system with gaming/media center and immediately noticed the CPU were cool but GPU was running about 30degrees higher. I called up Dell again told them this unacceptable because it was a ticking timebomb and had to tortuously explain the whole missing thermic glue thing.

They ended up sending out a new heatsink and 3 packets of that compound. I made sure the tech applied it generously to the GPU core.

Now I'm getting reasonable temperature readings with peaks around 85 during heavy multitasking and 40-50's in idle and 55-70's during browsing/video etc.

It's sad because they know the majority of us have 1yr warranties so they didn't extend the warranty extensions to us like they to the 8400 GPU models last year.

I was a big dell fan and actually paid more for the XPS so that I could avoid this. To their credit their CS although tiresome, did come through even when I was out of the country on work.

 

I also have the XPS M1210 ...T7400, 7400go, I've had the laptop for two years and my motherboard (GPU) fried about two weeks ago...I opted for the 4 year warranty so dell sent a tech right out to replace the motherboard. My solution was the $42 (Newegg) Zalman NC1000! I took off the ram cover and the wirless card cover...my temps RIGHT now are 24 CPU and 37 GPU, that's down from 50 degrees cpu doing light web surfing and 50+ for the GPU. I have I8kfan running on low (2400 rpm) in manual mode. This combination keeps the noise low and the laptop cool. If this this laptop fails again, it won't be because heat.

Jim

 

I had a horrible experience with my dell m1210. My video card fried in about a year and a half after I purchased it, so I was out of warranty. I called Dell CS and they said it could be fixed for $200. I was thinking that was a good deal for a motherboard replacement so I sent it in. They called me a week later and said I had to pay 300 more. I immediately protested and they dropped it to 170 more. (I was already getting annoyed because I had to pay more even though the first person I talked to said it would be 200. I told them this and they just said CS people have no clue at what they're saying, only techs can make that decision).

I had to wait 3 extra weeks for it to come back. Once I got it back, the GPU temps were scorching, 80 C idle and 110+ in games. I sent it back in telling them it was way too hot. I got in back with no change at all. I noticed that they did not even put anything on the video card, no thermal pad or paste.

So, I took it in my own hands to install a copper mod similar to the m1330. This dropped the temps by 50 C. It worked fine for about 2-3 weeks before I got blank screen when I turned on my laptop. My friend who's a repair tech told me the motherboard was probably a refurbished one. So, now I've just gone and bought a Lenovo Thinkpad, not bothering with Dell anymore. I had to call Dell support so many times and not really getting much help. Maybe just because it was out of warranty service. Definitely getting warranty now, but it really is luck whether or not you get a problem.

Really hope no one ever has an experience similar to mine.