XPS M1530 - How long have you had it and has your 8600M GPU died yet?

For all you M1530 owners, how long have you had it for and is the 'defective' GPU still working fine?

For those that had the M1530 or had it replaced, how long did the GPU last before it died?

Also, please mention whether you undervolt/undervolted your CPU and use/used a notebook cooler as I think this would affect the life of it.

Had mine since April '08 and the current motherboard since December '08. Undervolted CPU and notebook cooler. Still working perfectly.

These questions are relevant to my big question here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=442804

The poll is just for summaries sake but an actual response with the details would be appreciated. Also, the poll is only for M1530's you bought new. i.e. not refurbished, second hand.

 

I got mine in Jan '08. It died this Oct '08.

I run a lot of heavy apps like CAD, Max, Maya etc, which worked pretty well on my XPS. But ultimately, the GPU gave in. It wouldn't switch on most of the time. It would overheat within an hour of usage, and remain unusable till it cooled down completely. Ultimately, everything died except the HDD.

 

Mines still going fine after a year and a half. Make sure you clean your fan exhaust, mine had a whole load of crap in. Just had the mobo and heatsink replaced, gpu was fine tho. I use it on a cooler and now my temps are in the 70s when i play l4d2

 

Will be 2 yrs this February...and still running...and I don't o/c the card and really push the system hard....

 

Sounds like what I had done. The increase in temps was just due to the stock thermal pads needing replacement. Every time I had my heatsink/fan replaced, temps when gaming would drop back to the 70's simply because it had new thermal pads on it. I knew this but was just taking advantage of the warranty lol.

 

Had this baby from July 2008 and still fine

use a laptop cooler

 

Had mine for 2 years and it just started acting up now. I have under volted the CPU for 1 year and even did some over clocking the video card during that year. After that ran stock on cooler.

 

What exactly happaned once it started acting up? GPU temps high? Downclocking?

 

Mines will be 2years old in February. No problems so far. Got the 3year warranty and hope it'll last way after that.

 

mine is 1.5 yrs now, had 1 mobo, and 2 heatsink replacements. Now im due for a HDD replacement. No undervolt, but major issue im having with it is heat. i have a notebook cooler under it and a small fan on its right side, just to keep things cool but running games on it causes its temp to shoot as high as 98C. Now COD: MW2 wont play long, unit just crashes on it after a 30-45 mins of playing with low res settings.

 

Replace the thermal pads with some AS5 or some other thermal paste. I had my motherboard replaced once and heatsink replaced 3 times because of overheating, but the overheating just kept coming back. I found out that it wasn't these that were the cause of the problem...it was just because of the thermal pads needing replacement. The only difference between heatsink replacements, were the thermal pads which were the only things really new each time.

 

Mine just started giving trouble the first months of use.
since im a big time gamer, but i also like to take my computer with me on trips i chose the m1530, but after 5 mobo and 6 heatsink replacements dell finally agreed to send me a new sxps 16.

still not able to get it for 3 more days, it sucks

 

By trouble you mean overheating? I replaced my AS5 today with some fresh AS5 as temps have been rising again. However temps are still the same. I know that it takes time for it to settle but when I got a heatsink replacement from Dell, temps would drops significantly (20C for CPU and 10C for GPU). I think those thermal pads they used are actually good. At least they have an instant effect.

 

As i have a 3 yrs warranty, i checked with dell if i can do this and according to them this will pretty much void my warranty. I even asked them if their tech can do it for me tomorrow as i have a scheduled hdd replacement, but still the same answer, warranty will be void.. oh well.. looks like i will have tp stick with this thermal pastes that they have.. as im into games, im really now seriously considering buying a desktop

 

just keep an eye on your temps, and if they get too high call up dell and complain about it. they will switch out the heat assembly for you under the warranty

 

In that case, just keep getting your heatsink replaced as that'll replace the thermal pads as well. I did that while I had my warranty and each time my temps dropped heaps.

 

Still working fine after 2 years, undervolted CPU, notebook cooler and overclocked GPU.

 

Working fine, coming up at two years now. All stock, no undervolting, no tweaks, no cooling pads.

 

Got mine for two years but got stolen 2 month ago so I don't know but god I wish 8600M exploded and mutilated the thief's balls!

 

LMAO, i usually only replace my computer when it gets stolen, when they aren't i can keep using them for years and years until they are completely obsolete

yep, i replaced my thermal paste countless times, but temps just started getting high again after weeks of use, i just grew tired...

 

is dell replacing the xps1530 for xps16 because of this?

 

yep, they tried to give me another m1530 but i didnt accept it

 

how many repair u had with urs before the exg??

 

erm.... about 5 motherboards and 6 heatsinks, not counting many others like palmrests, dvd drives, etc..

 

u like the xps16 better? i kida like the aluminum and the fill of the xps 1530

 

i dont have my sxps 16 yet, its already in my house. But im traveling at the moment, and wont get it until next week. CANT WAIT!!!

IMO it looks like a big step up from the m1530, i dont think i'll miss it one bit

 

dell gave you the same specs in the xps16
?

 

yep, most of them are better, like the 500 gig hard drive and the gfx card. not to mention its a centrino 2 platform.

 

got mine April 08, died first time 5 weeks later, then again 4 months after that, dead again 6 months after, then killed the screen, new mo and screen, died for the last time October 09: Dell agreed to a system replacement at that point, same specs or better -- in my case, much better.

 

During that time did you monitor the temperatures? Were they really high before the GPU died? Or were they normal but the GPU died randomly?

I'm trying to get an idea of how the GPU fails. I've heard it's random but I've heard many people saying that it kept getting hotter and hotter until it died, meaning it was the overwhelming temperatures that killed it.

I'm contemplating whether to keep my M1530 or sell it while it's still fine. But I really don't want to sell it because I love the thing to death. I treat it like a baby, undervolt the CPU, use a notebook cooler and always monitor temperatures, but that might not be enough to keep the GPU from failing randomly.

It's really really hard to consider selling it when there's nothing wrong with it.

 

My theory is that the paste on the heatsink starts drying off and becomes uneffective, driving your computer to even higher temperatures than what it reached before, and the gpu doesnt help at all, considering its design is faulty and that it will eventually fail ( or not, as some users have proved )

So high temps + faulty chip = an unstable timebomb.

i wouldnt sell it though, use it as if it were any other computer, if it fails, it failed and its time for a new one

 

Yeah, because after replacing the stock thermal paste on the CPU and GPU with AS5, my temps go down a bit but no way near that of heatsink replacement. I think it may have to do with reusing the purple thermal pad on the northbridge, so I bought some of this

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180397215603&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT

which looks to be the same stuff. Hopefully I'll see temps drop a lot more because since they all share the same heatsink, high temperatures from the northbridge are going to transfer to the CPU and GPU.

For your information this is what my load temperatures looked like straight after a heatsink replacement



And this is what they looked like while undervolting the CPU and using a Zalman NC-1000 notebook cooler.




At the moment though, mine look like the first one even though I'm undervolting and using the cooler so obviously temps have risen.

 

How do you and Koer get them to send a replacement with better specs? Do you call in and argue with them? I'm curious.

 

Different case for me, had dell replaced my HDD coz it had some errors on dell diagnostic tool and luckily tech was kind enough to clean the fan with dust (he literally peeled the dust off from the inside of the fan) and put in a new set of thermal paste. But before he placed a new set of thermal paste, the pads were almost melted out of the heatsink. Now my temps are at 45-47Cs at idle time, compared to 55-60Cs before.

 

Dell will relace your system when it has failed over and over again more than, say, 3 or 4 times.

I just emailed the unresolved issues dept and a very kind rep offered a replacement, and apologized for the inconvenience that my computer had caused over the last year. ( i just mentioned i had 5 mobo replacements and 6 heatsink replacements, and that i was starting to get the same overheating as before, and that many others were getting replacements for less than what i had gone through )

its just a matter of being polite and always saying what you want, or what you expect, dont assume that the rep will offer what you want, it will rarely happen. oh and always give good reasons to why it should be that way.