XPS M1730 Fan Speed

Anyone know of a way to control the fan speed on this laptop? Even sitting in Vista with Aero I'm hitting 70+ degrees running the cards in SLi in a cool, air-conned room (plenty of vent space under the laptop to). Even had it downclock on me playing CS:S. I've tried RivaTuner and l8kfan tools but they don't seem to be able to influence the fan speed. The fans just don't seem to kick into gear to cool the beast.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers

Dell XPS M1730
T9300 (2.5) Dual Core
4gb ram
Vista 32 SP1
Dual 8800M GTX (SLi)

 

Maybe you could get a laptop cooler. I probably would get one if i had that laptop.

 

Just raise the back of the laptop using a bottle cap, or CD case. This will drop it's temp by around 5C.

You can use I8kfan to control the fans, but it's not suggested since it's best to let the bios do the work.

 

I use I8kFanGUI on my new Inspiron 1720, its great software and cools the laptop right down, or as much as you want it. Its also simple and small, so you aren't bogging your system down just to control the fans. Not sure it it works for your model or not though. I'd be surprised if it didn't.

I have also made a little MDF stand for the laptop, which picks it up and allows it to draw heaps more air in. The stand is U-shaped, and I designed it so the air is drawn in the back (and of course spits out the side). Anything that picks it up would help if yours also has the fan intake on the bottom.

 

Just a note.. if you have a 64 bit OS, this program will not work, even though they do have a 64 bit version available for download

 

Yeah, I got the I8kFan tool running and it forces the left and right fans on, but the only thing I see getting noticably cooler is the CPU. Doesn't seem to be an option to get the middle fan going (only 2 fans selectable in the tool) but not really sure what thats cooling (come on every so often and stays on for a minute or so). The GPU and chipset temps remain fairly constant so maybe its over one of those.

Just ordered the thermaltake 3 fan widescreen laptop cooler. Hopefully that will help.

 

I wouldnt bother. The thermal control in this system is excellent. Let the BIOs manage the fans like its supposed to.

Hitting over 70c is normal. Even with a notebook cooler, my fans kick in at 75c and bring the temps back down to around 56c. A cooler wont keep the notebook at a lower temp permanently, it'll just reduce the time it takes for the temps to increase.

 

Ifti, have you had no issue with the nVidia thermal safety kicking in? Not sure if thats what happened to me the other night but I was playing CS:S for ages, changed servers, noticed I was stuttering a bit on the new server, checked RivaTuner and the card had been downclocked to the low power setting. That was with the 175.63 drivers, back using the stock drivers atm.

 

KracsNZ: If the thermal control is kicking in, it's an issue you need to refer to Dell because the cooler is clearly not working correctly.

Nothing in an M1730 should overheat, the cooling system is nothing short of phenomenal.

 

Never had that issue TBH - Im using Dell Performance Driver 174.31 and its been perfect so far.

 

Thanks for all the replies guys. I already received the W1 cooler, so can't cancel it now lol, but it fits my laptop pretty damn well (not the way they intended though) and the 3 fans line up with the 3 fans on my laptop.

Played around an hour of HL2 Ep2 with everything maxed with the Dell performance drivers ifti is using and it 'seems' to be running well. I'll do some more testing over the weekend.

Still have the problem with TF2 though (weapon switching crash), but I'm going to blow away the TF2 data files and re-download them and see if that fixes it.

Thanks again.

 

Sorry if this is hijacking the thread, but the subject line fits, even though I have the opposite problem.

My fan kicks in doing the most benign tasks (web surfing, email) at full speed and it's LOOOOUD. I have no idea why. The surface of the machine is cool to the touch before the fans go into overdrive... what would cause the fans to max out when just there are no CPU-intensive tasks or 3D games running?

 

Have you checked the temps?
Use riva tuner and HWMonitor ...

 

I see it at 37C when the fans are running at full speed... shouldn't they only run at full speed when they are working to keep the temp below a certain threshold, like 60C? 60C is probably no hotter than a car dashboard on a sunny day... 37 is just a hot day... hot, yes, but not "the CPU will fuse because it's so hot so I'd better run the fans hard" hot.

 

I always have the cpu, gpu's, and HDD's temps displayed on the G15 LCD using Everest Ultimate, so I can see what the temps are while I play games. I have had zero issues with my M1730, both my gpu's run around 62c, the cpu core 2 gets to 85c but core 1 only gets to 65c this while playing games.

 

Have you tried updating the BIOS?

Also what are your ACPI thermal zone temps?

 

Hi; the bios is the latest; the temps are low (unless I'm playing a "Source" game like portal or HL2, at which point they go hot off the scales!)

The point I'm making is: "why are the fans running on high even when the temps are not so high that the fans should need to run high / noisy?"

If the temps where high, (or I was playing a game or running processor-intensive tasks) and the fans were running high, I'd understand: but all temps seem to be low enough that the fans should just be on low, and I'm just surfing the Web etc: nothing intense.

Is there some way besides Task Manager to see which hidden processes might be driving the CPU or something... something that triggers the fans to go into high speed mode?

 

Wait, so any xps1730 can have the temps shown in that LCD? can I have a pic of how it looks on the whole scheme of things?

 

this how it looks on my M1730 LCD . its always good to know how your laptop feels.
Regards
tom

 

That is soooo cool.
Thanks.