E1705 Overheating?

Our nearly 4 year old E1705 has begun spontaneously shutting-off , and I suspect thermal protection is kicking in and causing the laptop to shut off. I installed RealTemp and have found idle temperatures around 60 C, sometimes rising to over 90 C under a modest CPU load (e.g., 50 %). I believe the thermal limit on the processor is 100 C.

I have checked to be sure all the vents are clear and free of dust.

I installed the fan control GUI "I8KFanGUI" to get additional insights into what may be happening, although I have found nothing conclusive. Idle CPE core temperatures of around 65 C, with the GeForce Go 7800 graphics card at about 60 C. I did a video render for about 5 minutes resulting in a 75% CPU load. CPU core temperature climb up to 96 C, and appear to be continuing to climb at the time the render ended,

I recently update the BIOS from A00 to A10. Could that update have done something to the native fan control of the laptop? If not, any other thoughts on possible causes?



Thanks!

 

Did the laptop have these issues before you updated the BIOS?

 

It could be the new BIOS. Reflash the driver to A08. I wouldn't go all the way back to A00. Although it wouldn't hurt to start there and work your way up. A08 is recommended to fix some security issues.

When you go to the drivers page click the link to the description of the latest version of the BIOS. There will be a link to other versions. It will have every update from 0 to 10.

If that doesn't fix it then I would open up the laptop and clean out the dust and the fan itself.

 

No, there were no thermal issues before the BIOS update.

 

Thanks for the suggestion. I will given the reverting to A08 a try and see what happens.

 

The description of BIOS 10 says "Update thermal table for NVidia graphic". So it could be the trouble. Let us know if it fixes it.

 

I also have an E1705 with the go7800.

This computer just runs incredibly hot. Don't leave it running on a surface that is not flat and hard... leaving it on a coach or pillow will definitely overheat it.

That being said, after installing windows 7 professional (compared to Vista), my power management has been much better anecdotally. The fan was always coming on in vista and the bottom was much hotter than it is now. I also had issues finding a driver for vista though... whereas in Windows 7 it found one automatically that works great.

I have not updated the BIOS period.

Do you or (anyone else on this forum) know whether our GPU is affected by the NVIDIA melt down syndrome? My computer has run HOT a lot, but it hasn't had any issues associated with the defective material...

 

Anyone have a link to the A08 Bios revision?

 

I have dealt with three 7900GS cards and they have all been faulty, some down the road, some from the get-go (a supposedly "refurbished" part delivered from Dell did not work right out of the box.

 

Great. Maybe the GO7800 is more resilient for whatever reason.

What's Dell's policy on warranty extensions? I have a 4 year complete care/accidental coverage plan that will be up in june, any suggestions?

 

I'm not sure the 7800 is more resilient. It is probably due to the fact that it outputs less heat than the 7900. I suggest forgetting about the current machine when the warranty is up and either look for a newer Dell or, IMHO, a computer from another brand.

 

I don't play 3D games at all anymore... any way to significantly underclock or somehow extend the gpu life?

I am thinking I should just put it in power saver and bump the LCD brightness to where I want it. I think the computer runs quite a bit cooler in this mode.

But open to any other suggestions as long as they don't cripple my notebook.