Studio 15 Heating Problems

I've had my Studio 15 for 10 months now and it has always heated up very soon after startup but lately it has been getting so hot that it burns to put my hands on the palm rest or the touchpad.

In the last few days it has also been switching itself off randomly which I think might be from the heat. When it turns back on I get a blue screen with a memory dump and it doesn't let me turn it back on for a while.

Also when it gets hot, the laptop seems to slow down, freeze or mouse movement/video play stutters on the screen which I don't think should happen for 4GB of ram.

The fan is also always on from startup and gets very loud when the laptop begins to heat up.

Is this normal for all Studio's? Should I ask Dell for a replacement? I'm actually afraid it could catch fire with the temperatures it reaches.

 

Download HWMonitor and let it run. Post your maximum temperatures for the CPU and graphics.

 

Here's a screen shot of what came up:

 

Those temps don't look that bad. Is that right after you booted or after it's been idling for a while?

I have a Studio 1537 and my CPU idle temps are a little higher than yours at 48-51 degrees. My GPU idle , however, is cooler at around 51-53.

 

That's after it idling for a while. CPU is up at 52 and GPU at 62 now. But that's just with a browser open with a few tabs.

Does it not annoy you how hot the palm rest gets?

 

It doesn't seem that warm to me. I do have my system undervolted though. You might want to give that a shot if you don't like the heat.

 

Define "a while", because to the person waiting for a bus, a while is 10 minutes, whereas the person waiting for a plane, a while could be several hours........

Those temps are not really that hot anyway - but in reality different people find different temperatures more or less comfortable. It really is a personal preference. However, one area which does cause concern is the heat generated by the wireless card on this machine. If you do not use wireless, switch it off (Fn + F2, or just F2 if you've still got it setup for media key first). Otherwise, it might be worth setting your wireless to low power mode - it's in your advanced power settings.

As KingRaptor suggested, it might be worthwhile taking a look at undervolting, but I doubt it would make a whole world of difference to your touchpad / palm rests.

Another thing, make sure you have the powerplay settings turned on in the ATi Catalyst Control Centre.

 

If i were you i would buy a tube of Artic silver 5 put it on the cpu and that should decrease temps by 5 C or more. Thats what i did with my studio.

 

By a while, I meant around half an hour.

I can't open the ATi Catalyst Control Centre since I installed Windows 7 for some reason. I'll adjust the wireless settings, I use it all the time so I'll just lower the power.

Is there any way to stop the laptop from shutting down when it gets too hot? It shut off last night and wouldn't turn back on for 10 mins. It got as far as the welcome screen every time before cutting out.

 

If you have a heating issue, then it wouldn't make sense to avoid the laptop from doing an auto-shutoff. That's the defense mechanism the laptop has and is set in the BIOS. Avoiding this would be a bad idea.

Your temps don't point in the direction of heating issues though.

 

By the way, what's the fan behavior of the laptop like prior to it shutting down? Is the fan at full speed?

 

Yes, it's at full speed.