fan goes off often, considering sending it to Dell, but i've alreayd opened the laptop

I have a Studio 1555. the fan keeps going off. I've undervolted, applied Arctic ALumina thermal paste on the CPU, GPU, and chipset but it hasn't fixed anything.

So my next two options are to place a copper shim between the CPU, GPU, and chipset with Arctic Silver 5 hoping it'll help wiht the cooling.

Then if that doesn't work, i'm going to do a clean install of just Vista 64bit, maybe there's a software issue where a background process is eating up the resources increasing the temp?

If that doesnt' work, i'm going to send it in to Dell, but since I already opened up the laptop to replace my CPU (went from a T9550 to a P8600) and applied the copper shim/thermal paste, will they refuse to honor the warranty and juts send it back?

 

If you can get it back to how it was before you made any mods then they probably wouldn't even know.

The fan is noisy on their latest set of machines, I noticed the fan on my Inspiron goes off quite a lot and I've yet to find something that fixes it. It wouldn't be so bad, but it's very loud - jumps straight to 3000RPM from off, if only there was a lower setting. Unfortunately I can't get any of the fan control programs to work on it either.

 

Do NOT put a copper shim between your CPU and heatsink; those two already come into direct contact with each other. Putting a millimeter-thick copper piece in between them will cause extra pressure and may break something.

 

There is no risk of damaging the cpu from pressure:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNd8ddu1Z58

However, adding a layer of copper will decrease the cooling capability of the heatsink, as that is another layer of metal and thermal paste the heat has to travel through to reach the heatpipe.

My Inspiron 1545 I got a few weeks ago seems to be really quiet. It has three fan settings; off, low, and high. The high only happens at startup and the low is really quiet and doesn't seem to be on all that much. I lapped the heatsink as the aluminum was unbelievably not smooth and I applied some ceramique. My plan is to de-solder the aluminum square and solder on a piece of copper.

To see if its software related, just turn on the laptop and stay in the bios for a while.

 

Fair point. Even if the sheer pressure doesn't damage something or bend the heatsink out of shape, it will accomplish nothing; the CPU die and heatsink surface (which is already copper) are in direct contact in the first place.

 

I dont get what so bad about the fan going off. The fans are set to go on when it reaches a certaiin temperature then shuts off when it reaches a lower temp.

 

His point is that his fans are more active than they should be, meaning his system is at higher temperatures than normal.

 

How is that test even conclusive? They left out a major contributing factor in metal pressure and expansion.....HEAT. Apply 230Lbs with the cpu running and a hot and overtightened heatsink then show me that it doesn't break.

 

It shows the CPU can take a lot more pressure than anything you are going to be able to accomplish in a laptop. Also, if the heatsink expanded it would expand upward and to the sides, the paths of least resistance, at it would be by a tenth of a percent maximum. I mean, if you could show a single case of where this has actually happened, I might be singing a different tune.

 

Thats what I was thinking. The OP didn't say anything about what he was doing. Was he playing video games? If so, thats completely normal. The Fan would definitely go off to cool down. If hes thinking the fan is going off too much, more than normal, what does he consider normal? His old laptop where the fan didn't turn on much?

In my opinion, if its not broken, leave it the way it is. Its not getting uncomfortably hot. The cooling system is doing its job. At this point theres too many factors that may cause your fan to go off. Even a high room temperature could cuase your fan to go off more than normal.

 

Well that's true. I've never heard of a CPU die breaking under pressure. I have however, heard of a heatsink cracking under too much heat. Oh the irony.

 

all i do is browse the web, mostly text too, no flash or videos.

just right now, i'm siting here reading a magazine with only one Firefox window open, and the temp is slowly increasing from 26C->42C, fan turns on, drops down to 26C, fan turns off, repeat. basically increasing temp while i'm doing nothing at all. of course i'm checking task manager and there are no processes taking over 5% of the CPU usage.

 

My P8600 is about 44C right now after just browsing the web/watching a few videos. I think 42C for a T9550 is normal.

 

I have a P8400 now, the fan always kicks in if the temp is hovering around 42C after say 20 seconds. when does your fan turn on?

 

Oh, I didn't notice that you switched from a T9550 to a P8400. My fans are on at a low/moderate speed most of the time when I'm browsing the web/watching videos/doing general stuff. When I start playing games, the fan really kicks in and is quite audible.


EDIT: To be more specific, they go off at around 43-46C.

 

Isn't that what happened to your old 1420?

 

Yup. That's the one.