m1210 Too HOT!!!

I bought this laptop in October 2006. My laptop routinely goes over 90 degrees celcius even when surfing the web or chatting on msn. It has been reformatted and scanned for Spyware and viruses blah blah blah the whole shebang. About 6 months or so after buying the laptop I soon felt that the system was lagging quite a bit, a reformat did not help this. FPS Benchmarks went from an initial 70fps to 40fps. I had trouble playing NFS:MW in its natural resolution on low detail. This was a game released in 2005.

So I called Dell and they agreed to replace my heatsink. When I got it back, the temperature was better. However after about 2 weeks the temperature went up again. And now, around 2 months after that my computer routinely reaches 90 degrees celcius every single day just web browsing and instant messenger chatting.

So I called Dell again and claimed that the processor was damaged by thermal cyclic loading, and thus were performing sluggishly. I quoted benchmark scores that scores my computer equivalent of that of a computer built in 2002. But apparently none of that was enough to get my processor replaced. They also questioned where I got my temperature readings from. And I said that I got them from the sensor through NHC 2.0 (notebook hardware control) . But they said that even though the readings are astronomical, they couldn't confirm that the computer was going above 90 degrees celcius because that is 3rd party software. So now my processor is rotting to death and I can't do anything about it.

What can I do? My warranty expires in about a month.

my cpu idles at 60 degrees celcius

PS a friend told me to undervolt it to temporarily cure the problem, how much should I do this?

 

Its likely that the heatsink has problems, or isn't correctly seated on the processor. You should keep contacting Dell until they fix the issue. If the notebook feels sluggish, tell them that the XPS is a performance notebook, and that you shouldn't have these problems. Also, try to speak to a supervisor or a technician, and they may be able to sort something out.

You should be able to use NHC to undervolt the processor. If you take the voltage too low, then the system will experience instability, so once you reach that point, just use the previous setting. Undervolting should reduce the temperature.

 

this really shouldnt be an issue, with modern CPU's they have a peak temperature setting at which they will either shut themselves down or cycle downward forcefull until they cool down......

You must be using your computer in a dusty/humid/hot area, but I mean 60 degrees at idle is pretty good........

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsid=3005

http://www.heatsink-guide.com/maxtemp.htm

 

But I am not using my computer in a dusty/humid/hot area at ALL. I feel like I'm freezing here in my room or at the office all the time. And I would disagree with 60 degrees at idle being very good, its mediocre at best. And most of all going over 90 on a regular basis is just asking for disaster.

And another thing, "cyclic thermal loading" if you ever studied material science and engineering you would know about this and how this can affect processors. This constant going up (90) and down is making my processor degrade a lot faster than it should.

 

Get the temperature from the system bios and they can't deny the temperature reading due to 3rd party software.

 

funnily enough, I can't find it in the system bios. I even told the guy that it was there, but he told me to go find it and it turns out I was thinking about one of my other computers.

 

Try I8kfanGUI and see if that gives off a different reading. What about the FAN ? Can you hear it/ see the RPM? It is clearly audible even at lower RPM. A cooling pad could also help.

Mine runs at 50C idle and 65~70C under load with an ambient temperature of around 28C.

 

Mines runs at ~45C idle and up to 65C on peak load. This is with a Zalman Notebook Cooler. Did you check for dust in the fans, if they're working at all?

 

Yes I've checked for the fan and dust and everything. My ambient room temperature is near 20 degrees celcius. I have established that the problem is a misaligned heat sink.

My real question is, what can I do to convince them that the heat has damaged the processor (through cyclic thermal loading) and warrants a replacement processor.

 

mine runs between 45-55c idle nofan, and then the bios kicks the fan on until about 37c.

NHC is not compatible with my cpu, 1.83 c2d (wanna say 5300?), there are no undervolting options in it. I do however use RMClock to do my undervolting, mainly for heat.

before the undervolting (which i have all multipliers set to .950), it idled at about 55-60c, and loaded up to about 82