XPS M1710 overheating and shutting down during gameplay... help me lord.

After searching high and low for a driver that would play MOH:Airbourne about 2 months ago, I found one that worked but it made my computer overheat and shut down. I havent played any PC games since (going on 8 weeks come to think of it) and reverted back to the Dell/NVIDIA Go 7950GTX drivers. I put C&C3 in this afternoon for a bit of christmas fun and 5 minutes in to the game the whole system shut down due to overheating again. The thing that puzzles me is that this is with the standard drivers and not the modded ones that were giving me hassle a few months back when i was trying to get MOH:Airbourne working. C&C3 worked fine beforehand and this is completely baffling me.

Any assistance would be great,

regards,

Chris

 

Make sure the clock settings are still stock with RivaTuner, also might want to look into a cooling pad.

 

pardon my ignorance, but in english please mate!

 

He means make sure you aren't overclocked.

 

I havent touched any settings, i wouldn't know how to overclock it or even check if its overclocked for that matter. Any pointers on how to do this?

 

It shouldn't be overheating if you're using Dell drivers and don't have it overclocked. Make sure nothing is in the way of your vents. Might be dust build-up in the way. If everything seems fine and you're using stock drivers I don't know what to tell you. Your GPU or fans may be deffective. Should consider calling Dell for tech support.

 

Easy to solve, just open up your laptop and clean out the dust build up, especially on the fans and on the heatsinks for both CPU and GPU. No Air can dust will help you if you haven´t opened it up a single time. I open my up frequently to clean it out, just the better for the laptop.

 

how do i open it up? will it invalidate the warranty?

 

if you do a search for m1710 service manual, or follow the link here

http://support.euro.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/xpsm1710/en/SM/index.htm

follow the instructions for taking apart the fans, but obviously you are not taking it out, just cleaning it.

 

just open the panels that you can. (it will not void your warranty)

I'll have to agree with the dust theory.

It is the most likely of everything else.

You are supposed to clean out any notebook (especially if its got a gaming GPU) once every month or two.

The dust will collect and the heat will make it condensed... clogging up fans and vents.

1) open up the panels to get to the fans and vents if possbile
2) use a flashlight and try to see through the vents... if you barely see light through the other side... then its dust
3) use some Q-Tips and compressed air cans (or compressor) and give your system a 15-30 minute cleaning.
4) always monitor the temps, to watch for dangerous temps (90C and above).... and indicates that there is a cooling issue (DUST)

Optional: re-apply thermal compound for the CPU and GPU if needed.

Lastly, use your notebook on clean, hard, flat surfaces (NOT on laps, beds, couches, etc)... but I recommend (for gaming notebooks) to use a good notebook cooler (like Zalman ZM-NC1000) to cool the entire underside of the notebook.

 

Maybe you should try the driver cleaner utility which could remove some rests of the old drivers u were using!