DELL L701X Overheat

Hi everyone,

Has anyone else got a Dell L701X with overheating issues ?

The heatsink assembly is a really poor design, check out the pic below, if the fan stops you can feel the copper get warm and when the fan kicks in you can feel it blow warm air then stops again.

If I start to encode video or not even anything quiet as extreme, the temps at the cup get to around 100 degrees and it shuts down, funny thing is the fan goes nuts blowing cool air and the copper is cool apart from directly over the CPU. It's obvious the whole cooling is completely inadequate or maybe I've a dodgy heatsink ? the GPU cools fine and if I fire up a game the fan starts to blow out hot air and keep the temps down it's only the CPU that's the problem.

It's really driving me mad.

Check out the pic.

Alanstrainor

I would probably reapply some thermal paste to the CPU, not much else you can do.

Did that already, but it's obvious the heatpipe isn't transferring the heat to the heatsink.

I thought I could mod it in some way but I can't find any info on the net.

duckysauce

is it still under warranty ?

duckysauce

duckysauce wrote: »

is it still under warranty ?

No, warranty expired about a year ago.

The problem would have been there from day one, but I never really pushed the cpu, but if you go to encode video or the likes it's not possible unless I set the cpu not to snable turbo mode. Bit useless really.

Next laptop I get the first thing I'll be doing is encoding video to see if it gets too hot.

I'm not really impressed that dell could not have known about it.

mordeith

I have a very similar cooling system in my Dell Studio XPS. I've never checked the CPU temps under load but the laptop is being repaired at the moment for burnt out componenets on the MB. I wonder if the issue you highlight was the cause? I must monitor the temps when I get the laptop back (hopefully today).

U_Fig

I have an l501x and have a fairly similar problem but it's not too extreme.. I use it to transcode hd content to my tv and it's gets pretty hot but only once has it shut down.. Most of the heat comes from the GPU tho I switched to intel graphics by turning off the nvidia card and it got considerably less hot.. It still got hotter than I like but no where near when using the GPU..

mordeith

mordeith wrote: »

I have a very similar cooling system in my Dell Studio XPS. I've never checked the CPU temps under load but the laptop is being repaired at the moment for burnt out componenets on the MB. I wonder if the issue you highlight was the cause? I must monitor the temps when I get the laptop back (hopefully today).

It could have been the issue. Or maybe a failed component is causing the cpu to over heat ?

Yes I would download the widget for monitoring temps and some should show the clock frequency. As the temps get too high you will see turbo being disabled (it won't go into turbo) and the frequency will drop from say 1.4 ghz to aroung 900 mhz. That's a sure sign of over heating. You will know by the temps anyway.

Use intels own cpu tool for your own cpu and it will show turbo mode.

Most people only browse the web or play games and never really use all the power, though most people think that a faster processor makes the difference, in some cases yes such as video encoding ( you can never have a fast enough processor for that) but most people will never use it.

The biggest difference is going to a good fast ssd such as OCZ vertes 4, I got that in the laptop and it's hugely faster than any hdd, so much so that using the work laptop or any other non ssd machine is absolute torture.

IOPS not transfer speeds are what matter in ssd's transfer rates only really apply when transferring large files from one drive to another, and that will be limited by the slowest drive anyway, usually a hdd as a backup drive.

mordeith

I do tend to use the laptop for gaming (although nothing hugely intensive in that respect). I do occasional video editing and encoding but its mainly used for music production which doesn't really put a huge strain on it. Anyway I have updated the thread on the laptop repair which you can look at here

U_Fig

U_Fig wrote: »

I have an l501x and have a fairly similar problem but it's not too extreme.. I use it to transcode hd content to my tv and it's gets pretty hot but only once has it shut down.. Most of the heat comes from the GPU tho I switched to intel graphics by turning off the nvidia card and it got considerably less hot.. It still got hotter than I like but no where near when using the GPU..

My GPU runs fine even gaming, as the CPU is far less stressed, the heatsink cools it fine.

My first gen I7 doesn't have integrated graphics, so I couldn't switch anyway.

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