Vostro 3550 - Overheating when playing games

Merlin5

Merlin5

Merlin5

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My Dell Vostro gets really hot at the left vent and also at the vent underneath at the left side. The screen starts artifacting badly and eventually bluescreens if I don't hold the laptop in the air for a minute or two to cool. I quite often play games in bed with the laptop resting on a duvet in bed and this is when the laptop overheats. This is obviously not ideal for airflow.

I presume a notebook cooler would solve it?
I typed notebook cooler into amazon and a bunch of them came up. There's one called the Thermaltake Massive 23 LX Notebook Cooler 23cm Blue LED 10-17 Notebook 2 x USB. It has a 54.5CFM fan and costs £27. Would that be a good one to get or does anyone know of a specific cooler they recommend? Thanks.
 
Getting a cooling pad will help, however l would suggest de fluffing the heat sink and fan assembly.

Was quite surprised how much fluff came out of my laptop this week and l do not use it on a soft surface. Dust gets in as most laptops do not have dust filters.

I use a CoolerMaster U3 with the fans removed to give better clearance. But it comes with 3 positional fans.
 
CEUOTC said:
Getting a cooling pad will help, however l would suggest de fluffing the heat sink and fan assembly.

Was quite surprised how much fluff came out of my laptop this week and l do not use it on a soft surface. Dust gets in as most laptops do not have dust filters.

I use a CoolerMaster U3 with the fans removed to give better clearance. But it comes with 3 positional fans.
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The U3 seems pretty good.

Seems to have 3 fans at 15cfm each, so 45cfm is pretty good. You removed the fans though, wouldn't that defeat the purpose?

What's the best method to defluff the heatsink and fan assembly, do you mean spraying compressed air into the vents or opening the laptop?
 
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Merlin5 said:
The U3 seems pretty good. This one? Cooler Master U3

Seems to have 3 fans at 15cfm each, so 45cfm is pretty good. You removed the fans though, wouldn't that defeat the purpose?

What's the best method to defluff the heatsink and fan assembly, do you mean spraying compressed air into the vents or opening the laptop?
Click to expand...

Aye thats the fella, (PS best remove the link).

I removed the fans as the pad gives plenty of clearance to allow the 2 fans in my laptop to work quietly when watching films, l fit the fans if l am doing any gaming.

For me l can easily get to both fans and heatsinks, so l just remove the fans and then pluck out the fluff from the heatsinks with a small brush, if l am in a hurry l use a hover :) then refit the fans back to the heatsinks.
 
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CEUOTC said:
Aye thats the fella, (PS best remove the link).

I removed the fans as the pad gives plenty of clearance to allow the 2 fans in my laptop to work quietly when watching films, l fit the fans if l am doing any gaming.

For me l can easily get to both fans and heatsinks, so l just remove the fans and then pluck out the fluff from the heatsinks with a small brush, if l am in a hurry l use a hover :) then refit the fans back to the heatsinks.
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Thanks mate for the tips. You're right, link removed. :)

Having done more research, the U3 is big and more suitable for 17 to 19". The U2 is meant to be better suited for 15" laptops, which is what mine is. I can buy one new for under £17. Has two movable fans not three, but the CFM for each seems to be 31CFM, giving me 62CFM which is good, same 80mm size fans though as the U3.

The other one I'm considering is the Zalman ZM-NS2000 which has a single fixed 200mm fan. It also can be raised to 4 positions which 'might' be useful for keeping the laptop vents well away from my duvet, and has two stops preventing it from slipping. That's £20.

But I don't know which of the two cools the better. My laptop has two small vents underneath in the centre, and one underneath to the left and back, next to the side exhaust vents, so I need to make sure they're getting ample cooling.

What sort of temp reduction are you getting, anything substantial? I'm wondering if they actually do enough to stop the laptop overheating.

Oh, is it safe for me to put a vacuum cleaner over all my vents to clean them?
 
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I've watched a youtube video to disassemble the laptop, I'm gonna have a go. It's a faff because the single fan is facing upwards at the top left of the motherboard. I have to remove the keyboard and the DVD drive, a ton of screws and a few delicate ribbon connectors and the top panel. Wish me luck! :D




edit: I may not have to do anything further in fact. I discovered that it's my i5 2410m that seemed to be overheating. Running prime95 made it shoot up to the 80s very quickly. I just lowered my cpu clock in processor power management/maximum processor state to 85% which disables turbo boost and brought my 2.3ghz to 1.8ghz. In prime95, temps stabilised around 68c to 70c. Got a game running now and cannot see any difference in framerate and temps are better. I'll still buy a coolerpad though to improve further.
 
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If you are stripping it that far then you may as well clean off the old TIM and re-apply newer TIM.

See this thread IC-DIAMOND in Laptops

With the fans fitted get upto 5'c off and a quicker drop off in temps when system idles.
 
Bah, still bluescreened and rebooted during a game.

CEUOTC said:
If you are stripping it that far then you may as well clean off the old TIM and re-apply newer TIM.

See this thread IC-DIAMOND in Laptops

With the fans fitted get upto 5'c off and a quicker drop off in temps when system idles.
Click to expand...

I had considered doing that. I have some MX2 paste from when I built my desktop. I think I read that my laptop has a thermal pad of some sort so putting TIM on may not be appropriate. Tbh, looking at that screenshot above, I can't figure out where the cpu and heatsink is. Are they under the motherboard? Because the fan assembly looks like it's bolted from underneath, so would I have to remove the motherboard?
 
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mrham4321 said:
In my old Vostro you had to come at it from underneath to get to the fan. You would disassemble it from the top if you wanted to change RAM.
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Well I've replaced my HDD a few months ago from underneath and I was able to unclip the RAM which is connected next to the HDD. I couldn't see in this video (if you feel like watching it) how I would get proper access to unscrew the fan, once the top and back cover are removed.

 
Well I took it apart tonight. Took me a few hours but was fun and nerve wracking at the same time! Thought I'd broken a connector at one point.

Here's pics I took of the process for anyone interested.

http://postimg.org/gallery/3e2aa5qrk/

I had to gut the whole laptop to get to the CPU and GPU TIM. Cleaned off the old hardened stuff and applied MX2. I put on a bit less MX2 than in the pic, but not much less. Frankly, temps haven't changed, in fact, are very fractionally higher on the GPU and harddrive at idle. Might do it all over again and put even less paste on or even try spreading it next time instead of letting the Heatsink squish it.

CPU still idles in mid 50's. I've heard it's not uncommon for my laptop so maybe I won't be able to improve on it much.

Having said all that, load temps during prime95 and intel burntest are much more like they used to be when I first bought the laptop. Just had large FFTs running for 7 hours and the highest temps recorded were 76c CPU, while the GPU got to 63c and the harddrive 50c so maybe I have improved it.
 
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I'll be doing the same to my Latitude E6440 very soon, after almost 3 years I guess whatever paste is there has dried up now. Saying that it's a lot easier to do in mine, just unscrew the bottom which exposes the heatsink for the CPU and GPU and 4 screws to get that off, not even a 2 minute job to get it off!
 
neoboy said:
I'll be doing the same to my Latitude E6440 very soon, after almost 3 years I guess whatever paste is there has dried up now. Saying that it's a lot easier to do in mine, just unscrew the bottom which exposes the heatsink for the CPU and GPU and 4 screws to get that off, not even a 2 minute job to get it off!
Click to expand...

Next laptop I buy I'll make sure it has access to the heatsink like yours, much easier! :p
 
Quick update guys. Changing the TIM has indeed made a huge difference. While idle temps have not shown any improvement, the load temps are where it's showing the new paste is working. I played a game last night for a few hours, resting on my duvet where gaming normally makes it bluescreen and reboot. But the GPU temp only went to 56c and remained at that. Showed 56c in gpu-z and 55c in HW Monitor. The CPU temp went to about 68c and no further. No hint of overheating or artifacts on screen, so no bluescreen or rebooting. Yay!

I ordered a Coolermaster U2 Plus yesterday for £17 from amazon. It'll still be nice to receive the cooler, but right now, it's looking like the new thermal paste is doing it's job well.
 
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