M1330 Overheating

Ironic Namesake · 25 Jun 2009 at 13:37

I've had my M1330 for a while now, had the board replaced a while ago but didn't really use it much since.

Have been using it again the past week or so and whilst the office is quite warm we do have air con and keep it around 23c.

Here's a screenshot with the laptop pretty much at idle (MSN + firefox open)

Surely this is far too hot at idle :eek:

TheVoice · 25 Jun 2009 at 13:54

That does seem very warm, my M1330 usually sits at around 40-50, that's with the fan forced to Slow. Are you using the Balanced or Dell Recommended power scheme in Vista? That helps keep temps down quite a bit.

Ironic Namesake · 27 Jun 2009 at 22:30

Changed the power scheme which seems to help a little, sits around 60c idle.

Seems the GPU is the main source of heat, under load this stays steady at about 100c, I'm sure this is down to the 8400 chip which have problems (hence why the mainboard was replaced before!)

Bigsy · 27 Jun 2009 at 22:47

Sounds like you should have a crack at the 'copper mod'.

ShaolinDreams · 27 Jun 2009 at 22:52

how effective is the copper mod? im interested in doing it to my netbook to make it run silent.

Bigsy · 27 Jun 2009 at 22:59

AFAIK its only applicable to the 1330 as it has a massive fat inefficient TIM wedged between the gpu and heat pipe.

I guess some netbooks may have the same issue but as they don't generally have a single heatpipe for cpu, gpu (usually intergrated, no heatsink) and northbridge (again no heatsink) there probably aren't any gap issues. With most netbooks you could probably just replace the TIM with straight arctic silver.

ShaolinDreams · 27 Jun 2009 at 23:02

thats a good idea first trying some artic silver first

Ironic Namesake · 27 Jun 2009 at 23:18

Will give that a go tomorrow, where could I pick up a copper sheet from?