D630 Owners Thread

I got a d630 from work and have added 4GB of ram and a 500GB hard drive I did notice that the two I got have 6 cell batteries in them and was wondering if there is a good off brand for a 9 cell battery. $145 from dell is way too much.

 

You should be able to get one for less than $75. Here's one: One 1 New Genuine Dell D620 D630 D631 D640 9 Cell Hi Capacity Battery OEM 1 | eBay

 

Thanks for the info. I might convert it to an ATG then. the keyboard lights are an added bonus... are they really as red as I'm seeing, or are they also available in white? if they're not available in white, I might go see about modifying the lights themselves (I'm assuming they're just LEDs...?) and replace with white ones.

I also did a little research and also asked around in one of the many IRC networks I frequent, seems the proper term for that glue is underfill and should be under the chip as well, and Foxconn skimped on that when soldering these. superglue is okay, just not recommended. there seem to be cyanoacrylate-type underfill adhesives that one can buy, I've found, but again, no definite answer, so at this point I can only assume that everything will be alright. at the current moment, the laptop no longer goes nutsy cuckoo if I leave it at one angle for too long, and I can only imagine that the heatsink modifications I've made are helping a lot.

for reference for the thread, all I did was take a copper plate a couple millimeters thick from a copper base of a heatsink and thermalcompound-superglue tacked it to the GPU heatpipe above the CPU but to the upper left corner of the Alps touchstick in the middle of the keyboard. from there, I cut away the plastic undercoating for the keyboard metal and thermal compound joins the plate and the keyboard. I'll again assume this is alright, seeing as back to the days of the Latitude C840, the keyboard was essentially the heatsink for the GPU in that (a GeForce 4 440 Go! 32MB, made contact with the keyboard bottom on a raised aluminum plate with a copper heatpipe running the length of the keyboard to by the fans, no fins.) That alone dropped the temeratures 7C, which when you're in the high 60s/low 70s and near the point where solder cracks usually become a problem, it's a big deal. the temperatures I listed in my previous post are the system after the fix.

 

Fairly certain those LEDs only came in red, but that's from a sample size of like 10... you'll probably have to replace them if you want white ones. I'm also not too sure how easy it is to crack open that ATG display assembly; there's definitely parts of it that are glued together, though I don't know if the bezel is one of those parts.

 

According to this:

it looks like the LEDs are soldered on the ribbon itself that extends from the bottom of the lid upwards. this looks like an easy fix, just desolder the old ones with a lower-wattage iron and drop-in some white ones of the same size and spec. but that depends on if it's the LEDs themselves that are red, or a filter over them that filters it into red light. if it's the cover over them that's red, that'd be a big no-no for me-- I'd have to pop them out, take measurements, and fabricate some clear replacements. all in all though, the keyboard lights otherwise would be a big plus for usability. I'm planning on making this the semi-expendable take-with-me-places-that-I-otherwise-wouldn't-want-to-bring-my-good-laptop laptop, such as taking it with me to visit family or on a road trip to Michigan, which is something I've been planning for a few months now... and the area of Michigan I'm going to isn't the happiest of places to keep personal belongings safe.

 

Dell D630
Current Processor, Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 2.50GHZ
Ram, 4GB DDR2
OS, Microsoft Windows XP Professional SP3
Graphics, Intel GMA
Temperature Software, HWiNFO32


I upgraded the dell D630 laptop from the t8100 processor to the t9300 processor. I cleaned of the old thermal pad grease using rubbing alcohol and then I used Arctic silver 5 by putting a pea-sized dot in the middle and then by mounting the heat sink it spreads the thermal grease over the processor. (I did this yesterday 25 November)

Its quite cold in my room at the time of posting this

The average idle temperature for the CPU while in use for about 5 minutes is 45 – 50 degrees centigrade, lots of activity is known to rise it to 65 degrees centigrade

I have noticed while feeling the laptop underneath, that the processor area, the video area and also the middle of the LCD monitor gets hot. As it warms up I noticed that there is a horizontal line near the bottom of the LCD screen showing some sort of after images underneath, it shows regardless of whether I am in windows or on the BIOS/Boot-up screens and this stays until I switch it off and leave it to cool down for a few hours, I think that the heat must be responsible for the horizontal line. While connecting the laptop to the other LCD TV I don’t see the horizontal line at all its only on the laptops screen.

The GPU temperature rises from about 35 – 47 degrees centigrade before showing those horizontal lines

The auxiliary temperature shows about the same temperature as the GPU

I also noticed that the laptop warms up even more if I connect it to a charger

Is there anyway to lower the laptops temperature so the horizontal line will stop appearing on the laptops monitor?

Thanks for your help

 

Can you take a picture of this line(s?)? Based on your description, it's hard to tell if it's something wrong with your GPU or your screen... though I suspect it's the former.

 

Here is a picture of the line (the horizontal line is very near to the bottom of the screen) you can just about see it in the image, under the line shows a duplicate of the top of the screen
this happens while i am using the pc for about 10 minutes or so, the underside of the pc where the cpu is gets quite hot too

 

I've had a D630, intel graphics, for 6 years now. Great machine! However, the fan was going on it, sometimes it just wouldn't spin without me manually giving it a quick twirl. During those times the CPU would thermal throttle down to 400 mhz (2x multiplier). So I just grabbed a new one, and a new palmrest while I was at it. Swapped everything out, cleaned the CPU off and put on some Arctic Silicone (that's all I had here). Now when I boot up the CPU temps go to 75 before the fan kicks on and I immediately get thermal throttling down to 2-4x multiplier. Even after the CPU temps drop down to 40 it will never increase past 800 mhz (4x).

I've disassembled everything and reseated the heatsink, cleaned off the compound again and used the remaining paste I had left, with no change. I'm screwing the heatsink down in the order given, but I've tried random order too. Is it just the paste? Why doesn't the system ever recover as the temperature drops?

 

Yeah, pretty sure yours is a screen problem and not a GPU problem... it does work properly on an external monitor, I assume?

Are you getting the AC adapter not recognized error?