E6400 overheating throttling

The trigger does not seem to be a simple 55C ACPI temperature, as reported by HWmonitor. I've just been running OCR on a PDF file (with throttling control in RMClock disabled) and the temperature has spiked up to 65C without any sign of throttling. There may be something more subtle, such as time above a threshold, which is more difficult to figure out.

John

 

Correct, but at least it's a paying software where they took time and have the resources to bring their sensor and measure up with what their software says and provide any correction if needed, at every version they support more and more hardware., as they get released. When I first got my Dell Latitude E series laptop, about half the details did not show up in the program, and for temps I only had HDD, CPU, GPU. Now, on the latest version, everything is provided or this laptop.

That is the advantage of shareware over freeware of a successful software, like this one... support for hardware.
Also +- few degrees is not the end of the world.. if it says 30C when it's really 100C then we have a problem, but it is not the case.

 

Last Friday, July 31st, I wrote:

I never received a call back. I probably spent a couple hours today talking to 6 different Dell people trying to just get an answer to the question "Am I going to get this callback or not?". I got nowhere. It was a Kafkaesque journey taking me from El Salvador to Tampa, then to India, the Phillipines and ending somewhere in Central Florida (the last person I talked to wouldn't reveal the city, but it wasn't Tampa according to him). Total dead end. I was polite, but persistent. It didn't matter. So this is the second time I've been led to believe something's happening, been promised a call back and then was blown off.

I've started one last track. I did reach someone in Tampa who was engaged and conscientious enough to record the details in my no-doubt extensive log for this service request, including details on how to reproduce the problem and I gave him the link to my 59 page report. So they have all they need to follow up on this. I was told that at this coming Monday's regular meeting of the Tampa lab technician(s) and Tampa second-level tech support staff and Dell Engineering (presumably calling in from somewhere else), that this issue would be brought up. But I'm at the end of my rope with Dell Tech Support. If they call back, fine, but I'm not calling them anymore. I've done my part ( 8 separate calls talking to 12 different people). I still encourage others to bang on them politely.

Joeb7, your recent report regarding your contact with Dell was promising, but today I re-read your post from over 3 months ago on the Dell Community Forum (on April 22) where you said:

I'm starting to see a pattern. Lots of promises, but no results. It seems that this could be a deliberate corporate response to try and keep what appears to be a serious, but often invisible design flaw or defect hushed up as much as possible to avoid having to fix it and/or to avoid bad publicity. Or it could just be a stellar case of collective incompetence.

I still hope to continue investigating and publicizing this problem and encourage others to do the same.

 

Would furmark work with an Intel GPU? Is there any other way to get my temperatures high enough for a throttle?

Thanksf

 

I have at least a datapoint to add to this discussion. My E6400 has a P series processor and the Nvidia GPU. I have the thermal throttling when on the docking station at my home but not usually when on the station in my office. One big difference between the two is the temp. The corner of my home office where my laptop lives is routinely at 82 or so deg. My work office is most always at 72. Also at home the laptop is driving a 3008 display at 2560 resolution via displayport connection, at the office its driving a pair of 1280 displays, one dvi and one VGA. I can press the unit to throttle at the office but really have to work it. At home, it does so routinely. This problem IS thermal related. I plan to get an oversize laptop cooler for the laptop and docking station to sit on at the house and give it a try. I'll report back.

 

Wait... your laptop is at 82 degree Celsius? Why do you put your laptop on top of your oven? You attach 3008 monitors? That is impossible, from only 2 monitor outputs. Sorry, you make no sense.

How about going single/dual monitor setup instead of 3008, if that is even true, and be more organized. Also, put your laptop on an desktop, not on top of your oven.

 

Which one are you thinking of buying? I've been looking into this as well some time ago but I found that most of these are designed to fit an undocked laptop. In many products the docking station itself would even block part of the fans (of the laptop cooler).

 

I reckon it's 82 Fahrenheit, which is about 28 C. 3008 WFP is a DELL monitor type (a big one)

 

Well, I’m an expert on this for my E6500 with NVIDIA graphics, so I can provide advice for that system, much of which would probably apply for an E6400 with Intel integrated graphics:

1. Docking makes a substantial difference. Throttling kicks in roughly at temperatures roughly 10C higher (EDIT: lower, not higher) than if my system is not docked.

2. The component temperature that correlates the most with the throttling is GPU temp, at least on my system. CPU temp correlates too, but not as much (could be different with your system). In fact, the temperature that correlates the most with throttling (and I didn't include this in my report) is actually that of the air coming out of the fan port (on the left side). I measured it with a type K thermocouple (nothing special) connected to a Fluke multimeter. As a general rule of thumb, throttling kicks in at the low 50's C when docked and low 60's C when undocked, given an ambient room temperature in the upper 20's. See attached image to see exactly where I placed the probe each time (bottom center of the port).

3. In a docking setup, dual monitors (in my case, 1920x1200 Dell E248WFP's) makes a difference as opposed to a single monitor. That gels with high-correlation of GPU temp with throttling. High rez monitors are probably better for the same reason.

4. To best elicit the throttling, exercise both the GPU and the CPU because you generate more overall heat that way, as I did in the first test of my report.

5. A warm or hot room is better for triggering throttling, as you would expect - the E6500 is spec'ed to run at up to 35C ambient, the E6400 is spec’ed higher, at 40C.

 

I'm not sure where you are getting the information that "most of these are designed to fit an undocked laptop".

I have the e6400 with the dock, and the dock doesn't block the exhaust port for the fans. And I have no throttling issues running in the dock (with 2 instances of stress prime running, playing a DVD, and google earth running). I have the NVidia card.