E6400 overheating throttling

Your system is perfect form the looks of it.
CPU and GPU has a technology to downclock to the slowest speed it can when you don't use them to save power and reduce heat. Each of the processors will provide you with the power (CPU or GPU or both) as YOU need it, directly. You don't have to worry about delays or anything... this is all controlled by themself so they are no drivers or software to make it used, it's always there.

Now you can tell the CPU to either stay as Full speed, or default or minimum power, by changing the power option of Windows. High-Performance will set the CPU (and other components in your system) at full speed (creates more heat, and eats of course uses more power), balance is at default position, and power saver set everything to save power. Additional options can be found in the power option of Windows, in the Control Panel.

As for the GPU, the GPU has the same technology. However Windows has no way (today) to provide the same power management. It's all automatically down and detected by your GPU. It's behavior is as follows:
- When the system is plug-in, clock according on how much power you need/use, up to it's normal speeds.
- When you are on battery, stay at minimum speed as much as possible.

The speed and temperature is perfectly normal, in fact they are so normal, they are perfect

 

I am assuming the temps are for idle. Try stress testing with IntelBurnTest or Prime95 and check the temps to make sure your laptop is not overheating.

In general E6400 does run a bit warm and additionally some people have had issues with cpu overheating/throttling.

You might also want to put Arctic Silver to reduce temps.

 

Not really, mainly because if anything fails, in the end it is a work laptop and they will be forced to replace it, so I will not bear any costs, just time to replace faulty parts, which atm is negligable.

 

Are you sure the degradation you experience is not just dust buildup in the cooling system?
The fan in my E6400 has been running on full speed more and more the last weeks. Today I opened up the laptop, blew away the dust that was stuck in the cooling fins next to the fan. Now the laptop runs approx. 3 C cooler (chipset temp 47C instead of 50C as before) and the fan doesn't run on full speed while doing light work anymore.

Örjan

 

Agreed, plus hardware doesn't degrade like that. It's not mechanical (except for your HDD/optical drive, but even then these are nothing new, and designed to work for many years before failing or cause errors even if you run your laptop 24/7. Today's laptop and internal hardware are much better design then several years back, and are designed for such rough environment such as laptop's running very long hours. I mean for sure manufacture errors can occur, but are generally rare.

 

A17 BIOS released, but at the moment it won't download for some reason...

 

Thnk you!!!! It's work! no fan noise!

 

So what exactly is this A16 special build doing? Some people seem to suggest it runs the fan more often... and some people seem to suggest it runs the fan less often. I've been waiting for a BIOS that does the latter; is this it?

 

try it yourself.
Installed it 3 hours ago and it's sounds like new computer... WIth my docking station immedatly after playing youtube video fans start working and now playing youtube with no fan working!

 

I managed to download it (from here: http://support.dell.com/support/dow...typeid=-1&dateid=-1&formatid=-1&fileid=346107 )
Unfortunately A17 doesn't seem to include the changes to the thermal table that the beta BIOS included. The fan still goes to full speed mode at 50C chipset temp.

Örjan