E6400 overheating throttling

I also finally managed to get my hands on the A17.

In my case it makes all the difference!

I used to have my E6400 blowing mad after 5 minutes of flash videos.

That has changed. The temperature stays between 34-37C while watching HQ Youtube, been running it for at least half an hour now.

I'll try to get the temp to 50C and see what it does then.

EDIT: I opened 6 HQ youtube videos at the same time. It went to 55C and started blowing loud.

EDIT2: After closing all the videos it took 5min to stop the blowing. Temperature came down to 30C well before that and stayed around 30-32C.

 

A17 was no good for me, sitting here with nothing running, everything closed, sitting on the dock, room temp is 23oC, I left it like that, with MSN closed, everything I could close I did, and went and made a coffee, came back 5-10mins later and checked the temps, the fan is blowing on high speed, cpu core temps are 44/42oC, memory temp is 52oC, chipset is 64oC, HDD temp is 44oC.

Funny thing is that the Peak chipset temp is 69oC, so my chipset varied between 64 and 69oC at idle.

I wont bother trying to do anything else as my fan on sitting on high anyway. I am very tempted to try out the "Special A16 Beta" BIOS, but for now will be paitient and wait for the next release, hopefully they would put in the fix from the beta into a release BIOS update.

EDIT: This was sitting on the dock, I'll try later on off the dock and see if I get the same results.

 

That is odd. My E6400, while docked and idle, has CPU temps about 10 degrees lower (but room temp is also about 10 degs lower, so no surprise), but my chipset is at about 40 degs. Have you contacted Dell about this? You can ask for a new machine and let them send it to you. If it's no better than your current one you can just send the new one back.

 

Yeah I havent gone down that path yet because I hardly ever get the throttling issue, only when I have a bazzillion applications open, so it kind of sort of is not really a problem, yet, and was hoping not to go through the rig-marol of replacing the laptop, because seriously off the dock it doesnt get anywhere near the temps as on the dock.

On a side note, because we bought 10 here at work, one of the other owners decided to give the beta BIOS a go and he's using Win7 and has the same issue with the fan on high all day on the dock, and he noticed a big difference, so i might be brave and give it a go and start documenting before and after temps, with some graphs

 

I think A17 did help me in at least the fan noise, although i was never really annoyed.

Usually when i leave it on my bed to watch a show (i know i shouldnt keep it on my bed), it gets loud. This time for like an hour and a half and barely anything...usually its blowing hard.

 

Off topic, when I do this, I put a peace of wood under the laptop, to create a mini table to that the fan of the laptop is not being obstructed.
In my case, the wood part I use comes from my desk, it's some plate to hold a desktop computer on the side of the table. As I can't have my computer there based on my room layout, I have no use for it (desktop computer next to desk), so what to do with that wood part? make it as a mini table on the bed. When not in use I simply slide it in my closet. If you don't have a nice wood part, and can't acquire one, then any hard surface will do, or those overpriced laptop stands for the bed. Avoid plywood form the home renovation center (ie: as is), as it can leave wood particle on your bed sheets or rip them. If you can find something form IKEA that should works.

 

I have a Vostro 1700 that I bought from the outlet site. From the first day that I had it I had problems with it overheating. I used a laptop cooler to keep the temps reasonable until last month. I checked out and took it apart. The two things that I did were to clean the cooling fins and redo the thermal paste. The original thermal paste was ridiculously thick and half of it was pushed out on the processor. I had some Arctic Thermal 5 from a previous build and I used a thin layer on the processor. My temps dropped to the 35-45 C range with a high of 55. Just thought I would mention it to you.

Sport

 

Once I tried a thermal pad on the CPU which how I found out very soon, allowed the CPU to reach peaks of 100°C. That was the first time I experienced throttling. I learned from that, that the fan speed is rather influenced by the chipset temperature than the cpu temp. The fan reacted to load scenarios with fluent! speed changes. It was like heaven. Hence the inability of the cpu to transport its heat to the heatpipe, left the heatpipe more ability to absorb the energy dissipated from the chipset, therefore allowing this perfect fan control.
Of course I found the cpu temp peaks alarming. So I replaced the pad again with some good ole arctic silver 5. The chipset has now a "high performance" thermal pad which is specified at 5W/mk (about half of the arctic silver 5 perf. but still very good for a pad). The situation is now better than it was before. Yet not perfect, but still better. I'd love to see the heatpipe's copper parts in direct contact with the chipset.

I conclude that when it comes to throttling the cpu is the important factor and when it comes to fan control it is all about the chipset temperature. These two factors are mutually connected... like with some aluminum and copper...

 

The Studio 1737 I've just got my daughter also uses a thermal pad. I discovered this when a hint of CPU activity resulted in the temperature quickly rising and the fan coming on. It's a complete contrast to my E6400 where the temperature responds slowly.

I was surprised to discover that Dell actually use a thermal pad on a CPU but I assume it's to make life easy during assembly because the same heatsink also serves the IGP with another thermal pad. That said, my E6400 has the same arrangement except for thermal paste on the CPU.

John

 

Well after a mate of mine at work tried out the T11 beta bios last week I thought I would give it a go. I have noticed no difference in temperatures, nor fan speeds on the dock yet. Chipset temp is currently 66oC and CPU is currently 46oC and the fan is blowing a gale on high.

I didnt expect to see any difference in temperatures really, mainly because I am using the same applications as I was before, so I guess the fan sits on high on the dock, whether i like it or not. Will do some testing later on off the dock if time permits.