E6400 overheating throttling

Hi 66°C GPU is really hot. My GPU (docked, external 22" digital monitor) never goes beyond 59°C and stays at 43°-46°C doing office work, 48-49°C watching a flash video or doing video conferencing.

The CPU temp seems fine.

I this case - I'd assume, that your heatsink might be a bad one (we've heard about product problems with less/not filled with fluid heatsinks) or the contact between heatsink and chipset.

Oh well, I'm talking about Intel Chipset with Intel 4500 GPU.

I've received A18 BIOS now and that is pretty much T11. So for me, no downclocking anymore, some more steps in the fan settings (not off/med/high, but off/low/med/high now).

The only thing that annoys me still a bit is, that the fan runs on slow all time when docked in E-dock with external monitor. Even when system is IDLE for longer period. I've unplugged the fan and made a normal office day.
The CPU temp was always between 40-50°C and the GPU between 44 and 49°C. So fanless working WOULD be possible.
If that could be setup, that the lowest threshold switching the fan could be risen to the temps I've mentioned, that the fins where the fan blows out the "heat" would not get covered with dust too early again.

Conclusion: The thermal design of this item is a bit unfavorable. The heat CPU heat spreads to the GPU/chipset and heats it up, too. The heat of GPU/Chipset must pass the CPU before it can be blown out of the system. Not the best design, even some DELL technicians already mentioned to me, too.

 

Yeah I am finding that the chipset temps go crazy and rasie the cpu temps fast when having firefox open with 2 tabs, each running a flash application. The CPU usage is hardly anything and can watch the chipset temps rise quick, followed by a rise in gpu and cpu temps, even with the fan blowing on high the chipset has reached 90oC before throttling kicks in. This is all with me doing absolutly nothing really as I have firefox minimised. I havent really tried this off the dock, but at least have a very precise method of reproducing the throttling effect consistently.

And since I am currently running on battery, undocked of course, I am trying to reproduce this and guess what, cpu peaked at 72oC, chipset peaked at 72oC and gpu peaked at 48oC with no throttling...... fan is also on slow, not even high........... wierd I really need to do a same for same devices test I have been meaning to do for a while now. That is take all the devices out of the dock and plug it into the laptop itself and run a tempature test, to see if it is the dock itself or something related to it. Although I wont be able to put in my 2 20" monitors, might try to get a different cable to at least get one in.

Problem is that these two flash applications are not work related at all, and I have not been able to consistently get the throttling issue through normal everyday workload. I have had my heatsink replaced once before, due to the bearings in my fan failing, but actually cant remember having any issues with heat before then. That said I did not do any research, nor take regular readings either, so I might not have noticed it.

So really for me, until the throttling becomes an every day workload issue, I really do not have a case to take to Dell Support, the only problem I have is the fan blowing on high all the time while docked.

 

Hi Joeb7!
I am having the T11 Bios and it works fine on my E6400. But I am interested in the A18 which You received. I would be pleased if You could upload it.

I got a SL9600 CPU (Low Voltage) which didn't work, the Notebook powerd off after a few seconds because of "critical temperature". I suppose the CPU doesn't send temperature values or it sends wrong ones. I am looking forward to get another CPU and try it again, but perhaps the BIOS doesn't "know" this CPU... So I want to try other (new) BIOS Versions...

 

http://www.file-upload.net/download-1949517/E6400A18.zip.html

Use it at your own risk, please. It's in testing and scheduled for release in November - I was told.

http://en.community.dell.com/forums/p/19247293/19568906.aspx#19568906 - for screenshots.

 

Well I get the same results, currently sitting on the dock, with simply firefox open, nothing else, no IM, no nothing. CPU 45oC, GPU 49oC, Memory 52oC, Chipset 65oC, HDD 44oC, Fan High 4737 RPM.

 

Thank You joeb7 for the A18 Bios, I flashed from T11 to A18 and don't see any problem, yet.

 

But did A18 fix anything?

 

Well I havent seen any throttling yet, here is some interesting data but. I was litterally doing nothing, I had closed everything, but MSN, and was reading some paperwork at my desk, and the fan went from slow to fast, so I opened up I8kfanGUI and dumped the log file to see what triggered the fan from slow to high, and by the looks of it, no change in the CPU, GPU, Memory, Chipset or HDD temperatures occured, it just decided to go on high? The CPU jump to 10% is me opening up I8kfanGUI. I have only included the 5 entries before and 5 after the change of fan speed, but I can assure you they were similar further back in history. Also since the change in fan speed notice the temperatures stay relatively the same, and I have found that once it turns on high, it never goes lower, for example, if I turn everything off and leave the laptop doing nothing for lunch, I'll come back and it'll still be on high. I can then shut it down and turn it back on and it will sit on slow for a lot longer now with A18, but then eventually somehting triggers the high fan and there is stays, until I reboot it or power down the system.

CPU-temp GPU-temp memory-temp chipset-temp speed load fan1speed
45 48 51 65 2400 0% 3610
45 48 51 65 2400 0% 3597
45 48 51 65 2400 0% 3610
45 48 51 65 2400 0% 3597
45 48 51 65 2400 0% 3610
45 48 51 65 2400 0% 4028
47 48 51 65 2400 10% 4463
45 48 51 66 2400 0% 4664
45 48 51 65 2400 0% 4777
45 48 51 65 2400 0% 4795

 

In my case I still face throttling with Bios A18. But I don't have to reboot to go back to an unthrottled state.


Will test if things are different with Bios T11...

 

No throttling with T11 Bios...


So no throttling in T11 but still in A18 Bios