E6400 overheating throttling

Going with the D630 would mean fore-going all the goodies E6400 brings to the table. Display, keyboard, chipset/proc refresh, etc. Also, the new cosmetic face-lift is not too shabby either. For all the problems currently plaguing the E6400 it is still not enough to sway me to opt for model a generation older. Even T400 had complaints about the build quality etc.

Why not get the E6400 with Nvidia gfx. Depending on where you are you might even be able to return within 30 days if something is a miss.

 

I honestly haven't seen many complaints other than some about keyboard flex, and Lenevo appears to have addressed that (Refer to the "Keyboard and Touchpad" section at this link: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=4946).

It's very tempting . I actually read through all 7 pages of that dell forum discussion on the overheating (yes, I'm a little obsessed with this overheating issue). It seems to me that it's a design issue that no matter what Dell does, they aren't going to be able to correct it unless they redesign something with the heat sink. The BIOS thermal tables don't fix it, cleaning the dust out doesn't fix it (fantomx said he could reproduce the problems with fresh out of the box e6400's).

For a $1000+ purchase, I just can't feel good about buying a laptop that is going to have this overheating problem if I try to do something as simple as watching a DVD or running the aurora vista screen saver. If it's a design problem, Dell should have fixed it by now and had a recall. But it seems to me that maybe they are just ignoring it, because they know it will cost them millions to do a recall. With so many folks having the problem, it's pretty amazing though that they don't address it.

 

Honestly, if it was affecting more than those few people...and since overheating is such a major issue, you'd think a lot more people would have brought it up. 7 pages is nothing.

 

Maybe not a lot of people with the Intel GPU have tried running anything graphics intensive and maybe those who did may think that it's a GPU limitation.

I'm pretty sure this isn't an isolated issue. It's just a matter of time before more people start noticing this problem

 

Basically what I was thinking... Anyways, I'm going to pick mine up today and I'll report my findings.

 

I'll be anxious to hear your results, as it may have a direct impact on my decision . It'll be interesting to see if you get the overheating problems.

I think that's probably true. I mean, as a business laptop, most people are probably just running Word/Excel, checking email, basic web browsing on company intranet and doing stuff that doesn't really stress the GPU very much. I mean, how many people are watching DVD's or running Google Earth at the office on their e6400's? If they are, something tells me they won't be employed for long .

But still, those features are really important because for me this will be a work (for secondary contract programming)/home laptop combo. So I don't want to be worried about running Google earth and watching this thing crash and burn.

And it's not an isolated issue to just the Dell thread either. For example, see this link:
http://zdinfo.com/2009/01/08/test-drive-windows-7-on-dell-latitude-e6400/

Quoting from that link:
"Overheating of Dell Latitude E6400 is not an issue with W7, but with E6400 itself. There’s a HW design problem – that is OS independent, with no solution as of today (after a year!!!). Stay away from E6400 at all costs."

I know every product is going to have some bad consumer opinions no matter how good it is, but this overheating problem just makes me shudder.

Anyway, let's see how Goldeneye fares . If he/she still has the overheating problem, I think it's either gonna be the Leveno T400 (yes, I still hate that ctrl/fn key swap) or a refurb D630. Or the third option, keep the Inspiron for a while and see what new models come out in the next few months.

 

How do I find out if the system is being throtteled. First report... I got the system with a defective optical drive. It won't close... I downloaded speedfan and system is running IE and speedfan and my GPU is at 55C .... and even bounced up to 60C.... I dont know if it was throttling though...where do i find that info? Either way I think I recieved a lemon...

 

Okay, I did get an event ID 7... However, If i'm not mistaken it was during startup and I didn't notice any slowing, even though it obviously did... I now know how to find the event viewer but is there a way I can find the speed of the processor when it reaches the upper temperatures? Right now, I'm going to install a demo of age of empires 3 to see if that triggers it. I would install a game, but like i said i have a defective optical drive.

 

From reading the other posts, it sounds like people were doing stuff like playing a DVD movie (I realize you can't do that) or running some other graphic intense activity while at the same time, using speedfan to monitor the temps. Maybe you could try Google Earth or something. I'll let the experts chime in here because I'm really not sure.

 

played age of empires 3 for roughly 30-45 minutes on maximum settings and resolution flawless, GPU got to 90s ... mostly mid 50s but jumped to 59-60 randomly. Still no "event 7" other than the 2 at startup that lasted 9 seconds. I'm playing with google earth right now and it seems to be going good. If I use an external USB DVD player would that have the same heat effect as internal? I do have access to one of those....