E6400 overheating throttling

I think it is safe to say you are off the hook. If the issue was present and was throttled because of this, you WILL notice. It is a system wide phenomena. All applications will crawl to a halt(you will have trouble even to shutdown), audio will be scratchy and video will have skipped frames. Add to this you said you were able to reach 90 C, so it is almost certain your system does not have the problem.

The thing is, the throttling is perfectly ok and was supposed to happen and infact the cpu is constantly throttled depending on your system load to conserve power/battery life. But the throttle that occurs due to this issue is completely deferent, it is a throttle that is supposed to happen when the system encounters extreme thermal condition as a measure of precaution. Unfortunately, here it is happening prematurely.

Thanks for reporting back. Now I wished I've gotten the Nvidia gfx.

 

Your certainly welcome. I agree it seems my system is good. I'm watching a DVD on it now (with an external drive) and it has played through just fine. I will defenitly report anything else I find.

 

I think the DVD would still produce the same effect, regardless if it's external or internal since either way the graphics card still has to render the images. It'd be interesting to see what happens if you fire up a DVD AND hammer Google Earth at the same time .

This is indeed encouraging. A couple of questions.

1) Did you get brand new or buy a refurb?

2) Does anyone know if the problems with the NVidia cards are now resolved?

3) Does your fan run a lot? Another person I was chatting with said their e6400 fan is always on.

 

1)Brand New...Purchased though my univerisity for a large discount
2)?
3)Seems like it but it is very quiet and I can hardly notice it compared to my old HP DV4000

 

There is no problem with the Nvidia GPU's.
The problem was on the Geforce 8000M series GPUs, The Quadro NVS 160M is based on the 9000M series. The GPU heat is well managed with this laptop. See my signature on how much I overclocked that GPU using Nvidia's overclock tool.
The laptop doesn't even struggle.

I say call Dell for a new motherboard and heatsink, in the case either is faulty (bad thermal paste or doesn't properly touch the processor(s), because it's bended, or something on the motherboard is miss connected and give too much power to a/some components for few example of possible problems)

 

Reply to dcp12345678 post:

1) I've got P8600 and Intel GMA and most cases laptop is cool (finger crossed) I especially bought with P-processor serie and GMA. Temps jump when heavy load - like WMV9 HD 1920x1080p viedo - but it's like 48 CPU , 49/50 chipset , 39 HDD (ambient temp. 24 C). Flaw is when CPU and NVS are on same heatpipe - so I could say that this is budgetting going too far ...
2) maintenance is easy with bottom panel ... but no I dont think so.
3) in my region Lenovo is overpriced, secondly it's made of plastic and latest keyboard changes don't appeal to me either
4) Half price of Lenovo with same spec, also with 3yr NBD warranty, LED WXGA+ screen, eSATA, metal case, clean design and simplicity, availability of maintenance manuals,
5) Keyboard is better than in D630 compareable with Thinkpad keyboards. Trackpoint can be disabled - but it's useful.

dcp12345678 - you're right in one, when someone really is looking for mobile and powerful well designed laptop (not workstation heavy brick nor netbook nor consumer shinny lap) the chice is only -for me- between T400s and E6400 (well Panasonic CF-F8 is a "bit" too expensive).

FOUND on DELL's forum:
(http://en.community.dell.com/forums/t/19247293.aspx)

Intermittent Issues on Dell's Latitude's E6400, E6500 And Precision M2400, M4400

An issue has been identified that can affect the Latitude E6400, E6500 and Precision M2400, M4400. The issue is intermittent and can manifest itself as a random BSOD, USB failure, Windows® freeze and corrupt video.

Replace the Memory, If the System Has Elpida Memory Part Number NY687

The solution is related to the 4GB system memory part number NY687 and the vendor Elpida. If the system does not have this memory part number, follow normal troubleshooting. If the system has this memory part number and it is Elpida

There is also reported that 4GB systems may have this problem. Problem that manifest similarly and sometimes is mistaken with overheating...

 

Thanks for the feedback Chris!

So you have the Intel integrated graphics. Not sure what you mean by "flaw is when CPU and NV are on same heatpipe". Is this the NVidia card you are talking about? From my understanding and the latest info GoldenEye has provided, it seems that the NVidia card is the way to *avoid* the overheating issue, as GoldenEye didn't experience it with the new laptop he/she just purchased. Can you clarify if you are talking about the NVidia card or exactly what you mean?

It may be plastic, but I saw some youtube's of a guy dropping it on the floor and it didn't even hurt it. I think it's pretty hard to argue about the build quality on the T400/T400s. And with the Leveno outlet, you can come pretty close to Dell outlet prices (at least in my region), so price savings wasn't really a consideration for me. But the keyboard arrangement was the thing that I couldn't get past, just can't live with the CTRL key not being in lower left corner because I use that key extensively.

As for latest keyboard changes, I assume you mean the T400s. Yeah, I saw that new layout too. What these "brilliant engineers" fail to realize is that people get used to a keyboard layout after using it for a long time (decades in many cases). Even if it's not the most ergonomically correct or politically correct or [insert your favorite expression here], the fact is, people are used to it, and it works for them. If it ain't broke, don't fix it! I wonder how many potential customers Leveno loses each year because they won't provide a Bios update to swap FN and CTRL? I know of at least one .

Good to know, thanks. What is it that you think makes it better than the D630? Also, how's the "smudge" factor? Some folks were saying it's a fingerprint magnet.

I'm really close to buying the E6400, you guys have all but convinced me that as long as I go with the NVidia card, everything will be ok in regards to the overheating. But has anybody here had the overheating with the NVidia? Just wondered.

I'm watching the dell outlet closely . What do you guys think of the regatta blue and regal red? This is a home box for me, so I don't have to worry about being conservative with laptop looks. But the colors are very hard to find on the outlet.

Also, what processor do you recommend? I'm planning to keep this laptop for the next 4 years, and I'm going to run XP until my employer switches over to Windows 7 at some point (or maybe Linux if Windows 7 fares as well as Vista did ). I was thinking anything 2.4 ghz or better should be ok to run Windows 7 and I'd have a machine that would be sufficient for the next 4 years. What do you think?

 

If you look through the dell support forum, some people have had the problem with the NVIDIA as well, however, I can say that my machine seems to be running quite well. Here is my full specs and winows ranking...
2.4 GHz Processor
NVIDIA Quadro 160m
4GB Ram
250GB 7200RPM HDD
1440x900 display (I checked and I did get the LG, which I am quite impressed with)
VISTA SCORE:
Processor: 5.3
Memory: 5.9
Graphics (Aero): 3.2
Gaming Graphics: 4.7
Primary HDD: 5.4

 

I agree with Goldeneye. However, I have 2 ideas on to how to fix this problem.. I mean these are not fixes for us.. They are for Dell.

1- Redesign the heatsink so that follows the height of each processor is cools off, so that a super thick layer of thermals paste is not needed to do contact between each processor and the heatsink, which should help every processor to go down a nice (just a prediction) 5-6 degree Celsius.

2- Have a separate heat sink for the GPU.

My guess is that it's not Nvidia GPU fault... it's just that the CPU in combination with a powerful (for a laptop) GPU with a badly design heatsink end up having for some users issues. If one processor heats up, it affects all of them.

 

I ran Windows 7 RC on a Pentium 3 800MHz with 512Mb of RAM (it's actually usable for web surf)
And for a smoother experience, I had it installed on a AMD Athlon XP 2000+ (that equivalent to a Pentium 4 1.8GHz), with 512MB of RAM.
So, really any CPU is fine for Win7. The question is now, what does your applications needs.