E6400 overheating throttling

Either the cooling system is clogged with fluff or the thermal paste on the CPU needs replacing. One test is to check whether the fan is blowing out lots of hot air when the CPU is under full load. You can also drop the CPU temperature by undervolting the CPU. See the undervolting guide. Undervolting has no adverse effect on the CPU performance.

John

 

It blows out lots of hot air, seems like the fan is always kickin on. I have a 3 year warranty I guess I will have to call dell.

Does the following look warm from just sitting there doing nothing?

 

Those temperatures look fine to me.

 

Sorry for double post, but it's a different subject entirely:

Does anyone if the E6410 has improved thermal capabilities? Is the throttling gone, and/or do they use a better cooling system?

 

Throttling is "gone".
What needs to be noted is that it is NORMAL and A MUST for laptop to throttle when they heat up. This is when you know you have a good laptop, as you are insured, despite being annoying at time under extreme heavy loads, it prevents the system from overheating and breaking (and burn your desk or lap or cook an egg like some Mac Book Pros). I think everyone here prefer a system that throttles but will last you 4-5 years, and a system that doesn't and break next week because you decided to do something demanding on it.

If you need maximum performance and no throttling, even under extreme load conditions from all your hardware components, then a desktop is what you need, thanks to their significantly larger heatsink and air flow design. That is why it is best to have both. Laptop for on the go usage, and desktop for some serious performance.

An easy way to improve by a few degree the system cooling, is add thermal paste at the areas where the heat-sink touches the base of the laptop, to improve heat spreading of the heat-sink everywhere on your system metal base.

 

Some months back I did see my E6410 throttle when it was under sustained (many hours) high CPU load and docked. I started up ThrottleStop and it fixed the throttling. I'm a little puzzled why it happened (maybe twice) because I was running the CPU-intensive process for several days.

John

 

I understand the need for the CPU to throttle down to lower temperatures. I'm by no means a power user nor do I play games. I use the MS Office line of products and Adobe for the most part. Where I run into trouble is Skype after about 5-10 minutes my computer becomes completely unstable. The CPU(s) gets up to about 83-85 then it throttles down to the point of unusability, I cant even open up a folder. If I use throttlestop the problem goes away.

While I'm not sure how to check the fans other than visually they look pretty clean no dust clinging to the vents or anything. It's in the dock primarily so it's even raised off the desk at the rear.

From reading various threads if the throttling issue has been resolved in A19 or above I'm guessing it's my thermal paste either on the GPU or CPU

 

SethC I can assure you that I use Skype on my system (E6400), and I have no problem, and I do a lot more. Heck I even overclock my GPU like no tomorrow before playing a game on the go. So I AM pushing my system to high level sometimes (well I do do it in a room with A/C during summer, don't block my air vents, and do clean my fan and heatsink).

To clean the heat sink and fan you need compressed air. Be sire to hold the fan in position before blowing compressed air on it, and when you blow on the heatsink. The heatsink location is where warm air comes out on the side of your system. You want to hold the fan in place with your finger, because the air blast is so powerful that it can spin the fan to higher speeds that it was design for, and may damage the motor (fan will start to make more noise).
If you are going to have Dell replace the heatsink (which they will, as the thermal paste is on it), you'll get a new fan and heastink, so don't bother getting a can of compressed air. Also, if you do get a can of compressed air (as you want to dust off other computers in the house, like your desktop computer to keep them quiet, stable, and longer, be sure to read carefully the instruction on the can)

 

Sorry for refreshing this old post, but has anyone solved this problem? Its driving me crazy, because in idle, SKIN (DIODE4) has the highest temp of all temps, but turns on fan with only 41C. But my temp doesnt go below 46C. So fan is working all the time. Is there any way to rewrite the thermal tables, or where is diode4 located on the motherboard? Thanks.

 

I have a M4400, but with the same problem. SKIN (DIODE4) temperature causes the fan to be on all the time. Any information on where this diode is or what it's responsible for?