Vostro 1500/1700: Are the exhaust fans reliable/durable ?

Are you using any type of notebook cooler to keep your temps in those range? My GPU temps are always 61-65 on idle while my CPU temps are 45-50 on idle. I have a vostro 1400 btw.

 

The only time I see over 80c is on my tablet during an orthos test.

 

Mine has worked well so far. But a replacement to have as a spare.

I bought a replacement fan back in April to get rid of a buzzing noise that I thought was the fan. Turns out the buzzing was caused by a failing hard drive.

 

Lucky me. Mine's out of warranty, and those temps (actually, I was off a bit -- core 1 is at 93c and core 2 at 92c) are actually WITH a dual-bladed cooling fan under the laptop.

 

I use I8kfanGUI and run the fans in slow mode constantly.

 

Interesting discovery !

I reinstalled Vista because it was blue screening. So I decided to install the nvidia drivers from Windows Update. My GPU temps averaged in the 47-50c. With the drivers I downloaded today my GPU temps dropped to 37c.


edit: I had been using the 174.31 Dell certified drivers.

 

I'm using that too to monitor my CPU temps but it gives me a different GPU temp than rivatuner. Rivatuner reports my GPU 10 degrees higher than I8kfanGUI. I don't know if it makes a difference but I'm still using XP I don't know if I should upgrade back to vista.

 

I use HWMonitor to monitor my temps. I use I8kfanGUI to force the fan into a constant slow mode. I reinstalled Vista and installed the nvidia drivers from Windows Update and my GPU temps dropped 10c.

I was using nvidia drivers 174.31 and it was causing my card to run hotter. Now with Microstsoft's recommended drivers my 8400m GS idles at 34-37c.

 

rasenganx,
I noticed that i8kfan reports inconsistent temperature from the other monitoring software as well, soI used rivertuner to calibrate my temperature (i use i8kfan to monitor all my temps). In my case, I just use the offset menu in the options to add a (positive) 9 to the GPU.

Rodknee,
The temperature difference that you have come to noticed with the new driver is probably because powermizer is functioning again. Some drivers on laptopvideo2go tends to "break" powermizer, which usually downclocks the gpu when idling. With higher clocks, the gpu normally runs hotter. Hope this clear things up a bit.

 

Pai, the drivers I was using (174.31) came from Dell's website and were for the Inspiron.

I did notice they gave me an ever so slightly higher WEI score 3.4 vs 3.3 which is what I have now. I highly recommend to anyone wanting cooler temps across the board to go with the official drivers from Windows Update.

My 8400 GS is currently idling at 37c.