Vostro 3350 Owner's Cafe

Yes and no. Mind you I'm using a quasi-hybrid-kindof cooling pad that helps keep the base on the 3350 cool (think of weaker version of the ice packs you use in food coolers).

I think that SB temps are pretty low, as I am idling at around 45-55C without any fan or cooling activity. My old HP TC4400 with the T7200 would idle well at 40C, but that meant the fan was on and off to keep it that low.

I can't say for everybody if 50C is the expected idle temperature, but it sure feels that way. Having had a Clarksfield i7-720, SB i7-2760, and SB i3-2310, I find that idle temps fall between 40-60C, depending on the ambient temperature and any kind of cooling equipment.

 

Thanks for the quick replies. I suppose idling at 50-55C in itself doesn't bother me that much. What bothers me is that the fan kicks in even when I'm watching a simple youtube video just because the temp rises to the low 60s. In fact, the CPU is only running at 800-1000MHz during this time (checked with CPU-Z)... nowhere near the 2.4GHz (or 3.0GHz) maximum! So in addition to the high idle temp, it seems the CPU shouldn't be rising 10C when running so slowly.

 

Go check out how hot Ivy's get.

 

Haven't seen anything on YouTube yet... but I'm sticking with the "you could fry eggs on the underside of that thing!"

 

Does anyone know if i can bump up the amount of ram to say 12 or 16gb?

im finding the 6gb it came with a bit low and wanted to increase it but crucial seem to think that the max ram it can take is 8gb. is this actually true?

 

Ok, I did a little more research on IB CPUs and apparently they do get hotter, but again, I'm not really concerned about the heat, I know they can function when really hot, it's the fan that is more annoying to me. I guess I'll just live with it.

One other thing, I noticed the LCD panel on mine automatically dims depending on what is being displayed. No, I'm not talking about the dimming Windows does after a certain timeout, it's like if the screen has mostly black or dark images on it, it will dim a bit and when I open a mostly white window, the display will brighten up. At first I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, but I'm pretty convinced now this is the case. I have the LG panel in mine, is this a feature? Can this be disabled?

 

In the Dell battery meter (right click battery icon in taskbar, select "Dell Battery Meter" or whatever name yours might be called) and disable the "Enable Dell Intelligent Display" option. That might be causing your dim display

 

The memory controller is in the CPU, and Intel officially supports up to 16 GB on Sandy Bridge. There might be a BIOS limitation, but I've seen people here with 16GB in vostros, so I'd say it's pretty safe to assume you can use 8GB sodimms.

 

I can verify that the Vostro 3350 will accept two 8GB SODIMMs and function perfectly. The BIOS recognizes them and Windows 7 x64 Professional recognizes them. I now have 16GB on this little beauty and love it!

 

all you need now is a SSD and you've got yourself a great little, well-rounded machine!