IC Diamond 24 Results

Hi all,

Just did a repaste of my M14X and wanted to share the results here, also because I don't fully understand them to be honest and want to have some opinions about it

So before the repaste I was sometimes getting up to almost 100° on the processor which aparently is not healthy.
Below are some temps I took right before the teardown, so I'm not too confident about about the GPU temp as it seems to me that it takes quite some time for it to peak.

Before Repaste:
CPU - High - 98°C
CPU - Low - 66°C
GPU - High - 75°C
GPU - Low - 46°C

With the first repaste I got the temps below.
While the processor already looked a bit better, the GPU actually looked worse then before which really made me wonder.

1st Repaste:
CPU - High - 90°C
CPU - Low - 62°C
GPU - High - 77°C
GPU - Low - 57°C

So I was of course thinking that I must have done something wrong and opened the whole thing again.
However when I removed the heatsink I saw that the pasete was perfectly covering both chips completely.
I redid the whole thing anyway and you can se the final results below again.
The processor looks even better.
However the GPU stil behaves weirdly.

If I start a game it will go up to around 70°C and seem to stay there.
Then however it will veeeery slowly (half to one houer I'd say) climb to around 80°C.

2nd Repaste:
CPU - High - 92°C
CPU - Low - 46°C
GPU - High - 80°C
GPU - Low - 44°C

So it seems to me that something is going wrong here, but I have no idea what.
Could it be that the better conductivity for the CPU actually makes the heatpipe take away more heat from the CPU which has a negative effect on the ability to also take away heat from GPU?
Andy why is there this really slow climbup to 80 when playing for an hour?

Normal use are the following (browsing, etc. not gaming):
CPU - 53°C
GPU - 50°C

What also concerns me is, how the GPU usage looks like in MSI Aferburner.

This is before any repaste:


And this is afterwards:


Looks to me, like it's now for some reason constantly downclocking.. however the temp shown during this constant "down spiking" is 69°C before it was 72°C.

How long would the paste take to burn in and would it really improve?

Thanks,

Benjamin

 

How about the clock rates? Was this while playing a game? Perhaps during the 'down spiking' there was a moment where there wasn't much GPU load?

 

Did you wait 10-12 minutes before seating the heatsink? and how much did you apply?

 

Was the same scenario and the spikes imo came definately from overheating.
After repasting one more time the issue was gone.

Between one and two rice corns.
Didn't know you're supposed to wait 10 to 12 minutes? - What for?

After a second repaste my temps are fine, however I don't see a lot of improvement versus the dell standard paste/pad... maybe 3 to 5 °C.

 

3-5°C? If I'm not wrong that's the norm, and the temps of your second repaste,
CPU - High - 92°C
CPU - Low - 46°C
GPU - High - 80°C
GPU - Low - 44°C
seem pretty good to me. Lowest I can get my CPU to during normal use is around 55-60°C, and on Normal power plan it's 60-70°C, and GPU is 48-52°. Maybe it's time for me to do a repaste...

 

I will be getting my m14x soon... is it true you have to remove the optical drive, hard disc, and battery in order to access the cpu and gpu?

 

Yes and no.
You actually have to take the whole thing apart in order to access CPU and GPU (Removing optical, HD, and battery is just part of that).

The first time I did it took me like 2 hours.
Once you know though, it goes faster.

There's a very good description somewhere in this forums with pictures and there's also the official dell service manual with detailed steps on how to access GPU and CPU.

 

Its pretty involved process, not for the faint of heart... however I am hearing that if you call and complain they may send a tech to put a new fan and heatsink and you can then bribe them into using your own paste...

Anyways here is the nice post on the breakdown of the m14x (why is this not a sticky?)

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...-m14x-disassembly-teardown-upgrade-guide.html