Should I be concerned with my temps?

So i just bought an Alienware M15x from ebay a few days ago;
the specs are as follow:

CPU: Intel Core i7 Q720 1.60GHz
GPU: NVidia GeForce GTX 260M
RAM: 8GB
OS: Windows 7

The HDD that it came with was an 64GB SSD, but in all honesty, that seems way too low for me and thinking of selling it. I fitted in my 4 year old 250GB HDD 5400RPM.

Anyway, onto the point.

My CPU idle temp runs at around 50-60 (currently hitting 61 as i type this).
The GPU has never gone past 50.

Should i be looking to get it repasted any time soon?

 

Not at all. Most Nvidia GPU's and intel CPU's are rated up to 92 C. Your target high should be in the 80's. I noticed you got the GTX 260M... you can buy on Ebay or amazon a GTX 480M or GTX 580M for pretty cheap. Also don't sell the 64 GB SSD if there is another hard drive space. You can use it as a cache to speed up your HDD... Also you should scrap your 4 year old 5400 RPM HDD; a HDD that old has CRITICAL FAILURE written all over it. Get a new one, preferably a 7200 RPM or better.

 

Thanks for the reply.
That sounds a relief to hear, and is the GTX 260M really dated now? Though I may consider upgrading in the near future (although i don't know if i'm confident enough to upgrade the GPU/CPU myself, so probs would get a repair shop to do it for me - this goes with saying for re-pasting as well).


And na, there is only one hard drive space in the laptop, otherwise i'd definitely consider in also installing it. Also, is there actually a BIG difference between a 5400 and a 7200 HDD?
I know 7200 is faster at booting by some seconds, but is it going to be worth it for the extra heat it will produce?

 

Yea, the GTX 260M is pretty dated now. I'd expect you to be able to play most modern (2012-2013) AAA games like Bioshock Infinite or Tomb Raider in low to medium settings at 1600 x 900 resolution. I don't think you can upgrade the CPU to a newer generation (i.e. second gen core I) because of the motherboard won't allow it, but you can, and quite a few of the members on this forum have upgraded the GPU, and would be willing to give info on that (I haven't done a GPU upgrade myself) Plenty of threads on it, and for the most part seems pretty strait forward.

Your 4 year old HDD will produce more heat and take more voltage than any modern 7200 RPM drive. And yes the performance difference is noticeable. The biggest thing is that most HDD in laptops wont last more than 5 years (moving parts need oil, and constant writes and reads take their toll) so you should replace your old HDD. It will make your new system feel that much newer as well. Its also a rather cheap investment, you can get them from Newegg for cheap: Newegg.com - Computer Hardware, Hard Drives, Laptop Hard Drives, 7200 RPM

 

Don't forget you can also swap your optical drive for another HDD caddy so you could keep and use both (if you don't mind an external optical drive).

 

As noted, you can swap the optical drive for another HDD - that is a fairly big job because it requires quite a bit of disassembly. Another option would be to what I did - swap for a larger SSD - 200-500 GB may be enough that you can archive stuff you don't need on an external HDD. Switch to full SSD will increase responsiveness substantially. Processor upgrade is not hard - again, there are detailed instructions. Although you cannot use processors from 2nd generation series, upgrades to 920 will produce significant increases in processing speed - depending on what you do with it. I have not done GPU upgrade - but there is a range of possibilities - some of which are easy (just put it in) and some of which require lots of work. RAM can be upgraded to 16gb (Bios will say it's not installed, but Win sees it just fine. FInally, Windows 8 does run well on my machine - and on others as well.

So, read and see what others have done. There is a lot of knowledge and experience here to help you.

ENjoy!

Joe

 

Installing optical drive caddy took about 1 hour 30 minutes following the videos on youtube named: M15X teardown.

Would definitely recommend the i7 920XM or 940XM due to overclocking ability.

Would also definitely recommend a gpu upgrade in the form of a 7970M or GTX 680M if you can afford it.

See the link in my signature on how to remove, replace and re-paste cpu and gpu on M15X.

 

thanks for the replies! They were all very helpful, and @fatboyslimerr, cheers for the links!

Just a matter of now whether i'm gonna sacrifice the optical drive for another HDD space, so will think this over.
Other than that, brilliant stuff guys.

 

Why are people still throwing the option of putting a 580m to people asking for advice. To OP, get either 7970m (finnicky) or 680m.

 

It's profiling based upon the person asking advice... I'd assume someone buying the m15x second hand wants to save as much money as possible. The 7970m and 680m are considerably more expensive, and the older gen 4 and 5 GTX cards still put out a huge lot of performance over the 260m for a decent price. iRAZ didn't seem like he wanted to OP his system, just wants good performance. A lot of people throw out to everyone who posts on the forums to put in high volume SSD + Quad core extreme CPU + The best GPU, but the fact is most people aren't made of that kind of money.

 

Those temps are fine. No need to worry about them. The 580m is a great card for lower budget.