Jesus Christ, this thing is a furnace!!

Dell XPS Studio 1340. I asked on this forum before telling my friend to buy if the heat issues had been resolved. A couple of folks replied that it was. However, 2 days of me using this thing while she is out of town and my left leg seems to have a damaged nerve from all the heat that was hitting it! I monitored the CPU and GPU temps and at one point i saw them as high as 70 degrees!! I even changed to a balanced power setting from the high performance one that she had set. No real difference. Also the heat that is hitting the left side of the LCD is incredible! I read somewhere about opening up the laptop and applying thermal paste as it looks as if Dell cut corners on that. However, opening a new laptop is not something i fancy doing. Oh well, i guess its going back if she cant deal with the heat.

 

well the intake of the computer is going to line up nicely with your leg, so it should go without saying that if you set this thing on anything that blocks the intake you are going to increase it's internal temps.

I was one of the people who said it ran fine, but there were also some reccomendations made by myself and others:

-Update your BIOS to the latest version.
-Get a cooling pad or a flat surface if you are going to use it on your lap.

There is NO performance laptop that will run cool if it has it's intake vent on the bottom obstructed. 70C degrees isn't really all that bad, but its going to be hot on your leg for sure. there's a reason that companies have moved from "Laptop" to "notebook" and thats partially because you need to have them on a level surface to give them good ventilation.

 

Heres the thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=453273

I was thinking of another thread where some one was asking about heat issues with this laptop, it doesn't seem it was your thread. Sorry.

Get yourself a lapdesk or a cooling pad for it. Theres a lot of performance crammed in that little machine, and performance = heat if it isn't getting good ventilation.

 

Best solution I have found is getting yourself one of these LOGITECH lapdesk things.

I have the portable lapdesk N315 and no longer feel any heat at all. In fact this also helps the laptop stay cool in the first places as all the air circulation vents remain fully exposed so the cooling fans stay off for longer. You also get a pop-out mouse support assuming you like to use a netbook mouse occasionally.

 

70 degrees is indeed nothing to worry about (my gpu and cpu run around 92 celcius, acer + nvidia 8 series ftw ^^), especially when considering that you were blocking the vent.
If you want a good laptopcooler go for the zalman or cryo lx coolers, although they might be a bit big for your 13 inch
I have a logitech cooler with 1 fan, which actually makes my cpu temperature rise with 10 celcius...but, I don't know how but when I'm gaming my gpu shows less purple and rainbow sparks, and less shutdowns, so I don't know...This is first and last logitech cooler I bought anyway.

 

The Zalman NC1000 is a PERFECT fit. My wife has one

I posted a pic in another thread somewhere... but take my word for it, its like a glove.

 

Get yourself a tea tray to sit the notebook on, it will protect your legs and allow ventilation to the notebook vents, and are very cheap to buy.

 

to give you some idea about temps

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=263039

 

Thanks all. I was reading up on undervolting and thermal paste "surgery" last night. I'll try undervolting first before resorting to the surgery.

 

A laptop cooler really is a better solution than undervolting, in general... And certainly better than applying a different thermal compound. By better I mean, generally more effective and also much. .. safer.