Please help, my SXPS 1640 is HOTTTTTT

Can someone suggest something i can do?

I am beyond my 30 days so i guess a return is out of the question? I am really not happy with it.

I didn't notice it too much because i got used to leaving it on my lap on top of a laptop bag ... so i don't feel any heat.

But it is soooo hot that i literally cannot even hand it to my wife, it would burn her.

The hot zones are all along the back, all along the left side, and the bottom on the left side.

I am dreading calling dell customer support, i know it is horrible for personal products

Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

 

Could you please download, run HWMonitor and report temperatures (ACPI, CPU, GPU, HDD - Maximum, Average)?
It will give numeric values for your computer's centers of heat.

 

I can do it later when i am home with that laptop.

But is it necessary? if my wife cant even hold the laptop without getting burned, its safe to say its too hot lol

 

Probably, but my computer can go up to 95C under stress on the inside but on the bottom case you barely feel a thing.

Just want to find out where the heat is coming from.

 

I suggest you invest in some oven mits. Yes oven mits, that way you don't get burned But seriously, the thing has a metal chasis so it's expected to get hot. I think most of the heat coming out of the SXPS is due to the hard drive which sits right in the front (and that's where most of the heat comes from). You might want to consider getting an SSD drive, it could drop your temps down quite a bit. Also, search for the RMClock undervolting thread, it will drop your overall temps by at least 3-5 Celsius. Finally, a laptop cooler like the Zalman will help things greatly.

 

If its getting so hot as to burn him, i seriously doubt it has anything to do with the HDD. If it got that hot it would more than likely fail first.

 

Is yours not hot? or do you have the SSD drive?

 

I previously had a Studio XPS 16 with a 3670 card. It did get hot but not enough to burn me. I don't know if you're exaggerating or if it really is getting hot enough to burn you. If it is, then I'd suggest you RMA it for another since it may be defective. If you haven't already, prop the laptop up from the back while using it on a flat surface (e.g. desk) and see if that helps. Are you using a 6 cell or 9 cell battery? With a 6 cell battery, it may not have enough clearance for the vents if you are not using it on a perfectly flat surface and it could explain why it's getting so hot.

 

Im using a 6cell battery, and a 320gig HDD which is 7200rpm. I also upgraded the processor slightly to Core 2 Duo P8700 (3MB cache/2.53GHz/1066Mhz FSB)

And when i say burn, i don't mean like skin is red or literally burned ... i mean so hot that she says "owwwww" and cannot hold it, must put it down.

I have several other laptops, 2 of which are also Dell (Vostro 1000, and a Dell Mini 12) none of them are even noticeably hot.

 

Do you use it on your lap or flat surface? If you're using it on your lap, I'd suggest you don't since it won't have room to exhaust it's hot air (vents get blocked). This laptop requires a flat surface if you are gonna use it with the 6 cell battery otherwise you need to prop it up from the back or use a 9 cell battery which does it for you.

 

I can give that a shot, raise it up a couple inches maybe. Are you positive though? I was under the impression that the vents on this unit are in the back facing back, and possibly blocked while the screen is open fully

 

Any laptop will benefit from having good air flow on the underside, regardless of vent placement. All the heat producing components are almost flush to the bottom of the laptop. Though you may find that you require an active solution and not just a passive one.

 

By the way, for those of you that frequent this forum ... is this not a common issue? Judging by your replies, it sounds like it may be unique

 

It's a common issue that the laptop gets very warm. But hot enough to burn you? No.

 

It shouldn't burn you but it will lower your sperm count

 

It's not the hard drive that causes the heat on it. I have the 500gb 7200rpm drive which is hottest oof the whole lot and most oof the heat comes from directly under the touchpad, a good few inches from the hard drive. It's the south bridge and wifi cards that cause all the heat, some very smart guy at dell thought that instead of giving it its own heat pipe that using the chasis as a heatsink would be a much better idea

 

I've seen you repeat this several times now. Have you physically opened up the SXPS to verify the southbridge has no heatsink and is directly touching the casing? I find it hard to believe. Because if this is the case, a very simple fix could be to add a small heatsink + fan and use one of these to connect to the motherboard to power it.

 

I have, and directly under the hottest part of the touchpad area is the southbridge and wifi.

I believe it is more the sb than wifi, but both do heat up enough for it to be uncomfortable.

I returned mine for this very reason....

 

My touchpad is hot, but nothing compared to the left side of the laptop, and the bottom of the laptop on the left side .... MAN that bish gets hotttttt

im telling you ... i cant even hold it with my hand in that place to give it to my wife, its just TOO hot.

 

Check out what this guy did: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=284218&highlight=southbridge

I'm assuming this is the SXPS 16 southbridge:


It should be possible to be able to squeeze in a flat heatsink in there to help it dissipate heat better.

 

Mine was hot under the touchpad from the HDD only, but that went away when I installed an SSD. I never noticed heat in the areas you are talking about and I was using it for gaming a lot. Might be a silly question, but how much is the fan running on the system? Based on how hot you say the system gets, it should be blowing at about 50mph If its not blowing or not blowing hard, it could be a bad fan or fan conrolller?

 

How do i know what speed the fan is running?

 

All that is going to do is spread the heat over the area..lol

There is no fan to move the air so that mod = pointless.

 

HDD's don't get that hot- even when running them 100% for 2 hours (which I'm sure you didn't do).

I think you experienced a placebo effect more than anything that SSD did for your thermals.

 

Not necessarily, the sink alone increases surface area and helps heat dissipation even without active cooling.

 

I said basically this on the fist page, im not special enough heh.

 

I was using it for a couple hours, thats for sure. I know I was not scientific about, it in terms of measuring temp before and after, but my touchpad hand resting on the palmrest did feel cooler after the fact and didnt sweat like when there was the 7200rpm momentus drive in there. I dont think I have enough brainpower to make my hand sweat from mental focus alone

I know I am leaving myself open to jokes, but I dont know of a better way to craft this response

 

Honesty doesn't hurt

But really HDD don't generate that much heat compared to gpu/bridges/cpu. Not to say ~100f snt cool, but really in the realm of 150f*+ its not that much.

giev or take my crappy drunken C/F conversoins.