XPS M1210 Heat Issues Solution for my laptop

Here is my story about heat issues with XPS 1210 and how stumbled upon the solution for my XPS. I bought XPS 1210 in late 2006 with 2.33 ghz pentium dual processor, 2gb ram and 160 gb hard drive. I am currently running dual boot XP and Vista.

For a while it worked alright but it always seem hotter than my old inspiron and fan kicked in more often. I didn't worry about as programs seem to be working fine. I had one year warranty and let it expire without renewal. About 3-4 months ago I got a 25 inch monitor and hooked XPS to it. Since then the heat problems started to get worse. Watching videos was impossible on the big monitor as the GPU heated to above 100 C and system shut down.

As I didn't have warranty I decided to try and fix it myself so read about heat issues on many blogs to get an idea. Most suggested to check the heat sink and thermal compound on the processor. So I opened to laptop with good instructions that are available on Dell support site. After I took the heat sink apart I found that there was no thermal pad or thermal compound on the GPU. There was some on the processor. So I applied some Arctic Silver 5 exactly according to the instructions (not too much) and put everything back together. Unfortunately it didn't help much in terms of GPU temp which was still around 90-100 and went over 100 while watching videos on external monitor leading to shut down of the system.

So I opened it again. After removing the heat sink found that even though there was thermal compound on the GPU but there was very little or none on the opposite side on the heat sink which led me to conclude that there was no contact of thermal compound between GPU and the heat sink. The heat sink in XPS 1210 runs from one end which is GPU and then over another processor and finally over the main processor leading to the fan. Interestingly the main processor sits on some sort of housing which raises the main processor in relation to the GPU and the other processor. Also, in my computer I found a somewhat thick thermal pad applied to the second processor which caused the heat sink to get raised further on the CPU side thus creating space between the GPU and heat sink and ultimately no good contact between the GPU and heat sink. So I removed the thermal pad on the second processor and that helped a lot to get better contact between the GPU and heat sink. I cleaned all the processors again and applied a fresh round of Arctic silver 5 and like a miracle the temp of my GPU dropped from high 90 to mid 60 C. Now I have no problem watching any videos on big monitor and temp has not gone over 75 C. I still think there could be better contact between GPU and heat sink but this has solved my problem to a great degree.

I don't know about the design of other XPS models but is it possible that all XPS models have a similar heat sink design which could be a faulty design that is causing over heating issues in these computers.

Hope my experience helps someone.

 

thanks for the info. I had my video card replaced earlier because it died on me, probably most likely do to heat problems (I didn't bother monitoring GPU temps before, silly me). Now since I'm paranoid of trying to send it in (cost 370 for me to replace it since my warranty expired) to be repaired again, I've monitored my temps.

My GPU hit the 100s and wasn't even loading any programs. I definitely have to open it up and see what's going on.

 

FINALLY someone with the same problem as me

i have both m1210 with integrated on xp and the other with nvidia on vista

the integrated was my first laptop, it was very cool and NEVER made any fan noises, even when playing games it would be very quiet

then i got an upgraded model, where i got a bunch of problems.. the fan was SO LOUD and the laptop was SO HOT, and when i played a game for around 10 minutes, the game would freeze completely for 2+ minutes, then it would resume.. but still very laggy, and then it would freeze again and again

i checked temperatures and realized that the temp was ridiculously high, not sure if i remember but on idle it would be around 70+ degrees and when playing videos or games it would definitely go above 90

then i underclocked the geforce to as low as it can possibly go, i installed vista sp2 beta, and put the battery settings on "battery mode" so that the ram and cpu are further underclocked

now the laptop runs .. cooler and doesn't crash with games, still nowhere close to the integrated graphics though..

i am VERY SURE it has something to do with the GPU heatsink

 

I finally got around doing copper modification on my XPS 1210 similar to the one suggested for 1310 on this forum and it made huge difference in the temps. Now my GPU on XPS 1210 runs in 40s with max not yet exceeded 55C and CPU idles around 35 with max not exceeding 50C.

For the copper modification you need much thinner copper piece than whats used for modification for 1310. I just bought a piece of copper pipe from Lowes and cut a small piece. Then spliced it and cut the right size (Little smaller) to fit on top of the GPU and with a hammer flattened it. Need to put it on a flat hard surface and use few layers of paper towel or something on the top and bottom. If you have a vice then it will probably work the best. Copper is very soft so it will flatten. Once I had the correct thickness I put a small dab of arctic silver 5 on the GPU and put the copper piece on the top of it followed by another dab of arctic silver 5 on the top of copper piece (i.e. between copper piece and heat sink). Put everything back together and its amazing that the GPU temp dropped from 80s to 40s. I didn't do any copper mod to CPU but it also for some reason running cooler.

 

sounds good, I've never done a copper mod or had any experience in that aspect. but I definitely want to try what you just did apatil. I've sent in my laptop once for overheating and when I got it back, nothing really changed.

do you happen to know the thickness and relative size of your copper sheet?

 

Apatil -- I'd like to know the approx size of the copper shim you used as well. My out-of-warranty M1210's GPU fried and I have a new motherboard on the way. I'm going to try doing the copper mod on it once it arrives to make sure it doesn't happen again.

 

Where's the guide again? Even though I got my tech to put a tonne of thermic compound on mine, it's scary having already gone through 2 motherboard(gpu failure).

Those temps are unheard off on my system.

 

I did a copper mod with the exact piece used for the M1330. It is larger than the video card by like 4 mm on both sides, but I didn't have any tools to cut it so I just used it normally.

Using mx-2, I reduced by GPU temps from 100+ C to 40-50s (over 50 degree C drop) with a notebook cooler on. The gpu temps are about the same as my cpu temps. It might go even lower if I reapply the paste, might have been too thick.