DELL is refusing a refund. What are my options now? HELP!

Many of you here already know my 9 month long issue with my Latitude; for those who dont, heres the very brief run down.
My Latitude E6400 keeps overheating. Somthing having to do with a combination of my Nvidia Card, the docking station and lousy heat dissipation and the computer keeps overheating.

This is my FOURTH replacement laptop from Dell; they refuse to change any components and will only send me an exact replica of what I have-so the problems persist.
I appreciate the help but am no longer looking for solutions to this issue as I have tried just about everything.

I want to get rid of this computer!

It has been the bain of my existence for the past year and I have no more time or patience for this!

Forgive my annoyance/anger but am livid over this situation; never have I had a company just deny my problem the way DELL has.

I have tried escalating the issue but to no avail.

What to do now???

 

Assuming you've pursued all lines of negotiation with Dell, the only option remaining is to sell it, either in parts or as a whole. Put the profit towards your next laptop, if you get one.

 

Here are your choices:

What you can do:
- Send a report at The Consumerist and requesting advice.
- Make a formal, calm, respectful, reasonable and polite letter and e-mail it to Micheal Dell ( http://consumerist.com/5091557/email-michael-dell), and see what the founder of Dell can do for you. (don't let your anger of your experience affect that letter, else it will be ignored) I suspect to get the following: Dell store credit of the price of the system or full refund or a new machine build somewhere else then for your region and sent to you, or some beta BIOS/drivers. The 2 last ones are most unlikely to occur.
- Sell your laptop.

Drastic Solutions (I know! I read what you said, but these are SMART ones.. and drastic)
1- Screw the dock station. If your system is fine without it, then live without it. Sell the dock station. It won't kill you to attach the display cable and few USB's manually.

2- This will void the warranty: Get Arctic Silver thermal paste and replace the CPU and GPU thermal pads. You may need to apply a larger amount than normal as the distance between the processor and the heat pipe is large. You may need to add a copper sheet between the GPU and heatsink as the GPU is the thinnest one.
Also, make sure that the copper sheet doesn't slide out (so cut it in a way so that it somehow holds).
Make SURE that the metal base of the laptop is used as a heatsink. Meaning that the real heatsink touches the metal base. And that the metal base and heatsink has pads that touches the panel.

3- This one won't help much, but it's something. Use Nvidia Geforce (or Quadro) notebook drivers (if you don't see the Quadro NVS 160M, the Geforce 9000 series is the drivers you want (it's actually an overclock Geforce 9300M). Then, download and run (no install needed) Nv GPU Pro, and then enable "Nvidia PowerMizer", enable "allow the GPU core clock to change speed based on it's temperature", enable "GPU core clock slowdown", and enable "GPU memory clock slowdown".

4- Install Nvidia System Tool, create an overclock profile and SLOW down your GPU instead. And set the automatic profile loader to load the default speed and lowest speed based on what you do. (see my signature for a tutorial). Note: If Nvidia PowerMizer is enabled, the profile loader may not function, so see for that.

Remember to use EVEREST (unlimited trial version should do fine) ( http://www.lavalys.com/products.php?ps=UE&lang=en&page=48) to monitor your system temperature. It shows very accurate temps of your devices.
Quadro GPU max temp : 100C (due to the higher component quality used on the board)
CPU max temp : 90C (If I remember correctly).
By "max" I mean before the throttling occur.

During these test for watching temperature:
- Don't watch video (especially Flash), don't game, don't have any software (expect Everest) running. THIS INCLUDE YOUR IM SOFTWARE AND Anti-virus. You CPU should be idle <5%.
- Don't have the system be under the sunlight.
- If you have air conditioning, turn it on if the room is warm.
I know it sounds excessive, but we must eliminate the most variables.

Normal GPU operation temp for Geforce (desktop and laptop) is 75C on all chipset... if it's lower then it's very good. Quadro GPU's has higher quality

 

I had similar overheating issues when docked with my M6400 and nVidia card. It was the GPU that needed replacing. The whole thing just ground to a halt when docked and powering external monitors...but with me Dell were very eager to fix. They kept replacing bits of the laptop (CPU/Mobo and finally GPU). If the GPU hadn't fixed it then they were going to give me a new M6400.

 

On the Latitude E6400, the GPU is soldered on the motherboard, so everything is changed (well not the CPU).

 

Thank you for your thorough post/advise.
Will try the above next week and see what happens.
Im just so tired of all of this...

 

Yea, I can imagine.
It really suck to have such bad luck. :/

 

If i was you, I would just sell the thing and get something else. Obviously this model is not working out. Don't bother with arctic silver as it will give Dell excuse to void the warranty and modifications make it harder to sell the computer.

Its odd, i've always had heat problems with Nvidia cards in laptops. My latest one has ATI and it runs super cool and quiet.

 

file a bbb / atg complaint