Dell 1520 overheating

So,
I've had my inspiron for almost a month now and it started to get a little hot when playing HL2. Sometimes when I play I get a black screen in the middle of the game, but when I minimize the game and return, that fixes it. I have my laptop sitting on a wood desk and was wondering how I could improve the heat dissapation (maybe place it on an aluminum sheet or something.) Any suggestions would be welcome.

P.S. Any better drivers available, yet, and is overclocking out of the question for me.

 

Get a cooling pad for it.
If you're in the US, you might check Newegg.

 

Is this a common problem for the 1520? The one I was looking at would be built with the exact same components dburache has and it's rather disappointing to hear that the laptop has such big heat issues.

 

This is the first report I have read of overheating, usually everyone says it runs really cool.

 

my vostro doesnt run cool, but it isnt hot either. Basically the same amount of heat Ive evxperienced with all laptops..

 

I can only feel the heat in the left rear side and when extremely gaming!
This would be the time you don't want to keep it in your lap

 

That's bassically it. It doesn't overheat and shut down, it just gets kinda hot mostly on the left side and the fan is on more often. When not gaming it stays pretty cool.

 

My friend starting having some heating problems, especially on the left side. But he said it was because of the 7200rpm hard drive. so he ignore it.

 

people state a lot of unverified ideas! the 7200rpm power consumption is even less than the 5400 one Dell uses in new Inspirons and hence less heat! read this article about Hitachi Travelstar 7k

 

I've got the same problem. I was playing FEAR with the graphics and processing all set on medium and i still had overheating issues. I was getting 60+ FPS and then...black screen. I still heard sounds...of me dying. I had to use the task manager to exit FEAR. I hit CPU temps of 60°C when I got the black screen. The cooling pad isn't helping either. It's weird cuz sometimes, it doesn't even sound like the fans are on. It's got me worried. I've got that stupid little yellow triangle with the ! in it. Stupid thing won't even let you click on it to see what's wrong. My guess is it's just a warning of the high temps cuz it eventually goes away.

 

i think that trianlge alerts you that your out of system memory. Do you have your page file enabled? how much ram do you have?

 

The 1520 does NOT have heating issues at all. It's one of the coolest notebooks I ever used and owned. You're problems are failing drivers and lack of memory since I seen yellow triangle alerts mentioned in the task bar.

Update you're drivers, and if you feel better get a good cooling pad.

60C is nothing for a processor, mine get that's hot just running Photoshop.. lol

When it gets to be 90, worry.. lol

 

Cooling pad is one idea, when i have my 1520 on my wooden dinner table i place two 1/3 inch thick wooden coasters under the two rear 'feet' of the laptop. this raises it off the table a bit and will let more air under the laptop to feed the fan. trust me, hot air coming out is what you want, just make sure you're getting cold air going in.

 

I heard that the 1520 is one of the better cooling laptops out there.

 

Head over to laptopvideo2go.com and try some newer drivers. I have great luck with the 169.09's.

As far as overheating - if you have it on a hard flat surface it should not be a problem. My 1520 even with more powerful hardware, runs cooler than my 1505. The CPU is always under 60c and the GPU under 65c, even overclocked getting 4500 in 3DMark06.