Dell Inspiron 1720 running seriously hott!

ok it's like 90 degrees here in san francisco right now and i have no air conditioning. my laptop is so hot i'm getting worried. the bottom can't be touched for more than a few seconds before it starts to burn my hand. what shall i do?

 

dip it in ice water.

 

1) Cut your laptop off.

2) Take your laptop to the local starbucks / panera / free wi-fi spot with air conditioning.

3) Take your laptop to your buddies house.

4) Put your laptop in thre freezer.


All of these will work except number 4. Please don't do number 4.

 

Make sure you've cleaned the vents from dust if you haven't yet already.

Also try to lift the notebook say about 3/4" from the desk to give it better ventilation.

How hot is it running btw?

 

i've shut it down and i'm using my work laptop now. i don't care if that burns out lol. i haven't found any program to monitor the temps on my dell yet. anybody know which one will work?

 

just got everest working. cpu is running at 58C (136F). it's a t7700. is that safe? the only other temps it's reading are the hard drives. one 48C the otehr 50C. what program will monitor my gpu?

 

HWMonitor can be used to monitor the temps on your machine:
http://www.cpuid.com/hwmonitor.php

58 seems kinda high for the CPU, is that idling or are you doing something pretty CPU intensive?

And definitely clean out the vents and try lifting it from the desktop. That should help a bit at least.

 

I'll try that program thanks. cpu load is fluctuating 15-30% whilst I am listening to music, browsing internet and on IM. The vents are clear. I cleaned them out when I upgraded memory last week.

 

oh wow this program is reading different temps. does this look ok?

 

temps have come down about 10 degrees after lifting the computer off the surface. i'm gonna shut down now and hope tomorrow isn't so warm!

 

You could try a laptop cooler. Google "laptop cooler" + cnet

 

74° is hot, too hot. If you don't find a way to make it cooler somehow, it won't last that long A normal non-OC'ed CPU should be around 30-45 degrees If you go higher than that (>50°), the chance of your CPU failing will be greater... (that goes for any CPU)

I'm probably going to get me an inspiron 1720 myself, how's your experience with it so far?

 

Well you said your vents are clean so that's not a problem. I am using the HWMonitor program, have been for a few days. My T2370 reads around 35-40 degrees C in a constantly air-conditioned radio shack that is around 53 degrees F at all times. And that is just running iTunes listening to music. The bottom of my lappy doesn't feel hot at all and it actually feels barely warm, nothing to worry about here. You could go into your battery settings (assuming you are using vista) and change your battery plan to lower your maximum processor usage to say 50% instead of 100%. This will let your processor use less power by not ramping it up all the way to run apps and result in a slightly lower temp. Also in your battery plan change your Hard Disk to turn off after a certain period of time, say 5 mins for you so it isn't running hard all the time and producing heat. You could also try undervolting your CPU if you think it could be an ongoing problem. If you type in undervolting into google you should be able to find some information on it (or check my post about Heating Up the Inspiron 1420 above this). If you're not using your CD/DVD drive ensure there is no disc in it so it isn't ocassionaly spinning to check the media in it and creating heat. If you have your laptop sitting on your lap it can block vital air vents that will trap heat inside your laptop, so on a desk with little feet under it would help dissapate that heat better. I would take your computer to a friends house or other area that is cooler than where you are at and run your temp monitoring program. See what kind of temps you get then. If they still aren't that much lower it could be a problem with your laptop. Some things that I have experienced has been bad thermal paste/pads used to attach heatsinks to processors which resulted in high temps and bad heat displacement. Could be that Dell made a boo boo when assembaling your laptop. Things like that happen. And you haven't messed with trying to OC any components of your laptop have you? That could cause major issues also. Just trying to think of what could be the problem. Anyways, if you have more questions or anything let me know, I'm always willing to help out.

 

Check your process list. Be sure to click on the view all processes button at the bottom of the window. I found indexers that get installed with apps like Nero and even the windows one running non-stop and cause heat up. Virus scanners as well can do this too.

Once I shut them down the fan slowed down and the temp went down.

Possibly another part of your problem is the increased heat generated by that second Hard Drive you have installed.

 

im getting my 1720 in a couple weeks... and its rarely that i read about it overheating... why dont you try a clean vista install maybe there is some background app running all the time becuase these temps are HOT and in the case of the 1720 it should stay cool, or send it back to dell.

 

its HIGH. the temperatures shouldn't hit those numbers unless you are involved in some cpu intensive tasks like encoding, decoding, gaming, CAD etc etc

for browsing the internet, listening to music and stuff, it should look something like this