Re: Update - M1330 laptop's nVidia chip overheating?

Timothy Daniels wrote:
"S.Lewis" opined:
"Timothy Daniels" wrote:
"Ben Myers" elaborated on his cough:
Timothy Daniels wrote:
"S.Lewis" coughed:
*cough........cough*.........'new system exchange'.......*cough..........hack.......*
?? BTW, perhaps due to requests by other
customers for a new system exchange, a tech
rep out of the blue commented to me when I
inquired about progress on repair of my laptop
that repair would be faster than getting a new
system. Something about time to test a new
system, murmur, mumble. I suspect that since
nVidia chips are showing a tendency to overheat,
Dell is backed up on replacements of XPS
motherboards, and more are going into repairs
than into new XPS laptops. I wouldn't be
surprised if Dell is invoking some kind of failure
clause in its contract with nVidia or with its
contract with the motherboard manufacturer.

*TimDaniels*
It's worse than that for nVidia. See this article from about 6 weeks ago:

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1137463/nvidia-dell

So look for phaseout of nVidia chips from Dell systems, desktops sooner, laptops and the all-in-one later... Ben Myers

Wow! Big FooBar by nVidia. Here are a few quotes:

"On one side, you have Dell, one-time masters of the supply chain,
and squeezers of every penny they can get. Industry insiders tell us
that Dell will be billing Nvidia for everything, from bad GPUs, mobos,
replacement costs, help desk, lawyers, and every truck roll needed
to fix something in the field. If Nvidia wriggles out of paying for
something, they will pay for it in other ways."

"There seem to be two currently-affected products, the low-end and
the mid-range parts of the last generation. Depending on the failure rate,
Nvidia could be looking to eat the majority of a generation's products
plus the cost of things they were soldered to, and the tech school
dropout used to screw new parts in."

"If you go over the Dell desktop lineup and look through the customization
options, you will see that, with a few minor exceptions, there are no more
Nvidia cards being offered in Dell systems. Whoopsie. I guess the
$10M that Nvidia paid Dell wasn't enough to make amends."

"This is nothing less than a sea change at Dell. Nvidia has basically been
shown the door by Dell in a most unceremonious fashion. Nvidia either
decided to stop buying market share, or Dell just got fed up with it,
but don't preclude both.
"From what we hear, Dell's laptops and AIWs aren't far behind either."

If I had know about this a few days ago, I would have requested
that my laptop get a motherboard with an integrated graphic chip
instead of a new nVidia card. The integrated graphic chip would not
only run cooler, but it wouldn't use as much energy, either. Not
being a gaming machine, it should have been ordered that way to
begin with. So much for having the Latest and Greatest.


*TimDaniels*


Given the call logs of your own system combined with the known issues with the NVidia chip, I still say you're entitled to a system replacement.

That doesn't even consider the fact that your onsite warranty (a premium cost add on) is now no good because Dell's onsite gorilla hosed the screw threads on the hard disk.

Personally.........you're owed a new system.

If I were answering your call that's what I'd argue with my supervisor. It's a reasonable request imo.

Good luck, Tim.


-Stew

Thanks for the advice, Stew, but I can only keep it in mind at this point.
I have just found out that the XPS M1330 laptop has been given a new
mobo with a new BIOS to increase the cooling (i.e. lowered temp threshold),
the laptop is at the FedEx depot in Memphis, Tenn., and my on-site repair
warranty has been extended by one year for any future nVidia problems
that may arise. The repair depot also recommended that there be no changes
in the parts options (i.e. no downgrade in the graphics chip) because it could
lead to "complications" - whatever that means - but that the issue with a
downgrade would be considered if there were to be a future problem with
the nVidia chip.

Dell also recommends that I *buy* a cooling pad from them to keep
the laptop cool. This is a thin platform that has a couple cooling fans in
it that are powered by a UPS port. Between the new BIOS's increased
cooling schedule and the cooling pad, the laptop's battery would probably
last about an hour and the frequent whooshing noise would be dustracting.
In other words, the laptop might as well be an undersized desktop. I
declined the cooling pad purchase. I will use the laptop as it was supposed
to be used, and if the nVidia chip craps out again, Dell will have to put in a
new mobo with a downgraded Intel integrated graphics chip. Criminy, why
didn't Dell test examples of the friggin' system before it put it on sale?

BTW, the telephone rep didn't refer to my laptop as a "laptop". He called
it a "mobile". I guess "laptop" is too hard to define for thermal specifications,
and to say a PC is a laptop implies that one can actually use it on one's lap.
Can you say "false advertizing" and "warranty issues"?
:-)

*TimDaniels*



"complications" is nonsense. And pure bull***, to boot. If one substitutes an ATI or Intel graphics subsystem for the nVidia subsystem, the worst complication is that one would need to install the ATI or Intel drivers. Duh! That ain't difficult.

In addition to the BIOS update that causes the cooling fan to run more often, I suggest that you download and install the very very nice and very much free I8KFANGUI. This was originally written to keep the Inspiron 8000 from overheating, but it seems to work with most any model of Dell laptop, because Dell has pretty much standardized on whatever sensors and controls are on its laptop motherboards. I8FANGUI overrides whatever is built into the motherboard BIOS to control the fans, giving you, instead, fine-grained control over all the sensors and fans in the system. I install I8FANGUI on every Dell laptop I touch, and it has prolonged the lives of a number of Inspiron 5100-series laptops, the laptops that caused the previous overheating scandal and recall perhaps 3 years ago.

Finally, I agree that the term "laptop" is somewhat obsolete, not because Dell says so, but because the ergonomics of using a computer in ones lap are pretty awful. Not just for the computer, but for the person, too... Ben Myers
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