Re: M1330 laptop's nVidia chip overheating?

Timothy Daniels wrote:
"Ben Myers" wrote:
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 uncere-
monious 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 distracting.
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.

[....]... Ben Myers

I guess the repair depot is trying to keep the work as
"focused" as they can on the nVidia chip - so as to bill nVidia
for the work - and hoping that the new BIOS takes care of the
overheating problem.

Would the I8FANGUI utility be able to monitor the GPU
temp? The writeup seems to imply that it's only good for
CPU temps. And as part of its monitoring, would it control
the fan speed automatically?

*TimDaniels*



If the Dell laptop has a sensor to read GPU temperature, I8FANGUI will read it. It also reads hard drive temp, monitors fan RPM if sensors are present, etc.

You can set the I8FANGUI temperature controls to turn off the fan, run it at slow speed, or run it at high speed. So the fan comes on at a certain temperature, runs until the temp is low enough, then shuts off. If the laptop has more than one fan, each one can be controlled individually. It's entirely under your control.

As a rule, I've tended to use lower temperatures for fan control than most Dell laptop BIOSes use. For example, I generally turn on the fan at slow speed around 115 F, and high speed around 130 F. This seems to have worked well, and I have had no complaints about fan failures.

.... Ben Myers


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