Dell Studio 1557

[The Streets]

Excellent! Thanks. Fingers crossed this fixes the problem...

[kizwan]

Don't forget to let us know how it goes. Good luck.

[The Streets]

The offending parts have been replaced, and now my laptop is running (relatively) cool...

I'll see how long this lasts, because it ran fine for a while when I bought it, before gradually getting worse and worse, same again when I had the fan and heatsink replaced the first time.

Out of interest, what happens inside the machine that causes its cooling abilities to degrade so sharply over time???

[kizwan]

Out of interest, what happens inside the machine that causes its cooling abilities to degrade so sharply over time???

I don't know but I bet poor heatsink design & low quality of thermal paste. I found the heatsink in our Studio is much "smaller" compared to my other notebook.

[Digit100100]

I don't know but I bet poor heatsink design & low quality of thermal paste. I found the heatsink in our Studio is much "smaller" compared to my other notebook.

I think it's good-old fashioned dirt. I've had mine since January-ish....worked fine initially, the odd blue screen, but that's normal in my world. I had pretty much a fully-spec'ced lappie with the HD swapped out for an Intel SSD, 6gbs's of RAM, I had even put in the broadband card.

Around June it got horrible - I couldn't work for more than a couple of hours without it crashing....I used one of those cans of compressed air, some dirt came out, but all in all there wasn't much improvement. I was about to call Dell (something I resist usually due to the irritation levels introduced), but thought to try with the comp air one last time...for some reason a heckuva lot more crap and dust came out the second time, and since then, it's all been good. Note : I also removed the 5530 as I wasn't using it - so maybe that had something to do with it as well.

It's gone through that cycle once again in the last few weeks, and again it solved it...so maybe it wasn't the broadband card.

For the record, I work generally from home on a clean desk(!), and the house is clean...I think most of the problem comes from when I travel.

Anyway - just relaying my experience.

Cheers,

Digit100100

[kizwan]

Yes, you're right. My old Acer Aspire 9420 also had overheating problem. I just disassembled it. I found the fan, motherboard & other parts covered with dust. I just clean it. The overheating problem doesn't occur anymore since then.

CPU temperature on my Dell is normal but I found the ATI GPU is a bit high. It is easily increased to 60 celcius. I think when the warranty is over, I'm going to re-apply the thermal paste with good one. Fortunately, it doesn't crash or BSOD for no reason. I use it for VMware simulation & other work. For gaming I use Asus notebook.

[jimlad21]

ok guys, quick question, i wann get a SSD in mine, but still need a 2nd data drive, anyone see a way i can add a second drive? i see you can get optical bay sata caddies but, with it slot loading is that gonna be possible?

[kizwan]

I think it is possible. Yeah, 99% sure, I think so.

[jimlad21]

tell me more, i left my lappy at work, but its slot loading space is it not built into the frame?

[kizwan]

To be sure, you need to open the notebook casing. The slot-load DVD drive should have the same size like normal laptop DVD drive. So the caddy should fit. If I remember correctly (from watching the Dell engineer working on my laptop earlier this year), the DVD drive can be detached just like normal laptop. However, I'm not 100% sure.