~XPS M1330 owners lounge~

[kozzney]

I have my old M1330 and the optical drive no longer works. When I insert a disc in there, it just spins but doesn't read it. All you hear is this slight buzzing sound like the laser is stuck or something.

This sounds crazy but you may want to try blowing out the inside of the drive with a compressed air computer cleaner can. Just stick the tube in where the CDs go in and spray away. Sometimes my optical drive doesn't work, and then I do that and it works again (for a little while at least). Just something to try before you buy a replacement.

[Maelwys]

My m1330 died for good last week (power surge) rip gives me a good reason to get the XPS 13

My M1330 (purchased 9/2007) gets daily business and gaming use and is still working fine. That said, my screen has developed a 1/4" wide vertical greenish/black bar right in the middle that obscures anything underneath. It seems to come and go but will probably get worse. I guess it's time to look for a replacement!

Sadly, I don't care for the new XPS 13 very much. I know it's an ultrabook, but it is too limited in some very critical ways (memory, screen resolution, CPU) that I need for my upgrade.

[sesshomaru]

Was playing around with the old laptop.. Manages a 0.95V/ 10x multiplier stable undervolt using Throttlestop/RM Clock. 20°C temperature drops under stress testing. It still is a sweet machine..

[mmoy]

Zero problems on our M1330 - my wife used it up until June and I loaned it to a coworker a month ago to do development work on. I plan to take it with us on a long trip later this year for my wife to use. The performance is perfectly fine for what she uses it for and it is thin and light and gets good battery life. It's a very nice machine with integrated graphics. I have never cleaned the machine as it hasn't shown any performance or fan issues. The only upgrade that I would consider is replacing the hard drive with an SSD.

[Tabris]

Need someone who's opened up their M1330 recently to confirm something for me.

Had my laptop switch off from what I assume is overheating, recently. Idle temps jumped up from around 65 Celsius when idle to the mid-high 80s.

Thought it could be a TIM issue, so I've taken it apart and put it back together. On trying to put it back, I noticed that the screw towards the end of the GPU wasn't screwing in, so I took the fan and heatsink out again and I noticed this:



Anyone with a nVidia card on their M1330s know if this is supposed to be attached to the screw, because I have a feeling it's detached from my motherboard, which means it will probably need replacing as of consequence.

The laptop is still working fine, but temps are abnormally high.

I have a feeling I may have made things worse by changing the TIM as it's fresh and hasn't had time to cure.

Seems like a good time to replace my laptop, but at the same time, it seems like a rather trivial reason as it's physical failure rather than some other issue.

Edit:

Temps are currently hovering around at 67-72 Celsius for both the CPU and GPU.

[intarweb]

I don't recall that being attached to the screw from the last time I attached the heatsink assembly. My recollection may be in error, however.

[Tabris]

It probably is supposed to be attached to the motherboard and not the heatsink, thinking about it.

I cant screw it down and that lack of pressure probably isn't aiding with heat transfer.

I'd consider getting a completely new mobo, but I don't fancy forking out £120 or so for a new mobo and heatsink when I could put that towards getting a new laptop.

Going to see how temps are once the TIM has had a bit more time to cure. If it hovers around the mid-low 60s, I can deal with that.

[zrtom]

Tabris,
Yea, you've pulled the socket/nut out of the motherboard. I'm looking at an nVidia board right now and it doesn't look like there's enough room on the back side to fit a small nut to hold the heat sink down.
In the US I've recently purchased a couple good used nVidia boards for $50 USD on eBay. There's a LOT of junk M1330 boards out there so you really need to hope the seller has a good return policy.
Tom

[Maelwys]

I'm on the cusp of retiring my M1330 with nVidia in favor of taking a bold new direction with a retina MacBook Pro. Aside from a screen issue that doesn't really effect usability, this has been an excellent laptop. Kind of sad to see it go.

If I decide not to keep it, is eBay the best way to recycle these and possibly get a few bucks? I assume it's better used for parts at this stage, and people on the NBR marketplace are looking for better and faster.

[mmoy]

I noticed that FileNet has a new 128 GB ExpressCard SSD. I was thinking of upgrading my MacBook Pro to one of these but then I'd still want to use the old Expresscard SSD (48GB). So I thought about my M1330. I had a look at the M1330 as I recall that it has an ExpressCard slot but I couldn't remember where it was. I did some digging on the web and found out that the slot is where the remote-control is stored. So putting in an ExpressCard SSD would mean not being able to carry the remote around.

Has anyone out there got this to work - that is booting off an ExpressCard SSD? I suppose I could put in a regular SSD into the M1330 and it should hum along quite nicely but would like to reuse parts if possible.