Dell XPS M1330 - nVidia GeForce 8400M GS - Copper Mod

[Hep!]

Well there you go... now you get a new one. Pray for a non-faulty one.

[beto113]

yep... i called them now and they there is a technician coming tomorrow to change my motherboard and the heatsink because it looks mine is terrible. just saying... my gpu on power save mode idle is running in 79- 81C

so i hope tomorrow they bring a working motherboard

does anyone know how to detect if the new motherboard has the same Nvidia problem??
or what kind of failure or tests i should run to make sure my motherboard is not defective?

thx

[Hep!]

To quote myself...

Only boards manufactured after August 2008 are fixed.

Just to clarify, it is very unlikely that a replacement board WON'T be faulty. That's right, if you're getting it fixed, you're probably getting another faulty board. Reason being dell uses refurbished parts for warranty replacements, as they can't sell them in new systems. And how many refurbs do you think they have that were manufactured less than two months ago? Little or none.

Also to clarify, I'm not convinced that these new boards are even "fixed."
I believe they may have improved GPU/motherboard solder contacts, but the cooling assembly will not be changed and EVEN IF YOU GET A NEW "FIXED" BOARD, YOU WILL HAVE PROBLEMS WITH YOUR GPU OVERHEATING UNLESS YOU DO THIS MOD.

For the 1000000th time, I will make it clear - this is a mod to improve the cooling of the M1330 - it is not a mod to fix a faulty GPU.



The nvidia GPUs failing are not because of high temperatures, this only assists them in dying more quickly.
They are dying because the solder points between the GPU and motherboard weaken over time with heat cycling meaning the normal warm up and cool down that happens with normal use.

[azza21]

I do understand that an intentional failure is fraud. however i do have some points in my favour.

My point is that i just want my computer working as it suppose to. without a glitch. ive paid £1150 on my machine and i cant play a 5 years old game on low graphics details because even so it becomes unplayable. With a on-board graphics card from the basic model i would get a better results. that's what **** me off, a company that sells a defective assembly and instead of fix it up just do a work around releasing firmwares that do not fix a **** thing. so whos first breaking the contractual morale are them, not me. after all ive paid for a certain performance that has not being delivered.

I know its discussable i have no intention to fraud for fun nor keep this discussion. Sorry if a passed any idea of trying to force. Nothing personal, I was just explaining my intentions and why im disappointed with Dell. i rather prefer them to just swap my laptop for a well working one that would make me happy with it.
Thanks Hep!


I will try to approach them on another way and see if they swap my laptop

Does anyone ever tried to talk with dell and had the laptop fixed? or anyone have any tip of how i should talk with them?

All the best Beto

PS: about the blue pad, noted i will keep it safe.

Mate i completely understand your frustration. I am in the same situation, ridiculously high temps on the CPU and GPU. I have had an engineer come round 3 times and replace the board. Yet I am still getting these temp issue's. It is a complete joke. I also paid around £1200 for my notebook. The m1330 is a great notebook it has many qualities but i am getting fed up of the problems it is causing me now, there outwaying the qualities on this noebook and as for the performance of the thing, grrrr. Like you i cannot even play old games properly on it, god I tried to play Age Of Empires 3 the other days on med/low settings and it was still unplayable, RCT 3 is just as bad. I didn't expect crysis at 80fps performance but i expected better then what I've been getting, especially after the reviews i read before i brought it.

I'm seriously thinking about cutting my losses and selling the bloody thing. If i can get £600 that is

[beto113]

Hey... just had my motherboard changed... and the copper mode done.. i can see already the difference from the last motherboard
btw the guild are great i though i would have problems but i didnt, it means that its dumb proof!!! :P congrats

i was trying to install the I8kfanGUI 3.1 on my windows vista 64. when i try to instal the version for 64, the installer tries to install a driver and does not succeed so the installation aborts. Does anyone have the same problem??

fyi - just after pops up a warning sayingthat driver is not digital signed

all the best Beto

[Hep!]

It's a known issue... just search I8KfanGUI vista 64 or using unsigned drivers in Vista 64.

[maraja]

I haven't read the entire thread so I am not sure if someone else has already posted a similar note but...

I had decided to mod my XPS while I was waiting for a replacement HD to arrive from Dell (free of charge, 2 days to wait: very good!) as I was occasionally experiencing some systems crashes.

While waiting for the new HD I installed Ubuntu on an external USB HD and backed up all my data (the old HD had a problem anyways, as reported by the Dell Diagnostic DVD).

The day after, after having booted from the USB and worked for some hours I experienced another crash...

After some researched I found this great thread and then decided to mod my system.

However, before shopping around for the copper, I decided to install the latest nvidia drivers (177.80) and, as suggested by a friend, the latest Adobe Flash plugin for Firefox (10.0 r12).

I worked all day long today and have had no problem at all

For your info I installed a tool (members.dslextreme.com/users/billw/gkrellm/gkrellm.html) letting me to keep the GPU temperature and get some sounds played when the temps reaches warning levels.

I will keep you updated if the problem is definitively gone or if I need to shop for some copper.

BTW can anyone please Iet me know what temperature (CPU and GPU) can be considered WARNING and what should NEVER be over exceeded?

thank you so much for this wonderful thread, without this I was most probably moving to a different notebook (and forget dell forever).

[elg3ne]

After for waiting long 200hrs to cure my copper mod here are the results:

OS: Vista 32bit SP1
Ambient of test: 25C

Before: Idle (not using for 10mins)
CPU0=51
CPU1=55
GPU=62

Before: stress test with orthos
CPU0=79
CPU1=79
GPU=77

============

After: Idle (not using for 10mins)
CPU0=42
CPU1=45
GPU=54

After: stress test with orthos
CPU0=72
CPU1=74
GPU=70

Observation:
On playing the idle temp, for the first 10mins GPU is idling at 54-59 but after 15mins GPU is shooting up to 60-64 is this normal? No programs running on vista and Im just watching the temps.

Is this results are ok? I'm still thingking to redo the mod because I am not satisfied :-(.

Thanks

[jb1007]

elg3ne.. I would say your results are pretty good for the GPU. Very nice that your CPU dropped that much. My CPU temps went down only slightly after doing the mod.

[Halkar]

elg3ne, what did you use to measure the temps?

I used an aluminium heatsink one of my old lattitude laptops fit perfectly between the gpu and heatsink. I did this after my mobo replacement as I do beleive i would have problem again in few months. I am out of waranty so I will dump and buy another laptop if it dies again. I measure my temps with hwmonitor tool and my normal usage (browsing, few docs etc) between 45-55c. I am not sure how good is this tool as everest reports about 10c more. This is on Vista64. I also have XP32 on the laptop which runs hotter (again monitoring with hw tool). Also also have Windows 2008 64 (I know I know )which runs hotter again about 10c more.

Does anyone know any good tool to monitor the temps?