**OFFICIAL** Dell XPS M1730 Owner's Lounge, *Part 4*

[Killerko]

Just to update on my graphics card overheating problem it wasn't caused by new drivers or anything. It was just the fans were clogged by dust.

I haven't figured this out at first, but I decided to do a copper shim mod and when I actually opened my 9800M GTX card and saw that mess inside with big chunks of dust I knew why my gpu temps were rising to 100 degrees celsius and screen going off and on

So when I saw what happened to my GPU, i took the whole motherboard out and cleaned the CPU fan, whole case and heatsinks as well and it was clogged as bad as GPU.. (also removed the ageia physx card at this oportunity so there will be more space for cpu cooling) so after cleaning all the fans, blades and heatsinks and applied this copper squares whenever possible with ic diamond 7 paste, now my gpu sits at 75 degree celsius at full load which is awesome! Computer starts with the card at 39 and then it sits idle at 43 degree celsius.. cpu alone sat idle at 27-28 (X7900M) ...all this with all fans on max and cpu were running at 3.0Ghz which is my default frequency I ran with

so if you have some overheating problems that you didn't have before it might be well worth to check your fans inside your gpu/cpu



couple of pictures I made from the process:
http://www.dropbox.com/gallery/24987...9800m?h=e6c81e

[Killerko]

I have a 3.5 year old (out of warranty, Service Tag CL2WRH1) XPS M1730 running Windows 7. I had been having screen blackouts off and on over about a week and increasing in frequency. Oddly, I was able to run a cable from the GPU’s DVI connection to my TV’s HDMI input and see the screen most of the time until the end. But then both went black and didn’t recover. During these blackouts, I was still able to access the computer through the network.
I replaced the original GPU (a NVIDIA GeForce 8700M 256) with a refurbished NVIDIA GeForce 8700M 512 and IT WORKED! … for about 20 hours. Then everything went dark. No more network access. Now it only powers up to a couple of clicks of the optical drive and a short whirring of the HD. The only lights are on the power indicator and the NUM CapLock.
I tried the startup diagnostic (FN+ power) and the lights and tones gave me the following sequence:
The three lock indicators flashing twice all together,
Caps only flashing for about two minutes,
All three flash once,
Trilling beeps as they each flash left to right in quick succession,
Three flat beeps,
Then continuous repeat of the trilling and flat beeps and flashes again

Apparently this reduces to 3-3-1 according to the charts I found. That means “NVRam Insufficient Power”.
This is my second bad experience with Dell and I’m ready to toss the whole thing and get an ASUS N75SF or a Toshiba Qosmio unless someone can offer me hope?

This sounds like your GPU need some baking in the oven to get it back up and running :-)

[vinoob]

Hello guys am new to this thread, i have an 3 Years old DELL Xps M1730 it was working perfect for the past 3 years but all of a sudden it started giving me problem.I have 2 problems
1.keyboard back light, it stopped functioning any way am not much interested in it to recover.
2. When ever i start my laptop and play the first video might it be on Facebook or you tube my laptop freezes and the screen turns black.it never responds after that.and i have to restart my pc manually by holding the power button. every time this happens.But it works well if am playing any other video which using a media play or if i play any games.This is a really strange situation am facing.I even updated my nvidia drivers uninstalled and res-installed all went in vein.

So guys please help me out to solve this problem am facing.for the past 5 months am restarting my XPS twice every day.

[ncm6349]

Hi all...I am a proud M1730 owner and my laptop is out of warranty. The laptop has finally developed graphics issues as it crashes on the video drivers during bootup. I backed up any important data I had on the laptop and loaded a fresh copy of Windows 7 with just the latest Nvidia video drivers and the machine crashes reporting a video error shortly after booting into windows. The machine then hard locks (have to hold the power button in, turn it off/back on to do anything). If I run the machine in safe mode it is fine, but obviously this is not a solution to the problem. From reading through this thread in the forum it sounds like video problems are common for these laptop. I have a pair of 9800GTs in SLI currently in the laptop. I checked my service tag number on Dell's site and can re-open the warranty for $420. The cheapest I seem to be able to find the cards is around $400. I am running 4GB of RAM and an 80GB SSD. I have blown air through the base of the machine as well as removing the cover above the keyboard and blowing through that direction. Based on everyone's experience, if I re-open the warranty and then issue a call for my video card...what do you think will end up happening? I end up with a refurbished set of vid cards? they tell me they don't have any and have to replace my machine?

[wah47]

Is it possible to overclock C2D T8300 ??

[Magnus72]

Yes you can overclock it another 200Mhz using Throttlestop.

[wah47]

Yes you can overclock it another 200Mhz using Throttlestop.

Thanks, I'll give it a try It may be useful in new games which are pushing my CPU to 100%

[wah47]

And one other thing, What should be the safe temp for 8700m GT? I'm trying my best but the temp reaches 74C-76C in just Two hours of gaming.Is it okay? It's not overclocked by the way.

[Consi Pit]

Thanks, I'll give it a try It may be useful in new games which are pushing my CPU to 100%

And - any results ? I have the same CPU . A question of the Risen 2 ( Alan Wake also ) - anyone tried it on the beast ? How about sli works in these games ? . I would like to buy it - but I must to be sure how it goes .

[wah47]

And - any results ? I have the same CPU . A question of the Risen 2 ( Alan Wake also ) - anyone tried it on the beast ? How about sli works in these games ? . I would like to buy it - but I must to be sure how it goes .

Yeh I have Throttlestop now and I did some tweaks with it.Well, I'm not any expert with overclocking I'll give you the details latar.

I have Alan Wake.Also, I have 8700m GT SLI.The SLI works fine but I don't get much better performance.However SLI works much better with 8800m GTX.So you have a better chance Game is fine by the way.
Low@1024x768+2xAA(Lowest)
Min:10 Avg:20 Max:26
Medium@1024x768+4xAA
Min:7 Avg:16 Max:19
High@1024x768+4xAA(Max)
Min:2 Avg:9 Max:12
All benchmarks are done with single card as I don't like SLI at all.It gives unstable fps
Ended the game.It's smooth @low and lags at some points for few sceonds only