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Dell Inspiron 8600 heating
Hello...I've been monitoring the temperature of my Inspiron 8600 and have noticed that with the adapter, it hits 52 C in a short period of time.(Gradually at first, but much quicker later on.) The fans will kick in and drop the temperature to 36 C and the process will repeat again. With the laptop on max battery, it is initially a gradual process to reach 52 C, but afterwards, it happens faster(I'm not doing anything graphic intensive. Word Processing or instant messaging) Are these common temperatures or does there seem to be a problem with the cooling unit? Is there anyway where I can have the laptop run at a slower clockspeed while my laptop is plugged in? I don't need the 599 mhz for what I'm doing...Lastly, how effective are the cooling pads that I find off Dell's website?-thanks for the help.
Let me suggest a couple of things.
Firstly, what program are you using to monitor the temps? I would suggest I8kfanGUI, because as well as monitoring the temperature, it will also allow you to take either manual control, or scheme control over the fans... meaning you can keep the laptop much cooler.
Secondly, You want to control the clockspeeds (of your CPU, yes?), then SpeedSwitchXP is the program for you. This will allow you to have a separate power scheme for Battery and AC power. If you want to run it at a lower clock speed on AC then simply change it to max battery settings or dynamic switching.
Have a go at these.
stu
Message Edited by sakor1 on 02-27-2004 01:31 PM
viper11885
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Posted February 27th, 2004 03:00
Your temperatures are normal. Anything over 70c, then you should really check up on things. If your temperatures get there, you may want to get i8kfangui to turn on the fans at a lower temperature. You do have a Centrino processor, so it shouldn't get there unless there is something wrong.Yup, these are normal temps.
Strange though that your fans turn on. When I do normal office work or surf the internet my CPU is almost always at 600 mhz. In this setting it remains at 52-57°C max. In this situation the fans do not turn on.
Only if cpu use gets higher (by watching movies, playign games) the fans turn on.
Note though that the max battery setting does not lock the cpu at 600 mhz when on AC power. (Check with fangui for this). How high is your cpu usage when doing standard work? Mine is always 5-10% or 15-25% with winamp 5 playing some music in the background.
- Right now, I'm using max battery and surfing the internet...The CPU load is 12%. Sometimes the temperature does reach 57 C, but the fans will not allow the temperature to go out of that range. I downloaded the newest bios recently, and I don't know if that has anything to do with it. I've gotten in the 60 C range about once, so I'm glad to hear my temperatures are normal. Do you think those Targus pads show a visible trend in keeping the laptop cool?
Cooling pads work nicely with laptops that become very hot at the bottom like the 8200,5100;5150,1100. The 8600 however remains pretty cool at its exterior. As cooling pads allow extra cooling by taking heat from the exterior (bottom) of the laptop it has not that much effect on a 8600.
As the 8600 is a very cool laptop qua cpu temps, it is also not necessary to cool it just a little more.
- I noticed that if I turn on my i8600, it starts the CPU fan at 70°C. If it has been on for some hours, it also happens that the Cpu fan starts at around 60°C, so this seems to be normal.
You don't have to worry about dust on the i8600 because the CPU radiator is easily accessible by removing the CPU fan (top left corner) at the bottom of your computer (2 scews need to be taken out). If your fans run often, check there for dust every few months.
grc15r
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Posted February 27th, 2004 01:00