Dell Latitude E6400 - Overheating issues with minute tasks such as playing flash videos for extended periods?

The fan might be on all the time. It's on right now. There's enough noise in my office that I don't notice.

Since having received my e6400 back from the Dell Repair Depot, I have had no issue with bad performing throttling. However, the fan does appear to run at the highest rpm still, but, unlike before it was sent in to Dell, the fan does lower its speed. Prior to sending it in, once it was at its highest rpm, it never lowered even when all the applications were closed.

I had my E6400 motherboard, fan and heatsink replaces but the problem still remain in a fewer occasions.

And the fan is always at high speed when the computer is docked, there's no way to slow it down, even closing all applications.
I'm going mad...

I also had my E6400 motherboard replaced just last week after weeks of issues with my CPU going to 70-100% usage and the problem persists.   The technician who came to my house was supprised Dell didn't replace the fan as well.     I thought I might have a virus so I completely reformatted my hard drive and updated my bios and all drivers I could find.   I do use a docking station and external monitor and that seems to be an underlining theme in the thread I have read.   I plan to run my E6400 today without using the docking station or monitor to see if that matters.     I really need to use my 22 inch external monitor so I hope that isn't the issue.

Hello everyone

Please let me tell you my opinion: I am using a Dell Latitude E6400 with the following configuration: CPU Intel Core 2 Duo T9600, 4GB RAM and nVidia NVS 160M. I have the same issue when playing 1080p HD videos. my previously system was a Dell XPS M1330 with nVidia 8400M GS. the problem (actually the same) with this laptop relied in Intel chipset. this chipset caused overheating due to wrong fabrication or error of fabrication. everyone in Dell Service Partners had known the issue with that laptop

What I think now about Latitude E6400 is that they use the same chipset (P965) and it has some problems - overheating. For example I have another 2 Lenovo Thinkpad, one T61 with NVidia NVS 140M and P965 chipset and X301 with Intel 4500MHD with also P965. Guess what? I don't have such problems at all. I think somehow Dell has some problems with the chipsets from Intel due to some tweaking/modification of the P965/G965 itself.

Maybe I am wrong, but I don't know what else I should think of.

Bogdan

Hi.

Does this problem also affects the E6400 ATG model? I am assuming it does and have read quite a few pages of this thread and 1 post lists the ATG in long list of laptops having this problem but I wanted to check.

The reason is I am considering an E6400 ATG (Windows EX, 3GB ram, and P8700 Intel Penryn Core2 Duo 2.53GHz (3MB Cache, 1066MHz FSB) processor) with a 128GB SSD drive for DJ'ing in clubs because it should (on paper) be able to handle a bit of rough and tumble which comes with gigging.

This envoroment can get very hot so any heat issues could be a problem although the software I will be running will not tax the processor much and the audio will be taken care of via a USB sound card so maybe even if the processor is running 1/3 speed it wont effect things. The biggest problem would be the system crashing and the music stopping!

Dave.

I've literally spent 3 days working on this issue.  I work in software and we have an IT support staff.  I turned my M6400 with Nvidia over to them - they went over what I had tried and basically told me that I have an extremely clean system that has been optimized.  The told me to reinstall my OS, which is a very time-intensive procedure for someone who has a development setup.

I also worked as PC support for 5 years and have been building computers for more than 20 - I know what I'm doing.  Figuring this problem out has been a nightmare.

After doing so and spending another day getting the system to a usable state, It started to grind to a halt again.  I could only get relief under two conditions:

1) If the system has set idle overnight, it would be fast for about 15 minutes the next day.

2) If I booted into safe mode with network support.

All Diagnostic tests would pass.

Again, I reinstalled, tweeked, optimized - but it all came crashing to a halt.  I updated to the most recent bios available from A01 to A10.  I finally started suspecting throttling after viewing these posts and I'm very upset that Dell did not notify users/owners.  The loss in productivity easily exceeds the cost of the laptop.

My fix - finally blowing this machine out (dust).  That seems to get it cool enough to have it settle down.  I've got the Nvidia card and run two montiors.  When I'm on one monitor  at low resolution (safe mode) - I didn't seem to have the problem.

I honestly don't know if it's CPU or GPU, but if it's GPU related, this is my second dell that I bought with high end video that has caused major problems and again, the second computer that I wasn't notified in regard to said problems.

I'd like to run a fan utility so I can throttle the fans up while plugged in.  The I8k utility is difficult (at best) to install under Windows 7 64bit.

Dell - if you're going to sell us a laptop for $2k plus, it should WARN us if it's clocking itself back...

Yes, that was really lucky for DELL that no larger magazine or other media took up this obvious hardware design issue. In the end it's always proftiable switching adds in those major magazines.

I know this thread is pretty old dating back to 2008, but I had my fair share with troubleshooting my laptop as well.  After checking the support site and upgrading to the latest A27 BIOS my issues are solved!!! I had the exact issues as other from this thread and the BIOs update isn't a workaround is a true for the issue in my case.  Good luck.

A27 BIOS, I was using A17 previously. 

http://support.us.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&releaseid=R279140&formatcnt=0&libid=0&typeid=-1&dateid=-1&formatid=-1&source=-1&fileid=412053

I'm glad I found this information. I've been dealing with this for months. Our IT guy doesn't have a clue why the fan runs continuously. My system eventually comes to a halt and the only way to "fix" the problem is to force a shutdown by holding the power button down. As others have stated, the system works fine when it isn't on the docking station and only using one monitor.

Hopefully this will help someone.  I had the exact same problem. I updated to the latest BIOS and that kinda helped.  Before the BIOS update, I had to reboot my laptop in order to get it back.  After the BIOS update, once I close the Flash video, the CPU goes back down and I can use the laptop again.  However, it still gave me problems with running flash video for more than a few minutes.  I read one of the posts here in this thread and it mentioned opening the case and removing the fan.  I did that...wow! my fan vents were totally clogged.  I removed that dust and I'm testing now, but I'm encouraged that might actually fix the problem for a while.... until they get clogged again.  

I had posted the same frusterations as everyone else on this post months back. I ended up sending my laptop back to Dell. They had downgraded my BIOS to A17, but I have since updated to it to the latest BIOS and it has been running great. I live in southern Nevada and heading into the summer months. Between that and the dust factor, I have made it routine to air blast out the fans once a month. Minor inconvenience but the laptop has been running great.

Did you receive any assistance with this problem? The standard reply from Dell is to change out your software, even after asking them about the overheating issue which results in the throttling of the CPU. I was advised by Marlon, Dell El Salvador, there are no known overheating issues or throttling issues with the e6400. The way to prove you have an issue is to download an application that will measure the CPU temp. You can watch as the temp rises, the CPU slows down and then goes to 100% usage. You can see this in Task Manager.

Has anyone received a reply from Dell advising how to fix this issue? I still have not seen a real fix to this issue? Dell?