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XPS L502x Hardware issues
Hi all,
I have a 5 months old XPS 15 L502x (after replacing my dear M1530 :emotion-6: ) and I think I am having overheating on my system.
When I use intensive 3D graphics applications, my motherboard and i7-2720QM heat up to 95-99 celcius degrees. (I use hwmonitor for this) And frequently, my graphic driver would crash or freeze my entire system, if not application that was using 540m would lock it self up in RAM which there is no way for me to get rid of that particular process unless I hard reset. One thing I noticed was whenever applications hang, Windows kernel would be stuck with constant 13% CPU usage. Additionally, my laptop has shut down on me(as if it was overheating even though I didn't notice since I was in AC room) twice for no reason.
I've contacted tech support and all they told me was to reinstall graphics driver and OS. I told them I won't reinstall OS since I've gone through all the loggings and it appears to be there is nothing wrong with the Windows 7. I know it is not the driver since I tried all the drivers available (even the beta ones) and I am not the only one experiencing this driver issue. After 5 calls, DELL agreed it might be the overheating problem so they dispatched a new motherboard along with copper heatsink. After the repair, technician and I noticed there weren't any improvements to the system temperature.
Now DELL wants this laptop in their repair depot for thorough analysis but I am just concerned about several things. I was trying to 'crash' my laptop to confirm if the driver problem was resolved. Even before I got to the 'crash' part, I noticed my fan started to turn on and off constantly regardlsss of what I was doing. Fan would turn on for a second then off then on, repeatedly. I thought it was just a software glitch so I closed my lid and waited until the system was in sleep. After reopening my lid, the system did not respond so I hard reset it. Following this, BIOS (I presume) gave me four beeping noise which is RAM read/write failure which I temporarily(?) fixed the problem by removing then replacing the RAMs.
I don't know what to make out of this. Should I just send my laptop in for repair? Could this be fixed without having to sending my laptop into DELL repair depot? I really don't want to since I have some software on my laptop that I use for school work. Is anyone else experiencing similar problems?
PS. I do have enough ventilation going on with a cooling pad underneath my system. And pardon my grammar/spelling errors, I just woke up and feeling a little grouchy, if you will.
PSS. In past four years, I think I replaced my motherboard 4 or 5 times in total with DELL... (my luck with electronics but oh well)
DELL-Terry B
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October 21st, 2011 16:00
The temperatures that you are talking are about right for the system, especially playing high end 3D graphics. The symptoms really don’t sound like overheating. Typically if the system was overheating the processor will shut the system down to protect itself. So basically the system would just die and would not start back up again regardless how often you pressed the start button until the system was cool enough for the processor too start safely.
Assuming it was the GPU and not the CPU that was overheating, you would tend to get graphical errors then no video when the GPU got to hot.
The error messages and other symptoms do fall more along memory problems, and i suggest testing the system one memory stick at a time and see if the problems follow a specific dimm. If you have not already, I suggest running diagnostics start the system while holding down the FN key or while tapping F12 and choose diagnostics. Allow the basic tests to complete and if you have the option run the memory, hard drive and fan tests. They may give some indication on what is wrong with the system.
IF you don’t want to further troubleshoot, sending to the depot is not a terrible idea, they will diagnose the system there. They may even give the option to reinstall the OS if they find something wrong there. Either way I strongly suggest backing up your data before sending. Diagnostics is pretty easy and if you are comfortable on swapping out memory dimms you may want to test the system first. You may be able to pinpoint exactly what is wrong and save the notebook a week’s trip to the depot.
Please post back here with your decision to send ot the depot or not, and let us know the results of any diagnostics.
Thanks.
TB
DELL-Terry B
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October 21st, 2011 16:00
It looks like you have done your homework. Feel free to shoot me a private message with your personal info and the service tag if there are any issues with the depot service. I am not expecting any but the offer is there anyways.
TB
bls0620
29 Posts
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October 21st, 2011 16:00
Thanks for the offer. Being a computer engineering student I tend to surf on the 'datasheet world'.
Thanks again Terry!
bls0620
29 Posts
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October 21st, 2011 16:00
When I looked up on the datasheet for i7-2720QM, junction temperature is specified to be 100 celcius degrees. And my CPU runs right under that point. My GPU runs maybe 85 celcius at its peak, which is far lower than the CPU temperature.
According to the diagnostics, nothing came up wrong. I was suspecting it might be RAM but no errors were reported.
I am leaning towards sending the laptop to depot for repair since I can't pinpoint the problem from my end.