Inspiron 5510 Overheating

The first thing you should check is the cooling fan. I guess your laptop has been at least a year old or even more than that so, better to check the cooling fan and if you find dust and dirt on it, clean it and check. This is the most basic check you should do whenever you face overheating.

I've done all the initial troubleshooting, cleaning vents etc whatever possible without opening it. Also updated drivers, BIOS and even tried other OS like Ubuntu etc. And the issue remains.

The only solution I could find is to disable Turbo boost which makes the i7 11th gen CPU equivalent to 4-5 yrs old i5 which is terrible.

Hi,

there might be several reasons why your notebook might overheat. I am not going to tell you that you have to put it on a even surface (not on cloth and so on), because that will disturb the in- airflow (lol), and im not going to tell you that you have to clean your fans regularly and don't put anything in front of the outlets where the air is blown out  - these are standard answers you're going to find, but there is more.

I recently had to deal with overheating issues and did dive very deep into the www regarding notebook architectures, temperatures, heat pipes, cooling and so on.

First thing, and very interesting would be - what is the general purpose of your daily tasks and needs with this unit? Are you driving it nuts from time to time? Do you need it to be running at those turbo clock mhz? I did read that you want to play light games - are those very demanding? What settings will you play when doing so - will you need the maximum power which your notebook is capable of?

First at all i personally think that the necessarity of repasting the thermal paste on the cpu and gpu is pretty obvious, but caution! If you never have done something like this, i warn you to do it without proper preparation and reading stuff about doing it and checking out ALOT of online reference. In general removing and repasting thermal paste is  no rocket science, but you have to be careful, know what you do and this might instant erase any warranty you still might have. Going for this might dramatically reduce the overall heat which seems to be not optimal absorbed by the heat pipes which transport the heat to the heatsink / fan unit. With the right thermalpaste reapplied, this might really work wonders!!

The second thing you might want to make your mind up is (no im not telling you to update all drivers and bios and all that stuff, because this will literally not SOLVE your problem at all) checking your bios settings in terms of :

Intel Speed Step

What is Enhanced Intel Speedstep® Technology?
Enhanced Intel SpeedStep® Technology allows the system to dynamically adjust processor voltage and core frequency, decreasing average power consumption and heat production.

Intel Speed Shift

Intel Speed Shift technology also known as HWP (Hardware p-state) or Hardware Controlled Performance delivers quicker responsiveness with short duration performance shifts, by allowing the processor to more quickly select its best operating frequency and voltage for optimal performance and power efficiency.

Intel Turbo Boost

What you NEVER want to do is turn OFF speed-step. This will not allow your unit to throttle down and will cause it to permanently run with a high clock (which it does right now anyway, lol) with constant high power drawing, high clock rates - create more heat, super hot laptop and so on.

If i were you, i would test 2 things before going for the re-paste job and also some additional thoughts  about what you might be able to improve in terms of heat-dissipation (additional thermal pads with super slim copper shim pads, and so on

Try to turn off the Turbo Mode and check with HW Monitor how things improve in terms of your temperatures.

Next step would be to turn off Speed Shift as well as leave off the Turbo Mode. How is it?

Maybe try the third option - Speed Shift OFF and Turbo Mode ON.

You really got to think about what you want to achieve with your notebook . I'm saying this, because modern architectures with newer 11th and 12th Intel GEN CPUS (and maybe also dedicated GPUS), create ALOT of heat which will keep those units stay pretty hot. Some models might get hotter than others, depending on the overall placement of specific stuff on the motherboard. There are some technical flaws with modern trends trying to make everything slim, lightweight and small, packed with tons of new HOT stuff.

If you still have warranty - Contact Dell support and ask them for a new heat-sink unit with fan and they have to send you a technician for a repaste job with a GOOD thermal paste. Lets see what happens.

Every additional mod you might make to maybe reduce a few degrees here and there might break your warranty, guarantee. Just saying it AGAIN. Also bear in mind, that it makes a difference, whether your case is aluminum or plastic!

A last thought is something i havent tried so far, but some people tweak their way too hot units with is a special program which allows you to manipulate alot of settings - but again - you have to read ALOT how to work with this to not cause any damage to your unit. It is a programm called "Throttle Stop".

Sorry for the long text, but i totally feel with you with this topic and i know that something like this hurts, because no one wants a notebook which constantly runs super hot without even stressing it at all!

All the best to you, man!

Cheers

Fullyard

@fullyard First of all thanks a LOT for this detailed post, gave a very deep insight into the thermals of laptops.

I don't really wanna play games at this point lol because I'm slowly digesting the fact that this laptop is in no way capable of that...

Mostly the stuff I do with this is coding, code compilation, movies, youtube, and such stuff.

EDIT: The tests I performed for overheating didn't involve any heavy loads...just 2-3 chrome tabs with HwInfo open.

I tried disabling turbo boost and it does improve the thermals by a LOT, from 95 degrees down to 50-60 Celcius with it OFF. BUT, benchmarks take a HUGE hit. 

I haven't noticed any real-world slowdowns but have to test more with boost OFF.

I strongly believe it's quite stupid to put an H series chip in a laptop with poor thermals. Another major flaw is the nonavailability of the traditional S3 sleep mode.

With this new modern standby, sometimes when I put the machine on sleep and then come back and check, it's super hot and fans are roaring, basically putting it to sleep doesn't turn OFF the CPU.

And yes, I indeed tried using ThrottleStop, but undervolting is locked, thanks to DELL!! But I was able to lower the PL2(Short term) from 51W to 18W, which helped a bit, but not as much as disabling turbo boost.  

From what I observe, the fan runs at higher RPMs only when it gets too hot, it's mostly idle under normal loads. So DELL by design has decided to lower fan noise at the expense of excess heat, but the user doesn't have the option to change this. DELL power manager COOL mode doesn't help much.

Once again thanks a lot @fullyard  for that detailed post, learned a lot from it!

Hey man!

Glad i could help, really! I recently had to deal with buying myself "that " perfect notebook for really normal things to do.I am not planning to do games at all, but being able to do so, if i wanted.

I am building my own desktop pcs since 1994 or so, did dive into notebook architectures and 11th and 12th gen cpus only 2-3 months ago and stressed myself ALOT with buying the WRONG Dell unit, a Latitude 5421, after boggling like 6-12 Months whether getting myself a notebook or not, because i dont want to exhaust my fiances 10 year old HP Notebook (which i already pimped and had to disassemble because the thermal paste was dry as some jabba the hut victim buried in the desert).

So i had the Latitude 5421 and man, 10-20 % usage on the cpu and it run with 90 - 100 degrees all the time. I was like "what the... is going on in this machine" - and started after sleepless nights big researches in terms of all of this. So i am glad i could pass on some of that stuff i discovered.

My new Dell Inspiron 14 Plus is a f....ing hot machine in terms of design and performance so far. I am a treehugger- so its green brushed endor-like aluminum case might arouse your random leg hugging ewok, for sure. heh!

For what i did read in your reply - i suggest to try it without the turbo boost and observe if your programming duties and multi-tab browsing is too slow or anything, but i really doubt that. Grew up with the normal stuff being able to have some good old overclocking - and now they design this to be a given standard , which can cause some real trouble. Totally hear ya on making some weird decisions in terms of packing stuff in a way too tight enviroment - this aint no sarlacc pit, for real!

Would be nice to hear about your final findings and outcome . I am still boggling in my own case about how to deal the "turbo boost" mode as well as the "speed shift" stuff. I did turn it off and noticed a dramatical drop in the MAX temp, but the clocks are not going beyond their given standard value - this will literally  in terms of stuff which uses only the single core for the performance.

What i am still interested in, would be your numbers in terms of temperatures your ddr4? and your ssd will get at max - this is something you might also make your mind up. I did recently found some nice thermal stuff on amazon which help to reduce some heat on stressed DDR4 as well as keeping your ssd not reaching their given max temp- again - that stuff naturally gets hotter in a notebook- thats just GIVEN.

I did check the other day the temperatures in my self built actual desktop pc - i was about to cry. LOL. Super cool everything... but yeah... thats the difference!

Cheers!

Yours,

Steve

Hi @fullyard thank you so much for this deep dive, I've been trying to do casual gaming on this notebook but the thermal throttling was too much for me to handle. I just ordered a new thermal paste because I think the basic one Dells uses it doesn't help. And all the info you shared will help me in my quest to try and lower the temps in my notebook.

@CrazyHogPlum​ Most welcome! Which paste did you get and did you already apply it? Be careful with that!

@fullyard​ It's a Brazilian made thermal paste (TS-COLD by Implastec).

I hired a friend that works in IT to help me, so to leave less room for mistakes.

I'm doing it today after this friend leave work and I'll post any updates about the overheating.

My Inspiron 5510 is a little bit different from @shadow_007 because mine has the discrete MX450, so even more heat being created in this tiny body.