Inspiron 9100 CPU problem

Question

My 9100 have been working great the past year, until the past 2 weeks. First the fan seems to run ALL the time, so I found a utilitity i8kfan to control the fan via (putting the automatic control and 'normal' setting). This will reduce the fan to around 2k rpm, until I run an application that require a lot of CPU. THen the fan would kick in around 4k RPM. The weird thing is that starting last week after the fan going to high speed under high utilization, the performce degrades down to a Pentium Celeron at 600 MHz (using SisSoft). I then monitored the CPU temperature versus CPU utilization and here's the anomaly, when the performance degradation occurs, it conincide with the CPU temperature DECREASING when the CPU UTILIZATION goes up!!!!! Can someone explain to me what's going on? When it is functional the CPU UTILIZATION goes UP in direct correlation to the CPU temperature. I have the screen capture of the SisSoft and the temperature anomaly if interested. Can someone explain to me what's going on? Thanks, Hx

bacillus · Answer

When your CPU rises above a certain temperature its speed is throttled back in order to try to lower its temperature.

In your case I suspect that your CPU heatsink is covered with dust and debris leading to the overheating problem. You can try using a can of compressed air to blow out the air vents in order to dislodge as much accumulated dust and debris without actually opening up the laptop and physically cleaning the heatsink.

Locked Topics – Laptops General

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