Laptop overheating

Heat and ventilation are issues with pretty well all modern thin laptops. Always use the laptop on a hard surface, never on a bed, couch, pillow, etc.

You might want to do what I did:

I took a strip of lumber, about 3.5 cm. wide x 2 cm. high (1.5" x 3/4"}, and the length equal to the width of my laptop. I routed out two notches to accommodate the laptop's rear feet. The rear of the laptop sits in those notches, propping up the rear by 2 cm. That provides better ventilation underneath the laptop and makes it easier for the fan to draw in air via the bottom vent. 

It's cheap insurance, and also positions the keyboard at a slight angle that makes typing more comfortable. It won't solve a major heat issue, but it helps somewhat.

You can also reduce heat caused by Turbo Boost by changing power settings.
Settings | System | Power & Sleep | Additional power settings | select your plan | Change plan settings | Change advanced power settings | Processor power management | Maximum processor state: set to 99% or lower.
If you set it to anything below 100%, Turbo Boost will not activate, so system will not generate as much heat and you will save battery power.

Some forum members install Dell Power Manager app from the Microsoft Store and choose a cool thermal profile.

One of the Precision 7560's we have at work had this exact issue, and the problem was finally fixed last week. There was a wire passing from under the heat sink that was causing the heat sink not to make proper contact with the CPU and GPU. They had replaced the fans and heatsinks on this with no resolution, but we just got lucky that we have a competent local onsite tech in our area who caught the error. This must have happened at the factory. 
Although the 11th Gen Intel processors do run hot, they should not be overheating in a mobile workstation class system. I do lift my laptop off the table, and even place it upside down when it is attached to the dock to let it have a better chance of pulling cool air in, but it should not be idling at such high temperatures that you are seeing.

thanks filbert. i am not looking to mitigate the issue, i am looking to permamently solve the problem so that i can actually use the beast of a xeon processor to full extent. thanks anyway.

we can live in hope that this might be the case, but i expect it's just badly thermally designed. i might have to resort to filbert's solution and mount my laptop on a thermal conductor of some sort with fins and fans...kinda like what the laptop has but up to the job?!?

Just to clarify, I am looking for an answer to the following question, put in very simple English so that even the challenged can understand:

"Is a CPU package temperature of 71°C found in an idling laptop to be considered normal?"

---

@braechnov wrote:

Just to clarify, I am looking for an answer to the following question, put in very simple English so that even the challenged can understand:

"Is a CPU package temperature of 71°C found in an idling laptop to be considered normal?"

---

If it is truly at idle, that temperature would be considered high. However, much depends upon the ambient temperature of your room and the positioning of the laptop.

If the laptop has a proper application of thermal compound, fan and heat sink's radiator are not dusty, and everything is otherwise operating normally, that temperature is high for idle.

Assuming no dust and normal fan operation, it's possible that thermal compound was not well applied. Too much can be almost as bad as too little.

I have a Precision 7560 for 1.5 years. I encounter overheating problem right from the beginning. Laptop is  used on table and keeps getting hot regardless of fan or aircon. So this is definitely some kind of design flaw as mentioned.

Even when put to sleep mode, laptop never sleeps. The fan will be running out of the sudden and the laptop is hot. This laptop never sleeps, I have to use hibernate via Windows command because it is not a power down option. Even with hibernate, the laptop may wake with exception error that restarted the laptop and any unsaved work is gone.

Nowadays, the laptop can't last 3 hours without AC power. And this is only after switching off high performance to balanced power.

I don't see any hope in this laptop power management and overheating issue.

This worked for me:

Open Power Options:

1. In Windows Search for "Edit power plan".
2. Choose "Change advanced power settings."

3. Processor Power Management:

4. Expand the "Processor power management" section.

5. Look for options related to "Processor performance boost" or "Processor power boost mode."

6. Set the options to "Disabled" for both "On battery" and "Plugged in" if available.

If the option does not show do the following to make it appear.

Registry Editor (Regedit):

1. Press Win + R to open the Run dialog.

2. Type regedit and press Enter to open the Registry Editor.

3. Navigate to the following key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Power\PowerSettings\54533251-82be-4824-96c1-47b60b740d00\be337238-0d82-4146-a960-4f3749d470c7

4. Look for a value named Attributes in the right pane.

5. Change the value data to 2

6. Close the Registry Editor and open the power options again.

@vedantssj​ I checked and already have the value set to (2) I did this previously to be able to set max processor frequency. Is there another way to get the option you have enabled?

Thanks,
Kyle

I had similar issue with precision latop with nvidia a2000.

- high temp at indle cpu with fans spining (noisy)

- extremely poor performance with anything GPU related, even though processing is done on dGPU everything funnels theough intel UHD and DWM.exe running at 80/90 %, specially when attaching monitor

- thermal throttling constantly - laptop performs worse than my 10 year old 7440 E

- Motherboard changed by dell with no luck

after more than a year of frustration and hopeless settings tweaking I was about to sell it, but i tried one last thing that i read in a random post somewhere:
Install standard windows version NOT dell version, I thought it doesnt make sense but tried it anyways..
Downloaded windows ISO

Installed WIndows 

Installed Dell command update for the drivers

Everythig at default.

the results were SHOCKING to say the least:

- idle cpu temp 45 deg C

- DWM.exe maxing out at 10% even with full load on external monitor

-  system extremely responsive and fans only come on occasionally

Conclusion: dell image is full of bloat ware, and drivers might not be getting installed correctly with the dell windows image.

Do NOT install support assist, it creates many serices running all the time.

Use dell command update for the drivers instead.. or if you want support assist for any reason  make sure to disable the services to avoid it doing random stuff in the background.