XPS M1730 laptop - Need to lift it off the table for best cooling?

Question

Has anyone tried doing performance benchmarks of the M1730 with it sitting down flat on a smooth tabletop, vs with the back end propped up about 10-20 mm? There could be a large increase in performance with it propped up off the table.     I see on the XPS M1730, Dell has gotten away from the XPS M170 design with two smallish side fans that mostly inhale on the top and sides, and now has a huge air intake grille that covers the entire bottom of the laptop. The air exhausts on the back are also larger, allowing greater heat removal from the SLI chipset.   This is good, because the primary speed and performance limiter has to do with how easy it is to pull large volumes of cool air across the very hot chipset. With 3D shaders and effects cranked up to the max, the ol' XPS M170 design with the corner fans gets to a point where the fans cannot keep up with the heat removal and eventually the keyboard and the entire top of the body is really hot to the touch. And then... the... game... starts... to.... stutter...   However... most laptops only sit about 2 - 4 mm off the table with tiny rubber feet, which really restricts and limits the airflow to the bottom air-intake grille.   The best cooling would apparantly come from propping the back of the laptop up and providing a large air gap so more air can get under there more easily.     Also, any real benchmark tests for a gaming laptop require that it be stressed constantly for at least 30 minutes so that the system can get thoroughly cooking.   The XPS M1730 might get excellent results the very first time a benchmark is run, because the laptop body is cool and acts as a huge heatsink during the short test run.   But then after running at max load for 30 minutes, the benchmark scores may be much worse because the system is now hot and not able to absorb any more heat from the stress testing.   -Dale   Message Edited by DMahalko on 11-06-2007 11:00 PM

Andrev · Answer

Hi Dale.

Do you own the M1730 yet ? In the affirmative, do you think this one is getting hotter than the M1710 ? Actually my M1710 is running pretty cool all the time. Playing huge games for hours doesn't make the temperature get higher than 65 degrees C what is more than excellent compared to my previous XPS Gen 2. I extremely satisfied of it. The overheat subject is always my main concern when time come to buy a new laptop.

At home, I'm using a cooling base what make it even better. The temperature stay most of the time below 60 degrees and the bottom stay very cool after shutting down the laptop.

Tell me more about the cooling system on the M1730. What about this new SLI video cards and Aegia booster. All this doesn't make more heat in the laptop casing ?

Andre.

Message Edited by Andrev on 11-07-2007 02:46 AM

Ls3D · Answer

I'd like to rip the Physics card out of mine! Why heat silicon I'm not using. Too bad it is not supported in RealFlow, 3DS Max etc. Regarding the cooling I took the feet off a really old desktop and located them under the 1730's feet. Just seemed a little breathing room would help matters even though the rubber pads are less than a quarter inch. She also sits on a floating glass panel and this seems to be a good conductor of heat possibly cooling more than some other surfaces. I've never been concerned about temperature related benchmarks (not a gamer), but reducing heat to increase the life of the system sure seems like the right thing to do. -S

DMahalko · Answer

No, I don't have the M1730. Most of what I'm researching and learning about it comes from Dell's online service and owner's manuals for the machine. You can look through the service manuals yourself (showing how to completely take it apart), starting from here:

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/xpsm1730/

In the "Owner's Manual" document are a set of views showing all the ports and buttons on the system. Here's the bottom view with the vents, clearly showing the three fans -- one fan for each of the SLI GPUs, and one fan for the CPU:

Bottom of M1730:

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/xpsm1730/en/om_en/html/about.htm#wp1148091

That center fan for one of the SLI GPU's doesn't look like it's going to get much airflow with the laptop sitting totally flat on a tabletop.

If you look at the other close-up views on that page, you will see that there are no intake vent holes on the top or sides of the body. All air intake vents are only on the bottom. Actually using this laptop in your lap while gaming would probably block most of those intake vents.

Here is the bottom of the M1710 in comparison. The air intake vents are tiny compared to the M1730, but that's because there's also intake vent holes around the sides and top as well.

Bottom of M1710:

<ADMIN NOTE: Broken link has been removed from this post by Dell>

Also, to make room for a bigger outflow vent, Dell has moved most of the connecters off the back side of the M1730. The video output port are now on the left side, and there's just the power input, network jack, and one USB port on the back.

Back of the M1730:

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/systems/xpsm1730/en/om_en/html/about.htm#wp1204904

Back of the M1710:

The total size of the outflow vents on the M1730 are at least twice as large as on the M1710 and M170.

-Dale

Message Edited by DMahalko on 11-07-2007 07:20 AM

Andrev · Answer

Once again Dale, very informative comparison.   Thank you so much taking time to display all this. I really appreciate.   Andre.

yanneman · Answer

for people that really want/need the optimal airflow you can always consider buying a laptop cooling pad... they are quite cheap and handy to travel... you have static ones like XPAD http://forum.tabletpcreview.com/showthread.php?t=5829 or you have the ones with fans (bit loud) you plug into a usb(most of them even have a plug that enables you to reuse the usb so you dont lose one. thats what i did with my old XPS M170 cause that one rly had heat issues

Andrev · Answer

Yanneman.   You are so right. I have a cooling pad from Cooler Master.   http://www.amazon.com/Cooler-Master-NotePal-Laptop-R9-NBC-ADAS/dp/B0009WPSEC   I really like it, very efficient and give the laptop a slight angle what make it easier to use the keyboard. I get better performance while using this cool pad especially during hot summer days. When turning off my laptop, the bottom is really cool, especially the memory bay.   Andre.

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