Hi.

During certain activities, e.g. playing Quake Live and Half-Life 2 Demo, the laptop slows down to a crawl.FPS drops from the normal 60-125FPS to 0-12FPS for as long as 1 minute! This happens even with lowest level of detail and lowest resolutions! CPU-Z shows a drop of CPU speed from 2.4 GHz to >>>>>>266MHz<<<<<<< (probably the CPU wants to cool itself). This CRITICAL slowdown happens when gpu temperature indicator rises to 84-86 degrees Celsius. The CPU cores temperatures are around 80 degs also but i mostly looked at the GPU temp as it is highest and therefore displayed in speedfan tray icon.

Generally the ultimate slowdown problem manifests currently only in games but even when no game is running, the temperatures get close to the critical threshold during work and the fan is quite loud. Watching simple, small flash movies also seems to bump GPU temperature to 78degC and makes the fan quite annoyingly loud. As I avoid tinkering and i'm not an overclocker, I didn't use any apps like speedfan / cpu-z / gpu-z / ,,Nvidia system tools'', nor open the laptop case, until i noticed, that the fan is quite loud when completely idle. This problem did not occur with this magnitude, when the laptop was newer (it has 2-3months now). Only occasional 1 second hiccups which I didn't then recognize as related to temperature. Also the laptop seems pretty hot and loud when almost idle: GPU: 75degC, CPUs:68degC. When completely idle: I have never seen the GPU temp drop below 58degC. Additional QUESTION: what are the normal temperatures? GPU is Geforce 9600M GS. CPU is Intel Core 2 duo 2.4 GHz. I opened the laptop case to check for dust. Not that much dust was there. After removing the dust, the situation didn't seem to improve at all. I've read that, such problems may be related to amount/state of thermal grease ( http://danandsherree.com/2004/07/18/our_dell_inspiron_11.php ). If i were to check/fix that, will i loose warranty if i detach the heat pipe, radiators, etc. for that purpose? I would prefer not to send the laptop away for service, because i need it for work.

Also, is it ok, that the air blown out by fan, seems not hot but rather room temperature? The heat pipe is very hot (,,measured'' by fingertip). I also tried lowering GPU frequencies using NVidia system tools. But that was after noticing the problem; also this is another story in itself.

I paid relatively big amount of money for this laptop and what do I get? A loud, overheating laptop, whose CPU often slows down to a 266MHz CRAWL during CPU load. My previous laptop was ThinkPad R60 and it is way quieter and never overheats, even after 3 years.

 

Pleas help me.

TIA