Dell Laptop's working great but...

youtin

youtin

New Member
My Dad received a slightly used Dell Latitude laptop. I'm very pleased to see that it looks almost-brand new and the specs aren't bad at all. However, I noticed that after having it turned on for only about an hour, it gets very hot (the underside) and the keyboard gets quite warm too :( My Sony laptop gets hot as well but the heat never affects the keyboard.

I usually leave my laptop running overnight downloading or converting, but I'm not sure about the Dell Latitude. Is it safe to leave it on overnight? Won't the heat fry the hard disk prematurely? Is there a way to at least keep the heat from the keyboard away?

I'm open to any advice you can give me. Thanks in advance! :)

If it would help, here are the specs:
Dell Latitude C640
Mobile Pentium 4 - 1.8Ghz
RAM - 512 mb
Hard disk - 40 GB
DVD/CD-RW Drive
 
What kind of surface have you been putting it on? The problem could be that the fans aren't getting enough air because they're covered up, I'm sure it's not only that, it might just have hot running parts. Run speed fan as I would like to know your temperature's.


http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php
 
Is the fan running? Dell's are notorious for fans going bad over time its an easy fix if its the fan but you have to take the keyboard off and the heatsync on the processor as its all one piece..
 
Halian said:
What kind of surface have you been putting it on? The problem could be that the fans aren't getting enough air because they're covered up, I'm sure it's not only that, it might just have hot running parts. Run speed fan as I would like to know your temperature's.


http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php
Click to expand...

The readings I got from speed fan are :

HD0 - 61C
Temp1 - 49C

I think it actually cooled down a bit. So is this bad or not?
I've also elevated the laptop slightly by using bookcorners.

EDIT: newer readings:
HD0 - 58c
Temp1 - 43C
CPU - 43C
GPU - 42C

Thanks!:)
 
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I worked on some larger Dell's at work last summer(I forgot the exact model of them) and man, you would not believe how hot they got! I saw one hitting about 70*C and the fan still never kicked in!

http://www.diefer.de/i8kfan/index.html

There's a program I loaded on one. It helped a good bit, but you have to deal with the fan. I doubt you'll find any laptop today without somewhat of a heat problem...
 
^ Thanks, I tried the program. I put the fan speed on high 'cause on normal settings (fans on 'slow') the laptop was still as hot as before..

The CPU temp's dropped 5 degrees celsius but the HD temp's still at 63 though :(

My gawd, are Dell laptops really heat machines!?!? I probably wouldn't have minded it much if the heat stayed away from the keyboard. (My VAIO does that and it makes me happy) Makes my hands hurt!
 
I have a latitude and mine is hot on the keyboard to. I beat your speedfan temps, I've hit high 80's with temp 1. If you go into the options there's a special option just for dell laptops. It tells you 5 or 6 temps. My CPU hit high 70's but my harddrive never went above 40.
 
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