Dell XPPS15 L502X heat and noise issues.

[Kerio_Orisa]

Hi,
My laptop was heating up a bit too much (temperature above 90’s in normal load, and sometimes shutting down after hitting 100C), so I finally decided to open up my Dell XPS 15 (L502X) and replace the thermal paste. I have few questions:
When I opened it up, apart from the thermal paste on the cpu (i7-2630QM) and gpu (Nvidia GT-540 2gb), there were several white pads, and one grey pad. The grey pad was above the motherboard HM67 chip. This is the first time I ever saw a heat sink with thermal pad needed to cool down the motherboard. Or am I missing something? And what are all these small white pads? They seem to be covering different chips on the motherboard. Does anyone know the width of these white pads, and grey pads? Are all of these thermal pads to conduct heat? Or some are meant to block heat? I think the white ones are meant to block heat, but I may be wrong.
Anyhow, after replacing the thermal paste (didn’t do anything with the pads, since I wasn’t expecting to see them anyway), the temperature of CPU and motherboard remains in 80’s C, and GPU in 70’s C under normal load (20 browser tabs, and some MS Office work alongside). So, although it is not in the dangerous zone (90s and above), it is still quite warm for not so intensive tasks. I have cleaned the heat sink, and fan etsc also. I also used good quality thermal paste (CoolerMaster Gel Maker Nano). And the the fan still works in an annoying manner with bursts of sounds, instead of constant sound. It is very annoying, and I rather have the fan working the whole time than these annoying bursts (fan on, fan off, fan on, fan off, and goes on like this constantly). Any solution to fix this?
I am also considering downgrading to I5-2540M (lower TDP, and dual core), but its not worth it if the fan is going to behave in similar manner. Please share your experience if you use any other CPU on this laptop. I don’t think the GPU is replaceable on this one?

 

[Ketchup]

I don't know how long you have been into computers, but for a number of years you would never find a northbridge (and sometimes a southbridge) without a heatsink. In fact, some would have fans on them with noise that would rival the one on your CPU.

A lot of the time with laptops you will have a thermal pad sitting between the chip and a heatpipe, so there really isn't much work do to on these. Of course, Dell would make each model a little differently based on the heat output. On yours, you shouldn't get too much heat out of that 540, but that i7 will be putting out a fair amount.

On a 5-year old laptop, the main thing would want to do is keep the dust out. Nothing wrong with some good thermal paste, but the past it came with shouldn't be doing too much worse than it was when it was new.

 

[JeffMD]

You are thinking way to much about your colors.. they are thermal pads and they do the same thing. They were simply applied at different stages of construction.

Your cpu and gpu were all from the era where chips were hot and used lots of power. And because they are hot they need noisy fans. There is no fix. Throttle your laptop down, use a pad that keeps the bottom surface cool, and otherwise live with it. Otherwise, get a new laptop. ^^

 

[Infrnl]

I have the previous version to you (L501x) mine has been running way hotter than it used to. I have blown it out, replaced any thermal paste, etc. It hasn't helped. Nature of the beast i suppose.

I honestly wouldn't waste the money to downgrade the cpu. Best upgrade ive done that helped my slow down was changed to ssd but that can come with it's own issues.

Only thing that bothers me now is heat, fans, battery life, and weight compared to newer laptops.
On the other hand, there are limits on these new ultrabooks compared to older laptops as well. Damn technology and people wanting to make fragile finishes along with too thin of products

Edit: I'm currently trying to find a new laptop for reasons above, but hate non replaceable ram, shortage of ports, etc. Makes it difficult

 

[fire400]

copper mod the GPU and mobil greese the bearing on the fan, use extra AS5 on both CPU and GPU copper sinks to bleed out extra heat to offer full contact with sinks and chip which will surround the outer side layer and trap excessive heat leaking.

upgrade to a Samsung 850 EVO SSD or PNY 1311 SSD, these two are lower budget and work the best with older motherboard chipsets. strip the OS down to flat version of Windows and turn the Windows power profile to power saver with desired display time outs.

would be mostly useless to downgrade to i5, 'cuz the i7 can still throttle and will offer better threaded multitasking instruction sets in a much lower frequency.
it's almost inverse 'cuz the i5 will work harder to achieve your OS tasks that you mentioned, and the heat output would almost feel the same with sandybridge, generally speaking.

just tweaked an HP DV7 DDR2 system with Vista. had 4gb (2x2) and 7200rpm hard drive. I put a $45 SSD into and $20 w8.1 pro x32 OS on it. and that's as far as the price should go on something like this, considering $50 for 4gb DDR2, that would be $100 for an 8gb upgrade for an 8yr old computer... hell no lol, and upgrading the CPU for $20-$50 for barely any more performance would have been dumb. man, the system ran, but it could barely sustain 720p on youtube...

anymore than $100 on this super old HP computer, I would have just went to best buy and got an AMD A10-gen7 laptop with 6gb laptop, for $280!