Dell Latitude E6400 - Overheating issues with minute tasks such as playing flash videos for extended periods?

Okay - bad news. BIOS A14 is out now. And a couple of other updates, sound, DCP, etc.

Installed them all - issue remains same.

Even if the heat-sink was replaced already, I'm going to accept the offer of changing the motherboard and everything else until it works.

Have a nice weekend.

New mobo was installed - no change.

Just run in E-Dock with external monitors a screensaver like Aurora or Bubbles for a while and you'll see what happens.

Next step: Friday, new processor and new heatsink (again).

What else? New HDD, new Mem? Any ideas? Oh I'd hate to re-install everything the 3rd time.

Bye, J.

I have 6 of these in my organization doing the same thing.  The only way I've found to cure it is to stick a small fan on my desk and point it at the right hand side of the laptop while on the edock.  I do not have the CPU overrun that way.  If Dell doesn't come up with a fix for this and soon as we have been fighting it since last fall, these will be the LAST Dell's my company buys.  It should not take this long to find a resolution, or admit you have a hardware problem.  Very poor customer service and support in my opinion.

this is obscene...after the acpi hits about 65, the processor (p9500--2.5ghz) downclocks to ~800mhz.  Then whatever im doing either becomes unplayable/unviewable.  thats about the max temp my laptop hits, and its not even that high.  im using an x4500...there has to be something they can change with an update.  it seems like the thermal tables are set weirdly in the bios.

for example, ill be playing a game fine, and then all the sudden after a few minutes the game becomes so slow its unplayable, and the temps arent even that high!

55...: Absolutely. That's also my experience and I guess they can change processor, heat sink, mobo 100 times. Everything runs fine - even 3d games on that Intel 4500 GMA run in acceptable speed. However, when that temp is hit, the machine just downclocks and is not useable until it cooled a bit down.

And - 65°C temp is not really high, isn't it? My old DELL D600 became such hot - you could fry an egg...

DELL !!! Please update that thermal tables and fine. Save your money on new MOBOs, heat sinks, etc! PLEASE!

We are having the same problem with cpu maxing out.  We have 7 of the E6400 laptops at my organization and they all have the same problem from time to time.  Hardware replacements have not fixed the problem.  The problem occurs more when playing video, flash, etc., especially when connected to a dock with a large resolution monitor.  

Come on Dell, what's up with the delay!?  I've been tracking the problem on this and other threads for months now and still no fix!

I'm going to receive a brandnew laptop now. I'm not too confident that this might be the cure, as MOBO, 2x heatsink, processor was replaced already by now with no success.

DELL pro support technicians have tested as I have suggested an E6400 in an E-Dock using two external monitors. They've ran GPU benchmark tests etc for two hours. The fans where blowing at highest speed, however, no downclocking / freezing.

What we've tested here after the processor replacement: We went to the BIOS and disabled Intel SpeedStep. When the system was heating because of Aurora screensaver, we noticed no downclocking of the processor cores to 800 MHz as usual. (We've used perfmon.) However, the system became very, very slow after a while and CPU was maxed out 100% even if the cores where running at 2.4 Ghz full speed.

So I assume that it was the FSB or something else being downclocked which can be read using "everest"?!? I never tried personally.

Anyhow - the Q is, if there is really a series of MOBOs, GPUs (X4500 Intel in my case), Chipsets, etc. that have this defect or is it just some thermal table correction to be done?

HI Happy E6400 Customers!

So it's been over 3 months since I last wrote.. and still not a word from dell, except they are replacing hardware which is really just wasting more time instead of dealing with this.

The company I work for suddenly dropped this model. No more E6400!! YAY.

Regardless mine is still at home collecting dust, WHAT A WASTE. Will be happy to just get rid of it now, but I plan to have it replaced, but by another model (not another E6400). I am just happy I didn't fork out my own cash for this machine... if I had I'd be calling dell everyday complaining, and not accepting replacement parts.

How much does Dell owe us for the hours wasted on this?

In the meantime I got a MacBook Pro, that I can now edit videos on, and render etc without this overheating issue... it's a dream..or it's simply what I was expecting to do on the Dell. Even though I haven't owned a mac since 1984 and really didn't want to go down that road I am now happier than ever.. and getting things done.. without overheating ;-)

Hopefully there will be a fix before these machines are good for the museums..

Oh, before I forget, I photoshopped together a really nice wallpaper with a picture of a lemon and the yellow text that says "Look! It's a LEMON!" if anyone else wants it for your E6400 let me know!

cheers,

krux/

switzerland

Still waiting for solution for this issue.

I have received a brandnew replacement E6400.

Guess what - Same issue there as well.

I come to the conclusion, that the DELL Latitude E6400 with Intel GMA X4500 has a design problem, especially when you use it in the E-Dock with one or even two external monitors.

Maybe it's only the thermal table in the BIOS or it's a real hardware problem for all of them.

I remember once, that the issue remained even after a computer restart, so it's not related to OS at all (we clarified this earlier, but it's important to remember this). At this point, we must find something similar we're doing while working... maybe the angle of the computer when connected to e-dock causes the heatpipes not to work as designed or something. (I don't use e-dock, but also use pc not on table. They should recall the entire line or something. And we've 5Y NBD on these. What further steps do you plan to do now? I would like to know if the Dell E6400 similar inspiron computer also have this problem.

Looks like i'll go for toshiba =) I get two for a price of e6400 and if it crash i just swap them. =)))

Okay, I called Dell tech support last week and they determined to swap out my heatsink/fan.  After installing it the problem seems to have disappeared.  Looking at my old heatsink/fan I noticed a little dust, so I remoed the two screws that hold the fan onto the heatsink and the inside of the "fins" where the fan blows air out was almost completely plugged with dust/lint!  I removed the fan from my boss's machine, it was completely plugged up.  But you couldn't see it unless you removed the fan from the system.  We grabbed the shop vac and used the kit that lets you get into really little spaces ( keyboard cleaning kit ) and cleaned it out and viola!!  It seems to be the trick.  I know this might not apply to all of us as I still feel there is something to the thermal table theory in the bios, but for all that are frustrated, it might be something you want to look at.

I use a Dell E6400 with P8600, integrated X4500 MHD, and without an E-dock.    Running 'normal' business applications does not cause any problems, including flash video or any display-intensive apps such as playing video files, etc.   There are certain direct3D apps however that can cause this problem after about 15-20 mins of use, on a normal room without airconditioning.  With airconditioning (ambient temp of about 22-25 deg C), there is no problem whatsoever.   I've recently purchased a notebook cooler (Coolermaster Notepal Infinite, to be exact) and found that it provides enough cooling to prevent the issue from happening.    The longest I've since been able to use it is 6 hours straight without the notebook slowing down.

Note that, even when the 'slowdown' occurs, all the temperatures (based on generally available software that reads sensors) indicate relatively low temperatures (40-50 deg C for processor, 50-60 for ACPI, HDD is running cool at 40 deg C).  Running Prime95 'stability test' heats up the processor up to 60-65 degrees and doesn't cause the notebook to slow down to 800 MHz.

Also interesting to note that OpenGL 3D 'torture tests' do not cause any problems.

Hi,

my last post was deleted by DELL forum team. I don't know why. Maybe because of the screenshot.

Anyhow. Just let run Aurora screensaver on VISTA for a longer period.

You can see in eventviewer, that theprocessors have been limited by system firmware.

I'm out of this for now. Can't waste more time on this. I'll recommend our purchasing dept. to buy another product.

I just copied my huge file archive via SyncToy from Microsoft to my external USB2.0 HardDisk.

After 10-20 Minutes (I can't tell exactly because the music was too loud) I found out, that the fan was running on high speed. After some more minutes, the music started popping and interrupting. Than I found out, that windows act slow and CPU was at 100%.

The system showed the nearly same stupid behaviour when u use screen savers or any other 3D app.

I assume that the copy process runs through the Northbridge of the chipset, too? That's where the Intel GMA 4500 is hosted, too, right?

Well - more and more I believe that this a real nice HW design problem we're having. As said, I got two E6400 here same problem. And on one of it MOBO, heatsink (2x) etc. was replaced already.

What can we do?