Laptop overheating without CPU activity

grant123 · Veteran Joined: 23 Mar 2005 Posts: 1080

Sometimes my Dell XPS13 laptop overheats all the way to 100C under CPU load and shuts itself off. Lately this is sometimes happening without any significant CPU activity at all. What could it be? The only thing I can think of is a GPU mining virus/trojan.

666threesixes666 · Posted: Fri Feb 07, 2014 8:06 pm Post subject:

run

PaulBredbury · Watchman Joined: 14 Jul 2005 Posts: 7310

Navar · Guru Joined: 20 Aug 2012 Posts: 353

Massive production design flaw. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_XPS#Problems

You shouldn't have a thermal trip regardless of CPU/GPU use under normal conditions. Meaning the manufacturer gave a damn, your ambient temperature isn't 90+ F, and half a cat or years of you and your surroundings aren't wedged inside the fan(s) and venting paths thereby building extra heat as an insulator and causing premature fan failure.

100C+ off an inaccurate itegrated diode->sensor reading is crazy to allow and obviously tripped thermal limits. Is the unit getting physically hot to the touch? If you're feeling that kind of real surface heat anywhere on that (low profile?) unit, get a reputable shop, a skilled friend that you favor with beer/meals to engineer a fix (google, XPS 13 related units seem to have serious thermal design flaws (large gap in TIM contact space, fan noise/issues) going back to 2009), or just replace the unit entirely.

Do the cooling fan(s) run? If not, BIOS->sensor->fan control issues. Dell are infamous for these and setting control points rediculously high. They're also infamous for evaluating only lower TDP sensor readings (CPU) versus the often high TDP even at 'idle' GPUs which cooked a lot of poorly thermal controlled Nvidia cards in the past and earned them a class action lawsuit.

Are you feeling any hot air from the fan exhaust? If not, then take the advice above and get the unit disassembled, completely cleaned and ensure the die surface->TIM->heatpipe->fan thermal chain is fully functional with new quality TIM (a decent non-generic grease compound will do). Dell quality control is worthless for proper TIM (thermal interface material) use. Poor surface and uneven mounting and the material used tends to degrade fast at high heat thresholds.

Finally, are you using i8kutils to control fan use? It should not be unreasonable at all for you to stay below 60C in peak sensor temp when load is low or idle with proper fan use, especially without active GPU.
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grant123 · Veteran Joined: 23 Mar 2005 Posts: 1080

Thank you everyone. I will look into this and report back.

grant123 · Veteran Joined: 23 Mar 2005 Posts: 1080

Dell sent me a new fan and heatsink and wow. It's like a new computer. Dead silent and super cool. It hits 80C tops when compiling icedtea. The old parts were completely clogged with dust. emerge world is fun again.

grant123 · Veteran Joined: 23 Mar 2005 Posts: 1080

Strangely, it seems to be creeping back toward 100C under heavy load. At first it wouldn't go over about 80C but now it's touching 95C. Could this be due to dust accumulation in 1 week? My other thought is the thermal paste on the heatsink could be melting away.