Yes, a great sticky guide that I wish I had found a little earlier too ... but as usual you don't go searching for a solution until you've run into the problem.

One note could be made: The black mylar strips adhered to the top of the fins at the end of the copper heatsink tubes do not need to be removed at all. I preferred to just leave them all as is and make sure they were all re-installed properly, as the manual explains. Just make sure they all lay the same way they were before you took everything apart.

I took some pics of the dust I found packed in mine between the fans and the fins at the end of the heatsinks and wow ... I couldn't believe the dust in there. You are correct in stating that Dell should make this problem area aware to people that own these things. It is no wonder they are frying all the time ... they can't breath. And all the blowing and sucking you can do from outside the case will NOT remove the dust packed in this location. Many people are afraid to disassemble their notebook in fear of voiding their warranty but it MUST be done on a regular basis regardless. This is a problem Dell should rectify ASAP ... should have rectified a looong time ago and they would have saved a ton of warranty work and saved much face. They lost a lot of loyal customers over this to be sure. Apparently ACER is greatful though

Already been said many times but.... I can only hope newer models are made to enable user access for cleaning dust along the air flow path. It seems so basic and would improve the reliability, reduce component thermal stress and failures.

Another thing to note is that Dell designs its bios fan control in order to minimize fan sound rather than to keep the computers idle temperature cool. Sure its a tradeoff but there should be some common ground rather than just keeping the fans off most the time.

Right, my M1710 cycled between 70 & 80*C constantly with the latest A07 BIOS. I installed i8kfanGUI and now I can keep it between 50 & 65*C (just what I chose) with the fans barely running any more often. You can't even hear the fans on Low speed anyway. I'm a lot happier with my notebook running so much cooler and I'm sure it is too.

Did you ever consider that this was engineered by Dell on purpose, in order to lessen the systems life, so they can sell you a new laptop?

Probly, cheap bastards. However that makes me not want to buy from dell, I got 5 years out of my compaq presario before it kicked the bucket from my OWN mistake of force flashing the bios in a windows environment. I know. I learned.

My Inspiron has burnt out alot, and now that its out of warranty I'm constantly downclocking the gpu and looking to make a better solution just to get the idle temps below 50C. Downclocking and even having full fans on with AS5 on the gpu gets it to 51. Not cool enough.

I don't believe Dell minimizes fan cycles to control noise as much as trying to reduce power draw to increase battery performance. Of course tin foil hat conspiracists might believe that Dell was aware of the dust bunny problem so reduced fan operation to slow the inevitable dust build up.

And yes, it has been a tradeoff. When I first installed I8kfanGUI I was shocked to see how high the CPU/GPU temps were under Dell's bios control. It seemed Dell wasn't too concerned with components longevity. Maybe these tactics got them through the standard 1 year warranty interval, but for longer terms it had to have caused problems.

Cheers!

I believe you have a bad heatsink since you have already disassembled the unit to apply AS5. I assume you cleaned everything at the same time so dust build-up is not the issue, right? If your GPU heatsink has the finned module at the end of the copper tube arm extension similar to M1710 then I don't think the arm is transferring heat away from the main heatsink. I had a similar problem with my XPS Gen2; the arm was cool to the touch while the main heatsink was blazing hot, and of course the GPU temps were in the Stratosphere. Luckily, Dell replaced the GPU under warranty. Since yours is out of warranty you should be able to find a replacement heatsink online. I've gotten most of my Dell parts from eBay. Hope this helps.

Cheers and good luck!

I own a dell, and I own a sager. copletely different ideologies on computing. Dell favors quiet and idiot-proof, Sager prefers to design everything around keeping the parts at full performance, even if it means things are a little noisier / looks a bit uglier. What this means is that DELLS are not made to the same level of cooling / performance standard, and at the time the m1710 was made, it had to be able to handle a stripped down GMA 950 to a 7950GTX / FX3500m, to a FX3600m in the m6300. Hence, the design, which is modular to a great extent, had to be able to handle everything, and DELL favors saving $$ vs. putting more $$ into R&D. That's why DELL was so resistant to OC'ing anytihng in their laptops. They knew they probably couldn't handle much, if any of it.

So true. I was surprised when Dell eventually offered the unlocked T7600G CPU as an option for the M1710. I finally found a new one for my M1710, but was very disappointed that I couldn't run it above 2.667Ghz without fans maxing out constantly and unwanted temps. With Windows 7 I can run it at 2.8Ghz but the fans still have to run wide open too often and temps are still higher than I like for component longevity. Yes sir, the cooling system is certainly adequate for normal operations, but that's about it.

Cheers!

And that's all it was designed for... normal operations. I have an m1710 myself with "only" a T7200, and i have to keep i8kfangui maxed out to keep the cpu and gpu under threshold, even after cleaning and reapplying AS5, and then blasting all of the dust out. It's a nightmare getting into there to do that! When i play games like GTR:Evolution on it, if i attempt to put the game to its desired setting, what happens is it stutters because heat cannot escape in time. It's just an inherently flawed design.

Have you guys ever heard the acronyms for say cars? Ford/ fix or repair daily/ found on road dead? Fiat/ fix it again Tony. Pontiac/ poor old nixxxr thinks it's a Cadillac. Well DeLL is / death enclosure limited lifespan.

DeLL's are good standard notebooks they are not high end by any stretch. Clevo's they are not. HP's have issues also. So do Asus but at least they are pushing performance somewhat.

I LOVE that DELL acronym.

I don't have one for sager, but i call their gaming rigs "the little engines that shouldn't"

I had a T7200 in mine before I found the T7600G. I don't believe your experience is typical. A T7200 (2.0Ghz, I believe) should run under load easily. Of course, the GPU definitely adds to the heat stress when gaming. My M1710 has run flawlessly in Thailand under high ambient temperatures with high humidity;especially horrible conditions for a laptop to endure. I've run M$'s Flight Simulator for hours and hours using dual screens with no issues with the T7600G. Of course the GPU is taxed using dual monitors. I do have I8fanGUI to turn CPU fan on high when GPU temps elevate. I also use my M1710 as a workstation designing huge complex 3D models with Solidworks which also taxes the CPU and GPU. The only issue I've encountered was maxing out the video ram on a highly detailed house project. Other than that it has worked as it should for 3 years. Now that I'm back in the U.S. with much cooler ambient temps my fans stay at 2500/2600 rpms when not gaming or modeling. I would definitely look into why your system is maxing out when it shouldn't be.

Cheers!

I don't know what it is either, however I rarely use it, and it's relegated to the gaming machine my little sisters use when they don't want to use their HP DV2000 (The record low scorer on Passmark 7). It runs big circles around their DV2000, but it just runs hot when gaming. Perhaps I got too acquainted to the functionality over form the sagers give. (For reference, my P9700 / 8GB / SSD loaded NP8662, when idle is about 26c; the m1710 idles, fans at full blast, at 37c.)

I think it's in good part due to design.

Jason