what's the temp. of you CPU? my D420 is so noisy...

That does sound somewhat odd. However, I'd suggest not using i8kfanGUI. It seems to not work so well with these newer Latitudes (seeing as how it's creator is limited to only making it work systems he owns) I'd suggest using NHC to check your temps instead. i8kfangui has been known to improperly read temperatures and fan speeds on systems it doesn't 100% support. If your temps in NHC are still roughly the same then I'd say you have a problem. But I'd make 100% certain it's not just the software mis-reading the temperatures. My D820 won't get hotter than 130 degrees according to NHC and that's even with putting a full load on it.

MrEvil : I just had to post - I just installed the NHC- it is NEATO!!

My M1210 holds at 45 degrees at idle (1.0GHz)
at full throttle (2.33GHz) it goes up to 60 degrees. The fan comes on at 60 to keep it right there, it cycles it back down to 55 degrees, and it bounces from 55-60 while at 2.33GHz. (I don't usually keep it at full blast though)

My processor switches dynamicly (very quickly I might add) it stays at 1.0GHz most of the time.

I'm sorry, I meant to say my CPU doesn't get hotter than 130 when I push it, right now just idling here at full clock speed it's at 109 Fahrenheit. The P4 in my i8200 would get up to 159 at full load. You might have a problem with your Laptop if it's that hot all the time. Does your D420 also have the ULV processor?

I posted the following at the Dell Community Forum. It made a big difference to me.

I also picked up a D420 at the Dell Outlet recently with a U2500. It's for replacing a 300m and everything about it was better than I expected, except for the heating up with fan off followed by the vacuum cleaner noisiness that others have described when it came on. I was getting ready to return it under the 21-day policy, but I seem to have found a good solution.

The core of the solution is the I8kfangui utility. Since the slow and fast setting correspond to noisy and noisier, my goal was to set the fan to run all the time at a slow speed so it doesn't get hot. You can do this by disabling CPU Temperature Control on the Temperature Control tab and enabling automatic fan setting and hardware sensor support on the Autostart tab. You can then use the slider on Set first fan speed, which I set at 32. Then check Maintain minimum fan speed in the Main Window. After doing this reboot (having enabled Autostart).

The results for me is that temperatures at idle remain at around 40, going up some as you do various tasks. But unlike Dell's fan settings, when the machine is at idle it will return to 40. I8kfangui does not show any speed for the fan, but it must be on since the machine stays cool instead of heating up. I have to put my head about 8-10 inches away to hear it, and it's not very different from how it sounded before when it wasn't hot enough to turn on the fan.

One caveat. At this setting if you attempt to charge the battery, the system will begin to heat up; mine got to 50 before I pulled the plug, whereupon it cooled back down to 40. With the 6 cell battery, it's not hard to just put it into Standby for awhile, charge the battery up and have 4-plus hours with silence and cool temps.

One other item. I'm using Notebook Hardware Control, but the current version doesn't allow voltages below .9375 (stock for the 800MHz speed). Others mentioned using RMClock (I think). Does the current version of that allow lower voltages?

No, the problem is neither NHC nor RMClock. The real issue is that Intel locked the minimum voltage on the Core Duo and Core 2 Duo.

Well that's sure disappointing. I wonder why they did that. Thanks for the info, even if it's bad news.

Hello...Newbie here at the forum..was wondering if any of you who were having the D420 running hot problem found a solution? And also for those who received the replacement systems, has the problem been fixed on the replacement system?

I just received my D420 (Core Solo) and noticed the same noise problem and also the system is running about 57 degees (on HNC) as I write this..

You might try the solution I suggested several posts back on 10/30. You can also look on the Dell Community Forum. It's down right now, so I can't give you a link. Searching on "D420" will lead you to two threads on the subject. They offer several solutions, all of which involve using various settings of I8kfangui. This should solve your problem. It has for me and others.

My D420 idles at 65C on Vista. It's only a month old. Under load, it'll easily hit 75C. What the HELL is going on?!

Edit: nevermind, thread got cleaned up, thanks admin.

Arctic Silver 5 attempt

I have the same problem/issue you all do with temperatures--mine run in the low-to-mid 50's (according to RM Clock (which I really love, both for this machine and others; it's great for under-volting)) and it runs it's fans far too often for my liking.

So, I decided I would take it apart and put Arctic Silver 5 compound on it, or at least see what's going on. I wanted to share what I did, so this is going to be a lengthy post.

What's going on is that there are two thermal pads that connect the northbridge and the CPU to the heatsink, and there is a heatpipe connecting the cpu to the fan.

But, it seems like kind of a dumb setup, imho: the heatpipe that connects the cpu to the fan area doesn't really have any other kind of fins or anything anywhere (next to the fan) for the air to move through to help cool it down... The cage around the fan also seems to be lacking any kind of fins as well. (but I didn't take it apart)

here's a couple pictures showing what I'm talking about:
from the side, you can see that there's only a thin sheet of metal next to the heat pipe. (click for a bigger image)


grrr!
Here's a picture of the top of the heatsink, with it's heatpipe (the cpu is in the corner):


And the bottom:


The thermal pads are about 1mm thick, and the one over the heatsink is about 1.75cm squared, but the actual die of the core-duo is much much smaller: there is a very thin copper shim under the pad (maybe 1/10th of a mm?) that was pretty thoroughly stuck onto the die. I didn't pry it off, so I don't know how large the actual die is. The thermal pad over the northbridge was about 1.3cm square, and the northbridge die was just a bit smaller.. maybe 1.1cm? (didn't measure closely)

So, there we are: two thick thermal pads & a complete lack of fins to help cool down the heatpipe; no wonder these things get toasty!

I may see if I can get some thicker copper shims machined, but I'm not sure if the heat actually getting to the heat pipe would do much good!

What are other people's thoughts?

I did the same thing to my d420 about two weeks ago, and took apart a friends D420 2 days ago. As IronRooster was saying, the d420 has pretty much the worst heatsink/fan design I've ever seen or heard of in a laptop.

That purple pad used to transfer heat from the CPU to the heatsink is complete junk. For my 420 I found a piece of aluminum a few mm thick and lapped it on both sides so it would be perfectly flat. Then I used Arctic silver on both sides and used it for a shim between the CPU and heatsink. The laptop certainly runs cooler. Before it ran so hot that it would almost burn my legs. It always ran above 70c even at idle, 80c+ under load even after undervolting with NHC. Now it still runs warmer then an ultra portable should, but at least it's under control now(45c~65c depending on ambient temps and workload). I did the same thing to my friends 420 only this time using a piece of copper instead of aluminum. His runs cooler then mine now but I'm not sure if it's just because his CPU runs a little cooler, or if the copper really is doing that much better of a job. I'm thinking about finding a piece of silver to redo mine. Too bad Dell had to do such a piss poor job on the cooling. Could have been an awesome little notebook.

Neat! That was what I was hoping to hear! (that someone's already done this & does help at least somewhat)
I am really amazed that they could have even considered this a reasonable cooling solution.. :-\

Can I ask where you got your copper shims?
I'm at a loss for where to begin to find some.. (granted, I haven't had time to really check google)

I just went and looked around in the hardware store for awhile until I found something that looked thin enough. I found a big fuse that had copper connectors so I bought one and cut then end off. It was still too thick so I spent a bunch of time filing it down which was a pain. all you need is something 2 or 3 mm thick. It doesn't have to be perfect because the heatsink is screwed down with some spring like tabs, just so long as the spacer doesn't push up on the heatsink too far and make the heatsink hit against the notebook case when you try to put the motherboard back in. Also, don't try to shim the chipset, leave the purple heat tab they have in it, + put a big blob of paste on it so that if your shim makes the heatsink set up higher then it was before then the chipset still has some contact. If you try to shim both the CPU and the chipset then you will never get the heatsink to set directly flush with the CPU. Those chipsets don't produce hardly any heat so don't worry about that. I would like to buy a pure silver coin and lap it smooth on both sides to see if it would help my temps any. Anyone know where I could buy a pure silver coin or slug? Even if it costs $20 I think it would be worth trying. If it can drop my temps any then it will be well worth the money.

Well, I can say that something about the thickness of a sanded down quarter isn't quite thick enough! it was around .9mm thick, and I think you do need something about 1 to 1.1mm thick to really get it to make good contact. (that seems to be the thickness of the thermal pads)
My hardware store has some about 1mm thick copper sheets, so I'm going to pick one up when they get back in stock, and we'll see how that goes.
It pretty much didn't change the temperature of the laptop, actually.. I'd love to maybe solder some fins around the heatpipe and see if that'd help.. :-P