m1210 temperature + other stuff

I'm a new owner of the m1210 and a previous owner of the 700m. I got it from the Outlet. One thing I'm surprised about this unit is how often the fan is going off, even when idling or doing normal internet browsing, and music listening.

My temperature hangs around 50*C - 60*C. This temperature range is okay for my lap as I live in Canada and the temperature will dip down a bit around winter time. But the thing is, I want it to be stabled out around 55*C with music playing and all that. In other words, I don't want the fan to go off ever 10-15mins. I like my laptop quiet, and the 700m did relatively a good job in this.

I'm using RMClock + i8k. RMClock is set to the lowest possible voltage going at 6x. It came with Vista, but I removed that crap and put XP Pro.

The laptop doesn't have a discrete video card as my purpose for this laptop is not for gaming (that's reserved for consoles). I need it to run application servers for local developments.

Does anyone have any suggestions in reducing the number of time my fan go off? Are my settings correct? Please share how you tweaked your computer -- I hope I'm not the only one that's complaining about this.

Darn, that's just unfortunate
The temperature (and insane light leakage -- which I'll be calling Dell up to replace my panel) are the only grudge I have with the m1210. I looked at other people's temperature reading, I read some people claiming they can idle at much lower temperature than what I'm reporting. Only thing I can't tell from their reading is whether they're sticking with the passive cooling they have, or whether they have a laptop cooler to help out.

Well I recently got my laptop so it's not creating any dust bunnies yet (or I hope there aren't any yet).

My laptop doesn't have much of a cooling problem. It can maintain the temperature at safe levels, it's how it's doing the cooling that's bugging me (turning on the fan more often than I'm used to). When I had the 700m, I can run off batteries without the fans on.. doing simple web browsing and music listening. By having the laptop do this it also does conserve some power -- as supplying power to turn fans does take a bit of power. I was expecting the m1210 to be able to do this too, simple task = no fans.

Does your laptop idle around 45*C with the lapdesk?

I want to maintain a silent laptop for practical use, that means I can commute, bring it to school, work off the balcony, or living room.. etc without being confined to the materials needed to maintain a relatively quiet temperature level.

My CPU is the T5600 1.83Ghz (Merom). And it's using GMA 950.

* I upgraded bios to A08, disabled some components, tweaked i8k a bit.
It's idling around 60*C, and fan hasn't turned on for about 20mins. Which is a good thing, the bad thing is I'm testing at night, when the ambient temperature's lower.

I see, well there wouldn't be anyway to replicate that lapdesk environment when I go portable.

Probably best to stick with a m1210 as how it's built, and factory method of keeping cool should be similar. If someone's able to get their m1210 to idle at 50*C by using factory cooling method then I want to know what they did (also staying at 50*, or within a range that will prevent the fan from turning on). And if there are enough people that claims they did nothing but get lower temperature than me, then I know it's something wrong with my laptop... in that case I'll call Dell up and ask them... wussup with my laptop ?!

Yah, I can still hear low fan settings, i've gotta be deaf to not hear it (putting on isolated earphones). I'm just very picky that way. So far, it seems agreeable that the temperature is that high with fan on.

I'm still scouring around looking at people temperatures. I seriously don't know how people get theirs down to 40*C. Without their fan turning on.

My settings are, as of now in i8k:
Turn low fan on 65*C down to 48*C.

Originally I had it down to 50*C, which kinda allows the fan to be on for about a minute every 15-20mins doing music listening / internet. But I figured the rest of the components (ram, gpu, and chipset) were staying around the same temp 57*C. So I allow it to go down two extra degrees, which does help the other three components out. Going to 65*C also helps a bit because it hits 60*C too easily, but gaining that extra 5*C does take a bit of effort, I'd say with a better heatsink that covers all three component (RAM, CPU, chipset or GPU -- I know there are three heat producing components all clumped together, around the "t" and "y" area of the keyboard) it would fix up the fan going off (turning on) problem.

Also after the fan turns off,it will go back up to 58*C in about 3-5 mins. Which is understandable and therefore I see it pointless forcefully pushing the temp down, it's like a diminishing return for the amount the fan stays on. And it levels off at 60*C-63*C for a long time.

In the evening fans is off for atmost 30mins. But during a sunny day it's anywhere between 15-20mins. This is alright but not fantastic, and I live in a pretty cool climate, but I know of some people posting pretty low temperatures at much higher climates -- probably from AC or they're very easy going with the temperature or simply bs'ing.

Of course these temperature reading are my m1210, and if your average temperature is lower, then those number can probably be shifted down, you can probably have it set to turn on low fans at 65*C and just maybe, since your system is ran cooler, the fan will never turn on (which is something i want >.<)

Just reassembled the M1210 and apply new thermal compound on the CPU; This include removing the gunk that's originally there, there we're so much it kinda overflow the surface that contacts the heatsink to the CPU -- this is bad because it's basically trapping heat.

I used the compound that came with my third party GPU cooler for my desktop... you can use Artic Silver (or better products now), this is whatever I had is about 4 years ago. The results were quite pleasant.

It doesn't seem to be jumping from 50-58*C in less than 5 mins, now it takes 15mins (internet browsing). This can also be due to ambient temperature, will know tomorrow during the day time.

On glance, the heatsink differs slightly depending on your GPU. If you have nVidia, it's extended a bit longer, i think. I'm planning on expanding the surface area with aluminium foil and spreading it across the underside of the keyboard tomorrow. Not sure if this is a good idea. Hopefully by touching the keyboard, it may help disperse heat. (Currently it's just a copper rod that goes to the exhaust fan) The heatsink also look very tiny (seems smaller than the 700m, but then again, haven't taken my 700m for a while so not 100% sure). I think it's possible to improve, as there are still room internally.