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How to improve a consumer grade laptop?

Joestrad37
By Joestrad37
in Cooling
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Posted (edited)
Hello, Linus and Crew! I have recently (given the past 6 months or so) become an avid follower of your channels as well as very intrigued and grateful to your contributions to the tech community with your reviews, experiments, and demonstrations that allows us, your followers, to grasp concepts and processes that would otherwise be left obscure to us any other way. Being this my first time actually reaching out in the tech community to any capacity, I wanted to begin my letter with praises to you and your crew in all you guys do as well as encouragements to continue testing and breaking the limits of what can be achieved in the tech community, regardless of what some ranting pessimists may say. Also, I would like to present my first question of my own personal project I am performing and get your insight as to whether I am heading in the right direction with my reasoning.

 

   After many months of research, I decided to buy myself a Dell Inspiron 13 7000. I love the form factor, though the only real problems that I encountered on it were some "ghost screen touch" (which I hope go away with a driver update) and some heating on my CPU. I decided to go with this type of computer because 1) I am a musician and the 2-in-1 actually appeals to me practically for sheet music, and 2) I wanted to enjoy some light gaming while one day saving up for a real gaming rig. The only real problem I get while gaming is that my temperatures seem to get pretty high, or at least that is what I perceive from the bottom when feeling it after gaming for at least an hour or so on WoW. I have already upgraded the computer to a Samsung 840 EVO SSD and it comes maxed out with 8 GB of RAM, so I was wondering if perhaps putting IC Diamond thermal compound might help me keep my computer cool while enjoying the benefits of being to game lightly.

 

  Thank you for taking the time to read my letter, as I know you are all extremely busy with your videos as well as your whole room water cooling system, which I am trying to grasp as I try to think of ways that I might be able to help you with useful feedback. Keep up the fantastic work! Thank you again for your time.

Edited by WoodenMarker
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Posted

What are the temps?

Some other things to do are like factory restore that can clear up programs that would take up CPU usage and make the CPU run hotter.

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Hello, Linus and Crew! I have recently (given the past 6 months or so) become an avid follower of your channels as well as very intrigued and grateful to your contributions to the tech community with your reviews, experiments, and demonstrations that allows us, your followers, to grasp concepts and processes that would otherwise be left obscure to us any other way. Being this my first time actually reaching out in the tech community to any capacity, I wanted to begin my letter with praises to you and your crew in all you guys do as well as encouragements to continue testing and breaking the limits of what can be achieved in the tech community, regardless of what some ranting pessimists may say. Also, I would like to present my first question of my own personal project I am performing and get your insight as to whether I am heading in the right direction with my reasoning.

 

   After many months of research, I decided to buy myself a Dell Inspiron 13 7000. I love the form factor, though the only real problems that I encountered on it were some "ghost screen touch" (which I hope go away with a driver update) and some heating on my CPU. I decided to go with this type of computer because 1) I am a musician and the 2-in-1 actually appeals to me practically for sheet music, and 2) I wanted to enjoy some light gaming while one day saving up for a real gaming rig. The only real problem I get while gaming is that my temperatures seem to get pretty high, or at least that is what I perceive from the bottom when feeling it after gaming for at least an hour or so on WoW. I have already upgraded the computer to a Samsung 840 EVO SSD and it comes maxed out with 8 GB of RAM, so I was wondering if perhaps putting IC Diamond thermal compound might help me keep my computer cool while enjoying the benefits of being to game lightly.

 

  Thank you for taking the time to read my letter, as I know you are all extremely busy with your videos as well as your whole room water cooling system, which I am trying to grasp as I try to think of ways that I might be able to help you with useful feedback. Keep up the fantastic work! Thank you again for your time.

 

Put ur text colour on auto

i5 4670k / Be Quiet Dark Rock Pro 3 / Asus Maximus vi hero lga 1150 mobo / Sapphire tri-x r9 290 OC edition / corsair vengeance pro red 4 x 4 gb 2133mhz cas 9 ram kit / nzxt phantom 530 black / 120gb samsung 840 evo ssd / 240 gb ocz arc 100 ssd / 2x 1tb WD Blue / Cooler Master v850 modular psu / corsair k70 rgb cherry mx Brown / mad catz rat 5 laser mouse / windows 10

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Thank you for your responses. I do not think, unless there is a single stick of DDR3 16 GB RAM, that you can put in more than 8 GB. Also, how were you able to remove the heat sink from your CPU? When I tried, I had to stop to prevent from damaging a stubborn screw that would not come off. As an update to my "ghost touch" problem, it seems to have subsided dramatically after Windows perform an update, but I have yet to use my computer for an extended period of time.

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I am sorry about that, I have not posted ever on these forums, so I am hoping that I have corrected the reading problem. Thanks.

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The temps are currently 48-50 degrees Celsius right now and I am not even gaming yet. This is having around 10 tabs open in Chrome and RealTemp measuring the temperatures. When playing WoW, it does get hotter.

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Oh you see I have the light theme then, because my screen does not look anything like that. How do I make it go into the night theme?

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Oh you see I have the light theme then, because my screen does not look anything like that. How do I make it go into the night theme?

3670b3b981.png

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Oh you see I have the light theme then, because my screen does not look anything like that. How do I make it go into the night theme?

 

Bottom left corner, it says "Change Theme"

 

EDIT: Ninja'd by @Flyguygamer

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The temps are currently 48-50 degrees Celsius right now and I am not even gaming yet. This is having around 10 tabs open in Chrome and RealTemp measuring the temperatures. When playing WoW, it does get hotter.

Laptops naturally run very hot put some better paste on it and dont force anything while removing the cover you should be fine

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Thank you for helping me with the night theme, and I will try to see if I can access the CPU without damaging anything. Does anyone know whether or not the RAPID feature of the Samsung 840 EVO extends the life span of the drive since it reads and writes to the RAM, or am I misunderstanding the concept of RAPID?

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From what I understand, RAPID uses some of your RAM for caching theoretically improving read/write speeds(have heard of people having worse performance with rapid turned on).

Pretty sure it would have a negligible impact on lifespan.

Also consider that if you lose power or your PC crashes, any data currently in RAM could become corrupted.

 

If you want to increase the lifespan you may want to look at Over-Provisioning and OS optimisation in Samsung Magician.

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I have already over provisioned my SSD, so does that mean I do not need the RAPID feature active?

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I have already over provisioned my SSD, so does that mean I do not need the RAPID feature active?

 

RAPID is for HDDs to optimize their speed better.

 

//sidestory, your original text is still unreadable on Day theme. Please use default formatting...

^^^^ That's my post ^^^^
<-- This is me --- That's your scrollbar -->
vvvv Who's there? vvvv

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  • 2 weeks later...
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1) Good choice, I have the same laptop and love it.

 

2) IC Diamond does help temps a lot, I threw some on mine, dropped the temps a bit.

 

3) you're welcome  :)

 

As far as the RAM goes, I do believe that it can go up to 16GB if you can find a DDR3 laptop stick. Could be wrong on that last one though. 

 

 

Another question I have in regards to the thermal compound. How much do I put on the CPU of this particular laptop? I have heard that less is more, but when I did that, the temperatures are seeming to become worse... 

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Pea size amount for thermal paste. But it is one of those things where you may get three different answers from three different people. You might want to experiment by putting some on, screwing down the heatsink again, unscrewing it and removing it. Make sure it covers the entire processor (silver part or black part if there is no lid on the CPU). If it doesn't, try adding a tiny bit more and see if that covers it. Don't do this too many times. The pea size should cover it properly.

Also, be sure to thoroughly (and I mean very thoroughly) clean the CPU AND heatsink with 91% isopropyl rubbing alcohol. Good luck!

System: HP Pavilion P7-1010 Upgraded... CPU: AMD Athlon X4 645 3.1ghz, RAM: 6gb DDR3 1066mhz, GPU: Sapphire Radeon HD 5670, PSU: Seasonic S12 II 380w Bronze, SSD: Samsung 840 Evo, HDDs: WD Caviar Green 1tb 5400RPM, Seagate Barracuda 1tb 7200RPM, Case: Generic HP case, OS: Windows 7 Professional 64Bit SP1

2nd Best: Dell Dimension 5100 Upgraded: CPU: Intel Pentium D 945, RAM: 3gb DDR2, GPU: PNY GT440 1gb, HDD: WD 120gb 720RPM, PSU: Seasonic OEM, OS: Win8.1 32bit

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Also, don't apply it to the CPU and the heatsink. Just put it on the CPU. I also do not spread it either. I just put it on and let the pressure from the heat spreader do it for me.

System: HP Pavilion P7-1010 Upgraded... CPU: AMD Athlon X4 645 3.1ghz, RAM: 6gb DDR3 1066mhz, GPU: Sapphire Radeon HD 5670, PSU: Seasonic S12 II 380w Bronze, SSD: Samsung 840 Evo, HDDs: WD Caviar Green 1tb 5400RPM, Seagate Barracuda 1tb 7200RPM, Case: Generic HP case, OS: Windows 7 Professional 64Bit SP1

2nd Best: Dell Dimension 5100 Upgraded: CPU: Intel Pentium D 945, RAM: 3gb DDR2, GPU: PNY GT440 1gb, HDD: WD 120gb 720RPM, PSU: Seasonic OEM, OS: Win8.1 32bit

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