Dell Latitude C640, very hot!

[Jerry Dunham]

On 22 Jun 2005 at 19:21, Doug Poland wrote:

> Tobias Fendin wrote:
> > 
> > I've got a Dell Latitude C640, with FreeBSD 5.4 stable.
> > It works well, except for this:
> > After a cuple of hours up and running it gets really hot. My fingers 
> > almost gets burned when I touch the harddirve, memory etc!
> > According to `sysctl hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.temperature` the 
> > cpu-temperature is usually about 50-60 degrees C.
> > Which I consider i normal, but is it normal for the rest of the devices 
> > to be so hot?
> > 
> > Is there someone else who has the same problem which I do with a simular 
> > computer?
> > 
> I have a C600 that gets very hot too.  On a buildworld, it get's up to 
> 180f before fan kicks in.  The bottom is too hot to touch.

Yes, it's normal for these machines to get very hot to the touch.  As 
long as the fans come on appropriately and the CPU temp stays in the 
normal range you should be okay (if a bit warm).  We had customers 
complain that they'd used the machines on their knees and gotten 
blistered.  The only answer is, "Don't do that."  I know that's not 
very satisfactory, but it's a good machine otherwise and you just have 
to know its shortcomings.

I understand that the newer D-series machines are better, but I'm no 
longer with Dell Portables Engineering and don't have access to data on 
them.


--
Jerry Dunham
M3 Design, Inc.
jdunham at m3designinc.com
(512) 218-8858