Notebooks Is this a dead laptop graphics card, and now what?

People don't want to buy 2k laptops.

My laptop, the Dell Latitude E6400, was almost 2000$ Canadian, 14inch system. Quite powerful 2 and half years ago (except the GPU). The system is so cool operating. I have/had no problem putting it on my lap (unless I game.. but you can't game on your lap in any case... the laptop will surely slip and fall), I can overclock my Nvidia GPU like no tomorrow (almost double speed...), and still have the laptop under 80C under max load during gaming.

And yes it does features all the security mechanisms:
-> super speed fan
-> throttle system for the CPU. chipset and GPU
-> For the GPU: kill the drivers to crash the running software that makes it overheat
-> Force-shutdown if all else fails.

Also, it uses a Quadro GPU, which are more durable under though conditions, and superior components used (it better be, for the price).

Dell was so confident in this laptop, that in Canada they offered minimum 3 year warranty, AND 3 year next business day on site service minimum. That clearly says: "I won't break". And so far... it hasn't.

It also has 10 hours of battery life with the 9-cell battery life (web surfing, Aero ON, minimum brightness, (but it's a very bright screen, non-glossy)), and baclight keyboard turned off , and up to 21 hours with the secondary slice battery (small plate that you add under the system.. this plate is another set of batteries) - I don't have it.. too expensive.

Very impressive, very fancy... but also... pricy. And for the same price, at the time, you could get an Alienware system or a fully equipped gaming home class laptop (Dell XPS series), and still have money aside for other stuff. That is why business class system don't sale well with the "non-buisness" purchaser, if you know what I mean. Very few people here (on this forum) buys business-class Lenovo and Dell's, mostly also because their budget is very small. BUT they want desktop performance... soooo... the manufacture needs to cut... cut cut cut... on anything, just to produce the demanded laptop, plus fill it with trial software to reduce the price of the system even more. If it means to be able to put a blu-ray player for free, or more powerful GPU these trial software, then so be it. (Also I am sure that the agreement for these trial software, is not have them back everytime you re-install the system, that is why they don't give you the OS disk, but recovery disks, THAT or diminish tech support calls on a missing driver, to reduce cost)

 

Can't fault Dell on the business laptops although they are not immune to the GPU issue. The Quadro in D630 laptops are a system killer!

Asides from that I recently serviced a D630 lacking the Quadro and it's a wonderful machine. Laptop cost me £92 and have spent just over £100 in hardware upgrades, even with the T7250 underclocked to 1.2GHz it's a netbook killer in every respect. The 1280 by 800 resolution is just perfect for every application. Also the heatsink assembly does a very good job. The old thermal interface material was rock hard solid when I took it apart. Cleaned it up with some brute force removing the old TIM and used ShinEtsu MicroSi in its place. A spot of ultra fine machine oil on the fan bearing and asides from the whoosh of air when it spins up it's near enough inaudible. Temperatures range from 30 to 50 under most circumstances but under stress when it hits 70 the fan kicks in and effectively reduces temperature to 40 degrees.

 

For reference in case anyone else is wanting to do the same thing - I'd suggest not attempting any self repair! I didn't want to keep this laptop enough to pay any meaningful amount of money on spare parts/professional repair work, so I didn't take too much care not to break it further in process of taking it apart. However it would have have been very difficult to get as far as the graphics without breaking something. Stick to PCs - they are way easier!

I agree with comments about not enough cooling - it was one heat pipe connecting graphics onto processor, then leading to a (very) small radiator, cooled by one (again very) small fan, all buried inside everything else.

So next job is to re-arrange things so I can fit another desktop in somewhere. Then the fun begins on a new build Once that's done I hope the backup I have saved on external hdd is fine...

 

Damn!

Can still salvage something, I for one might be interested in the CPU your Samsung had installed! Do you know what model it is?

 

Sorry, I generally take pretty good care of things when they are 'new', but as soon as I've written them off I love taking stuff apart.

I think the processor itself (not much else around it!) is still ok - it's a T7500 2.2G/4M/800

 

Interesting little chip. Could you part with it if you feel confident taking it out and posting it in one piece!

 

Sure, I have no use for it now. You'd have to suggest how to package it so it would arrive ok though.

 

Soft foam should do the trick if you have any, then wrapped in bubble wrap and posted in a hard cardboard box.

Lots of fuss, might not be worth your effort!