Another new Dell laptop with overheat issue, do I return it or keep it?

Keeping the lid closed is not good. Heat rises and gets trapped inside with the lid closed. At least leave it open an inch or 2.

Wynona said:

One thing I would suggest is that you put your new laptop on a "cooling stand" to allay some of the extra heating if you're going to keep the lid closed.

Here's one at Walmart: COSMONIC Laptop Cooling Plate , Laptop Fan Cooling Bracket Adjustable Angel, With 3 Silent Fans Red LED Lights - Walmart.com

Or, you could check out Amazon.com for something a little bit more expensive, but maybe more reliable. :)

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Just a quick comment on that Walmart COSMONIC Cooling Plate - I would think you would show a cooling BLUE color in the advertising pics, like the others in Walmart ads....

Close me out. Currently setting up a little 14" Dell i5. Spikes a couple of times to 88-92C at boot up for a couple seconds, then calms down, humming along at 46-52C. 1st full day and I'm happy. Kootek cooling pad to be delivered by Friday.

I'm happy for you. I know it's been an arduous journey.

You won't believe what the UPS guy just dropped off.... A recently refurbished Inspiron i7 15.5" 1TB SSD 16GB RAM, you know, the ONE IN MY FIRST POST!!! No email announcement, no tracking number, no warning at all that it was coming. Just getting accustomed to that little i5.


Ticket says:
ISSUES: | PARTS REPLACED:
CPU HW ISSUE | 76F7Y (ASSY, PWA, PLN, I7R, U, RK, TI, N15)

Pre-Repair System Checks
OTHER: |YES| BOOT ISSUE RESOLVED |CID| YES
CPU HW ISSUE |YES| SLOW PERFORMANCE ISSUE RESOLVED |VFF| YES
| SYSTEM PASSED ALL FUNCTIONALITY TESTS YES


It is actually running cooler right now, but I haven't stressed it yet. Haven't reviewed the BIOS yet, to see what if anything they did odd.

Wow! Are you saying you got a full refund AND a refurbished laptop from Dell? I knew the right hand of that company didn't know what its left hand was doing. You can bet it was a mix-up rather than out of the goodness of their heart.

If you did get a refund and they don't ask for what they sent back, good for you.

This is my original new i7, from my 1st post.
They told me it takes 10-15 days for a refund. Guessing the folks from the Aftermarket Technical Repair Center (in Texas) didn't get the memo from the folks at Customer Technical Support (from somewhere), the ones who finally agreed to the refund.

I like that smaller i5 14", and now that this bigger i7 16" is running cooler now, I like it.

I think I'll wait and see who contacts whom first - if Dell contacts me about the 'missing' laptop or if daughter gets the refund. Simplest for Dell is to just drop the whole thing.

I've been instilled with so much confidence....

I have seen this "Have this replacement and keep the original" system of customer service in the past, I recently ordered and received an Android tablet, for use as an intelligent Kindle Reader. When it was setup I found it to be underpowered for the job, and wrote an honest review on amazon . I decided to keep the device as it was fine for general work. so I just forgot about it

Several weeks later had an email from the supplier offering me a substantial discount and to keep the device or a complete replacement and again keep the original.

I took them up on the offer of a partial refund, I left the review as was but added a note about their great customer service and upped the * rating a little .

A few days later I received a package containing a nice set of noise cancelling Earbuds - a free gift for the "Holidays"

Observations after a couple of days:
I have run both - the now refurbished [and unexpectedly returned] Inspiron 5510 from my 1st post, and my new Inspiron 5410 14" (the one I thought I needed because I was supposed to get a refund for the returned 5510.) Both are running fine. And I like both.

I never owned one so after Wynona suggested it, I purchased this Kootek cooling pad from Amazon in anticipation of my new i5 14" needing a little help. The cooling pad does make a difference, but my not-very-big abuse right now is streaming radio or the occasional video. The i5 5410 runs very well, even with only 8GB RAM. Overall about 35-50C with several websites open, Thunderbird, and streaming SiriusXM radio, or a Prime movie.

Comparing those same conditions, the refurb'd i7 is also keeping its cool just fine. Before, my i7 5510 would spike often at 96C. Now after a few days the i7 runs at 35-45C, and rarely gets to 55C. I'm liking it a lot more now!

Could be that i5 5410 works a bit harder to keep up? (It isn't really working very hard, but I ordered replacement 16GB RAM.)

Still no email or other notice from Dell that I'm actually getting the 5510 back; it's all configured, updated, running great. Still waiting to see if daughter gets the promised refund; might take a few extra days with the holidays approaching.

Email from Dell Customer Care today:
"...the refund is in the final stages it will be credited in 2-3 business days."
Both new computers are listed on the Dell Support website, and I've logged in with both. *SHRUG*

Be interested to see what they do. I once had a damaged flat pack chest of drawers from Amazon. Fully built it only to find one of the drawers was not straight. They said - we’ll send you another one. A month later I was getting threatening letters saying you haven’t returned the original one. I said - you didn’t ask me too - it’s built - I’m not going to dismantle it all. More threatening emails that if I didn’t return it I’d be charged for both. So sent it back fully built.

I can’t see Dell letting you have a free laptop and a refund - but we’ll see!

With any of the major manufacturers, quite often the cost of the replacement will be deemed to be less that the potential bad publicity will do to their image and it's resultant cost.

This is obviously more common with higher end Profesional hardware especially if you communicate with a Business email / address.

The cost that you see on Amazon, Ebay or the company website are nowhere near the actual cost of the items to the company ., which is why you will see the "free replacement and keep the faulty unit option" offered, this can be considerably less cost to the company than the investigation and repair option

My daughter told me that her refund came through yesterday morning. I waited for a while but I received no email or other notice that indicated that they knew where the laptop was or that I had it. I was using it regularly since it arrived Dec 15. I had loaded my programs and settings, loggrd in the Dell website, updated some Dell drivers, etc., and it kept cool and ran fine. The Repair folks in Texas did get it right.

But I came clean. After waiting all day I emailed the Customer Care folks and told them I had the laptop. I got an immediate email with an RMA number and a FedEx email with a label. So I reset the PC, boxed it up, put a return label on it, called FedEx and they are scheduled for a pickup tomorrow.

Turned out it was a great computer, but my replacement i5 5410 is running just fine. So, this is the end of this story.
Solved...

You know, it would be cool if I could buy that exact 5510 refurbished from the Dell Outlet store. They are selling them for $650-800. That would be at least $200 savings....

FJRMarty said:

But I came clean.

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You are a good man, Sir. After all is said and done, your reward will be greater than any laptop.

Windows may be part of the issue with brand new machines. I have a new XPS 15 9510 and did a clean install of Windows 11 on it. For the first few days it idled at 50C and was hitting 70C doing just e-mail and web browsing. I never really stressed it to see how quickly it would it 90+C. However, after a few days of using, updating, and tweaking Windows, my temps are a bit lower. I tend to see idle between 38 - 42C and under normal usage hitting 55 - 60C. Admittedly, the XPS 15 is pretty thin for its size and components, and I figure a i9-11900H may run a little warm in that environment anyways (other owners with the i7-11800H have had similar experiences).

On an earlier post, someone made a good point that I hate about the big brands...the BIOS tied to a whitelist of components. A while ago I had a Lenovo W510. It was a beast at the time but only the hard drive (I upgraded from HDD to a Seagate hybrid drive and ultimately to a SSD), and I think the memory could be upgraded. While I hate that so many manufacturers solder stuff on (memory in many cases and unfortunately my Wifi card in the Dell), there are a lot of physical upgrades that can't be done because the BIOS won't allow it. It's bad enough with laptops but it is probably even worse for desktop owners.