LOL..., Seriously, the air vent can be cleaned up easily, it is only the fan that troubles a lot. I definitely need to wait till the warranty is over to clean up my fan just to avoid the void of warranty. Even after the warranty is over, it is still a laptop, it can still be used to surf websites, watch movies etc. So, even though getting a new laptop, this laptop will still be well taken care for good :]
After for 3 and a half year, I tried to apply some thermal paste on it but it doesn't really make a great impact on lowering the temperature. Currently, I'm using Everest Ultimate Edition to monitor my laptop temperature closely as I don't wanna lose this laptop lol. For gaming, the GPU temperature did rise up to 98 degree celcius, it is only being lowered down once I use a table fan to blow directly onto my laptop and it falls back to 90 to 92 degree celcius. I consider to be safe, not to let it surpass 100 degree celcius. First of all, I'm not in an aircon room, so GPU shooting up above 90 degree celcius is not a surprise. Secondly, the fan is connected to 2 heatsinks, one to CPU and one to the GPU (on the motherboard), so the CPU and GPU are sharing the same fan, definitely it is hard to keep temperature low in that way. Unlike gaming laptop which worths RM 4000+, they come with 2 fans which GPU and CPU taking each, so it does bring down the temperature. Most obvious reason is that because the GPU in gaming laptop is much stronger and generates more heat, so the GPU cannot share the same fan with the CPU. But, I believe for most Dell inspiron laptop, the GPU and CPU are sharing one fan, so take my advice, don't push your GPU too hard by playing graphically intensive game. Even if you want to do it, make sure you monitor your GPU temperature closely.
Consider gaming laptop like Dell Alienware is kinda expensive and if you have a tight budget of RM 4k to 4.5k and graphics card matters to you a lot, I suggest you to go for Sager NP8130 because I had seen the interior of the laptop, it is well design with 2 fans and having a Nvidia Geforce GTX 460m. Somemore, my new laptop is a Sager for one reason, it is easier to clean the fans in it, no need to disassemble the whole thing like what I did to my Dell Inspiron.
Of course if you like Dell and really wanna take good care of your Dell laptop well by cleaning the air vent and fan once in a while, I suggest you take a look at some of the youtube videos on how to disassemble your inspiron laptop. The following video is not made by me but I do refer to it on how to disassemble my laptop. Furthermore, I had seen those technicians disassembling my laptop for me when they were replacing my defective motherboard.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj27k2v6BdwThis post has been edited by jimmykvt: Apr 23 2011, 01:20 AM