I believe all Dell Inspiron laptop comes with a motherboard that has GPU built into it. Means you can't separate the GPU from the motherboard.

I'm a Dell Inspiron 1420 user for 3 and a half year (my 3-year Dell warranty already expired). I would say Dell's warranty service is really awesome, my 3-year Dell warranty comes with international warranty. I fried the GPU on my motherboard twice during the first 2 years of warranty. My first time was when I was in Macau, China, I called Dell Hong Kong and the next day they sent a technician to replace my motherboard for free. Impressive eh? My dell inspiron was bought in Malaysia and I called Dell Hong Kong to fix it for me while I was in Macau for free because I have the InHome or OnSite service warranty.

The second time I fried my motherboard was when I was in my hometown in Sabah. They also sent their contractor with the motherboard to replace my defective motherboard.

Why my motherboard is dead? Because of the GPU (Graphics Processing Unit, widely known as graphics card). My air vent was full of dust and I was a first time laptop user and I didn't know how to take good care of my laptop. It was just at times when the hot air blown out of the air vent wasn't strong anymore, means all the dust was stuck at the air vent. At the end the laptop was heat up during gaming, my screen came out with funny colors then hanged, I restarted my laptop and that's it, black screen lol. The technician replaced the motherboard for me and I saw how he disassembled the laptop, so at the end I know how to disassemble my laptop with the help of watching some youtube videos (people do post some videos to teach you how to do it). So, my advice is if you don't really know how to take care of a laptop and hope that your laptop is under good after sales service (particularly warranty claim), go for Dell.

And my advice is don't push a Dell Inspiron laptop too far, don't expect it to be able to withstand high graphics settings as the GPU is only some low to midrange or midrange GPU. I believe most low to midrange or midrange GPU is actually sharing 1 fan with the GPU, at least I saw this in my own Dell Inspiron 1420.

Of course now after 3 and a half year, my laptop is still working, but since my warranty already expired, I need to take good care of it on my own. Cleaning the air vent is easy because you can just take off one of the panel at the bottom to get access to the heatsink connecting to the CPU.

But, if you wanna clean the fan in it, then you must really really know how to disassemble your Dell Inspiron laptop. There is no easy way to get access to your laptop's fan, you need to disassemble the whole thing like how I did. And there will be tons of screws to unscrew and you need to remember which screw is belonged to which part. And any cables inside the laptop that you had disconnected, you need to remember to connect them back before assembling them together again. Refer to the pictures below:

Disassemble them into pieces just to access the fan in the motherboard lol


Before, dust stuck at the fan. More dust stuck on it means your fan is going to spin slowly, means your laptop will get hot easily


After cleaning it up, looks better


This post has been edited by jimmykvt: Apr 22 2011, 03:02 PM

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=jj27k2v6Bdw

This post has been edited by jimmykvt: Apr 23 2011, 01:20 AM

I don't recommend you to take out the keys of your laptop keyboard one by one as laptop keyboard's keys are very fragile.
Instead, get a keyboard skin and place it on top of your keyboard, you can type on the keyboard skin as if you are typing on your keyboard.
So, the keyboard skin is the one which will get dirty and you can just take it out when it is dirty and wash it and put them back after you have dried it.
The keyboard skin comes with different colors and there is also transparent one. I'm not sure whether you can find it in Batu Pahat, but I'm sure you can find one in Sim Lim Square, Singapore and there are many keyboard skins for different model and brand of laptop. The price is around SGD 10 - 15.



This post has been edited by jimmykvt: Apr 23 2011, 09:01 AM

I saw a lot of Dell's keyboard skin in Sim Lim Square (Singapore) that comes with different models lol, not that hard to look for Dell Inspiron 1420 for my keyboard

Oh, splashing coffee drops on your keyboard? lol
If you have Dell Complete Cover warranty and if that warranty is still active, you can splash all lol, jk jk... XD

I have never dealt with an Inspiron 15R, but the first 2 minutes of the video clearly shows you how to take off the keyboard :]

Yea, I believe you can take out the keyboard without unscrewing anything from the bottom. The bottom part which he unscrewed was at the edge of the laptop while the keyboard is in the middle. You can try to take it out like what he did without unscrewing anything from the bottom and of course make sure you don't pull the whole keyboard too hard since there is still a thin ribbon connector connecting the keyboard and motherboard as shown in 1:57 of the video.

Yea, working in SG, and I'm going to collect my new laptop next week, the brand and spec are already shown in my signature :]

Good luck with the cleaning :]

Yes, ATI Radeon HD 6970m is better than GTX 460.

You can take a look at the benchmark list of mobile GPU here:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Mobile-Graphi...List.844.0.html

Dude, you need to recognize there are 2 HD6970m...
one is cross fire and the other one not cross fire, mine is not a cross fire :\
If it were a cross fire, I would had mentioned it in my signature, too bad it's not.

This post has been edited by jimmykvt: Apr 23 2011, 10:48 AM

Not too sure what's the brand of HDD and RAM. Won't know until I receive it.

My laptop model will be the same as Keenxlimit's except mine comes with an ATI Radeon 6970m while his comes with a GTX 485m.

Here is his review: http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/1827691

Anyway, this is a Dell Inspiron thread, I don't wanna flood here with Sager laptop. Should be discussing Inspiron earlier on lol.
Any discussion on Sager, you can visit Sager thread, we got bunch of people there to answer your question :]

This post has been edited by jimmykvt: Apr 23 2011, 11:04 AM

Never heard of Dell Inspiron has MXM, not even Dell XPS has it. Normally only gaming laptops like Alienware, Asus G series and Sager have it.

If you want a gaming laptop with MXM, get at least RM 4k and go for Sager NP8130, that's the cheapest gaming laptop so far.

Even if you can get a good graphics card, it will still be a great challenge to run 3D games with high graphics settings because Inspiron/XPS are running on a single fan and heat sink is shared between GPU and CPU. XPS has 2 fans but the other fan is so small that I doubt it does any significant help in reducing temp.

Surely when you want to upgrade your graphics card, mostly the reason would be for gaming purpose. However, you might wanna consider whether it is worth for the upgrade or not because heat might be a very critical issue. You won't want to be disappointed when your GPU temp is running high with the new GPU, right?

This post has been edited by jimmykvt: May 25 2011, 09:18 PM

dedicated GPU? Dedicated means 专用 in chinese.
When we say dedicated GPU fan, means that the fan is only for the GPU, not shared by the CPU because CPU has its own fan too :]

Haha, sorry, bro..didn't know you don't know how to read. I misunderstood your previous post.
Buying the GPU alone is of course not worth it, it's too expensive and somemore we don't know whether the laptop is able to cater the heat generated by a more powerful GPU or not.

This post has been edited by jimmykvt: May 26 2011, 09:55 AM