Tuesday, February 21, 2006

CPU Benchmark


My Dell laptop has been running really slow recently and this weekend I run a CPU Benchmark test which highlighted a severe problem in that it was running at fraction of the speed it should have been.

The CPU test I used was CPUBench2003. More benchmarking utilities are here.

I found the solution lurking on the Web ... it involved dismantling the fans and vacuuming out the exhausts which were badly blocked with dust causing the laptop to overheat and the CPU to stepdown. When I rerun my benchmark, i had a ten times increase in performance.




5 Comments:

  • Anonymous TonyS - Artemis said…

      I use Maplins, computer air duster, if the machine is off, just spray this up the exhaust vents (underneath, side and back)this is a much safer way that dismatling the laptop.
    Dell have a lot to answer for on design of laptop cooling solutions.   

  • Anonymous Matthew C. said…

      ThrottleWatch is very useful for monitoring CPU throttling, either due to power management options or, as you found, other external factors:

    http://www.panopsys.com/Downloads.html   

  • Anonymous Paul Healey said…

      I have exactly the same problem with my Dell Inspiron 9100. Its one of those things you don't tend to notice until you really need to do something quickly.

    A can of compressed air sorted it for me, same as Tony suggested.   

  • Blogger Mark said…

      Matthew - nice one, thanks for the pointer ... ill give it a try.

    Paul - i have a Inspiron 9100 too, one fan came out easily, the other also needs the soundcard to be removed first. Just to need to remove the grills underneath. It didnt take more than ten minutes to do the complete job.   

  • Anonymous Anonymous said…

      Same problem with my scalio fujitsu siemens. After 14 months use the cpu overheated and kept shutting the computer dowm when doing heavy work. There was enough dust to almost block the veins of the cpu heat sink. You have to release two clips on the cpu fan to reveal the problem. Roy   

Post a comment