Alienware Sentia m3450 14-inch Notebook

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Anthony Fiti
Kurtis
Alienware
Dec. 5, 2006

Specifications

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Testing: Temperature

To test the temperatures of the processor inside the laptop, I used a utility that allows me to see the temperature of each core (since this is a dual core processor) as well as the speed and the C state (sleep state) of each processor. The most active state (normal mode) is denoted C0 and the idle states are C1, C2, C3 and C4 (depending in the processor it may not implement all these states).

At idle, when running off battery, the CPU throttles down, so that it will consume less power and, as a side effect, will run cooler. The idle temps were registered at 41C for each core. This was a few minutes after boot (so it had the ability to cool down). When the laptop was plugged into a wall, it went back to the default CPU speed and registered idle temperatures around 53C.

To test temperatures under load, I ran Orthos to load both cores up to 100% and waited for the temperatures to stabilize. Unfortunately, I noticed some odd behavior I would have to attribute to throttling. The processor speed would drop from 2.16 GHz down to 450 MHz for each core, and then the temperature would drop from about 80C to 70C, and the CPU would spin back up to 2.16 GHz again until it triggered the thermal throttling again. Eventually, after enough stress testing, the laptop would shut it self off.

When the laptop was under load, I picked it up and ran my hand on the bottom side of the unit, to see if one specific area was abnormally hot, but I found no such spot. Likewise, the top of the bottom case (where the keyboard is) did not have any hot spots. So while the laptop's CPU was throttling due to temperature, I was able to rest the laptop on my lap and use it without any discomfort. While this may sound good, to me it says that the laptop is not able to get rid of the heat generated by the CPU, leaving the heat inside the unit instead of radiating it out of the chassis, and thus causing it to overheat and shut down as seen in the Orthos stress test.

I wanted to make sure that I didn't have a bad sample, so we arranged to get a replacement Sentia m3450. Unfortunately, I found myself facing the exact same problem with the replacement - throttling and eventual shutdown of the laptop when using Orthos.

I believe the problem to be rooted in the fact that one of the intake vents is on the bottom of the laptop. Now the laptop, if used on a flat firm surface, will sit up and the vent will be exposed to air. However if you use it on any soft surface like a couch or a bed, its likely that the units intake air vent will be blocked, and the system temperatures will go up and become a problem. With that said, I experienced this problem on both soft (couch/bed) and hard (desk) surfaces, although it happened more often on the soft surfaces.

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Page 6 of 9

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Page 1: Introduction
Page 2: First Looks
Page 3: Taking a Closer Look
Page 4: Bundled Software
Page 5: Testing: Hardware & Software
Page 6: Testing: Temperature
Page 7: Testing: Performance
Page 8: Testing: Battery Life
Page 9: Conclusion

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4 User Comments

1 - Posted by EmoMakesMeCry on December 6, 2006 - 1:43 am

pretty sweet notebook. the only problem i have with the sentia is it's keyboard. it just looks...i dunno...ugly? i can't put my finger on it.

anyways, any idea if y'all will be getting a thinkpad x60 for review? that'd be a pretty cool comparison. :)

2 - Posted by Nick on December 6, 2006 - 12:30 pm

No way would i get a notebook that shuts off under full load due to thermal throttling. That just screams poor design. Im really surprised such a problem could make it through testing unnoticed. They make test chambers specifically for rooting out these types of failures and it would surprise me greatly if alienware didnt employ them during design, testing and production.

3 - Posted by Kurtis on December 6, 2006 - 4:47 pm

I was quite surprised myself... Oddly enough, it doesn't crash under loops of 3DMark, which is what they use for stability testing. But it does crash under the heavy CPU load of Orthos (and HL2, coincidentally).

4 - Posted by Anthony on December 6, 2006 - 4:50 pm

Indeed, and its not like my room is that hot (76-78F). But two laptops later I could provoke both into shutting down while running Orthos.

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