I've got a Dell Inspiron 17 5000-series laptop. I bought it three and a half years ago. It's a real gem. 32GB RAM, Core i7 8th gen, I TB SSD, runs like a top. The laptop sits on a cooling pad but I don't use the fans (I can't even find the power supply for it). I use the pad as a pedestal to keep the bottom of the laptop elevated. So, the cooling vents are not blocked.

For the past week or so, I've been getting this faint-to-moderate "electrical" smell (intermittently), like something is too hot. It might be something else in the room. There's a 20+ year old ceiling fan that may be getting ready to give up the ghost, and I am on a couple of meds which seem to have altered my sense of smell a bit. Thing is, I only get it in front of my laptop.

I installed a couple of CPU monitors- HWMonitor and Core Temp, mainly running HWMonitor. I get spikes just above 200 degrees Fahrenheit, although for the most part all four cores run between 98 and about 150 degrees.

It's quite possible- since I've never bothered to monitor CPU temp, that this laptop has always run with these core temps. I have never had a thermal shutdown.

I'm wondering if the thermal paste needs to be renewed. I pulled up the service manual online, and yes, I suppose I could get the optical drive out myself, and yes, I suppose I could remove the 18 or 20 screws holding the baseplate on, and remove the heatsink, but there's a good repair shop just up the street and I am inclined to let them do it.

If I've not had a thermal shutdown, should I be concerned about this? Again, having never before monitored the CPU temp of this laptop, I don't have a reference point. I suppose she could have just picked up some fine dust that's gotten into the case. What do you think? If it was the thermal paste, wouldn't it run hot consistently?

I would think that it's possibly pulled in some dust, or the internal fans might have slowed increasing temps.

We have a local shop up here that offers a "cleaning service", where they perform a baseline, then they open the case to remove any dust, lubricate/replace fans, and check temps again when done.
Not terribly expensive, and it does keep things a lot cooler in the laptop. Maybe a local shop offers the same down there?

The thing is, I have all sorts of stuff I'd have to remove from the latop- all sorts of stuff to do with the forum, a decade worth of email, passwords, lots of stuff. Kind of a pain.

The assumption, of course, is that techs are curious. Perhaps they are not, but all the pics of guns on here, and everything else, I wouldn't feel comfortable unless I handed them a laptop with all my stuff removed.

Do you have an air compressor or cans of compressed air? You could blow it out yourself as a first step. Then monitor the temp as you use it.

Mine is set up on a cooling pad like your's for elevation, I don't know where the power cord is for it. Every few months, I need to get some compressed air and blow out the vents and the fans (I have multiple cats and a husky so FUR is life). So it could be the fans. If you rule out the fans, check your battery for bulging?

No bulging, but the compressed air is worth a try.

My son has a 17-5000 from 2016 that had the same smell and it was the battery getting swollen. Something about gas escaping so I got him a new battery. My 15-5000 from 2018 is still running well. Just the fur problem slows the fan down when it gets clogged and it also emits that strange smell.

You can pull the drive. They can (and often have) a LINUX imaged hard drive or they can use a bootable CD/DVD or USB imaged to run any diags.

The CPU(s) have copper heatsink with fans (copper base on the CPU and a "tube" to the heat sink at the fan), and the fan's can loose efficiency and not spin fast enough, as well as dust build up, and as you suspect, (not as likely) possible separation of a good bond of the heat sink conductive grease.

Or the battery as Chowser stated.

The drive will be under a small access panel under the battery. Remove battery, lift the cover, and remove the retaining screw and slid the drive/caddy left and out it comes.

I don't think thermal paste would get ruined after 3.5 years. There has got to be normal operating temperature specs listed for that processor, I would check that before disassembling anything. 200 degrees Fahrenheit sounds really high to me though.

Do you feel the fan is working? My laptop's fan died once and then it would shut down regularly. I understand that hasn't happened to yours yet but it would explain the increase in temp more than the thermal paste going bad after 3.5 years.

I would hit it with some compressed air and see how dirty it is. That could cause temp spikes.

Even if you don’t take it to a shop, you should back up all that data to an external drive.

There’s definitely a better than average chance that the fan is getting clogged with dust.

https://www.reddit.com/r/intel...n_about_temperature/

This says under 100 C is within spec.

100 Centigrade is 212 Fahrenheit. I haven't hit that.

The last post says, basically, it's an old and tired question.

Then again, it's reddit, so...

The things is, where is this freaking smell coming from? With these meds, it may be coming from my own nose or brain.

Just now:

First column shows current temp. Second column shows the minimum temp within the given measurement interval. Third column shows the maximum temp registered during the measurement interval.

Intel CPUs begin to thermal throttle at 95C. That means the chip will slow itself down to try to protect itself from melting down.


That laptop will have a fan of its own. at 90C it should be ripping pretty good and you should be able to hear it. If it's not running, there's your problem, failed fan. Not a difficult repair. Also, as stated above, if the heat sink is clogged up (cat dander is the worst) the heat sink and fan can't do their job.

My dell of similar vintage kicks the fan on at around 75C (167 F) and it quickly drops the temp down into the mid 50s under a light gaming or heavy web browsing load. With 0 load on the CPU, its sitting at 45C (113f) right now in my 85 degree shop.

The other thing I would have you do is right click the taskbar and select task manager. Then click the performance tab and see what your CPU utilization % is. If it's pegged out to 100% you've got a rogue thread that's running the in an infinite loop heating it up. If this is the case you can click the processes tab and see which task is chewing up your CPU cycles. You can the click on it and click on end task to stop it.

My suspicion is that it's a failed cooling fan in the laptop though.

When I was on the school board, we had our IT guys blow out all of the computers with compressed air to clean out the dust and crap. This is especially needed if the computer sits on the floor. I always blew out my PC annually. It ran good right up to the time it quite. About 10 years.

Computers don't really have "thermal shutdowns" unless something catastrophic happens. What you get is thermal "throttling". Your max processor speed gets capped to allow the cooling to catch up.

Even healthy laptops encounter throttling--most laptops are spec'd with CPUs that are intended only to run in short bursts at max power. Unless gaming or doing a video render, most people would not notice the thermal throttling.

I'm a proponent of opening new laptops and redoing the thermal paste from the get go.

DO NOT RUN COMPRESSED AIR through you fans without preventing the fans themselves from spinning. If you don’t, then the fans will spin much faster than they are design to and you’ll ruin the bearings.

Use the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility from, you guessed it, Intel’s website to record a log of various data including thermal throttling, power limit throttling, core temps, etc.

If it is thermal throttling, then repasting may help. I’d find a disassembly video online and watch it a few times. I’ve had to repaste a couple laptops after about three years and to get the temps back down.

Another thing you can try is vacuuming rather than blowing air in.

The idea is to remove the dust.

If you have a small vacuum cleaner, you can make it more efficient for this by putting tape over the tube nozzle so it is more of a narrow slot if you don't have a wand.


If that doesn't help you can reverse the hose and use it to blow air through.

I vacuum my laptops out when they start running hot.

quote:

Originally posted by sig2392:
Another thing you can try is vacuuming rather than blowing air in.

The idea is to remove the dust.

If you have a small vacuum cleaner, you can make it more efficient for this by putting tape over the tube nozzle so it is more of a narrow slot if you don't have a wand.


If that doesn't help you can reverse the hose and use it to blow air through.

I vacuum my laptops out when they start running hot.

This was going to be my suggestion also. I have vaccuumed out many computing devices. And it is amazing how much dust, lint and other crap is inside the boxes.

Small comment. Everything so far assumes the smell is coming from the laptop. You mentioned a ceiling fan. Smell around the base of the laptop. That is take it off the base and smell it’s butt (the air vents, etc). The smell could be coming from something other than the laptop. Maybe not, but a simple check.

From the basic facts so far it doesn't seem like this at a critical level.

Checking the fan for running including the speeds and blowing out the dust would be a first stop.
New CPU thermal paste could be beneficial.

Before going to Thermal Paste I would do a stress test from Passmark either the Burn-In or the Performance Test.
Then monitor the temps.
I use Core Temp.

Note: you may be able to adjust the CPU fan speed in the BIOS or other utilities.

35 to 60 Centigrade > is all good
Much higher > I have concerns.