# Oh, Dell, how your quality shines



## ArielMT (Apr 25, 2011)

This morning, a customer brought in a Dell Inspiron 560s, one of their current budget slim-tower designs, complaining that it just turns itself off after 15 minutes and won't turn on again.  It did it to us in the shop, though not at precisely 15 minutes.  We looked through the Windows 7 event log, and the only event recorded was Event ID 6008 when the system booted again.  We couldn't find a thing about it relevant.  We stagger our lunch breaks, so I decided I'd let it sit at the BIOS setup screen to isolate whether the problem was hardware or software.  About 14 minutes later, the fans rev up to full speed, then a minute later, bam, powered off.

Yup, it's a hardware problem, and it's heat-related.

Being a tiny shop, we can't stock the parts and tools needed to fix heat-related problems unless it's dirty fins or the like.  Having done nothing else and losing no work having it in our shop, we phone up the customer and give her a choice: let us try to fix the problem at our standard fee and without assurance (or ordering expensive Dell replacement parts), or pick up the PC knowing basically what's wrong and owing us nothing.  She opted for the latter, saying it was given to her by a tech-savvy daughter.

When she came for it, I picked it up, and then I tilted it from tower orientation to pizza box orientation.  (This model has little rubber feet on two sides of the case, allowing it to be used in either orientation.)  When I did, something rattled inside, making the distinctive noise a metal fin makes when struck, and it was loud.  We both wondered at that, for it's a noise a PC is never supposed to make.  She gave me permission to open the case (which we hadn't done), and when I slid the side/top panel off, there on the motherboard was a heat sink resting on its side, near the PCI-X16 slot.  Not far away was a surface-mounted chip die with evidence that something was mounted on it.

The northbridge heat sink had fallen off!  It had simply fallen off the now-exposed northbridge chip!

Nothing held the heat sink on but some sort of thermal glue compound, similar in principle to the thermal grease between the CPU and its heat sink assembly.  Nothing held it on but that, and it fell off simply by improper application at the Dell factory and rapid aging of the bond.

Thanks, Dell, for addressing the quality control problems your company has become infamous for!  Stay classy, Dell.


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## Runefox (Apr 25, 2011)

Does. Not. Surprise. At. All.


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## Unsilenced (Apr 26, 2011)

Fuck. I just bought a dell. Pretty sure it's the same type you're talking about. 

This should be fun.


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## LLiz (Apr 26, 2011)

You'll really love Dell when you have to have a notebook fan replaced, only to find out that it will take 3 weeks because they have to order the part in from Malaysia!


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## ArielMT (Apr 26, 2011)

It's been three years now, but I've had Dell cancel an order on me twice, both on the day the order was supposed to arrive, and both with the reason that somehow *I* canceled the order.  A replacement that was supposed to take only two days ended up taking a full month because of that.


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## CerbrusNL (Apr 26, 2011)

Just to play the devil's advocate, here; I've actually had an exceptionally good experience with dell:
I've had my Dimension E520 for little over 2 years, when my harddrive gave up on life. I called their helpdesk expecting little, since the warranty on the desktop had expired. How wrong I was. After some tests so they can confirm the harddrive's mortality, they replaced mine free of charge with a newer (Faster, same capacity) drive!
It was delivered withing a week. The only downside is that I had to return the old (broken) one. But they sent someone to pick it up, once again, free of charge.

Now, that drive shouldn't have died in the first place, but they handled it nicely.


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## ArielMT (Apr 26, 2011)

My main system is a Dell Inspiron 600m from 2005, and my parents both use Dell Studio (or Vostro) laptops less than two years old largely without issue, but all three of our Dells were ordered through the small business line, sparing us from most of the disposable quality the low-cost systems simply must have.


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## pitchblack (Apr 26, 2011)

ArielMT said:


> My main system is a Dell Inspiron 600m from 2005, and my parents both use Dell Studio (or Vostro) laptops less than two years old largely without issue, but all three of our Dells were ordered through the small business line, sparing us from most of the disposable quality the low-cost systems simply must have.


 
Yeah, Dell's small business stuff is generally pretty good. My family gets most of our computers that way, with only a few problems here and there. Their consumer lines, though... even the high end stuff (XPS, Alienware, etc.) is so rife with problems it amazes me that people buy anything from them anymore.


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## Plantar (Apr 26, 2011)

I've for 3 running Dell desktops, all running since 2002 -2004 until now. I've never had a problem with any of them, save for the time my bigger HDD died, so I replaced it with the original 40GB HDD.


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## FF_CCSa1F (Apr 26, 2011)

To be honest, I can't quite understand why you would diagnose it like that without even opening it first. Unless the customer specifically asks me not to, I tend to open all machines up anyhow and give them a puff of compressed air, just as a nice touch.

Anyhow, that is indeed quite sloppy on Dell's part. A very poor design decision.


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## Akau (Apr 26, 2011)

That's really a shame to hear. I have only owned 2 dells in my life, both Dimension series one being a 4300 and the other being a 4500. I bought the 4300 used and with no OS CD's and stuff like that and giving Dell the information I had they even knowing it was used sent me replacement discs for the COA on the side (Windows xp Home) which I thought was really nice. But I never had any problems with the systems, my guess though is that their products just aren't well made at all anymore ... UNLESS you probably buy their business products like their Optiplex and Precision series towers. 

Notice Dell gives the Inspiron towers something like a 1 year warranty and the Optiplex something like a 5 year warranty... I know which one I'd buy! As for the customer with the slim tower, I hope things work out for her.


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## Kihari (Apr 26, 2011)

Packard Bell, HP, Compaq (the real kind), Gateway, and Acer have all passed through my or my family's hands.

Never once a Dell, though.


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## FF_CCSa1F (Apr 26, 2011)

Kihari said:


> Compaq (the real kind)


 
Best computers ever conceived.


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## ArielMT (Apr 26, 2011)

FF_CCSa1F said:


> To be honest, I can't quite understand why you would diagnose it like that without even opening it first. Unless the customer specifically asks me not to, I tend to open all machines up anyhow and give them a puff of compressed air, just as a nice touch.



Normally, we do, especially for out-of-warranty and expanded PCs.  We're hesitant to open up in-warranty PCs for two reasons: First, we try to fix problems without jeopardizing the warranty (and OEMs still include tamper-evident seals on the main access panel even today) in case the customer needs to take advantage of it later; and second, the problems we fix are overwhelmingly software in cause.

Edit: Also, the inside of the PC was so clean that it would've passed a white glove inspection.



Akau said:


> As for the customer with the slim tower, I hope things work out for her.



As do I.  That was literally a jaw-dropping moment.



FF_CCSa1F said:


> Best computers ever conceived.


 
Shame about the company, though.  They have insisted that my Compaq Presario 1690 laptop was an HP Pavilion desktop ever since the merger.


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## Hir (Apr 26, 2011)

the heatsink just fell off? good grief, that's pathetic.


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## Lobar (Apr 26, 2011)

Their computers are trash, but I am loving my Ultrasharp monitor :3


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## ArielMT (Apr 26, 2011)

DarkNoctus said:


> the heatsink just fell off? good grief, that's pathetic.


 
You read that exactly right.  The heat sink managed to stay just barely on, resulting in the symptom, until I gently turned it to carry it out to the customer's car.  Then it fell off.


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## VoidBat (Apr 26, 2011)

I thought people had learned to avoid Dell by now, apparently not. 
Even a bootleg copy would probably run better then the original itself. :V


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## Iudicium_86 (Apr 26, 2011)

I have an Alienware (laptop), two years strong now with only one issue needing to be serviced. Even then it was due to a virus and got it taken care of in a day from a local shop (Support the lil' guys!<3). Even though owned by Dell, I think Alienware still operates separately. But either way, more of my friends have better experiences with Alienware than the straight Dell stuff.


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## Lobar (Apr 26, 2011)

Iudicium_86 said:


> I have an Alienware (laptop), two years strong now with only one issue needing to be serviced. Even then it was due to a virus and got it taken care of in a day from a local shop (Support the lil' guys!<3). Even though owned by Dell, I think Alienware still operates separately. But either way, more of my friends have better experiences with Alienware than the straight Dell stuff.


 
They also pay out the nose for it.


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## Ley (Apr 26, 2011)

Definitly not getting one.


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## Akau (Apr 26, 2011)

Iudicium_86 said:


> I have an Alienware (laptop), two years strong now with only one issue needing to be serviced. Even then it was due to a virus and got it taken care of in a day from a local shop (Support the lil' guys!<3). Even though owned by Dell, I think Alienware still operates separately. But either way, more of my friends have better experiences with Alienware than the straight Dell stuff.


 
I can probably attest to this, when I was really young I bought an Alienware desktop and it had -gasp- a whopping 2.2GHz Pentium 4 in it, and omg a Nvidia GeForce FX 5600 in it or something like that. I think I paid around $650-700 for it back in..2003? I still have the thing it's just that I don't use it very often because the fans are really loud in it, but it still does run (this is before Dell bought them I believe) Two friends of mine have the Dell XPS desktops ( XPS 720 I think? ) And they haven't had a single problem other than one friends PSU popped and Dell didn't replace it, but the thermaltake works alright that he put in there.


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## Ames (Apr 27, 2011)

Haha... Dell...

Thermal epoxying heatsinks directly to chips is a common practice, but usually not on big chips like the northbridge/southbridge.  I mostly see it for little things like graphics card memory.  Even so, the bond should not fail like that.  Sounds like they used some cheap-ass epoxy.  You could get some arctic silver thermal epoxy to fix it.  It's cheap, has excellent thermal conductivity, and pretty awesome bond strength.


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