New laptop periods of high heat

I just bought a remanufactured Dell D630 laptop with W7 home 64.

I’m using this computer solely for audio recording and it seems to run fine on W7. I choose this computer because my audio interface is an Echo Mona and requires a pcmcia slot, no brand new computers have it and adapters have a high rate of failure.

When I’m recording I only have Vegas 9.0, Echo sound panel and Speed fan for temp monitoring running. Most of the time the CPU anywhere from 5 to 18% and a 46c temp. About every 10-15 min the CPU usage jumps up as high as 60% and temps as high as 80c in a min or 2 it drops back down to the mid 40s.

I turned off the wifi and nothing else is running. W7 must be doing something for a short period of time causing these jumps in CPU usage. I used to have some links to things you can turn of in XP that are not needed for audio recording.

Does anyone have any suggestions on how to set up W7 for audio recording?

I never monitored the temps in my laptops before but have determined that laptops can run 20 30 deg hotter than a desktop. My desktops run BD rebuilder and all cores are maxed at 100% and never gets above 60c.

Please change your print to white.

+1 to the cooler pad.
Given the laptop has just been reburbished I would hope inlet/outlet air slots are clean.
You don't appear to be doing CPU intensive tasks. I'm not a Speed Fan user but I wonder if it is performing some fan control??
You could try disabling speedfan and try some these popular temp monitoring problems:
Core Temp
Download Real Temp 3.70 | techPowerUp
http://openhardwaremonitor.org/
Then see if you observe the same temperature cycling.

I like Open Hardware Monitor since it monitors more system parameters.

Hi Datman,

'Winsat.exe' is a 'System Assessment Tool' in Windows and it runs a series of tests to rate your computer on a scale ranging from 1 to 5. It rates several subsets of your computer system including processor, memory, primary hard disk and graphics. If 'Winsat.exe' continues to consume majority of the system resources, you may 'disable' this task and change its 'triggers'.

To 'disable' a task that takes up high resources, you may follow these steps:
- Open 'Control Panel' > 'Administrative Tools' > Double click 'Task Scheduler' > Browse to Microsoft\Windows\Maintenance; and 'Disable WinSAT'
- Right click and 'disable WinSAT' task in 'task scheduler'
- You may also change its triggers; you may find the following 'web article' useful: Change an Existing Task
You may also refer to the images attached.

Hope this helps.

Hi Datman,

Glad that 'Winsat.exe' stays disabled; and the applications are now resulting into a nominal 'CPU usage' and an acceptable 'temperature' level. Thank you for confirming.

Do reply if you have any further questions; would be glad to assist.