I have the same model 15R (N5010).
Although it has good looks its a bunch of rubbish under the hood.
The answer to your question is:
NO ITS NOT NORMAL.
As the above users stated usually the reason could be from the overheating GFX which does tend to get overheated when you play 3D games. BUT, in the case of 15R, There are 2 Factual reasons for it over heating:
1. Its not the GFX directly overheating, but the low quality Samsung Hard Disk (
which you can see from many forums that its one of the least trusted Hard Disk brands) which overheats and passes on the heat directly to the GFX which is situated next to the HDD.
2. Unlike other laptops Dell 15R (manufactured by Quanta) seems to have deducted some parts from the body to make it cheaper (
like the HDD bay cover). Due to bad engineering the airflow is faulty and its not cooling the system as its supposed to.
Worse, due to the lack of drivers you are virtually stuck with Windows 7 64bit (32 bit works too). In most laptops you can control the fan speed enabling to make it work faster so that the system cools down (although noisy). But it seems its not possible to override it on 15R.
My advice: - Buy a laptop cooler which is like a plate placed under the case enabling it to get further airflow.
- Change the HDD to a more proper brand such as Seagate or Maxtor.
- Keep the HDD at least 40% empty.
- Defrag once a week.
- Do not use laptop on bed, or lap (so that the airflow intakes are not blocked).
- If you are using it on the table and not mobile for a long time, use it without the battery (remove it).
- Backup data regularly, because it will keep on crashing.
BTW my default idle values are:
CPU: 68C
GFX: 76C
GFX Load: 0%
HDD: 40C
Loaded Values without cooling pad:
CPU: 82C
GFX: 89C
GFX Load: 68% (while playing wow).
HDD: 55C
Loaded Values with cooling pad:
CPU: 61C
GFX: 68C
GFX Load: 68% (while playing wow).
HDD: 46C
If you dont want to fiddle with stuff like above, do yourself a favor and next time spend a bit more and get an HP Pavillion (which I certainly will) and save yourself from the headaches.