Laptop heat issue

[Khêll]

Hi Guys, I am new to this forum but i have been following Linus for quite a while now.

 

A few years ago, when i still was young and naive, i bought an Alienware M14X R2, which seemed like a good idea at the time, as i was travelling a lot and wanted to game anywhere i went.

 

It was only after buying my laptop, that i it became clear what a huge mistake i made.

 

Dells has included a GPU temperature throttle into their UEFI that, throttles everything down, when the GPU reaches 67°C.  

After over 2 years of the community complaining about this issue, they still haven't fixed anything.

 

Now that my laptop is over 2 years old, i start getting mayor problems because of this. My laptop throttles the GPU down to a mere 200 something mhz and makes gaming impossible.

 

I updated every driver and the UEFI, opened my laptop completely and made an entire cleanup of the fan and heatsinks and everything is clean and i can clearly feel the airflow underneath and behind my laptop. 

I make sure to have a 1-3 cm space between my laptop and my desk and still have this throttling problem.

 

Attached are some pictures of me stresstesting the gpu using MSI Kombustor 2.5, setting the Fanspeed to max with HWiNFO64 and monitoring everything with GPU-Z.

 

After doing a lot of research on the web, i found a "solution":

 

There is a bug in Nvidias Driverversion 331.65, that prevents the GPUs Boost technology, which weirdly prevents it from throttling. So my GPU wont reach its top speeds, but i can live with that, it's still better than not having a GPU at all.

 

The problem is, the GPU now works without any restrictions and when i stresstested it, i had to shut Kombustor down as the GPU reached 95°C.

After letting the GPU cool down a little, i started a game of Loadout and was amazed, i went from <10 FPS to over 120!!!!

But after 10 minutes, my PC shut down to prevent from overheating, so after restarting it, i manually set an FPS limit to 60 in the Nvidia drivers. 

 

Sadly, Alienware uses one single Heatpipe connecting the CPU and GPU, to a single Fan.

 

Is there a way to further cool the laptop? I already have a laptopstand with an integrated fan, but it didn't change anything, as the fan blows upwards and the integrated fan downwards, so i guess they block each others airflow.

Will repasting it do a big difference? As i never repasted anything i am a little affraid to do it the first time on a laptop.

 

I really would appreciate your help without the hate about buying an Alienware product, i regret it enough and won't do it anymore. 

 

Thanks a lot  Guys!

[D4RK]

could u post a picture of the bottom of the laptop and make sure u show the heat sink if u can.

[soup]

 If you have totally cleaned it as you say it is not a dust build up So maybe after two years it is your actual thermal paste that has dried up so needs replacing? Does your laptop have some sort of heat spreader/sink that can be removed, the top of the CPU cleaned, re pasted and the heat spreader/sink put back on?

[Khêll]

A photo of the bottom opend or closed?

 

Edit: Yes i could open it and remove the motherboard and the heatsink, but i have never done it before, but if you guys think its the only way, i will have to try it, it doesn't seem that difficult.

[D4RK]

A photo of the bottom opend or closed?

 

Edit: Yes i could open it and remove the motherboard and the heatsink, but i have never done it before, but if you guys think its the only way, i will have to try it, it doesn't seem that difficult.

do both, opened and closed, and take a close up to the heatsinks, then i can tell u how to open it as well.

[soup]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O07C0qyuBOk

 

This is an alienware 18 but should be similar enough to work from.

 

Lots of youtube videos on this subject if this seems a bit detailed for your needs

[Khêll]

yeah thanks a lot guys, you are awesome!

 

Here the picture of fan and heatsink with the bottom opened.

 

Dont worry about how to open the laptop, there are tons of videos about this on youtube, even from alienware themselves.

 

So i will need to repaste it after my exams, that's what i was afraid of, and that's why i aseked you here, to get an other opinion!

 

[D4RK]

i saw the heat sinks on google, and ur only solution is to repaste the laptop, my laptop cpu thermal paste needed to be changed just after 6 months, and its doing better now.

[Khêll]

Thanks a lot guys, i will repaste it in a month, after my exams. I will keep you updated on the difference it makes.

 

Linus was right, his community is awesome

[D4RK]

Thanks a lot guys, i will repaste it in a month, after my exams. I will keep you updated on the difference it makes.

 

Linus was right, his community is awesome

btw just a note, dont let the gpu run at over 88C, so u dont damage it.

[Khêll]

yeah i will limit the fps to the temperature and not to 60 fps, because some games run at lower fps and still overheat it

[soup]

<Old fogie mode>

 

Concentrate on revision for your exams rather than gaming.

 

</Old fogie mode>

[Khêll]

Open it, take the heatsink off, then:

-Remove the fan, clean the heatsink carefully with water

-Dry it with a haird dryer, don't hold it or you'll burn your fingers

-When going to put back use a good thermal paste (MX-4, NT-H1...), avoid conductive thermal pastes; newer laptop GPUs and CPUs doesn't have metalic IHS on them.

 

This is very effective... factory applied thermal pastes are shytto

 

 

USB cooling-bases ain't that good, since USB only provides 5 V and from 500 mA to 900-1000 mA so fans wouldn't spin that fast

 

btw just a note, dont let the gpu run at over 88C, so u dont damage it.

 

 

I repasted my laptop and cleaned the heatsink with water. now i am running kombustor at max 60°C without max fanspeed!!! 

 

It's amazing!

 

Thanks Guys!

[D4RK]

I repasted my laptop and cleaned the heatsink with water. now i am running kombustor at max 60°C without max fanspeed!!! 

 

It's amazing!

 

Thanks Guys!

great, i am glad i can be of help to you

[Khêll]

np, also what paste did you use?, it's good to know more pastes for replacements

 

i used the arctic cooling mx-4

 

there was also a shitload of stock paste on the cpu and gpu, like really a lot!, and it was all dried out and hard

[Khêll]

Oh the same as me...

yeah, they usually do this craps

Hey guys, 

 

i have a little question:

 

Can it be that the thermal paste takes a little time to settle? Because i have even better temps now than i had after booting my pc for the first time after the repaste. I now have idle temps of 33°C for my GPU and 42°C for my cpu.

 

I even overclocked my gpu to 969,1 mhz and it runs at 62° under full load.

 

I have now 133 constant fps playing LoL at max settings befor i had like 20-30

[Khêll]

Yes, depending on the type of paste it'd be 24-72 h (MX-4) or 1 week (Arctic silver 5)

 

Nice! I just don't get how computer manufacturers cant invest in higher grade thermal compound. I paid 10 CHF, or around 8,50EUR for 4g of MX-4 and i barely used anything and pasted CPU and GPU with it and can certainly paste at least 8 more things with it.

 

when buying a 1300 EURO Laptop, i would definitely pay 2-10 euros more if it had a way better compound.. they even could do profit on it.

 

i don't get it

[Khêll]

Manufacturing process depends a lot on machines (including thermal compund ), human work is just a bit of assembly and examination...

t

yeah, still the used thermal compound is just about cost reduction, or companies like arctic cooling dont want to sell big deals to dell or don have the capacities to sell them the quantities they need