Alienware Aurora R7 really bad heating issues

[boey]

So, I have an Alienware Aurora R7. I noticed the i5-8400 inside was idling at around 60C and gpu idling around 50C. Under load, the cpu would often go above 80 and sometimes 90C, while the GPU(which I did not overclock) would go above 70C(ambient temperature is constantly 30-35C). I opened my case after a while and noticed that it was using MSI Aero GTX 1070 which has blower style cooler. Also, the PSU was covering the CPU fan(stock intel heatsink) and there was only a few small holes for hot air to escape from area around the heatsink. What would be my best choice to fix this issue? Due to the design of the case, I do not have much clearance for a large CPU heatsink like the Noctua NH D-15, while there is nowhere to mount a case fan for watercooling. (Pictures below were found online, but the case is exactly the same as mine.)

Youtube video showing the case of Alienware Aurora R6, which I think is exactly the same as mine. -> 

[Senzelian]

I'd get a new case as soon as the warranty period is over.
Cases like this one are simply badly designed and there isn't much you can do about that other than to regularly clean them.

[boey]

1 minute ago, Senzelian said:

I'd get a new case as soon as the warranty period is over.
Cases like this one are simply badly designed and there isn't much you can do about that other than to regularly clean them.

Any suggestions for a new case and cooler for the CPU?

[seon123]

Those temps are fine, especially considering the high ambient temperature. 

The CPU cooler does not look like the stock Intel one. It has a different mounting mechanism and a different fan. 

[Senzelian]

Just now, _d0nut said:

Any suggestions for a new case and cooler for the CPU?

There are a lot of nice cases. Really depends on what you are looking for.

But generally I'd look at budget options from Fractal Design, Corsair, Phanteks and NZXT.

Noctua coolers are obviously very good, but I like to use be Quiet coolers whenever possible.

 

If you get a new case, make sure that your current motherboard and PSU are compatible.
The both need to support the ATX formfactor.

[boey]

Just now, seon123 said:

Those temps are fine, especially considering the high ambient temperature. 

The CPU cooler does not look like the stock Intel one. It has a different mounting mechanism and a different fan. 

The picture does not show the stock Intel cooler. In my region I only had the choice of stock Intel heatsink or water cooling, which I did not want to pay for at that time. My cpu is currently being cooled by the stock intel heatsink(the one with the ugly intel sticker on the fan and the ugly ketchup and mustard cables)

[boey]

4 minutes ago, Senzelian said:

There are a lot of nice cases. Really depends on what you are looking for.

But generally I'd look at budget options from Fractal Design, Corsair, Phanteks and NZXT.

Noctua coolers are obviously very good, but I like to use be Quiet coolers whenever possible.

 

If you get a new case, make sure that your current motherboard and PSU are compatible.
The both need to support the ATX formfactor.

Im looking to upgrade my CPU to either a Ryzen 7 2700X(and a fitting motherboard) or a i9-9900k/i7-9700k. Do you think watercooling would be necessary for quiet cooling since I’m planning to do moderate overclocking?

[Senzelian]

6 minutes ago, _d0nut said:

Im looking to upgrade my CPU to either a Ryzen 7 2700X(and a fitting motherboard) or a i9-9900k/i7-9700k. Do you think watercooling would be necessary for quiet cooling since I’m planning to do moderate overclocking?

No, definitly not necessary.
I'd just go with a really nice large air cooler and two bequiet Silent Wings 3 fans.

 

An air cooled GPU on the other hand will definitly be a little noisier, but should be fine in a quiet case like the Fractal Design Define R5

[boey]

2 hours ago, Senzelian said:

I'd get a new case as soon as the warranty period is over.
Cases like this one are simply badly designed and there isn't much you can do about that other than to regularly clean them.

 

2 hours ago, seon123 said:

Those temps are fine, especially considering the high ambient temperature. 

The CPU cooler does not look like the stock Intel one. It has a different mounting mechanism and a different fan. 

I found out that my GPU's temp limit was set at 83 and the fan was only at 43%. I managed to increase the temp limit to 90C and keep the fan at 100%. Now the gpu does not thermal throttle and it got 100 more points on unigine heaven. Increasing temp limit(which increases power limit) and increasing fan speed to stay at 100% won't do any harm right?

[Senzelian]

2 minutes ago, _d0nut said:

 

I found out that my GPU's temp limit was set at 83 and the fan was only at 43%. I managed to increase the temp limit to 90C and keep the fan at 100%. Now the gpu does not thermal throttle and it got 100 more points on unigine heaven. Increasing temp limit(which increases power limit) and increasing fan speed to stay at 100% won't do any harm right?

Might not be the best idea to leave the fan at 100%. The bearing might wear out faster.

Powerlimit is fine tho!

[EsaT]

10 hours ago, _d0nut said:

 I opened my case after a while and noticed that it was using MSI Aero GTX 1070 which has blower style cooler.

You should be thankful for that.

With non-reference cooler just circulating heat around that PC would be getting fried to dead in such total garbage case.

They just slapped fancy logos and bling bling lights to it.

It simply isn't fit for anything but light use (web surfing/word processing) PC.

 

 

10 hours ago, _d0nut said:

Im looking to upgrade my CPU to either a Ryzen 7 2700X(and a fitting motherboard) or a i9-9900k/i7-9700k. Do you think watercooling would be necessary for quiet cooling since I’m planning to do moderate overclocking?

Those 8 core rehashes of Sky Lake are going to be such high power consumption CPUs, that suspect likely cheap or at least cheapish motherboard isn't good for them...

Even for defaults.

Assuming motherboad is standard model and gets BIOS upgrade.

[aezakmi]

1 hour ago, EsaT said:

They just slapped fancy logos and bling bling lights to it.

Alienware in a nutshell, users care about the looks, I mean if you designed a case with a rear spoiler just like a car users would think it's faster just because of that lmao

[boey]

16 hours ago, aezakmi said:

Alienware in a nutshell, users care about the looks, I mean if you designed a case with a rear spoiler just like a car users would think it's faster just because of that lmao

The specs looked pretty worth for the price(for a prebuilt since at that point in time when I bought it I didn't know how to build my own PC).

I paid the equivalent of $1160 USD, and got

Z370 Mobo

i5-8400

GTX 1070

8GB DDR4 @ 2666

470W PSU

1TB 7200rpm HDD

16GB Intel Optane Memory

 

Also, the case looks really ugly imo. If they wanted to go for looks a normal case with tempered glass and a solid colour throughout the insides would look better than this grey thing

 

[boey]

On 13/08/2018 at 7:35 PM, Senzelian said:

There are a lot of nice cases. Really depends on what you are looking for.

But generally I'd look at budget options from Fractal Design, Corsair, Phanteks and NZXT.

Noctua coolers are obviously very good, but I like to use be Quiet coolers whenever possible.

 

If you get a new case, make sure that your current motherboard and PSU are compatible.
The both need to support the ATX formfactor.

Do you think a Noctua NH L9i would be good? It looks like it could fit very well https://noctua.at/en/nh-l9i

[Senzelian]

4 hours ago, _d0nut said:

Do you think a Noctua NH L9i would be good? It looks like it could fit very well https://noctua.at/en/nh-l9i

It's an excellent cooler, but if it really lowers the temperatures by much is questionable.

[boey]

14 hours ago, Senzelian said:

It's an excellent cooler, but if it really lowers the temperatures by much is questionable.

Well I found out how to open the PSU bit covering the CPU and although the website said ‘Stock Intel Cooler’, it came with the one on the picture above, which according to my friend is the cooler they use for their old dell optiplex prebuilts. I’d assume those coolers are not meant for high temperatures and loads on the cpu so I would imagine the Noctua cooler could be a relatively cheap temporary fix until the warranty runs out and I can get a new case

[Senzelian]

3 hours ago, _d0nut said:

Well I found out how to open the PSU bit covering the CPU and although the website said ‘Stock Intel Cooler’, it came with the one on the picture above, which according to my friend is the cooler they use for their old dell optiplex prebuilts. I’d assume those coolers are not meant for high temperatures and loads on the cpu so I would imagine the Noctua cooler could be a relatively cheap temporary fix until the warranty runs out and I can get a new case

a cooler's ability to cool depends largely on its mass.
The noctua cooler might have a better fan and also a better fin design, but the mass shouldn't be much more.
That's why I think it won't necessarily fix the issue. Instead, I would reapply thermal paste and see if that fixes the issue, before buying a new CPU cooler.

[EsaT]

5 hours ago, Senzelian said:

a cooler's ability to cool depends largely on its mass.

Cooler's cooling ability depends on its ability to dissipate heat into air.

It would have to be multi-kilogram chunk of metal for heat capacity to be significant in any way.

(and once that big mass would heat up it would take long time to cool it)

[Gix7Fifty]

Interesting, the gpu  in the video is powered through the mobo on a 6-8 pin connector. Never seen that before.

[Senzelian]

13 hours ago, EsaT said:

Cooler's cooling ability depends on its ability to dissipate heat into air.

It would have to be multi-kilogram chunk of metal for heat capacity to be significant in any way.

(and once that big mass would heat up it would take long time to cool it)

The point is, that more mass helps to dissipate the heat and that you can judge a coolers cooling capacity roughly by its weight. 1kg of metal is going to do more than 1g of metal. 

[jake929]

I own an alienware aurora r7. My model has an i7 8700, and gtx1070 (upgrading to 2080 ti shortly). I am ruinning the stock AIO liquid cooling solution, and have noticed no issue with excessive heat on either my graphics card or cpu. everything has been fine in both idle and under load. I cam curious to see how the 2080 ti handles though.

[boey]

42 minutes ago, jake929 said:

I own an alienware aurora r7. My model has an i7 8700, and gtx1070 (upgrading to 2080 ti shortly). I am ruinning the stock AIO liquid cooling solution, and have noticed no issue with excessive heat on either my graphics card or cpu. everything has been fine in both idle and under load. I cam curious to see how the 2080 ti handles though.

Because you have an AIO on the CPU, which makes the CPU heat not affect the air inside the case. For me, my air cooler blasts hot air into the case which gets sucked up by my gpu, since airflow in the case is trash. Gonna upgrade in a month though.

[-rascal-]

2 hours ago, jake929 said:

I own an alienware aurora r7. My model has an i7 8700, and gtx1070 (upgrading to 2080 ti shortly). I am ruinning the stock AIO liquid cooling solution, and have noticed no issue with excessive heat on either my graphics card or cpu. everything has been fine in both idle and under load. I cam curious to see how the 2080 ti handles though.

 

Keep an eye out on the temperatures.

The RTX 2080 Ti will dump a bit more heat into the system compared to a GTX 1070.

Even the Aurora R7 has pretty bad overall system airflow, it could be a problem.

[boey]

On 12/21/2018 at 2:35 PM, -rascal- said:

 

Keep an eye out on the temperatures.

The RTX 2080 Ti will dump a bit more heat into the system compared to a GTX 1070.

Even the Aurora R7 has pretty bad overall system airflow, it could be a problem.

The 1070 is a blower design, so it dumps close to no heat into the system, whereas the 2080Ti is likely not gonna be a blower which would dump a lot more heat into the system, especially if it’s an overclocked high end card like the gaming x trio which has 6+8+8 power cables i think

[Tristerin]

(33-35c)91 - 95F ambient temp?  Jesus.

 

That is the first thing to fix if you want better thermals.  The air entering my case is 21c

 

On the bottom pic it looks like you could mount a 120mm AIO as top exhaust.  Since I see no other exhaust worthy ports on that case, is it using the top (I THINK I see a fan)