Alienware 17 R4 lightly artifacting

[spiqeddy]

I got an Alienware 17 R4 with a I7 7700hq + GTX 1070 in trade for my desktop recently.  Ever since I have had its been fairly unstable,  stuttering,  micro freezes,  a few lockups and resets early on,  and even an occasional artifact or two.  I had a small artifact issue appear while playing Vampyr where about 3 times during the couple days that I played it a quick triagle would show up on a characters forehead for a brief second.  Only happend about 3 times in the entire I played from start of the game to end so I didn't think too much of it,  but it was horribly clunky thoughout the whole game,  where it would be 70+FPS and have stutters down the 30s constantly.

 

I had the same issue while testing the laptop with Assasins creed origins,  again only once or twice did a see a small artifact appear during the entire time I tested it, and not during the same session(same as Vampyr).

 

Now I am trying to play Control on this laptop and this is what I have found,  while having both Global Reflections and ScreenSpace Reflections enabled at the same time I get white artifacts over any surface with heavy reflections in the attached screenshot,  and on surfaces with a lot of fine lines(like fences or grates),  I get what is seen in the second attached screenshot while moving(only while moving).

 

I have already removed the heat sync and repasted, and tried to make sure the old thermal pads are making good cantact with the VRMS and VRAM(after doing this it took me about a week to figure out why it would not POST and boot properly after initial bios setup,  turned out to be the Power button ribbon cable is slightly faulty and requires being held in the right positon to function).  The 2 VRAM chips on the right side of the GPU are still not getting good contact with the heatsink and thermal pads though,  since half of the one of the chips and the second chip require contact with the heatpipes witch sit about 1mm higher above the thermal pad.

 

Anyways I already ordered a 100mmX100mm sheet of new thermal pad that is 0.5mm thick and power button board/cable.

 

Since the artifacts are not happening much yet(only very rare occurance in most games so far) and in control thats the biggest issue i have seen yet,  do you think the issue is just being caused due to improper contact with the heatsink and not permanent damage yet?

 

Just hoping its not a huge issue yet while I wait on shipping.

 

I am really hoping fresh thermal pads with proper contact between the chips and the heatsink will resolve this,  because it has been running like this for the life of the laptop.  The heatsink has never been removed before and the thermal pads had several gaps where little to no contact was being made whatsoever.