Alienware 17 R5 - 880m over heating? or weak GPU fan? Both?

[MrJ]

Has anyone owning the new Alienware 17 (R5) noticed anything odd? like a burning hot GPU? or a drunk GPU fan? or perhaps the 880m and the fan are both drunk? haha don't mind me I'm just genuinely confused.

My current set up is and Alienware 17 (R5?) 2014 model with:

4910mq processor

880m Graphics

256 SSD + 1TB HDD

32GB ram

120hz screen

Windows 8.1 + Classic Shell

Fully updated including the A12 bios.

I'm having an issue, to start off, the GPU fan.

The GPU fan in the R5 does not seem to spin fast enough to keep the GPU cool, The fan will kick in around 65-70C (2400RPM) and it will stay at that level untill 75-80c (3200-3400RPM). The fan will not even spin faster the moment the GPU temp slowly creeps *over* 90c. I'm not sure what’s going on there. I have tried modifying the Fan speed with Hwinfo64 and I managed to push the GPU fan RPM no higher than 3400. @3400rpm the fan is slightly audible. However at a mere 3400rpm the temps still creep right upto 90c. I find this very strange, since my other AW m17x R4 with an OC 780m (Thank you Slv!) runs stable and much cooler (maximum peak 87c in summer) and the R4 GPU fan is quite audible spinning @4600RPM. The new Alienware R5 models are meant to have better cooling, well that’s what was advertised… So something is not right here……

This GPU fan does not help the 880m, this GPU throttles like crazy with the frame rate drops all over the place, and this card heats up very quickly. Using monitoring software like NVidia inspector reveals the huge drops in frequency ranges. The latest nvidia driver didn’t help much either, thanks Nvidia. The 880m is an obvious rebrand but dayum does this card have serious issues. There is no issues with the thermal paste or the thermal pads, everything is good and seated in well. So yeah, this is an interesting thing… did I mention its winter over here in AUS? something is definitely up with the default automatic fan settings along with the 880m’s crazy throttling.

Here are some of my questions:

Does anyone have similar issues to me with the new Alienware m17 R5? Is this a common issue with the R5 GPU fans?

Is there any way to unlock the GPU fan controls to push the GPU fan further? Or is the GPU fan a downgrade from previous models?

And is there a way to tame the 880m? perhaps maybe an undervolted Rom?

Feel free to ask me for more info if I have left anything out. Thanks in advanced guys!

[kamlesh]

Has anyone owning the new Alienware 17 (R5) noticed anything odd? like a burning hot GPU? or a drunk GPU fan? or perhaps the 880m and the fan are both drunk? haha don't mind me I'm just genuinely confused.

My current set up is and Alienware 17 (R5?) 2014 model with:

4910mq processor

880m Graphics

256 SSD + 1TB HDD

32GB ram

120hz screen

Windows 8.1 + Classic Shell

Fully updated including the A12 bios.

I'm having an issue, to start off, the GPU fan.

The GPU fan in the R5 does not seem to spin fast enough to keep the GPU cool, The fan will kick in around 65-70C (2400RPM) and it will stay at that level untill 75-80c (3200-3400RPM). The fan will not even spin faster the moment the GPU temp slowly creeps *over* 90c. I'm not sure what’s going on there. I have tried modifying the Fan speed with Hwinfo64 and I managed to push the GPU fan RPM no higher than 3400. @3400rpm the fan is slightly audible. However at a mere 3400rpm the temps still creep right upto 90c. I find this very strange, since my other AW m17x R4 with an OC 780m (Thank you Slv!) runs stable and much cooler (maximum peak 87c in summer) and the R4 GPU fan is quite audible spinning @4600RPM. The new Alienware R5 models are meant to have better cooling, well that’s what was advertised… So something is not right here……

This GPU fan does not help the 880m, this GPU throttles like crazy with the frame rate drops all over the place, and this card heats up very quickly. Using monitoring software like NVidia inspector reveals the huge drops in frequency ranges. The latest nvidia driver didn’t help much either, thanks Nvidia. The 880m is an obvious rebrand but dayum does this card have serious issues. There is no issues with the thermal paste or the thermal pads, everything is good and seated in well. So yeah, this is an interesting thing… did I mention its winter over here in AUS? something is definitely up with the default automatic fan settings along with the 880m’s crazy throttling.

Here are some of my questions:

Does anyone have similar issues to me with the new Alienware m17 R5? Is this a common issue with the R5 GPU fans?

Is there any way to unlock the GPU fan controls to push the GPU fan further? Or is the GPU fan a downgrade from previous models?

And is there a way to tame the 880m? perhaps maybe an undervolted Rom?

Feel free to ask me for more info if I have left anything out. Thanks in advanced guys!

Got the same problem man donno what to do had tough time convincing my parents to get this beast Alienware 17 with 880M and its running on 94c on watchdogs hope there will be a fix for this and dont worry there are lot others with the same problem all we can do is wait for a fix .

• 
  

[MrJ]

Got the same problem man donno what to do had tough time convincing my parents to get this beast Alienware 17 with 880M and its running on 94c on watchdogs hope there will be a fix for this and dont worry there are lot others with the same problem all we can do is wait for a fix .

Thanks for the reply Kamlesh, good to know its not just me!, I had some trouble finding people with a similar situation to me. So far I have had no luck on finding a way to push the GPU fan rpm's above 3400 :\, If anyone els knows anything please do share.

[mptjimmy]

have you guys tried a repaste yet?

Thanks for the reply Kamlesh, good to know its not just me!, I had some trouble finding people with a similar situation to me. So far I have had no luck on finding a way to push the GPU fan rpm's above 3400 :\, If anyone els knows anything please do share.

[MrJ]

have you guys tried a repaste yet?

Thanks for the reply mptjimmy, A repaste didn't fix the issue in my case, I'm leaning more confident towards the GPU fan since it does not spin over 3400rpm's to effectively flush the heat out. For example my old m17x R4 with an overclocked 780m the GPU fan spins up to 4700rpm's the moment the temps hit around 75-85 which quickly stabilizes the temps or drops them down. My newer AW 17's GPU fan doesn't seem to flinch when the temps topple over 90 eeeekkk

---- Edit ----

For those who like photos! - I ran a test with fur-mark and took 2 sneaky snapshots of the evidence. It has to be something wrong with the GPU fan or the fan controller. Take a look:

*photos cropped due to 800x800 restriction*

[kamlesh]

Guys so i contacted Nvidea regarding the heating issue and this is what they said [ This is Shreyas, assisting you with the issue that you are experiencing.

I understand from your email that you are facing overheating issues with the card. I apologize for the inconvenience.

I am sorry to hear this, however we do not have any users/customer directly report the issue to NVIDIA. In forums I see many users have posted, however no user has posted it to us.

We only provide the basic chipset for the OEM's, the cards are then customized and then installed on laptops. Hence we do not have much control over the manufacturing and assembling the GPU's in the laptops.

BIOS Is not provided by NVIDIA it is provided only by Dell/alien ware. Hence you would need to directly contact them for the update.

To assist you better please update me with the following details:]

I thought that Nvidia is the one to be blamed but they are blaming the manufacturer in this case my case thats Alienware/Dell and i wonder why dint anyone reported Nvidia if you guys are suffering for these problem.

Guys you can also follow up to the below threads:-

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/757508-pidge-nvidia-has-asked-user-experiencing-problems-880m-list-them-here-8.html

http://na.alienwarearena.com/forums/thread/75914/hardware-software/nvidea-880m-over-heating

[cammac66]

Is it possible to make a new fan profile for the GPU using MSI afterburner/HWiNFO?

[rewben]

i guess aw17 is better with 780m. perhaps with enough rants they will push a new bios update with the right fan profiles.

[Russvox]

I have the same throttling issue but I have some bad news, according to MSI my 880m never goes over 61 degrees, but still throttles like crazy. I was just about to start a thread to see if anyone knew better clock settings to reduce this.