OFFICIAL: Alienware M17x R3 / R4 - Owners Lounge

[link3rd]

Yes, those CPU temperatures are a bit high, especially if just during gaming, where typically it won't stress your CPU to anywhere near 100% utilisation, so I'm pretty sure it's just not pasted up well. I'd redo the pasting, and leave the CPU retention mod to further on down the road if you decide to do overclocking. If there's nothing wrong with your CPU heatsink, and you paste it up well, then you should be able to keep you CPU nice & cool while gaming without the CPU retention mod. Apparently with the CPU retention mod it can damage your chip if you screw down the screws too tight, so I'd leave that for now.

My CPU isn't overclocked, it's just been modded with Throttlestop to allow full turbo boost up to 56W without any time limit associated with it. Normally you can only get the full turbo for a short duration of time, but with the mod I've done it can run at 56W & full turbo forever. Temperatures less than 83 degC when running Prime95 for 10 minutes. During gaming I don't think you should see temperatures higher than the high 70's, low 80's on your CPU as a guesstimate, but google around for other M17xR3 2920XM users temperatures if you want to compare.

I'd repaste your CPU if I was you.

Ok, I think I pretty much gotten better at doing a paste job. I read that the thinner the layer, the better. Is that true? I pasted my GPU with Arctic Silver 5. I was thinking to use Arctic Silver again for the CPU as opposed to ICD 7. I remember doing the paste job on my other GPU before (the last time, remember? ) with ICD7. it was so coarse that it actually scratched the GPU die. (the metal plate that you have to apply the thermal compound on the VGA card itself). It looked like someone used sandpaper on it.

The paste job i did on my current card, I put a little dab of AS5 in the middle and took my metro card and spread it on the die. (as if I were buttering bread) It actually turned out to be too thin a layer, so i had to put a little more. I screwed it up and unscrewed and checked until I was satisfied. I don't know what that method is called. Do you know? I figure I'd do the same with my CPU. A thin layer if I'm not mistaken?

Ok, so the Heaven benchmark tool is for GPU temp testing and I assume that this Prime95 is better at CPU testing... I found a download for Prime95: Prime95 (64bit) - 25.11 Download - EXTREME Overclocking

Is that it or is it the wrong one that you have? I agree with you too. I think games wouldn't be CPU intensive. I actually used hwinfo to monitor if my CPU is throttling in the OSD during gaming. I remember it started throttling with BF4 single player.

[Robbo]

Here's the latest version of Prime95 from the creators website:

Free Software - GIMPS

Yes, ICD7 scratches GPU chips & heatsinks because it contains diamond, so acts like sandpaper! I don't think it's worth the damage.

You did the spread method on your GPU.

Yes, you want the thinnest possible layer of paste between the heatsink and the CPU or GPU, to give the highest rates of heat transfer. Arctic Silver 5 recommend the spread method for mobile Intel CPUs.

[Levan Shalamberidze]

Hey guys,

The problem I started experiencing yesterday is that when I play dota 2 and am (for some reason it happens always on this moment) defeating Roshan on Diretide, my laptop stops recognizing that the charger is plugged in.

This is the third time in 2 days that this happened, my laptop's been on whole day today - the issue doesnt seem to be there by itself. No, it doesn't happen on every Roshan encounter at DT, but I couldn't simulate this problem so far in other circumstances.

The first 2 times when this occured my battery drained to 5% in about 1 minute and laptop shut down!!! This last time though - just a regular non-recognizable charger followed by standard battery drain.

I couldn't solve the problem by rebooting, HOWEVER, a shut down and turning the laptop back on made it recognize that its plugged in.

I'm running a custom A12 bios made by TechInferno and a gtx 680m that I installed with modified drivers if this helps.

Hope someone can help me solve this, would greatly appreciate any tips!

Thanks

[fatkidbuu]

how do you measure your cpu cores

[Robbo]

how do you measure your cpu cores

Throttlestop / CPUz / HWMonitor

[Mike Buehl]

does anyone have an issue with the r4 idling at around 70-80c?

[Thomas Zumbrunnen]

does anyone have an issue with the r4 idling at around 70-80c?

My cpu is idling at 50c average.

[wtfrofl]

mine idles around 50c also.. reapplying thermal paste may help alittle

[gsx]

have the alienware m17xr3 for a 2 years now no problem since just upgraded my GPU to gtx 780m from ati radeon 6990m so happy now

[bradleyusm]

I just aquired a M17x R4 a few days ago. I am still trying to figure every thing out with the switchable graphics and such but it seems nice. I'm intrigued by you saying you upgraded your GPU to the 780m from your old card and may try to give that a shot once I get confident with taking it apart.

[shagrax]

my cpu and gpu are both around 50-60 celsius

[ElPako87]

Hi there, my r4 with 3630 and 7970m stay around 54 (cpu) and 56 (gpu), during normal tasks.

In gaming I have reached max 71° (cpu) and 67° (gpu). I'm planning to repaste with mx4 to see if the temps will lower further. Anyone used the mx4 for repasting the r4?

[Praetextus]

The temps for me are around 45-50 on iddle. Even after overclocking it in the Bios and with the programs it never reaches above 65.

[tudisimo]

I reapplied thermal paste and dropped 10c

[Praetextus]

I just finished installing my new Crucial SSD! I must say I am very please with what I am getting so far. It was actually pretty easy to do. I got mixed up in the boot settings and got a few scares but everything is installed and I just did a test. above 400mb read write and the computer started up in under 20 sec. It was around a minute before. The SSD is pretty inexpensive now so I would recommend it.

[Robbo]

I just finished installing my new Crucial SSD! I must say I am very please with what I am getting so far. It was actually pretty easy to do. I got mixed up in the boot settings and got a few scares but everything is installed and I just did a test. above 400mb read write and the computer started up in under 20 sec. It was around a minute before. The SSD is pretty inexpensive now so I would recommend it.

Good stuff! SSD's are great as a boot system drive, I'd find it hard to go back to HDD.

[ginger]

Have m17xr4 for 2 years now decided to replace my gtx660m to 7970m and nightmare begins, can't instal any drivers dell.nor amd while instaling goes to black screen and stuck or if it pass the driver instaling then freezes at windows boot logo. rly frustrated right now don't know what to do. went throu few fresh windows instals no different at all, and fn+f7 not work either if i do that i get black screen and beeps. any suggestions ?

[Pankas]

Trying to make 5 posts to get a11 unlocked bios, so hello everyone . Having weird problem, when while gaming i get black screen crash with sound in loop. tried testing everything, drivers updated and still same thing persists. Funny thing, same game does not crash with integrated intel hd4000 card, so i wana try to disable integrated card, and see if it might solve my problems. Thanks for having me on the forums

[Robbo]

Trying to make 5 posts to get a11 unlocked bios, so hello everyone . Having weird problem, when while gaming i get black screen crash with sound in loop. tried testing everything, drivers updated and still same thing persists. Funny thing, same game does not crash with integrated intel hd4000 card, so i wana try to disable integrated card, and see if it might solve my problems. Thanks for having me on the forums

I don't think disabling the intel GPU is going to prevent those crashes. To me it sounds like the card is unstable, if you're overclocking then remove the overclock & see if the problem persists. If you're not overclocking then your GPU might be dying. You could try underclocking your GPU (reducing it's frequencies - the opposite of overclocking) to see if you can gain some stability, which might prove the point that your GPU is dying. Check that GPU & CPU temperatures are OK too.

[Pankas]

Temperatures are stable at 56 degrees idle and 65-67 gaming. Yesterday i did ran integrated dell system check (ePSA), received message (Error code 2000-0122, validation 67532), which states it might be problem with motherboard, but asuming everything runs fine with integrated, i'm afraid you might be right about graphics card dying. Can i underclock with MSI afterburner or do i still need to do this from bios?

thanks in advance for your help

[Robbo]

Temperatures are stable at 56 degrees idle and 65-67 gaming. Yesterday i did ran integrated dell system check (ePSA), received message (Error code 2000-0122, validation 67532), which states it might be problem with motherboard, but asuming everything runs fine with integrated, i'm afraid you might be right about graphics card dying. Can i underclock with MSI afterburner or do i still need to do this from bios?

thanks in advance for your help

I don't know about MSI Afterburner. I'd try NVidia Inspector.

NVIDIA Inspector Download version 1.9.7.2

[Pankas]

Thanks Robo for the input,

Downloaded Nvidia inspector, but when i open .exe file all i can see is blank table, without any information in it. Does it work for AMD GPU's or i'm doing something wrong? Thanks again for you help.

Yea problem still there, MSI afterburner did not help with underclock, i want to try inspector next.

Have my wife's laptop with Nvidia 460m, so i might as well try to check for sure if my graphics card is at fault, just wondering if heatsink will be compatible with nvidia 460m, or i will need to do some modifications.

Thanks alot for your input guys.

[Robbo]

Thanks Robo for the input,

Downloaded Nvidia inspector, but when i open .exe file all i can see is blank table, without any information in it. Does it work for AMD GPU's or i'm doing something wrong? Thanks again for you help.

Yea problem still there, MSI afterburner did not help with underclock, i want to try inspector next.

Have my wife's laptop with Nvidia 460m, so i might as well try to check for sure if my graphics card is at fault, just wondering if heatsink will be compatible with nvidia 460m, or i will need to do some modifications.

Thanks alot for your input guys.

Haha, nope, won't work, I thought you had NVidia.

[Giddran]

Going to install a 680m in my r3, does the motherboard support it?

[Robbo]

Going to install a 680m in my r3, does the motherboard support it?

Yes, with some compromises. Here's a thread on it:

M17x r3 680M compatability - Page 103