[Alienware 17R4 / 15R3] - Disassembly + Repaste Guide + Results

Without

 

If i remember correctly ICD thermal paste is good for uneven heatsink as it is thick and will help with the gaps. But it also has bad review in terms of scratching the cpu die. But i would say that is a better option than putting a 0.5mm thermal pad on the HS..

 

Try -110 or -120mV.

 

Can someone share their TS undervolt settings? I seem to get random freezes whenever I restart or shutdown the laptop. I’m currently down to -70 mV from -80 mV. So far, it’s been good. I’ve done up to -150 mV before.

How conservative should the increments be when you undervolt? I was doing it by -5 mV.

Should I just reset the values to zero whenever Windows gets updated and needs to restart?

In any case, I’ve dropped both my idle temps down to 38~40°C after my latest repasting. What’s annoying is that the core temp differential seem to have increased where I’m hitting 78~81°C on cores 0 and 2 while cores 1 and 3 hover around 66~68°C.

 

Is it on FCU update?

 

Oh. Crap. That was the last update that froze upon restart. I forced the laptop to shutdown, turned it back on, and then restarted normally after it updated.

I’ve had to reduce my undervolt several times whenever a driver had to be updated.

I started at -150 mV, then -120 mV after I noticed the freezing. Went down to -100 mV for the BIOS update. I forgot what drivers I had to fix (other than the ****ty Realtek audio driver), but I had to reduce the value again to -80 mV. After it froze last night (regular browsing and watching some video files), I decided to reduce it to -70 mV.

After that, I did a repaste and repad (I’ll update with a diagram when I get home later) then did a quick temp check which is how I saw the initial idle and max temps I just listed above.

EDIT: I listed the pad changes and temperature readings in here.

 

Hi, just got the 17 R4 today
this test with stock speed ( no overclocking )


and these 2 tests on level 3 overclocking option, in Bios





Do you recommend repast? I DO not see any effect while gaming, NO lags and no freeze


thanks

 

Compare that with your MSI and you will see you need to repaste it for optimal performance and cooler temps. Check mark GPU stress test and you will find oth of them crossing 90C.

 

you are right, im am just afraid of taking the laptop apart, repasting the MSI was very easy. thank you for reply.

 

Then I think it will be relatively easier than MSI. Use service manual for 17 r4 and @iunlock disassembly guide. A word of advice Take it slow and make sure you have all tools. Use Plastic pry to remove wifi cable as in the video http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...5r3-disassembly-repaste-guide-results.797373/

 

I did the repaste today used coollaboratory liquid metal, thank you,
results with CPU performance mode ( Level 3 ) and fan performance mode OFF
Any comments or advices?

 

Looks great. With full fan speed you can reduce temps by 10-15C. Is it on stock thermal pads? If so, next time you do a repaste considering replacing thermal pads for reduced temps.

 

just adjusted the the 1mm pads to 1.5mm as shown here.

 

Great job on your repaste.

 

Use Throttlestop 8.48 (only use XTU to set the overrides) and HWinfo64 so we can see the VID or core voltage. Also what are you using to test those temps?
Try prime95 29.3, with FMA3 and AVX Disabled (read undoc.txt to find out how; you copy and paste 2 lines into local.txt). You should stay under 90C.

Remember to use 100% fan

 

thank you, you helped me doing this. thank you again

 

Do the temps on the 17r4 typically run hotter or cooler then the 15r3? Trying to decide if a 17r4 with a 1070 and 6700 might be more likely to run cooler then then a 15r3 with the same setup.

 

Yes 5-10C cooler.

 

Hi all! So a few months have passed and it seems that its time to give my 17 R4 a repaste. However, I wanna see if I can make it as cool as possible and if possible, the most quiet ever! My 17 R4 has an i7-7700HQ, 1070 .

So, I have checked online and was tempted to get the GTX 1080 heatsink, which I see has fatter heat pipes and I don't know if it is guaranteed to fit, although, there was a guy who discussed it on reddit and claimed it fitted perfectly and temps went down lower due to the better cooling capacity. https://www.reddit.com/r/Alienware/comments/5n79bo/swapped_my_gtx_1070_heatsink_with_1080/

I was thinking, what would be the result if I were to instead, use TG Conductaut, Fujipoly thermal pads, the 1080 heatsink (and a lil bit of custom modding if possible).

Has anyone here tried fitting the 1080 heatsink on the 1070 model?

Also, I have noticed iunlock putting a heatsink on the PCH. Is it necessary and also, whats the benefit of cooling it more?

 

Hello, I have a 7820k with a gtx 1079, since the purchase I was having thermal issues such as thermal throttling, so I opened a ticket at Dell with the evidence so they authorized a heatsink replacement, so after some days the technician came with the heatsink and for my surprise it was the gtx 1080, I also did a repasting with my thermal grizzle hydronaut(I removed all Dell thermal paste).

Before I was hitting 99 everytime without undervolting, now it does not go above 82-83 celsius playing games or running benchmarks.

Now I can do 5500 on TimeSpy and 12300 on FireStrike with the std profile.





Enviado do meu iPhone usando Tapatalk Pro

 

Wow!!! Awesome! I think I am gonna get one on eBay.

That plus, LM compound, Ho Ho this gonna be awesome

 

If you're travelling with the latop I'd say stick with Traditional paste than LM. If you can make a foam or barrier that prevents LM from leaking out then go ahead with LM, otherwise trad. paste will do.

 

Due to budget and safety, I am probably gonna go with CLU (C Liquid Ultra). Does CLU sustain better? Because, my laptop is in the bag and on the go occasionally, Thermal Grizzly C is out for me as I heard it can gunk out when the laptop is travelling.

I am trying* to make sure I get the utmost performance since its pricey to get a new heatsink :X

 

You can always ask Dell for a heatsink replacement.

 

I contacted them and they said change isn't needed if the heatsink is doing fine.

I am using the 1070 Heatsink with Cooler Master Thermal Compound (not sure exactly which one since it came from a liquid cooling radiator I used for a server build).

Temperatures at the moment reach 85 C on CPU and 70 for GPU when running Furmark CPU and GPU burner at the same time (full load stress)

No thermal throttling so far. Although, in real world usage, temps prob won't get that high for my usage yet :X

I just want me System silent and perform well with heat management, which is why I want to get the 1080 and LM compound. However, I had bad experience with CLU once when it dried out, which makes me wonder whether CLU is ok when the laptop is occasionally on the go, if not, do I really have to stick to normal thermal paste?

 

Will a 5mm heatsink work 100% fine for the PCH mod? It says ~4-5mm and I was only able to find 11x11x5mm heatsinks that would ship to me in the time I need it to.

 

R4?
No, shave it down or file it

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

 

Yeah, it's an R4. I absolutely have to file it down? Is it fairly easy to do and will 4mm be fine? I'm planning on using Kryonaut for the CPU, GPU, and PCH.

 

What is the thermal throttle point of the pch in alienware 17r4?

I noticed yesterday playing ac origins my pch hit 86c (the highest I've seen it). Usually it's in high 70s..

What are the symptoms of pch throttling ?

 

Sudden lags, decreased frame rates and non responsive apps/games.

 

Is there a tool to monitor pch throttling?

And do you know the throttle point for the a17 r4?

 

@VICKYGAMEBOY was saying with MEI 11.6 or 11.7 which is in newer AWs the PCH throttle point was increased from 85C to 90C. Just keep the BIOS, IRST, Intel HECI and Intel MEI drivers upto date.

 

Yes u can use HWINFO tool to monitor.. for ingame report Go to settings once in HWINFO, go to OSD RTSS tab, scroll down, ull have pch temp.. enable it.. it will showup in game, if ur using msi afterburner.. syptoms of PCH throttle is worse then ur core temp throttle, PCH throttle can cause ur other components to slow to the lowest possible speed, for example, ur cpu will go 800mhz nuts, ull have no cpu power to render, in that case GPU will be used at 50%.. and your sound card will have issues processing, NVMe drives will take hit due to natur of PCIe lanes being crippled.. im not sure about the thermal temps on R4, i dont own one, but for 15 R2, R1 systems its around 80-86, depending on firmware, BIOS, and ME drivers.. for heatsinks.. 15R1, 15R2 max height for pch heatsink 3MM.. or a custom made one like @judal57 did.. u can find lots of 3mm ultrathin ones on Ebay.. i got it from china.. i have like 20pcs.. no wonder desktop motherboards have such nice PCH designs.. big heatsinks with nice RGB lights.. alienware RND tested systems on 20c controlled room temp i gues, thinking PCH dont need any heatsink.. its finee.. lack of passion.. miss old alienware..

 

Hey, it's actually quite high and i believe it's around high 90s on the R3 and R4 (probably upped due to the inclusion of a Pascal GPU I guess). Highest mine was before mods was 96.5C. no problem in games or with throttling, I just didn't like seeing any chips temps that high.

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

 

Yeah I'm the same 86c seems on the high side to me. I experienced some choppy frames in ac origins, however cpu and gpu temps all seem ok.
86c pch was the highest I'd seen it.
Im wondering if the issue was with nvidia driver 388.xx as there seems to be issues with similar symptoms (choppy frames and lag).

I'm using an oldish bios S1.0.12_K1.0.8 as it seems to give the best performance for my model - a17r4 1080 4k 7820hk, haven't tried 1.2.0 yet though, maybe as some have suggested Dell have increased the throttle point of pch on later bios versions ...

 

I did a thermal repaste of my gpu and cpu. Put everything back together perfectly. Now my laptop won’t turn on. This is frustrating.

I used
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01A9KIGSI/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0007TOR08/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00004WCCL/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ZSJQLME/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ZSJRH22/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s02?ie=UTF8&psc=1

My ac adapter works. I tried disconnecting my battery and adapter then pressing the power button for 1 minute. It still didn’t work.

I don’t know what to do. I followed every step perfectly and all the cables are attached.

I followed https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nMud4ldFdWs

And this http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/alienware-17r4-15r3-disassembly-repaste-guide-results.797373/

I’ve google searched for a while, I would guess that my motherboard is fried, but I have no idea how. I was very careful in my approach to disassembling and repasting.

I even changed the garbage killer wifi card to intel. I wasn’t being careless.

When I try to turn on my laptop nothing happens but when I plug in the ac adapter, the power button lights up to the color I set it to.

It doesn’t actually turn on but when I press the power button again the light disappears and still nothing.

I live in New York City. Is there anyone from Alienware that can help me nearby?

 

Also I've already contacted Alienware support.

I opened up my laptop again to make sure all cables, ribbons, wires are attached properly.

It just sucks that I've spent a lot of money for the thermal repaste materials, new wifi card, & all day yesterday doing it.

Now this happens.

It's terrible you spend all this money for the laptop and you have to open it up yourself & spend more money just to have it functioning optimally.

 

Did you contact dell 1st to give them opportunity to fix whatever the issue is?
What is the issue, high temps? If so what temps are you getting and what model gpu do you have...

Have you repasted before ? I notice you have used liquid metal paste which is risky ..

 

They didn't seem to too high but I was getting 75c to 80ishc, the highest temp I've seen was 84c

My GPU is 1070

I contacted them about the killer wifi card & possible SSD upgrades, not the temps prior to repasting yesterday.

I haven't repasted before, but I took my time & I was meticulous in the process.

I wasn't seeing many people having problems repasting, I figured I would be no different if I was diligent.

I didn't anticipate this situation happening if I just followed the guides perfectly & took my time.

 

84c on the cpu? Is that the 7820hk? What temps on the the gpu?
Really none of those temps really needed a repaste.
I'd be inclined to try again but remove the liquid metal paste and use non conductive paste... preferably before a dell technician arrives.. I suspect they may replace the motherboard though

 

Yes 84c on the CPU 7820HK, GPU was averaging 79c usually.

I just wanted to my Laptop to perform optimally, lessen the noise from the fans, increase the lifespan of my laptop as a whole. That sure didn't work out.

Dell hasn't gotten back to me yet.

Would trying again actually work? if the motherboard is fried which I suspect, it seems like a lost cause.

I don't even want to look at my laptop right now. I spent 12-13 hours with it yesterday not gaming

Why wouldn't they replace my motherboard?


a rep in this video says repasting doesn't void warranty.

 

Gpu is high for a 1070 - but I would always get dell to fix 1st. I suspect the real issue will be the heatsink. Hmm, what site did you get that video off (what google search did you use), repasting laptops voids the warranty if things go wrong - it does in the uk.
I suspect your right the liquid metal may have fried the motherboard .. maybe... but if you have the time, I would try again and I'd get of the liquid metal paste and use non conductive

 

I do overclock so maybe that contributed a lot to the temps.

I got that video off of their Alienware youtube channel. I'm not sure what google search you're referring to I just randomly found that video along with many others before attempting to open up & repaste my laptop.

I'm in New York City so I don't know what the warranty difference is.

I don't see how liquid metal fried it as I taped it up well, And I didn't excessively put liquid metal on my heatsink or cpu & gpu.

Has anyone actually revived their laptop by removing the liquid metal? I don't have any other thermal paste but the liquid metal leftovers.

 

If you overclock the gpu then maybe 79c is ok, cpu temp is fine.
I think it would be useful to see if the liquid metal hasn't run- if not you may be ok - it might be a lose connector and unplugging all the connectors might do the trick - hopping!
I suspect alienware will send a tech to replace the motherboard though

 

I will check tomorrow, I really hate taking that tank of a laptop apart... sigh

There are no loose connectors, I made sure of that.

Speak of the devil, Alienware replied back to me they said it will cost me 269 dollars plus tax to send it in. With no guarantee of a fix..

I really like the laptop but things like this just make my blood boil. If you're going to charge people 2 grand+ for premium laptops then it should arrive to me basically perfect.

I shouldn't have to repaste & replace the wifi card myself.

 

Got the same conclusion with my current laptop. I've basically had my items ready for the repaste even before I got the laptop. I'm returning it tomorrow, and I'm hoping on getting a Clevo from HID this time.

 

I hear you, I hope you enjoy your new laptop.

Returning it is too late for me haha. Sometimes I wonder if would've just been better off with a Nintendo Switch. only 400$ with games & way less maintenance and headache.

Also I would have ordered my laptop from HID as well if knew about it 2 months ago.

 

Even if you *think* you have done a good job... You could have missed. See also MiSJAH's LM results.

 

I didn't over apply my liquid metal like Misjah & I applied electrical tape as necessary.

 

If you have done it properly... The machine should started up exactly as before you started re-paste the laptop!! LM can go everywhere when you paint Liquid metal... You don't always see it due the very small blobs.