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

I will wait for the answer from AW. I hope they will consider to replace the heat sink and fans assembly. Otherwise I will buy more pads and Conductonaut to sort it out myself.
At the moment since the laptop is still under warranty I don't want to do a thing.

 

I dont recommend going with conductonaut if the heatsink itself isnt making proper contact. In general the laptop should perform with tradfitional paste. Not only with liquid metal.

 

But if AW refuses to replace the heatsink/fans what other option do I have?

 

Honestly, replacing the heat-sink by DELL is basically pretty low 50/50 chance that your issue will get re-solved. (+ risk of someone else basically touching your computer)

Next time you plan to re-pad or re-paste (only with Gelid pads already on) it is important that your laptop is 5 hours cold, otherwise the pads will break when removing heat-sink thanx @rinneh.


On the other hand, re-pasting and re-padding yourself is sure benefit, the only risk is that you MAYBE will have to try more times to get it right.

+++

The best results I got was removing all pads (they were stock Dell's), placing heat-sink back unscrewed, checking for proper contact between dies and heat-sink by pushing and/or finger-tapping on heat-sink above dies = no metal-to -metal sound means contact is good. If not, I twisted slightly heat-sink (all X,Y,Z axis) and get it right. Simply put, when you put heat-sink on dies unscrewed, there must be no 'click' sound if you tap above dies. Period.

Then I went pad by pad beginning with the largest (hardest to fit) on video memory, ending with the smallest pads while the transparent and blue protective sheet was still on Gelid pads. If such pad does not move while pushing/pulling it out-of-place with tweezers, or other tool, all is good, but double check dies contact at the same time. If you have no die contact with such pad, if the pad is small size (area), you can compress it by pressure, otherwise try one step lower thickness pad.

While doing this you have to check that dies and heat-sink still have some contact (a very narrow gap will disappear after removing the sheets and heating up the heat-sink and components after re-assembly).

Think of Gelid pads as thick thermal paste made into a sheet, because that is what Gelids act like, luckily @ pretty high 12 Wm/k. They have no internal 'strenghtening' texture which makes them break easily, but also they 'give' under pressure and heat by up to 50% and once compressed, thay do not come back to shape = they do not push heat-sink upeards, which is very good.

When all pads are fit-measured, put them all on components with protective sheet still on, put heat-sink above them (unscrewed) and see what you die contact is. If there is only slight gap, all is perfect, tension arms and heat will take care if that.

For the processor I recommend 0.5 mm Gelids. I used to have 10C higher core 0 and 2 with Dell stock pads. These cores are closest to the screen. Put Gelids on, try to tap or better press above cpu on heat-sink and feel what the gap is.
It is perfectly okey with Gelids to compress them by pressure, so you will have to push direcly above the pads on the heat-sink to flatten them a bit.

Now. Clean all contact areas with alcohol, remove transparent white protective sheet and put Gelids on all components blue protective sheet facing up, put (a bit more) thermal paste on dies, remove blue protective sheet.
Now bend arm above processor thermal pads (closest to screen) upwards, so it stays 2-3 mm from its original shape and assembly heat-sink screws following numbers on the heat-sink 1-7. Do one turn per screw going 1-7 until all screws are fully in and tight.

Turn on laptop, remove any under-volts, and now launch AIDA64 fpu and gpu(s) selected (maximum load) as you need to use the fresh strength of heat-sink arms and heat to flatten Gelids during first 24 hours.
My temperatures after doing the above were about 90C, but I was patient and it paid off. After 5-6 hours all temps went down as Gelids adjusted and dies and heat-sink got only better contact.
Then I applied under-volt, CPU core differences completely disappeared.

If after 24 hours you still have high core differences, you can try removing back-plate while running AIDA64, and ~gently press ( Careful, very HOT ) on heat-sink directly above pads ONLY and see what effect it has on core differences.
Please make sure that you DO NOT press on the die area above CPU, as this would push thermal paste away from die LOL

I hope all goes good !!!!


This was the only way that I succeeded 6 months ago, and I have not re-padded or re-pasted ever since. Before that ... you don't want to know lol
I tried with terribly expensive Fujis >>> no cigar, only (guaranteed) Gelids can do this.
With Gelids costing 10 EUR per sheet, it is easy to mess around.
BTW. I did the above with LM conductonaut, medium amount.

 

Hey, thanks for thorough explanation.
One last thing. Would you recommend Conductonaut or Kryonaut for the application? What is real world difference between them in terms of temperature?
Last time I ordered Gelid pads online but I would like to sort this thermal issue this weekend and my local shop only has Arctic pads. Are those any good?

 

@karoliens You are welcome.

I would stay with Gelids. You have them on already so maybe just concentrate on CPU. Definitely Conductonaut. I have never used Arctics or Kryonaut, can't tell.
The above 'guide' does work with Gelids and Conductonaut. Don't forget to paint area around CPU and GPU with finger nail color LOL


I never get more than 70C on GPU and CPU with ZERO core differences.
It use to be 90C for both and 20+C core difference on 0 and 2.

 

Thought I'd share my experience as this guide was of great help.
Got my AW 17r4 in Mar. '17 (6820HK, GTX1080). After the purchase, I found this guide and other forums regarding the temperature issues. Needless to say, I was a bit concerned. Out of the box, I did see temps in the high 90's. I let it go knowing if it bricked, I had an extended warranty and Dell would fix/replace. At one point, the computer did completely crash (red blinking power button) and was sent back to Dell. Came back with the same temps. I kept the same mindset as before; I'm under warranty and it's covered and I didn't think I was experiencing performance drops. I tried some of the other methods of lowering temps (I.e. raising back; undervolting) to no avail. However, it got to a point where I was seeing big lag spikes in games like Battlefield. Through performance monitoring, I could see the temps hovering in the mid-high 90's (as usual) and occasionally the CPU clocks would drop to 800mhz (I assumed due to thermal throttling). The performance drops are what led me to consider a repaste. I don't have the right tools though so I sent it off to a local repair shop and they used this guide to do the repaste/repad. I was extremely pleased to see max temps (not even avg, MAX temps) not going higher than the mid 80's. Even better, when I now lift the back just a half inch or so, the max temps don't even reach 80 (before, lifting the back almost seemed to stoke the fire). I no longer see lag spikes and clock speed drops. I can now play intense games like Battlefield for hours without worry of temps being an issue. Also, I could never use higher than OC LVL 1 in the BIOS with getting a crash. I can now run it smoothly at the highest OC level.

One point of concern, however. I never noticed my SSD temps before, but after this repaste/repad I see the Drive 2 Temperature of the SSD going as high as 90C. I don't remember seeing such high temps on it before. It is the pm961 nvme samsung 512gb. It has the SSD shield and some pads on the shield. Could it be the pads on the shield are not completely flush with SSD? Does anyone recommend doing anything to remedy what appears to be oddly high temps?

 

I want to thank you @c69k and @rinneh for helping me out.
Today I have received the email from AW. They will be sending the technician to replace the heatsink and repaste. Reading this forum I also found out that CCI is preferred heatsink over SUNON therefore I asked to replace it with CCI latest revision. In addition they said It could provide my own thermal compound. I will provide Kryonaut and hope that will improve improve temperatures.
If the problem will remain I could always repaste myself. But at least I will get a new heatsink.

 

Hi all,

Been having issues with idol temps being around 50degC and fans sitting at around 3000RPM to maintain this - super annoying!

Gaming and benches give decent temps though - 60's to 70's so I'm not sure what is causing the high idol temps - could it be one of the pads being too thin around the CPU? I was thinking of trying some K7 pro to replace the thin pad right below the CPU.

Any help would be much appreciated!

Cheers

 

I would ctrl+alt+del and see what process is making CPU hot.



I have this problem if after gaming I do not close MSI Afterburner.

I notice something funny, everytime I take a snip, all the 0.X processes come to life LOL
Normally they are all 0.0 %.

 

Keep only CPU,Memory,Disk and Network in Task Manager and your CPU usage will be lower. Additional info causes CPU to wake up and consume unnecessary power.

 

Cheers for the tip - my CPU usage tends to hover around 10% with the top two being IntelXTU and Chrome (about 1.5% each).

So is there no part around the CPU that if doesn't have a thick enough thermal pad will cause CPU to idol high?

I'm trying to narrow everything down before taking it apart and potentially repasting again.

Cheers!

 

If you get good temperatures in games, all is fine. If you had a badly placed pad, you would also be getting high temps while gaming.

When browsing, my idle temps on CPU are 50-52. I sit in a hot room of 24C. As soon as CPU or GPU temperature reach 60C even for a moment, fans turn on until all cools to under 50C, then fans are off.

It could be that maybe you have fan/cpu performance mode ON in Bios, double check and turn off. But, I doubt that this is the case.

 

Hmm maybe, just strange that it never use to idol like this - I mean it can be sitting on the desktop with nothing open and the fans are at 3,000RPM trying to maintain 50degC.

What BIOS are you running?

Cheers!

 

I run latest 1.5.0. for my Alienware 13 R3.

Maybe play a bit with processor performance settings in power options in Control panel. Try setting minimum processor to a '0'.. Or select balanced clicking on battery on task-bar.

It could be that your processor does not down-clock when not in use and runs hotter than you are used to.

Also, it could be that your fans are full of dust (just throwing ideas LOL). Or lift back of your laptop by 2 cm for better airflow.

 

Cheers mate, I've done most of those - will try checking the fans though! Thanks for the ideas, appreciate it!

Sent from my SM-G925I using Tapatalk

 

I have MSI working it only shows 1% CPU usuage. The reason you see such high spikes with all the processes when MSI is on is because you didn’t set each program to use which GPU. Goto Nvidia Panel and for each program choose Intel GPU, and choose Nvidia for gaming programs. Make sure to also choose MSI to use the intel GPU. If you don’t change anything from the get go I don’t understand why so many programs automatically default using the GTX1060 instead of the intel GPU which there is no need for it.

When I shut down the game and exit out of steam or Uplay my cpu show 1% usuage even with MSI running.

 

@cn555ic

You got it !!!

After installing latest nvidia driver, I only assigned games to use nvidia, and forgot changing all the rest manually to use Intel gpu.

Thanx.

 

So the heatsink has been replaced by AW already but as some guessed it did not solve the cores temperature difference problem.
With default settings in BIOS no OC peak temperature gets to mid 90s average around mid 80s while gaming. In addition cores 0 and 2 are hotter than other two under load. I assume this is not normal?
According to AW I shouldn't look into maximum temperatures only average. But I read on this forum that most of the guys with sorted cooling are getting max temperature way bellow 90 or is it the average?

 

The max is what everyone uses to gauge temps.

 

Thanks. In that case my CPU temperatures are way too high.

 

I would recommend that you repaste the laptop and check the tolerance levels on the thermal pads. Chances are when you let those third party techs touch your computer, it often turns out worse than before...sad truth.. so I encourage you to get some Kyronaut thermal paste, some thermal pads (Arctic pads are nice) and give your laptop a good repaste. When you open up your laptop, pay attention to the thermal pads and see if the chips and heat sink are making contact/compressing on the thermal pads. If not then in those areas you'll need to use slightly thicker pads. Usually you'd need another 0.5mm thicker pads for those areas that are not making good contact.

You can do it. Just follow my guide and if you have any questions, ping us here and there are a lot of good folks that can help you.

 

Hey guys i repasted my alienware r3 15 inch with the liquid metal, after a few dissasemblies and trial and error i have managed to lower my cpu temperatures. But my core 0 & 1 have temperature fluctuations around 10-15 degrees on idle, they usually run around 44 degrees c with a few spikes to around 69. I believe my thermal pads are off because i ended up replacing them using the measurements on the guide and i read they were not the same for the 15 inch R3. I managed to fix some off the ones that were incorrect(was having 95 CPU temps at first after repasting). Unfortunately now i cant measure the stock thermal pads that came with the laptop and i have no way of knowing which thermal pad thickness go where. Is there any chance someone here can guide me as to the correct thermal pad measurements on the 15 inch R3. It would be very much appreciated.

 

Hi everyone, this is my first post, looks like a nice forum!

I'm going to repaste my Alienware 15R3 (GTX 1060, i7-7700hq) as soon as my ifixit tool set is delivered tomorrow. I was wondering if I have to remove the motherboard as well for my model, as I'm seeing mixed story's here and on reddit. Is it indeed true that for the models with a GTX 1060, the motherboard does not have to be removed as the fans are not attached to the heatsink?

Also I have arctic silver 5 laying around here. Is that sufficient, or do you guys really recommend to buy something else like conductonaut?

Thanks in advance

 

Refer this thread http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...nd-apply-traditional-and-liquid-metal.806840/

 

Thanks for the link! Probably just going to apply paste and not LM as I do not plan on reapplying it anytime soon.

Really hope the heatsink will come off without having to remove the motherboard.

 

Yes it will. For best case scenario, remove all components and add thermal pads as well instead of wasting time. All in one go for max reduction of temps.

 

That's amazing. Thanks for the tip, will buy some thermal pads at the pc store tomorrow. I'll post the results here.

 

Buy0.5mm,1.00mm and 1.5mm. Some parts of heatsink and SSD need more thickness so stack them to meet the thickness.

 

By the way, any suggestions on which way to apply the thermal paste on the gpu/cpu? I see a lot of different opinions about that as well. From what I've read the majority uses a dot of thermal paste in the middle for square chips, and a line for rectangular chips.

 

Depends. I switched to full spread from Dot(CPU) and X method(GPU).

 

Alright, I just opened up my laptop. To my supprise it seems like dell already opened it once, leaving several pretty badly stripped screws.

Most I got out using a rubber band, but there is 1 remaining screw of the heat-sink that is so badly stripped that I'm not getting any movement at all. Any ideas?

EDIT: Probably not dell, I just remembered that I had my hdd replaced a year ago, but this screw doesn't even have to be unscrewed to replace the hdd?

Going to ask some friends if they have a dremel, seems like the best option here. I don't think there are screw extraction sets for screws this small.

 

I've used pliers to turn them. Takes some effort but it has worked for every time.

 

Tried using a few but I can't get a good grip. Might be the pliers I'm using?

I'm going to try and use the dremel tomorrow, a friend has one laying around. Unless anyone has another idea of course.

 

Wow, i never saw a stripped screw as bad as this one. I think your best bet is to turn it into a flat head with a dremel carefully. Dont forget to tape off the rest of the pc so you dont have metal shavings everywhere on your motherboard.

 

Ok so I tried the dremel, but a 24mm cutting blade is too big.. I can't find anything smaller here in the netherlands. Been to 8 shops but without succes.. Couldn't find any screw extraction sets for screws that small either.

Any other ideas? If not I'm probably going to call dell and ask if they can do it for me.

 

Use a really sharp knife, like a scalpel. It will cut into the screw and let you turn it like a flathead. That's how I got one of mine out.

 

That actually doesn't sound like a bad idea, thanks! Will buy a scalpel tomorrow and try. I'll post the result.

 

You may be able to find small needle-nosed vise-grip style locking pliers which could let you get enough grip. I've used them in similar situations. You can try a couple of different methods to get enough purchase - gripping just a chunk of the screw from the inside stripped part to the outside, and also across the entire screw.

You're likely going to have a very hard time turning that badly stripped screw into a flathead. You'll probably have to score across the entire diameter in order to get it to budge.

 

Probably going to make cuts with a serrated blade. It will take time unfortunately.

 

I've done this loads. Get some loctite ultra gel glue and sacrifice a PH0 or PH00 drill bit. Glue it on. Push down. Hold it in place for 5 mins, then leave it another 20. Make sure you've removed mobo, press very hard into board with finger pushing back on other side and turn very slowly. Works everytime. Roughly 1/5 times I find I have to repeat it twice or something

Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk

 

Just tried the scalpel, but no luck either. I'm going to take it to a local shop somewhere next week and see if they can drill it out.

I tried using something similar, but also without luck. Never thought getting a screw out could be so hard lol.

 

So, I guess I'm just going just going to have to work with the high temperatures. I called dell, who initially did not want to help me at all because I opened the laptop. Then, after a lot of discussion, they agreed to fix my pc BUT I would have to pay 150 euros JUST for the initial diagnosis of the problem and after that an aditional few hundreds for the repair itself.

I also went to a few local pc shops, but they are all afraid that when drilling they'll just remove the head, leaving the rest of the screw.

Too bad I guess.. Anyway, thanks for the help guys, really appreciate it.

 

Hmm but when the head comes off, there is a chance that about 1mm will stick out because heatsink itself comes off as well.

 

It was mentioned before, but using a dremel or similar, or even a small hacksaw to turn the screw into a flat head screw (cut a slit across what's left of the head) would be your best option if you haven't tried that. You may have, but I just didn't see it. Doing that should work.

 

Sorry to hear that. I had a similar problem, so frustrating. Might want to mess around with different needle nose plyiers. That’s how I eventually got mine off

 

Hey guys, decided I want to finally change my thermal pads in my R4. However the ones that are recommended on the first page I can't find them in-stock anywhere in the UK.

Can someone point me in the direction of an alternate example I can get easily?

Thanks.

 

Err I don't know if I'm going mad lol, but I can't see a response?

 

LOL

I would buy Gelid pads. Happy since I tried them.