Alienware 13 R3 Thermal Testing - Should you cool your PCH with mods?

Thank you for the info. Click

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/official-alienware-13-r3-owners-lounge.797884/page-666

Check posts 6655 and 6656.

 

Thanks for the input. I've tried everything, wrapped 5 layers of the PGS around the heatsink... several attempts but Unigine still pushes the laptop PCH to 89 degrees and counting after a 15 minute run.

I am starting to wonder whether the PGS I bought is any good. The Raspberry cooling block I've tried doesn't resolve anything either. Bah...

 

Just stack some thermal pads on there like 2.5mm. Snap the bottom base on then take it off and make sure it is making contact. My pch doesn't break 65c.

 

Thanks. So thermal pads only? Bottom base you mean the plastic base behind the metal back plate, yes? What thermal pads would you suggest?

 

thermal pads only - yes. Yes take the plastic base off then place thermal pads and then put plastic base back on to check if contact was made. I used arctic silver but I will be switching to gelid 12W/mK pads.

 

Has anyone gotten Dell to acknowledge or even budge on this flaw at all? Even though we're capable of fixing it I can't help but feel I've been sold a huge lemon.

Dell techs only stress half the system at a time they never see the PCH overheat its not even on their radar it seems.

 

Unearthing this necro thread to add my 2 cents. I tried both the PGS and Versarien Foam HS methods and ended up sticking to the latter. The 5mm foam heatsink fits perfectly. In fact, I've added PGS on top of the foam to have additional heat transfer to the back plate. PCH temps never break 85C. Room temp 25c, NO fan/cpu performance mode. Will upload pics in a bit.

 

85c is a little hot with a heatsink if that's peak game temps. Mine can break the 70c mark if I stress it. I use the copper foam btw (10mm x 2mm I think). Would like those pics! Undervolting the gpu can help the pch temp a lot too.

 

What's your room temp? How hot did it get before you applied the foam? Mine used to reach 95C all the time and throttle everything down. Room temp 25C. If lower it to 20C it maxes out at 80C.

The lowest I can get it is by bridging the PCH and heatpipes with a strip of PGS, but only if I force the fans on max with both fan and CPU performance enabled in the BIOS. I have a bunch of 2mm foam too, maybe I should give it try.

 

23c. I don't think my pch ever hit 85c without a heatsink gaming. I have run my gpu undervolted for over a year now. My usual pch temp is around 66-68c max gaming. I don't have my base cut like yours. Did you use the thermal tape they had on the foam? Thermal paste will yield a better result. Careful of those little things around the pch (lol). Your also running a samsung drive and if it's nvme, it will heat your pch more than usual. Seriously think about undervolting to .850v and under. This 1060 has no business jumping over a 1v on a 80 watt power limit. .800v for the 13 r3 1060 is the sweet spot imo.

 

Any tips on how to undervolt the GPU?

I have two NVMe drives there. Are there any optimization tweaks for those?

 

Use msi afterburner and press control + f on the graph. For me personally I have a straight line at .800v, 1721mhz. Yours might not be able to achieve this clock. What's your ssd temps. I suspect they are running hot.

 

both ssds are around 45-50C

 

Wow, this is a huge revelation for me haha! 1700mhz at .830v seems pretty stable. Dropped from 80W+ to 52W and the temps aren't even touching 65C while gaming!
But the PCH chip is still hitting 80C. need to figure out a way to remove that heat from the copper foam. Maybe I should try the PGS bridge to the pipes again...

 

@Kuro Kensei ,

For your already existing PCH mod I would connect to back- plate with thermal pads (you might have to cut out some plastic off backplate).

 

Been thinking about that too.

Oh, btw, interestingly, if I use my AW graphics amplifier instead, the PCH chip is happily sitting at 60-65C all the time.

 

It’s a shame that cpu performance mode adds so much heat 20c+ on the PCH because the benefits of 5-6 frames you get in game helps a lot when only gaming at 60 fps, World War Z game is a big example of where you will see the difference (zombie swarms). Don’t mean to bump old threads but I was in a dilemma if I should go through the troubles.

 

You guys realize that pch temperature is controlled by how active it's set? In the power plan options under PCI Express there is a power saving feature. Having that set to off will skyrocket pch temps and using a thunderbolt connection will increase it even more. Maximum power savings is what I use. CPU clocks have no relation to pch temps, but a high pch temp can throttle a CPU depending on what the bios is set for in regards to throttling.

Passive heatsinks do next to nothing for PCH, needs to have active cooling when pci Express power savings is set to off.

 

Mine is always set to maximum power saving to no effect on PCH temps.

Stock (no heatsink) - 95C under load
Copper foam HS - 85C
Aluminum HS - 80C

It's getting it below 75C what we are trying to achieve. Just because yours doesn't get that hot, doesn't mean there's no problem or that a passive HS has no effect.

 

Kuro, I need your opinion, please.

My GPU is getting to 80-82C for short bursts, because I hard-flashed 110W-130W Vbios and I see games pulling (peaking) 110W.

90% of time in-game I am pulling 70-80W.

During this short period when GPU gets suddently hot, heat-sink fires heat back to PCH through my PGS tape (PCH to heat-sink PGS mod) and as a result PCH gets to 80-90C. And even if my GPU temp. drops to 75C, PCH stays around 85C.

I never saw CPU throttling even at PCH of 90C (all time max.) and I keep Throttlestop set to BD PROCHOT ON for safety.

I want to go copper foam 5 mm thick (could not find thicker) and then connect it directly above it to metal of backplate.
I wil rip off the black plastic from backplate size of the copper foam and use quality thermal pad for heat transfer.
From your experience do you think the back plate can absorb the heat? Considering it is basically actively cooled by air being pulled in from fans below. Plus the metal back-plate is pretty huge compared to any laptop heat-sink.(SSD, RAM or PCH)

If I use 5mm copper foam and place it directly on PCH, what would be the distance to naked metal on the back plate?
What do you think is the best way to connect copper foam to PCH for best heat transfer?
What wattage this small s**t PCH uses? I have no info on this, specifically for 13 R3.

I know that since I have connected my 970 PRO to (naked metal) backplate with thermal pad, I never reach 70C on controller whatever load I put on the SSD. Normally it would be 80-90C easy with throttling.
970 pulls anywhere under 10W.

 

Once the pch has proper load the heatsink does next to nothing, this is easy to test using thunderbolt 3.

This is a problem for my notebook, they are testing BIOS' currently. My pch sits next to an nvme ssd and with TB 3 it spikes to 95c with no HS. I use active cooling to bring it to 50c. Without I get temps around 80+ when using tb3.

Are you always downloading on a high speed connection? Using m.2 lanes? Anything connected to the pch?

The difference is massive when theres no load. Lowest I've had is 30c but that's active cooling.

The only explanation is your pch has a heat deadspot.

The most effective heatsink is to use copper shims, stack them and at the very top use aluminum then maybe a Fuji poly pad.

 

I disagree that a pch heatsink does nothing. It helps a lot and have tested this extensively.

 

I don't mean literally nothing, just not enough to make significant difference. active cooling is 200%-300%+ better than just passive.

 

Of course active cooling is better! I think 8c-10c drop in pch temp is significant for passive cooling but that's my opinion. Are you saying your pch is actively cooled in your alienware laptop? If so, pictures!!

 

Sorry, I've been away for some time and missed your question. I don't think copper foam is the go to solution here. Its amorphous structure doesn't make it a good heat conductor. It gives best results when nothing is obstructing the pores and there's a good air circulation.

I'd rather use a 5mm aluminum heatsink (thermal glued to the die at the corners, with a good t paste in the middle). It will touch the backplate and transfer some of the heat to it. Maybe try a pad in between but not sure if there's a big difference.

 

Copper foam worked great for me. Never tried aluminum yet. There actually is some airflow around the pch.

If you use glue to secure it, you should do it how @iunlock did. Put tape down and glue the heatsink to that.

 

When I did a repaste today I put these on the PCH. 2 of them fit perfectly on it and there was no interference anywhere on my 15R2. Well worth the $4.

SogYupk 20 PCS mini Aluminum Chips VGA RAM Cooling Heatsinks heat sink cooler + Cosmos Cable Tie https://www.amazon.com/dp/B007XACV8O/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_pN34CbHH6E29S

 

Those are 5mm and would not work for the 13 r3. Just clearing that up for others.

 

@c69k

Hey, was just reading your post on PGS and pictures in 13 R3 lounge, and was wondering the 8 layers are around the heat pipe? and then you have 4 layers on the PCH itself? because of the adhsive?, atleast thats what it looks like on the photos? just wondering as i might do this mod too. after i get the repaste to work correctly. waiting for materials to arrive.

Also, I see you have electrical tape there to insulate, but isn't the PGS non conductive for 2 kV thats 2000 volts?

Thanks for a great post on the PCH cooling ;-)

 

@Torben Sloth Thomsen

Hi,

I cut the pgs sheet to one stripe, pch wide, of 6-8 layers of pgs sticking on top of each other, that starts on pch and goes around the heatsink leading first to top of HS, then around the top edge continues to its bottom part.

I also scraped off the black color layer where pgs connects to the top part of HS for better contact. I used to use less layers before, but 2 weeks ago I went thicker.

The insulation was to protect from heat, and secondary from direct contact as it leads over Vbios chip.

Let me know if I answered clear.

 

So you scraped of the paint on the heatsink?

I saw, a photo with location of the cores, on the cpu might you know a link to that?

Thanks for your help @c69k

 

@Torben Sloth Thomsen

You are welcome.

Yes.
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v


I just have the pic., but no link to the original post, if you mean that.
v
v

 

Super cool thanks a lot! I noticed quite some difference on my cores during load on the system, so I need to get this repaste done thoroughly as I have a lot of crashes in certain games. I would like my 13 R3 too run stabile