Alienware 17 R4 GTX1080 in game random Stutter & Freeze

I just suggested best option...and that You get what You paid for with Your money...
But we live in world where almost everybody will (try to) scam You...

 

Youre on the right track mate but solving this isn't easy and may take several attempts (on one unit it took me four attempts, on several others I can get it in first or second attempt now).

You must not have ANY gaps in any of the VRMs or MOSFETS so make sure by shining torch light, wiggling pads with tweezers, checking for imprints, dry fitting with pads on chips, using fresh squishy Arctic pads only not fujipoly, fill any tiny gaps with k5 pro paste not another pad.

The reason your GPU temp has increased is because by adding more pads you've now managed to push the heatsink away from the GPU a tiny amount making the paste on it less efficient, you need to scrap those pads and start again following iunlocks guide to the letter with the new squishy pads (also ignoring 1 pad in the guide which is 0.5mm when it should be 1) and then add any tiny pads where needed to chips after dry fitting first. The heatsink balancing shape is also so important too!

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Hi guys, so i recently purcharse my new AW 17 R4 with i7-7820HK with GTX 1080 but the problem is i'm having a stuttering during 15-30 mins of gameplay in Overwatch. Should I install an old vBios like everyone of you suggested? or repad and repaste it? I don't have any experience in opening a computer before and I'm afraid I can't send this one to Dell U.S. to fix this for me cause I live here in the Middle East, so it sucks I have to do everything here alone to fix this issue. And can anyone of you post an instruction how to install the old vBios? I don't have any idea how to do it. Thanks.

 

cant believe this nonsense is still going on even till this day. goes to show no QC work done at all at factory level.

read opening thread. installing old vbios is not the solution.

 

Try opening up on the bottom, and press gently on the heatsinks all around were the vrm is suppose to be. Mine was doing that when they replaced the MOBO. I read that the vrms arent touching, so if you press down it should touch and not overheat.

 

Maybe I'll do a repaste and repad for this thing. My CPU temp is running at around 98c, with undervolting at -0.130 V, it runs at 93c. When I added some rubber feet from the bottom, my CPU temp goes 68c max on Destiny 2, which means all that it needs is a cooling pad or any sort of thing that elevates and allow air to go easily at the bottom. Guess I have no choice but to prepare myself and do the repasting and repadding myself, I've read alexnvidia and iunlock's thread so that would be my best guide. And can I ask which thermal pad is better? Fujipoly or Arctic cooling? I have no idea what is "6w/mk" or "11w/mk" on those things.

 

If you are in Dubai take it to Saba Computers in Computer Plaza and speak to Houssam he can help you do this he knows his stuff very well

 

yea mine was in the mid 80s gaming, but when they replaced the motherboard, I had the tech use some kryonaut, i game in the 60s now.

 

Oh, I live here in Qatar, so I will do the repasting / repadding alone, I just have to be very careful on this. There is sure some technician, but I'm afraid they don't know what their doing and end up breaking some stuff.

I hope I don't have that motherboard issue. I was also planning on using kryonaut, it may be safer than liquid metal. Is 1 gram of thermal paste enough for CPU and GPU? And what thermal pad did you use? Fujipoly or Arctic cooling?

 

Kryonaut is the worst paste

 

Depends greatly on heatsink fit. If you got a good tight fit kryonaut is incredible, it's very runny compared to thick pastes such as ICD. I suppose you could say kryonaut is situational. That's why kryonaut might be rather bad for most notebook heatsinks, especially the garbage fit clevo is producing.

And considering most AW also suffer from crap heatsink fit, i'd say kryonaut is also terrible on most of them as well.

 

yup. When I put it in my taptop, it was ok for the first 2 days, then the temps starting increasing dramatically to the point where I gave up on it and went back to ICD.

IMO, for a good fitting heatsink either go with Conductonaut or Liquid Ultra and for not good heatsinks, IC Diamond.

 

Some people are way to scared of conductonaut, so Kryonaut is pretty much their option in that case imo. IC Diamond or TK3 are godlike tims for most Clevo notebooks, since they are thick and somewhat fix lazy manufacturing.

Since I got almost all tims you could possibly imagine here, I think I'll try and see how noctua is performing compared to the others. I never tried this tim before and when trying to look at data such as conductivity, I get nothing. I'm quite excited to see how it performs.

But yeah, if you have a good fit and want the most out of your system, conduconaut is the way to go.

Once I got a clevo system again I'll probably test this lineup here to see how the tim react to crappy heatsink fit. My clevo is already modded and has a beastly fit so I can't test it on that one.


- Conduconaut
- Liquid Ultra.
- Kryonaut
- ICD
- Noctua
- Some cheap Coolermaster
- MX 2

 

I ordered a conductonaut tube to test it on my MSI taptop. I'll let j00 know the results soon,

 

So what thermal paste would be better for AW17? I don't want to use any liquid metal since I travel daily with my laptop and I'm afraid it might spill the liquid metal inside. My choices would be arctic silver 5 (which most would definitely use) or thermal grizzly kryonaut.

 

That's the thing me and phonix were talking about it really depends on your heatsink fit. If you haven't modded it and it's stock, then IC Diamond or TK3 would probably be the best for you. Also on a bad fit conduconaut and CLU are terrible.

 

Ditto

 

What brand produce TK3 thermal paste? I can see you post info about this thermal paste everywhere

If you mean PK3 so is this thermal paste's viscosity barely average. Not a a very good choice for uneven/warped hetsink. People should start to opent up their eyes for Phobya NanoGrease Extreme if they have a HS of less quality. Even a damn good choice if you have a perfect fit.

 

LMAO. He's talking about PK3 and its nothing more than average.

 

Its Prolimatech PK3 Nano Al paste.

 

In this test Phobya HeGrease Extreme is top dog

https://www.hwcooling.net/en/the-test-of-27-thermal-compounds-part-2-en/2/

 

Yees. And for the records... Will never be a substitute/replacemant for ICD or Phobya NanoGrease Extreme if you have a warped/uneven heatsink.

 

Yeah I even felt CM Maker Gel Nano( same as ICD but no scratch) was good for warped HSF on my old laptop's small HSF.

 

So is the in game freeze/ stutter issue fixed by dell now?

 

That depends on your game and your clock speed of CPU and GPU. On these models, the PCH will not throttle until it 95C.

 

But note that the freezing is also caused by poor pad placement on the VRMs, in fact it's much more likely.

This issue appears to be improved by the latest models but only appeared to be a major cause for concern on the GTX 1080 laptops anyway

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Hello again, I changed all pads for arctic pads, checked everything 3 times, in some cases used termo paste (not k5, don t have in my contry), but still freezes after half an hour, the only change, that now when GPU load drops to 0% PerfCap Reason registers no VRel, but Pwr, what does it meen and what could you advise to me?

 

Don’t use thermal paste instead of pads.

Get 0.5, 1 and 1.5mm arctic pads, they ate slightly squishy so you can use them as intended, assuring proper contact of every single chip

 

I used arctic pads, but in some cases when it s no proper contact with pads using heights by Ionlock, even additional 0,5 termopad rised heatsink so I lost contact in close points too. In this case I put a drop of thermal paste in the middle of the pad and then checked how paste spreaded. If paste covered the
whole pad with a nice thin layer - I assumed that contact is OK

 

DO NOT FOLLOW iunlock's guide blindly. that's what got me into this stuttering mess in the first place. if you study his guide carefully, it is riddled with inaccuraccies. every system heatsink is different, so you need to customize the pad height based on your system component contacts, NOT based on what he recommended.

 

It's not very nice to blame others who are trying to help. But I agree to some degree. The guide is just that, a guide. It's not a bible. You gotta take it with a grain of salt.

Some pads he has marked with 0,5 or 0,1mm needed way more on my unit, while others marked as 1mm only needed 0,5mm.

I still appreciate iunlocks effort, when the 17R4 was new I bet everyone read his guide on how to repaste, many with great success.

So, don't use thermal paste instead of pads, don't follow guides blindly, just asure proper contact between every chip and the heatsink.
It will take hours, a few tries maybe but you'll get it.

If you can't ensure contact then you need a new heatsink. Just call Dell and say something nice like "FULL THERMAL SHUTDOWN" that should get things rolling.

 

iunlock has confirmed his guide is a general case and every system differs so, do your research whilst repaste/repad.

 

Some might say he is trying to help, but some will disagree he is actually helping. everything you need to disassemble is already clearly given in alienware service manual and it's more accurate.

this is less about blaming but more about warning people about his guide. most people just blindly follow and got into this mess.

 

yeah, only after i started warning people about his guide and stressed that every heatsink is different.

 

Yeah I know. You were featured in OwnOrdisown channel and some posts related to disassembly.
Unless there is a photocopier/3d scanner to print out the same heatsink otherwise, we need to find our own method to perfect the repaste/repad procedure.
I'm not saying iunlock's general case guide is not good but just a general case.

 

Exactly, well said

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No they didn't, when are you going to stop this!

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Rubbish... HOW ABOUT THE TITLE OF THE TOPIC! Specifically the bit that says "GUIDE"?

Is that clear enough for you now?

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it's only clear to me you are his lapdog. you get royalties from colluding with him? equally pathetic

 

Sorry but when i did repastes initially i also used his guides and it helped me a lot. The dell guides are just renders and no huge photos.

 

So I got in touch with Dell again to try to replace my laptop. I had issues getting a replacement before because I bought it from Sweden, but live in Latvia and they don't provide the full support service here.

Anyway, they said that they have a new revision of the 1080 motherboard and will try to arrange a replacement of that to resolve the stuttering issue instead of replacing the whole laptop. I don't have any more details at the moment, hopefully they can get it sent out to Latvia like they managed to do with the cooling assembly before. Will see how it goes.

 

Did they confirm there is issues with older revisions of 1080 Motherboards? Or is this a shoot in the blind?

 

Last time I talked with a tech they said it's a known issue and offered to replace the laptop. And now they're offering a newer revision of the motherboard.

 

I wonder what the cause is

 

I'll ask next time I talk to the tech, maybe they know.

 

Because the symptoms are stuttering i might think that the power delivery circuit cant handle the 1080 in some cases. But thats just a guess.

 

This is the second time I heard about the so called newer motherboard revision. Can you please take a clear picture of the motherboard once it arrive? Especially the part number, revision number and overall picture. If it does exist I will update my thread accordingly. Thanks.

 

Dell designed the power delivery for 150w graphics load. Dell was forced to change, aka increase power targe due false claims that AW was one of the very few brand who delivered maximum powered 1080 graphics. This after they saw the other OEM's delivered higher graphics TDP for 1080. And Nothing was changed on the MB to handle the increased 30w Power load. Of course trouble like this will occur/take place when you eat up the headroom for safety usage.

 

I ordered a 17 R4 Friday February 9th, i7 7820hk, gtx 1080, 32gb ram do you think my order will be shipped with the revised motherboard or do you have any further knowledge about this motherboard? Thank you in advanced.

 

I assume that you assume on his assumption