M14x R2 temperature and cooling thread

Is this function within the BIOS as I couldn't find it?

 

I said built-in Windows not BIOS. But as you dont know enough about Windows as it looks like i recommend you not to experiment with functions like that.

Anyway here is where to find it on your own risk:

Left Click Windows Button - go to command / search line - type in msconfig - now go to start path - advanced options - choose how many cores you want activated on next restart;

To revert to all 4 cores simply uncheck the box.

 

Thanks for that, but its a little bit condescending to assume I don't know enough about windows - but I'll put that down to English not being your native language.

I do wonder however if there is any difference between turning a core off in Windows and turning it off in the BIOS?

 

Well, my particular GPU problem has hit a new low.

GPU core of 135Mhz and its even down clocked the RAM Clock.

And this is in a room of around 20degC ambient.

Interestingly, if I pick the laptop up off the desk, the tone of the fan changes and it instantly results in cooler CPU & GPU temps. As far as I'm concerned, this points to a design flaw in the cooling system of the laptop. Due it its design, there is sufficient airflow restriction around the laptop bottom to result in not enough airflow through the fan & heatsinks to cool the laptop sufficiently.

Just propping it up off the desk with a roll of cellotape is enough to cool the GPU by a further 5 degrees and CPU by around the same. This may not sound much, but its enough to stop the GPU throttling back, although it makes no odds to the CPU though, that's still underclocking at 2.9Ghz.

 

Right, Dell sent a "technician" (you'll see why its in quotes shortly) to replace the heatsink, which seems to have done the trick for the CPU, but the GPU is now constantly sub 200mhz.

It does appear to be a bit of a design flaw, in so much that the heat pipe from the CPU goes over to the GPU and then over to the heatsink & fan. The problem appears to be that the heat from the CPU simply warms up the GPU on its way over, I had the ludicrous situation today where the GPU was downclocking itself because it was at 67 deg, when IDLE! Yup, the GPU wasn't being used, but was being warmed up to the point at which it downclocks itself simply by latent heat from the CPU.

Oh yeah - the "technician". He used no anti static protection and took the old heat sink off and simply put the new one on. He didn't even bother to clean the remains of the thermal paste off the CPU& CPU. I'm amazed the CPU is cooler, but it is - probably more through luck that judgement.

I've got half a mind do it myself next time and repaste the two myself. At least I'll know its been done right.

 

My idle temps for the CPU are 50-60 C, and idle for GPU is around 45-50
Gaming for the CPU is 70-80C and gaming for the GPU at 100% usage instantly spikes up to around 67C, where to gpu throttles to 50% power. What a useless piece of crap, Im going to get a dell tech to repaste it hopefully, but any other ways of keeping temp down? I have hte laptop elevated...

 

I use a cooling mat with 2 usb fans which keeps my temps at exactly 64. I also had to move mine away from the wall a bit (was backed up against it) to allow better airflow

 

Please read my thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m14x/686354-my-m14x-r2-repaste-details.html

This is well-established now. Even the r2 has insufficient cooling and thermal paste. Look at my performance gains after i repasted-->disabled turbo-->propped the back up. Every step took off some more heat until I had absolutely shamed the factory state of the notebook. Some hi-end brand, huh?

 

Are your CPU temps not good? Mine have been anywhere from 65-80 while gaming, 81 at it's highest point but that hasn't happened again. I thought these were normal though, especially for a laptop.. I've dealt a lot with dell and the tech guys coming to replace heatsinks and such I'd really like to not have to call them anymore... Would repasting fix it that much as well??

 

Hey all... well, I was very happy with my M11X, but the wife really wanted it, so I passed it on, and bought the M14X and I'm having the same issue as everyone here, less then 30 days old, after reading this thread, I find myself spiking up to 82C just playing WOW doing daily quests so I tried the simplest thing I could think of and grabbed a roll of scotch tape and propped up the back of the laptop, now the temp is spiking to only 75C ..... amazing how crappy a design could be that propping up 1/2 inch makes that much of a difference, and the fan turning into a jet has subsided a little as well, but I'm thinking I should pursue getting it repasted, will Alienware do this for me or am I stuck going it alone ?

 

I don't know tbh... Some people suggest buying your own paste and sending it to Dell with your notebook, but I would not trust some random tech to do a good job with the application... I did it myself, but I have a lifetime of working with electronic stuff. It made a huge difference in the temps and performance.

 

BTW you mean the CPU hits 82c? That's not that bad, right? The GPU should be around 68 max. I was able to get the GPU down to 59c after optimizing my r2 and greatly reduced the core temps, too.

 

The first few days I messed around with my R2 when I would game my CPU hit 81C, only once. Still not sure if this is 'normal', because I see some people that feel it's acceptable, while others don't.. anyways, after some consideration I decided to turn turbo boost off. I didn't want to because I didn't want to have to limit performance just because the laptop has crappy cooling. But man it dropped my temps about 10C. I haven't noticed really any performance either, but I am going to re enable it and see the difference.

 

It depends on your use cases. I push my "premium" notebooks and expect them to perform to spec. And I hate it when companies make a poor design decision and then try to stick the consumer with the product. Check out the XPS 1730 sometime... 3K flagship notebook that was abandoned. It's essentially a half-Alienware Dell from their experimental days. But the GPU module is known to die, and you can find info over and over on the Web. I rebuilt the graphics card and it was a mess inside. Toothpaste everywhere, clearly heat was going to be an issue. The more you stress, the more problems emerge and the faster the emerge. A week later and they won't even tell me the part number for the replacement GPU. I get tired of casual gamers telling everyone how AW notebooks are "gud enough" because they run games smoothly. They should be held to a standard commensurate with their pricing and (self-inflated) rep. Sorry to ramble...

 

That's interesting... I have about three weeks with mi M14x and I've reached 85° temps, playing for 3 hours games like Crysis 2 or Sleeping Dogs. I know I have warranty but knowing that turning off turbo bust decreases so much temp, I might try it as well...

 

in most cases over heating is cause by poor TIM application or heatsoak (when the thermal system reaches a point where it cant remove more heat than it already is).

poor TIM is just unacceptable and has plagued many companies, not just Dell/Alienware. for Exmp Evga is pretty bad with this too. you can buy a $300 card from them and get 10-20c drop in temp from a re-paste... really? its seriously one the least expensive materials involved in manufacturing yet they use the most generic all purpose junk for TIM. i know there are longevity issues and extremes when you have ppl in hotter countries but still there are many materials out there that will outlast the life of the part its used on that is relatively cheap and would work so much better if it was just applied right... even if new method on application cost more it couldn't be eclipsed by returns + S&H, CSR salaries to deal with the problems and part failures due to bad applications...


heatsoak is also unacceptable but a much more complex problem. to avoid heatsoak you need one or more of the following. cooler running Chips, larger surface area heatsinks, larger CFM fans. but those all come with cons and most ppl arent willing to deal with them. cooler chips are normally binned and are the "cream of the crop" so they cost more. larger heatsinks cost more to make, add size to the laptop and are heavier. higher CFM fans tend to generate more noise.

so i guess its up to the community to solve these problems since manufactures wont....

best thing you can do is re-paste your CPU & GPU with something like AS5 or ACD. if you do it correctly and still have thermal throttling problems there is something seriously wrong with the thermal design (in the case of the R2 its not so bad), the Chip runs abnormally hot or you live in a hotter climate.

in that case, return your laptop and hope you win the laptop lotto or hang out for a bit while a few of us come up with a solution. so you can use this mid sized beast like it was meant to be

 

My test results suggest that the biggest drop in GPU temps might come from simply propping the back of the m14x up about 1/3". A repaste with IC Diamond has greatly improved the "overhead", so now I am further from any throttling temps, can overclock more, get more stability, longer product life, etc.. When I started, my GPU hovered around 68c. After a repaste, disabling turbo, and propping the back up, it hovered around 59c. That gets me further away from the rumored 65c throttle onset, which is critical for my VJ use. Complain to AW about them being so dumb with the thermal paste issue. Supply & Demand

 

I have not contacted AW yet about the repaste, but when I turned the turboboost off in the BIOS, the CPU temp stays less then 70C, which keeps the fan from turning into a jet engine. This still seems rather silly to me. The GPU luckily has not been an issue and the temps seems to stay rather low, but again, I've only been using this to play wow, have not tried Skyrim and Borderlands 2 yet, both are installed and functioning, but not played them on this machine for more then a minute or two, MOP has me busy

 

Reporting a Turbo Boost mode turn off: Temps stay at 72° max and noise was noticeably down, I don't get it, is much more cooler, quieter and didn't notice ANY downgrade in gaming quality (Metro, FIFA 13 & Mirror's Edge).

 

It's because the CPU is not as important as the GPU for many games. So a non-turbo i7 is still powerful enough to serve its function. Once you cool down the CPU by disabling turbo, that means less heat traveling through the heatsink, which means a cooler GPU also. It's how the notebook is designed, for better and worse.

 

If we do a repaste and tear the m14x down, is that still covered by Alienware/Dell Warranty?

I don't have IC Diamond but I do have the good old Arctic Silver 5, will that be good enough?

 

My understanding is: You can repaste it, just don't break anything. So be smart and follow our guides and you should be good. My IC Diamond results are awesome, but I'm sure there are more brands worth trying.

 

I just have a quick question, maybe a bit stupid... Does anyone has the issue with the fan running all the time. Even if I do not use it I think the fan runs atleast at 2000rpm though the processor is cool (43-45 degrees celsius) and the GPU is of (optimus). M14XR2 here, and it came with the latest bios A09.

Thanks in advance

My God! It was driving me crazy. From morning I've installed windows on this machine and the fan is running non-stop. Finally I made now after about 12 hours of use, an balanced plan and the fan shut off. It only comes on when required... What a pain... I cannot believe it, such an easy fix!

 

My temps with Steam, Skype and 2 youtube vids open

 

didnt want to hijack this thread with a huge post but i solved all my thermal issues with a heatsinkmod.

link:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m14x/702068-m14x-heatsink-mod.html#post9012027

 

I did a repaste, just follow the web video or instructions for the R1. It's not that hard if you are careful. I haven't noticed a huge improvement, but 1-2 degrees Celsius is a good enough reason for me.

Also I disabled turbo boost and seems to be a little quieter (still loud though) and more steady with no gaming impact.

 

Lucky er. You would think the i5 would stay cooler. http://i.imgur.com/qJ1da.png

Then again im not on my cooling pad but still pretty ridculous. Ever since I got it replaced for a faulty motherboard my GPU temps dont shoot up to 65C when gaming and throttle, but theve been slowly increasing, a month or two ago i would get 59C/60C at max load, now im seeing it get up to around 63C, and CPU at 83ish.

What you could also do, is use hwinfo to control fan speed and set it pretty low whenever your system doesnt need it. But be careful to turn it off if you are going to do some gaming or something.

 

I have an i5, and my temps are the same as yours. My GPU at idle is around 46 C and when Im doing some heavy gaming (Far Cry3), It jumps to around 68 C and my CPU gets up to 79 C. I'm wondering if I should repaste my GPU/CPU, I'm terrified to tear down my M14x.

 

Me too man, if it was a desktop i would feel better but laptops freak me out

 

I hear ya. I actually found out that when my laptop is at idle, my gpu hits 50 C, thus causing the fan to kick on. It brings it down to 43 C and the process repeats. My gpu never goes over 50 C when at idle. My cpu on the other hand goes up to 55 C before the fan kicks in for the gpu. This brings down my cpu temp to 45 C, then it happens all over again. I wonder if this is normal or not?

 

This is what is happening to a lot of Alienware owners now, R1 and R2, and repasting didn't help.

 

Interesting... Do you know if it's related to the bios or not? Right after I opened up my M14x I updated to bios A10 so I have no idea if this happens with other bio versions.

EDIT: Okay so something a little different is happening. Normally when I boot up, I switch on HWMonitor to keep an eye on my temps. Just now when I booted up I switched on HWMonitor as usual and to my surprise it's not showing the temps for the 650m. It was a little concerning but I ignored it. When I checked back on my temps, my CPU idles at ~44 C and my fan hasn't kicked on at all. The only thing I can think of is that there was a problem with optimus and it finally decided to switch to the Intel graphics, which in turn lowered the overall temp of the computer.

Does this sounds reasonable or am I missing something?

 

My nVidida card is never on straight after boot up and doesn't show up in hwmonitor, only if I do stuff that requires it. I thought this was the normal case,
maybe there is a problem with your optimus?

 

Hmm that's what I was thinking. I re-installed my graphic drivers and such, but the problem persists. Very rarely does it go back to "normal." Does Optimus use a physical switch to swap between the Intel graphics to the nvidia card? I'm wondering if the problem is hardware related or if I just need to mess with a few settings in Windows.

 

Nevermind I figured it out. All I had to do was go into the nvidia control panel and change the preferred graphics to the integrated graphics card rather than auto select. This was under the global tab in the 3D settings. Now my temp readings for my CPU at idle is ~45 C and my fan never has to kick in because the nvidia graphics card isn't being used (before, the nvidia graphics were being used all the time which would heat up the whole laptop).

 

Hey I need to know something. I'm using the r2 and need to know if I have a heating problem. I recently was playing Mass Effect 1 and measured my temps. I found I ran a max of 90 degrees Celsius CPU and 64 degrees GPU. Is this too much? I think it is. How should I go about fixing this?

 

How long ago did you purchase your laptop? It's good to dust it off a bit every now and then.

Alienware Laptops: Basics to deal with overheating

If the laptop is relatively new, it shouldn't need a dust off. It could be that the thermal pads moved while it was being shipped, or the thermal paste was not correctly applied. Send me a PM with your service tag if you need any help with it.

 

Yeah, although everyone is entirely wrapped up with the new 14's, I'm really a bit disappointed in my current R2. Is it safe to assume this thread is still active, or has it moved? In any case, here goes.



While playing Marvel Online - hit 98degC back in June (image) .. 2 months after I picked it up. Now I'm seeing that the idle temps are somewhere around 46 degC. Not good. I was really hoping to avoid a repaste, but that's just way to high. I recall how re-pasting my R1 didn't do much good, in fact made it slightly worse... so not entirely looking forward to doing that entire activity again.

So anyone have ideas how to talk me out of it? I will try doing the dusting...but 98C in June... nothing to do with dust. Can you tell I'm not in the mood to repaste yet another machine?

 

Old topic but I'm having a concern with this. Been playing COD Black Ops 2 lately and I checked out my temps the GPUs reaching 85+ Celcius after like 10 min of gaming about 55 Idle and the processor about 65 idle. I feel like these are definitely too high seeing as most people are barely reaching 70.

 

It's because everyone's throttles. I dont see how your gpu can hit 85 when throttle is at 67.

 

46c idle is good imo, anything up to 55c idle is good for a laptop. Anything under 90c when under load is perfectly fine. My desktop gpu hits 80-85c under load. A lot of people here are worrying about nothing.