ALIENWARE 17 GTX 880M OVERHEATING

hi, i have alienware 17 with gtx 880m. i noticed that while gaming, my gpu constantly at 93c. is it normal? mine is almost 6 months of usage.

 

It's not normal. my two 880M in SLI has maximum temperatures about 77-78C with nearly constant 100% usage. You seriously need to repaste the GPUs and clean heatsinks. Use something like Gelid GC Extreme paste and temperatures will be much lower. You should keep it under 85 and you will be safe

Also temperatures from 85 to 90+ will reduce lifespan of the gpu so do it now if you want to keep your laptop long.

 

but mine usage is about six month, but the temperature is 93c constant while gaming with almost 100% usage. if im doing repaste and cleaning it will solve the problem?

 

Yes it will. 93C is much too high. GC Gelid Extreme will be a lot better than factory thermal paste. Very high performance laptops like Alienware ones require often heatsink cleaning and about 6 months thermal paste renewal to ensure temperatures.

At 93C your card probably throttles itself to avoid burning GPU.

 

Get some good GC Extreme paste and also some good Phobya XT pads!

 

ok guys, thanks for the replies. i will try to do some cleaning after this!

 

IMHO I would not recommend replacing thermal pads until there are still heat issues after replacing thermal paste.

 

If you're still in warranty, call Dell to send a technician.

 

If you are curious to do it and if you don't know how.. here a tuto i made before.

 

Move the HDD from the center caddy to the one below the CPU fan to allow for better air flow to the GPU ... Then repaste the GPU with some good thermal compound (There are tons of good greases) get the available high performance grease but make sure it ain't electrically conductive to avoid any short circuits in case it touches anything on-board.

Doing that dropped my temps from 93-95 to 78-80 on very long demanding gaming sessions

 

I did just that - moved my SSD (boot drive) from the centre caddy to the one below the CPU/RAM. Less heat there. I'll end up putting my storage HDD in the centre caddy, since it doesn't run very often and therefore doesn't generate much heat.

I would suggest something like Gelid GC Extreme/Supreme as a TIM. While IC Diamond is great, I just don't like how thick and somewhat difficult it is to apply. I always seem to have less than 100% coverage when I use IC Diamond, and the fans then speed up to compensate, making the machine louder. I never have this problem with Gelid GC.

Of course, it could just be that I am appallingly bad at applying TIM.

 

Looks like a design fault but honestly, im not surprised.

 

if i move the hdd to another port, my data will not lose? how about raid configuration?

 

and what is the best thermal paste to use??

 

I don't have RAID configuration so for this you have to ask someone else but as for the thermal paste use GC Gelid Extreme or Zalman STG-2 if you live in europe. They have similiar characteristics. Don't use Arctic Silver 5 or IC Diamond, there are better pastes out there.

 

but i live in asia. why arctic silver 5 and ic diamond is not good? how about arctic cooling mx4?

 

Because there are much better pastes in same price there. IC Diamond is very good but hard to put properly. Buy GC Gelid Extreme. You can use arctic cooling mx4 if you want, it's 2C worse than Zalman one but buy Gelid if you can.

 

what about arctic silver 5? whats the difference bettween conductive and non conductive?

 

Don't use AS5, its too worse for 880M, no questions.

If paste is conductive you can kill your CPU if you put it wrong. Best thermal paste is Liquid Ultra and it's conductive.

 

1- If u move the HDD you won’t lose any data
2- I personally use Zalman STG-02 but any non-conductive paste would do fine like arctic MX-04 you mentioned
3- As GodlikeUR said please steer clear from arctic silver 5 because the conductive nature of that paste may do you much more harm than good

 

Use Gelid extreme. Just about as good as IC7.

 

i know about mx4 and ic7, mx4 is good to learn, after to put ic7, you can do it buy micro nuts and after puting everywhere or you can warm it a bit in hot water and will be easely as mx4 but you need to do it fast
About Ultraliquid, it's so easy, the easier i ever use, it's easy to remove it too, buuuuut it will scratch you core so much lol.. i had the experience with my old i7 4700qm.

 

im stucked now. liquidultra is it bring harm or good? i read somewhere, it is difficult to remove and may cause harm

 

If you want to overclock hard 880M then Liquid ultra

If you won't overclock or just slightly then Gelid Extreme.

If you put Liquid ultra wrong you can kill GPU. Liquid ultra is only a several Celsius better than Gelid so if you aren't a professional buy a Gelid.

Also if you would try to put liquid ultra on aluminium heatsink like in desktop computers that's gonna destroy the surface of heatsink.

 

my choice now is limited. liquid ultra and prolimatech gk-3 are the only options.
if apply the liquidultra on both gpu and cpu, does it safe? there is no aluminium part at the gpu and cpu right? i will do it very careful.

 

Prolimatech is 1C worse than Zalman. Your choice.

Don't know why can't you just buy Gelid, it's available everywhere.

 

unfortunately, not in Malaysia.

 

I would recommend staying away from Liquid Ultra unless you really know what you're doing. It can actually damage your system.

 

About LiquidUltra:
Corrosive to alluminium, but not corrosive to copper. Mainly all heatsink in laptop are copper for core with alluminium for the rest of the heatsink because in term of heat transmission, it's a bit better and also cheaper. liquidUltra is really easy to remove, as easy as using thermal paste..just remove it after having used your laptop. The BAD things about LiquidUltra: your core will be full of scratch, when i say full, i mean you will notice it from far away but no deep scratch.
I can't say nothing about Gelid, i didn't try^^ but for gpu, i don't recommand liquidUltra.. mostly for cpu yes, but for GPU, stay with thermal paste

 

Liquid Ultra is a bad idea on GPU.. It's ok for CPU but GPU is really dangerous.. Also look on ebay.. You'll easily get GC Extreme there!

 

it will take a few weeks to ship to Malaysia. lol
how about proligmatech pk3?

 

I already said about prolimatech. It's about 1-2C worse than Zalman. You can use it if you don't plan overclocking.

Im surprised that you can't get those items in Malysia. Even in a maximu sh*thole as Poland is I can get these products.

 

Should you use Liquid Ultra on gpu I recommend you paint everything around gpu die with varnish that can withstand heat. Then the risk becomes less if you have a little too much paste and liquid ultra squeezed out around gpu die during the installation of the heatsink. Works great.

 

had the same prob for over a moutn abouth 2 days ago all was working good again playing witcher 3 temps ware 74/78 to day i made a shout down of my laptop after shouth down same **** happened the gpus are going to full boost for nothing 1000MHz / 1000Mhz they dont go down till 92 c hits on them for the 2 days that i dint restart my laptop it was using clock speed of 750/750 goes up when it needs to now when i start play i get 1000MHz from start is there any setting to make gpus use the clock speeds how much they need not at full boost from start plss ?

 

Use MSI Afterburner and do a underclock. It should also limit Boost clock.