Alienware 17R1 owners that upgraded to 980m

Has anyone else noticed a very large increase in heat generation on the left side of the laptop in the area of the Wireless card/HDMI port.

I upgraded the card and it seemed to run ok for the first day or so but now I can't run basically anything GPU intensive without cooking that side of the laptop. The laptop get so hot the wireless card kicks out and I am basically afraid to use it for gaming at this point for fear of cooking it.

The CPU and GPU temps are all within norms and freshly pasted. CPU is at 71 and GPU is at 65 while playing ARK and the left side of the palm rest is to hot to comftorable touch, let along touching any of the metal on any of the ports. It is mildly warm but not unpleasent right up until I launch a game and then it goes into thermo nuclear mode so somehow heat is being transfered seeminly from the GPU through the board or to that spot in particular.
I am at a loss as to how heat is being generated and pushed that THAT spot in particular.

I removed the wifi card and it makes no difference aside from I can stay connected because I am using the ethernet port and the wifi isn't tripping due to heat.

Any ideas or guesses would be appreiated...I have nothing.

I have already tore down the system completly and can come up with nothing, nor can I find anything with google that comes close to this.

Thanks in advance.

 

Are you using the 3 pipes heatsink? And do you have a notepal cooler?

 

Have you checked max PCH temp during load?

 

Do you have a HDD in bay 01, that's just below where your referring too, I've noticed some of the older HDD's getting really hot, almost to hot to touch.
The only thing above that (inbetween the case and palmrest/keyboard) is the card reader, but I've never heard of those raising the temps.
That's also close to the CPU, the fan is obviously working but maybe its (fan) on its way out and generating heat.
Cant think of anything else in the area that would cause what your describing.

Just had a afterthough. Maybe the coin cell battery is on its way out. You can partially remove it without dismantling the laptop, I know it resets everything but might be worth a try.

 

Yep, 3 ppe heatsink that came with my 780m. Using a coolermaster U3 cooler but honestly it never helped that much.

I don't see any sensors to monitor the PCH but the PCH is way up near the top middle, and it isn't getting as hot as the left side by far.

I have tried it with the HDD removed and still get the heat generation

I even moved the drives around and the hot spots stick in the same area, not following the drives.

I replaced the coin cell battery as a last ditch nothing else as working few days ago and still get the problem

At this point it has to be a short somewhere is what I am thinking. I guess it is also possible that both my adapters are shorted? from when the 780m blew? It seems unlikely but there has to be a short somwhere. The only two pieces that i can't rule out are the AC adapter plug, which i have a new one on order but it is two weeks out, or a motherboard which is another $350 CAD on top of the $900 I already forked out for the card.

I am going to remove the 980m tonight, go back to the iGPU and see what happens....I don't know if the system will attempt to draw enough power to make it heat up , but worth a shot. Even going back to the 60hz screen and enabling Optimus might show me a heat dissipation at which point I may ship the card back to Woodz and just have him test it to rule that out as I have no way of testing it.

 

You can see PCH temp if you put correct settings in Hwinfo "settings". I thought you said temp was high on the keyboard. Because PCH chips is just below the keyboard. Anyway, put up the sensor in Hwinfo and watch the max temp under high load.

 

Enabled the PCH sensor but I still don't see it in the sensors display.

The keyboard is only getting warm around the WASD area which is right around where the board is getting hot , which is also where the AC jack plugs into the MB. The keyboard eems fine the farther I get from the problem area which isn't right above the PCH. I checked the board around the PCH with the thermal probe when I had it and there was nothing of concern there. I don't remember the exact temperature but it wasn't a concern.

I put the 60hz screen back in and am running diagnostics at this point though I don't expect them to find anything.


I also took the 980m out to test some stuff with Optimus enabled and the laptop still gets warm over on the problem side without the 980m installed just not as warm as when gaming with it as it isn't pulling as much power.

After these diagnostics are done I am going to reflash the bios for lack of other options and see if that has any impact at all.

As I stated above, the problem seems to go away when I let the system run on battery so that really pushes me in the direction of board/charging port. I am reluctant to order a new board until the charging port gets here and I can rule that out in the event that the eBay seller does not want me returning a board that I didn't need

 

Diagnostics found no isses ( big shock ) and reflashing the system bios has not helped at all either.

Has to be either the board or the AC jack. Guess time will tell.

Thanks all.

 

Someone can feel free to correct me...but if it was the board...the heat should stay running on battery power correct? I am not an electrical engineer nor do I pretend to be...but if the problem goes away on battery power that should point to an AC issue?

Unless or course it is a problem where the AC jack connects to the board lol....

 

Do you see any discolorations on the components?

 

I thought the HDMI port looks a little less shiny then the USB ports beside it but it is also getting stupidly hot in that area. Nothing really jumped out at me though.

 

Isn't the wireless card on the CPU side? I would suggest switching the power port feed circuit if the problem occurs only on AC.

But also isn't that board on GPU side?

 

The wireless card i on the back side of the same area. The heat is transfering through and tripping the broadcom card that came with the system. The Intel 6250 Wifi card I have pushes through with the heat but lets face it, that much heat isn't good.

As for switching the power port feed circuit, I have no idea how to do that.

The GPU was just an initial suspect as that was the only thing that had changed in the computer BUT even after I took the GPU out the board still gets warm so the 980m isn't the problem, and others have used the same GPU in the same laptop and they are not experiencing these issues at all so something else has gone wrong. Presumably something on the board or power port went and took the 780m that I initially had with it, or the 780m blew and took something else with it, I don't know which and probably never will. I have a new AC port coming in the mail and will attempt to fix it with that first since it seems to be an AC related problem for now. The motherboard heats up from the point where the AC plug connects to the board down to the HDMI port and in a circle around that area, the rest of the board is still cool. It is also possible since I was using the HDMI port when I realised the problem that something shorted out the board at the HDMI port and it is causing problems but I really don't know how to test that. To the best of my knowledge there is no way to disable the HDMI port.

I should point out the HDMI port still works just fine, which I would think shouldn't if it was shorting out. The laptop itself also works just fine, it just super heats to the point you can't touch the side or you will burn yourself , but only on that one area.

 

Can you try HDMI on battery and report back

 

Try it as in? The HDMI port itself works just fine, I can HDMI out and in no problem. I keep referencing the port because that is about where the heat seems to drop again on the board and I just happened to be using that when I first noticed the problem. It is entirely possible the HDMI port has no issues at all.

 

I mean if you use HDMI on battery does it heat up ?

 

You should be able to see PCH in the HWinfo, I know you have the IR gun tested but make sure you have the PCH data too, Check if it's disabled and then enable it.

 

Finally got it

Not sure why it didn't show up the last time I checked it....but anyways, temp is currently fluctuating between 70-72 while playing ARK almost maxed out , so no issues there at least

 

70-72 on ARK is pretty good. I'd say your temps are under control for sure.

 

I think youre on to something here. I had an ASUS heating up a lot around the AC jack. I could not see any cracks in the soldering or breakage in the jack. However, re-soldering the jack solved the heating issues. I guess there must have been a small crack I couldnt see.

 

I found out something when I went to 970m on Windows 10. I noticed I adjusted the power plan to high performance plan and noticed my 4910mq was always at 3.9 on all cores all the time and was getting hot down that left hand side of the laptop and not downclocking when at idle. As soon as adjusted to balanced plan each core then was downclocking on workload dropping to1.4ghz. So my problem was I was using the wrong power plan. Still gets warm but nothing really to worry about now.

 

After the motherboard was replaced the issue went away and both sides of the laptop are cool now. There was def a short happening in there.