Alienware M17x R1 and single Radeon 5870 cooling problems

I have recently upgraded my GTX260m to single Radeon 5870. Radeon card is manufactured by Dell and was slave card in R2 system. I have removed crossfire cable and have installed heat sink from my GTX260. Heat is perfectly transferred from pipes to the radiator. Video card is perfectly working but fan is always at 30% , system is rock solid stable while I am not playing games. When I start to play card is overheating cause fan is running always at 30% . Gpuz-Z shows that when card reaches 96C fan reading is 100% but actually fan did now starts to blow at 100% it is staying at 30%. I am with A07 bios for the motherboard and the newest Vbios for the 5870. I have returned my GTX260m and fan is working great it spins at 100% when it is needed. While I am with GTX260 HWinfo is not finding gpu fan while I am with 5870 HWinfo detects it but with low rpm around 200-360rpm and fan can not be controlled. I was trying to install A06 modded bios and system is flashing ok but when I enter the bios it is again A07 version any idea how to downgrade to A06 modded bios to see what will happen with th fan control. I have red a lot of threads in which very few people have problem with cooling 5870 and have no solution to it. Here is the order of installing my 5870 card and some screenshots I do not have battery in my laptop and I am running it only on power supply.

This is how I have done things:
1. I have stopped hybrid graphics and enabled integrated graphics
2. I have removed GTX260 and have installed 5870 - Win recognized only integrated 9400
3. I have stopped integrated graphics and then Win recognized 5870
4. I have installed first the Dell drivers then the newest from Amd .

 

What do the fans do when you manually control them with HWiNFO?
Are you sure it can't be controlled with HWiNFO? When you have the Fan Control settings open and set it to manual, and put 4000rpm for 10 degrees and everything above, it doesn't spin?

And I wouldn't push my luck to much running Furmark when your fans aren't working, for a 5870, 96 degrees is seriously hot...

 

Nothing happens I can not control GPU fan with both cards I can control only system fan with three steps 0rpm,2000rpm,4000rpm. Here is a picture of HWinfo.

 

What do you see when you click the fan icon in HWiNFO?

 

I see three fans I can control only the second one this is the system fan. First fan is not responding to my controls the third is not available. When I disable EC support first and second fan controls the system fan I am not able to control gpu fan again.

 

Fan 2, click 'custom auto'.
Select the GPU sensor above, and then for reading the 'gpu thermal diode'.

Under this, fill in the temps and RPM's you want. To test, fill in 4000 rpm at a very low degree (30 to 40 or something), it will immediately speed up if your gpu is this temperature now if you click ok.

 

I have done this, program starts to set 4000rpm but system fan starts to blow at 4000rpm there is no matter what I choose gpu termal diode or other only the system fan is blowing the other one is still slow with no change, I have tried both with EC support and without it the same. How I can downgrade to A06 modded bios while I am doing it in WIN7 64 bit, flash pass but system is staying at A07.

 

I have managed to install A06 and A06 mooded bios and I have the same low spin problem. Does anyone know which wire of the fan for what is responsible I am thinking to attach GPU fan to the system fan control and do you know from where I can buy male and female fan connectors I want to make something like adapter.

 

I am very curious to see a solution to this problem.
I have a very similar situation, I will be upgrading my gtx 260m to a single 5870m that was used as a slave card previously. I bought the card yesterday and should receive it next week.
What I am curious about is that I was told on this forum in a thread I made yesterday that my gtx 260m heatsink is not compatible with the 5870m. I would be quite pleased if it was.
I'm not very knowledgeable with how these things work, but perhaps the incorrect heatsink is the issue? I hope not because i'd like to be able to achieve what you are trying to here

EDIT: In fact it was Jiggy here who told me. So what's your opinion on this Jiggy? Would it be a heatsink issue? Or is it possible that the gtx 260m heatsink would work?

 

I am inclined to say it dont fit, but reading the above i am starting to doubt.
Someone who did it, vs me thinking it doesnt fit... Makes me think i might possibly be mistaken.

When you get the card though, you can see in the blink of an eye. Remove the heat sink from the nvidia, put it on your new card, if the cooling block aligns perfectly on the processor (aka the gpu on the nvidia card is in exactly the same place as the ati card), and you are able to tighten the 4 screws, then it fits.

 

Ok, Good to know.
In your opinion, do you think that could be causing the OP's issue? Or should heatsinks have nothing to do with that?

 

Its not likely the heat sink has anything to do with the fans running or not while using hwinfo.

Im still thinking an nvidia can not fit an ati card though, as the gpu positioning is different in my memories. Could someone jump in and confirm or reject this?

 

You can use your GTX260M heat sink. I have done all of the cooling mods for the 5870 and I was unable to cool it with 30% of the fan then I have attached video fan control to the system one and card was working great but running this laptop at full blast of both of the fans is a real pain.

 

There is only one pair of heatsinks for both the M17x and the M17x R2 that fits all cards they were sold with.
The only difference is made by the thermal pads arrangement between the heatsink and the card.

 

Double checked in my pile of parts, Katalin is correct, same heat sink.

 

Same problem here, maybe anyone can come up with a solution? Other than the hardware fan control wire mod?
Cause it seems like most M17xR1 users do not exprerience the same trouble with fan speed with 5870 mobility, yet there are at least 3 cases of such 5870m behavior can be found through the NBR - all with the latest Bioses on VGA and the motherboard.
May it be the MB revision issue?

 

This is probably the topic that should be brought to the attention of anyone who ever tries to update his Alienware R1, so that they do not screw something up.

 

Maybe a bit late ... Red and black are +5 and ground, yellow is rpm and blue is pwm , just plug the red and black and you will have full spin full time.

 

Doesn't this require soldering or such? Is that really the only solution to get full spin time?

 

Nope, with a tiny screwdriver unmount the yellow and blue wire from the plug, insolate them with some adesive tape and voila. I don't know if it's the only option but it's an option and you can mount back the wire whenever you want.

 

But won't that make the fans run full blast (at 100% speed) 100% of time??? I'm still unsure about something. Is it the motherboards fault? Is it delegating fan speed?

 

Yep, it will run constantly at full speed. I don't know if it's a mobo issue, we have something simillar in m17x r2 and 7970m, we have to run the fan with hwinfo or it will stay at 30 %.

 

I don't know if it's generally a good idea to force fans to run 100% all the time, disregarding the noise wich would be insane, the fan would most likely live a very short life :/

What i would try (in order according to the priority):
- Try to get the laptop working good enough not to overheat with costum vBIOS undervolting/underclocking (max temps after 10min of stress testing should be around 85°C (and for the love of god please don't use furmark, it's known to blow up GPU's and power supplies... use 10 loops of crysis benchmark or something similar))
- Try to get it working with one of the 260M's
- Leave the laptop with just 9400M

When you are back i'd reccomend getting a 4870M CF (The best performing officiall GPU setup for R1, and you wont have to worry about the fans)

 

Dammit, at least it works to run the fan with hwinfo. The only fan I can control with hwinfo is the processors fan. I have no way of changing the GPU fan to something above 30%. I've got 3 fans. One GPU. The Hwinfo is only showing Fan 1 and Fan 2... And I'm not sure what to make of that really.

No actually I have a way better solution. I found an R2 motherboard for about 100$, so I'm getting that, and replacing it in the R1. But that will have to wait a bit. For now, the GPU is nice and cool. It sticks at 45-50ish temperatures, so it will have no reason to overheat for watching 1-2 movies on HDMI, skype and a some document work... She is good to go and I could not be happier.

*EDIT* Is there a chat feature here, cause apparently we are both online at the same time...

 

You forgot to unplug the right side fan

That won't work, it will phisically fit, but you will also have to replace:
-CPU heatsink
-The top assembly (The thing between the keyboard/media board/palmrest and motherboard) because the CPU HS is a bit different now
-Audio board daughterboard (The R1 version with coloured audio ports isn't compatibile with R2 motherboard)

Great, what about in load, what temperatures do you read?....

Yes there is, I'll send you a message.

 

You will need a i5/7 cpu too.

 

Oh right, i knew i forgot something xD

 

Hi, first time posting on a forum, not sure if this one is dead, I have an m17x r1 and I'm also battling the fan issue with a single 5870, I started with a 260gtx, tried 2 5870's in crossfire but had trouble with finding the correct driver. Dropped to a single 5870 over the weekend and everything seemed to be running smooth until the laptop just shut off out of no where with no warning, area around the fan felt really hot but I never heard the fan spin up, I like the idea of just running the red and black wires so it's running 100% but I'm also thinking to put a small electrical dimmer switch on the red wire and run the switch outside the laptop. Maybe find a little black one that doesn't look bad and mount it to the side of the laptop or the back and bam, manual fan control