Applied thermal paste on my M17x think I possible messed it up :'(

Hey people,

I made a stupid mistake..I applied new thermal pads and paste on my Alienware and it booted up fine..I did a silly thing of running a Resident Evil benchmark pass to log the temps it got to 95% then a black screen..

Rebooted and then graphical corruption I tested the system with 1 card and all is fine I think one of the cards is borked for sure (running 2 x 5870 in xfire)

Have reseated and reapplied thermal paste but to no avail I feel like punching my face in to be honest I should have checked out the system without games first and if the temps rose I would know have to reseat card of pads etc...oh well live and learn..

I realise I may have to pay for repairs it is under warrenty (3 years) but even without the pads/paste I put on the temps were reaching up to 95 degrees....hence I decided to put new paste in.

Ive never delt with AW what is the procedure..ive put back the stock pads which are flimsy to say the least..the system boots with one card but hates 2..what should I do

 

Sorry to hear that.I think its unlikely your slave is buggered .As your Master is the card doing more,but unless you were monitoring the temps i dunno.You could have botched your pasting on the slave but i still think unlikely as it will usually shut down due to excessive heat before burning out.What it could be is the crossfire cable connection,if i was you i would check that connection first making sure interfaced correctly.

 

Laptop is xfire..the left Im guessing is the Primary and the right the Secondary..The secondary was very hot to touch I took the secondary out and it booted fine without any corruption..

Althought I do sometimes switch on the system and it basically the fans spin loudly but no post.

The paste was MX3 and it was put purely on the die no spillage at all I spent ages doing it..like I said it booted up perfectly I should never have tried a game :/, The pads were 1.5mm to me it seemed fine maybe the card was already going to bork who knows but im clueless as to how to approach this or what things to try..

Normally once the gfx is corrupted its normally 95% a card has died.

edit: have tried and reseated the crossfire cable many times but to no avail

 

Just get on Dell chat and have them come out and replace both cards. Make use of the three year warranty. Also, this isn't completely your fault. You were just attempting to fix something Dell messed up on, since it really shouldn't be getting that hot to begin with.

Don't mention that you messed with anything, just describe what happens when you boot (with two cards).

 

thanks guys I will speak to a dell agent, do I just explain what the situation is and they will come out to replace or..shoud I request a new system im still under 21 day period?

Ta

 

If your in that 21 day period, a new system would be better, since the technician won't have a chance to mess anything else up.

 

The problem is that applying thermal paste on the GPU will most likely void the warranty.

 

I've done that on another Dell system, and they either didn't notice, or didn't care.

Even if you do a bad job, they shouldn't be able to tell the difference, since they aren't that great at applying thermal paste themselves.

 

I have never seen or heard of this being the case, except by people such as yourself that 'caution' they can void your warranty. infact, Dell and aw ship out new pads and paste to customers for them to apply all the time.

 

Just use the warranty ( you never opened the system .

 

It's not because you never heard of it that it never happened. I know for a fact on a M170 that changing paste can frying your CPU will cause Dell to look very deep into the issue and question you quite a bit. They ended up replacing everything but it was not far from "oh well, it's your fault." I am sure that it will happen if too many people fry their CPU or GPUs. It's only a question of money.

 

in my expeirience with component failure and even in situations where paste or pads have been re-applied I have not been denied service. nor has anyone else I know, nor have I see any thread or post in reference of such. you would have to be fairly negligent or find a rep on a bad day to get to that point imo. is it possible? sure, I would not say it's extemely likely however..

 

Yep I would say I agree with that statement nonetheless you still have to be careful.

 

Lately, Dellienware is far less picky than a few years ago.
And that's why I like their attitude. As Lozz said, they can even send you the paste/pads to do the job without questioning the warranty issues.

Lenovo, for example (and I know it for fact) might easily void the warranty if a mobo replacement is needed and they notice that the paste is different (not the perfect square they provided). Some trick it by applying the same color and thickness paste (MX-3 or even ICD-xx) in the same square form, lol.

 

I agree, the problems that plauged their CS department in the past are washing away slowly it seems. even the overseas reps I've spoken with are decent. the lenovo problem you mentioned sounds outrageous.