M17x overheating

Hello, I bought my M17x 19 months ago. It has the nVidia GTX 280m SLI, which is where the problem is. I've started disabling the hybrid SLI because of how hot one spot would get under the laptop. When I did have it on I would make sure it's getting a lot of air, and I actually have the back of my laptop about an inch off my desk. Aside from the noticeable heat, now when I have the SLI enabled and am playing a game, my laptop will repeatedly crash. I'll even turn the settings down and after about 20-30 min the screen will freeze or go black. This doesn't happen when the SLI is disabled.

I saw something once where someone opened up the back of their M17x and cleaned or something, and really improved the fans and stuff. Is this something I should look into? I know the fan is running because it's also much louder when the SLI is enabled. If you need any more info or want me to download software to get an exact temp with SLI enabled, just let me know. Thanks for the support.

 

Hello, Nerevar, I would recommend the following steps:

First look up the 'teardown M17x' videos on youtube(2 official parts) and clean the dust on your heatsink blades (on all three of them) the fans may be turning but if the hot air is blocked in the laptop by a 'wall' of dust your system overheats.

Be patient when disassembling, go slowly and pay attention!

I would also recommend you get your hands on a tube of thermal paste (whatever brand as it makes very little difference so it comes down to preference) to replace the old one on the CPU and GPU dies, if you're comfortable with this but you should already see a big difference (lower temps and fans hitting a high speed less frequent) just by cleaning it up.

After doing the above go to BIOS (repeatedly press the F2 key at the alien head) and access the Graphic Settings sub menu go over PCIeGen 2 and turn it to 'Disabled' - this will prevent drivers from pushing your cards to a higher bandwidth than 8x causing your system to freeze and video driver failures .

Now that you did all that go to Dell support site and download the latest BIOS version for the M17x (not R2 or R3) follow the instructions and flash it.
If you're already on A07, disregard this.

Lastly, in Windows , download the latest nVIDIA drivers off of nvidia.com but don't install them just yet,download CCleaner(Google it, don't remember the site), now uninstall your current video drivers thru Control Panel and reboot your system in Safe Mode.
Run CCleaner and clean your registry, reboot I'm Windows normally this time and finally install your video drivers, reboot when prompted.

If you did all of the above you should now be ok and fully enjoy your Alienware, don't forget to report back here.
Also if you encounter any difficulties don't hesitate to ask, I'll be more than happy to assist as many others here.

Cheers

 

Thank you very much, the thermal paste comes in Friday so I'm going to do the whole operation then. I'll let you know how it goes.

 

you can also try lapping the heatsink
http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/cooling/39

theres a guide on how to lap in the link above according to the one who powrote it you might game lose 5 degrees celcius if dont properly

 

Ok so the disassembly, cleaning, and thermal paste re-application went really well. The amount of dust blew my mind. After that I downloaded the bios update and began the flash process. It was going through the steps in a program called WinPhlash64, and it frozen on one part. I was worried bit thought maybe that part just takes a while, so I left it on all night. In the morning it was still frozen and The computer was unresponsive. So I turned it off, and now I think I killed it. when I boot it up all the keys light up and the caps lock indicator just flashes. Nothing at all shows up on the screen and even if I turn it on with my windows 7 disk in, nothing happens. I feel like I just got it running so well and now it's dead. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

If you still have warranty on, just give Dell a call.

You paid for your warranty for a reason. Use it =P

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware/404987-how-recover-bad-bios-flash.html

or call dell and have them replace the mobo.

 

So how did it go?
Are you sure everything is properly connected inside? Did you download the correct BIOS file?

 

downloaded the right bios, but I used the winphlash64 to update it and my computer froze during the process. Now I'm working on trying to get the computer to boot with the link from Mkelliny.

 

Let us know how it goes, Hopefully all goes well!

 

No good so far. It seems the WINCRIS doesn't actually transfer any files to my usb, not sure why. Do you happen to know a way around this?

 

Nevermind what I said before you need a system running a 32bit version of windows or else it will fail. It failed on my M17x but not on my Dell Inspiron.

From reading page 5 in that thread I posted you need to use a computer running XP to create the recovery USB, Which is why it worked on my Inspiron 6000

I will post the files for you

EDIT: Nevermind I apparently cannot send you the files as you will need to have wincris.exe make the USB drive with a recovery boot, which is something I would not be able to give you.

 

I had this same exact problem with winphlash64! I came here frantically looking for results and solutions but I found nothing. I can't remember if I made winphlash work or not now....

I've had this same problem with vista64 m17x r1 and other install applications. they authorize, then freeze and never run. winphlash can be saved when frozen by ending the process. no need to boot down.

 

If there's power getting into the laptop, as you said, you should be able to do a crisis recovery. But you need to create it in windows XP as stated above.

Good luck

 

Wow long time since I've been able to reply. My issue with the bad bios on my M17x has been resolved. I used the WINCRIS.exe to format my flash drive on my Windows XP home PC. I plugged the drive into the upper left USB port and held FN + B while I powered on the computer. There were some big differences this time: The beeping I heard before continued for 3-5min of seemingly random beeps, then a re-boot with the familiar start-up screen. I learned that you NEED a computer with windows XP for the crisis disk. I tried just about everything else including changing the compatibility of the WINCRIS.exe file, but nothing worked until I found an XP PC and did a normal format. Changing the drive of the USB was unnecessary on the XP PC as well. Thank you all for the tips, Dell wanted to charge me $360 to extend my warranty. If I could pay you back somehow just let me know.

 

Spoiler

That is great news, finally!
Yep it was mentioned a few times that the crisis disk works under win XP environment.
Glad you figured everything out.

Have fun!

 

YAY! Welcome back man! Glad everything is working now!