M17x-R3 CPU & GPU Re-Pasting Guide w/Pics!

I didn't have mine propped up in the back of the laptop at all, and was getting about 78C with furmark, put a small box to lift the back end up a few inches, now getting about 72C after 4 mins with furmark at xtreme burn-in 1920x1080, good enough for now.

 

repasting could only improve thermal conduct between CPU/GPU and sink, the max temps depend on many factors, such as room temps, location of laptop, etc.

 

Idle temps aren't a great measure because they can vary wildly since the fan is either not spinning or barely spinning. Small fluctuations in load or ambient temperature can cause large GPU temp swings. If you want to measure how effective repasting was, look at temps under 100% load, or, if you must look at idle temps, at idle temps while the fan is manually set to 100% via hwinfo.

 

Does repasting your CPU void the warranty and will they be able to easily tell if they do?

 

You're actually better off not spreading it. If you do, you run the risk of getting (a lot of) air bubbles. See here.

I never cease to be surprised just how much goop the Dell tech use on their components. Ridiculous. Nice guide though.

 

it did not void others who repasted...i even remember reading how a tech complimented a member on the good paste job they did

I completely agree with this. let the heatsink spread it. The online guides that show the spreading or creditcard technique is not optimal for temps.

 

Just repasted my cpu and gpu and now my integrated GPU is not working. Any ideas? I'm going to take it apart and repaste just incase some of the compound got on the cpu and bridged something it shouldn't.

Figured it out. Just reset the BIOS and all is well.

 

Followed this guide for my R2, as the temps are uneven across the 4 cores, 10 degrees between core 0 and core 3

So went for a repaste, but still the same? tried DR650's advice about adjusting the screws whist running but no difference? any body else have this, I noticed a thermal pad on the cpu heatsink (still the original one) should I try changing that?

 

There will always be variation across the cores. Have you checked if your heatshink is flat? Don't overtighten the screws and tighten it with an X pattern...similar to how you would put a tire on. This will help in keeping the heatsink as flat as possible

you can change the thermal pads to something better like fujipoly 6w/mk pads, however, this will not help you with your core temps

 

There is usually a variation across cores. I can't remember the temps of my R1 very well, but I think there was about an 8°C variation.

 

I'm still not sure if I'm brave enough to repaste my AW laptop. I did my Inspiron 1720 and its made a big difference.

I sent an email to technical support and they said that I couldn't do it myself without voiding warranty.

Do any of you overclock your GPU permanently or do you only do it for benchmarking?

 

Is repasting more of an overclockers worry vs. leaving the machine as is or will it make a big difference to a stock user as well?

I have no intention of overclocking so is the stock AW paste good enough?

 

.....anyone??

 

If you are careful with the re-paste you will not void any warranty. We have all re-pasted here with no issues.

I run my CPU at 41/40/38/38 on a daily basis as well as my AMD card permanently on 830-850/1050 during my gaming sessions (when I am done I switch to Intel HD). Few months gone, no problems.

When I ran benchmarks I pushed my card to 870/1050.

 

I re-pasted my both my CPU (2670QM) and my 6990 with Prolimatech PRO-PK1 and went with the custom auto profile in HWinfo64.

Now GPU temps dropped significantly.

However I am now concerned with my CPU idle temps. They are lower than with the factory paste but seem high at 58c. Both the heatsink and CPU were cleaned with 90% isopropyl alcohol and I was quite careful when tightening the screws to ensure they were done uniformly until snug.

 

58c isn't high for a mobile CPU. I'll check later when i get home tonight and post my CPU idle temps.

Do you have the back raised up?

 

No I do not have the back raised up it's just sitting on my desk here at work.

I Just ran 3D Mark Vantage and CPU topped out at 87c GPU at 71C

 

Sounds like you need to redo the CPU paste. Both idle and load temps are higher than expected, although idle temps will be largely determined by the settings in the HWINFO64 lookup table. For comparison, here is a Vantage run at stock settings and accompanying HWINFO64 from back when my R3 was a 2820QM/6990M setup. As you see, CPU temps are under (barely) 70C.

 

hmmmm 87c is a tad hot, though not outrageous

Raising the back will drop your temps up to 7-8c..many here just do it ghetto like the "Book" method or the "bottlecap" method lol



My CPU cores hover between 71-73c under 100% prime95 load. I also used PK-1.

 

Anyone ever tried using some thermal pads for the voltage regulator thingies near the CPU?

I heard they could lower temperatures, and I have seen other laptops put some padding there.

 

Do I need to buy thermal pads? It seems like some guides don't even mention thermal pads.

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you can just reuse your stock ones if they are still in good shape. I'm still using the stock pads and I've repasted the GPU at least 3 times

 

@GeoCake -- I've tried both pads and paste on those VR's at different times, but saw no benefits. There is more separation than I initially thought, so I probably didn't have thick enough pads; the paste was hardly disturbed.

 

Well those temps were after redoing the CPU paste again ;-7 They are bit better than I was seeing with the factory job

 

Completely up to you. Just wanted to give you an idea of the possibilities.

 

I will redo it again tonight and see if they improve any.

 

The 87c earlier mightof been a glitch.

I Just ran Unigine 'Heaven' DX11 Benchmark 2.5 and max CPU temp was 75c
then immediatly did a 3D Mark run with a max of 82C after both benchmarks.

 

That sounds much better.

 

Hey guys, I need some advice, my R3 is doing pretty well on idle 53-56 for gpu and 50-55 for cpu.

But when heavy gaming, the temperature slowly creeps up to the throttle temperature 78degree or something. I try to solve this using hwinfo custom auto fan, solves the temperature throttle but the temperature do slowly goes up to dangerous level of 90. I monitor temp with realtemp but it's annoying to stop playing for online games with no pauses.

So a repaste will be a good action to solve this, yes?
Also will I have to replace the pads or any other thing?

 

I think the laptop is only 8-9 months old, so I'll just keep the stock ones for now.

Also, do you spread the thermal paste evenly before you attach the heatsink again? In the guide, it seems like you just put some paste on, put the cpu/gpu and heatsink back together and just let the pressure between the two spread it out.

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3 things.
1) Apply this throttle fix
http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...throtting-fix-no-need-modify-system-bios.html
2) repaste your gpu
3) raise the back of your laptop

that is correct...let the pressure of the heatsink spread the paste. This seems to be the best way. Use paste that is easily spread like PK-1, MX-4, AS5 etc.

For CPU, because its rectangular, you can look at my CPU guide pic of how i applied paste on the cpu (my cpu guide in my sig)

For GPU, because its square, you can apply a rice grained size of paste right in the middle

 

Great Job, I just did mine and so far the results are phenominal. I now am hitting 65 deg (and thats just a max it hovers at 62-63) on furmark where as before I was hitting 77 deg.

On a side note my GPU was not square as it shows in the guide pics it was more rectangular, seemed to be longer and thinner. Yes I do have the 580m. Also the thermal pads that I replaced looked twice as thick as the ones you suggest in your guide.

Anyways DO THIS if you have a m17x, you won't regret it.

 

The concensus from forum regulars that have repasted, is to use 1mm pads, so your observation is consistent with ours

Repasting is easy and everyone should do it. The benefit is huge

 

Is it absolutely necessary to replace the thermal pads? I have yet to source some pads that I'm willing to pay shipping for (frozencpu wants to charge me $15 to ship Fujipoly pads to me).

 

it's recommended but if you take care and ensure you don't damage or get them dirty, should be good.

remember the ram chips themselves do not have monitoring so the only sign that something is wrong would be on screen artifacts.

 

What? I'm confused again. Early I asked and they said if the pads are still in good condition, you don't need to replace them...or is this post talking about ram? Because I'm talking about CPU/GPU

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Thanks for that. +rep
I think I'll wait to repaste my GPU. The temps are acceptable as is right now.

On another note, I repasted my CPU with MX-4 and right after repasting the temps were great. Idle temps were lower by 4~5 degrees C and load temps barely broke 60 degrees C. Then after that, the next time I fired up the computer, on average the temps seemed to be about 5 degrees C higher than before the repaste. Now the temps seem to have settled around 2~3 degrees C lower than stock paste. I'm not really concerned since the temperature range shouldn't really hurt anything but I'm just curious if this is normal. Is this the paste just settling in?

It just dawned on me why you were confused. When xeroxide mentioned "RAM" he's referring to the vRAM on the GPU.

 

hi, i want to ask if i change my gpu from 6970m to gtx 580m, what kind of thermal pads do i need?(in term of thickness)? and do i need other stuff to install it? because i read from NBR that some seller sell it with heatsink and bracket. I'm a bit confuse, aren't heatsink and bracket included when we bought alienware in the first place? Why do they sell it?(or do i need a different HS and bracket if i want to upgrade to gtx 580m?)

Thank you very much masters, please, this grasshopper need enlightenment

 

Success.

I've been getting huge drops in FPS and performance for awhile and i finally decided to do something about it. Ran prime95 while watching hwinfo and sure enough there was a ton of throttling going on, right before temps hit a 100 and my laptop just shut off, no bsod.

Before the repaste my cpu idle temps were mid 60s.

Followed the guide and re-pasted with MX-4. Ran prime95 5 minutes later and temps never go above 80c and I'm idling in the high 40s :thumbsup: I also cleaned out a lot of dust in the fans (It had been a year since I cleaned them ). I'm going to see if I can run use the XTU utility to keep 4 cores at 2.6 ghz and not burn up my cpu. One thing that was weird was during prime95, the 4 cores maxed out at 2.3 ghz under full load. Shouldn't they have been at 2.6 ish?

also re-pasted the 6990m (didn't change the pads) and am going to test it in Furmark. I know my GPU tips were hitting 90's while playing Metro 2033.

Great Guide

One thing that pissed me off was the GPU heatsink had several different size screws holding it in place. It turned into a PITA trying to get them out evenly.

 

Think I'm going to finally bite the bullet as my 560m has been hitting the dreaded 78 degrees throttle point in SWTOR for a while now, when I first got the machine I did'nt even have a stand and it worked fine, I played for hours with no issues, but now even with a laptop cooling stand with a fans over the GPU heatsink and another blowing air directly into the CPU intake I'm getting nowehere, even after just 30mins or so of playing I'm hitting around 75 degrees.

One question to the enlightened however, this guide makes reference to using a half grain sized amount of MX-4, but other guides ive seen recommend full grains and some seem to use more. Eg this video on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITj5XV7XimU shows the poster using a lot more than what I'd call a grain and spreading it out rather than just reseating the heatsink.

Is there any relative pro's on con's to these differences in technique? Or is this just a personal preference of the poster?

Also is there any general cooling maintenance I should consider while I have the rig apart?

 

Have you tried just blowing your fans clean? could just be a lot of dust in your system.

 

I have had the undercarriage off of the machine off and tried to suck out any dust with the vaccums nozzle attachment, perhaps I should remove the whole fan assembly and have a proper look.

PS Does anybody know of a UK supplier of Fujipoly Premium pads? Cos google is proving to be at a loss?

 

in the future don't use a vaccum as it can cause a static build up and zap your machine. You compressed air and blow the dust and stuff out of the machine.

 

Dont worry, I did'nt touch anything electronic, just the plastic case of the fan itself.

 

Pretty interesting, good to know