what is the best way to do a through cleaning of my alienware 17 mid 2013

i have basically just used compressed air up to this point and can tell that my fans are starting to run longer and louder

 

I would diassassemble and use q-tips with alcohol

 

That's a good method. You could also try repasting.

 

thanks guys

 

wait , repaste what the cpu or the gpu or both

 

If you are at stock paste "which isn't actually paste since dell uses thermal adhesive tape" I would say do both

 

Where did you get that info? Every Dell laptop I've worked on over the last several years, including my Alienware 17 R1, uses thermal paste for both the CPU and GPU if installed. It isn't particularly good, or more importantly correctly applied, thermal paste but it definitely isn't thermal adhesive tape.

 

Dell thermal compound comes on the heatsinks, I believe that is what @ MahmoudDewy meant.

You should clean both fans and then run stress tests for both GPU and CPU. Take a note of the temps you get under full load as well as idle temps. Then let the laptop cool down (15-30 min off should be enough) just to be safe and avoid burning yourself. When the CPU and GPU heatsinks are not hot to touch, fully clean both heatsinks and CPU+GPU die areas with rubbing alcohol. And finally re-paste both with some good thermal paste like Gelid Extreme or Liquid Ultra (quite dangerous as this metal based paste can not touch any aluminium surface!). Your temps will be better when idle and especially under full load, fans should then kick in less since the components will not need so much cooling.

 

My laptop came with something similar to http://www.ebay.com/itm/20pcs-25x25...sive-Tape-for-Heatsink-sink-CPU-/381087899111 preinstalled on both CPU & GPU.

& when Dell technician came to replace my faulty 1st GPU he brought one of these with him & he told me that this is what they use now & no thermal paste.

I believe they are doing this to eliminate the human error in the thermal paste application but let me tell you this, toothpaste could do a much better job than this thing . When I replaced these pads with Zalman ZM-STG 02 -10c on both GPU & CPU (Maybe more for the GPU because I used to stop whatever I was doing when I saw the GPU hit 95c so it could possible have gone higher) Now the highest I see on the GPU is 82 & that is only when playing Witcher 03 with modded vBios that keeps my GPU on constant voltage/clocks

 

I know that on the 17r2 that they do use thermal paste, saw another owner disassemble the laptop and clean the paste off.

 

With the R2 cooling system & reduced thickness they can't pull this sort of shenanigans. They would be crazy to do that as the cooling performance of these things is disgusting.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/ali...er-install-order-guide-alienware-systems.html course if your cleaning house, and want to do a full re-installation heres a link to a quide for order of installation. I'm bored so I'm browsing these forums, don't mind me. (Also wnated to hijack this thread to see a little avatar of myself in the thread )