M18x - GPU Temperatures

Thank you sir! +rep'd

I also just realized that a dirty vbios could also have been what was hindering my GPU overclocks! I have some testing to do!

 

TY

I uploaded it again with a screenshot of GPU-Z and a readme with the bios version and some other basic stuff.

 

YAY, I can now make my GPUs properly angry again while being properly happy about it

Only figured out it was the vbios when I had a bsod while trying to remove the drivers. Maybe my 6970s are not turds afterall! I would be so freaking happy if that is the case lol (this could also explain my abysmal Crysis bench performance)

This all came about as I am getting a baseline to do a comparison before my thermal paste application (see, it did have a reason to be here.....lol)

 

I wouldn't worry about those temps, they are fine. The fluctuations are totally normal. If you sit in a quiet room you may notice that every time when one of the cards gets into the 60's the corresponding fan will slightly increase the rpms and bring it down to high 40s - low 50s. This will go in cycles. Browsing (especially with loads of flash) will often accelerate those cycles.
As long as your load temps are under 85c in furmark, - you are fine.

 

hmm.. that might explain my low clock speed. im gonna download the the vbios n try it out.

 

Still upgrading paste but get this...one of the banks of vram on one gpu....no thermal pad at all....way to go dell!

 

thank god i got a long warranty... how embarrassing

 

Back together, running the same tests again now to see if I made a difference.

PS: This laptop must have been designed my a satist.......you would think it was designed by Apple with it being so accessible and all! (although I did note that the chassis WAS made by Foxconn)

 

Was there a pad above the CPU like in M17xR1?

 

Nope. The CPU heatsink is dedicated to the CPU. The chipset heatsink is a pathetic sheet of metal next to the left GPU lol (essentially no cooling that is - not an issue really though as the "chipset" is an afterthought in SB systems)

The cooling design however did look fantastic to me. Very heavy duty - easily comparable to or surpassing Clevo in my opinion. Also the GPUs look like they had excellent even contact with the heatsink - no retention mod needed (which is good since the c clips are gone replaced by cheap plastic holders that ALL broke off while I was working lol)

And finally, my results! It worked...temps are better haha. They did not use the cheapest stuff possible though - looked very similar to what Dynatron provides on their server heatsinks (decent quality!)

Spoiler

CPU before paste


CPU after paste


GPUs before paste


GPUs after paste

 

Hey guys,

When I run hwinfo32 it never picks up the temps and sensors on my 2nd card. It will show that it is there, and the options says it is monitoring it, but never any sensors displayed. Any help? Im back on the stock factory, alienrespawn build.

 

That is because of the driver's ULPS feature. If you run trixx and disable it, then it will show up. Alternatively, you could change the registry entry for EnableULPS from 0 to 1 and it will always show up.

 

Thanks man! Appreciate it a lot. You were right, I love this machine! Though there are a lot of little quirks irking me...

 

Imageshack - unled1bmt.png
do u think my fans broke?

 

Nope, that GPU is under load and the temps are ok for stock thermal compound.

 

Do the fan controls on Trixx work with the M18x? I just tried it on my wife's G73JH and setting it to 100% had no effect. Temps and noise levels were unaffected.

 

That's because the fans are on the mobo not the GPU's and controlled through BIOS.

 

Hopefully we'll get a good step-by-step guide to repasting the GPU's with pics soon. If not, I plan to make one myself when my mothership lands. 5150Joker had a great idea in another forum to 'stretch' the ridiculously thick thermal pads on the cards when you repaste. This should provide better thermal conductivity across the board - giving the memory chips and gpu sufficient contact with the heatsink. Hopefully I can provide some positive results using this method. To anyone who wishes to try this before i have a chance to post pictures - take care and best of luck to you.

 

I just got my m18x today and I cannot determine if my GPUs are setup correctly. I see no sensor data for the second GPU, but I have launched Trixx and have disabled ULPS. Is there something else I need to do? I have tried HWInfo, HWMonitor and Afterburner and none of them give me temp readings for the second GPU. I tried this first with the Dell drivers, but then uninstalled and then installed cat 11.5b cap3.

Any help will be appreciated. I do plan to do a clean OS install on an SSD I have, but hate to go too far if I have a hardware issue.

UPDATE: I played around and noticed that if I disable Crossfire I am able to read temps for both GPUs. But, as soon as I re-enable CF I can only get one reading. Is this normal for ATI? I have always used Nvidia so I am totally a newb at ATI stuff but have been reading up a lot while I was waiting for my beast to arrive. I just never found this issue in that reading.

 

Have you tried GPU-Z?

 

Ugh, I am just disgusted with this machine right now. I did try GPU-Z and it worked, but before trying that I also installed Radeon-Pro and noticed that Afterburner was suddenly showing temps. But, then it seemed to stop. I was theorizing that perhaps I needed to have Trixx running to disable ULPS (whatever that is), Radeon-Pro running and then perhaps it would work.

But, as I tried that I got my second hard freeze on the system. What a pain.

I am giving up on it for tonight and am going to open it up in the morning to remove the stock memory and install my HyperX 4GBx2 and my SSD. Then do a clean install. Hopefully that will help. I have had many Dells and an M11xR1 and never had issues on day 1 like this machine. A brand new laptop should not be having hard freezes on the desktop like this.

 

Don't blame the machine. Software often causes these freezes when the program is trying to access the EC along with the operating system. Just use GPU-Z and HWmonitor for temps. No freezes will happen.

 

Don't get me wrong. I never blamed the hardware, but blamed the software setup from Dell. I cannot swear by it, but I am pretty sure I did not have monitoring running with the two hard freezes.

Anyway, I have done a clean install on my Crucial C300 and all seems good so far. I still encountered the sensor info. But, I found that after I launched GPU-Z and monitored the second GPU that now Afterburner can monitor it. Very odd. I did close GPU-Z first to avoid multiple programs monitoring at the same time.

Now to do some temp testing and benchmarks. Hopefully the temp monitoring will not disappear.

Thanks for the suggestions. By the way, what exactly is this ULPS option in Trixx that everyone says to disable?

 

Ok, I just had another freeze. Ugh.

Can you explain or point me to an explanation about the issue with the EC and causing freezes?

At the time of the freeze I was starting a 3DMark 11 run with Afterburner and AIDA64 running. AIDA64 did not detect any sensors for the GPU, so it was just monitoring CPU, etc.

I am going to try a while without Afterburner even thought I like its on-screen and monitoring ability.

Is AIDA64 also an issue?

What is safe and not safe to prevent these freeze-ups.

Nothing is overclocked at this point.

 

Fresh Install. No freezes here, I only use CPU-Z, GPU-Z and HWMonitor. Been running almost 3 weeks now .

 

Jason, I would suggest trying what Zero uses to monitor system info...also, currently, hwinfo32 seems to cause lockups too by accessing EC info. Ive also used HWMonitor and two gpu-z's and can report that it DOESNT crash.....pretty sure Martin Mumak will come up with a fix for Hwinfo32 tho.....(I kinda like that program so I hope he does!)

 

Ok, I am going to give it a try. I have removed AIDA64 and Afterburner from the equation. I will rely only on CPU-Z, GPU-Z and HWMonitor for now. If I go a few days with no freezes then that is probably the issue and I will wait for updates from Afterburner and AIDA64.

Am I good with using Trixx and Radeon Pro? They are really monitoring tools, but both seem popular on this forum and have good uses since I cannot use Afterburner. Does the Trixx fan control work with the M18x?

Thanks to all for the help.

 

Trixx should have fan control, I havent used it yet but watched a few vids here M18X my video collection that suggest that you will be ok.

Great vid collection too!

 

Hi, ok, I have installed Trixx and I will play with the fan control. Thanks for the link to the video collection. I actually found his videos via a Youtube search before. He does have some nice videos. Actually, his videos were what helped me make the final decision to cancel my m14x order and go for the m18x.

PS - so far no more freezes, so hopefully I will be good now. I just hope Afterburner and AIDA64 gets fixed as I love those programs. Trixx seems to have the same overclocking functionality as Afterburner, but I love the rivatuner onscreen display part of Afterburner.

 

I don't think you can have fan controls with Trixx, the fans are not connected to the cards but to the mobo and controlled through BIOS.

 

Anyone know why my VDDC isnt displayed? I have two M18's atm, both running latest gpu-z...one displays vddc, the other does not.....hmmmm......

 

I disabled the PLC and EC reading in HWinfo32 and so far no freezes. BTW, this is the only program I know of that can read the real fan speeds. I wish it could show these readings for both cards.

Probably a GPU-Z glitch.

 

Correction, HWinfo32 also shows GPU fan speed incorrectly

 

Just thought I would post a quick update on my temps. New system. All Stock at the moment...pastes/drivers...the lot.

Only thing I have done is put this beast up on my cooler and ran furmark 10mins as per T1TJ's first page test criteria.

Fairly happy to say that primary went to a max of 78 and secondary to max of 77.

The other sensors did show higher temps but none exceeded 90c and the lowest was 88c on gpu #3 sensors.

Im guessing that with a repaste at some point, these temps will fall right down in line with others that have repasted already.

Having opened this beast up already, I can see that its a "softly softly" approach needed - not very user friendly to get to the gpu's as the display has to come off....again.

Saying that, its not nearly as bad as what I thought it would be - I wouldnt be daunted again by opening the beast up again - got to do some "remedial" work anyway to install the HyperX I have sat here, along with my C300.....

As I have never repasted anything before, if anyone wants to give some tips on this, well, that would be much appreciated.

At last, its looking good...... - the only thing that does baffle me is that gpu-z shows VDDC as 0 where my previous system actually showed 0.900v or 1.100v as and when......hmmm?

 

I'd really just like to say this thread has scared the living crap out of me.

I have been contemplating a purchase of either an m18x or the latest Macbook Pro line. Whilst the MBP's temperature and cooling efficiency concerned me (I say this owning a 2009 model), my fears pale in comparison to the Alienware machine having read steviejones' plight.

I don't want to have to open my machine to apply paste.

I want a machine I can simply turn on and get decent graphics out of on Windows 7. I don't play the most demanding games in the market.

I was considering either of the below configurations, but the pendulum has heavily swung back in favor of the MBP after reading this thread.
___

Each configuration was intentionally ~$2,600 for comparison purposes.

Summary: Macbook Pro (2011 model)
Processor: 2.2GHz Quad-core Intel Core i7
RAM: 4GB 1333MHz DDR3 SDRAM
HD: 500GB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 RPM
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 6750M with 1GB GDDR5

Summary: Alienware m18x
Processor:Intel® Core™ i7 2720QM 2.2GHz (3.3GHz w/Turbo Boost, 6MB Cache)
RAM: 4GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1333MHz
HD:320GB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s
GPU: Dual 2GB GDDR5 AMD Radeon™ HD 6970M - AMD CrossFireX™

 

The two are in totally different categories.

1) If you run the same stress tests on the MBP not only you will experience some serious overheating but the CPU and probably GPU will throttle down heavily. M18x owners are very picky and will do everything to lower the temps by a couple of degrees. During normal occasional gaming you will have no issues unless the system arrives defective by default.

2) If you are still worried about the temps and do not wish to open the system and repaste it, - order from a reseller who can repaste it for you

 

Has anyone here played Witcher 2? and if so, how are your temps looking like if you have the 6970 XF setup?

 

Here you have my temps

 

You have a poor contact between the GPU's and their heatsinks. I suggest you to do repasting and replace the stock thermal pads with paste. You may have to apply a significant amount though.

 

Thnks Aikimox, 3k euros of price and they put bad paste. I have some mx-5, but is there any guide to do it?

 

They didn't put bad paste but the entire HS+Pads+paste setup is poorly implemented. To improve the situation you can replace the pads on memory chips with a good quality paste and also bend a heatsink a bit for better contact. Dunno about MX-5 but I know Joker used MX-4 and it was great. I'm using TX-4 and it's very good for memory chips, no bleeding and no mess.

There's no video guides AFAIK but I may be repasting mine in a week or two when upgrading the cards and will make a video as promised.

Generally, you can follow the service manual from the website and it should be fairly easy, just time consuming.

 

Aikimox, what would be good thermal pads for the gpu, and what thickness would i need? im already going to be buying the ic diamond 24 carat for my cpu, so ill put that on the gpu.

 

Scook/Aikimox- Just wanted to know if you had a chance to take any pics of the repaste. I have done PC builds, lapping heatsinks but never tackled opening up a laptop, much less a $3500+ laptop. I was actually considering purchasing from HIDevolution as they charge $60 for a CPU/GPU repaste with IC Diamond. I am confident of my abilities, but I have read a few post that say the parts on the M18 can break easily. And I do not want to void the 3yr warranty I will be getting.

 

thnks again, I used this past to repaste mi ex-asus g73jh, gpu and cpu, Could you upload a few photos of the repasting process when you do it?

 

koelle- I noticed your sig and want to know what Bluray burner you have in your M18?
Thanks

 

@Koelle: I would recommend repasting your CPU as well. 86C is a tad on the warm side. Perhaps a repaste will allow you to run at under 80C. Remember a cooler CPU will also let your other components run cooler too including your GPU even if they don't share the same heatsink so always worth refining your cooling as much as possible.

I use ICD thermal compound 24 carat diamond paste and it really does the trick. Ideal for power users

 

I tried bergquist 1&0.5mm but wasn't happy with the results, paste will always beat pads.

If you order yours through Fortnax, I can personally repaste it for you BTW, we price match other AW resellers, not to mention the extra customization options

 

Thnkx king of Interns, i repasted my ex-g73 coz I had a guide, the problem is that I have no Idea to disassemble this laptop, Is there any guide? I dont wanna force plastic parts, for instance, the control center have a very weak pieces of plastic to lock it into the base. In my Asus there were a warranty seal between cpu and heatsink. How they know that you have opened the laptop?

I think that I will replace the pads and the paste.

rawhide85, I bought br burner, sony optiarc, and i made it external, and I have plugged to the lappy-

 

Instuctions (or destructions lol) on how to teardown your M18x are here:

Documentation

You can open these beasts without voiding warranty - they are designed to be user upgradeable. The service manual does carry the following warnings though:

CAUTION: Only a certified service technician should perform repairs on your computer. Damage due to servicing that is not authorized by Dell is not covered by your warranty.

So, unless you know what your doing, think twice would be my best advice.

Also, be prepared for some major surgery on your syste to repaste ithe gpu or cpu. Quite a big teardown and the display assembly needs to be removed. Its not difficult but can be daunting - the thought of tearing down your system to the bare bones. This is what you will have to do....... here - I posted some pics of my teardown on this page.....you will have to get to this stage and then a bit more to repaste.....

 

Well, I can't beat that offer. I will certainly keep you in mind when I begin serious pricing. Also, will the repasting void the Dell warranty as I will be getting the 3yr basic.