*OFFICIAL* M18xR1/R1/18 Owners "Are my CPU/GPU Temps OK Thread" - Ask Questions/Get Help Here

I have 7970Ms, but I can't remember a time in my mobile gaming tenure where both GPUs had similar temperatures, idle or load. What are you using to read fan speed? The reason I ask is because I haven't come across a program that reported them correctly.

 

Coffee is up to $2 at 7-11?

 

LOL... The temps are nothing to worry about, my curiosity is mostly the fan running slower. The machine is performing great and my overall temps since the 3 pipe are fantastic.

 

I am using HWiNFO64 and MSI Afterburner to watch temps.

 

Thanks for adding that detail. Fan speeds are usually not reported with 100% accuracy. Many of the utilities out there are not even intended for laptops... some seem to be geared primarily for desktop computers, with laptop compatibility thrown in as an afterthought or maybe even by accident.

Yes, if you get the high octane stuff in a "Double Gulp" cup it's more expensive.

I don't have any fan speed sensors in HWiNFO64 and those in MSI Afterburner probably are questionable. GPU fans in a laptop are essentially chassis fans. They are not directly controlled by the GPU like a desktop video card. The EC controls all fans based on sensor reporting, and as TurbodTalon mentions, the accuracy of third-party interpretation of that information is suspect. I don't remember the finite details, but the last conference call with Louis Bruno (Alienware's Lead Graphics Engineer) this was covered briefly and if I remember correctly, the EC does not manipulate the left and right fans independently... they are controlled simultaneously. Don't quote me on this last bit of information, because that was a long time ago. Maybe Steviejones or another person that attended that conference call can add to this based on what they remember from Mr. Bruno's comments.

 

Ok professors, lol, I realize my data may be suspect but it was observed across multiple programs. I do suspect by the lack of there being any actual problems with it running this way, that I am all good and I may proceed to getting some real use out of it. Its nice to know whats going on under the hood:thumbsup:

 

The only other thing that having an awareness of can be useful is that some of the third-party utilities that interact with sensors can actually cause malfunction with the EC signals and create problems with fans not operating correctly. So, the utilities we like to use for monitoring may not only sometimes be inaccurate, they can cause overheating, etc. I've had this happen a couple of times. I no longer use SpeedFan because of that. It caused me some serious issues with fans malfunctioning with 580M SLI.

 

Good to know for sure. How do you monitor your systems vitals?

 

I used HWiNFO64 to watch the temps. The improvement was drastic and immediate for me.

 

I'm curious what the normal gpu temps should be while running heaven 4.0, I noted mine jumped to 75 then cooled off to a stable 71/72 is that normal for. 680m? Seems like it should at least stay in the 60s

 

HWInfo reports almost all vitals right on the money. Not fan speeds though.

If you force all of your fans on with HWInfo, to say 2,000RPM, do your GPU idle temperatures stabilize closer to one another?

I have noticed that the fan for my primary and secondary card aren't always doing the same thing. Every so often the primary GPU fan will come on full blast and run for a couple of minutes for no reason whatsoever, but I think that is peculiar to the 7970Ms in an R1.

 

I am not running heaven 4.0 but at 99%-100% GPU load over 24 hour period my average temps were 51C to 62C max.

 

I have not done anything but monitor to this point, I will have to look into forcing the fans to spin up. Currently I have no method of doing that.

 

HWiNFO does it. Check between the 'Reset Values' and 'Logging Start' buttons at the lower left of the window that reports all of the data. Looks like a crude fan.



And then this window:



Unless I'm mistaken, you cannot control the fans individually.

 

This was interesting, and thanks for the 411. When I set the fans myself to 3500 RPM's they align in speed very close and the temps are near the same on both GPU's. This is fine for a test but it takes all the fans together, CPU included so I can't leave it this way. It does prove that if the system would simply tell it to run at the rite speed it can and does bring the temps into line.

Edit: I set up a custom Auto that takes readings from the first GPU and the CPU to set the fans speed and doing this has forced the slow fan to speed up and the overall temps are looking really good. The GPU's @ 100% load are running 51C on both, so no more 10C difference and the CPU is running @ 62C under load. Not bad..

 

The only thing that bugs me about the custom fan profiles is that there is no, how do you say, overlap? Let's say your temperature goes up, causing the fans to move up to the next speed. However, once the temperature goes slightly below that threshold, the fans slow down again. If you have a game that runs the GPUs enough to be right at that temperature threshold, you have fans that are cycling slower-faster-slower, and so on. Very annoying. Unless they fixed that? It has been a couple of revisions since I tried it.

 

My idle temp is around 50 which seems high also, guess i should call dell and return it? It's only 1 day old lol

 

I wouldn't start thinking about a return unless your load temperatures are really high. I don't know what your computer's specs are, but my 7970s idle at about 40-50° C, depending on what I'm doing.

High CPU and GPU temperatures are almost always something mechanical and can be fixed easily without even calling Dell.

By mechanical I mean dust in the heat sink fins, needs a re-paste, heat sink is positioned improperly, etc.

 

Seems pretty stable to me and I have made a 10C adjustment to the triggers between the GPU temps and CPU temp to get it to equalize. It is not a perfect solution but with some tweaking it may be useful for some of my needs. Perhaps a revisit is in order for you and then you can tell me if its better than your last experience.

Edit: Interesting side note; I just did this same set up on my now freshly re-pasted M1730 and in the Custom Auto controls for that system I can adjust both GPU's and CPU independently.

 

It all depends on where you leave. I have never seen my temps below 56 neither cpu or gpu, but here the temps are higher than 90F. So if it cools when its under load then you should be fine.

 

When you see 100C then worry, you have plenty of time to give it a nice workout and I am sure after running it a while you will see better how it behaves. If its hotter than normal under load you can re-paste etc. There seems to be much flexibility as I am learning in the temp area.

 

Yes, I'll have to take another look at it.

The fan control seems to be different for every laptop. My old M17 doesn't even have the option, and my M17x had independent control of each as well.

 

I have to say, I like this allot. The system is running really nicely at perfect temps and the fans are not blasting, just doing their thing. I have not seen allot of throttling but you can change the ranges to make it stable without a problem. Gpu's running 100% @ 53C and CPU 64% @ 72C so nice....

 

I haven't found any software to modify M17 fans . So if you find any please let me know.

 

I'll let you know if I find anything. The M17 didn't have adequate cooling to begin with, so I'm not sure if forcing the fans to 100% would do much.

 

thanks! i'm just on stock speeds and my temp never gets higher than 79-81c on all 4 cores

gaming:
running far cry 3
gpu load 99% temps 69c
cpu 66c

 

sorry for the newbie question but I only recently got my new M18xR2 and already had Dell techs out 3 times so I want to check everything before I get them out again.

I'm concerned about the temps the cpu and gfx cards run at.

My cpu is always around 50C at idle and 90 - 102C under Prime95.

I have 2 x 680M video cards and aida64 shows both GPU fans at 0 rpm. The temp at idle is always 57-60C.

Do the 680M video cards have fans or just a heatsink with heatpipes?

I'm not game to run any stress tests on the GFX cards until I know for sure it has no fans.

Are these temps normal or should I be worried? Do these GFX cards have fans?

 

I don't think those temps are cause for concern. My cards are usually idle in the low 50's. Gaming usually they are around 67-72, last night the Sleeping dogs bench they hit 76 which a bit of a OC which is nearing the edge of my comfort zone but hey.
You really dont want your cards to hit 80 and beyond.
Best thing is to clean out your fans first and see if that makes a difference, you'd really be surprised. I myself haven't cleaned them out for about 2-3 weeks and looking from my temps its probably time again

 

You mention that your fan speeds reads 0, but when you have that reading do you look and feel underneath your computer on the far right and left sides and see if you feel airflow? And yes, you have one fan per card.

 

What CPU and what is it clocked at? The temps running prime95 are not necessarily relevant. Are you in a warm environment? Do you see the same temps under normal use? If not, then don't worry about it.

The GPU fans are actually chassis fans. They are controlled by the EC, not the GPUs. Most of the monitoring utilities available do not accurately reflect laptop fan speeds. Some detect either 0% or 100% at all times.

 

Thanks for the replies guys. My system specs are:

Alienware M18x R2 Intel i7 Extreme 3920XM (at Stock) | 32GB Kingston (4 x 8GB) DDR3-1600MHz

256GB Crucial M4 mSATA SSD | 2 x 1TB HDD data drives (NON-RAID) | 1 x 500GB HDD

2 x 2GB GDDR5 GTX 680M - SLI | Killer Wireless-N 1103 | Slot-Loading Dual Layer Optiarc Blu-ray Burner

Windows 8 Pro X64 Secure Boot & Fast Boot enabled

I ran Furmark burn in test and maxed both GFX cards at 99% and neither card got over 76C (tho Furmark kept throttling both cards but I've read this is normal on Furmark) so I guess that says it all okay.

I'm in Australia and it's always warm here. Room temp ~25-27C

Sounds like you might be right Mr Fox that the fans are not being detected as GPU fans. Both Furmark and AIDA64 show fans at 0%

I haven't felt for airflow from fans but I can sure hear it pushing out a lot of air.

Hopefully I can rest easy tho I wish the cpu temps were lower (I'm used to water cooled desktop temps)

cheers

 

Solution to my problem: Okay so finally we had some time to take a look at the GPU again and see what might have went wrong. When we removed the cooler, we immediately noticed how there was only silver thermal paste on the other side of the copper even though we made a good layer on the full surface of GPU. For some reason even when the screws are tight on the cooler, there will be a very small gap on the other side which doesn't fully contact the GPU. We replaced the paste and put a little bit more on the other side. Now everything works how it should and all temps are good.

 

My 7970m has never gone over 75 degrees with the overclock, but my 3920xm will occasionally hit 90-91 degrees playing CPU intensive games like GTA IV. Other games it never goes over 80. Is this normal/safe? There temps are at a 4.4GHz overclock but even on smaller overclocks my CPU still hits 90 degrees at times.

I know 105 is the limit but surely something is wrong if you hit that while just gaming.

 

GTA4 is one of the more peculiar games to run. I play alot of it lately and use 4.0 Ghz to run it with with 1 GPU. My CPU temps usually stay in the high 70's - low/mid 80's, GPU 68-73 (900/1250). Nothing wrong with the CPU hanging around early 90 degrees for a little, but running 4.4 for GTA4 seems to give diminishing returns so I don't bother clocking the CPU any higher.

 

It's just a hassle to change it because I haven't figured out how throttle stop works, it's so confusing

 

Maybe this will help...

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I mean it stops working occasionally and I can't open it. I works occasionally but most of the time I will click on it and it won't actually open, or it will say "ThrottleStop is already open" when it clearly isn't. Same thing happens for HWiNFO.

Frustrating when I change the settings then it doesn't open so I can't change them back.

 

You sure its not minimizing like this?



TS is the kind of program to always have open. You can always try using the task manager and end the process, so that you can relaunch the program and make your changes.
I'm not sure why TS and HWinfo64 are closing on you though. I'd try reinstalling it or a different version.

 

If you're running Windows 8 and run ThrottleStop as a Windows Task at startup/logon (which I do), it sometimes does not appear in the System Tray. However, changing your Taskbar Properties to show all notifications all the time should fix that problem. It sounds like what TBoneSan is pointing out is the problem, but if you are hiding System Tray icons, even in Windows 7, you might not see them if the tray has collapsed and not showing you everything. They may be running, but you are assuming they are not. Once those programs are running, you have to maximize them using their System Tray icon, not a Desktop or Program Menu icon. They don't have the larger Task Bar buttons like an open program window will have. If you uncheck the "Start Minimized" option in ThrottleStop, you will see the big Task Bar icon when it is running, but that is not the default behavior.

 

I run windows 8, task manager doesn't pick it up, but when I click on it it says its already open. Definately not displayed on the system tray too.

HWiNFO just simply opens once, maybe twice, then randomly stops working.

 

That happens with Windows 8 sometimes. This is a Windows 8 defect and not a problem with HWiNFO64 or ThrottleStop. Use Task Manager to kill them and relaunch.

I have basically killed off/emasculated my Windows 8 Modern (Metro) UI and I don't have issues with either program any more. If the Modern UI loads by default it seems to make that issue worse. My Windows 8 installation functions essentially like an updated version of Windows 7.

 

Hi there everyone. Question.

Is it normal for my laptop's CPU (specs in signature) to reach a temperature of around 75-92C whilst browsing the net? I'm pretty sure it's abnormal and the fans are constantly working hard and obviously, lots of noises come out from just my laptop lol. Any thoughts and solutions on this? I don't want this problem to extend as it proves to be a risk on my laptop.

FYI: Tried a full scan with AVG and nothing seems to be the problem.
Thanks in advance.

 

Well 90+ is definitely high even with just browsing seriously high. Before my CPU went up to 90C while gamin with MX-4 paste (OC @ 4.1 Ghz ) then i did repaste with IC Diamond now it stays below 72C all the time even with heavy gamin. so i think you got to repaste CPU again and make sure clean heatsink too.

 

The moment I saw 'you got to repaste CPU again', I stopped, dropped down and cried lol.
The reason to this is that I'm too scared to tear down half of the components as the laptop is expensive and i'm not good with tools and such. Plus, I don't even know how to reach the heatsink for M18x. Heck, I don't even know what it looks like. D;

 

lol sit tight take a bottle of Stella Watch tear down videos (have a look about M18x too ) on youtube. If you havnt got basic tool then just order it on Ebay its very cheap. Just make sure you wont break any tabs (well you will one or two but it doesnt matter). Actually i've opened my system many times so far (8 times in just 2 days cosz of crossfire issue)

 

Before repasting, a simple thing to do would be to check that the fans and heat sinks are not clogged up with lots of dust bunnies. You can do that with a very minimal teardown. If that proves not to be the issue, it does look like it's time to go further......have you any warranty if you are afraid of doing it yourself?

 

Nope. The warranty expired a year ago. Could you link me any video tutorial that specifically stresses on cleaning the heat sink? I know Mr. Fox has a complete teardown tutorial but that's not exactly what i'm looking for as that is the complete process.
Could you tell me how you clean your heat sink? Or at least point out the necessary steps to get to the heat sinks in Mr. Fox's tutorial video?

 

Well, it's quite simple really. Ensure the machine is not on AC/plugged in and remove the battery - at this point, I'd purge all power from the machine by holding the on/off button for 20 seconds or so - and then remove the bottom panel (4 screws on the edge of the battery compartment will now be visible) and slide it off. You will then be greeted with the awesome sight of your 3 system fans - middle one being cpu fan.

You can then see how clogged up the fans are - if they are congested, chances are the heat sink fins will be, too. You can do a bit of a visual inspection of the fins by looking through the rear vents, if you like.

I think the best way of cleaning would be to remove the fans - couple of screws and a small connector to release from the motherboard and they come out nice and easy - you could leave them connected if you didn't want to unplug them completely - just be careful with the cable if you decide not to remove them completely. You can clean the fan blades with some compressed air in short bursts - try and stop them fan spinning too much as it can damage the fan if spun the wrong way. Vacuuming can also be used. You could use a Q-tip to keep the blades still.....you can also use Q-tips and some rubbing alcohol (surgical spirit or isopropyl alcohol) to clean the blades even more. Again, just be gentle and you will get some nice results.

For the heat sinks, once the fans are removed, you will see them. Many people blow air 'in' from the rear in an effort to clean them - the debris is just gonna get blow even further inside the machine, so you will want to blow 'outwards' to remove and apparent debris. Short bursts again.

That should be about it. Re-assemble. Job done. Check temps.

Have a look at this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m18x/729513-m18x-r1-suddenly-overheating.html for more handy info, and this one: http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m18x/644886-advice-cleaning-my-alienware-m18x.html

 

Great reply. I shall try it out first and i'll keep this post updated.

 

Here is also some troubleshooting that we have posted about overheating