880m .....seems to run a tad....warm....

So, long story short, I happened upon a dead Alienware m17x (I'd wager its a R5, its from late 2014) on CL. Guy wanted $250 for it. I met up with him, took a peek and offered $190, he went for it.

After some poking around I was pretty certain it was a bad board. Got a new board, installed, laptop works!! Total price with the new board: $300.

Specs:
1080p
80GB SSD (I installed a spare 256 I had laying around)
i7 4910
16GB RAM
GTX 880m

Only issue I have so far is, this 880m seems to run a bit...warm. When replacing the motherboard I did repaste/pad the GPU (and CPU of course). During various game testing and some synthetic benchmarks, the card hits, and maintains, 93c. Performance never really drops and clocks remain a constant 995/2500. Should I be worried or is this normal for the GPU? I see varying responses out there in Google-land with some saying its fine, others saying its too toasty, figured I would ask here and get some further opinions on my specific situation.

 

Wow, that's an amazing deal, best I've ever seen in my life
That's the 17 R1, in some countries it was sold as the M17X R5, but that's a misnomer

93C is mysteriously hot for a 880M, did you repaste it correctly with good paste? They were known to run very hot as they were just 780m's overclocked to the point of being unstable, but usually around mid 80s

I loved the Ranger, congrats on snagging one!
This makes me want to get one again..

 

I was certainly shocked at the initial price and even more shocked the seller went for my offer. He did seem rather convinced it was toast for good though so i suppose he was just pleased to get anything for it. As for paste, I used Noctua NT-H1. As for "correctly, I suppose thats always up for debate. I prefer a small dab dead center with enough to cover the GPU once the pressure of the HS is applied. As for padding, I only had 1mm, 1.5mm and 2.0mm and am pretty sure a few areas could have used 2.5mm but, not in any area that would make that big a Difference I would think.

 

Since you seem to know what you're doing, I'm going to assume to dusted the internals
Thats suspciously hot, but I would recommend selling and getting a 970M anyways, runs a lot cooler

 

So, A- Yes, internals dusted very well during the teardown (for mobo replacement). B- While I do know what I am doing to a point....I have never tried actually swapping a laptop GPU for a totally different card, not sure I am in the class of HSF modding and trying various odd BIOS revisions.....what major steps would be entailed swapping for a 970?

 

All you would need to do is buy a 970M and swap it for the 880M, that simple. Put on new thermal pads and paste, boot into windows and install drivers

 

Indeed, can do! So then the next logical question, is that the highest I can go with just the "swap out" qualifier?

 

With just swapping out, the highest you can do is a 980M which is around 10-5% than a 1060M. If you have the 120HZ screen or onlocked bios, you can use a 1070 MXM but I think you need to mod the case

 

Or sell me your laptop @Kyle_Gates lol

 

Calm down! The lad has barely just boughten it, and for a killer price as well..

 

I remember the good old 880m days. I had an 18 with 880m sli and they were finicky and yes a bit warm. But if you got lucky and ended up with decent cards, found the right driver for them and didn't mess with them too much they could be really good cards. After about 3 or 4 months of trying different drivers and settings I ended up pretty happy with mine. They tended to mostly run maxed in the mid 80's and occasionally would hit 87-88. I then sold it about 6 months later and upgraded to an 18 with 980m SLI which max out around 80. If you're comfortable doing the upgrade I would do it sooner than later. I didn't trust mine and they ran cooler than yours so I would be concerned about how long that card will last.

On a side note, the whole time I had them I only found 1 driver that they didn't throttle with. I want to say it was something like 344.71 but it's late and I might be completely wrong. Sounds about right though. Unless that was the bad one. Either way, I'm glad I had the 880's, I learned a lot during that time. I'm glad I got rid of them too.

 

In fairness....this Alienware makes it 3 that I own so....

Not saying I am looking to sell or anything but, Its not my only gaming laptop

Mainly I have just never owned anything in the 8xxm series (other 2 Alienware's have 780m and 770m SLi) and was just a little surprised at those temps. For the overall price I paid Im quite pleased with it as a backup system to other various gaming systems around the house but it may not get used to much in the near term. Also great to know I can add a 980m to it down the road to bring it a bit more in the speed dept.

 

The 880m's were notorious for running hot even though they were basically just a 780m. I heard stories about people replacing them with 780m's because the performance hit was negligible and the temps were just so much better.