Any trick to getting GPU fans to kick on?

My m17x just got here, everything seemed great until I loaded 3Dvantage and ran my first benchmark... it halted mid way thru .... checked HW monitor and low and behold one GPU was cooking over 100C (GPU under the numeric keypad..) oddly there was no fan spinning on the one GPU.... seems I have seen reports of some GPU fans having issues, was just wondering if there was some sort of reset one needs to do to get the board to function , or some other undocumented trick ... something short of boxing the otherwise problem free system up and shipping it back . . .

 

Sounds like a bunk fan and i would Call Dell ASAP. Moo had the same issue and there is no trick to getting them to work .

 

no trick but i am trying some modifications to my broke one


You can follow my guide how to remove your GPU to check and see if the power plug for the GPU came out in shipping

 

Try to reseat your fan, Coresong. I'm sure that there is a guide for it on the support site.

 

Support had me take apart the thing to make sure the fan connector was seated...it was (good thing I watched Moo's video, the tech was not too sure of himself) . . . . so they say a tech will come out to my house after i get back from vacation, so it will stay dead for a full week until I get home.

Saddly the support rep evidently did not manage to understand my email address, and I got no confirmation email. Last thing I want to do is sit on hold for another 30 min to go make sure they got the info right.... my email was associated to my order, why on earth the rep had to ask me for it (and not understand me thru the long distance connection..) is beyond me...

From all appearances, I have exactly the same problem Moo had . . . DOA fan . . I bet they do their "testing" of the units just through the base onboard video and do not stress the 280's, pretty hard to miss a non spinning fan when the thing is cooking at 107C......

.. guess I dont get to bring the m17x on vacation . . . wife is happy about that anyway ...

 

lol they always are unless your me


She loves playing with the lights and playing games

 

Well , I went away on vacation, told the Dell service rep I needed to have the tech come out when I got home, he said no prob will contact you then.... I come home to find Dell sent me a replacement GPU fan... figured I could replace it just as well as any tech, so I did, and presto... a very cool 2nd GPU (Thx again Moo for the video...)

Just as well I did it myself, as was never contacted by dell again (or any tech). I did have a small snafu, after updating some drivers I somehow lost my keyboard lights, thought I must have not replaced a cable right after having it apart so many times . . so I took it apart again to make sure everything was connected ... still no lights ... started to dread the thought of calling dell for a replacement keyboard . . . until I read a post by Mandrake about his lost lights... low and behold, after doing some arcane and undocumented things in the evidently buggy AlienFX software.... all was well...

Finally got 3dVantage to score ..

My M17x 3DVantage Score

 

thanks for keeping us up to date. i like how dell handled your situation with taking your notebook apart and sending someone to your house to see what's up. to me that's service.

 

thanks for the thanks makes me happy when its useful

 

Well, Dell did send the replacement part.... and said they were going to send the tech to do the replacement ... they just kinda missed on the 2nd part, I did the replacement myself, and since it worked, I didn't call them back to ask what happened to the service tech. It took 78 min on the phone the first time, I didn't want to repeat the experience. Since it all worked out in the end, I'm satisfied ( I really rather do the work myself anyway, figure I'm at least as careful as any tech they have in my area) I am somewhat surprised they never got back in touch.

Now that its all working, it is a sweet system, rock steady at 2.93 ghz, havent pushed much further with success yet.... but it does rock (although still only about 1/3rd as fast as my desktop .... Stock 3Dvantage score of system in my sig .. ...)

 

Out of interest what vantage score did Alienware post in the 'My Alienware PC Information' file on the desktop - I'm surprised they didn't find the dead fan when they ran vantage on your system, especially as that section of the report is subtitled 'Burn-In/Benchmarks'.

 

Haha that machine in your sig is a little bit of a beast; just a little I dont think any laptop is gonna come anywhere near that lol; laptops are meant to be a little more mobile hehe

. Shame Futuremark snafu'd and included Physx tests in the CPU section of the test though; because nowadays it doesnt really create a fair scoreboard; what with Nvidia cards having Physx accelleration potential; which likely wouldn't reflect real world usage as the GPUs will be busy on 3d work for a game! (Or you'd hope so lol). Hopefully they'll use a non proprietary; CPU based test like Havok or a proprietary solely CPU bound test next time round; I dont like the stilting/uneven playing field it gives scores sometimes.

 

Ya pretty sure the pretty lights are the only reason I could convince my girlfriend to not ditch me if I ordered a $2600 laptop haha

She does not approve of my computer habits

 

LOL.

My girlfriends doesn't understand/approve it aswell!
She didn't even like the lights on a a €2300 laptop Not even the Pink ones...

 

sorry to hear...

lol

 

on topic guys on topic .....

 

PhysX would be fine if they just made it a standalone category and not lumped in with CPU. Since some people actually have a dedicated PhysX processor, having to turn off PPU actually means wasting dedicated hardware which is BS. I believe the 3rd category for PhysX would be the best approach.

 

Pretty much what I meant CPU-based/non proprietary standards would be best. I dont mind people getting additional score for thier PPUs (although how many people have one, so perhaps not such a waste; AFAIK support for the dedicated PPU is pretty non existant now Ageia have been swallowed by NV), however it shouldn't be portrayed as a CPU advantage; it's not, and I don't agree with Nvidia cards getting an overall 3dmark boost just for having side support for the accelleration, as it skews the results, if the same acceleration was based around an openCL standard both sides could use; then it;d even the playing field; as it is, I believe Futuremark should update Vantage to not incorporate Physx acellerated CPU score boosts into the total score. That said AFAIK Nvidia have given them a pretty large sponsorship deal; so unlikely to happen.
At least the GPU-GPU score comparisons are moderately reasonable

 

I got one for desktop...haha (for sale if anyone interested, no room since dual GTX275's now and mATX)

And M1730 owners CAN have one....

 

You know what I mean only 5% even of enthusiasts likely have one, the sales figures weren't exactly astronomical; and I actually think it better they were swallowed up; although I'd prefer an open standard, it's at least a step forward!

 

Well, PhysX is being more and more adopted. Since nvidia bought them and incorporated into all geforce gpu's it gives developers a reason to spend the time with it now. I just got one because I play a lot of games using the Unreal 3 engine, so figured why not. This engine uses PhysX often and the card was only like $60 (had to get the PCI version though, not PCI-e )

 

Will be interesting to see what happens with this; Im actually expecting a DX Physics API sooner rather than later (especially when MultiCPU rendering is apparently being incorporated into DX11, which could theoretically lead to Crossfire/SLI driver implementations becoming redundant, as it'll be handled by the DX API; I believe there was also an addon card based version [Hydra?] being designed to do the same thing); especially when you consider at the moment Nvidia is pushing CUDA based Phsyx physics processing, whilst AMD and Intel seem to be jumping into bed over hardware Havok processing. Of course Larrabee cant add some extra competition to the GPU market soon enough; but it seems Physics are very divided atm, do you support Physx, Havok in software and soon hardware support form (I believe Havok may be OpenCL based) or do you try and support both until something better appears?

 

What would make most sense for the M17x would be 280GTX's running SLI with PhysX running on the 9400m. Come on nVidia, pull your finger out.

 

^ That is definitely true

I think on the desktops you can choose a gpu to run as physx card, this would be all that needs to be done here as well? So just needs driver support I think (and awesome idea!)

 

Depends on whether the IGP is actually active/connected when the dedicated cards are selected; that said not a bad idea; probably moddable too.

 

Well I know absolutely nothing about writing drivers, but does someone who does wanna give this a try? haha

 

i can try but
off topic you computer is coming on my birthday. shouldn't it be the other way around.

 

Sorry Don haha....and if it makes you feel better, will probably be there before then....

Let us know what you can do with the drivers! I would recommend working with the ones that BatBoy made that mandrake has been using.

 

Very interesting you mention that, it certainly would pop up, or one would think... until I checked that file... here is a copy of that section attached below . . . Seems like someone neglected to bother . . . perhaps a QC prob when they try to ship alot out the door at once?

 

WOW - they dropped the ball there. If you have any more problems I would definitely point out to Dell that your machine has not been tested. Whoever 'AI' is needs their wrists slapping!

 

I think the fan on the right under the num pad has issues. It is very loud and buzzes something awful, I need to call support see if they will mail me a new one.

 

No human needed... AI tests only. Welcome to Cyberdyne...