Alienware M17x overheating

Alright here is my deal. Right now I am only playing one game that is Dragon Age: Origins. I just reformatted my system less than a week ago. Before I reformatted I never had any issues with running DAO on max everything. Texture on high; graphics on high and maxed resolution. For some reason since I reinstalled everything about 20 minutes into playing my computer shuts-off. Just like from an overheating problem. The only difference between now and then was I did not have the most up-to-date video card drivers. Now I have the latest drivers.

I have done a little reading on this site and others and I have downloaded a CPU temperature monitor and a GPU temp monitor along with RivaTuner. My CPU temp is fine while playing the game even with everything maxed still. My GPU temp is around 110C and 95 to 100 for the second card.

I turned the graphics setting down to medium and the temperature is still well into if not just above the danger zone of 90 - 95C for the GTX 260m.

I use to not us a cooling pad underneath and just tried two different ones in the past 2 days and it still shuts-off while playing the game.

Any thoughts and steps would be appreciated on how to help maintain the temp on the video cards would be great so I can continue playing this game on high settings.

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CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo T9600 @2.80GHz
GPU: Dual nVidia GeForce GTX 260M @1024MBs each (SLI enabled)
RAM: 4GBs DDR3 @1333MHz
Display: PnP monitor (native 1920 x 1200 res)

 

Settings have pretty much no effect on temps, unless the game is just terribly optimized. I would clean out fans and if that doens't work,repaste.

 

Sorry not sure on what some terms mean. What is repaste?

 

reapplying thermal compound to your CPU and GPU

 

this is probably better suited for the alienware m17x sub forum

 

Just thought I'd add a few more suggestions;

Thermal compound as mentioned above +1

Cleaning Fan out + 2 ( as dust easily gets inside the m17x chassis having a very open underneath portion too it.

Another way to keep a laptop running cooler without a cooling pad is to make sure there is plenty of space underneath the laptop for air to get through... if you play on a desk then I would suggest propping up the rear of the laptop maybe a 1 - 1 1/2 inch higher then it would normally sit on a flat surface... This will help keeping your laptop cool in a very cost effective manner.

 

you're not alone pegasus, mine heats up crazy hot also, everytime I forget to turn on my 2 fans and it randomly shuts down 20minutes in, I always get surprised

 

it shouldn't overheat... the dust in vents and thermal paste on CPU+GPU is causing this.. you might want to get dell to change the paste and blow out the vents with compressed air yourself.. doing that itself will drop temps by a lot.

Panther214