4900MQ overheating (90+ degrees gaming)

I am wondering if this is normal. Just got a new laptop (Alienware 18) with two 780Ms and a 4900MQ. 780Ms never go over 75 when in use but the 4900MQ seems to be out of control, idling at 60 celsius on average, and hitting 85-93 celsius when playing Far Cry 3 and Crysis 3. I have not checked the paste and I do not know how to change it myself. I have made the fans go full throttle when any component is over 70 degrees, but the CPU still hits 90 during any heavy gaming easily. Normal? Please post so, so I can hear that it is. Not normal? Please post corrective suggestions, so that I can take the appropriate action. I am under the impression that under 80 is optimal and wish to not peak this temperature during heavy gaming.

I am not an overclocker and haven't overclocked anything, though when I bought it it said the 4900MQ was overclocked to (I found this GPU-Z) 3.99Ghz maximum.

 

I suggest you start reading about undervolting and reapplying thermal paste.

 

I have the AW 18 with the 4910MQ and dual 880m. I repasted my laptop when I got it and idle about 41c and game around 65c and 70c tops. Even before repasting this was only different by 3c so you have an issue of sorts imo. I would repaste or call dell under warranty and have them do it for you as 80c and more on a cpu is not good for it and the heatsink is better then that.

 

4.00 Ghz is a huge additional load on the cooling system compared to stock. When I was setting up a W230SS for a friend, on a 4700MQ, the temperatures were going up by 3 degrees for every 100mhz of extra turboboost I was overclocking.
The alternative explanation is that your CPU cooling system might be a bit warped, thus causing suboptimal contact with the CPU. Best way to tell is to remove it and see what the thermal paste spread pattern looks like. Like Zombiewarpig said, if the problem is the cooling unit then the RMA is probably the best choice. However, I would attempt a repaste first with something decent and see what your mileage is.

 

Repaste. It's not hard and take the time to learn. Save yourself the hassle, time, and money for someone else to do it in the future, and you know it will be done right. That's the first and simplest way to check what's going on.

 

Yes I suggest a repast and also complain and see if they replace your CPU under warranty...

 

You haven`t used Alienware 18 before I see.

We are talking removing pretty much everything inside the machine, turning it over, then removing some more. Then you get access to the chips and can do the repasting.

It is time consuming with AW18. My GT70 MSI however took minutes.
But I agree repasting is what could be needed for OP.

 

Thank you for the machinegune fire replies, lads.

As most of you suggest the repaste, I will order a tube of Arctic Silver MX-4 and using Mr.Fox's GPU repaste video on youtube as a guideline, attempt to repaste the CPU myself, when I get the opportunity (which I should in 2 weeks)

Now the warranty is a hassle. I live in China and the prices there are crazy, so I bought this machine on Ebay (as it was classified as DELL Refurbished), and as I was going to Hawaii (and still am for 3 more days), ordered it to be shipped to a friend I'm staying with here and picked it up upon my arrival. This means

1) I'm unsure if the warranty applies to DELL China
2) or at all, since I didn't buy it officially from their website

So I'm really hoping against all things holy that it is not a problem that is not fixable by myself, as I fear I will not be in a position capable of dealing with deal on even footing. As for the paste, I will attempt it as soon as I get back to Shanghai. Good to know that this really was the issue I thought it was and not a placebo illusion.

For a more solid test, I ran Prime95 in a room at 30c, and hit temperatures of 93-99 on all 4 cores. This definitely tells me something is off.

 

I'm pretty sure the warranty applies as long as you have the receipt. Alienware customer service is meant to be really good. The biggest problem you face is shipping costs.

 

This is interesting. I do have the digital receipt, so I will try this when I'm in Hong Kong in 3 days time. I'll tell you how it goes from there. For the meantime, I have to use throttlestop to set the multiplier to 32 or 33 to stop the heat at 80c when gaming.

What I am fascinated about is the problem. Heat has to be transferred from the CPU to the copper heatsinks which are then blown out by the fans. The fans are fully functional. By processes of elimination the only logical explanation I can think of as a computer layman is that the first step in the heat dissipation process, getting the heat out of the chip and into the copper, is the fault line. However, I have never heard of a simple repaste that isn't Coollaboratory Liquid Ultra dropping a machine's CPU temps by 15c+ (my 90 vs zombiewarpig's 70) , so there may more than meets the eye.

I shall let you good fellows know how it goes with the Hong Kong AW people.

 

Sorry for double posting, but I've just noticed I have a 'Intel PCH' temperature of 75, constantly. If this is abnormal, perhaps it plays into the problem as well.

 

I've seen temp drops in the range of 15-20C after I did a repaste on a 2 year old Toshiba laptop. Granted the stock paste had fully dried out and caked itself all over the CPU and heatsink, but such huge variations in temperatures are definitely possible if the stock paste had long expired.

As for the PCH temperature, 75C for idling is a bit high, but nothing to be concerned about. The danger zone is >100C so you still have quite a bit to go.

 

Thanks for the info about the PCH temp. The original laptop's owner purchased it in October so I can't think of a reason that the paste would have dried in such a short span of disuse, but it potentially could have been a bad paste job to have begun with, eh?


I read on some potentially valid forums that a deviation of temperature of more than 5 celsius between threads when monitoring them indicates abnormaliites in the paste application, as a very much 'rule of thumb' kind of thing. Anyone think differently?

 

not mentioned yet but having an ambient room temperature of 30c could well be part of your problem.

 

It could also indicate a warped heat sink which is making good contact with only one corner of the die.

 

If I'm not mistaken, the 4x10mq processors are Devil's Canyon and not Haswell, and have a better heat transfer ability than their predecessors, which would additionally explain your temperature.

I'm really curious why you would mention this as a root cause. It is true that I am in a neither well nor poorly ventilated room with temperatures outside reaching 30 and humidity in the 70 and 80 percentages, but I cannot believe this would cause a 15c rise in what should be a better cooling system simply due to ambient temperatures, unless ambient temperatures somehow compound the heat inside the processor?

 

as i said, it could be part of the problem.
im in the uk and our weather doesnt usually get that high or last that long but when it is very hot (still not 30c though) my temps can hit mid to high 90c while gaming. a few days later when its raining (normal weather for us) my temps playing the exact same game hit mid to high 80c max.

 

Devil's Canyon = desktop only. Laptop CPUs do not have a heat spreader and the heatsink contacts the die directly so that's a non-issue.

You'd be surprised how much of a difference it makes. In the best case scenario it's a 1:1 relationship ie for every 1C rise in room temp the hardware gets 1C hotter. But more often than not, it's actually 1:1.5 or worse.

 

It's normal to have up to 10c variation between cores. Otherwise every Intel CPU I've owned, used, or repaired have been faulty. And it could have been a bad paste job or cheap paste.

 

Hmm. Thanks for the all the corrective information guys. I'm going to bring it into an AW shop in Hong Kong if I can find one, or Shanghai if I can't, and see if they offer repaste services (I don't have absolute confidence in doing it myself, I fear too much I'll damage the CPU or screen when pasting and removing it, respectively), or if I really can't find a place, I might try to do it myself anyway.

 

Yeah its a great shame with the AW18 with the repasting being so difficult.. In the AW17, its a matter of removing the bottom and then the fan and removing the heatsink and repasting.. Its a 5 min job if you know what your'e doing...

 

I was not aware Alienware 18 was such a hassle. Surprising, considering the praise that machine gets. I like having easy access to such components. In Clevo all of them are like AW17, just pop off the bottom cover, remove a few screws, clean, and repaste, and bam you're done. Even the Aorus X7 is easy to access/repaste.

Curious why the AW18 was designed that way.

 

You have to remove the motherboard in the AW14 to repaste.

 

It was probably to make it more compact.. I don't like the new AW17/18 design and that's why I got the R4... Its a bigger brick but looks much better..

 

agreed 100% here.

 

Wow trying to discourage users from doing their own upgrades etc.

That is a big minus for alienware if they do that from now on. Old Alienwares it takes minutes to get the cpu out.

Maybe I won't purchase a modern Alienware in the future....

As for the OP. I agree with others that re pasting is critical and also checking the fan intake and especially exhaust vents for dust. Compressed air will clean them out.

Also try elevating the back of the laptop a little to create more airflow under the chassis and to help heat escape.

 

It's been like that since M18xR1. I'm certain that if AW re-engineered their 18.4" flagships they could definitely get the MXM slots and CPU sockets to go on the bottom of the motherboard instead and be more easily accessible.

 

Clevo does it in their 17" so not sure why not in AW 18". Plus I know AW of past were pretty easy to work on.

 

I'm sure they had their reasons with the R1, and then they probably just continued the tradition. Otherwise they'd have to re-design the mobo and re-engineer the chassis, and that will definitely be costly.

 

From what I've heard the AW18 is much less hassle to get to the CPU/GPU's than the R1/2.
It takes me about 15 minutes at best to access them in the R2 and that's working efficiently.

 

As some of you fellows suggested, I purchased some Arctic Silver MX-4 and brought it to a store to repaste - they also did the GPUs and cleaned the fans without telling me first, which chuffed me a little bit, but the final result is some definitively lower temperatures on both HWiNFO64, Throttlestop, and as a side check, Open Hardware Monitor. Apparently, the paste had dried out on all 3 components and it needed a reapplication. Now, it still goes to 80+ a little when playing high end games because of the heat and humidity of where I live, but otherwise, it worked. Thank you for the advice, all of you forum dwellers!

On an unrelated note, the guy doing it accidentally loosened my SLI bridge and I spent a good 2 hours wondering why NVIDIA control panel didn't have any SLI options in it, but once the problem was identified it was easily fixed.

It may amuse some of you in that the store charged 200 HKD (around 25USD) for the service as that is the flat rate they charge, but they told me afterwards that if anyone brought in an Alienware 18 in the future, they'd charged 500 HKD instead, because it was apparently very hassling to open and put back together again.

 

Glad to know it got fixed. $25 USD really is chump change for getting an AW18 repasted, since the tear down is quite involved.

I hope for your own sake you have an A/C in your unit. I can't imagine living in the HK summer heat without an A/C. That one time I tried I almost ended up passing out because of the heat (and humidity)!

 

Yeah good to hear. $25 is cheap, try doing it locally where I'm at it will cost you at least twice that if not closer to $100. But glad it got sorted out. Worth the $25 IMHO. Maybe try to do it yourself though for future reference.

 

Good that you have a local store nearby that you can trust to do the job properly.

Makes many Dell techs look like amateurs. Alienware 18 needs to be disassembled quite a bit I hear. The fact that they would only charge 60 dollars or so to do the work is a deal!

I agree with HTwingnut though. Spend some time learning how to re-paste. You usually need to do so about once a year. Especially with a laptop with dual GPU's and the fact you live in a hot and humid place. In fact you might need to do it every 6 months. Doing it yourself is faster, cheaper and probably better as no one will do a better job than you.