M5550 heat issues ?

From the research I've done, the laptop only gets about 4 or 5 degrees hotter than the comparable laptops of that size. I don't know yet in person, because I haven't seen it. My brother just ordered one for his wife though, so I'll post back up in let you know when it gets here.

Also, if you're worried about heat, you may want to consider upgrading to the m9700 (what I'm typing on). It's not as expensive as you might think, it's lightning fast, and it stays blessedly cool. It's a LOT cooler than my girlfriend's m7700, that's for sure.

My m5550 gets warm to touch, especially under load, but not hot.

You do have to be careful about not blocking the cooling vents, which cool the CPU and the graphics card GPU. If you do, it's sure to get hot, possibly damaging the laptop. This will happen to any laptop, not just the m5550.

It wouldn't hurt to get a laptop cooler though.

As for the fans, their purpose is to keep the CPU and video GPU cool. Under load, they're bound to run.

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Mine gets warm to the touch but it doesn't bother me much. I'm just a little hesitant to leave it on and unattended for long periods of time; while i'm using it i barely notice. The hottest i've gotten it up to is 79 celcius GPUtemp while watching a dvd for 2 hours on Silent mode (no fans) which isn't bad at all imo.

i recieved my m5550 3 days ago and i have about 5 random shut dows and some extreme heat . its shutting down now for example when i was downloading files from norton antivirus . not a verry stressful task . even browsing the net while on itunes creats EXTREME heat quikly . i nead to get this problem fixed and from what ive heard if i send it back to them they will do F**K all ,I more upset now then pissed off i was given my machine by my father for a birthday pressent and its just not working . for a powerful laptop its just shutting down on the smallest tasks , i turned it out about tens mins ago havent touched i and its starting to already heat up the keyboard . its a disaster

You should contact tech support. The m5550 should never shut down due to heat. You may have an improper interface between the cpu/gpu and heatsink, or a bad fan.

Is ayone having these issues running Windows Vista on the m5550?

Can you check your bios version? My first m5550 I recieved had the same issues like yours but the current one I have has not shut down on me once after I updated to the current 204w bios. (windows XP) I just upgraded my lappy to vista today and updated the bios to 206w with vista support with no issues so far. I will update everyone on this... So far I'm loving my m5550 even though it does tend to get abit warm...

hey hammerhead i have the same setup as yours the 2.33ghz processor the 7600 nvidia . i have a 100gig hard drive . also got the additional battery . i am running on windows vista ultimate aswell.

Hey bryans where abouts can you get the windows vista bios update from that i think will solve the problem for me . i have heard other people saying it solved the problem for them

ok guys just off the phone from alienare technition . i am currently running sp2004 software for reasons i am not sure but its testing somthing or other . Now this might sound dumb but he told me about the silent mode button . i already new about this but left it off as it reduces fan speed and the cpu clock but i am not sure when it is on or off . so if you guys could help me . the blue light that came on when i pressed the button ( the little blue fan symbol lighst up) i persume means silent mode is off because this is what the technician told me .so for the last few days the problems i have been having ( The random shutdowns and extreme overheating) are due to this "SILENT MODE" being left on . ok i no thats confusing so to simplify it . when the blue light symbol is on, silent mode is OFF and the fan and cou are running full speed . but when the blue light is OFF silent mode is on and i get overheating. so what im lead to belive now is LEAVE THE BLUE LIGHT ON!!!. but i wanto no if this is correct. ill test it for my self but i hope this was the problem . and as for those who design alien ware its not verry sensible to have silent mode off when the light is on a visversa.

PLEAS LET THIS SOLVE MY PROBLEM

ok so just rang tech support there again after my machine shut down during the sp2oo4 test. the guy told me he is sending me thermo gell and i am going to re thermo gell my heat sync . any comments on this

muzy did the fans kick on when you pressed the button and the light was on?

Seems like a quick-fix to me.. a bit disappointing. If the problem persists, I hope they'll have some better solutions for you than thermal gel.

from what i can hear ive never noticed a fan on this note book and theer seem to be no changes sound wise from whn the light is on or off

Hey I sorta had the same issue as you, however my fans do turn on now (and are very noticable sometimes). I had random shut downs due to heat early on (while the fans never turned on too a few times). I talked to Alienware (on their forums) and they gave me the same crap as they are giving you (Thermal Gell, etc). I was using Notebook Hardware Control to check the CPU temps early on (and the NVIDIA temp thing that comes on your computer for the GPU which I still use, that actually works). I found it didn't really work though (Notebook hardware controll), the CPU temps never really updated (they did but only once and awhile, and I had big jumps sometimes, like from 50 to 80 (fans came on only at 80 when this happened) or something or from 50 to shutdown, etc, etc). Anyway since then I tried a few other CPU temp things and oddly I8kfanGUI seems to actually work unlike the rest I tried (the fan control and such doesn't work, but the CPU temp reader does and updates each second at worst). I8kfangui is made for DELL Inpsirions though so I 'm kinda surprised that worked best heh... so anyway since I've installed only that I haven't had any heat shut downs yet (few weeks now). I'd suggest you install that and see what the CPU temps are getting to (Once it hits 63 the fans should turn on, or thats when they do on mine), if you notice it go over 70 or whatever and no fans your fans are probably broken or the power cord to them isn't attached or something Also I'm pretty sure the silent fan button means its on if the light is on (opposite of what they said). I always had mine clicked off anyway and my fan sometimes roars like a mad man, I'll try tonight though with it on and see what happens.

great thanls for the help . did you use the thermo gel and did it show any improvment . at the moment im using speed fan it it measures my 2 cores seperatly . but not ever hearing a fan . well nothing really noticable. ill try download that software you reccomended and see if it helps i hope it runs on vista

muzy, I checked using the battery control button on my m5550 when I got home using cpuz and mine shows that with the light off that the processor is working at full speed. I think the AW support guy may have gotten confused with this. I have also heard my fan kick on a couple of times since I've been using it. I am going to install Everest to monitor my temps asap. I just received mine today.

Congrats CajunCARTFan! Pix, review, pix?



Zoid