M9700 Overheating Issues

Have you applied Arctic Silver on your cpu? What temps are you seeing under idle & full load?

That has probably done permanent physical damage, I would call ASAP to get a replacement CPU.

The amd processor won't sustain damage at 90C believe it or not...

Make sure the radiator is clean, and consider reinstalling AS5. The cpu intake is on the left side of the case, so make sure that's not blocked when you use the system also.

My cpu frequently runs in the low 80's, but I've only seen it go over 85 once. I have the alarm set at 85 in Notebook Hardware Control to keep an eye on it.

When gaming, it sits in the low 80's, but it idles in the high 40's amd usually runs at about 60 degrees for websurfing and that kind of stuff...

You might also want to monitor the rpm's on your cpu fan. It might be sub-functioning and therefore would be a cooling issue. Can you correlate the heating issue with before or after you applied AS? If it only occurred afterwards, that might indicate an improper application or misalignment where there's not adequate thermal conduction through the heatsink.

what video games are you playing ?? do you have notebook hardware controller installed? what program are you using to monitor the temperatures??

last weekend at a lan party my computer reach 90c but i never got any error or slowdown i used a notebook stand and it help a little it didnt reach 85 after that

Hey, did you get this resolved? This thread could be a lifesaver for me. I tried running DoD for the first time in a few months, just cause I was super bored. When I started playing, I got the exact same errors you got...so I gave up, and came here to look for answers. When I saw this thread, I checked my error logging, and it appears im getting the exact same issue you've been getting. Apparantly, according to the log, it has been going on since the 9th of this month, and I did not even realize it because I almost never game anymore.

So what should I do? Im going to make sure its nice and clean, and put some AS5 on it(which I've never done on this current machine).

Hmm.. could there be something up with the m9700 CPU.. mine has just started doing the exact same thing.

close to 90c loaded down.

Where are you all checking the error log at? and applying AS5 is out of warranty. Right?

didn't the AMDs have that weird problem where they wouldn't power down or go into powersaving.. kind of like the opposite. it think that forum goer with the malx ran into that. but, then again, my brain feels like mush, so i could be wrong!

If you contact Alienware and let them know you're having heat issues, they will allow you to apply AS5 without voiding the warranty.

Well I got the heat issues taken care of. I AS5'ed everything using the tutorial posted in the sticky, and now Im surifing the web andits sticking between 50 and 55c, and even with illustrator and PScs2 open, it hasnt gone above 57c.


I used to get this problem too. When I shut the computer off, it would "appear" to shut down, but wind up sitting on a blank screen till i held down the power button long enough to over-ride and shut down. I havent tried shutting down since I put the AS5 on, so I'll try right now and see if it still happens.

Well'p, just tried and it works!

looks like the simple as5'ing fixed everything!

Wow, I've been having the exact same problem, and have been skeptical that AS5 would solve it conclusively - looks like I'll be taking the foot out of my mouth and giving it a shot ;-).

As a side note I think AW really dropped the ball on this one - this machine runs waay to hot, it really shouldn't have passed their initial tests. The fact that we have to take apart the damn thing and apply thermal paste 6 months after purchase is ridiculous. The heat has been so significant for me that I actually have plastic components that are warped due to the heat (one example is the wavy shape my touch-sensitive buttons are above my keyboard). I realize the system was designed to push the envelope for notebook performance, but I think they pushed the hardware too far (granted AW isn't the OEM, but if they're gonna slap their name on it ...).

Right now AW is 1 for 3 - the released an amazing notebook with great performance and looks (+1), but there was clearly inatequate testing before release (+0), and then terrible support when the thing eventually fails (+0). Definitely a love/hate thing here, love their machines, but hate the current state of the company/policies.

I've had this problem, identically. Worked great at first for gaming, and in time (within a year) it started to overheat and the FPS would be cut way way down, once every 20 seconds or so. Now it happens so often that I don't even care to game on it. For the price I paid and how little support/solution there is I feel pretty terrible about Alienware and their products. I can't be sure if its primarily just the Aurora m9700 or others too, but I'll never recommend Alienware to anyone else.

Clean the heatsinks and apply AS5.

Okay, I'm a bit uninformed when it comes to what goes into a computer's makeup, but I can basically take them apart, and if this is only needing an application of thermal paste I can do that too. But I have a question or two.

By heatsink(s) plural, what do you mean? The only one I thought there was was what was touching the processor. Basically if I know where to apply the AS5, I can pick some up and do it. Any further help would be supah appreciated.!

The processor has it's own heatsink/fan unit. There is also a very large heatsink assembly that covers the two vid cards, the SLI chip and the nForce4 chipset. If you're only having issues with your processor temps you might just want to do the processor heatsink first.



Here is an excellent tutorial with pictures posted by aaronjb.

If I may be so bold as to say, my experience with Alienware has been at best apathetic, and at worst not unlike the Cold War, though rarely did the temperature of my system mimic.

1) This proprietary motherboard.. has no voltage meters or temperature gauges. Why not? That's, in my uninformed opinion, loopy. They're valuable things to have on a mainboard, ESPECIALLY one you're going to tightly pack with multiple hard drives, SLI video solutions, etc. This thing cooks. Hot, hot, hot. Why no temp drives? Surely, this came up in testing. I don't want to be the tin foil guy here, but is it impossible to think that the reason the m9700 doesn't have a temperature gauge on it is because the thing would be beeping its head off every hour of every day?

I've had to apply fresh compound twice to this system, mail it in twice more. The logical processor problem mentioned above.. I had it too. Bad. I found that by removing the AMD drivers, it ruined performance but kept it steadily bad.. whereas using the drivers made it clock up and down rapidly, making anything other than Minesweeper unplayable.

2) Why do I have to come to this forum for help? While I'm more than grateful it exists, this really ought to be something that I can resolve over the phone. But, a thumbing-through of my problem tickets with the tech support people over there would reveal two years of hell. I had the machine arrive two months late, with one already dead video card. DVD drive wouldn't eject without a pin-push. The CPU problems after problems. Vista support being nonexistent (for a 4000$ system, I was heartbroken to discover that there seems to be zero attempt to make Vista SLI drivers. My second 400 dollar video card has been napping for over a year.)

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Venting over.

I've concluded that Alienware is impossibly un-worth the cost of the system. I was always one of those, 750 bucks, build-it-yourself types. I'm now using that machine again because the six-years-newer laptop of meltdom has zilch for reliability.

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That said, let me add a fresh problem to a similar issue. My m9700 has, as of today, started an interesting, fresh, and new problem on me. It simply turns off. No beep, no warning, just straight to black. I think it might be the battery, as it's never been replaced.. but it does this when plugged in too, which made me skeptical.

It turns off regardless of system stress (be it playing WoW or idling on the desktop.) Shutdowns typically don't happen until the machine's been on for at least 20 minutes.

Anyone else experienced this before?

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For what it's worth, that's a very helpful diagram to post, Hammerhead.

Additional point of note : I am fairly certain it's heat now.

I ran StressPrime 2004 on the machine. Died in about 30 seconds of running Large, in-place FFTs.

A fresh application of compound would be a start, but maybe I ought to think about just keeping it on the dry side of some water. Hard to believe I'm actually thinking about a radiator solution for a laptop.. but it's a heck of a lot cheaper than saying to heck with the 4k I wasted on this notebook and starting a fresh machine from scratch.

I'll do that some other year.