M9700 Overheating Issues - Page 2

Well put, winterion, heh. Although compared to everything you are (and have had) to combat I almost feel blessed. I've really been brooding over it and feeling like it was a big wasted chunk of money, leaving me feeling pretty wretched about the whole experience of buying a laptop to game. Never again will I unless some other one gets super reviews. Never again from Alienware at least.

Still going to try to get it working better if at all possible [grumble] with some AS5 and thanks again for the detailed information Hammerhead.

I think the turion must just run too hot for long term use of the heatpads as they dry out and the temps start to climb.

I applied AS5 and even at full tilt the turion didn't go over 82-83 degrees, but the past week or so I've been getting warnings from NHC that I have set to warn me if the cpu goes over 87... It's been hot here, but I'm thinking about cleaning the cpu up and reapplying AS5 to see if it comes back down... It's been close to a year since I applied the AS5 to the cpu. The gpu's are still running the same temps, so it appears the cpu is more sensitive to heat. A more robust fan/heatsink would be a good idea I think, but it's a one off Arima system so it's not likely. The heatsinks for the m9750 are different, and the cpu heatsink on that model also covers one of the gpu's...

I run my m9700 more than 12 hours a day, and only see the heat issue with certain games. I game probably an hour or two a day. The heat seems to be worse with older games that work the cpu harder...

When not gaming, the machine continues to idle at 48-51, and rarely goes above the sixties with websurfing and other non-graphics intensive applications...

OMG!!! Ive been experiencing the EXACT overheating issues. WOW and a few other games just drop in fps to 5-10 every 30-40 secs and gpu temps topped at 78!
I took the time n effort to apply the artic silver paste etc. Ordered it last week from newegg and followed aaron's guide and it WORKS!

Its obviously a heating issue and i must say when i opened her up, the paste was all flakky and uncovered on some parts of the GPU/CPU. Might have happened when i removed the heatsink as well.

Anyway, point being for anyone whos experiencing slowdowns in gaming. Applying the paste is a MUST!!!! My gpu under loads at around 72-73C stable and 65-68C at idle. Cpu i think tops at 71, but it doesnt matter. YAY! Love you all xD.

I think this might be the consequence of the cooking. CPU could just be shot. If that's the case, to hell with this laptop, I'm not spending another dime on it. . If you know what I mean.

Winterion up until yesterday I was experiencing the same issues as you (20 mins... black screen... the same b.s.) - DON'T GIVE UP JUST YET!. You gotta get a can of compressed air, blow out the dust as Hammerhead pointed out... then re-apply AS5. After doing that I achieved similar if not identical results as that of salax44 (SpeedFan tests...). In addition to the above, I also got a cooling pad (Cooler Master NotePal(home) Vantec Lapcool 3(mobile))... GPU idles at low 60's and loads at high 60's... Thank God for this forum!

not to dig up an old post, but having the same exact problem, but i already applied the AC5, twice now, using the tutorial. I, too, have NHC set to alert me at 87degrees, and it hits it everytime in gaming. At 90 degeres or so, i get the slow down and it cools down only to heat back up and repeat itself. I wish i knew a better way of cooling the CPU. The heatsink and fan have been cleaned, its sitting on a cooling pad, and has been AC5'd...

Its kind of silly to reach these kind of temps... would underclocking it a bit help the heat issue? even if i lose a small bit of performance? (its sad this even has to be done)

you might want to recheck your AS5 and make sure that it is evenly spread across the surface and that its not to thick because if its not then it will not do it job and temps will still climb...

thats what i thought the first time i reapplied it, but the second time i made sure to follow the directions to the letter to make sure it was applied correctly. Sadly, it did not help.

Turns out, underclocking by even a small amount lowered the temp enough to stop the built in underclock. No noticeable difference in games. Sweet.

There's another way to drop temps a bit if you're interested, without the underclock...

Download a free program called "systool". Once you've got it, you can use it to underclock if you want, or overclock though I wouldn't recommend it. Under CPU Overclocking, choose the nforce4 as the chipset, then hit read. Mine then shows the fsb speed to be about 193.75. Don't know why it does this when doing a read, but you can then increase the fsb to close to 200 for stock speeds. You can drop it a bit and it will lower your temps.

Then, under AMD64 Cool&Quiet, you can undervolt the cpu a little. This drops the temps also by supplying a little less voltage to the cpu. First set performance to "max performance" in NHC, so the cpu locks at full speed. Then hit "read" under systool's "AMD64 Cool&Quiet" heading. When on max, I get 12x, and 1.450 volts. I then lower the voltage to 1.425, and click write. This keeps my temps at 80-82 degrees max instead of 83-85. I tried 1.400 volts for lower temps, but it freezes up the computer after gaming for a while.

Undervolting is like overclocking. Some processors will tolerate it quite a bit, others won't.

When done gaming, I use NHC to go back to "dynamic switching", and it clocks down again and returns to normal settings. Unfortunately I haven't figured out how to save the profile under systool, so for each gaming session, I use NHC to go to max performance, then manually undervolt as described above. This allows stable full performance at stock speeds with temps that don't go over 82 degrees for me.

wow, thanks hammerhead, ill have to give this a try. i really appreicate the info.

So after almost 1 year I believe my m9700 is over heating? Out of nowhere while playing WoW my computer has been shutting off. Does anyone know what exactly I should do? Do I bother calling alienware? I bought a 2-3 year extended warranty plan for the computer. Would they just replace something for me if I sent it in?

Thanks in advance.

First, try taking off the back panel, and blowing out the two fans with a can of air you can get at any office supply or computer store. If there's dust in there, it won't cool well.

After a while, the heatpads between the heatsinks and chips can dry out, crack and become ineffective. What I and others here did was remove the heatsink off the cpu, clean it, and apply Arctic Silver 5 thermal grease. Temps dropped 6 degrees for me...

Here is a guide with pictures on how to apply AS5 to the m9700.

You can use a program called Notebook Hardware Control to get your cpu temps.

You can use rivatuner to check the temps of your vid cards. There may be some better programs out there for this though...

Oh yeah, and it wouldn't hurt to call Alienware. They will help you with the issue and may suggest trying Arctic Silver 5. If you aren't comfortable doing the work, they may ask you to send the laptop back so they can do a diagnosis and do the work, but it can take several weeks for the shipping and work to be done.

Hey Thanks for the heads up, I called alienware yesterday and they told me to first try and blow some air on the fans etc/clean it with that. It helped... but barely as my computer still shuts down while browsing the web and listening to music as well as playing WoW. I can tell that where what I believe is where AS5 is to be applied had been eaten at over time and I plan on buying the things i need to clean/fix it at Fry's tomorrow while over the phone with an AW technician.

I also asked him "Well what if this still doesnt fix my heating issues? What are you going to do for me? I have a 3 year warranty on the computer." He said I would need to send it in and they would end up fixing it for me.

So if the AS5 fix doesnt work, looks like i'll be out a computer for 2-4 weeks i'm assuming. However, if this means that I was sold bad parts etc... and they decide for some reason to upgrade the computer because they dont carry the M9700 anymore/it's parts (I hope) I will be thoroughly pleased with them =D. One can hope, am i right? And has anyone heard of them ever doing this for customers?

Alienware will replace a system that they are unable to repair. I know of a couple people that had issues with their 7700's, and were able to trade up to an m9700.

It's unlikely in your case though that this won't be easily resolved. It's most likely just the heatsink interface with your cpu. If you end up sending it back to Alienware, it's likely they'll be able to diagnose and repair it.

If not, they could offer a trade up to an m9750, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

Yeah HH, I think you may be right. I did AS5 with them over the phone and ran another stress test while they were in control of my computer, it shut down after 1 minute and 8 seconds. AW then said I was going to be receiving new parts for my computer within the next 3-4 days. Once I get the parts a local repair company is apparently coming out to my house and doing a new install of these 2 items i was notified about via e-mail: \

Item(s) Ordered:
[Item:THERMAL GEL, Qty:1]

[Item:AURORA m9700 (W830DAX) CPU HEATSINK, Qty:1]

So apparently the guy over the phone thinks this will fix all my problems. I'm not exactly convinced though. What are your thoughts on this so called soon to be "Fix"?

Sounds like they think it's the fan on the heatsink...

You might try taking out your memory, and reinstalling it. Not sure if a loose memory dimm will cause shut downs, but it will cause lots of problems.

It's a bummer having issues, but AW will get it resolved, hopefully sooner than later...

Did you put AS5 on the vid cards, or just the cpu?

I was instructed over the phone to just put it on one of what appeared to be a Nvidia Video Card area. I didnt get dual video cards, and it looked to be on the opposite side of where another video card may go. When we ran HWMonitor on my laptop the video card never seemed to get too hot. It was the, I believe, ACPI/THRM Temp that was going above 95 degrees Celsius :/ ...

When I talk to the person in charge of putting my new heatsink in when he comes to my house, i'll be sure to thoroughly interrogate him as to whether my computer may just be on a never-ending slump of problems after this and what his opinion/thoughts on what I should do with alienware are.

I personally plan to persue the problems as best I can and bug the hell out of Alienware until I see results that I am satisfied with.

My m9700 has heat issues with the cpu, not the vid cards, so hopefully the new heatsink and as5 for the cpu will resolve your issues. In my experience, vid card overheating leads to artifacts and freezing, cpu heat issues can lead to shut downs.

I would apply AS5 to the cpu, but since AW is sending someone to do that for you, you might just want to wait for that.

I've applied AS5 to my cpu now more than once when the temps start to climb, and it's fixed it each time. Unfortunately, it seems the temps the turion runs at are high enough that if there is any kind of air bubble in the AS5, it will expand and contract over time enough to push the grease out of the interface.