Need help/advice temperature issue

[Peter450]

Ok so after a lot of hmmming and rrrring I bit the bullet and picked up a new (well new looking) laptop from dells outlet a Alienware 13 with a 1060. Initial impressions were very positive very nice bit of kit.

I know theirs been temp issues with Alienwares so first thing I did was run Alienwares own stress test and then I installed and ran XTU.

I did a quick 5 min stress test on XTU and the benchmark which also takes about 5 mins

CPU max temp was 99c
GPU on the Alienware test was high 80s

Now I not had a gaming PC for a while but those temps look very high !! to me

I ran the above with standard fan profile

I decided to run it again with the fans on max, (i'e full blast regardless of what your doing) and temps were around 80 both CPU and GPU

I'm not keen on the fan full blast mode as its noisy, and overkill when not gaming and will likely wear out the fans

I'm not an expert but I seen people getting better temps than this (70s), I'm not keen on repasting a new computer so was wondering how do people do these tests, as if they do them full fan blast mode then I'm around 10c worse so maybe not to bad, but if people are getting that on the standard fan profiles then I,m 30c worse which is very bad

I don't fancy it's going to have a long life if it's running in the high 90s everytime I play game

What's people's thoughts on this ?

 

[MrFunex]

Have you updated the BIOS to the latest version?

 

[Peter450]

I updated the bios this evening and it's made perhaps a small difference, max temp was 95 or so in the benchmark test.

This on the standard fan profile again

It just seems a hot to hot, I know a gaming laptop will get hot but temps in the 90s seem excessive.

I also checked the temp differences across the codes and while idle sees them all pretty similar under load the difference can be up to 15 on occasions, usually around 10 or 12 which again seems excessive

 

[MrFunex]

If your temps are over 95C, open up a web-chat with Dell. They'll book you in for an engineer visit to sort the issue.

 

[Teknobry]

sounds like it needs repasting & better thermal pads.

 

[Peter450]

That's my thoughts, I've put in a request for that, although the tech phone support thought it was within tolerances...so maybe they might send someone (will know in a few days) but looks like they won't...so if that does turn out to be the case not sure what to do.

Got two options I guess, keep it and put up with it or return it (still within the 14 day period)

I like the laptop, it's well built with a great screen but I'm not happy with thermals on the very upper edge of what they should be and on principle don't think I should just accept that. I want the laptop to ideally last a few years and high temps won't help on that front

 

[LEK-89]

Don't necessarily believe what Dell tech support will tell you over the phone, some of them at times can give out false information on things.

The CPU temp alone maxing out at 99c is indeed high for an Alienware of this kind - they're not the slimmest of laptops out there and should be able to keep the CPU at lower temps. It is known that Dell can do a poor CPU / GPU paste job on these in the factory and what I would be doing is a complete repaste altogether - by all means get the Dell tech to do it for you but insist on them using some Thermal Grizzly Kyronaut as opposed to their own paste.

Liam.

 

[FlyingFish]

If you haven't already, enable the thermal throttling monitor in xtu (graph options) as I'd imagine that once you've got to those temperatures posted above the CPU will be throttled down and performance will be taking a massive dive.
When I've done testing, you can use other test/stress programs and keep xtu open to monitor temps etc and any throttling