[Alienware 17R4 / 15R3] - Disassembly + Repaste Guide + Results

I already replaced the 0.50mm with 0.15mm thermal adhesive. But the issue remains. Investigating ...

 

For anyone that has actually used Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut, does it actually require a reasonable amount of effort to remove? From what I've read is that liquid metals (maybe ICD mostly) damage/scratch the dies. But iunlock has said its pretty easy. Though he's had A LOT of experience with it so idk if he uses some special liquid remover haha

 

The only challenge is you need to make sure the LM is not smearing into the components.

Other than that, just gently and carefully wipe the LM off until you get none remaining on the copper + silicon + die substrate.

 

Thanks, that has me sold haha. I know a few people were wondering and even though both websites have notifications for stock arrival, but Newegg and Memoryc have the Conductonaut

 

It's amazing stuff mate. Sat here running OCCT at 4.2GHz with +10mV and after half hour it's still only maxed out at 84C and its wedged on a flat table with books behind it close to the vents! Average temp across all cores is 66-69C

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Is that also while stressing the GPU? Definitely still sounds good for a 6820K and +10mv though

 

Hi i need help. Anyone know this model of thermal pad? Fujipoly thermal gap Gr80a-100 13w/mk
I want to know if I can use this instead:
Fujipoly Extreme X-e Thermal Pad - 100 x 15 x 1.0 - Thermal Conductivity 11.0 W/mK

Fujipoly Sarcon Gr80a-100 Characteristics
Silicone compound with double sticky surfaces and Thermal Conductivity of GR80A-00 material is 13.0W/m-K by using ASTM D5470 modified*1 (8.0W/m-K by using Hot Disk)

Which is the difference between thermal pad and thermal gap?

 

I am having a heck of a time finding a website that has the 1g Conductonaut in stock in the US. A 5g would definitely be wasted on me, and if I could save a few bucks that would be great.

 

I would subscribe to email stock notifications. I did that and a couple days later found some in stock (but that was 5 gram). Tbh better to have too much than too little. 1gram, from what I heard, is good for about 3 dies. Basically, make sure you do it right the first time. And if you ever have problems you'll need to order more and wait + also maybe pay shipping again. I'm sure you could always find someone to sell some to too if needed, like friends that may want to benefit off a use for 10$ lol

 

Ha. I may just grab the 5g then.

I would ask if I could. In our friend circle I happen to be the one anyone would go to for something like that.... I am the "uber nerd" in the group. My buddy often tells me, while we're out and I am obsessing over something, that my geek is showing.

I live and breath this stuff.... Unfortunately not for a career... Don't have that magical piece of paper they print for you at the paper farms

The wait is killing me!

I am still kinda drooling over the p870dm2 that was the runner up... But my gosh you cant beat the build quality of these machines and for the quality issues the p870dm2 seems a little highly priced until they can step up their game.

Where's meh alienware!

I may do this job on the AW17r3 I am giving my wife depending on how it goes with the r4. It gets great temps as it is, but I also always turn on the fan performance mode before gaming. Fan noise has never bothered me one bit; would rather have a cool machine. Will most likely be doing the same with the 17r4.

Also want to hunt around for the larger psu as I'll be farely interested in pushing the cpu and gpu as far as possible before negative gains.

Most likely going to be replacing mem as well. The unit is only coming with 8gb, @ 2667. Perhaps another chip or seeing what the chipset will upgrade to within reason... Comes a point where the cost vs performance gain isn't noticeable.


I'll have a butt load of questions I am sure.... Hope yer all ready!

 

I used spread method for the CPU anf GPU repast with Gelid. GPU temps were the best i ever had. But temps gap between core0 and Core3 sky rocketed above 25°C.

Looking at the CPU print on the heatsink i saw this :



About 30% of the CPU isn't covered by the heatsink
Looks like the OP's GTX 1070 17R4 repad layout didn't fit my 15R3.
Or my heatsink is warped.

So i contacted DELL, again. I told them i repasted and repaded my 15R3 and discovered some flaws in their factory assembly like the pads films and that the heatsink doesn't fit the CPU as it should. They asked me if I had pictures as evidences. So i sent them by email : The film on their pads, the old factory thermal stomp, my CPU repast and the uneven CPU print on the heatsink.

They told me i shouldn't have repaded and repasted without their approvals. And they could have voided the warranty.
But finally they'll send a tech with a new heatsink for free. That's all i needed.

 

Just curious what were the Temps idle and load?

 

Only void warranty if the machine is broken in the process, but in this case your heatsink is broken from the factory (warped).

 

CPU @3.6GHz had Core 3 overing at 53°C when OCCT Stopped as Core 0 reached 93°C Resulting in a 40°C gap !

Core 0


Core 3

 

This is Thermal Grizzly's answer about: Why should not Conductonaut be used for Extreme OC? What do they mean by extreme overclocking? What difference is there with overclocking?

------
Hi

It means that Conductonaut should not be used for subzero application such as extreme overclocking with liquid nitrogen (Temperature around -190 °C)

If you just overclock on air/water you can absolutely use Conductonaut.

Best regards,

Thermal Grizzly Marketing

 

What if the ambient temperature is subzero, the CPU would be subzero before it starts running.. I wonder if that amount of time will damage the paste.

 

This is exactly the same situation I was in before the liquid metal repaste, except that for me it was core #1 which was over 25-30°C hotter than core #2... see http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...e-pasting-and-overclocking-experience.800173/

 

Fallout fails to perform even in the best hardware, I had the similar problem and this helped me
https://www.reddit.com/r/fo4/comments/3s93p4/low_fps_on_good_hardware_try_these_two_fixes/

Also in the Nvidia control panel, set the Fallout4laucher.exe with the Nvidia driver and it should work..

 

Is that the new heatsink you need to remove the Motherboard or, is that the old one, because I saw 2 YouTube videos with 2 different heatsinks!

 

With pre-released AW you could remove the heatsink directly

With my first batch AW I can remove the heatsink with fan's cover plate.

For newly released AW i don't know.

 

Completely unrelated of sort... But excited.

Delivery for 17r4 on Wednesday
6820hk
8gb 2667
128gb m2 (I'll be popping in my old sata 512gb)
gtx 1070
1080 (was told it is 144hz refresh... We'll see about that)

Fujipoly pads, 33+ tape and solution arrived today.

Grizzly conductonaut will arrive Friday.

Will sit down to work on this over the weekend, hopefully successfully, and will come back with results.

For ease and covering my own hide over issues such as a warped heatsink I'll be taking plenty of photos and quite possibly a video.

The video is always nice incase they try to fuss about warranty; started doing that before selling anything on ebay.

 

Good luck and set aside a day for that!
I also recommend lapping the heatsinks and bending the heatsink arm

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bending the heatsink arm??? what do you mean?

 

Did you read OP?

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Yes, but, I do not remember reading about it. Where does it say it?

 

The bending of the arm was a solution to the thermal pads being too thick on the chokes. This issue was corrected in factory and now that the pads are the correct size bending the arm may create uneven pressure where there is currently even pressure.

 

I just replace the thermal pads and thermal paste (with LM). The heatsinks (with cpu and gpu fan) is new.
Dell shipping the replacement because the cpu fan was faulty.

How do I if it is the heatsinks corrected?

 

You should be able to see that before your repaste the core temps were close in value to each other. If your core temps are very uneven so is the pressure on them.


See below for image that contains a fixed thermal pad on the chokes:

 

I see. The new version of heatsinks carries 0.1mm white thermal pads.
I left the original, and there is no difference between core temps.

 

Great!

 

When you say no difference between core temps is that between before and after the repaste or between cores 0-3 after the repaste?

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between cores 0-3 after the repaste...

 

That's great!

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Ok happy days then!

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Can someone help me with what type thermal pads I'm going to need with my repaste? Thank you! I can't find the fujipoly 14.0w m/k


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I just got mine repasted from a Dell tech, Kyronaut and the Fuji pads. I went from 92 plus in max (I stopped the test at that temp, could have gone higher), and also greater than 25 degree differential, to 81 max, with a 16 degree differential. I no longer have to worry, happy. Yes, it's a higher differential than I'd like, but nothing to worry about anymore, imo.

 

That's still terrible and something is causing the heatsink to be uneven. I mean maybe not terrible but it looks like you could have about 70s-77s across 0-3

 

NotebookReview - Error
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I'm thinking you are right. I ran a longer test and I got these results:

Core0 88.0 C
Core1 75.0 C
Core2 90.0 C
Core3 71.0 C

I've contacted Dell. This is only a slight improvement, probably only the Kryonaut doing its job, but probably still not seated flat.

 

Wow so not even rethermal pasting with kryonaut fixes the issues? This definitely has me second guessing doing it to mine ☹️


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Did you bend the heatsink arm? I think cores 0 and 2 are on the north side so with those temps it indicates to me that there's not enough pressure on the north side.

When I did mine I bent the north side arm a lot and then screwed it down nearly all the way before screwing down the other arms

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The Dell tech did the install, and no he did not bend the arm. He did replace the thermal pads with the thicknesses outlined here though. I had all that stuff waiting for the install. I read in one of these threads that bending the arm wasn't needed if you are replacing the pads. Am I wrong?

 

Did you happen to notice how he tightened the screws though? My guy fully tightened each screw 1by1 and I had to kinda walk him through most steps as is, I really didn't want to correct him on every little thing (and he broke the wifi cable connectors so I had to take it back apart anyway). So I just let it go and fixed the screws myself lol

 

I didn't notice if he tightened all the way. He didn't break anything though. I did have to correct him on order a few times. It's complicated. I do have enough kryonaut to do this again myself. Do you think that's worth it? Is there a Los Angeles area person that is proficient in this issue to go to instead of myself?

Barry

 

Where did you get your pads from? I'm not too sure where to look since I'm about to tackle this job myself



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there's links to the pads in the instructions in this thread. Easy order on Amazon.

 

Funny thing, I had emailed Alienware tech support saying I needed thermal pads and they said they were delivering the part to the warehouse for the tech to pickup. Dude shows up with thermal paste, which is what they sent for him for my "thermal pads". Luckily he had thermal pads on him, which looked the same as Dell's obviously since he's a Dell tech haha. Idk if I will stick with spending another 30-40$ on pads, I don't plan to overclock. When I initially changed the pads with the Fujipoly linked, they were all dry and crumbly, but that was when they had the wrong sizes listed. Couldn't reuse them.

Went back and checked my Amazon order, apparently I ordered the 17W/mk, which is probably why they were more dry and crumbly? Idk

 

No you're not wrong, I too have seen this guidance on this very forum but I ignored it when I did mine and my temps are distributed within a few degrees always. I had the new version of the R4 and I left the 0.1mm pads on the chokes where they were but I still bent the arm a lot. I figured that with one screw one end and two the other that I'd rather bend the one arm to ensure that the heatsink is tight down as the act of just taking off the heatsink and putting it back on again could mean that the same pressure on the north side as the South wasn't enough.

Also once I finished the job I looked at the heatsink on the mobo very closely for several minutes from all angles to ensure it looked even and parallel with the board. I didn't have to make any adjustments.



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Also anyone feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but the pads linked are 100x15. There are also 60x50. Doesn't the 60x50 have double the pads for nearly the same/less cost depending on shipping/prime/taxes etc

 

You can buy the 60x50, it doesn't really matter if you cut them to the right size and apply properly.





Also to note, if you don't have the thin thermal pads, just skip them entirely on the grayish metal blocks, the chokes do not need to be cooled at all.