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

I agree, that's essential! I had some pump out when I reopened mine on the sides. You have to put more LM on in a laptop as well so this increases the risk

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

 

Can you tell us how far out the LM got and what measures you're taking to ensure this doesn't happen again?

 

My concern is that the heat and total exposure, that the tape will loosen up over time. Electrical tape shouldn't be used like that for a prolonged period of time.

 

Why not, it's rated to 200C...

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

 

I can do one better...









https://s24.postimg.org/yzfcc54ad/20170122_210333.jpg

 

Thanks Pete! Looks like the LM wouldnt have gotten too far off...

Best of luck with your repaste and adjustments!

 

How important is it to replace the thermal pads?
I'm looking into doing a liquid metal repaste but I'm having a hard time finding Fujipoly in Canada at a decent price.
Someone had recommended arctic blue thermal pads as a cheaper alternative.
There's also K5-Pro paste.
Is there a big performance gap between stock, Fujipoly, Artic and K5-Pro?

 

Same question here, im about te repast, but my temps are not so bad, 67° for GPU and 80° max for CPU, im sure sure i'll change thermal past, just do a repast.

 

Idk much about thermal pads, but considering iunlock recommends pads with 11W/mk, surely the stock Dell pads have at least like 1W/mk, they have some sort of heat transfer. So if you can find something cheaper and reasonably priced in your area, anything is better. But at the same time, memory chips don't create much heat but VRM chips do. Not sure where the VRM chips are on these boards, but I would worry about those the most. If they use the same size as the memory, then 2 birds with one stone. I can confirm the VRM get very hot on desktop GPUs, I touched a little mosfet heatsink I attached to one to check if it was hot, it left dents in my skin for a couple weeks lol. On my GTX 970 G1, the memory chips on the back of the GPU don't even have anything cooling them off, but the front side did (probably simply cuz those large heatsinks span the entire PCB, not cuz it needed it)

 

That's true. Dell using the junky thermal stamp is not a good sign for the quality of their thermal pads.
I ended up ordering CLLU and K5-Pro. They both ship from Europe so it might take awhile.

I hope one syringe of CLLU is enough for both CPU and GPU.

 

Hello guys,

I know it is kind of a long shot, but is there anyone in Europe doing somewhat similar to what iunlock is doing for the USA? i.e. assisting with LM application etc.

I am currently living in Denmark (temporarily), however, I am travelling back to the UK on a regular basis. Any chance anyone could recommend a person/place offering to do this properly for me? I am inexperienced myself and the whole process of disassembly an applying LM seems way too dangerous for a 1st timer to do on his 6820k/gtx1080 configuration.

Thanks in advance.

 

Any best methods for removing this liquid metal from the gpu and cpu without having it kinda ball up everywhere with the rubbing alcohol?

Love it but I can't seem to get a straight answer from anyone at dell about the display I was supposed to have. Found a "new" unit on their outlet site at the same price I paid w/ double the memory, tobii, and an nvme ssd thats twice the size as well. So basically going to pop some paste back in this thing and send it back to them. Same price, three upgrades, I would feel bad sending them back a unit over only a few upgrades and this one is running great.... but they've tossed me all over the place for a week now trying to get the display I was told was going to be in here.... so screw 'em! I'll at least get a few upgrades

So I just want to get it back to stock....

which is funny if ya think about it. "Hey Dell, I got this thing to max out 72C at 4.1Ghz but usually hangs around 60 while gaming. Let me get this back to stock though so we're cookin @ 80-90 depending on which core you happen to be looking at. Oh and all those pesky little thermal pads I popped in there that you never installed, I can take those out too if you want!"



But anyways, when I was doing some of the tidying up after the LM application I noticed it doesn't really want to be wiped up. I just don't want to get any stray conductonaut on anything and fry something I am about to return.

of course I doubt dell will tear the machine down to the cpu/gpu. Could leave it in there and one day we'll see a post saying, "Just bought refurb alienware, don't know what you guys are talkin about!! Stock temps rock!"

 

It isn't as difficult as you think. It honestly all tears down pretty quick. First time spend a day doing it. The second time I took this one apart, I realized the next day reviewing photos I missed a pad for the gpu mem, I maybe spent 30-45 minutes for tear down and reassembly. Maybe grab a bunch of ziploc bags and label those for the different screws. The second time I did it I didn't need to remove the wires for the wifi card, it just slipped between the board and fans. Follow everything in order from iunlock's guide and it will go pretty smooth. Just don't rush and stay organized. Anti static wrist bands are cheap, a box of powder free gloves goes a long way as well... few bucks for the added insurance is nice.

clean, clean, wipe, clean, prep, clean again, tape, retape, double check the edges, clean, wipe, and.... ummmm .... oh yeah, double check, clean and .... clean

Any oils or residue on there and the tape won't want to stay in place for you. Guitar picks, tweezers helped me get the tape on there. Didn't want to get the oils from my skin on the tape and gently using the guitar pick edge I was able to butt it right up to the die nicely. Page 104 of this thread has some of my photos, 106 has Pete's and the first page has iunlock's.

Other then that watch a video or two of someone applying the stuff.

Have you ever done a repaste or is this just your first time with LM? If the latter and you want to play it safe there are some that could probably chime in with their results using the kryonaut. I think I have read a few posts with happy users. Later down the road you could always decide to go back and give the LM a shot.

Either way, good luck with the search or the repaste!!

Nothing more fun than tearing these apart though!!

 

Dude I don't reckon you need to bother. I've seen a lot of evidence now to suggest using LM doesn't void the warranty. So in that case why bother to clean it off?

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

 

And what about a magnet to leave LM ? Does it work ?

 

rofl! You are joking right? Loool

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

 

What tape?

 

Super 33+ electrical tape. Protect yourself from jumping anything and causing a short.

Use this on the cpu and gpu. Take a look at photos from pages 1 (iunlock), 104 (myself), and 106 (pete light).

On page 106 pete shows what could possibly squeeze out when applying pressure from the heatsink. Being conductive, you do not want any of this contacting other components. It would be the equivalent of tossing a dash of water in there and then firing it up... Not good.

 

Sadly not

Maybe if you fly me there I'll do a repaste for you fully free of charge

3M 33+

https://solutions.3m.com/wps/portal...l-Electrical-Tape?N=5432987+3294355633&rt=rud

 

Ha! I thought about that.... But being this is a return shouldn't I bring this as far back to stock as possible?

Or should I charge them a few bucks on top of the return for upgrading their "paste job" .... They can resell at a higher rate with custom cooling work! Heck people are paying others on here to do the work!

Keep your eyes our for a 17r4 1070 6820hk on dell outlet refurb. Willing to bet ya get it for a song and a dance.... And it'll have conductonaut in it.

I do feel a little weird sending them a unit with LM in it though as a return though.

 

Missed oportunity...


What he said!

 

Another relatively new 15R3 with the old thermal paste stamp and too thick CPU choke thermal pad




Weirdly enough, from the patterns I see: the newer ones with a thin CPU choke thermal pad have bad arrangement of thermal pads everywhere else, but the old one with the too thick CPU choke thermal pad have proper placement of every other thermal pad on the GPU vram and vrm

 

Aka the Dell lottery We are soon in February. And this continue

 

Ah, I did not think about hands effecting the Super 33+. Is it really that bad that gloves should be used?

 

So it seems as though the new Kaby Lake tear down is a little different than the Skylake one. It's actually easier in that you do not need to pull out the entire motherboard in order to remove the heatsink; instead, you can just remove the 3 small screws from each fan that attach it to the heatsinks in order to repaste as you can see below. This is the 7820HK and GTX 1070.
Looks like I had the new paste but it was still running 93 max and ~83 avg while playing Witcher 3 on OC Level 1 with -0.075 V. After repaste (and before letting it bake and settle mind you) I was down to 85 max and ~71 avg. Benchmarking Unigine Heaven 4.0 never exceeded ~81 so I guess Witcher 3 was far more of a handful for the laptop than that. It should lower over the next couple days but I think it's a worthwhile improvement from prior as I used only a decent paste (Arctic MX-4).
TL/DR: You do not need to remove the motherboard anymore for the 1070 in order to repaste.

 

LHz still removes motherboard to put on heatsink with liquid metal properly


reason being if you put on the heatsink like this, excess movement from trying to clip on the fan cables will cause the LM to smear on undesired places

 

You don't need to disconnect the fan cables at all anymore as the exterior upper fan housing is attached to the heatsink instead of the motherboard now; that's what I'm saying is the difference so you no longer have to remove the fans (and therefore the motherboard) at all now.

 

anybody got some info on the new alienware 17 batch?
i mean the one after dell fixed these heatsink issues?

 

Looks like both Skylake and Kaby Lake 15R3's with GTX1070 have this design. The fan shroud is not attached to the heatpipes in the GTX1060 version. Either way, you shouldn't have to remove the motherboard to do a repaste.

I'm still waiting for my CLLU and K5-Pro to arrive. Even though I already have decent temps, I'm looking forward to see how LM performs.

15R3 with 6820HK and 1070:


15R3 with 6700HQ and 1060:

 

Ya exactly, just wanted to inform those with the 1070 that there is an easier way. I followed iUnlock's awesome guide until that point where I deviated because it was a lot easier to just remove the fan housing than take off the MB

 

So it appears as though my temps are really not that good even after a repaste... (playing Witcher 3 on table surface for an hour but not elevated nor with cooling pad) Wanted to see if it would get hot and sobeit. Have it only on OC level 1. Average temps seem good but the fan profiles do not seem aggressive enough...

EDIT:
So undervolt by -0.100 V led to significant temp decrease:

 

Build date of your machine?

Sent from my VS995 using Tapatalk

 

20 January 2017; Seems like the issues with temps persist.

EDIT: So I checked my BIOS and it seems as though even though performance mode was enabled, fan performance mode was not enabled. Complaints about the fan aggressiveness being low are gone. Now it runs at high all the time. Don't know if that is a super great thing but I think it will be better for temps for sure.

 

The new Alienware is going to be here.

Trying a couple different things... Even though temps are rock solid on the first one I have here.

First thing is I am going to try out the XR-m instead of the X-e

Second thing: I am going to put an extremely small amount of Kryonaut on either side of the thermal pad to help fill in any pores and produce a much more even contact.

Still using conductonaut on the cpu and gpu.

I'll hopefully be able to get to this tonight or tomorrow.

Then I'll beat the crap out of it! And post some temp results!

New one:
6820HK
1070
256 nvme
16Gb 2400
Tobii <- very curious about this

Maybe I'll luck out and come to find out the gpu's chips are samsung!

 

Samsung Memory!!!

 

congrats!

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

 

Your post made me curious about my chips, I have Micron (checked with GPU-Z). I remember reading some chips/GPUs have firmware problem with something, which chips is it? Because I am comparing my two 15R3 (6700 vs 7700) and am noticing the 6700 + Samsung chips are getting 10-20FPS+ in Heaven. The 7700 1070 is throttling or something. I am guessing that is what people are complaining about?

 

All 1070 gtx cards with micron memory are affected by the vbios voltage bug - see http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...bal-issues-gpu-firmware-update-needed.800219/

 

Hey Guys, repasted and repadded my 17R4 (7820hk and 1070) with fujipoly pads and grizzly kryonaut. Did wonders for the 1070, it dropped it by 10C (68C to 58C) in Heaven benchmark because of that crappy toothpaste they used. Unfortunately it made my uneven core temps worse. I have a "fixed" heat sink from Dell but it was still ~12C off (Core 0 and 2) when under load in 5prime. So I decided to repaste and repad and now it's 22C higher on Core 0 and 2.

Do you think a pad if lifting up part of the heat sink? Not enough paste? Bend the arm more? What side of the heat sink is core 0 and 2 anyway? Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

 

I had the same issue, repast &repad only got higher uneven temps. I used a very thin layer of thermal paste on the CPU, mounted the heatsink, unmounted it. And looked at the paste's print on the heatsink.
Only one corner was printed, meaning my heatsink was warped.

I had to ask dell to change the heatsink to fix the issue. But they also changed my mobo in the process with a refurbished one. My temps are better than before but still i have 10°C betwen core 0 and core 3.

BTW core 0 and 2 are on the rear side of the mobo where there's only one retention arm (n°1).

 

Can't believe that's still a big problem. I'm gonna use some cheap past on both my CPU and GPU, screw it on tightly. Then unscrew it and check the paste. And maybe repeat it again with using more pressure on specific screws to get better coverage before using conductonaut

 

To eliminate uneven and high CPU temperatures I used copper shim 0.5mm 20x20mm and bent a little the heat-sink on the CPU Core 0/2 side.

 

Unfortunately my temps have not gone well in games even after repaste. Even Counter Strike peaks CPU at 99 degrees with -0.100 V undervolt which is bad. Dell is replacing the heat sink so I hope this one is better...

Sent from my SM-G930W8 using Tapatalk

 

Talked to Dell tech support today and I heard the same. Apparently it only became available this past week.

 

have you got a 15 mins test of OCCT at least rather than 20 secs for a comparison?

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

 

On my AW15R3 under OCCT test it can hold stable 4.0GHz only.
If the frequency is set to 4.2GHz it drops to 3.9 GHz, which is not the case for Cinebench R15, i.e. stable 4.2GHz throughout the whole test.

 

Finished doing my conductonaut repaste. Almost had a huge headache, there was also a air bubble in in my tube and even though I was ready for one and carefully applied small amounts of pressure, it didn't stop a big pop causing conductonaut to squirt out. And a big blob came out, probably enough to do both the GPU and CPU + heatsinks. But luckily, it completely missed the laptop. These things really have to be tested in like a completely different room haha. Gonna be doing temperature tests soon when I am finished eating but I can already tell it was worth it

@iunlock would it be possible for you to do a test with one of your 17R4 with OCCT + Heaven running? I'm just curious of how well I did or didn't do my LM repast

 

Second attempt here goes


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Not sure what I did wrong the first time but here goes lol


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk