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

Yup. Much happier with the results. 32 C average after being on the computer all day is nice. Haven't done any gaming yet though today

 

Great stuff... have fun and enjoy!

 

I have a Dell tech organised for on-site visit to replace faulty CPU fan and was going to ask for repaste as well.

Is there much chance of things going wrong as I need the laptop next day for work?

Thanks

 

To prevent and/or minimize casualties, I would watch him like a hawk and make sure that he is not a monkey tech.

In order to replace the fans you have to remove the motherboard so that is where things could go south if not done right.

Pay extra attention to the ribbon cables. Those are delicate...so make sure that they are removed properly.

 

Hey thanks @iunlock just one last question: what cleaning cloth/swab should I use, just a microfiber cloth for the thermal paste?

 

@Mobius 1
Mobius, are you currently repasting services?

I just ordered my AW 15 R3 and figured better safe than sorry since my last 2 laptops pretty much died from overheating and have been researching on the issues with the new batch of alienware.

Could you PM me please (i have less than 5 posts)? Thanks!

 

Yes, hold on a second.

 

Hey guys, I now provide FREE thermal pad upgrade to 6w/mk on top of the display calibration service.

Price have been greatly reduced until the end of summer.



If you don't want to pay for thermal pads, and get better deal for repasting service, now is the time.

 

So guys i bought the new laptop its been a less then a month.. i was playing Wildlands on ultra see the result below of heat temps!! Annoyed .
Suggest me what to do with the system? it is GTX 1070 8GB model !

 

Do a repaste. There loads of information in this thread about it. If you are not confident doing it yourself and you are from the US, there's a few people here that will do it for a fee.

 

Try max fans in the bios (fan performance mode) and lift back of laptop first.

Post back with temps.

 

I wish I had links of reviews of laptops readily available to show people that other brands of laptops reach the same/near-same temperatures. There is a handful that are obviously way too hot out of the box, but if it isn't throttling, then you shouldn't be annoyed, since your laptop would be working as intended. Nearly everyone on this forum has done a repaste or had a Dell tech do a repaste, its just what manufacturers do, they use bad paste.

 

So I have had the conductonaut on for a couple days, and just installed the windows 10 creators update. Has anyone else installed it?

My idle temps are now 45-50c...but my maxes are still low 70s. Any idea what the culprit could be?

 

I just want to point out if you take a look at his picture he is throttling. Repaste needs to be done and frankly a rebalance with how bad those cores are out of whack.

If you have onsite just get dell to send out a tech to replace the Heatsink and why he is there toss him some better thermal paste. Not the best soultion but will work if your not conformable doing it your self.

 

Well tried, Temps get higher then 90%^^ . I will do the repaste!

 

well im not in USA so that wont be possible! ill give it a try myself! just ordered IC Diamond Thernal Paste(hope it works fine).

 

Looks like I need to repaste?
I enabled CPU performance mode and set to OC Lvl 1 in BIOS and ran OCCT and it stopped the tests in less than a minute that cpu0 reached 91C.
The temp difference from cpu0 to cpu3 is like 15+C.

 

Have you tried undervolting with XTU?
I have a AW17 R4 running a i7-6700HQ, GPU 1060 and have found this thread very useful

What BIOS are you on?
I am waiting for dell tech to come onsite and replace fan, heatsink and hopefully repaste with some Thermal Grizzly Hydronaut (couldn't get Grizzly Kryonaut locally)

My temps aren't as high as yours but I have found doing all the below has dropped the temps a bit while I wait for a time the dell tech can come onsite when I can be there as well to supervise as I believe there are a number of things that can go wrong and I don't want to be without my new AW.
- Updated BIOS to 1.0.8
- Undervault using XTU -0.85
- Have laptop elevated sitting on laptop cooler
- Check every 2 weeks that all vents are clear
- Enabled CPU performamnce mode in BIOS
- Hard set the fan speed in HWinfo to new max's available due to performance mode (not sure whether I needed to do this or not)

 

Well i tried-- seems improvement by undervolting! A quick question is it save to undervolt the core for a long time? :thinking:

 

Yes it should help reduce the effects of electromigration over time.

 

Revised PCH Mod.
(Revised and Improved over the copper shim method that I had posted here.)

Thanks for being patient guys. I just had to make sure before publishing this (long duration tests)...many many tests later, it's sealed and confirmed. It works great.

Note: Notice the orientation of the fins (horizontal). Also, the height you want is approx. ~4mm. The size of the actual HS doesn't have to be exact. I may even end up trying a bigger size (width) later and test to see if it makes any distance. The thing you don't want happening is having the rate of thermal dissipation exceed the amount of air flow that's under there for obvious reasons.
Enjoy

OP also updated.

 

Well a quick question, can i use IC DIAMOND thermal paste instead of grizzly etc..?

 

Yes you can. Also, refer this post Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut vs Grizzly Kyronaut vs Arctic Silver 5

 

This looks really promising @iunlock , thanks for sharing! Quick question, have you tested using just a straight aluminum HS with the peel away conductive adhesive that some of them come with? I've got one of those and I'm wondering if I should scrape away the bottom of it and just use the method above instead.

Cheers

 

He uses Kryonaut thermal paste, which I think is better than any thermal pad available to consumers today. That I know of at least

 

I repasted my new 17R4 Kaby Lake last night.
I was able to leave the wifi antenna wires attached to the nic. The way the wires are routed on the base plate they come right out to the fan hole.

I also didn't have to remove the motherboard. Just unscrewed the two tiny screws on each fan and could pull the heat plate and top of the fans off leaving the motherboard in place and not having to unhook all the cables.

The only cables I had to pull off were the tron lights, hdd, and battery.
Was so much easier.

I used Kryonaut since I had that on hand from a prior repaste.
I went from OCCT shutting the test off due to high temp in <1m to running for 5+ at <80C until I stopped the test.

I really want to try Conductonaut but it looks like everyone does too. There is not a 1g tube anywhere.

 

Thanks illuMinniti, I was more curious if going the route of a hack like that will give significantly lower temps than just sticking a heatsink with an already applied adhesive conductive solution.

 

Just in case....any LHz bros or recommended guys in the UK that could do an iunlock quality job to my new 17r4? Ideally in London. Got the 7820+1080 model arriving tomorrow and am dreaming of the temps you guys are posting...but I doubt I have the patience to not bugger the job up at least a little bit!

 

The adhesives are very poor and rated at only ~1w m/k...

I would not use the adhesive.

Scrape it off for sure and apply kyronaut.

True and correct.

Great job on the repaste.

As for leaving the wires on along with the mobo, this is not recommended for several reasons. I've written a piece on this before.

Few highlights of why not to...

1. Can easily bend the heat pipes if not super careful. Even the slightest bit can...rather will make a big difference. The units already can suffer from uneven heat sink.

2. Once the under side thermal tape is broken, it loses efficiency by a lot. I've already tested this numerous times.

3. Once the WiFi clips break, the whole screen unit has to be taken apart to replace it and it is very tedious, to the point where replacing the entire display unit is easier.

4. When realigning the heat sink, due to the clips of the fan assembly, it prevents from getting an even, "seat." This is an important step to get right the first time, because once the hs plate makes contact with the paste, you don't want to lift it. It's a one shot deal.

There are reasons why I don't take short cuts. I repaste almost every other day and have tested everything under the sun to be certain of the best and safest methods.

80C's is a bit high for kyronaut on occt. The Temps should be in the low-end 70C's. Did you repad as well? How are your core differentials?

(This post is meant to be informative.)


::iunlock::

 

i think u have the gtx 1070 version?

 

The 1080 with the uhd screen.

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk

 

hmm... ok.. maybe they have updated the layout a bit on the kaby lake version. cos on my sky lake 6820hk + GTX1080, even removing the small fan screws the fan assembly will not detach because it's taped shut. and also the opening between the fan and heatsink will not allow the WiFi card to squeeze through. i've tried it, does not work. so ended up doing the long but correct way. but then again, i have the 1440p 120Hz display.

 

Will do then, thanks again!

 

Someone tried with Thermal pads Fujipoly 17 W/mk? Are more difficult to handle than 11W/mk?

 

Yes. the 17.0's are very dense and not very desirable for applications with a small margin of tolerances.

11.0's are more flexible as well and just overall a better fit for the job in this scenario at half the cost too.

 

But, the 17 W/mk can be applied too, right? I have 11 and 17 W/mk.

 

Btw is there a way to avoid disassembling the whole motherborad? Just want to repaste the thermal on cpu and gpu!

 

Sounds great! I just want to the repaste thing! Can u post the guide pictures. How to avoid removing the whole motherboard just for thermal paste?

 

Pretty much did this. It is for the 15r3 but it worked perfect for me.


I left the wifi wires on the nic since when I did this on my first one (Skylake w/ 6820 and gtx1080) I messed up the connectors on the nic, so I didn't want to do that again. I wanted to leave as much connected as possible. The wires on most of the plugs are so thin that they look like they could break or pull out just by looking at them.

This new one is a Kaby Lake 7820/gtx 1080 and I don't have the old one to verify how wifi was run.

On the new on for me the wifi wires were routed in a channel that lead out to the fan hole so I could totally remove the inside base plate for access to the heat sink.
Once the inside base plate was off there were just two tiny screws on each fan that I removed and the whole thing could pop up.
There are some tabs/clips that hold the top plate of the fan to the body of the fan and there was some tape on the bottom of the side radiators that I had to deal with.

For me it was WAY easier this way then the first time with removing the motherboard.
I can't say 100% it will work for everyone though. Your mileage may vary.

 

I also have disassembled both ways. There are three screws on each fan shroud, Philips size 000 iirc. Remove NIC wires, in plug battery and hard drive, unscrew all the screws, pull the back plate, unscrew fan shroud, heat sink assembly comes off perfectly, just grab the back heatsink or side heatsink and lift gently. Careful not to bend anything, but I can get the laptop repasted in 10 minutes this way, vs way over an hour with a full disassembly, and much more can go wrong when you are disconnecting every ribbon cable on the board.

It may be different on the 17 though, I did it on the 15r3. I also did full teardowns on the 17r4, and its a huge pain. Especially when you get it all back together and realize you have a screw leftover.

On the plus side, on the 15r3 there seems to be only 5x screw sizes. m.2 screws, outside cover screws, back cover screws, fan shroud screws, and all the internals are the same size. So an added bonus is no need to keep track of your screws, if you do a full disassembly you'll get several more sizes in your pile.

 

Also, my LM repaste was awesome the first day, then idling around 40-50 for several days, and now its back to idling at 30 or so, max in the 60s. Must have had a burn in period?

 

No burn in period for liquid metal. More likely some ****y from M$ running and steal clock cycles in the background

Edit: See also THIS

 

So I repasted today, took about 4 hours due to a stripped screw that was way over tightened from the factory and they left the plastic on the pads so the plastic fused to the heat sink and was really hard to get off.

There was a change in my 15R3 that differs from the instructions that on testing now appears to have resulted in me now having uneven pressure. The thermal pads I circled are listed as 1mm and as important to replace. So I replaced them with 1mm. However, it appears from the pad that I removed from there that they are now 0.1mm just like the other pad over the chokes.

As a result my temps now after the repaste are much more uneven than before. I will need to do it again tomorrow or later today and try to put the old pads back on or put TIM there and hope for the best. I would advise that no one replace any of the pads around the CPU.

 

Hey mate I'm based in the UK (Bournemouth) and have repasted mine about 4 times. I don't offer a service but PM me for any advice.

P.S. If I were you I'd ignore others and follow @iunlock fuse to the letter. It's thorough, low risk and tried and tested the best, safest way. Also take a look at my experience in my signature for some additional hints and tips

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

 

OK repasted again and replaced the 1mm pads with the 0.1mm pads again and temps are now much closer. Still pretty uneven but not the insane 20c I was seeing before the changes. The two hottest cores are also taking lower temps at a higher voltage now.

 

I don't think that there is a lot to worry about with the lm conductonaut. My laptop sits in the sleeper of my truck, and all day long is shaken. For 3000 miles a week, it sits vertically and horizontally, and shakes/vibrates constantly. No issues at all, and runs way cooler than stock. Honestly, if you're careful and take your time, and don't spill the stuff on your mobo, it's a simple and effective mod than can be done in less than an hour.

 

I'm curious, if using LM Conductonaut and it did spill while you had accidental damage warranty, is that covered? I would assume not but idk for sure

 

@iunlock I sent you a PM with a couple of questions.

 

Hi guys, this month I am planning to buy an Alienware 17 r4 with gtx 1080, i7-7820hk qhd tn 120hz.
I just want to know if the heat issue had already been solved by dell? I mean, compare to the skylake units, did they improve a lot, the temps of kaby lake units?
I really want to know because I'm afraid that I might not be able to do the "repaste or so" job.
EDIT: If I stick with the stock paste, would you guys still recommend the overclockable cpu? Or the HQ one? I am really worried about the temps, since I lived from the Philippines where the temperature is usually high.

 

Somewhat the issue is solved, depends on your ambient temps. If you want to OC, I highly recommend anything over stock paste to get consistent clock speeds. If you're in US I highly recommend repaste services @iunlock @DeeX @Mobius 1