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

I know the PCH is a different mod, but he said he wants to do it all including the PCH mod.

 

Rofl, +1 for the most expensive cooling pad I have seen yet. =P Has got to be a southern invention.

 

I really want to do the repaste with conductonaut and change out the thermal pads, and I can get the conductonaut for a reasonable price on Amazon in Canada, but I can't find anywhere to get the Fujipoly pads.

As a reference, I took a look on Amazon USA, and the Fujipoly Extreme Thermal Pad 100x15x0.5 (11.0W/mK) and the 1.0 ones were both $10.99 and $11.99 respectively. Being in Canada, I can't order these items from the USA Amazon. However on the Canada Amazon, they are a whopping $54.62+$17.02 shipping for the 0.5; and $68.23+$17.05 shipping for the 1.0. Insane prices! Even with the conversion, it's at minimum 5x more than what they should be.

Q#1: Is anyone from Canada? I'm in the Toronto area - anyone know where we can get these pads around here?

Q#2: Is the 1.0 Gram tube of conductonaut enough to do both CPU and GPU?

Thanks!

 

2 = 1 gram is enough for two computers at least

use arctic 6w/mk for thermal pad if fujipoly is not an economically viable option

 

I went through all 171 pages of this forums, and found someone that mentioned frozencpu.com. Appears we can order Fujipoly pads there quite affordably! Very useful. I'll be ordering the aluminum heatsink for the PCH as well, may as well do the repaste, repad, and the PCH mod all in one go. I want to OC this thing to at least the 3rd OC setting in BIOS and have it run stable and cool. I'll post before and after temps from OCCT and HWinfo64 for it all, once all the items come in and I do the job.

This guide is very useful and helpful, but I had one question regarding the PCH mod to make sure I understand it correctly. I'm will put electrical tape around the PCH, put thermal grizzly kyronaut on the PCH (just like as if I were doing a repaste of the CPU), put the aluminum heatsink on top of that, and glue the corners in place (gluing the corners of the aluminum heatsink to the electrical tape).

Is this correct?

 

yes

make sure your aluminum heatsink is short enough, or you can always shave away the fins

 

Perfect, thanks! I know too big is a problem for obvious reasons, but is too short a problem as well? I can file it down to 4mm easy enough, but should I be aiming for that "perfect fit"?

 

ideally yes, 4mm or shorter

 

Dumb question...

What do you peolple mean by "balance the Heatsink"?
How it is done? which tools are needed?

Is it something different from bending the 3rd cpu arm?

 

Read this and discuss it here
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...u-core-temperature-differential-issue.805062/

 

That's a good question.

When I balance the heat sink, I use special vice like grips and controlled heat to "remold/bend" the heat sink to where it needs to in order to eliminate any tension it is causing on any of the mounting points.

Yes this is very different than simply bending the CPU arm.

I also go through several runs of commercial grade pressure paper to ensure that the coverage is as even as possible. Almost darn near perfect.

This is the reason behind the results that I post showing the very minimal core differentials if at all...

Ensuring that you have the best possible contact also extends the longevity of the repaste in general, because when metal heats up it expands and when cooled it contracts.

Therefore, if you have one mounting point going this way and the other points going that way, unless the actual structural part of the metal is tamed/fitted/adjusted (in simple terms) it can lead to warping where on a flat surface, it will often times compensate by warping the areas where it shouldn't. Hope that makes sense..

.

 

so you basically twist and reshape the copper heatpipes slightly? any pictures?

 

@iunlock As the other Alienware forum thread is closed... New units with same TRIPOD mess is out. I will edit this post later with new examples. Bookmark the post if wanted Or you could make a thread especially for this!!

Edit. New one -

 

I have some new data and info as well regarding the contrast we're seeing with the latest systems...

I'll make a thread later for sure..

.


::iunlock::

 

Was messin' around with turbo voltage, (something I hadn't touched) yesterday. Ran a Cinebench 15 for 936cpu @ 4.2Ghz. Very pleased with the 6820.

 

we already have a dedicated thread for this
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...u-core-temperature-differential-issue.805062/

and i agree with you, even with newly build laptop as recent as early May, and heatsink assembly revision A01, this problem is still there.

 

Hello,
Not sure how to contact you. No pm access yet. Hope this is fine. I'm looking to find out if you can do a repaste on my dell aw 17r. Please let me know. Thanks.

 

@iunlock Please ping me -- I would like your help in repasting my AW 17R4 as well. Thanks!

 

Hello everyone,

I just bought an Alienware 17 R4 (6700HQ - GTX 1070). It is lovely but my temps are high, hitting 85+ for the CPU and the GPU, so I am obviously considering a repaste.

My problem is that I cannot easily get thermal pads where I live. I can get Grizzly for a fair price but pads are a problem. I cannot get Fujipoly pads at all.

What I can get are only these, nothing else is available and I cannot order from abroad:

Arctic Thermal Pad (easy to find and buy)
EK Water Blocks thermal pad (slightly cheaper than the arctic but only 3.5W/mK on paper?)
Thermal Grizzly Minus Pad 8 (nearly three times the price of arctic)
Gelid GP Extreme (same price as the arctic but only up to 80mm x 40mm available, I don't know if that's long enough because the guide recommends 100mm long strips?)

What would you recommend?

Thank you in advance.

 

Hi i used:
2 package of Thermal Grizzly Minus Pad 8 - 120 × 20 × 1,0 mm
2 package of Thermal Grizzly Minus Pad 8 - 120 × 20 × 0,5 mm
works perfekt is very sticky which make it much easier to hold it in place at the cooler.

 

Hi together,

I own a Alienware 15R3 with 7820HK and a GTX1070, unfortunately my temps were high (and still are) so I opened the thing 5 times now and repasted with various methods like the finger spreading with foil, cross and line, a.s.o. I attached some photos of the last repaste.

Unfortunately my temps are still high, I used Arctic MX-2 (5 year old,closed, still in great shape)

Did somebody test with Witcher 3? Maybe it is because the GPU is at full load too?

I already ordered the grizzly kryonaut but maybe it won't help at all, I count on your opinions before opening the notebook again..and again...

I really want to keep this unit, I don't have any screen bleed or anything, it is just how I want it to be (and I guess it's over with warranty since i scr..up some of the screw heads )

Here are some screenshots, hwinfo shows witcher 3 where I have the biggest issues.
http://imgur.com/a/1D3Ap

 

Consider Repaste using Kryonaut, because Arctic dries up pretty fast so you must repaste every 2 weeks. Also, take into consideration the ambient temperature as well. Mine still peaks up to 94C on CPU and max 80C on GPU in Witcher 3 at High Settings with Post processing set to high as well. I'm using Cooler Master Maker Gel Nano.

 

Ok, so my temperatures are somehow "normal" due to the fact that I have the mx2 applied?

Is tue Kryonaut much better than the mastergel nano?

 

@iunlock Maybe you should have this video in OP? The way yooo all <should> apply Liquid Metal!

 

..

cringe af

 

Too little? And I wonder how much he would put on the HS

 

@Papusan: Well, that is too much right? Atleast, you can skim it off and apply on GPU and heatsinks of CPU and GPU.

 

You kidding? Maybe enough for 3 chips. You never do it this retarded way. The man is completely..... You know what I mean.

 

@iunlock @Papusan To replace the thermal pads and thermal paste on a 17r4+1070 Kaby Lake are the same instructions as for 17r4+1070 Sky Lake?

 

Should be the same. Ain't changed much from Skylake to Kaby.

 

In 17r4 Koby+1080 uses more thermal pads. No?

 

Both for the 1070 and the 1080 is listed in OP

 

Say " For the 17R4 with the 1070 you'll need" does not say whether it is for Skylake or Koby...

 

Yooo can see what changes there are from skylake vs Kaby with 1080. Should be the same changes for the 1070 versions as well.

 

If I applied LM like that, @judal57 will be the first one to kill me followed by @Papusan [will freeze me to death] and @rinneh would kill me as well.

 

Yes they are the same. Nothing changed really on the mobo end...skl and kbl are the same physically.

 

@iunlock I wasnt able to message you due to being a new user I believe, but I was wondering about your repasting service.

 

PM sent.

::iunlock::

 

@iunlock I just got an openbox 17r4 from BestBuy with the 6700 in it, and it is running into this issue where the temp differentials between Cores 0/2 and 1/3 are 20-25C. I'm considering repasting instead of just returning it, as the price was fairly good, and I have a few questions:

1) You mentioned balancing the heatsink took you a lot of time. Could you explain what this entails? Was it something you could test/balance while it was broken down, or did you have to repeatedly break it down and tweak it whenever you weren't happy with the results?

2) Anything tricky with the reassembly? When I break down my Acer Aspire, there always this one tab I have to watch out for when I put it back together.

3) It's not included in this guide, but in reference to what you talk about in http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ven-core-temps-due-to-uneven-heatsink.797477/ this thread, would I bend that third tension are up? or does changing the padding fix the issue?

Thanks!

 

Hi, I'm thinking on repasting my 15R3 with conductonaut, however my machine is the AMD model. The die is really quite different to the nvidia ones. In the picture you can see it has little thingies around the die, I'd be fine if I covered those with tape, right? Or should I only apply LM to the CPU? After all the GPU isn't really having any issues, though the more temp gains the better. I took this picture when I repasted with MX-4 but I'm not having any improvement, though this was my first time doing this kind of job

 

Taping is for security during normal use the LM wouldn´t drip out but its better to use the tape, sometimes a hard hit is enough and a drop cames out and kill your mainboard.
so better tape it.
if you use LM and all your coolers are copper better use it on gpu too if one of your coolers is aluminium dont use LM it destroys it.
Also it looks like you need some new heatpads (the blue ones) your don´t looks so good anymore.
so in short yes use tape, yes use LM on all coolers if they are copper and use some new thermalpads

 

Thanks for the reply. My concern was if those small things would fry with the paste or something. I remembered that this is the same die as the actual 470's and 480's and so I just checked and some people have used LM on their cards without any tape, so I guess it's fine but I'll still use it. And yes, some of the pads were torn probably because I opened up the machine shortly after turning it off . I'll order a few of the grizzly ones. And BTW my heatsink looks to be the exact same as the nvidia models, the 'newer one' with the white pad

 

@iunlock I don't know if you remember but I posted a message on your 6820 overclocking post saying that my clock speed would not exceed 3.6GHz. Towards the end I said it didn't really matter since they were going to replace my system. They said the new models no longer suffered from overheating issues. I said I would return to confirm or deny their statement, and denied it is. It's true that the new models do not thermal and power limit throttle as much as the old ones but that is due to their poor design decision to seemingly raise the temperature limit of whatever system is responsible for enabling those features. My new system shipped with the 7820 and after the honeymoon faze ended and their toothpaste broke down my cpu was back in the high 90s again. As I said, I was not thermal or power limit throttling at all in those temperatures but I was experiencing freezing in my games. My gpu would be at 97ish percent usage and it would drop to 0 resulting in a 3 second freeze. I did not take their word for it and had all the supplies on hand for my buddy to help me repaste due to my disability; and what a f*cking experience that was. You know how you're not supposed to let the liquid metal touch the motherboard? How that could cause some serious issues? Well he put the little nozzle on the end of the Grizzly tube and begun to gently squeeze a drop onto my gpu when ALL of the LM shot out like a cannon onto my motherboard. After we let out every cuss word known to man he scooped up the majority of paste and put it on the proper components. We then spent the next two hours going over every inch of the motherboard with a flashlight, canned air, and coffee filters cleaning every tiny drop we could find. Thank god that stuff doesn't dry and behaves like mercury because we were able to get it all off; even the drops that went into a plug of some kind. We did the best we could on judging the right amount for the cpu and gpu since it just got piled on instead of working with a pea sized drop. After he put the new pads on he put it back together and fired it up and to our surprise it didn't combust. It worked just fine and my temps didn't go over 75 while stress testing. I thought we were in the clear, but my computer continued to experience gpu load drops and freezing during gameplay. Dell was sure it was software related so I did a fresh install of the Windows 10 creators update to satisfy their claims, but the freezing continues. It seems the heat caused permanent damage to my gpu. I will have a technician coming out on Friday to replace my motherboard. I already purchased another $80 worth of supplies and cleared it with Dell to have the technician apply the LM and thermal pads. At first I was pissed that they had to undo our hard work but as it turns out it's beneficial because my temps have gone back into the high 90s. Does that sound right to you? Is it because of our ****ty application? Regardless, I will post again when that's all taken care of.

I apologize for the wall of text.

tl;dr the new models still overheat and be very careful applying liquid metal.

 

This problem is allready known why and how to fix it you can see here

 

Thanks for sharing @flashtu. I will explain this to the technician when they come by. I really hope I get one that knows their sh*t.

 

I finally got around to performing a repaste on my 17 R4 (6700HQ 1070). I used Arctic Cooling Pads and Grizzly's Cryo liquid metal.

Everything went fine and my temperatures dropped from 90+ (and throttling) to 74-75C for both the CPU and GPU (room temperature of 28-29C). The laptop is also completely silent when idling now (the fans were always on before). I am very content with the results.

Just one thing to note though. In my version, one of the pads that is recommended in the guide to be 0.5mm is actually 1mm (I measured the original pad, it was 1mm too and still it was making almost no contact at all).

 

do not follow the guide blindly. customise the pads to your own heatsink size and shape. if you follow the guide here blindly, you will run into serious issue as you have already found out yourself

 

Planned on doing this on a 15 R3 but needed to confirm the pads needs in thicknesses? Also does the PCH mod still apply on the 15? And if so anyone got a link on where to order? Placing an Amazon order. Will be replacing the CLU on my 7700k with Conductonaut as well...I didn't realize it was over twice the thermal conductivity when I ordered CLU.

 

I received a refurbished Alienware 17 R4 last Friday (GTX 1070 + 6700HQ), as expected it has the core temperature differential issue. When Dell performed a remote Prime95 Stress Test, Core #0 hit 95, #1 84, #2 93, #3 75 - as such they've said they'll send out an engineer to replace the heat sync and repaste the CPU + GPU.

They've said I can buy my own thermal paste for the engineer to use - so having read @iunlock 's guide, I was planning on buying some Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut (I'm assuming I couldn't get them to use Liquid Metal?)

In addition to the above, my questions are as follows:

1.
- If I asked them to replace the thermal pads as outlined in this guide, would they do this for me?
- The guide provided for the GTX 1070 on page 1 for the heat pads, is this for Skylake models - so could it be followed exactly in terms of where pads need to go and their thickness?
- Furthermore I'd need:
2x mod/smart Fujipoly / Extreme X-e Thermal Pad - 100 X 15 X 1.0 - Thermal Conductivity 11.0 W/mK
1x mod/smart Fujipoly / Extreme X-e Thermal Pad - 100 X 15 X 0.5 - Thermal Conductivity 11.0 W/mK

2.
- The Power Supply Mod, what exactly is entailed to carry it out?
- Does it void the warranty?
- Is it likely I could get the engineer to do it for me?
- What type of Copper Shim is required and if I were to carry it out, would I have enough left over Fujipoly pads what is outlined above?

3.
- Do I need to buy the Arctic Cleaners, or should what the engineers have suffice?

4.
- Anything else I could get the engineers to do, whilst they're over to bring down the temperatures or anything else I should get them to check.

Any help with the above would be greatly appreciated and apologies in advance for the million questions. I'm new to the scene and have very little idea about all this, however would like to learn more and have been in the background, reading lots of the informative posts here for the last week before I received the Alienware.

 

Everything wich is not standard you have to buy by yourself and yes the most dell service technicans are free service technicans and not bound by dell mostly they will use everything you give them
sometimes if they dont want to do it giuve him some extra money and they will do it i paid 20euros and he did all LM and Thermal Pads.
But they will never do the Power Supply Mod for you.
And as i said evreything you want to use you have to buy it by yourself mostly the technicans came with a whole new cooling unit and want just to replace the old one which will not fix the heat problem^^