AW 15 CPU Thermal Throttling at 70°C i7-4710HQ & 970M

Hi, I'm getting thermal throttling and current limit throttling on the CPU at around 70°C to 72°C when gaming. This is after a cold boot and it shows up in under 30 mins.

GPU is the 970M and it is sitting at 65°C and 99% usage while playing the witcher 3.

CPU is at 44% usage and never goes above 72°C, GPU max is 67°C.

Ambient temperature is under 20°C. It's 20°C outside right now and it's much cooler inside my house.

I'm pretty sure this shouldn't be happening, it shouldn't be thermal throttling at such a low temperature.

Is anyone else having the same issue? I'm worried about this in the long run, the laptop is just over 1 month old.


Here are a couple of screen shots of XTU and GPU-Z:

 

Interestingly i had the same issue as you, My thermal throttle is worst than yours, When it throttle the CPU will drop to 0.80Ghz

I did everything possible, Update drive, Reinstall OS, Diagnostic etc you name it

Some people said that its a issue with the new AW17 in common where all device have same issue, but couple had advised me that it could be bad CPU/GPU paste job from factory

A little history of my experience
Im using AW17 check sig for spec

1st unit arrived with Screenbleed and hdd ticking sound = Requested replacement (Approved)
2nd unit Arrived everything fine but Heavy Throttling when playing GTA V, FPS from 90 all the way to 20 for 2 minutes then will boost back up, everything will be laggy and on happen during gaming, Temp never get more than 70 on 1st Unit.

Below is screenshot of my Throttle issue


on idle temp is around 45-55 on the 2nd unit, However i requested replacement = Dell not approving
went through so much of hassle and pretty much i emailed all email address i can find on internet with 2 pages long of complaint

Next morning i got a call from Dell Corporate office saying exchange Approved

Long story short new unit arrived and works like charm without any Throttle

P/S: on 2nd unit which having the issue undervolt seems to solve the issue

 

If u have disabled speedstep in bios , reenable it , i am on bios a01 and disabling speedstep locked my cpu frequency to 0.8ghz ; use the core unparking application and lock cpu cycles to 100% (it will lock your cpu cloc kto 3.3 ghz always)...
Btw if u are using up 99% of ur gpu i won't expect much cpu use anyways , try testing watch dogs or a cpu benchmark like occt or prime.
EDIT 1: My cpu reaches 79-82 degrees without any throttling on the same aw15 when running a very cpu intensive benchmark, real world games generally stick between 72-78 nothing more but have no throttling of any sort

 

I suggest you to post in this thread

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/why-is-my-alienware-15-cpu-throttling-to-800-mhz.777144/

 

Cheers, so a replacement machine solved the issue, that sounds good.
Mine drops to 1.6GHz and I get stuttering, I'll have to see what I can do about getting a replacement.

 

OK thanks, I haven't disabled speedstep and yours runs without any throttling, that's good to know. So mine does have an issue.....