Alienware 13 R3 Thermal Testing - Should you cool your PCH with mods?

u crack me up! LOL! more like in the name of science!

 

Yeah I was going to originally write "for science!" then I thought about all the console plebs...I mean science-illiterate fools that say that and then I decided not to write it then I looked at my GPA and hung my head in shame.

Thanks! Morty!

 

I was thinking about this mod and to add to it. I was thinking of getting copper tubing 3/8 OD and cut it to size and pressing it almost flat and making it oval in shape but not closing the copper piping. Then use the PGS strip to attach the flattened copper tubing both side to pch and then to the heatsink. This would eliminate the use of having to make a connection and do a two or 4 ply solution of the PGS strips.

 

So you're going to have 2 pieces of copper going into the heatpipe, presumably with thermal paste at the point of contact? Could work. The thing is you will have to layer the PGS regardless because a single thickness at the 11mm widths I used won't move enough heat to the copper all by itself.

I guess your final design looks something like a big U with the copper shooting up to the existing heatsink and a single large piece of PGS covering the PCH and the U like webbing on a duck's foot? I guess if it was sufficiently wide you wouldn't need to layer PGS.

 

Actually the better choice for PGS would be this one

The webpage allows you to choose different charasteristics for your specific needs. I choose a 150 degree temperature rating which is the highest you can get. The adhesive is rated higher also which makes sure it wont melt off the back of the PGS when things get hot. Also I choose a coating on the material so electricity dont pass through it. That seems important. What do you think? You can click on the pdf on the webpage to loook up all the different types of characteristics you can add to PGS.... I choose the A-KV type... eyg-a091205kv

 

Would be interesting to see what effect your different choice has!

To note, the one I linked to (A-DM) is different in these ways:
1 - Has electrical insulation - 1 kilovolt both sides vs 5 and 2 for your A-KV
2 - Adhesive temperature rated lower - 100C for A-DM vs 150C for A-KV (I figured if the PCH went over 100C the laptop is useless at that point anyways)
3 - Thermally non-conductive layers is second thinnest amongst product range to facilitate layering (so we avoid blocking the graphite from doing its job) - A-DM is 20 microns vs your A-KV at 36 microns
4 - Z-direction thermal conductivity is higher for yours (helps to transfer heat into/out of graphite strip) - 11W/mK vs 20W/mK
5 - XY-direction thermal conductivity is higher for mine (helps to transfer heat far from PCH to OEM cooling system) - 1900W/mK vs 1350W/mK
6 - Cost - 3 times the price for A-KV vs A-DM ($30 vs $10)

For comparisons sake, Kryonaut is 12.5W/mK, and liquid metal Conductonaut is 73W/mK.

 

Hmmm... interesting comparisons.
I havent opened my 13r3 yet. I bough at tube of kryonaut. I am still having big questions about what to do for the PCH and the small heat pads.
IMO the small fan method ( tapping the fan into the factory fan connectors with a y splitter) woudl workd better than any method. But I havent seen anyone try it! Can anyone offer lins, suggestions, anything, toward a fan and a y splitter so I can try it and post the results?
Also can anyone offer recommendation for heatpad replacement such as a link or some kind of specs I need to look fo rto maximize the heat pad situation?

I dont want to open up my 13r3 yet till i get these 2 things determined and ordered.
As of now I undervolt using ThrottleStop by about 8mv and I use a nice little laptop pad that has 2 fans which use the USB port to power the fans. The usb thing is not exactly optimal but it is going to do for now. Id like to get a higher RPM laptop pad I can plug into the walll rather than using a usb port..

Also I wanted to point out that I almost decided to sent this thing back and get a 17r4 or some other brand all togther but to be honest, the small size vs power is incredible! If I want or need more power I can get the Alieware graphics accelerator! This little machone is so quiet when its not being pushed. And its so sturdy! ... Anwyay... I managed to get 9699 on FireStrike... SO I must be doing something right on mine.

 

Ok so I went ahead and did a repaste. I bought a tube of Kryonaut. I took the unit apart. Surprisingly its not all that hard to do. Just go slow. You have to take out the wifi card and the SSD.
The Kryopaste is thick. I had trouble spreading it. I managed and it is on the chip and not everywhere else. Keep in mind that allot of these heat compounds are able to conduct electricity! You do not want this stuff on anythign but the surface of the chip.. HOWEVER! I did have a paste of non electrically conductive heat paste called Ceramique 2. I used this stuff on all the areas that the heat pads are touching. For example, I put the ceramique product on the transistors and surrounding chips and NOT on the CPU and GPU.
I then cut out the plastic area that covers the PCH chip. I left the chip untouched and just let the air pass over it and out the housing it was in. I placed everything back together. Looks nice. Nothing looks sloopy.
I did a full test of both GPU and CPU.. The PCH got to 81c. The GPU got to 91c. The CPU got to 84c. This was after 10 minutes of CPU and GPU testing at the same time. The fan kicked in full at 90c. It seemed to have kept it at that temp pretty good.
So what was my temp before testing? Is there any difference?
Yes. Idle temps of cpu hoover around 47c which was pretty much the same before the repaste. At Idle the PCH will hoover around 55c now. Before, it was around mid 60's. GPU at Idle is around 50c where as before, it hoovered around 65c.
I did a second test about a hour later to see if the paste would change its conductivity after its been through the ringer at least once, then cooled. Suprisingly it did change a little. The temps lowered around 2 or 3 more degrees doing the same test and keep in mind I turned off all undervolting during these test! So these results are all from repasting.
I can say that from this repaste, my unit is pretty stable at full throttle using the recommended testing procedeurs.
I find this procedeur I did, does help but mostly at the point of really high temps. Before I did this repaste the temps were all at least 10 degrees higher after 10 minutes of testing!

 

I wanted to add something very important.. When connecting / reconnecting the wifi card you need to put a small strip of electrical tape or something non conductive on the small metal bar that holds the card down. If you dont do this, the small metal bar that holds the card down will cause a short between the 2 wires and that is a big no no....

 

Isn't it okay because the outside of the antenna cable is ground?

 

Yeah, I think the antenna cables are tiny coax. If anything, more ground is good.

 

Excellent it looks like your machine is handling the full load like a champion. Thanks for showing your method and results. I am interested to see how the naked PCH + hole mod will hold in gaming for extended sessions. Perhaps it is the case that the small hole is enough or perhaps your thermal compound is more efficient than mine and a combination of these factors moves more heat out of the chassis and PCH area in the first place.

If it turns out that removing some plastic is that effective there may be much gains to be made if someone were to whittle away even more of the plastic base (within reasonable limits). I'm not just talking PCH but any area that gets hot. That plastic really seems to be holding a ton of heat in.

 

LOL no man... You dont want to ground everything.. In fact what this does is short out the wifi card terminals and makes the wires that pass all through your alienware chassis, useless. It makes the metal tab become the antenna! LOL you really want that? It would cause less wifi signal!

 

I'll post some pictures when I'm back at home and at my 13R3, but last night my PCH actually hit 75c! The GPU also hit 84c and the CPU 71c... And normally I would be concerned since these are *much* higher than what I normally get but then I realized that the 1060 was pulling at 95w and the CPU was doing 33w and, given the power draw, those numbers aren't bad at all considering that there was no throttling. This is on a system that is very much *not* stock and has been repasted and had heatsink modifications done by @iunlock (including the newest version of his PCH mod).

I should say that this was during a multi-hour XCOM 2 session using the full 180w PSU and that my temperatures are much lower on average, but that game seems to push both the CPU and GPU more than others and so it's normal to see higher than normal temps when I'm playing it.

 

The PCH mod on mine uses a micro-heatsink, although mine also tends to be on the upper end when it comes to power draw, thus both running slightly better and also slightly hotter, so it might not be representative of all systems.

 

I put a stack of thermal pads on the PCH (high enough for the plastic to press down on them) and even that brought the temps down a bit. From 80+ to below 80.

 

Yeah the PCH mods aren't very demanding in my testing under 90c is enough to prevent PCH related throttling and under 80C is easily achievable. Glad yours works nicely!

 

Lol nice. Its funny that its all that really takes. Dell could have just went a little further on our behalves...

 

Just imagine if HK cpu with this kind of space luxury with the PCH...

 

I'm really curious how this will turn out.
My CPU is currently experiencing high temperatures (one core reaching 95°C...) despite a decent undervolt :-(
This is after having Dell replace the heatsink and repaste the device - I guess the technician (if you want to call them that) botched the repasting.
If I'm going to dig through this device, I'd love to get the best possible solution and those graphite pads look just perfect for that.

Please let us know about your science-y adventures with those CPUs
(And thank you for sharing your stories so far!)

 

After reading this thread I think the PCH problem happens in all the current generation Alienware laptops.

I had to rush to fix mine.

That being said I do think the Alienware 17 R4 PCH problem comes when you unlock the GPU.

Also after I got my external GPU the PCH temps recorded being lower than when I used the laptops gtx 1080.

I did find this thread to be helpful thou I think the title should be changed to adress all Alienware laptops.

P.s. After dealing with Alienware I bought a evga 1080ti ftw3.

I don't want a Alienware with my 1080ti so I do prefer the over engineering.

#Alienwaring definition: selling a broken product which has the potential to be great but at the time of purchase is a broken price of crap.

 

Did you see the same behavior I documented on your 17? I was under the impression the 15 and 17 were large enough to provide the passive cooling needed but alas I don't own them.

 

I checked after my battlefield just shut down. I checked right after a restart and saw that the PCH was in the high 80s thou the CPU and GPU didn't go past 60.

After seeing this I decided to monitor the pch and saw that the temp of the PCH kept rising.

There is enough space in the 17 to mod it with a 4mm thickness heat sink. But for me at least I have to kee a cooler underneath to keep it stable and cool.

 

Yeah there's apparently a 50% return rate on Alienware where I work. These computers are simply incomplete. Got to do your own work or buy from a reseller that does repaste and PCH mod. The best solution is to be on notebookreview forums

 

As far as I know there aren't any resellers that offer PCH modding so you're really left with getting a good unit that doesn't hit high temperatures on the PCH, because those are out there, or doing the work yourself/contracting someone to do it.

 

You can send it to iunlock and get it done. Think that is the best solution if you live in North America.

In EU I can't help you there.

In Asia your best option is to make it yourself.

 

Its not advertised, but HIDevolution put some thermal pads on your SSD and PCH as long as they are opening it up to do a paste job or something else

 

What's the simplest PCH mod that works consistently? What kind of tool do people use to cut the plastic shield?

 

Thermal pads, cut a hole/window in the plastic with dremel or use graphite tape/micro heatsink. Thanks Alienware for not testing thoroughly and resolving the heat issues. We as consumers really appreciate hotplates...err notebooks

 

I've just played Shadow of Mordor for about an hour and my PCH temp maxed out at 103.5 degree's... my CPU at 99.0 degree's... a lot higher than what you guys have been posting.

I'm thinking of a repaste and PCH mod, but I don't think it will bring the temps down that much. Might call Alienware.

 

I would call them and get an exchange as your current laptop is running way too hot (to the point that it might damage components).

 

Hey, did you get around testing the heatsinks? wondering if they are worth getting.

 

Guys, can I ask how did the testing with the PGS go? Is this in conjunction with a copper shim for the PCH or copper pipping? Ive just got my hand on the R3-13 and I love it as much as my R4-17.. but the fans blow like crazy. Will definitely mod it.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/1-Set-of...176602&hash=item4b2cd62d0a:g:V9kAAOSwWBJXA33i
&
http://electronix.ru/forum/index.php?act=Attach&type=post&id=98555

 

Nothing.. Cam on tweacle(words of a true southerners seeking a response)

Do we yet have a final PCH mod solution?

Cheers
CD

 

What are your PCH temps? My 13 R3 never had a problem (mid 70's was as high as it got).

Also PCH temps will have no effect on fans which are controlled by CPU and GPU temps.

On my MSI 16L13 I used the Foam Copper heatsinks on the Mosfits. Really high quality stuff

 

Thanks for the reply. I know that the PCH is responsible for tasks that require the highest performance. If it gets to hot it limits the processing power of the cpu. And yes my pch is playing up, but so is the fan.. I'm getting some eight noise from it.

 

Best mod for the PCH which I have done multiple times on R3s and R4s is iunlocks aluminium heatsink shaved down and installed on top of thermal tape and glue with kyronaut to bond

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

 

Yes,iunlock has done some great work for alienware. This.is the mod I've done previous, I thought it might have developed, but glad it hasbt. Great work guys.

 

I bought the PGS tape and plan on doing yours. I was back and forth between the heatsink method and this and decided that thermodynamics work in your method's favour moreso. I have a 15 R3 and will be doing that. Did you place anything under the tape (foam, whatever) or is it just the tape that is layered across to the heatsink going across transistors? Thanks.

 

The tape is layered over the resistors directly. Be sure not to overlap tape or leave any gaps

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

 

Thank you, your idea about PCH & PGS bridge to heatsink is in my laptop and this mod simply works. Without this my PCH temps were throttling CPU and GPU during games. Now I get max 82 C, but that is during doing all below at the same time:

GPU mining (Ether 19.8 H)+browsing+installing game (unpacking re-pack) 4.5 hrs+syncing Onedrive (uploading 3 Gigs)+listening music using MPC-HC+copying 30 Gigs of music to external drive over USB 2 speed.

During any gaming I hit max 75 C, but that is after a few hours of BF1, COD WW2 etc. at 1080p max. settings. I recommended this mod to others giving credit to shadowyani, but now I will name you both (I just re-read his posts realising that ... thanx LM64792)

 

Hey guys,

Very interesting read. I've been lurking for a while and finally pulled the trigger when I saw some of the results in here as my AW 13 R3's PCH (1st gen R3 with Skylake, 1060GTX with OLED screen and 0.13V undervolt) would exceed 100 degrees when playing VR and easily go over 90 when gaming. So I went ahead and ordered some graphene sheets from AliExpress (0.25mm thickness).

On idle I get the following temps: https://imgur.com/a/gkLRus5

Mind you this is with a liquid metal repaste that's been going strong for almost a year now. Temps are great across the board, GPU/CPU

So here is my problem, I must be missing something or doing something wrong. I cut the sheet to size, removed the film from the sticky side and applied a layer from the PCH straight to the heat pipe as demonstrated in this thread. It's one piece, not two or so stuck together. Still, my PCH reaches the same high temperatures under load. What am I missing?

Really bumped, as I've tried a small heat sink as well, but didn't have much succes with that either (did you guys use the sticky tape underneath the heatsink or apply some sort of thermal compound?). Surely, the graphene sheet should help, right? The rest of my temps are great really...

Thanks for your input!

 

Mine is like 4 or 5 pieces, you need to do multiple layers and wrap them around the heatsink. If you are just basically laying a single sheet on top of the heatsink and the PCH, you probably aren't getting enough heat transfer

 

Thanks you, I will give it a shot. I'll basically have to remove the heat sink to be able to wrap it around? Looks like I will have to redo my LM job then... dang! At least something I can try!

Edit: Are these the same sheets just cut to size? Could be a great alternative for traditional paste jobs....

 

You don't have to remove heat-sink, it is easy job wrapping around when on. You must do more layers. First measure, cut, stick 5 layers together, then wrap around and enjoy PCH temperature equal or lower than CPU+GPU.
The video: Pretty much the same stuff, but the heat transfer with thermal pad is also optimized for Z axis. PGS tape is only good for X and Y. I really hope Z axis heat transfer will reach 2000 W/Mk in the future (graphite and diamond).

Good luck!!! I have had this mod for 5 months and no problems whatsoever, always under max 75C stable.

 

Thanks a lot for the input, I will give this a shot after work!

 

Damnit, this stuff is hard to work with. It takes ages to peel off the clear foil... sometimes I end up arbitrarily peeling off the OTHER end of the sheet....

I wasn't able to fully wrap around the heatsink but did do 5 layers and still have temperatures of 93 degrees and counting (after 45 minutes of benchmarking...) so not very happy, my GPU is running 81 degrees max, CPU stays nice and cool thanks. I guess I have to take this thing apart... AGAIN... sigh .

OK, before I attempt this again, one last question:

There are basically THREE layers: the clear foil you need to peel off, the graphene layer and another top (black) layer. Just to be on the same page regarding the sheet and stacking all these layers... did you leave the black top layer on???

Sorry for being such a pain, thanks for your time!

 

Mine only had 2 layers, the graphene tape itself and the wax paper base it was adhered to. I found it was easier to use tweezers to separate the two and pull the tape off without ripping. It is difficult stuff to work with though. I never did wrap it around the heatsink and I only used 2 layers but each one is different. I am on the 15 R3 though so it might be a bit better to wrap it given the smaller size of the 13. Good luck!

Sent from my SM-G950W using Tapatalk

 

Have you Googled the tape specifications sheet? Can I see?

 

Only what’s on the page on AliExpress, I would send the link but the forum picks it up as junk and won’t let me post it:

Product Name

2/PCS 100x200x0.025mm High heat conducting Graphite Sheets Flexible Graphite Paper Thermal Dissipation Graphene For CPU GPU VGA

Specifics
Type Hand Tools,Other
Package Bag
Model Number 100x200x0.025mm
DIY Supplies Electrical
Size 100x200x0.025mm
Number of Pieces 1
Brand Name WLXY
Application Other
Thermal conductivity perpendicular 20w/m.k
Thermal conductivity horizontal 300-1800w/m.k
Temperature -40C°-400C°
Descriptions

Graphite is a new kind of heat conduction and heat radiation material along the two direction uniform thermal conductivity? Friendly friendly, heat shield and components and improved consumer electronic products performance.

With the growing accelerated upgrading of electronic products and mini, high integration and high performance electronic equipment thermal management needs, our company launched a new electronic products dissipation technology, namely stone material film heat solve the new scheme.



This new natural graphite solutions, high efficiency of heat radiation, possession space is small, light weight, along the two directions of the uniform heat conduction, eliminate "hot spots", heat shield and components and improved consumer electronic products performance.

Product features: surface with metal, plastic, stickers and other materials combined with more design features and needs.



Typical application

Between the Circuit board chip and heat sink of LCD-TV,PDP chip and IC Between the transformer and the shell.