Alienware 15 Teardown & Repaste Guide

Hey folks I decided to do a repaste on my AW 15 i7 & 970M.

I've had a thermal throttling issue and was sent a 240W adapter for this issue and the thermal throttling stopped, which I don't understand. I still wasn't happy because I was getting high temps on BIOS A05 of 92°C max on the CPU and 76°C on the GPU when gaming. So I went ahead and did the repaste.

This is not a full step by step guide, the service manual is pretty good for that. This is just to highlight the issues and possible things that could go wrong that I found. These may be different to any issues you might come across. I am not responsible if you do anything to break your machine or any parts of it.

I would not recommend doing this if you don't have a plastic spudger or plastic scribe and some proper thermal paste remover. You will definitely need the spudger to open the case, pop off some connectors and to open small levers on some of the connectors.

I used Tuniq TX-4 thermal paste as I had it lying around from a previous repaste that went well. It has a good reputation for being able to fill in any gaps in a poorly finished heatsink or a bad heatsink fit. The recommended application for this paste the surface spread method, which I used. I also used Arctic Silver ArctiClean to clean off the old paste.

There are a number of different screws used to hold the laptop together, including ones with black heads for the black parts of the base and silver heads for the silver parts of the base.
I laid out the screws in the order I took them out. Just to ensure each screw goes back in the same hole. Usually starting in the bottom right corner and working my way around anti-clockwise. I took some pics of the different screws beside their respective holes.

I found that the CPU had a huge excess of thermal paste on it. And my GPU had a pretty large air bubble right in the middle where I could see the shiny surface of the GPU because it had no paste.

My max CPU temps while gaming dropped by about 5°C, from 92°C down to 87°C.
My max GPU temps dropped by about 6°C, from 76°C down to 70°C. I test this by playing an hour of The Witcher 3 and monitoring with XTU and GPU-Z.
Not a massive drop, but I'm much happier sitting in the 80's on the CPU rather than the 90's.
I'll update these when I've done some further testing.

The whole process took me 3 to 4 hours, I was taking my time and taking photo's. But this is not a quick exercise. There was some sunlight getting in and my phone camera didn't handle that too well, so I apologize for some of the pictures, but it's the only camera I've got.

I started by gaming on the system for 15-20mins to heat things up before I opened it.





The wireless card was pretty hard to get out, it looks like it is stuck down with a thermal pad for heat dissipation. So I left it in. Once I removed the antenna cables and the bracket that holds them in place, I put back the screw to hold the wireless card in.

 

Black and silver screws on base:

 

Palm rest was pretty hard to take off, I just took it easy with the spudger, push in and then pry up the other end of the spudger.


The Macro Keys cable was tough to remove and feed through because it was taped back onto itself. Once it was pulled apart it was easier to remove.




I found the hinge covers difficult to remove, so I left them on. They are also clipped into the back of the laptop body, which you will have to clip back in when you put the display back on. I was able to remove the display without taking the hinge covers out of the display.

 

But they do come off:


I would definitely recommend something plastic for this...not a screwdriver:




The speaker cable was quite tight, but it pulls straight out:

 

When removing the system board, it was getting stuck on the GA port, I had to pry the back of the case to get the system board out:




Be careful undoing the screws on the heatsink. Do them 1 turn at a time from 1 to 8 until they are fully undone. It feels like it could be easy to bend the heatsink assembly.
When putting the heatsink back on I did them 1/2 turn at a time, going round 1 to 8 over and over till they were all tight.


It looks like the heatsink has pre-applied thermal paste and way too much for the CPU:

It also looks like they might have added another big goop of paste on the CPU before they put the heatsink on:

 

The GPU had an air big enough air bubble in the paste, you can still see the shiny surface of the GPU:

 

Tinting the heatsink with a little bit of thermal paste to fill in any surface imperfections:


Applying the thermal paste:




It took a while to get a nice even spread, this was one of the first try's. As soon as I got a good job on both die's I put the heatsink on. Making sure to align the heatsink over the screws as best I could, then lowering the heatsink down while keeping it level. Once it made contact, I twisted the heatsink a few degrees to the left and to the right to ensure a good seal. All per the instructions for TX-4.

One of the best picture's I've ever taken!

 

Reserved thermal testing results.

 

Reserved .......

 

Nice work ... But I believe if you have done the rice grain method on GPU & line method on the CPU you would have had much much better results ... This is what I do on my rig & playing the witcher 3 for 12 hours (Please don't judge my playing habits I play only on weekends ) My CPU is below 70c & my GPU peaks at 74 and averages in high 60s ... That is on a 4910mq & a 120w heat furnace GTX880

The application method goes a very long way ... If you can do the whole tear down again and try these methods you won't regret it

 

Cheers! I've read that the grain of rice and line method are for processors with an attached heat spreader. This picture explains it for me:

The middle picture is for reference to show where the actual CPU is located in the heatspreader

These pics are from Arctic Silver's website, for mobile CPU's the surface spread is recommended:

Either way, surface spread is recommended for both desktop and mobile CPU's when using Tuniq TX-4.

But I'll try the line and grain of rice methods next time, thanks! Sure I have nothing to loose!

By the way do you have a 15 or a 17?

 

When you manually spread for either you can go into 2 problems, air bubbles (Due to uneven distribution) or putting way too much paste "which is present in your case" ... Remember that with thermal paste you can never put too little, put you can always put too much.

I have a 17" My old eyes can't handle small screens even a 17" is too small for me.

EDITed to delete wrong information

 

This is the naked CPU die.


For reference, this is a desktop i7-4770K that has been de-lidded. Recognise anything? That's the naked CPU die under the heat spreader.


And I do realise I left myself open for comments on my pasting method. But, as I stated in the original post, the surface spread method is the method recommended by Tuniq for their TX-4 paste, regardless of CPU.

 

I stand corrected then ... And lol ofc I didn't in any way mean to be offensive and criticize your method I was just sharing my experience so that it may help you even further

 

Peace man! I hope you are enjoying The Witcher 3, I certainly am, although I don't think I have done a 12 hour session yet!

 

I completed the whole thing with all side quests ... Reinstalled my Witcher 2 to start a new play through that I shall carry over to my next Witcher 3 next play through

Don't wanna give you any spoilers but this game gets progressively good in an exponential way !!! you will enjoy it

 

so what's the temperature reading you get before and after repasting?

 

"My max CPU temps while gaming dropped by about 5°C, from 92°C down to 87°C.
My max GPU temps dropped by about 6°C, from 76°C down to 70°C. I test this by playing an hour of The Witcher 3 and monitoring with XTU and GPU-Z."

Today, the tech and I did the spread and dot separately, and can say that both had the same results + or - 1. 86'CPU & 70'GPU max with the Gelid extreme. We swap out an the old motherboard for the newer one. The newer one comes with a04 bios and a new boot logo.

Update: After burnin- Temperature of CPU is now maxed at 82'c, GPU 69'C

 

Damn, now I miss my old HP Envy 17, accessing the motherboard was as easy as removing like 12 screws :/ the idea of screwing my 15 off in the process freaks me out.

 

great job man ... i made the same, but with IC diamond 24 and i don't know why you have so thin thermal pads ... mine are more thick .... and blue, not purple

 

Great, I'm glad you liked and found it helpful!!

I've no idea about the pads, just manufacturing differences I suppose!!

It feels good knowing your system is cooling as best it can doesn't it?

 

Hi I recently had problems with my alien ware 15 where 1tb ata was not always being recognised with windows in device manager, although it was in bios , so I thought maybe hard disk needed reseating so I removed bottom part and looked if hard disk was loose then turned on comp befor putting back the cover,then one of the wires went red hot and totally melted away,it is the small flat flexi cable in one off the pictures above which has a number 17 on it.
Is there any one who can tell me what this does and if I can order it from dell.
thanks.