Alienware 17 R4 - CPU thermal issues

Hi everyone, I really need your help today.

Back in February I purchased a fully refurbished 17 R4 (i7-6820HK, GTX1070 and a 4K screen), and it has been fantastic for gaming, capable of handling The Witcher 3 at 4K no problem. However, recently I've been noticing the CPU getting rather hot. I gave it to a professional company for a thermal repaste (and dust removal) who seemed very competent, but that doesn't seem to have made any difference. I've been monitoring with HWinfo and while playing Battlefield 1 temperatures immediately jump to 90C and stay there, with a half-hour average of 96C. For almost all of that time, HWinfo says there's thermal throttling, even though only sometimes do I notice an FPS drop. Temperature differentials between the cores are also quite large. Mean core temperatures for the half hour period are
Core 0: 96C
Core 1: 79C
Core 2: 90C
Core 3: 82C
NB this is while running with a book propping up the back by a couple of inches, in a room in London with an ambient temperature of around 20C on a desk with lots of space around for airflow.
I have not overclocked, everything is running as stock.
I've got the latest BIOS and all drivers are updated. Idle temperatures are around 45-60C.
I used this article for troubleshooting https://www.dell.com/support/articl...-or-throttling-during-high-cpu-stress?lang=en and using the Support Assist stress test found that, even though the average temperature was 88C (below the 93C threshold they set in the article) and it "passed" the stress test, in level 3 overclocked mode the CPU was clocking a constant 3.3GHz, nowhere near the 3.7GHz it says it should be, and that I should contact support. The same happens in normal mode (3.0 where it should be around 3.3). Is this part of the problem?

Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to be as detailed as possible because I'm getting quite concerned about the health of my CPU, and I wanted to ask the great people here before I send it off to DELL. I am not gaming very much because I don't want to risk further damage. Have I damaged it already?

Many thanks for any help you can give me, and I can provide more info if needed!!

 

Your idle temps seems high. Where do you live and what's your ambient temps?
There are uneven core differential temps.

 

Hello! I live in London, England, and so ambient temperatures are 18-20C.

 

You need to repaste and repad because it isn't done correctly. Remove old paste using isopropyl alcohol 70% or 90%.

 

I know right, I'm in London UK too, before repaste my 7820hk would hit 100C in like 15 min, repasting is well worth it indeed

 

Oh really! It's annoying because I paid £70 for a company to do it, they must not have done a good job :/ But I did notice that the pads were the really thick ones, so maybe I should get those changed as well..

 

Better you do it at home, just refer @iunlock's guide and take ur time.
EDIT: The disassembly guide http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...5r3-disassembly-repaste-guide-results.797373/

 

Okay, why do you say better to do it myself? Have you had problems with Dell's techs? (Just wondering before I take the decision to do it myself)

 

Yes everybody has had their share of experiences with Dell Techs. @Papusan can point you in correct direction.

 

I'm sure you find a lot of horror stories about Dell's outsourcing tech team if you look into Aw-sub threads. Best advice... Fix it yourself.

 

Alright, I'll give it a go, thanks!

Did you use iUnlock's guide? How did you find it? Feel free to PM me