Alienware 17 R4 GTX1080 repasting with Liquid Metal, My experience!

Wow so it's all finished and I wanted to fully document and present back to you guys my experience and tips that I found while running through @iiunlock's guide and repasting with grizzly conductonaut in the hope it may help make it easier for you. I'm no expert like the team LHz guys are and I'm keen to point out this is a big job so take your time! Its not for the faint hearted. I know what I'm doing but this still took me around 8 hours to complete (with a couple of mistakes along the way) and nearly ended in tragedy (more on that later)

So, first up I strongly recommend you are really organised when doing this. Here's a pic showing everything you'll need minus the stuff for lapping (which for me was P1200 sand paper, washing up liquid, tub of water)



First stage complete, straightforward. Note the organisation on the magnetic dry wipe board



Next up, Wi-Fi card removal was straightforward following his excellent video in the guide. Note I got the exact same tool he did



Next stage complete, about to take the inner cover off



Inner cover off, was straight forward



Mobo off to access the fan connectors before removing the heatsink



Next up heatsink came off. Careful with the screws, they're very fragile and REALLY easy to thread! Also note I have one of the new builds which had pretty decent temps out of the box (therefore I have the 0.1mm pad (white) and actual (rounded) paste on the CPU. Still way too much applied for what's need imo:



Nice and organised (can't stress this enough!) My board after full disassembly. SSD and Wi-Fi card were placed on anti static bags



Closer view of the stock paste



and...


Cleanup of the dies and heatsinks. My surfaces of the heatsinks weren't great, notice below how dull and non-reflective they are as well as also having some black residue on it which I don't think was the old paste (which only came off when lapping them).



I spent about 40 mins doing both, changing water out in between etc. Next photos show the finish after lapping. (note the corners of the heatsink showing the rubbish finish before lapping)

GPU:


CPU


Both together, nice, shiny and smooth!



My best technique for lapping the CPU heatsink repeated at 90 degree angles of course



Now my attention turned to the pads, this took forever (about 1.5 - 2 hours). I took my time and used a combination of Stanley blades and scissors where sensible. Before I started I removed the old ones carefully, one by one and used them as a template to cut around. When I removed the one below though I noticed it wasn't even installed correct! SMH Dell!



Also noted that the small square pads didn't even have the plastic removed before being installed! Seriously check the bottom one here, they were all like it!



Next up a manufacturing defect on the lower GPU heatsink area... Tut tut. This pick also shows a little bit how I bent the CPU arm. Quite a lot as instructed!



A pic showing exactly how I laid out all pads before putting heatsink back on. Note when I did this I tried sticking the pads to the heatsink first but if it wouldn't stay on then I just put it on the correct chip directly instead. Note I cleaned all chip surfaces with Artic Clean No.1 first as well.



And then the liquid metal was next. All I'll say is the tape saved me big time! see the pic below...



I was very careful but I must have had an air bubble in the tube and it all pretty much squirted out at once (perhaps squirt it over your heatsink away from the mobo first is a better idea), it was so close to game over! It's hard to work with and it's definitely more risky. When cleaning most of that up I ended up chasing it in balls around the tape trying to avoid the mobo which was really time consuming and difficult SO be VERY careful when applying this to your units!

Finally, i bent the heatsink arm a lot like unlock said and went to reassemble everything. When I placed the heatsink back on I found the best way was to do this directly from above and then slightly lift the mobo to screw through the heatsink to attach it. Again, be so careful with those heatsink screws!

So, I booted it back up with my heart in my mouth after all this work and then you get the red alienware symbol where it looks like it fails to boot after several attempts. Note this is just a BIOS diagnostics check I guess because the RTC has been reset after the battery has been pulled for a long period of time. After several reboots after the first power on it runs a diagnostics test and then reboots as normal so don't worry like I did lol.

So results next, was all this worth it? Hell yeah! See for yourself:

For direct comparison before and after, here is my OCCT run at 3.9GHz before the work above was performed:

Can't find the screenshot but I ran it a few times and the max temp was 84C with a -50mV voltage offset running at 3.9GHz. Average CPU temp as 70 and average spread was 8 - 10 degrees.

This is not bad as it's the new improved breed of fixed 17 R4's from Dell but I wanted ice cool so exactly the same run after all the work done above...:



Massive difference... a solid 20C drop on the Max temp and 14 on the average with an average CPU spread of only 3! Very happy!

Stay tuned for some more results coming with game tests and hopefully with @iunlock tuning abilities!

Also see further work in my spreadsheet of my results available here:



So I hope this helps and good luck with your builds!

General Advice I found

• Make sure you read all of the advice in each step. E.g. I pulled a cable before the battery cable in step 2 before I saw it in the guide!
  
  
• Metal pry tool was better for me and where the square holes are, use it to get it in these gaps under the cover and pry it open
  
  
• Step 5.1 lever on USB, don't forget to pull that back first!
  
  
• Step 5.1 two cables missed in guide (blue "MB" ribbon and white "DC In"cable)
  
  
• Remember where you take the tape off that holds down cables for when you need to out it back on
  
  
• Lapping heatsinks
  • Tub of water
    
    
  • Washing up liquid
    
    
  • P1200 sand paper
    
    
  • Lint cloths
    
    
  • Arctic clean 1 and 2
• BIOS diagnostics check and several reboots after first power on is normal

Pete

 

Try hosting the images on an external image host. They don't seem to be loading.

 

hmm not sure whats going on there, works fine from my laptop browser and phone browser, are you using an App?

I've added a "link" under every image if you or anyone else is struggling

 

Weird. I'm on my desktop using Chrome. NBR acting weird I guess.

EDIT : They are cached on your end or you are logged in to your Google drive.
Others don't seem to have access. Clicking on the links take me to a Access Forbidden page.

But great write-up nonetheless.!!

 

Nice write-up but sadly I cannot see the pictures either.

 

Argh ok hang on

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how about now can you see them?

 

Nope.
Try hosting on Imgur or something.
Mush easier that Way.

 

Yeah I'm guessing the way you shared them from your google account has them as private, or at least not public.

 

all fixed now i hope. Can you see them?

 

Holy ****. Its like Dell literally has monkeys doing these paste jobs and applying thermal pads. How do they even forget to remove the protective film. That would have possibly caused a lot of heat build up and hardware damage.

 

I can see the pictures fine now.
Thanks for the guide. I can never look at enough ways to approach problems, especially when it involves little bits, small places, and lots of wires.

 

Outstanding work. Although that last picture with the paste slightly worried me as it was overflowing on the sides but since everything checked out ok with temps you're A OK!

 

Great post! Nice pics.

The pictures from iUnlock were very helpful and I found the service manual helped for a"zoomed out" view:

http://www.dell.com/support/manuals...3B1051-9384-409A-8D5B-9B53BD496DE8&lang=en-us

Download PDF

I laid a couple of pieces of cereal box cardboard over most of the motherboard while putting on the liquid metal.

I was so glad I did because I dropped the cotton bud and I'm sure I would have got LM on the board otherwise.

 

Yeah that's a good idea mate

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Yeah but of course I couldn't leave that much and I had to clean it up as I only need a fraction of that. Best way was to suck it back up the tube, use the cotton buds to wipe excess on the other die and heatsinks and then wipe any left over back on the lint free cloths. Finally as I say in my experience I had to use artic clean 1 to clean the remainder of the tape. Took me about half an hour...

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Hey Pete, Nice tutorial here and congrats on the new AW17 and with those temps! I have a question regarding the repaste. I am planning on buying AW17 soon when Kaby lake comes out and I want to know if you keep the tape after repasting with Liquid metal or remove it? I know it is very noob question but just curious and would really help me! Thanks Dawn

 

You leave the tape on.

 

yep correct, thats why its tape rated to 120C (and why iunlock advises this must be Scotch 33+)

 

Thanks for the help!

 

Thanks Pete really appreciate it

 

Thank you for sharing your experience Pete, this helps a lot. How you feel about liquid metal in it, moving the laptop around or transporting it with you? If you do it at all

 

it'll stay in place, not much of an issue with LM escaping out of the cpu/gpu

 

I remember finding the plastic layers too when I put new thermal pads there. Thoght it's some kind of double sided tape, but if it really is the protective film then wow...

 

Yep I believe it is just the plastic! Why on those when nowhere else, it's the same pad used in multiple places and I can't see that a layer of plastic will help thermal conductivity

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I repasted my first 17R4 right away when I got it. It was just replaced Friday due to the lines on the QHD panel.
I used Kryonaut. I didn't get any good before / after tests though.

Some tips I have.
1) The wireless card aerials are a SOB! I broke my pads off the nic and had to get a new one. During the repaste it looks like you could just remove the card from its slot and leave the wires on it. If I repaste this new one I am going to try that this time.

2) I used an egg carton for the screw for a poor mans magnetic mat. But that mat is sweet.

3) I also did the pad replacement. I noticed that the big pieces just stuck due to the the fujipoly being somewhat sticky/moist. Those tiny pieces I had the same thought as what was the stuff on them. To me it was like double stick tape and I had to scrape/scrub them off to get the goo off. The fujipoly ones didn't stay on those tiny parts of the sink very well.

I need to so some tests to get a before / after benchmark.
Is there a good post on what all to set in BIOS and what software and how to set it up / use it that I could follow?

 

I wouldn't recommend trying to leave the Wi-Fi NIC attached, it'll be impossible to get that between the heatsink fan and the mobo and the less you man handle that thing the better! Have you seen the video from @iunlock he did in removing it? I followed that each of the 4 times I removed mine. Also done my XPS a few times with the same card. No problems

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I repasted my new 17R4 Kaby Lake last night.
Leaving the wires connected to the NIC definitely works. The way the wires are routed on the base plate they come right out to the fan hole.

I also didn't have to remove the motherboard. Just unscrewed the two tiny screws on each fan and could pull the heat plate and top of the fans off leaving the motherboard in place and not having to unhook all the cables.

The only cables I had to pull off were the tron lights, hdd, and battery.
Was so much easier.

I used Kryonaut since I had that on hand from a prior repaste.
I went from OCCT shutting the test off due to high temp in <1m to running for 5+ at <80C

I really want to try Conductonaut but it looks like everyone does too. There is not a 1g tube anywhere.

 

Just finished my repaste on my r4 17 i7-7820HK GTX 1080. My temps like you were good out of the box but said screw it. Dropped 20 degrees accross the board. Id firestrike it but cant get it to install on win 10.

 

do u have cpu core differential problem out of the box?

 

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The wifi cables were stupid easy for me, as i removed the card they litterally popped off lol. Easy install aswell.

 

that's encouraging. did you have to bend any tension arms or adjust the heatsink after you repasted?

and after repaste, is there any newly developed temperature differential problem for the CPU?

 

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.

 

Hi Pete,

Thanks for this post! About how many degrees would you say you bent the tension arm?

 

don't bother. it doesnt work, especially if you are using traditional paste

 

Sorry just seen I never responded to these posts and the first one in particular is very important:

So there's two reasons why I don't recommend disassembling the heatsink in this way (especially for those who haven't done this before):

• You will not be able to apply as much pressure when screwing down the heatsink screws when you put the heatsink back on. The way I do it is to stand the mobo on its end and have one finger on the screw hole on the back of the mobo pressing toward the PH0 screwdriver as I'm screwing in. I found you need to apply quite a lot of pressure from both sides of the mobo to do even the slightest tightness in these tiny screws...
  • One more point on this, to enable you to do this of course you need to do the step in my guide detailing lifting the mobo from the table onto the underside of the heatsink to get the M2 screws to bite first, then stand it on end as per my point above after you have screwed in as much as you can before you get any resistance
• There is a MUCH higher chance of threading the screws if you don't fully disassemble the mobo as per @iunlock 's instructions (it's the reason he is very specific in his guide), its not a fluke that his attention to detail is incredible and he really does think of everything believe me! The reason is because you can only apply a small amount of pressure before you start to bend the mobo, and with less pressure the twisting action to do up the screw is more likely to thread the top of it. The greatest way to minimise this risk is to apply the heatsink back to the mobo as I detail in the first bullet point

Bending the CPU arm can work it just doesn't work for everyone perhaps. Sometimes more things are needed but it's a good first thing to try for sure.

Finally, latest update for my system can be found here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...4-owners-lounge.797457/page-692#post-10611493

 

are you sure you got the correct tape? is this different in the US in UK Scotch 33+ is rated to 80C

https://imgur.com/QYuhXEE

https://imgur.com/DZVTWr0
Scotch 88 is rated to 120C Is this the correct version to use?

 

Nice point. I think there was two variants but either way super 33+is absolutely fine. Been using it for years. Have checked after opening machines up too. It's all good

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OK Thanks for the reply

 

Scotch88 is too thick.
Don't use this tape. Use scotch 33.

 

I am looking at getting the Alienware 15 with 1070 and i7 7700HQ.
But the guide I saw elsewhere (believe it was Alienware themselves) suggests it didn't need to remove the motherboard. Is this the case? as the guide here removes it. I would be much more confident if you didn't have to.

Also I am not a big fan of LM, is Kryonaut the best paste for the job?

I would go for a different laptop, but with student discount and the current offers, I should be able to get the 120Hz G sync, 1070 and I7 7700HQ model for around £1150-1200 which is insanely cheap compared to alternatives.

 

You dont need to remove the whole motherboard, if you carefully remove the 3 screws on top of the fanshroud for each fan, you can lift the whole heatsink off but the fans stay in place together with the motherboard.

Be careful opening this machine up though. It is for some reason harder to open it without breaking some of the clips with the 15inch version compared to the 17.

 

Yep good advice, personally I categorically don't recommend repasting without removing the mobo completely. It's much safer and more controlled with less risk on striping those tiny heat sink screws (which is so easy)

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