Brand New Alienware 13 R3 OLED Hot plate & Burner Review

Houston we got a hot plate on our hands. 96 degree Celsius for CPU, 91 degree for SSD. Oh lordy Alienware laptop is throttling right out of the box. PCH at this point is in check at 83.5 which is pretty damn close to max and I only ran the test for 15 minutes. GPU is running at 87 degree Celsius which is higher than I would like.

OLED is amazing and one of the main reasons I picked up the 13 and returned the 15. Keyboard and mouse are good to work with. Weight is little more than most folks would like for portable unit. The protruding heat sinks suck especially when they don't help and temps still hit 90+ degree Celsius.

Brand new laptop or refurb laptop they both run in the 90 degree temps if you opt for i7 and a decent card. If you go with i3 and i5 with 1050ti that is the only time these will run as cold as your ex.

Not sure what do to and if I want to spend time doing a repaste. Dell offered me $$$ to keep it instead of returning it.

Samsung PM 961 NVME 256GB SSD (25 power cycles, 3 power on hours, 282 GB read/314 GB Write - HEALTH). Hynix 8GB DDR4 2400MHz memory, Samsung OLED, 2.0% battery wear showing 74450 mWh instead of 76000mWh. Micron Memory for GTX 1060. Bios version 1.1.8. SSD is running around 72 - 79 degree celcius on basic tasks.

 

A repaste would probably solve it. I'd imagine you'll go down around 7-8*C

 

The cooling potential is not terrible on this machine. Dell's paste job is just garbage. You can easily get 70's to 80's with repaste.

It takes about 35 min to repaste (1st try and you are under experienced). It will take 20 min the second time when you find temps still a little high. Use a guide and screw things in evenly.

With testing and whatnot, I'd say 2 hours total time... So it is "worth spending the time", and no one who buys a gaming PC "doesn't have the time"

Put some pads on that drive, or replace it though. Toshiba shouldn't STILL be releasing this garbage.

 

My temps after CLU (CPU) and Kryonaut (GPU):

CPU Max: 73C
GPU Max: 84C

Original

CPU Max: 86C
GPU Max: 84C

PCH still gets up to 98C (Max was 100C)
SSD also runs hot still (80s)

Waiting to receive my aluminum heatsink for the PCH.

 

Here are mine:
CPU Max: 96C*
GPU Max 81C*

Conductonaut on both
CPU Max: 62C*
GPU Max: 59C*

I'm fairly convinced that people are not using enough liquid metal when they repaste. I made sure to use a fair amount (possibly too much) and I think I have one of the lowest verified temps on the board with this laptop

 

More paste is not going to be bad. Not enough paste is gonna suck

 

You're on the lower end but you're also, as far as I'm aware, only using OCCT to test and that does not accurately simulate real-world usage:

 

As long as you're adequately protected against pump-out, if you're not then too much paste could become a fairly major issue.

 

Mine has never gotten close to those temps, barely 80. I game on it constantly though mostly blizzard games. Hey how do I get my 13 in my sig? I forgot since it has been a few months lol.
Thanks.

 

Click on your profile name and then 'signature'.

 

Thanks so much!