A Thank You to Alienware-Luis_Pardo and On My M14X R2 Temps

This post has two goals: 1) to thank Luis Pardo for his help with my M14X R2 problem and 2) to discuss my temperature problems with the M14X R2.

All temps listed below are for the CPU and measured with RealTemp 3.70.

First, the situation: I’ve had the M14X R2 since the end of June. The laptop is in excellent condition and I love it to death. At the beginning my temps were hitting about 80 C while gaming and were at about 50 C when browsing the web or working on Office docs. I’ve posted my temps before and other users said they looked a little high for their tastes, but if they get any higher I should contact Dell support.

The temps have been steadily increasing and I’ve been hitting 90 C while gaming (within 5 minutes) and up to 60 C while browsing the web, and this is with a notebook cooler. Temps at startup would be around 45 C, but after running a game would not go below 60 C.

I contacted Alienware-Luis_Pardo here on the forums to ask about the temps and explain my situation. He promptly responded to my many emails and set up an on-site tech to come out and change the heatsink and the fan on my machine. I’m leaving the country in a few days for work and Luis assured me that he could have someone out to see me before I left. I was relieved to receive his emails and for all his help. I would have hated to leave the country with my machine as it was. I am very happy with the help Luis Pardo has provided and the tech service.

The tech came out yesterday and exchanged the parts. He was very professional and did an excellent job. I asked if I could sit and watch while he worked. As he began to take the laptop apart, I asked him if he would mind using the Arctic Silver 5 that I bought when reseating the heatsink. He said since I had a high-quality paste he would not mind applying it for me. He applied the Arctic Silver and put everything back into place. The whole procedure took about an hour. He treated the M14X well and kept it clean.

Here are my not-so-scientific results so far:

Before tech visit:
games = 90 C
web browsing = 60 C

After tech visit:
games = max 80 C on Crysis 2, ultra settings, DX11 (no notebook cooler).
Skyrim and Oblivion (heavily modded) are less than 70 C (Oblivion much more so).
Currently running Steam, typing this on Word, firefox open with 4 tabs = ~ 44 C.

I ran a Prime95 test for 5 minutes. The CPU temps maxed out at 83 C right at the beginning and then leveled out to 72-73 C for the rest of the test. I am not sure if I need to run this for a longer time. During the test the fan kicked in and brought the temps down to the low 70s. I will keep monitoring my temps. I’ve found that the Coolermaster X3 has also helped in keeping down temps too.

Overall, this is a great improvement over two days ago. I am very happy for the help Luis Pardo has provided. Thanks so much! It’s really great to see Alienware representatives like Luis on the board posting and helping users.

Three cheers for Luis! Thanks again.

 

Alienowl,

Thank you for the feedback on Luis. He is great at what he does and we love to hear about him. +1 rep for taking the time to call him out.