M14X R1 My 1st hardware crash

Hi,

I'm an owner of the alienware m14x r1. Have been using it for 3 years. Been very satisfied with it except for the temperatures. As you might know on the anlienware m14x r1 the temperatures were a HUGE problem. I don't know how it is right now, how much it improved, but haven't seen as much complaints as on the m14x r1 was.

When my laptop was under warranty on it's 1st year I reported this issue, they came to my house and change the heatsink. It helped for like 1 week. My temperatures dropped from ~95 to ~75. After 1 week the same happened. I thought, that it won't be fixed no matter how many times they chance the heatsink, so I have been using my laptop on 90ish (peaking at 98!!) for 2 years (note that that's the temperature of the CPU). For the first time yesterday my laptop crashed because of heat.

Yesterday evening my graphics card stopped responding. Gave a timeout error (TDR, i suppose it was). My game froze, I couldn't do much, I tried to sign out and back in, but it gave a bluescreen (running windows 8.1) I restarted my PC and my nvidia graphics cards was no longer visible as a hardware. Only my intel HD integrated one. I re-enabled my graphics card through bios and I went to bed. For now it seems to be working fine, but I suppose that that wasn't a good sign at all. What to do now? You think it run any physical damage?
I did run a game for like 1 min, to see if it was working correct, and there was no trouble. While running the game I also monitored all kinds of things. Turbo boost was on and GPU at stock clock. Clock frequencies were normal, game it's frame rate was normal. And in that 1 minute the CPU temperature peaked at 81°C.


A little explanation on how I approach things with my laptop:
- I use a laptop stand so enough air can go underneath, It also has a small fan but the fan doesn't make any difference in the temperature, so I keep it off.
- My father has an air compressor, so every few months I clean the laptop's air fan etc. Did it this morning too before starting my pc, quite some dust came out.
- When I'm not gaming my CPU is clocked at stock with turbo boost on 2.0GHz stock, 2.6-2.8 with trubo boost, and my GPU is clocked ad stock 590MHz, and memory at 900MHz
- When Gaming, on advanced power settings a made a custom power scheme same as "High Performance" only chanced max CPU usage to 99%. So it runs at 1.99GHZ, and with the CPU never reaching 100% it also never uses the turbo boost. The GPU however is Overclocked to 725MHz clock spees, and 1000MHz memory.
- I try to keep my windows clean too. I use Kaspersky internet secuirity, it has done a good job. I often use CCleaner to clean my internet cache in case viruses through internet comes. Avoid adware as much as possible. Don't have any on my pc. So yeah. The software seems good. Going to scan my computer for viruses too, will add a result soon.

So yeah, I toggle between these two settings when gaming. I thought of completely disabling Turbo boost through bios. and to never overclock my GPU again. Will that make a difference? And what else can I do?

EDIT: My anti virus software, didn't find any virus/threat.

 

I would recommend you to re-paste the GPU.

 

It will need to be repasted however the bigger problem you'll find is that the heatsink will be blocked up with dust - if the fan can't blow air through the heatsink then the cooling is significantly impaired - far more impaired than having a poor paste job. Something that the people on this forum need to learn - paste makes a difference but a blocked heatsink is far more detrimental to the cooling capabilities.

 

Thanks for all your replies.

It was indeed because of the dust. I worked for the last 3 months in a helpdesk. I realized my laptop got more dusty from there than usual. That's why it ended up getting too hot. I took of the laptops backplate. And cleaned it very thoroughly a lot dust came it. First time that that much dust has come out of my laptop. For now my CPU temperatur has dropped 10-15 degrees (now peaks at 82-83). I wasn't monitoring my GPU earlier, but now it peaks at 70 degrees.

So yeah. It seems my problem has been solved for now.