Legacy Area-51 m17x R-1 CPU overheating problem

Hi all,

I am in desperate need of your help and wisdom.

I've been a proud owner of a Legacy Area-51 m17x R-1 owner since May 2009.

In mid-2010, it began to overheat (Coretemp detected CPU temps at 102 C degrees), and because it was still under warranty at the time, I sent it to Dell then for repairs. After Dell sent it back to me, the laptop ran with normal temps again, but I was not told what Dell did that fixed it.

Everything was fine from then on until April 2011, when it began to overheat again and then would never power on (BSOD on startup and/or boot disk errors). At that point, I gave up and abandoned it. Months passed. Finally, I took it out again in June 2012 to try and revive it. I put in a new 128GB SSD hard drive and slapped on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit along with the latest appropriate drivers I could find.

The temps then were maxing out at 70 C at the time, which are acceptable. After a few days of gaming, however, it started overheating again and would shut down automatically.

At that point, I decided to disassemble the m17x to take a look (see photos below). I used a can of compressed air and sprayed out as much dust as I could (there was a significant amount of dust trapped inside the CPU heatsink and grill, and the dust has since been removed). I also bought a CoolerMaster laptop cooling pad that has 3 fans running underneath. Starting last week, my m17x sits 24x7 on top of this cooling pad.

When I powered up the m17x for the first time after cleaning it, the temps ran cool at 48-55 C and remained stable at no more than 60 C at peak during prolonged, heavy gaming, for all of last week.

However, since yesterday, while playing League of Legends (a game that my m17x should be able to handle even at near-max settings), the CPU overheated again at 102 C and shut down on its own. I powered it on again and it now occasionally idles at 50~ C, but even during normal, non-gaming use, it can run as high as 75 C. Last week, even during peak gaming usage, the temperatures were relatively stable at no more than 60 C. Now, I am too afraid to even launch a game in fear that doing so would almost certainly cause it to overheat.

As of this writing, the CPU's are stable at 72-75 C, which seem much too high, at least compared to my previous experiences with my laptop.

Also, my ambient room temperature is very cool at around 20 C, with my air conditioning always being on as well.

What could be causing my persistent overheating problems? I'm open to all suggestions that would cool my temps down permanently. Should I look to replace my CPU heatsink with another (new or used) legacy m17x CPU heatsink? If so, where could I buy one? I've scoured the web and sites like eBay with no luck so far.

At this point, I am even willing to entertain solutions involving running my laptop exposed in order to install a PC heatsink or a PC liquid cooling system, although I am not sure how much modding would be required or which solutions would be most compatible. I am currently already running with an external keyboard, mouse, and monitor.

In any case, thanks in advance to all for any suggestions and/or advice!

Best,
Anthony

My current hardware specs:

Spoiler

Area-51® m17x

Video/Graphics Card: 512MB NVIDIA® GeForce® 9800M GT
Display: 17" WideXGA+ 1440 x 900 LCD (720p)
Keyboard Options: AlienFX® Illuminated Keyboard – Exclusive Design
AlienFX®: Alienware® AlienFX® System Lighting - Blue
Processor: Intel® Core™ 2 Duo T9300 2.5GHz (6MB Cache 800MHz FSB)
Operating System: Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit
Memory: 4GB« Dual Channel DDR2 SO-DIMM at 667MHz – 2 x 2048MB
System Drive: Single Drive Configuration - Crucial 128 GB SSD hard drive
Optical Drives : 8x Dual Layer Burner (DVD±RW, CD-RW)
Wireless: Internal Intel® Wireless 4965 a/b/g/Draft-N Mini-Card
Sound Card : Internal High-Definition Audio with surround sound

Temperatures recorded 1 hour ago, 15 minutes after power-up:

Spoiler

Photos of my disassembly, taken last week (parts of chasis and CPU fan):

Spoiler

 

Sounds like it doesn't have a good connection with the heatsink, you try repasting at all with some Artic Silver? Also as far as modding some desktop cooling it would be very work intensive, especially on your laptop with the keyboard location. I'd recommend the repaste, another round of canned air and then you can look at the voltmodding guide to set the voltage lower(lower voltage = lower temps)

 

I would say perhaps the fan is dying on you. I mean... if it runs fine one second and then overheats the next, a few days later, then perhaps you should look beyond the heatsink itself.


You could also try and use HWiNFO32 and use the fan controller onboard to force the CPU at certain speeds. Might help.

 

HwInfo doesn't support this laptop unfortunately.