high temps on my m17?

hey guys!

i'm relatively new to posting on the forums [i normally lurk], but i have a quick series of questions for you guys.

i bought my alienware m17 last august and it came with the Q9000 processor the two ATI 4850 GPUs, a 500GB hard drive, and 4GB of RAM.

given a laptop with those specs, what would 'normal' idle temperatures be in a room at a roughly-standard 75 degrees Fahrenheit? though i left my computer on overnight [don't know if this makes a difference] and haven't done anything this morning besides using my IM client, iTunes and CPUID's hardware monitor, my computer is reporting temperatures of roughly 68 degrees celsius across both the CPU and the GPUs at what i'd consider to be fairly idle operation.

in reading other posts, it seems like normal idle temperatures should be MUCH lower [40 degrees celsius], so if that's the case, what should i do to lower my computer temperatures? should i invest in a cooling pad, should i reapply thermal paste? any suggestions are welcome if my temperature findings are, in fact, extraordinary. also, any particular brand you'd recommend should i have to go this route?

thanks for your help, guys.

 

the m17 run hot with your exact build (the same as mine) and no cooling mods and undervolting 60-70c idle is normal

mine is around 45-60 but i had to do several mods to get there


also the 500gb hdd from alienware is likely not helping i got a 250 gb in mine and i got an after market 320gb hitachi and the alienware stock one is the thing runing the hotest in my computer

 

Yeah your temps sound about right. What you can do to help is cut the bottom cover and glue mesh on the bottom. Also, after doing that you can pick up a laptop cooler that will help keep temps lower as well. I would also recommend redoing the thermal paste on the processor and the graphics cards. The stock alienware thermal paste sucks! Having done all this to my m17 all my temps went down about 12C-17C on idle and load. You can find out how to do all this in the m17 owners lounge.

 

Absolutely no way is 60-70C normal. For the 4850s, perhaps, but for the CPU that's high to say the least. I'd say low 60s is 'normal' for a completely unmodded machine.

My CPU idles at 50-60C, and my GPUs idle at the 48-55C area. I've got cooler GPUs though; I would expect yours to run warmer.

What I'd recommend is to take off the bottom cover, and tear off the dust covers that are over the vents. These just get clogged up and hurt the temps by as much as 5C.

If your parts aren't breaking 90C on maximum load then they're running fine. While below 90C is ideal, they're still relatively safe up until 95C.

 

runin the q9000 aside with the 4850 make this normal with the thing blocking the air intake of the m17 the whole thing get hotter

dropping my gpu clock and voltage droped the gpu temp about 7-9 deg wich droped the cpu temps about 1 or 2 deg

undervolting the cpu got it farter down and removing the back cover got it to the low 40

switching my install off the seagate default AW hdd to the aftermarket itachi one alowed me to pu more agressive powersaving on the seagate one saving 4 deg that crap is runing bloody hot hotter then my cpu sometime and being close to it i suspect it's heating the said cpu i'll be swaping it for a hitachi one when it arrives

 

hey guys!

well, i did reapply thermal paste [the arctic silver 5 thermal paste] as outlined in a tutorial i found through this site, though rather than use a paste remover i just wiped off the thermal paste with a cloth. i also bought the zalman NC2000 notebook cooler, and currently have it running.

my temperatures MAYBE dropped about 5 degrees celsius.

i was playing starcraft 2 yesterday, and i noted that my computer started stuttering, even after i shut down starcraft 2. i worried that my computer was overheating [as the temperatures WERE pretty high. i'd say ~90C] so I shut it down and let it cool over night. Upon turning on my computer and yet again, only running IM apps/google chrome/HWMonitor, these are the results that I see.

HD - 71C
CPU Core 0 - 65C
CPU Core 1 - 66C
CPU Core 2 - 69C
CPU Core 3 - 69C
GPU - 65C

Having tried thermal paste and a notebook cooler, I'm running out of ideas. I should try the mesh grill idea, but i don't have access to the tools required to do so. Should I underclock/undervolt my GPU/CPU? What would this do to the performance of the laptop? Is the stuttering issue something relative to the quad core CPU i have, or is it a direct result of my laptop overheating?

Thanks for answering my questions, guys!

 

With the thermal paste you should have picked up the cleaning solution with it. I am using AS5 as well and I didn't use their cleaner the first time I applied it and it didn't help my temps at all, but when I reapplied and cleaned the contacts with the cleaner my temps dropped significantly. You also have to make sure it's a very, very, very thin layer you apply or it will not better temps it will only make them worse.

 

that hdd is runing bloody hot and if it's on slot 1 it's close to the cpu and heating the thing up that might not be helping

A one of your die has his temps sensor off by a few deg B you did a beter job on one of the die

don't worrie about sc2 for now the game feel like it's trying to kill my laptop every time i play

as for stutering the so many reason for it that we should try to write a definitive tutorial about it

but if you are using hw monitor tell you tz0 temps when your stutering

have you had sutering in the past or is it new? only when playing sc2? rarely ?

if you are woried about your temp try runing without the back cover i've been doing this for the past year with no issue

the underclocking/undervolting is a long way to go with a lot of tryal and errors and result are custom to each one
on mine the cpu is runing fine at stock speed even when i reach 1.0500v but that is not the case for every one
and for the gpu i flashed my card so that the powerplay get them even lower on idle but that they remain the same when i need them (it saved 10 deg on the gpu alone)