Acceptable Temps for new ALIENWARE 17 Laptop?

70-75C is more than acceptable,

Make sure you update your Bios to the A03 version, this version has removed the thermal limit of 77C to a much higher 90ish C

the machine should be fine at around 70-75C (i have a AW 17) it can even go up to 80's, Adter some time if the temps keep going up i.e. 80-90's you might have to do some recasting and some cleaning up i.e. dust ion fans and heat sink.

I have a cooling pad to kepp mine cool, i recommend you getting on especially if you live somewhere where its hot.

I just got my AW 17 and i plan to do some routine maintenance i.e. nice good cleaning and re-pasting end of this year,

hope this helps.

by the way, its not bad if your card runs around 60-80-+5C anything higher means your need to clean your system.

good luck,

oh by the way,  do you play GTA 4? does it work well in your rig? i cant seem to make the game run smoothly on mine and i have a GTX780 4gb?

thanks

Hi Lee52390,

Temperatures as described are running great. Bad idle temps are around 70°C ~ 75°C and under load 85°C ~ 92°C or more (that's considered overheating).

Make sure you place your computer on a flat surface with any fabric that may clog the vents.

Also, checkout this thread to get a better performance within games on your new system.

Thank you for your reply Futokuko. I have updated my bios to A03 version; I also have a cooling pad which does help cool temps by about 5 degrees. I think I will need to do some repasting.

Lately, CPU temps on Dragon Age have been going up as high as 80, which is a concern for me. And regarding GTA 4, sorry, but I don't have the game on PC. Good luck with that!

Hi Lee52390,

The CPU temps provided are high but not as high to be considered overheating. Do you have performance issues? By the way, it's always good using a cooling pad.

No performance issues, although I have been getting a blue screen with the tag "Watchdog Violation" quite often recently. CPU temps never get that high unless when playing that particular game (DAO).

It sounds like the question was answered, and I encourage the use of a cooling pad, but would also like to encourage the use, if not done so already, of more aggressive fan speeds. Many of us gamers, myself running the m17x r3, find concern in cooling, as laptops of all varieties are more susceptible to overheating than desktops. So it is common to use fan speed controllers to increase fan speeds. I myself keep my fan speeds around 4000 when playing games. It keeps the system cool. It goes also require higher maintenance as dust builds up quicker along the heat sinks. Usually once a month, if not more, I pull out the fans and clean them and remove dust around the heat sinks, but it is worth it to get cooler temps and better frame rates and overall performance. 

The tamps you have are definitely ok, but the only concern is throttling. There is a battle of balance going on between performance, throttling, overheating, dust buildup, airflow, and more. Sometimes that balance needs a little manual adjustment. 

Keep in mind that all modifications to normal system operations are done with the understanding that liability rests on the user for changing normal operations. 

I personally use HWiNFO 64 as a means to control the fans and monitor other things. Normally, I use one or ore sensors and set tiered fan speeds absed on cpu and gpu temps, but lately I have noticed, as can happen, that certain sensor monitoring can make a system unstable, and therefore have resorted to a set speed use while gaming, and a normal operations when not or when gaming low load games. 

It sounds like the question was answered, and I encourage the use of a cooling pad, but would also like to encourage the use, if not done so already, of more aggressive fan speeds. Many of us gamers, myself running the m17x r3, find concern in cooling, as laptops of all varieties are more susceptible to overheating than desktops. So it is common to use fan speed controllers to increase fan speeds. I myself keep my fan speeds around 4000 when playing games. It keeps the system cool. It goes also require higher maintenance as dust builds up quicker along the heat sinks. Usually once a month, if not more, I pull out the fans and clean them and remove dust around the heat sinks, but it is worth it to get cooler temps and better frame rates and overall performance.    The tamps you have are definitely ok, but the only concern is throttling. There is a battle of balance going on between performance, throttling, overheating, dust buildup, airflow, and more. Sometimes that balance needs a little manual adjustment.    Keep in mind that all modifications to normal system operations are done with the understanding that liability rests on the user for changing normal operations.    I personally use HWiNFO 64 as a means to control the fans and monitor other things. Normally, I use one or ore sensors and set tiered fan speeds absed on cpu and gpu temps, but lately I have noticed, as can happen, that certain sensor monitoring can make a system unstable, and therefore have resorted to a set speed use while gaming, and a normal operations when not or when gaming low load games.

Unfortunately, many new Alienware users are reporting that manual fan controls are not working. HWiNFO64 does allow CPU fan control but the GPU fan turns off and this leads to GPU overheating. The same problem exists trying to use the SpeedFan utility.

It would be extremely beneficial to have this feature. Here is an IdeaStorm submission on this very subject.

http://www.ideastorm.com/idea2ReadIdea?v=1377804637778&Id=087700000008mW6AAI

The consistency of success in controlling fan speeds is definitel a concern, and I recommend everyone voting up the idea :)

SPeedfan has never been a reliable application for me, on any computer, but HWiNFO 64 has worked on at three separate AW models for me without much issue, but there is a stability issue with the COMPAL EC sensor that causing it to lock up and fan speeds to lock up or shut down at times, which is why it is very important to understand that it can put operation fo the sytem outside normal and can potentially harm the system if not handled properly. Ive had a couple times where GPU temps were close to 100C because of some freeze ups, but happens infrequently, and never to a point of harm of the system. Which is why I have switched to a specific fan speed set no matter what GPU temp is, that I use only when running certain games like BF3. Otherwise, system default speeds are fine.

Personally, I beleive most of the heat generation comes into play worsde with DX9 and DX10 setups. Its been discussed that the differing shader requirements and configurations causes additional load over DX11, which is why sometimes BF3 wont cause throttling on voltage or temp for the nvidia cards, but MW2 will, lol. Not to mention the memory allocation file still being set for 32bit and not 64bit. Still bothers me that even newer gmaes have memory usage limits because of being 32 bit. Oh well, just more reason to look forward to the future of gaming and overcoming those limitations.

SpeedFan has never worked well for me... ever. But, it was worth a shot since HWiNFO64 was a no go. I found nothing had improved with SpeedFan since I last tried it a couple of years ago. It is still not a reliable program like HWiNFO64.

HWiNFO64 has always (until the newest release) worked extremely well for me. I disable the Compal EC sensor in HWiNFO64 and just manually set fan speeds where I want them and it works beautifully with the M17xR2, M18xR1 and M18xR2. I did have some issues with the Compal EC sensor enabled, but none at all with it disabled. There must be some sort of conflict with the new EC causing the GPU fans to stop spinning, but the situation is the same regardless of whether or not the Compal EC sensor is enabled or not. It's strange to say the least.

Even if it worked correctly, it would be much nicer to have this feature built into AWCC for laptops. (I think AWCC for desktop might already have this feature.)

Thanks for all the responses everyone. I might have come up with a possible solution...its odd that setting affinity has reduced my temps significantly. When I set affinity to just one core, I get average temps of about 55-60C when playing Dragon Age Origins compared to my original temps of 75-82C. No idea why this is. Game seems to be running fine with one core too.