Alienware Aurora Restart - Thermal controls

Great info to add to "the mystery" that is the auto reboot of Alienware equipment. I can say after reading your post, whether gaming or surfing the internet, the auto reboot will occur regardless, as it has done several times on my Aurora ALX. Dell has no idea how to rectify this issue, as i have read/tried all the potential fixes posted on this forum and others, but to no avail. Good luck my friend!

Theres was no bsod just restart. What curve are u guys setting. I just set mine up to be 50 % fan @ 25ºC   100% @ 35.  I've never seen the temps go over 26ºC but it is winter here and i want to be ready for summer it frequently reaches 40ºC+ (104ºF)  where i live.   Like you said  mine never seems to come off 1% pci and 27% hardrive when its left to auto.   thx  for taking the time to reply

I use Manual/Curve setting. Automatic should work like Curve, but it never seemed to work for me.

I've never had a auto-reboot (while gaming or otherwise). I don't have MW2, but I do play Crysis (all settings on High ... IIRC).That's probably my most intense game right now. That one or GRID. You might check your Event Viewer and see if anything was written. Try gaming without GPU-Z (in case it caused the crash). Of course, check your video drivers, etc. If there was a quick BSoD, check for Crash Dump.

Lots of times a reboot like that when you are gaming is a power issue. A BSOD can also cause a reboot like you are describing. If you have the system set to automaticly restart which Is the default setting you may not see the BSOD. Go to "control panel/system/advance system settings/startup and recovery/settings" and uncheck the box that says  "Automatically Restart". Doing this will make it stay on the BSOD if that is what you are getting.

 I would check the power connections first since its a know issue that can cause what you are getting. If the card pulls more then the system can give it then it will force a reboot. There is a sticky that shows what order the power cables need to be in.   http://support.dell.com/support/topics/global.aspx/support/dsn/en/document?c=us&cs=19&dl=false&l=en&s=dhs&docid=84D6A6EDA59E9719E040AC0A64E97CC4&doclang=en  Dell is not shipping them with the correct power connection order. You need one rail for one power connection and another rail for the other. The card cant run off of one rail. I have an Area-51 and it was replaced and both systems came with incorrect power connections. The replacment system was well after the connections became a know issue yet they still sent it like that. Click the link and check your set up and confirm its correct. I can make my system do the exact kind of reboot yours is doing by making my cards pull more power then the PSU can handle. When its a PSU issue you get one of two things. A reboot or a complete power off. I really believe its a power issue you are having.

As for temps the computer will not restart because of the temp on the gtx 295. What will happen is at about 105c the card will clock itself back to prevent it from being damaged. Anything under 100 is really fine for the card, though you should never see temps that high. I would say anything over about 92c on a stressed card is when i would start to worry and look at ways to bring the temps down. Right now its 77f in my home and my gpu's are 53c,58c,61c,63c,65c and I hit about 76c when gaming and 90c under heavy loads and thats with 3 cards sandwiched in and a small overclock.

Thx for the reply morblore. I cracked her open and checked the power connectors on the gfx cards as u suggested and according to the chart it says P15 P16 for an Aurora with a gtx 295.

 So I don't think im suffering from the graphics card power connector issue. Thanks for the suggestion and trying to help tho.  

*edit*  Haven't had the problem since so hopefully it was a one off 

Still Having the same issue restarted twice today while playing mw2......... 

It keeps happening, I'm playing Modern Warfare 2  all is well then it just shuts down and restarts. I read that some people said it can be a problem with the realtek drivers. I'm pretty sure i have the latest ones but im going to download them from dell with my service tag to make sure.

some other threads about alien fusion and i have a bunch of messages about that also in the event viewer. So ive turned that off, I'll just let windows do power management. High performance and screen and tower never turn off.

1 A timeout was reached (30000 milliseconds) while waiting for the Alienware Fusion Service service to connect.

2 The Alienware Fusion Service service failed to start due to the following error: The service did not respond to the start or control request in a timely fashion.

3 The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first.This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.

 the pattern seems to be message 1 , message 2 , message 1 ,message 2 ,message 3 (resulting in a crash)