Alienware m14x Fan Noise issues

Question

I recently got m14x for gaming / general purpose. it is truly a great design.

But the moment I start playing counter strike global offensive, the fan noise is at its peaks. The noise is not only annoying to others but also for the user which distracts the game play. The only good thing about the noise is that its uniform high and so I am trying to use my headphones to ignore the noise.

I have updated the BIOS firmware to A09 (May 2014 release) and restarted my system but still have the same issue.

I am wondering if this is the generic behavior of the gfx (750M graphics card). saw this info from other posts in the forum regarding this issue.

Tried setting the optimized graphics from the NVIDIA application that detects the game. I have set the game to low details and shadow/texture detail to very low and other details to low -- to check if the fan noise is getting to medium or less. No changes I guess. still same issue.

Then I tried launching Age of Empires II HD which probably does not need much graphics and the fan did not even make any noise, it worked as if I am running word/excel application.

So, I am not sure how to take this problem because my other dell inspiron laptop does not make any fan noise when I play counter-strike. Should i wait for another BIOS update for alienware? I dont know!

Alienware-Joe · Answer

Would you mind checking the temperatures in both Idle and during gaming?

It definitely sounds like an issue with the video card fan and it may be caused by the video card not cooling itself off properly.

samjith · Answer

Checked the temp of the GPU core. Idle - 0 C utilizing 2.8% of GPU load Gaming - 57-60 C utilizing 15.5% of GPU load. Thanks, Samjith

Alienware-Joe · Answer

So the video card is not overheating, however the fans are spinning quite loud in comparison to
the temperatures it is reaching.
Try stressing out the CPU.
I recommend a program called: Prime95 - just have it run a Stress test.
While you have that open keep monitoring the temperatures of the CPU.

Just to make sure, while you're playing Counterstrike. On which side of the computer is the fan spinning the loudest? Left or Right?

samjith · Answer

Ran the stress test (Prime95). Tried Small FFT (overheat test) that shut down my system on over heating and then next I changed to normal blend test (blend of everything and more RAM tests) that increased the fan noise but did not shut down this time. However the CPU Core temperatures were at an average of 80-90 C

Talking about counter strike. I was wondering if it was game video settings that was creating this noise. So i changed the "Wait Vertical Sync" setting to "Double buffered" instead of "Triple Buffered" then the fan noise came down drastically. which is good and at tolerable limits. I would say it came down to the level of playing Age of Empires 2 HD.

To answer your last question, there is only one fan vent which is on the left side of the laptop (m14x) that is spinning high during high graphics settings. I am thinking if its the Intel CPU/graphics core that is getting overheated?

Thank you..

CurbedLarry · Answer

Dell seem to be totally incompetent at thermal design of laptops, especially faster Intel CPUs with Turbo Boost overclocking.

Have you tried disabling Turbo Boost in the BIOS? Made a huge difference on my 4th gen Core i5 and I haven't really noticed the performance drop.

I don't really understand why these CPUs want to ramp up to unsustainable speeds all the time just because there's spikes in CPU usage. This happens constantly in Windows.

Worst thing Dell do is let a machine heat up too much, then stick the fan on at 3,000 rpm for far too long, then let the temps get too hot again... Repeated until you're going insane from the noise.

Turning on the fan at a low speed sooner (as other manufacturers do) would make Dell machines vastly more pleasurable to use.

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Alienware m14x Fan Noise issues

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