Aurora R4 overheating problem SOLVED!!!

Thank you GoldFire. The photos above of my own CPU cooler and you post here meant I didn't have to go through the "that is the way it is supposed to work" routine over the phone. Thankfully I had the extended 3 year warranty, and to their credit Dell sent out a technician and fixed the issue promptly.

Thanks for the excellent instructions Darkpool! I installed my H80i yesterday and no problems yet.

Still this will be my Last. Alienware. Ever. 

Just an update:  My son and I both replaced our stock watercooler with the Corsair H80i and the pc is still quiet, cool, and working perfectly. I had originally replaced my watercooler with a stock dell product and it was noisy from the start periodically and within 3 months it was as loud as a cyclone colliding with a freight train. You couldn't hear anyone talk without screaming. This post was a great help.  Thanks all! 

Are this temps under Prime/Linx? or under normal load?

these are so hi! my cpu at 91 Tj go on throttling and i cant go over 91.

how could  u go over 100?

I had originally replaced my watercooler with a stock dell product and it was noisy from the start periodically and within 3 months it was as loud as a cyclone colliding with a freight train.

Was it new or was it used? Where did you buy it from?

You just saved my ***. I was on the verge of getting a new box before I stumbled on to your post. Your fix worked perfectly. I'll also add that my next box is not going to be from Dell...

Thanks for the great pics Essay. I just purchased the H80i (on feebay) and am wondering if I will need to get any special wire adapter(s) to configure exactly as you pictured.

That's my main concern here...will the H80i plug into all the connections you pictured without any added modifications/adapters? If not, what exactly will I need?

My 3930k R4 is over a year old and CPU temps at idle are all under 40C. But I'm convinced these temps won't last for long. Thanks to all that contributed here.

Great; thanks. Any fan error halting on boot with your wire config? And how are fan speeds being reported in Command Center?

I came across a utube called Alienware R4 overheating solved; there's discussion about a pump fix & taking a 9volt battery w/wires to your pump to test operation. I'm inserting the link to that vid here in case I ever need to direct someone to watch it, to test their pump w/a 9volt batt. There's a huge difference between a working pump that is clogged & a pump that simply died, while both will cause your cpu to overheat. It would *** to take the pump apart, clean it, put it back together & find your cpu still overheats --> when the pump was dead to begin with. I'd suggest testing the pump 1st b4 you disassemble it, listen to it, make sure it humms & vibrates, make sure it works 1st, then go from there:

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZncVlLRbBM8

Ya did good Berry. As we all know from page one (day one):

"There are many complaints, but those complaints are not translating into part dispatches. Because of this "non-translation", there are not enough Liquid Cooling units being replaced in the field for Dell to define this as a systemic issue. I will of course send this data up the line to the Alienware team."

A proper translation? 'Non-warranty-holders merely complain; warranty holders get parts dispatched'. The #1 complaint? 'I'm just out of warranty & my cooler failed'. And 18 months later, one wonders where Team Fail-ienware's public response is posted, for public comment. Their silence is deafening. While:

• the # of stock units 'afflicted' is not directly proportional to the # of stock units being 'replaced'

To proffer that is myopic in its truest sense --> myopia: (literally) trying to see like a mole <-- if it is to be estimable it will include the above plus the proportional 'sudden growth spurt' in Corsair's Hydro-Series market share, facts & data obtainable from Asetek itself who made both coolers, & mine a glib remark just now since in-house protocol 'tween Asetek-ware got to the bottom of the probable ratio long ago. Cui bono? Asetek. Who else; you're likely to buy your replacement from them, & they're the ones co-responsible for the explanation over why their units have an accelerated failure rate.

This thread now has 67,000 views. Contemplate the Christopher Brian Bridges aka Ludacris nature of the above statement. I see the words: 'you do not have a warranty anymore so we owe you nothing". A fine job there to document translate & define the systemic issue in live living color w/a photo for Dell MrsHog. Well said Mr BeefyBro: "I'll also add that my next box is not going to be from Dell".

Who could blame ya for not translating $ back into a System of a Down. 'tear it up!' ... Denzel in Glory

a thousand words is worth a picture

e-Machine's floppy-drive class-action-*** - 'the eMachines Settlement' - where everyone got free post-warranty laptops or desktops: my brother chose a free laptop even though his floppy never failed ... how 'cool' would it be to get a new Area-51 for all the trouble & out-of-pocket expense this caused

Views 12.15.14: FAQ = 14210 Hinge = 7159 TrbleShoot = 22937 --> 14210 + 7159 + 22937 = 44306

• R4 Solved!!! = 67,000 > where for every two who ever read the top three unmovable splash threads of obvious importance for fixing & fact-checking their Alien, three have viewed solved!!! (44306 x 1.5 = 66459 > where 2 x 1.5 = 3)
• solved!!! deserves to be sticky'd, where for every 'one' who ever 'trouble-shooted' their Alien, three have viewed solved!!! (22937 x 3 = 68,811)

Jan 20, 2015 Views: 71523 - 67035 = 4488 / 36 days ≈ 3800 in one month.

18 months later, systemic interest?

Feb 24, 2015 Views: 75315 - 71523 = 3792 

75315 - 67035 = 8280 views

3800 MORE views in one month? still? I thought the problem was over

April 19, 2015 Views: 80767

13,700 more than when I posted here in December >< 5450 more since my update count, Feb 24th.

May 30, 2015 Views: 85330. +4500 more views, in just 6 weeks? 18,000 views since December.

Summer 2013 is when the issue came to light. It's now Summer 2015. 2 years later.

Systemic interest continues in the R4 overheating problem ... why? ... exactly ... 

the basic question has changed since July '13 - not from how few pumps have failed - but to how few pumps still run  ... the former corporate stance fails miserably in the face of the Law of Large Numbers

- left as sitting ducks to both a real-world Bell Curve & an imaginary Dell Curve -

How many women & children thought a hair-dryer noise was normal? Women & children? Really? That's, uh ... stick that in your corporate slogans, puh-leez? And how many went unreported here? Undocumented here? Don't get me started, it is the 9th most viewed thread of all time, even surpassing all the people who ever stopped in to read about the CmndCntr. If we assume it's only reached half the audience that needed to read it? It would be #4 on the all time threads ever viewed (67,000 doubled) ... & from there slowly creep up to be #3 on the list of most popular annoying reasons people even come here. If it only reached 1/3rd of the people? Lol. Forget about it. I can't speak for those who work @ either parent/sibling corp., but I passed my course in Statistics while @ George Mason University.

I will define it if you will not: the probability & propensity for R4's cooler to clog & overheat Ivy-E is systemic

edit: see Wayne's new post below mine

Below, Wayne is about to tell us his R4 is under warranty. He will explain how he thought his cooler was exempt from the FukUshima Meltdown, & when his virtual email from Dell arrived (his Intel cpu is tasked by-proxy as the only early-warning system in place: scheduled to shutdown the pc at the boiling point of water, yadda yadda right?), a qwik call & talk w/Support yields the non-surprising information that the person on the other end of the line knows all about Wayne's Systemic Problem (the classic symptom - once it presents - has reached the level of infamy by now, as do the chicken-pox & apparently just as common: a natural part of an R4's 'life'). Support dutifully dispatches help & honors its side of the warranty. All is right on Dell's side of this world then. Yet it begs the qwestion if Dell gets their own brand of a warranty as kick-back from the Asetek Corp. (the cooler's maker) each & every time this occurs ... unless of course Asetek told Dell long ago: 'you chose the fluid, not us. This is on you' ... behind-closed-doors discussions such as those may await future litigation so can not be proven nor denied by any one.

What we can learn from Wayne's World:

• by definition, had he distrusted 'another' R4 cooler & opted for an h80i, he would not have called in for service & therefore one less 'Liquid Cooling unit being replaced in the field'
• minus Wayne's service call, a 'non-translation' would have occurred (as book-keeping entry) & Dell would reinforce their position as what can only be called the equivalent of: ignorance is bliss
• no non-warrantied customers can expect this level of comfort or re-assurance, other than if they call in to tech-support, those people are fully aware of the exact problem & the exact remedy

Last but not least, one wonders if Wayne's call into support is the final grain that could leverage the weight of the Dell Curve Definition over to that of an admitted 'systemic issue'. Probably not. Consider Sorites Paradox:

• better known as: the Paradox of the Heap of Sand 
• how many grains of sand are required to define a 'heap', lol
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sorites_paradox

(Moving on, no, I am not fool enuff to think 67,000 people browsed one time ea. My guess is somewhere between 3350 people @ 20 times ea to 6700 @ 10 times ea)

I have spent three hours typing a 'small' paper on how wrong the R4 cooler debacle is at every level & I am not even a victim of all this, nor is the paper near finished. For the community's benefit I will not publish it. Yet. This ain't about a $50 cooler, it's about a $500 & $1000 Intel Ivy-E, said cooler put there entrusted to protect & ensure its longevity, assumed to be bought & paid for. I publicly challenge anyone @ Dell or Alienware or their legal entities to have a war of words with me over this issue of a failure to take responsibility. Here. Inside this thread. For all interested parties to witness. Enter through the door of the debate on the question of not if - but when - an R4 cooler's Dyin' Time's Here ...

Welcome to Thunder Dome: two men enter. one man leaves.

Talking Points between Cass-Olé & anyone on Dell Alienware staff privy to the latest factual data-set:

• does Berry the Hedgehog's cooler swap - documented on Dell.com - deserve its place in the Dell Failed-Cooler-Ledger? Or is hers the equivalent of a Hanging-Chad & Butterfly Ballot: evidence of 'nothing'. Did a translation not just occur? If so, was it over there into some other 'category' of meaningless data best swept under a carpet, or perhaps does hers rank on the ledger as a 'good unit' still, since no service call was ever made for its removal & replacement. Should her documented failure be put on a ledger or taken off of one or both?
• as an on-record warranty-holder, did Wayne deserve to be fore-warned his Ivy-E was potentially at risk? If not, why not. If so, did Berry not have an equal right to the same information? If not, why not. If neither were entitled to be fore-warned & with an explanation becoming of a corporate conglomerate where thousands of dollars changed hands, do neither deserve an explanation for why they were not given an explanation?
• since no one can judge how much of the life-span of their Ivy-E's were cut short in the process of over-heating - & that w/out an honest attempt at a fore-warning - is Wayne entitled to a new cpu as well? Simply because Dell had a legitimate documented reason to suspect Wayne's pump would go bad? And not if, but when it did go bad as we saw & as Dell could reasonably predict it would, compound the pump's 'true failure' by putting his Ivy at an unnecessary risk & shorten its life span? If heat is not a cpu-killer, why install a liquid cooler on it to begin with?
• did you not just silently & secretly play the wagering waiting game with Wayne & his pump & cpu? Over whether his pump would fail or his warranty expire, whichever came first?
• does either Berry's or Wayne's failed pumps now equal one or two more documented reasons to warn your current warranty-holders the odds have just shifted that their pumps will probably fail soon also? Putting their Ivy's at potential risk &/or potentially shortening their life spans?
• please don' come @ me as if I din't just read a paper describing the work done @ the U of Minnesota using test equip said to cost tens of millions, testing Transistor Aging & Electron Migration, or a simple google on the term: how does heat affect a semi-conductor? Don't kid yourself. You will lose that argument as you Spin Doctor through every contrived sentence 
• By 2015, should a certain Dell liaison retract or amend the only 'official' statement on record to be in more keeping w/the times? Was not last years preliminary data superceded by this year's concluding data? Does your newer data confirm or deny the veracity the old prior statement claims in its small breadth of a few sentences harboring ambiguous conclusions? Have 'enough' service calls translated into predictable outcomes that are easily publishable, or best closeted from our ii's & ears, what we as customers would consider your skeleton turned ours?
• how many grains of sand does it take to spell this out for you: there is a problem you haven't adequately addressed to anyone's satisfaction but your own

I did some time @ GMU but I'm a graduate of the University of Virginia, founded by the late great Thomas Jefferson & I will make the old man proud. Before his glorious charge, General George Pickett said: "Don't forget today that you are from Old Virginia!". No sir. I shall not. The Cavaliers will represent. If you think it unseemly to make a public spectacle of a verbal Cage Match w/me, or yours begins at a position of weakness while I'm pre-prepared here to exploit you w/the strength of my whistle - or both - I offer you this as your way out: capitulate. Own your mistake. Sticky this thread or create your own, as is your duty anyway: to forewarn & inform the last of the people in need of replacing the last of your bad coolers. They're still roaming out there in the wild as the nasty little ticking-time-bombs we know you know them to be: a heap of them at that. You owe this community a response one way or another:

• no one cares of your legal argument: pen for us a moral-ethical base you can also posture on
• what's the past 18 months taught Dell to recognize & admit about 'the cooler problem' we ourselves recognize as self-evident, but which you need to admit to us finally & on record
• it's high-time someone who ranks as a high-official from Dell, Alienware, Asetek or all three collaborate & chime into this thread - or make a new one - w/the exact physical explanation of why the 'Alienware' cooler's liquid turns to aberrant mush & renders the afflicted units prematurely 'worthless', voiding its worth in title as a sound & proper cooling solution
• low-level employees w/out access to corporate data? Hun uh: that lip service was already paid
• where in all of your combined literature does it say: 'disassemble unit, flush & refill to restore normal operation' & where is that service manual published for public browsing 
• justify sitting on your hands while in your grip was an open & honest 'cooler exchange program'

Last, are the Presidents of Dell & Alienware both prepared to issue a formal public statement of reassurance on both Alienware forums that an internal yet corporate-wide mailer as memorandum or other like species of communiqué was not released or disseminated from one hand to next, fore-warning all employees who owned an Aurora R4 that the cooler they had then or may have in the future, may have been shipped w/a known issue that if left 'unattended' may jeopardize the health & performance of their pricey Intel processor should it in fact undergo an acknowledged fundamental failure, & to preempt the problem by replacing their coolers at once - or at the very 1st sign of trouble - where they're given a short list of the tell-tale-signs their cooler is probably clogged up, due to what else: the corporation's intimate demonstrable axiomatic knowledge that some coolers - possibly all - are or will be prone to failure, systemic - or its close-relative: 'in the spectrum of' - to the lot, & of course: no 'easy' way to tell good from bad. Unless of course there was an easy way, otherwise known as the in-house corporate secret, based on ship date, service tag, part#, juicy tid-bits I say. I will not draw this out, a 3rd-grader can apprehend what I get at & ask you evince for us:

on the question of anticipating a problem, on the question of fore-warnings:

• either no one should've been fore-warned or everyone fore-warned to anticipate
• is yours the position you could not so much as even warn the people who work for you?
• or will reality play out that men in black robes discover: only the select-few were fore-warned

... issue your statements or plead the 5th ... but here in the court of public opinion, it is an injustice to keep your lips sealed tighter than a factory-fresh R4 cooler's o-ring

Open up your mouths like your customers opened up their coolers: let us see what's inside there

What did ya know & when did ya know it. The Disclosure Project. 'Fess up. Or don't

Age quod agis

That latin phrase up there? It might could mean: Embargo on!

Pattern Recognition - gentlemen - is taught & learned from childhood. And I wasn't born yesterday

I thought I was lucky by not having this trouble with the overheating and fan noise that happens with the liquid cooling system on the R4 because mine was over 2 years old and no trouble. WRONG! It started acting up a couple weeks ago and got really bad today. Called Alienware support because I am still under warranty. The tech knew exactly what the problem was without me going into too many details. They will be sending a tech out to replace the cooling system later this week. I am sure it will be a refurbed, OEM unit. If money wasn't so tight this time of year I would buy a good one online and install it myself. That may save trouble down the road.

The tech replaced the Liquid cooling unit yesterday. The new one he put in is different than the one he took out. Both were Asetek, but the new one had a copper heatsink instead of aluminum and is smaller, height wise. Don't know if that's the premium I have been reading about, but it's keeping the CPU running at 3c cooler than the old one at idle.