How long have you had the system? I too was having the same problems as you with the optical drive not working and the performance drops. My optical drive juststopped 1 daydetecting any disks, butthe drive was visiblei in the control pannel. I just got dell to replace the drive on warranty, and the newone worked fine. This was afterhaving it for a year. As for the performance issues, as i said i havehad mine for a year, and i narrowed it down to an overheating problem. After about 20 minutes of any activity the system would drop in performance with bad FPS etc. Turned out the systemwas throttling it self down to cooldown. Check your airflow at the back there should be a strong gush of air comming out. I had to take my whole system apart piece by piece, to reach the fans to see what the problem was. Turned out there was a carpet of fluff clogging up the air intake.. Wheni got in there it looks very badly design there are like fins inside that give very narrow passages from the fans to the outside of the system.Ipulledthis fluffwall out and the airflow was back to normal and the system began functioning at full force again. If youve had the sysyem for a while i would recommend doing this. There is a guide on youtube done by alienware how to takeeach part out the laptop and put it back in. Just google search assymbling m15x. Hope this helps it got my systembackup to its former glory
Yeah, like I said above, even while playing LoL I'm still getting similar issues. I haven't tried a 3D benchmark yet but I probably will tomorrow after I clean it up,
Its not even a year old, maybe around 7 mounts. But it looks like my cpu actually hit 70C while I was just playing a game of league of legends and had the web browser open in the background, not very demanding things. So I think it might be a problem with the thermal paste. What do you think? But by any rate it looks like im going to have to pop it open tomorrow and check if it is dusty inside.
Currently its running 45-50C just playing a video on youtube and running the application
Yes it seems temp is indeed your problem just like me. Before the de fluff i was running dawn of war 2 and company of heroes at about 80 degrees C then the system would just throttle down to cool down, this temp would be achieved in like half an hour. I even used throttlestop to stop this happening and the temp went all the way up to 101 degrees C !!! Then the system just turned it self off for safety. I redid the thermal paste first, which was very badly done by dell and very sloppy work. But that only made a slight difference. When you first take the back lid off you can see both the fans and they will likly have dust on them, but that isnt where the probkem lies. You have to get in behind the fans and right inside those air intake things at the back. Due to the design this requires almost every piece to be taken out including the front touch controls panel. There are screws in the screen to let you do this. Once you got most things out you will be able to unclip the vents as they are there own piece. Get in there and you will see a literal fluff/dust wall that is blocked 90% of the airflow. You can pick the whole thing out with your things and it all comes out in 1 blob off fluff. Then just for good measure use a compressed air can the clean out the narrow passages inside the vents. Put it all back together and try running things again. My temps went back to about 50-55 while running those 2 games on ultra settings and as a result the system never throttled down and so all performance isues were gone. Its quite a bit of work but once your done you will be so happy. You have to do this about once or twice a year. Really poor vent design and very difficult to access. Hope this helps
you'd have to take apart your system quite a lot just to change the filter then. At least with an open design there's more of a chance for the dust to get pushed back out (or at least that that I'm guessing, lol)
Okay, so I took it all apart and cleaned out the vents with some compressed air. The vents didn't have that much dust in them but I cleaned them out pretty good anyways. I removed the old thermal paste for both the CPU and GPU but now Im having an issue with my GPU getting to about 90C when playing and dropping down to an idle of about 55C even with new thermal paste. I'm going to re paste it again tomorrow and see if that helps.
My CPU on the other hand is running fairly cool, never passing 60C
Below is a log of the game that I played when It got to 90C
Well the good news is you have narrowed down the problem to heat control as 90 is way too high, so there are only a few things that could be wrong. Was the system reached thos temp before you redid the paste running the same game? If not you may have applied incorectly or not cealed it correctly. The are loads of guides on the best way to apply the paste. You have cleaned the vents out so air passage is not the problem it seems. Have you tried testing thr fans themselves and if they are working. Can you feel with your hand at the back a load of air coming out? Is one side more than the other? If this os still normal then the only other thing could be where you are using it. This may sound obvious but using it on like a duvet or aomething like that really heats it up, always use a hard surface. If all else fails you can always contact dell to repair it for you if you are still on warranty which you should be after 7 months. I was out off warranty when i had the heat problem amf phomed them up. They insisted they had to replace the motherboard and it was the only fix and wanted to charge £521. Told them to get lost, and i just did it myslef cleaning out the dust and saving a lot of money. Even in warranty dell are a pain in the behind understanding the people at the call center is hard enough.
Well the good news is you have narrowed down the problem to heat control as 90 is way too high, so there are only a few things that could be wrong.
Was the system reached thos temp before you redid the paste running the same game? If not you may have applied incorectly or not cealed it correctly. The are loads of guides on the best way to apply the paste.
You have cleaned the vents out so air passage is not the problem it seems. Have you tried testing thr fans themselves and if they are working. Can you feel with your hand at the back a load of air coming out? Is one side more than the other? If this os still normal then the only other thing could be where you are using it. This may sound obvious but using it on like a duvet or aomething like that really heats it up, always use a hard surface.
If all else fails you can always contact dell to repair it for you if you are still on warranty which you should be after 7 months. I was out off warranty when i had the heat problem amf phomed them up. They insisted they had to replace the motherboard and it was the only fix and wanted to charge £521. Told them to get lost, and i just did it myslef cleaning out the dust and saving a lot of money. Even in warranty dell are a pain in the behind understanding the people at the call center is hard enough.
Just put some new thermal paste to see what would happen (arctic silver 5) and the temps are even higher then before. I did what a guide told me to do (apply a thin layer of the compound over the gpu) but now my temps are reaching 96C when playing RIFT on medium settings.... The fans are working as I can hear them blaring and feel air coming out, and GPU-Z confirms that showing my fan running at 100%.The strange thing is that while idle its staying fairly low at 50C
BLa5ter
30 Posts
0
April 23rd, 2011 06:00
blakeu
1 Rookie
•
25 Posts
0
April 23rd, 2011 11:00
Are other applications having similar problems? How does the system perform in 3D benchmarks?
Ferius
8 Posts
0
April 25th, 2011 01:00
@blakeu
Yeah, like I said above, even while playing LoL I'm still getting similar issues. I haven't tried a 3D benchmark yet but I probably will tomorrow after I clean it up,
Ferius
8 Posts
0
April 25th, 2011 01:00
Its not even a year old, maybe around 7 mounts. But it looks like my cpu actually hit 70C while I was just playing a game of league of legends and had the web browser open in the background, not very demanding things. So I think it might be a problem with the thermal paste. What do you think? But by any rate it looks like im going to have to pop it open tomorrow and check if it is dusty inside.
Currently its running 45-50C just playing a video on youtube and running the application
morblore
2 Intern
•
2.4K Posts
0
April 25th, 2011 06:00
If the dust build up is that bad why not put in a air filter?
BLa5ter
30 Posts
0
April 25th, 2011 06:00
Yes it seems temp is indeed your problem just like me. Before the de fluff i was running dawn of war 2 and company of heroes at about 80 degrees C then the system would just throttle down to cool down, this temp would be achieved in like half an hour. I even used throttlestop to stop this happening and the temp went all the way up to 101 degrees C !!! Then the system just turned it self off for safety. I redid the thermal paste first, which was very badly done by dell and very sloppy work. But that only made a slight difference. When you first take the back lid off you can see both the fans and they will likly have dust on them, but that isnt where the probkem lies. You have to get in behind the fans and right inside those air intake things at the back. Due to the design this requires almost every piece to be taken out including the front touch controls panel. There are screws in the screen to let you do this. Once you got most things out you will be able to unclip the vents as they are there own piece. Get in there and you will see a literal fluff/dust wall that is blocked 90% of the airflow. You can pick the whole thing out with your things and it all comes out in 1 blob off fluff. Then just for good measure use a compressed air can the clean out the narrow passages inside the vents. Put it all back together and try running things again. My temps went back to about 50-55 while running those 2 games on ultra settings and as a result the system never throttled down and so all performance isues were gone. Its quite a bit of work but once your done you will be so happy. You have to do this about once or twice a year. Really poor vent design and very difficult to access. Hope this helps
Ferius
8 Posts
0
April 25th, 2011 15:00
you'd have to take apart your system quite a lot just to change the filter then. At least with an open design there's more of a chance for the dust to get pushed back out (or at least that that I'm guessing, lol)
Ferius
8 Posts
0
April 25th, 2011 21:00
Okay, so I took it all apart and cleaned out the vents with some compressed air. The vents didn't have that much dust in them but I cleaned them out pretty good anyways. I removed the old thermal paste for both the CPU and GPU but now Im having an issue with my GPU getting to about 90C when playing and dropping down to an idle of about 55C even with new thermal paste. I'm going to re paste it again tomorrow and see if that helps.
My CPU on the other hand is running fairly cool, never passing 60C
Below is a log of the game that I played when It got to 90C
BLa5ter
30 Posts
0
April 26th, 2011 04:00
Well the good news is you have narrowed down the problem to heat control as 90 is way too high, so there are only a few things that could be wrong. Was the system reached thos temp before you redid the paste running the same game? If not you may have applied incorectly or not cealed it correctly. The are loads of guides on the best way to apply the paste. You have cleaned the vents out so air passage is not the problem it seems. Have you tried testing thr fans themselves and if they are working. Can you feel with your hand at the back a load of air coming out? Is one side more than the other? If this os still normal then the only other thing could be where you are using it. This may sound obvious but using it on like a duvet or aomething like that really heats it up, always use a hard surface. If all else fails you can always contact dell to repair it for you if you are still on warranty which you should be after 7 months. I was out off warranty when i had the heat problem amf phomed them up. They insisted they had to replace the motherboard and it was the only fix and wanted to charge £521. Told them to get lost, and i just did it myslef cleaning out the dust and saving a lot of money. Even in warranty dell are a pain in the behind understanding the people at the call center is hard enough.
Ferius
8 Posts
0
May 4th, 2011 12:00
Just put some new thermal paste to see what would happen (arctic silver 5) and the temps are even higher then before. I did what a guide told me to do (apply a thin layer of the compound over the gpu) but now my temps are reaching 96C when playing RIFT on medium settings.... The fans are working as I can hear them blaring and feel air coming out, and GPU-Z confirms that showing my fan running at 100%.The strange thing is that while idle its staying fairly low at 50C
Here is the sensor log: