m15, temperature 100°C, thermal throttling

Mine is in the depot.

Once it arrives I will try the following, a couple of tweaks plus changing the ac adapter for a 240 W

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TII41QjxqOI&lc=z22vixyqxzmwthmgi04t1aokgzex4wf4wx2zg3jqsex0bk0h00410

I am having same issues thermal throttling, I am wondering though and can get nowhere with tech support.  If the computer is unplugged it will not heat up at all while plugged into the adapter it will thermal throttle in minutes!!  Has anyone thought about voltage regulators being in a bad spot and that is causing the cpu to overheat?

@DaveSpurge  There's a big difference in the CPU power and clock speed when running off battery. If you use something like HWInfo64, you'll likely see that on battery, the clock speeds are much lower than when running off mains. This is the main contributing factor to the lower temperatures.

For anyone experiencing thermal issues, the easiest steps initially are :

1. Ensure the rear of the laptop is elevated

2. Try changing the thermal profile to Quiet. This lowers power to the CPU, but from comments on other boards does not affect performance too much

If you then want to take it further I've found these steps can help even more:

3. Undervolt using something like Throttlestop. Plenty of guides on YouTube showing how to go about this

4. Repaste. Alienware have a guide on YouTube for this, showing that a good quality aftermarket paste may help with temperatures.

My M15 runs at around 50-65°c on CPU and GPU in games now with good performance, no stuttering, and no thermal throttling. 

Does anyone know if the new models with the RTX graphics still suffer from this issue or if Dell took the chance to revise the thermal cooling/use a better paste?

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@DougalAW wrote:

@DaveSpurge  There's a big difference in the CPU power and clock speed when running off battery. If you use something like HWInfo64, you'll likely see that on battery, the clock speeds are much lower than when running off mains. This is the main contributing factor to the lower temperatures.

For anyone experiencing thermal issues, the easiest steps initially are :

1. Ensure the rear of the laptop is elevated

2. Try changing the thermal profile to Quiet. This lowers power to the CPU, but from comments on other boards does not affect performance too much

If you then want to take it further I've found these steps can help even more:

3. Undervolt using something like Throttlestop. Plenty of guides on YouTube showing how to go about this

4. Repaste. Alienware have a guide on YouTube for this, showing that a good quality aftermarket paste may help with temperatures.

 

My M15 runs at around 50-65°c on CPU and GPU in games now with good performance, no stuttering, and no thermal throttling. 

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Mine went to repair depot, they fixed a wireless issue and seems temperatures are better, at least I am not reaching 100 c, without undervolt I am reaching 90c with undervolt I reach like 80c.

I would Re paste with Artic Silver 5 high des Paste I was hitting 90c in American truck sim, some other EA games never even hit that high like BFV didnt even rock the house but it sounds like you need to re paste ur CPU and GPU its a pain in the a$$ however once you learn to take the machine apart its easy the next time I would highly recommend youtube the disassembly or else you could easily kill the ribbons 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/ARCTIC-SILVER-5-HIGH-DENSITY-THERMAL-COMPOUND-3-5G-NEW/252758395130?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m2749.l2649

the only solution for me was to use liquid metal! I'm getting 92C max playing metro exodus in ultra settings.

Good to hear @Joe1984PS .

I ordered mine few days ago. And I have exactly the same issues people going through. I tried to make it work but now im waiting for the technician to come replace the heatsink and fans as they said. 

Im curious to know how did it end up for you. What do you think was the issue and what ended up being the solution??

Appreciate you sparing some of your valuable time. 

Hey guys, just received mine during a replacement of my old 15 R4 that had a lot of screen issues.

Quick feedback for everyone about the heat issues and maybe a solution. Since I still got the 15 R4 for the last days, I thought I make a quick comparison.

During gaming the 2070 max q in AC Origins...was about 15 - 20 FPS higher compared to the 1070. 1070 was about 40-50 FPS while the 2070 Max Q is about 60-65. Take it for what you want. I am happy with results.

Now about the heat...during the gaming and max settings...I had my m15 around 10-12 Celcius higher heat then my older 15 R4. I am from Germany so not sure how much F it would be. I

do tend to have my gaming system run on balanced Energy mode. In this mode..I turned off the turbo boost for the CPU. I am not sure about Battlefield...but for the games I play...there are no FPS drawbacks by turning off the Turbo Boost.

The CPU and all other components are much cooler with turned off turbo boost. You can do it in the energy settings by going into the advanced settings and lower the maximum CPU energy consumption from 100% to 99 or 95%. That would tell the system to stop going above 99% and therefore not using the turbo boost.

My 6 cores working at around 2 Ghz each. Now if I want the turbo boost for installation or anything else...I just switch from balanced more to full power in the energy settings on the desktop.

Quick info about cooling pads. Flat on the table without anything else...the GPU temps are around 82C. With a turned off cooling pad around 72C and with a running cooling pad at about 67C. I mostly game on a cooling pad and a controller just relaxing on the couch. And for that.. I am happy to have a RTX 2070, a 144Hz Screen and only around 2kg weight :)

hope it can help someone enjoy the new system

Am about to get mine, as a replacement for 17r5 ! 

As for what am seeing, its a waste .. to get the m17, with 2080 RTX, new gen 

can you guys give me a real piece of info either should it get that system or not !  

its getting tight as i meed to start working on my thesis as architect i do a lot of render ! So let me know it would be great to hear from you 

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@sithvrix wrote:

I found something interesting, if I use laptop with only battery, temperature stays below 70, once I plug in it will reach 100, doing the same stuff and I don't see a difference in performace betwen battery and power supply (I was playing battlefiled V). Have you try this?

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@Joe1984PS wrote:

105 Celsius is not normal, Intel specifies that the junction temperature for this processor is 100 Celsius, everything over 100 is taking life out of you processor, I'm not getting a replacement weird because in my company this is considered a out of box failure. they will replace the heatsink and fans if that does not solve my problem I will send it back I have nothing against dell but its a very expensive computer.

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well, that is because on battery, windows caps the cpu clock to something like 2.20 (not sure the exact number). You can do this without unplugging by dropping max cpu usage from %100 to %99 in power options, but this will affect performance, which you may not necessarily notice it in games. In addition, you can do these:

1- undervolt cpu and cap its clock speed using throttlestop (search n read articles on how to)

2- update all drivers

3- fresh install windows

IF none of these work,

4- do a thermal repaste.

I tried combinations of undervolting -1.150, 99% Power Setting, reduced Turbo Boost Max and Turbo Boost Short Power Max Power in XTU.

What I liked the most was to keep Turbo boost on so I defaulted all my settings and just reduce Turbo Boost Max and Turbo Boost Short Power Max to both 50W. XTU Benchmark max temp was at 82C at 3.87GHz. Im happy with that so thats the only setting I have to keep my m15 tamed.

I have had my m15 for three months but just started to play high end games like players underground and was playing the game and it just froze up the screen and I had to hold the power button to restart.  I then installed a software to let me know the temps of my computer and the cpu temps were in the 90's when I was running the game and the high was 102c.  I then spent two hours with a support person from alienware this morning and she saw that the temps were high and told me that it might be a software issue and wanted me to do a factory reset of the computer  (no way) I told here you saw the temps even at idle were very high not running anything.  I have AC in the room, I have the computer on a pad that has 5 fans in it, and also I had another small fan blowing across the notebook but still the high temps.  Finally she got approval to have them send me a box to send in to them for service (now without a computer for a week or longer, thank goodness I have a couple of others but not the gaming speed of computer that I need)  Hopefully it is the heat sync issue and they can repair it quickly.

which cooling pad you are using?