Alienware M14x shutting down

brando1208,

Start by tracking the temperature on your system, to see if there are any signs of overheating issues, check out this link with the recommended tools to use.

Hi brando1208,

I wanted to check the status of the system, where you able to check the system temperatures?

I am having the same issue with my M14x R2 (6 weeks old). It happens only when I am not connected to ac adapter and playing graphic intensive games. I checked my temperatures but they look perfectly fine. I think it has something to do with the battery not being able to provide the power being drawn by the system at full load. If you could please help me with this issue, it would be much appreciated.

System Specs: 2gb Nvidia 650m (driver v306.97), Bios AO9, Windows 7 64 bit, i7-3720qm, 12gb ram

Hello Alex_Elec_Eng,

If the temperatures are fine, follow these steps and let me know how it goes!

Hey, I'm having exactly the same problem with my 5 day old M14x R2,  Except it doesn't always take 10 minutes, it appears to be linked to the Nvidia GPU somehow, perhaps not able to draw enough power.  

I've ran GPU-Z and recreated the problem and can confirm after trying multiple times that the GPU is not overheating.

Alienware-Karen, I followed the suggested link, The laptop runs fine using the Intel 4000 HD card while on batteries for general use.  It will shutdown unexpectedly while running graphical games on the Nvidia GT650M card, so following the steps in your link did not make any difference.

I've been promised a call back from tech support tomorrow when there is a specialist available? (so much for 1 day in home warranty repairs eh??)

Not my first Alienware system, I've had a few, although this is my first Dell Alienware system. (I temporarily moved to the darkside with Apple macbook's)... Please don't make me regret my decision to come back.......

Hi  m15chief,

The battery life during games depend on the settings for the power plan, also the brightness, bluetooth, WiFi usage and the game itself, can produce the battery discharges sooner than using the system for general use.

Hello again, 

I'm sorry i've not been replying lately, i went on a holiday for a couple of weeks. I have checked the temperature of the laptop, and they're fine, and following the steps indicated in one of the responses did not seem to work either, as i can't get the battery out of the laptop. Is there any other things i may be able to do to fix this problem?

brando1208

Check out this article, follow the step 6 (Battery Checker), if possible upload pictures for the batterymon test so I can check the battery status.

Hey again,

i have done the battery test, and have taken a picture of it. Where exactly can i upload these pictures?

Hi Brando1208,

You can upload them here. Click on the link that says "Use rich formatting" on the lower right hand corner, and then find the button that has a little image in it, click on it and upload it.

I'm not too sure if this is what you were after, so if you need more, just ask

Hello brando1208,

I reviewed the results for the battery test and it looks fine, please check the power setting on your system and set them to high performance. However I would recommend to run your games with the ac adapter plugged in because the battery might not supply enough power to the system.

Hi Karen, after just playing for a half hour on intense graphics, i realise what appears to be the problem. The location of the fan underneath the computer causes the whole thing to overheat and shut itself off. The single ventilation at the back of the laptop is not sufficient enough to allow the computer to cool down. It's a shame that there is nothing that can be done about it, considering that in almost every other aspect the computer is perfect. Well, thank you for your help

Hey Brando, I've been having the same trouble. The laptop will only power back on with the AC even though the battery is full and there is a message saying the battery is temporarily shut down until the temperature returns to normal.

Problem is, all of the sensors are reading within tolerable limits.

I've done lots of testing to try and find the true root cause, I have the laptop sat on a cooler master U3 and have multiple programs logging temperatures and voltages.  Its not as predictable as it was (I could load up Hitman on ultra 1080p and it would shut down immediately) but it still happens.

The other thing i've noticed is that the Intel HD Graphics gets hot.. still within limits but 80-85C..  I've checked and double checked and the game is being played on the nVidia card so i'm not entirely sure why the intel graphics are getting so hot.  I'm thinking that could now be the overhead cause, but as its integrated it could only be a board problem, or worst case poor system design.  (I'm hoping its not the latter and these surely must be isolated cases for a few main boards)

I've got an engineer booked today to swap out my mainboard and battery (Which i'm less than chuffed about as the laptop isn't even 1 month old yet) but while he's here i'll have him do a repaste with my 24 carrat IC Diamond thermal paste to see if that also helps & will report back here to let you know.

ok, mainboard and battery replaced about 30 minutes ago.. I had the engineer use my Ic Diamond paste instead of the dell supplied paste and already temperatures on the CPU and GPU are much lower.  They weren't unusually high to start with, but i'm seeing a good 5 deg difference using better paste.

I've run some quick checks and also so far I can see the temp of the NVidia and the Intel HD cards seem pretty static.  I've tried using MSI kombustor and 3dMark11, bith of which would cause a shutdown on the highest settings previously.  Also temperatures appeare to peak around 60 deg, not going much further.

New board is on A09 bios, which is the bios I originally had when these shutdowns started happening & the reason I was told to try A10.

I'll report back if I get any more random shutdowns, after I've upgraded the bios back to A10