R4 common issues and fixes

Hello, I thought i'd write this to help others with common problems with the R4. The R4 is great system if "working" problem is its a high end system with a couple very cheap after market products that can cause havoc and much frustration, especially if you are not cpu savy.

First of all when ever you have a problem with an alienware system try researching it yourself, use Dell as your "LAST" option, never your first (i'll explain why as I go through the problems)

Probably the most common issue with the R4's especially around the 2 year old stage is the transformation of your R4 into a jet engine... what I mean is the system fans will start going full blast all the time sounding like the cpu wants to take off. This will start when playing games and get worse as times goes on to the point of your fans going full blast just browsing the web. Dell will tell you this is driver, bios, or thermal control issues...not the case at all. The water pump is junk and after about 2 years the solution turns to gel blocking the internal rads in the water pump blocking flow. There is videos to show to attempt to remove the gunk but it is not worth the time, I simply replaced mine with corsair model that cost $65 and system went from 90 down to 28 and works perfect to this day and still stable at 28-30 (use RealTemp for accurate readings)

Next fun one would be booting to a black screen with blinking curser, this has happened to me twice and the first time I called dell and they told me I bricked my motherboard... after doing some research I found to fix the problem was to simply clear the cmos using the jumper method (jumper is under vid card so you'll have to remove this, its the jumper on the right). Not sure what causes this issue (best guess bad voltage config in bios) but this method fixes it. This fix takes 1 minute compared to the $300 option ell gave me of buying a replacement MB lol.

Next issue I have come across is the 5 beep no post RTC problem. Alot of people have had this issue and can be the most confusing because the beep code is not true or accurate. RTC is real time clock which basically keeps track of time and date when the cpu is on or off. When asking Dell about this issue they simply said my mb was fried. I decided again to research the problem myself, after nearly going mad trying to fix this problem I took it to a local cpu store and he said he has seen the problem before with other R4's. He simply took my video card out swaped it with a different one, system booted instantly, then shut down the system put my original video card back in and magically worked and behold my MB wasnt fried. He said the problem is that the voltage for the R4's were never set correctly and causes the system to basically go into a coma state. I have seen many people with this problem and Dell telling them to upgrade to an unsafe bios version (which voids your warrente) that commonly fries motherboards. So I suggest not upgrading the bios and just go buy the cheapest vid card you can to do the swap trick.

Any Thermal Controller issues(errors) can be simply fixed with clearing the cmos... The thermal controls are over complicated and way to integrated into the bios to be fixed with drivers or updates. When contacting dell about this they told me to first update all my drivers, then update thermal control app, after that didn't work I was told either my video card or motherboard was to blame and would need to be replaced (starting to think this is there answer to every problem)

Lastly this isn't an issue just a dirty trick Dell did to everyone with the R4's... remember when you ordered your R4 and had the option to have it over clocked for $100? Well my friends this is free and can be done with one simple click in the bios (see video's on how to do this) takes 30 seconds....

Long story short i'm not dissing the dell reps as they simply are just reading from a screen on troubleshooting tips and chances are havn't even seen, let alone worked on a R4 before. If I had listed to Dell on each of these issues I would have wasted over $1200 and still had the same problems that I was able to fix for the total price of $65 (for the new water pump)

Hope this helps some of you~