This post is more than 5 years old
2 Posts
0
10933
Help! Graphics card going on Alienware Aurora ALX
Hey guys, so here is my story:
I bought my beautiful Alienware Aurora ALX in Jan 2010... Best machine I've ever owned! Well about 6 months ago my machine started making this loud horrid humming noise and my hard drive crashed. Least to say, I was <ADMIN NOTE: Profanity removed as per TOU> . Ordered a new one, rebooted the system and everything was great. About a month later the noise started coming back. I'm anal about checking temps, everything was perfect within normal range but I was still worried to say the least. So long story short I deemed the culprit was the fan of my liquid cooling system. After about 3.5 months of useless tech support calls to Dell and the frusteration of staring at my so called top-of-the-line gaming computer sitting in the corner useless I finally received not just the $50 fan piece I needed for the unit, but the entire cooling unit itself. I was SO happy, I replaced the unit right away and started up my beast who was now purring like a kitten. I thought all my problems were solved until the next day my machine emited this HORRID loud grinding!!!!! I did the research, and found out its one of my graphics cards. The card is constantly overheating, but all the diagnostics I've run tell me the card is fine! I try to play a game, the computer shuts itself off within 5 min of opening it. I have tried everything I could think of, Ive removed both cards and thoroughly cleaned then, spun the fans, tried touching parts of the card while running to see if it would stop the noise.... Nothing is working short of the fact that I now have a personal fan pointed directly at the cards to keep them cool.
Has anyone had this issue before? Do I need to buy a new graphics card? Or is there a simpler fix? And is it possible to run my machine on a single card until I can get fix this problem?
I must say, I've dreamed of owning an Alienware since I was 13... When I finally could afford this machine I was happy beyond words... but after everything I've gone through, the parts I've had to replace, the constant problems, horrible customer service and the fact that for about 6 months I was unable to play on a machine I spent WAY too much money on... I am utterly disappointed and I don't think I will ever buy one again. It is not worth it.
NataliaatAW
2 Intern
2 Intern
•
835 Posts
1
November 29th, 2012 15:00
Yes, I think the video card needs to be replaced.
NataliaatAW
2 Intern
2 Intern
•
835 Posts
0
November 26th, 2012 09:00
Hello Horsie101,
Check if this is what's happening to your system and let me know.
ALIENWARE Aurora R1, R2 & R3: Cable interference on secondary graphics card fan
horsie101
2 Posts
0
November 27th, 2012 09:00
Hi Natalia,
Thank you so much for answering, I looked into the link you posted and I don't believe that's the problem. I took both cards out and ran them separately, one card operates fine and the other is on the verge of overheating within 5 minutes of booting up my system and continues to make a grinding/clicking noise while the other runs perfectly quiet. I also switched the slots the cards were in to check for interference and regardless of position the one card always overheats and emits that terrible noise. Literally within minutes of turning the system on, the card is reading at 90-96 degrees while the other stays within 50-65 degrees and the fans work on both. I haven't gotten the blue screen of death since my hard drive fried, but when the card overheats my screen just goes black, the power light goes to standby on the monitor and I can hear sounds for about a min then it all goes quiet.
I'm assuming I'd need to buy a new graphics card, or could it be something specific to the fan/heatsink on the card that I can replace?
PaulStephen
5 Posts
0
November 29th, 2012 17:00
I have a question i just got My alien Auror R4 about 3 days ago and was updating windows driver an such but stoped with upgrading the duel GTX 555s video drivers when i read a post saying not to update these drivers from nividea but throught the Dell website I was wondering why? and if i updated frome nividea would that cause instabillity problems on my system?
NataliaatAW
2 Intern
2 Intern
•
835 Posts
0
November 30th, 2012 09:00
Hello Paul,
The reason for this is that Dell drivers has been validated and tested to work properly on this video card, that doesn't mean that the Nvidia drivers will always present issues, it's just that they have not been tested specifically for your system so we wouldn't know with certainty if they will work properly or not.