Aurora R4 overheating problem SOLVED!!!

I'm about to take my PC apart, which makes me nervous because I'm not that tech savvy, and start yanking out my coolant system.

I suggest you seek the help of a qualified computer technician. Things can go from bad to worse pretty quick.

Thanks guys but too late- I've already exposed the innards and taken out the old cooling pump. I have a Corsair H55 unit that was on sale at Best Buy for $49 but I don't see how to connect the power as the new unit has 3 pin connectors for both the fan and the coolant pump which won't fit into the attachment points for my original pump. I'm not sure how to connect my new coolant pump now. Any advice?

Dear god I am so glad I found this. I was so irritated that I could not stop the jet engines and then came to constant system overloads. I love you.

You can.

Truckin

you can put a 3 pin connector into a 4 I believe that's what I did with my h80i and it works great

Thanks bkeyes, I'll give that a try and connect the fan, but the connector for the new Corsair H55  pump unit is for 3 pins and the plug I need to connect to has 7. Dell/Alienware support has been next to useless and has only raised my frustration level to the boiling point. This is my 3rd Alienware computer and likely to be my last at this point. At this time I just need a working PC and soon but have done all I can do on my end.

Well, it looks like I've solved my cooling problem and am back in business!

I finally was able to hook up my Corsair H55 Liquid CPU Cooling Kit after much angst and not much help from Alienware Tech support (but definitely help from this thread). I'm not comfortable poking around the innards of my PC, but desperate times...

As you may have read, the H55 only has 3 pin connectors from its fan and liquid cooling pump, but the original Alienware unit connectors had 4 and 7 prong connectors. According to the experts here, you can just plug the 3 pin connector for the fan into the 4 pin System Fan connector. That left me with the pump connector to worry about.

Here is the inside of my Aurora R4 after removing the original Asetek liquid cooling pump and fan:

Here are the two connectors used by the original unit: the 4 pin System Fan connector and the 7 pin CPU Pump (Red Circles). On the right is a spare 4 pin connection just lying about (blue circle) :

At Best Buy I bought a $6 fan just because it came with a 3 to 4 pin adapter! Believe it or not I couldn't find another adapter at BB or Radio Shack so I bought the damn thing just for this:

I stuck it on the end of the cooling pump connector:

Then I installed the Corsair H55 fan and pump liquid cooling system using the original thermal compound which came with the H55. It is applied in a circle smaller than the surface dimensions of my CPU, but I just wanted to see if the thing worked at all:

So, I turned my PC back on and immediately got this message: "Alert- CPU fan failure. Press F1 to continue or F10 for setup."

I hit F1 to continue and, surprisingly, nothing exploded in a shower of sparks and flame.  The fan was barely audible, a far cry from the out of control jet engine I was used to hearing before my attempt at a fix. I put my hand behind the case and felt some airflow. Ran HWMonitor after a few minutes and my CPU temps had dropped from 103C/217F to 49-50C and 124F. I jumped onto iRacing to see if that would up the temp but things stayed pretty stable temperature-wise. I'm sure I could get better cooling if I removed the pre-applied thermal compound that came already on the H55 and covered a larger area with some of the Antec Formula 7 Nano Diamond Thermal Compound I also picked up at Best Buy. Heck, with a name like that I'm tempted to smear it all over me! What would be the best way to remove the original thermal compound- isopropyl alcohol or some other substance or specific removal compound?

It is applied in a circle smaller than the surface dimensions of my CPU,

Unless it stops cooling sufficently, I would say you are done.

I'm sure Corsair uses adeqate thermal compound. It normally goes on very thin (like one grain of rice is all you need). I'm not sure what you saw pre-applied, but I'm sure it spead-out evenly when compressed.

As you may have read, the H55 only has 3 pin connectors from its fan and liquid cooling pump,

Well, that means they both run at a constant/full speed. Perfect for Pump but Interesting Corsair used that for the fan. Well, I guess not I suppose. Dell-AW knew they had a PWM (controlled by MIO-Board) port to use. Corsair didn't have that luxury so they made it to work on any machine (and likely just used a quieter or lower rpm fan).

Forth wire is Speed Control. If that was needed or wanted, I suppose you could replace fan with PWM model. Command Center should then control fan ... 1200rpm until 65c then faster (up to 4000rpm) to hold temp around 70c max. Wait ... what am I saying ... just use old fan if you want to.

Pump ... doesn't matter how it gets it's 12v. However, unless you connect it (all 3 wires with tachometer wire) to that 7-pin connector ... seems like Command Center will always say Pump is 0-rpm. No biggie ... just saying. Pinouts for that connector are in my Anti-MIO thread. With a little solder and heat-shrink tubing ... you could build a pig-tail cable using the cable from the old trashed Asetek unit (and the fan adapter cable you already bought).

 Edit: This post is about an advanced mod. If you can't solder and use a meter (to check everything before connecting) ... I would not attempt it.

Like almost all a year ago I got my R4 and these symptoms begin to appear. it's really a <ADMIN NOTE: Profane word removed per TOU> this happen ... already where is all this thanks for the solution

Let me start off by saying thank you for posting this because i had the exact same issue.......

i called up dell after my pc 6 months after being purchased sounded like a helicopter and was told after they bench marked my pc using heaven that 72c was normal..... i complained and they said nothing could be done to lower the temps well 3 months after my pc ran out of warranty it started extreme overheating so i called they hinted it was something wrong with the liquid cooling yet they wouldn't admit they installed a faulty component into my pc...

i was told to fix my pc and i would be able to get it back into warrenty well i did just that and called got it back under warrenty the next day 4 gigs of ram goes missing they then say my warrenty is void cause it still has issues i told them i begged the tech on the phone that reinstated my warrenty to do a diagnostic check to ensure my pc was fine.. they said they were refunding my money i told them no its not what i want and that i want to speak with a suprivisor well the warrenty i got stayed =].  Now 1hr after getting off that call my pc freezes and wont boot at all. so tech comes out and replaces ram but still wont boot. They come 2 days later and swap mobos yet cannot get it past bios .. today i get it to boot windows and after they proform diagnostics i end the call shut off my pc and now loose a pci express 2.0 slot on mobo after over a week of headaches they are sending me a new pc!!! with potential free upgrades thank god i got the warrenty to stay but good luck if any of this happens to u

btw my system is intel i-7 3930 6core 3.2

2x amd raedon hd 7870's

16gigs ddr3 quad channel ram 

etcetcetc

we will see what i get as upgrades when i get my replacement pc