Five Star Posted December 16, 2007 Report Share Posted December 16, 2007 (edited) Hi, I'm currently running into major problems with overheating with my go 7600 in an alienware m5550. It's currently idling on 77, and artifacts occur easily above that. I'm running the latest 169.09 driver and I've tried other drivers to no success. Any recommendations? I've also fixed the thermal grease and blown out all the dust in the face, so that's not the problem. Thanks Edit - also running on 32 XP Edited December 16, 2007 by Five Star Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
whitetigerx7 Posted December 16, 2007 Report Share Posted December 16, 2007 These Uniwill based systems often have been known to overheat. BE CAREFUL! Those systems when they overheat tend to make components on the motherboard burn out. You may want to see about how to downclock the CPU and possibly reduce some of the voltage if at all possible. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
llamuh Posted January 2, 2008 Report Share Posted January 2, 2008 Going to bump this since there was apparently no solution found. I've been experiencing the same issue with my Alienware m5550 since I got it a little over a year ago. It seems to be getting progressively worse, for whatever reason, but that could just be me. It's now nearly impossible to play games on my "gaming" notebook. I only had a year warranty and during that time my notebook was serviced twice due to the heat issues. Both times the issue got so bad that the video card eventually burned out. I attribute the problem to poor design on the heatsink and just general poor design for the cooling. They should have figured out a way to use two separate heatsinks with two separate fans. One of the replacement heatsinks they sent would keep my video card at about 46C at idle but would make my processor overheat pretty quickly making the computer unusable at more than just games, so I stuck with the other one that kept my CPU cool but made my video card overheat when under load. I've tried blowing things out consistently and using Artic Silver, removed the plastic panel covering the heatsink to allow for more air, got an aluminum cooling cooling pad with fans in it that elevates the notebook, but the problem persists. I'm going to attempt to play with voltages now and see if I can come up with anything. I'll keep you updated on my results. It's going to suck if it does help because that means that the faster video card and processor that I payed more for must be clocked/voltaged down to that of the cheaper options. Alienware has not been helpful on this. If all else fails I guess I will sell it for whatever I can get and go buy a Dell or something that I can get extended warranty/insurance on and then if i have issues like this where the manufacturer won't help, I can just 'accidently' leave it on top of my car and then drive off. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
llamuh Posted January 2, 2008 Report Share Posted January 2, 2008 *update* I have underclocked and undervolted my CPU and am still experiencing the heat issues. I've tried replacing the thermal pad that sits on the GPU which helped for a day or so but then it went back to overheating. Forgot to mention that in my previous post. I've tried removing the thermal pad and running off of Artic Silver alone but the video card overheated very quickly then. It's obviously not making the best contact with the heatsink but I don't know if that's the whole problem. When the GPU starts to overheat, you could easily burn yourself if you touched the heatsink so it apparently is making at least some contact. I have been trying to underclock the GPU with ntune but it refuses to accept my modified clock. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Five Star Posted January 8, 2008 Author Report Share Posted January 8, 2008 Sorry on the slow reply, I've been moving house w/o internet connection. Stock I think it idles at around 72. Using Drivers from here I've got it down to between 62 and 70(it depends on the fan). I replaced the thermal pad as the old one was buggered, but not much use. I haven't tried a external cooling solution as I was a bit skeptical about it. Like you said, it's a a design fault. It could be made a whole lot better by some software to control the fan, but I haven't managed to find any that works (or even detects the fan). A common issue I've found by searching is overheating when the fan button is pushed. I've looked it up and the fan button on the keyboard underclocks the cpu to allow the fan to come on less. It's officially something like a 'silent fan button'. I'll let you know how I go. I'm currently trying to source some good thermal pads and software to control the fan. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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