my alienware 14 cannot charge, spoiled motherboard i think, anywhere to repair in penang?

just found out dell has released the latest bios updates for m17x r4 and aw18 r1, to fix intel's spectre/meltdown bugs. this is impressive.

edit: not many laptop manufacturers are doing this to protect their customers, especially for old laptops.


This post has been edited by horns: Apr 6 2018, 07:16 PM

Wondering if I update my Alienware M17x-R4 unit will it work with NVidia GTX 770 card. Currently with custom BIOS.

you can run m17x r4 with different cards without using custom bios. i have one running 880m, stock bios.

Hi sifus, correct me if I am in the wrong section.

I just upgraded my old M15X from 460M to 860M. Installed with modified .inf
However, the temperature on idle was on 70'c and on load it goes up to 90+ (then it throttles). (With some cheap thermals)
Hence, it performed worse compared to my 460M

What problem could it be?

it's either bad thermal paste application, or incompatible gpu heat sink. (i.e. stock gpu heat sink might be insufficient to dissipate heat)

for the first one, reopen the gpu heat sink, and see if thermal paste covers all of the die surface. if not, clean it up and reapply the thermal paste (dot/rice method)

the second one is tricky. afaik, models like m17x r4 came with 2 types of gpu heat sinks, depending on gpu. for 660m they use a dual-heat-pipe heatsink; for 680m, they came with a 3-heat-pipe heatsink. (the additional heat pipe help to dissipate heats more efficiently). i'm not sure about m15x.

Thanks! I will try reapplying the thermal paste and pads. It got nothing to do with the drivers right? I had to use a modded .inf to install it because M15X does not support 860M officially.

ok try that first. it's not supposed to be drivers. we all use modded .inf for these cards hehe

Why is this happening? Just realised it. Both sides near the trackpad is bulging. Could it be battery?

this is bad. yes it's possible that the battery went bad and caused this. take out and inspect the battery.

Yep. Confirmed is battery. Throw away d. Dell quote me battery rm590+200 workmanship. I biy online only rm259l0 from dell distributor.
Btw, why thos happen so sudden? Do you know whats the cause? High temperature?

from what i have read, there are multiple potential causes for a battery to swell. overheated is one, overcharged can cause this too, or simply the battery is too old.

well, it's better to take out the battery when it's not in use. for old laptops i usually do that.

Considering the laptop is only 3 years old, not too old right. I think might be overcharged, because i always leave iy plugged to downloas stuff. Well, the battery is non removable and built in. I thought that iys okay to leave it plugged for lithium ion battery?

uh? just 3 years old? no not old at all. my m17x r4 are reaching 6. the batteries are removable so i took them out when i don't use these machines.

there must be some mechanisms to prevent over-charging for laptop's batteries (like smart phones) that's why they can do built-in batteries. my laptops are plugged in all the times when they were actively used. (aw18 r1 and xps has built-in batteries like yours)

since gas generation exist in lithium ion batteries, i think it's better to change them after a few years of use.

no idea why my battery bloated so fast, haha
Anyway, where to find the options for desktop mode for the battery? Cant find in anywhere, AW13 R2 2015

yes.. u purchased de?

well it's not that uncommon actually, especially for slim laptops to get this.

er usually it's in the popup menu when you right click =power icon in notification area at the lower right.

**Edit: Apparently there is a weird issue going on and I solved it. I actually had to apply some pressure to the heat sink and then temp magically dropped from 90'c to 50'c on load. I think there is some gap between the heat sink and the gpu. So, I ended up placing a hard object between the heat sink and the laptop stand just to apply pressure to it constantly.

Tried replacing thermal using thermal grizzly kryonaut.
It did help by preventing the pc from auto shutting down on load now.
However, whenever when I load up again the temperature shoots up to 93'c in 10 secs after I load any game and the gpu began throttling.

Attached is the gpu reading on idle state


This post has been edited by kviel1396: Apr 11 2018, 01:13 AM

how's the spread of thermal paste on the gpu die previously? did it cover almost all of the die?

can you take a picture of the gpu heat sink with the heat pipes shown? sorry i'm not really familiar with m15x.

I managed to find out the issue already. Editted my last post. Apparently I need to push the heat sink in. Im not sure why isit so. The screws are tight. Thickness of the thermal pad maybe?