Alienware M17x R3 FPS Suddenly Drops

Dosage · Apr 4, 2015

Hello everyone!

I bought an Alienware M17x R3 in early 2011, and it was great for gaming until a few months when I noticed sudden drops on FPS. To be specific, the FPS rate drops down from 60 FPS to somewhere between 10 and 15 for about 30 seconds and then returns to normal again. Using MSI Afterburner to monitor the drops on FPS, I gathered these information while running DotA 2 for only 30 minutes:

GPU: 74 Degrees Celsius
CPU: 83 Degrees Celsius
FPS: 12.9 FPS

Specs:

CPU: i7 2820 QM
GPU: GTX 460m
RAM: 8 Gigabytes

Last but not least, I know that these temperatures are somewhat very high, and can be by all means what's causing the FPS to drop, but I am looking forward to hearing your suggestions on how I should act to fix the problem.

Questions:
Do you think heat is the main problem that is causing this?
Should I dissemble the Alienware and clean the fans?
Should I reapply thermal paste to the heat sinks?
Should I get a Master Cooler cooling pad?
Should I upgrade the GPU or is it a waste on a laptop?

Thank you for reading this!

Turb0Yoda · Apr 4, 2015

Heat seems to be the problem.. Take it apart, clean out the dust. If that helps, but you experience drops in FPS, reapply Thermal paste to both the GPU and CPU. If that does not totally fix the problems, then try a cooling pad. No point in upgrading a laptop GPU. Bossyfins, over at the sister site, had a similar problem. He cleaned out the dust and the laptop could play games and not get frame drops...

Dosage · Apr 4, 2015

Thank you for taking the time to read my thread and post a reply to it. I really appreciate your being here.

It appears to be that heat is the problem, because I notice a decline in FPS the longer the CPU or GPU stay hot. I'll get some compressed air and thermal paste this evening and do some cleaning to this poor Alienware, and I'll definitely let you know the result first thing after the cleaning is done in 2 to 3 days.

P.S. I am not convinced either that I should upgrade the GPU since it won't give me a much greater performance.

Turb0Yoda · Apr 5, 2015

It won't do much. I doubt it's upgradable either... Never seen an upgradable Alienware

Dosage · Apr 6, 2015

I am thankful for your being active on my thread. I really appreciate your replies.

Here are the updates:

I just did some minor cleaning to the fans using Q tips to clean most of the dust on them. Then I used my hands to remove a handful of things that were blocking the vents and causing heat to accumulate. Now I can hear the fans breathing again. The heat of the GPU and CPU never went above 61 degrees again! The FPS now is constantly on 60-70 FPS when I am playing DotA 2. This was all accomplished with just some minor cleaning without using compressed air, thermal paste, or a cooling pad! I am impressed!

Turb0Yoda :

Some people claim that the Alienware M17x R3 is completely upgradable with the 780m and 880m cards, and with the 980m with some modding. However, I doubt that the Alienware M17x R3's PSU is powerful enough to run any of those cards to their maximum (needs confirmation).

Thank you for suggesting that I should treat the problem of heat! I'll get my hands on a compressed air can next to blow the dust off the fans and see how it goes.

Turb0Yoda · Apr 7, 2015

You should take the thing apart and THEN used compressed air. Otherwise you are blowing the stuff back in and that makes it worse.

Dosage · Apr 7, 2015

Turb0Yoda :

Man! I can't thank you enough for following this thread.

There is nothing to worry about as I wouldn't do anything of this sort. I'll surely unplug the fans, unscrew them, and take them out before blowing off the dust on them.

Thank you very much for your concern!

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