Help With Alienware Notebook Overheateing

[setotitan]

hey guys i know i'm not a seasoned poster on here and that a lot of people despise alienware, however i'm hoping for some serious help. my brother was just on here and got such great advice on building his system i thought i'd give it a shot....

i've got an alienware area51 m5550 notebook with a intel duo 2.17gHz with 2gb of memory a geforce go 6600 graphics card, running vista 32bit home premium edition. i don't know if you need to know all those specs but i was just hoping it would give some insight into what's going on. my laptop runs great, it doesn't stall or hang or do anything crazy like that. however there is one MAJOR issue, it overheats and shuts down constantly! the only way i can seem to remedy the situation is to use a cooling pad. it's just such a pain carrying it everywhere and monopolizing my usb ports and even then some times it still overheats. i get about 2 hours of work out of it and that's it. i'm not in graphic design, or i don't do any intensive gaming, i just wanted something that had the power when i needed it. when i was looking at laptops i wanted the best. and thinking about all my talks with techy IT types they always mentioned alienware. little did i know that it was all overpriced hype. i've had nothing but headaches from them. i've sent my laptop in several times and they still can't fix it. i live in this tiny little town with one computer repair store and their best advice is to "shut it off when it feels hot" what a joke!!

anyways i was wondering if anyone had any advice. i mean do i need a bigger fan or should i crack it open and use thermal paste everywhere? i guess my major issue is that i'm fully confident opening up desktops and poking around but i've never opened a laptop before. so i'm open to any suggestions, and i'm not opposed to rolling up my sleeves and getting dirty.

 

[Charr]

The M5550 line is notorious for a bad cooling solution. If you open it up, before careful, as laptops are always extremely tight on the inside, and are hard to work with. However, you may see some benefit by re-seating and re-pasting the heatsinks on the GPU and CPU. When you do that, make sure you use the thinnest amount of paste possible, and by thinnest I mean it is so thin it is still semi transparent.

 

[the_cultie]

I'd second that, some laptops have really crappy thermal compound which can lead to overheating. And as Charr said be careful if you open it up, there isn't much space to work with.

*Edit*
Ben333 has just posted a nice guide to opening up laptops here

 

[bryan_d]

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=228254

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=228560

http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=55011

http://www.techpowerup.com/55011/Alienware_Area_51_m15x_Hit_by_Overheating_and_Cracking_Issues?.html

All links related to your fast laptop. Indeed, so fast at everything including overheating!

Good luck,

bryan d

PS - I hope you have warranty

 

[setotitan]

wow! i mean i've ever since i've experienced this problem i've done a ton of research and it's pretty confirmed that this model overheats. what blows my mind is that there's no solution. i mean i would think that someone would have figured it out, like modding your case, or changing the fan out. i've just never heard of something so trivial like a case cooling issue dooming an entire system. again i don't have a lot of experience working with notebooks, but maybe it's just because it is a notebook that no one can fix it. well it's a tough pill to swallow but thanks for confirming my fears. i figured if anyone had an answer you guys would. guess i just need to start saving for a new computer

 

[Automata]

wow! i mean i've ever since i've experienced this problem i've done a ton of research and it's pretty confirmed that this model overheats. what blows my mind is that there's no solution. i mean i would think that someone would have figured it out, like modding your case, or changing the fan out. i've just never heard of something so trivial like a case cooling issue dooming an entire system. again i don't have a lot of experience working with notebooks, but maybe it's just because it is a notebook that no one can fix it. well it's a tough pill to swallow but thanks for confirming my fears. i figured if anyone had an answer you guys would. guess i just need to start saving for a new computer

Then you haven't seen my Toshiba

7900GTX overheats like no other, unusable.