Alienware 17 R1 Ranger GPU VRM cooling solution!

[Johndill]

 

This is the Ranger version of my GPU VRM extra cooling mod that I did on my M17x R4 here.

This mod requires bottom shell cutting. This is just a show and tell and not a tutorial. If you want to try this mod yourself be carfull when cutting and !!THOROUGHLY CLEAN OUT THE BOTTOM CASE OF METAL SHARDS & SHAVINGS WITH WATER & COMPRESSED AIR!! The metal shards from cutting are as small as dust & will be hard to fully clean, you do NOT want to have metal pieses shorting out your motherboard. Also cover your LED cables in the casing when washing with water, there are three, left, right & front. 🙂

First there is a center bar that had to be cut out in order for the HDD bay and MXM bay to be opened together. I used a hack saw but a dremal would be much easier.

Covered up the bear metal with permanent marker.

Final pictures. 🙂

It's no big difference to regular temps but does improve VRM cooling as the VRM end of the heatsink normally gets saturated with heat not going anywhere quickly but now it can! 🙂

 

Temps improved even more when you have the back of your system elevated to allow more intake. Some people use fan pad coolers but I've never needed to do more than this. My custom wood stand has a slit on the inside to give room for the vents.

 

[aldarxt]

This is exactly what I do , but I use a long piece of wood all the way across the back, It keeps the hot air from returning under the back and also keeps the table top from heating up which heats up the intake air

[aldarxt]

I noticed in the 4th pic the thermal pad that goes under the gpu card I also had one in my m17xr4 and removed it, the temps of the ssd/hdd dropped 10c and the card (p4000) also runs cooler. When I first got the m17xr4 in Feb. 2022 I installed a 2tb qvo in the first slot and put the 500gb hdd in the 2nd slot next to the gpu.

The hdd was running over 60c to about peaking at 70c so I switched the drives because ssd can handle more heat than hdd. Was not happy with the temps so the next time I opened the gpu and saw that thermal pad I decided to remove it to see what would happen and it paid off alot. It must be letting air flow from the ssd and cooling off the whole inside. The ssd hangs around 50c to 52c and the P4000 at 60c under load like mining and 3DMark episodes