- May 1, 2016
- 1
- 0
- 1,510
Yes, yes, I know there is little excuse to still be rocking an Alienware x51 (r1 no less) in this day and age. I am a little starved for cash at the moment, however, and have had to settle for upgrading the graphics card from the obsolete GT 545 to a GTX 960, specifically this one (http://bit.ly/1MKMmph). I additionally upgraded from the default 240w Alienware power supply to the 330w.
The card itself is more than powerful enough to satisfy my gaming needs, and after I put it in, it easily handles strenuous modern games such as Dark Souls 3 on high settings. The issue is that while doing so, at clock speeds where the card should be running fairly cool (1050-1150 mHz) it insteads heats up rapidly to 79-81 celsius and has its fan blowing loud enough to cut right through noise-cancelling headphones (not to mention annoy the hell out of my roommates). I have not yet experienced a crash, i.e. the card has never gotten quite up to the mid-80s where it is supposed to force a shutdown, but I have also not played for much longer than an hour at a time because the noise is just too distracting. If it helps, all temperatures were determined with gpu-z.
I can't think of what could be causing this other than the fact that the x51 case is small and tightly packed, and thus hampers the airflow needed for a relatively powerful graphics card. I've looked up various solutions for modding the case to solve this, and I've narrowed down two steps I would have no problem taking (if they actually work):
-Removing the metal on inside of the left side of the case (the side that can be removed to access interior).
-Removing the optical drive bay (which I don't use) to include another fan/aftermarket cooling solution.
My question is whether I'm right that poor airflow is the cause of my GPU issues and if so whether either of these two steps would help. Additional suggestions are welcome. Thank you in advance for reading.
The card itself is more than powerful enough to satisfy my gaming needs, and after I put it in, it easily handles strenuous modern games such as Dark Souls 3 on high settings. The issue is that while doing so, at clock speeds where the card should be running fairly cool (1050-1150 mHz) it insteads heats up rapidly to 79-81 celsius and has its fan blowing loud enough to cut right through noise-cancelling headphones (not to mention annoy the hell out of my roommates). I have not yet experienced a crash, i.e. the card has never gotten quite up to the mid-80s where it is supposed to force a shutdown, but I have also not played for much longer than an hour at a time because the noise is just too distracting. If it helps, all temperatures were determined with gpu-z.
I can't think of what could be causing this other than the fact that the x51 case is small and tightly packed, and thus hampers the airflow needed for a relatively powerful graphics card. I've looked up various solutions for modding the case to solve this, and I've narrowed down two steps I would have no problem taking (if they actually work):
-Removing the metal on inside of the left side of the case (the side that can be removed to access interior).
-Removing the optical drive bay (which I don't use) to include another fan/aftermarket cooling solution.
My question is whether I'm right that poor airflow is the cause of my GPU issues and if so whether either of these two steps would help. Additional suggestions are welcome. Thank you in advance for reading.
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