I got an Alienware 17 recently at a very cheap price. I've been loving it, but I noticed at one point while playing Unturned the fans were running like crazy for no apparent reason. More recently, I've been playing nothing but Overwatch, and the fans run at the same ridiculous level while the laptop gets relatively hot. What's odd is that if I unplug it, I can continue to play at max settings without a low framerate, but the fans go back down to normal and the temperature does the same. Obviously this has something to do with the way its managing power, but its very annoying and somewhat concerning. Is there anything I can do to fix it?
TL;DR laptop runs fans like crazy and gets super hot while plugged in running something it can run fine on battery.

8 years ago

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If its really hot in your area then usually a laptop (or tbh a desktop and a laptop do both...) can heat up extremely fast, and from my experience, really loud fans for anything isn't out of the ordinary, desktops and laptops both can suffer this in hot temperatures.

It's most likely getting hotter whilst charging as it is gained more energy from another source which is also heating up, so both temperatures add up together into the laptop.

Overwatch and Unturned have got some low requirements but I have heard a lot of complaints of them running really loud with the fans.

Seeing as you did get it cheap, there might be a negative about it, but this is unlikely unless you got it 2nd hand, as well, you sometimes have no idea whats happened to it.

8 years ago
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It was a floor model, so although it isn't exactly new per se.

On the topic of it charging while doing so, the laptop does have a setting for only charging at a certain threshold or whatever but for some reason I can't get it to work properly.

8 years ago
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Speaking as a friend who has an Alienware laptop, the heating up is normal. Unless the floor model was damaged and not cooling properly. You want to run it plugged in because it will use less power to the components.It also increases performance. Find the fans and clean them out first.

Also, get a good HDMI cable and hook it up to your tv. Better display and a higher refresh rate.

Can you please post your laptop specs as well?

8 years ago
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I'm curious but what would getting a HDMI cable do??

8 years ago
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... let them hook it up to the tv as mentioned?

8 years ago
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GTX 980M, i7 (probably Broadwell but I don't remember), 16 GB ram, 128 GB SSD, 1 TB HD.

I sometimes play on the screen and sometimes on my monitor, which is 24 inch and good in general. I have a nice TV but I honestly just prefer playing on my monitor or laptop screen. I always hated playing games on my old laptop screen which was 15.6 inch but this one is 17.something which is a world of difference.

8 years ago
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All laptops can get hot while playing games causing the fans to spin faster making more noise, my son had problems until he got a laptop fan and has no problems at all now. This is the one he's got https://www.amazon.co.uk/Zalman-ZM-NC3-Ultra-Cooler-Laptop/dp/B0091CVSYU It's been very good for the last few years so good he got another one not long back as a spare for the future but there are others out there you could get.

8 years ago
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Well, true fans run when they're excited. I bet Alienware has a lot of fans?

8 years ago
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