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1 Rookie
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3 Posts
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19
October 10th, 2025 07:10
m18 R1, 7900M - 80+Celcius while idle, random shutdowns
Issue #1 -
I have the TCC set to 15 so the temperature is capped at 85C but it hits that temp at idle lol. Even with low cpu usage (1-10%). So I uninstalled the alienware command center and it actually goes down to 65-70C. Any thoughts?
Issue #2 -
Laptop has randomly shutdown around 5-10 times while playing a game. Shutdown could be 5 minutes in or 30 seconds. CPU temp holds at 85-86 C due to TCC offset so I don't "think" its temp related, but who knows.
Event viewer just shows "unexpected shutdown". Not much else.
Anyone got experience with this?
No Events found!
anne_droid
3 Apprentice
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1K Posts
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October 10th, 2025 12:02
Hi
Could the thermal paste be the culprit, and require renewing?
user_b8e6d5
1 Rookie
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3 Posts
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October 10th, 2025 20:58
@anne_droid
I doubt thats the case. After tons of troubleshooting I believe its actually due to the gpu pulling too many watts causing an instant shutdown. Using HWinfo I have collected some logs and after reading them theres a massive spike and then the shutdown. The spike is anywhere from 205-230 watts.
A fix would be it seems to limit the power of the 7900m. Anyone know if possible?
mattyb3
5 Practitioner
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1.6K Posts
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October 14th, 2025 21:16
@user_b8e6d5 230W does seem way too high for this GPU. From what I can see online, you could try reducing the refresh rate of your display. Something like this,
You can also try adjusting some settings in the AMD software and making sure the drivers are up to date.
user_b8e6d5
1 Rookie
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3 Posts
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October 16th, 2025 19:15
@mattyb3
Thanks for the reply but I believe the laptop to be a major time cost for myself if I ended up keeping it. I have owned many laptops and worked on them throughout the years.
I put around 10 hours of diagnostics into this thing after 2 days. Actually installed every single driver there is for this particular machine for the gpu. I think everything points to a hardware defect, possibly in the power supply itself. I say this as a hunch because I have seen others with this laptop and dell ended up shipping them a 'newer version' of a power supply which makes me think I got a faulty original one somehow.
Anyways I will be returning it. I would've loved to have been able to use it but its not worth the further efforts and time for me. I bought it used off ebay full well knowing these machines had heating issues but this issue seems unfixable without sending it back and its no longer under warranty. Im not inclined to pay dell 150$ just for them to dilly dally around and maybe replace a motherboard and not actually fix the issue.