Laptop GPU fan stuck at idle after GPU replacement

[TiMN8R]

Last summer I replaced the primary graphics card on my Alienware laptop. The new card is an nVidia GTX680m (old one was a 260m), and ever since the swap, the corresponding fan has remained at idle, despite ridiculous temps of 100+ Celsius on the graphics card. The fan is nonexistent as far as MSI Afterburner and SpeedFan 4.49 are concerned... motherboard is the NVidia MCP79, I believe. ...If nobody has any suggestions, can anyone guess at how difficult it would be to run my own PWM signal into... whichever wire it is that controls the RPMs? Has anybody done a modification like that before?

 

[hizodge]

Does your laptop actually have a dedicated fan for the GPU? Programs like Afterburner won't find the fan, it should be visible from your motherboard BIOS.

 

[TiMN8R]

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, both GPUs have their own fans, and their own heatsinks. They're positioned on both sides of the CPU/northbridge/integrated graphics heatsink & fan. And sadly, the motherboard BIOS are very, very limited. Later versions of the M17x have far better/more complete BIOS in place... but this one only does boot order, a few power options, SATA/RAID configuration, and frequency-only overclocking control of the RAM and CPU. It's more a place to see the state of the system than to change it.

I'm considering reverting to an older version in the hopes that it'll 'refresh' the temp-fan speed relation table. I found out after originally posting that the M17x R1 fan speeds are hardcoded into the BIOS as you implied, so you really can't change it, except with a program like HWiNFO64, with a high respin rate.. I guess it just overrides the system calculated speed. That works for the CPU fan, but the GPU fan is nonresponsive, even though it's not greyed out.

I'll try the A06 bios, and then I'll update.

 

[hizodge]

Alienware products are overpriced and absolute garbage when it comes to overclocking, upgrading or any sort of general troubleshooting in general and so I'd recommend you never buy anything from them again. If you want a decent gaming laptop, I'd recommend Asus and MSI, which are both not only some of the largest motherboard manufacturers in the world, but also partnered with AMD and Nvidia.