9 out of 10 times it is caused by an external USB, firewire, or other external storage device. This is a frequent problem with Alienware desktops. It also feeds fresh air into the CPU area, which your radiator will need also.Ī problem I have had and helped a couple of others with is Hanging/freezing on starup and shutdown. This will force air into the GPU tunnel and allow your graphics cards to draw fresh air. When you are gaming or running anything graphically intense, you should open up your Command Center and set it to a manual setting of 50% to 80%, depending on your GPU temps. This will help to keep the ambient temperature down and keep your GPU idle temps lower. Curve should be around 20% fan speed at 28*c. It is a 92mm high performance server fan with a maximum of 110cf/m. The PCI fan is located above the hard drive cage in the Aurora, and behind the front bezel in all Alienware Desktop models. This is simply a precaution to take in order to keep all your components running cool. So the more hard drives you have, the more restricted the airflow for the Power Supply. The reason for this is that the Power supply draws it's fresh air from the area that the hard drive fan feeds. When you are running 3 or 4 hard drives you need to up the temperature curve so that it runs at about 40% to 45% at 28* ambient. It is fine left on auto with two hard drives or less. The hard drive fan (Aurora) is located between the hard drives in the hard drive cage. These fans can be found in the Alienware Command Center under the Thermal Controls tab. The System, or radiator fan, has no manual adjustments as it is fine without human interaction. The Hard drive fan and the PCI fan can both be turned on a manual setting or set to a temperature curve. Alienware desktops have several fans including a hard drive fan, a PCI fan, and a system Fan which is the radiator fan. One thing I have seen over and over is high GPU temps due to the lack of manually operated fans.

Alienware software support