I've done that myself with my home built system, except I use EVGA Precision X. Most of the tweaks I did to the default curve were on the low end of the scale - making the fan run faster at lower temperatures. It makes the computer a little noisier when doing normal stuff, but blowing off that excess heat does make the idle temp come down, which seems to move the entire temperature profile down.

But I have to agree with Jasper, especially since the machine is still under warranty. There's no reason for the GPU to idle at nearly 70 ^oC, and that will significantly shorten the lifespan of the card and other components. If you can't get those temps down one way or another, you need to contact Dell.

I forgot I had the card set to high-performance, thus the high idle temp. I put it back to normal and it's now idling around 50C.

oh, girl....lol

Put your Power management mode to adaptive. !!!!!

---------

Now i am happy. !!!!! Alienware are remarkable pieces of hardware. !!!!! and i thought for a moment....

what you have done....lol

Yes, major LOL. I switched from adaptive to high power yesterday to see if it fixed my problem; obviously, it didn't (or I wouldn't have posted in the first place)...and then I forgot to set it back. Now it's happily back on adaptive and all the way down to 47C idling temp. A much nicer number. Also nice to know that it passed the benchmark so handily, even though it doesn't solve the initial problem. Ah well. My husband has been saying since he got home from work "Just go play Skyrim!", so I shall, and we will leave dealing with this for a later date. I have some things to try...and I did set my system so I can grab the error message next time I get a BSoD.

Thanks for everyone's help! I may be back...depending on how my system behaves.

Good luck...anyway. !!!!!!