DELL Precision m4400 keeps shuting down, HELP!!!!

My friend has a m4400 with a C2Extreme, 8gb ram, 250hd, 770fx quadro that keeps shutting down when he starts play old game like AOElll or STCC.
It just suddenly goes all black and no power, But when you restart it it gives no error screen or "the computer shut down due to high temp..."
I had seen temps around 81c for the gpu.
Is this a known problem? What should I look for?

 

look more like temperature situation to me... did he try cleaning up the fan and the vents? Open it up and check out the dust situation first.

I am assuming bios and drivers are up to date?

 

Never saw cleaner vents and fans.

Isn't there a error code that appears when you restart you laptop after it turned off due to high temps? My Alienware is like that.

 

did you actually open up the laptop and remove the fans and clean them ?

it can look clean from the back side or bottom, but once you open it up and remove the heat pipes it can be a whole different story.

Also a thermal re-paste is probably a good ideal.

 

u "had seen temps around 81c." are you sure that is MAX temp? Because if 81c is under decent load, that gpu could be hitting 100c during gaming. Use realtemp and see whats up

 

What temps would be too high?

Yes I did open the bottom up even disassembled the fan and heatsink.

 

90s celcius would be high. And since it is old machine, it could be shutting down at points 95+C. Did you get the check?

 

M4400 heatsink fins are easily choked up with dust. I have to clean it every 2 months or the fan will keep spinning at maximum speed even without load. Another way to reduce the dust and also heat is to use cooling pad.
Even if everything is cleared, the laptop will still overheat under heavy load (my experience with gaming), thanks to the pathetic heat dissipating design of M4400. There is solution though - open the bottom cover, put a cooling pad and you will see temperature dropping and the game continues happily. Thanks again to the brilliant design of M4400, the bottom cover is very convenient to open with only 1 cir-clipped screw. No other laptop variant has such good feature.

Temperature will not exceed 90C because the laptop will automatically throttle the cpu speed down, and the game will run awkwardly. Open bottom cover is the only working solution.