Alienware 13 R3 a brick!

HELP! My Alienware 13 R3 is dead! I left it on, plugged in overnight, lid closed. Got back from the gym this morning and went over to take it out of sleep mode and it is a brick! Nothing, no flicker or anything! I have tried different outlets for the power source with no luck! I have had it since March 2017 and Dell replaced the motherboard and fans in mid March 2018 due to video issues. It was working perfectly until this morning. Any ideas?

 

Maybe try unplugging and holding the power button for 10-20 seconds to drain any possible power

Is the battery and/or CMOS accessible without voiding warranty?

If you can complete the first but not the second, attempt removing one stick of RAM if they are accessible to prompt a hardware change and determine if it can boot.

Good luck mate!

 

Tried this and no luck.

 

Sadly I forgot to mention those methods will only work with the battery disconnected.

If all power isn't drained then what jacked the sleep mode will remain (assuming of course it's not simply dead)

If no change after power drain / hardware change / cmos reset (assuming you have access) with battery removed, it might be safe to call up on Dell and have them service the machine again.

 

You are now the 3rd person I know of (including myself) who has had their 13r3 brick out of nowhere. Mine happened on battery. Turned it off, forgot to do something, turned it back on, and nothing. Completely dead. Tried all the troubleshooting methods mentioned here and nothing worked. My advice is to get a motherboard replacement and to extend your warranty

 

Weird, going to keep an eye on this issues. Are these cases known for the aw15r3/17r4 as well?

 

The issue on those models IIRC was the DC port / Battery cable burning out.

Though I dont frequent the later model threads as much since I dont have those machines so I would wait for those that do.

 

that was the 15r1/2 and 17r2/3

 

So far yes, I suspect a consistent approach from alienware these days lol

 

You need to open it up and disconnect the battery, then hold the power button, then remove the RAM and switch their slots for good measure.

 

thanks but that didn't do anything either

 

Is it possible Windows or Dell utility auto-updated your BIOS while you were out?

 

How would I know? I went to Best Buy (Geek Squad) and they said that it most likely has to do with the motherboard and to contact Dell which I have already done. Dell replaced the motherboard in mid March. Could it be a loose connection on the board?

 

Really no way to tell if you can't even power on to POST... It does sound kind of like a jank mobo really. The CMOS/battery reset is worth a shot if you can pull it off safely.

 

If that is where you unplug the internal battery and press the power button for 30 seconds, then I have done that with no results.

 

CMOS battery will retain the settings without the battery in place, its the sole purpose for it.

 

Point being?

 

If you take the battery out, it will not render the CMOS battery inoperable, as the purpose of the CMOS battery is to retain settings in your laptop.

Without actually removing it, you cant power drain the laptop. Its actually more important to remove that instead of the regular battery in that regard.

Otherwise everytime you boot, you would have to tell your pc which drive to boot from, the CPU settings, and basically everything else the laptop does

 

Not sure this approach works. Alienware 18 and later I suspect have NVRAM (non volatile RAM) BIOS settings that can only be cleared with a RAM hotswap mid reboot. CMOS battery does nothing to clear/reset anything anymore.

Apple actually does the same thing with their computers, but they have a preprogrammed key combo for resetting the NVRAM, something Dell didn’t have the foresight to do

 

I have NVRAM on my Ranger and CMOS still serves a purpose. Never removed any RAM sticks when I had 8 and 5 beep codes

 

Strange any time I had gone too much on an undervolt the only way to correct it on either the 17R1 or A18 was the ram hotswap method

 

Interesting but how does this help me with my current "brickness"?

 

Remove DC power, remove battery, remove RAM, hold power button down for a minute, connect DC power, see if it turns on and starts making 2 beeps then a pause then 2 beeps again

 

Isn't unplugging the internal battery enough for this purpose? I believe that it is as the battery is not removable on the 13 from what I have seen.

 

Try this

 

They must of kept the best unit to themselves. How on earth do they only manage to screw one screw at the base??? It’d make my life opening it so much easier with less screws to open and close


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All this is to prompt a hardware change, same thing as the cmos removal. No hardware change then no reason for the machine to behave any differently.

Just send it in to Dell

 

But there was a hardware change in March a new motherboard was installed with new fans as well!


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Your not understanding the dialogue here. The system does not care about the motherboard change in March and has absolutely nothing to do with the steps we described for you to test if it will boot.

Which is why I am saying just to send it to Dell. I don't think your savvy and would hate for you to void your own warranty just to test if it will boot.

 

Good point. However I’m gonna ask dell to come to me like they did in March


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Warranties are pricey, get your monies worth lol

 

Make sure you test out a few things before the tech leaves, try playing a game for a few minutes and make sure it works. My first Mobo replacement booted but had a faulty graphics card. This was immediately apparent upon playing 3 minutes of doom. My second board did not boot. 3rd board had a fan plug with broken plastic and one of the fans was not working--I plugged it back in myself and it worked, so I kept that board.

The moral of the story is that they DO NOT TEST their motherboard replacements, they are not new, and you need to expect issues if your experience is anything at all like mine. The tech that does the replacement can expedite the replacement process if you find out right away that the replacement board is no good

 

yes he had me play a game for 15 minutes upon installing the mobs in March. which is why i don't believe that is the problem...

 

Believe whatever you want, Dell is going to replace the motherboard. Just some advice to save you trouble with your replacement

 

What was the evident issue of it being faulty? Have a mobo replacement and the gpu isn’t as good as the last board that has a different problem.


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It would BSOD or freeze and loop sound every single time I ran a game for more than a minute or two; I had no problems with anything (other than crappy IGPU framerates) once I disabled the Nvidia card, so it was pretty straightforward troubleshooting haha

 

Ah ok. Also forgot you can disable it and the intel one works. Well I dunno if mine is worse since it works but just stutters.


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It may very well be worse. My theory on these motherboards is that the memory chips are not consistent heights from one mobo to the next, and this causes a myriad of issues with heatsink contact. The margin of error is very low, so even a slight difference can cause your components to go from being cooled to not being cooled. I have read the stuttering comes from the GPU memory not being cooled adequately. I would try undervolting first, and if that doesn't help then try replacing the thermal pads over the memory modules on the GPU side.

 

So what you think? If you bend the arms upwards you think that’ll help? I ain’t messing with liquid metal as good as it sounds.
The higher the risk the better the results. But I’m it’s not taking risk with something I’m not comfy or familiar with. Just regular old fashion pasting is what I do lol.


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No I'm not talking about any of that, the liquid metal will only help with the GPU core and that isn't your problem. Don't bend the arms on the heatsink either. All I did was clean off the thermal paste, replace the thermal pads, and then put the heatsink back on and tighten the screws as if I were putting everything back together. Then after I let it sit for a sec, I took the heat sink back off and looked to see if all the thermal pads had indentions on them or not. If you see some without indentions from the memory modules, you need to use a thicker pad there. Mine had 2 spots with no contact.

Once you figure the thermal pads out, repaste and put everything back together and see if that helps the stuttering. Also I found that running hwinfo with the game would make it stutter, but if I only ran the game (Witcher 3) by itself then it didn't stutter.

 

I’ll try that to verify l. Was thinking of trying another repaste.
As for the stuttering not all the time I tried it but I think it still happened without hwinfo because I use FPS counter and it stuttering. Sometimes FPS drop and sometimes just like a micro stutter with no gps drop. I don’t have anything else running because I already checked the temps and they fine. Only thing I can think of was the contact.
Of the pads.
Could squeezing them on really hard together and screwing at same time as opposed to just screwing it on help better because your forcing contact?


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I'm not 100% sure what you're asking, but I would not try anything other than using thicker pads for the areas that don't make contact. I think I only used 1 and 1.5mm pads on mine, but I can check if you need to know for sure