Randomly Shutting Off and Resetting BIOS Settings AW 15 R2

My laptop has a tendency to randomly shutoff after a few minutes of being on and have the BIOS get reset. I replaced the CMOS battery with one that wasn't new but was working in my old XPS laptop (I checked to make sure that both were in fact 3v). This hasn't fixed it, though this behavior is a lot less frequent if the fans are set to maximum at all times, but even this isn't a perfect solution and I doubt it's overheating as the reported temps weren't that high anyways.

 

Need hwinfo m8, some other part of your system is dying from heat.

I am beting PCH

 

But how would other parts of the system cause a BIOS reset?

 

Truth is, i have no idea man, computer hardware does funky ass **** when its operating outside expected parameters. Could be a short, or some other random **** on the board failing. One things for sure though, if it isnt a heating problem, that board is probably soon be perma dead.

Its rare, but ive seen Dell BIOS do some funky ****.

 

More likely its failing battery. Disable Dell desktop mode and see if that helps.

 

I would replace with a brand new cmos battery. The old one you replaced might be bad too. Rule that out first

 

Replacing a CMOS battery has nothing to do with the laptop shutting off. As long as a laptop maintains power, even a failing CMOS battery will keep settings. The problem is whatever is causing the laptop to power off like this is causing the CMOS to reset. Find out what is making the laptop reset. That is what needs to be addressed.

Have you checked the c:\windows\minidump folder to see if there are any crash dumps?

Also check EVENTMSC (windows event viewer) -->SYSTEM LOGS to see if there are any logs showing what happened (IGNORE any "event ID 41"--that is totally useless and irrelevant).

I've seen this happen when a non RAM caused BSOD (e.g. CPU voltage setting fail) causes RAM timings to be reset to default sometimes because the laptop freezes at power on after the BSOD (this is usually only when using very aggressive RAM timings which are fully stable)

 

So the brand new CMOS battery didn't fix it. So you are saying I should try different RAM sticks? Btw, it's a hard crash, meaning it just powers off instantly.

EDIT: I tried putting the RAM sticks in 1 at a time, but it crashed both times.

 

No I'm saying RAM timings resetting after a *BSOD* can be caused by timing fails.
Sounds like you have an onboard hardware problem.

 

There are no "Critical" events outside of '41' and there isn't a minidump folder either.

 

Looks like you need to RMA. Unless you can try to clean install (not repair install) windows 10 and all stock device drivers, and if that doesn't fix the problem, it's time to RMA the laptop.

 

I've already done a clean install to no avail. Laptop's out of warranty. I am somewhat comfortable with soldering, but I'd really like to be sure as to where the problem is before I even consider that option.

 

Last thing I'm gonna try is ask this: Does anything look wrong in this picture?

 

Looks okay to me.