AW 18 red squares on screen now no GPU-s detected

As the title says. Was playing WoW and when a load screen came up i decided to go get a glass of water. On return i had the same load screen with with red squares and the notebook was non responsive. After forcing a restart i just had the backlight. No image ....nothing not even sound.

Took a few coms resets and removal of ram to get sound and blindly i was able to switch to intel graphics (have image now). So now bios is showing no GPU.s

No external image also. when GPU-s activated.

Just had done the hotfix for the dells buggy software.....also strange is when opened up ....one GPU fan keeps turning on at random ....even with intel graphics on.

Did two GPU-s just die at the same time ? Will try to take it apart to see if the SLI cable is lose. ....but that should still bring up the image right ?

Any ideas ?

 

That's highly unlikely that two cards died at same time. Have your tried switching secondary card to the primary one? SLI cable does not do anything here, cards should be detected even without it.

 

Have not taken it apart yet.
Image form bios.


Just looked at my warranty and for some reason it does not show NBD just LS even dough i bought the 170£ 1 Year NBD Warranty.

 

That BIOS window is what you see if you have switched to IGP using FN+F5

 

Ok for some reason i still remember the M17x R3 as showing the discrete graphics in the bios even with IGP

 

On my M18xR1 if I switch to IGFX display mode then no external gpus are detected but maybe m17x is different.

@Up
Maybe you've used SG mode instead of IGFX

 

Well looks like i found the problem GPU 1 has a crack on on of the corners of the core.
After taking the GPUs this is what they look. I used IC diamond. repaste was about half a year ago.


And the crack. When looking at the reflection i can see that is changes right in the corner.


Will get a answer about warranty tomorrow. Its strange that it cracked as it was not even under that much pressure. All the plastic spacers are still good. Also why would it happen at a load screen.

 

GPU core is damaged, there's nothing you can do more. It's possible that it was damaged from beginning as it's unlikely to crack it under heatsink pressure. Maybe You didn't noticed it at start?

 

Might be that it was there. Strange though that it has been ok for 2 and a half years. Also that it did not die after i did the repaste.

On a nother note do the GPU-s have dif vbios ? as i was under the impression that they did not. After swaping GPU.s i get one beep...just one and after that nothing.
After swaping back all work.

 

No, vbioses are same.

 

I could be wrong here, but that crack is the protective layer around the cores. The GPU could be fine anyway.
First time I see a dent like that though.

 

Strange if the vbios is the same why did i get just one beep. Also it was not like the beep codes. It did not repeat... just one beep and then the backlight came on.

I have not seen one cracked like that with a GPU guard but looking at the heatsinks quality it might have to be sanded down a bit as the surface looks rough.


Just need to hope that the warranty extension i bought will be NBD as if not it will go to a nother service center here. Last time i was there....well i was there 5-6 times before i got a working computer back.

 

It could have been a flaw in the material that the heating and cooling over the years has slowly been travelling down the protective coating and now the crack goes down into the transistors.

 

Well yesterday i had the most pointless Dell support conversetion off all time.... 53 minutes... I was forwarded 2 times. Funny thing is that every time i got forwarded i had to give the same informatsion and they had to check my information. First rep i talked to asked all the information and what i had done. After that i got " Sorry we only give support to dell. You need AW rep"...why on earth not forward me right away. Ok got forwarded..."helloo Dell support how can i help" Again same info and then sry you got dell not AW .....finaly i got to AW gave info.....15 min later sry we cant submite repair order to you country. Also the funniest advice. The rep said that it could the the second card that is not working. So they adviced me to take it appart again and just have the first card in. On the previous subject the official dell repair in Estonia was the one to ask me to call dell/AW support in the EU as then they would send a tech. out when dell would register a NBD case. Anyway i took it in myself and today i got information that they ordered a new MoBo.

A bit strange and odd that the MoBo would be to blame. But I should get more information by tomorrow.

 

Make sure they don't charge you with anything. I find it strange also the fact that they are replacing mobo

 

Well its under LS premium warranty so hardware wise i should be ok. Parts on the other hand i have no idea. The warranty system is strange. I got the NBD hardware support and did not opt. with a extra 50£ for the NBD harware, parts and software support.

I am guessing by parts they mean screws, brackets, heatpads, heatsink, etc.?

 

Well things seem to be getting interesting. First of all the tech seems to have had a problem with the fact that i had opened up the machine and used non standard paste (IC-7). Luckily thanks to a firend there that problem got resolved.
Will need to wait for more information today but the last info i got was that a new mobo and ram?!?!?! was ordered and that it should arrive today.

 

Well its week 3 and still no notebook. Last week on 10.03 tech send out for new GPU-s from AW/Dell and now a week later still no ETA on the parts. Is Dell out of 780m-s ?

 

Well I guess they are now only ordering BGA crap and selling 880M

 

It´s strange as it is covered under NBD but so far the delay on parts is supplier fault. They have not even given out a ETA on the parts. Last information was and still is : ETA 31/12/9999 00:00. Just hope they dont offer one of the BGA notebooks or credit as if there is no option for 780m´s or they do not even offer 880m-s id rather build a desktop or move to a better notebook platform.

To bad i really like the design of the AW 18

 

Yeah me too. Shame that they stopped producing it. There's only MSI GT80 in unbelievable big price. Im sure I won't sell this laptop unless clevo will make some 18 inch models again.Try to ask them about 880M and flash custom vbios