AW 18, no power issue.

Hi guys!

I started getting some weird temps on my GPUs and CPU, so i opened it up and saw that Liquid PRO is no longer a liquid but just a dust here and there. I repasted everything as usual, assembled my laptop back together and voila! No reaction on power-up button. No LEDs, no fans kicking in or beeping ... no anything.

Now a week or so ago, i had the following issue: my laptop would lose its connection with the AC adapter when the battery goes lower than 94%(i had that Dell option 'charge between 50 - 100' or sth like that on). If i pulled the cord out and then placed back in, it would stay on the adapter for a few seconds and then lose it again. What i did was to use the 'charge one time to 100%' option in Windows and it solved the issue. My battery after that always had full 100% charge.

My AC adapter has its green light on all the time, even if plugged in my laptop. I've read several threads about this light going out when plugged in laptop, that's not my case.

What i've tried so far:

1. Boot from the battery only (it had 100% charge at the moment of me shutting down the laptop for a repaste).
2. Boot without the battery, using the adapter only.
3. Boot with only processor installed on the motherboard (no ram or anything else).

Has anyone had a similar experience? What could it be?

Thank you.

 

Reset the cpu lock? Sorry to ask, but have forgotten that before ... Also; removed battery prior to touching/removing the cpu? Omitting that bit is a certified way to kill a cpu. If memory banks were removed; seat very firmly, it's a bit of a flimsy/picky design.

If none of that helped; buy cheap i3 for testing.

 

Thx for the advice! I always remove the battery before removing the palms rest and getting my hands on CPU/GPUs. What do you mean, reset the CPU lock? Reseat the CPU? I did that without any luck .

I wonder, it should be able to boot to some point without anything attached to the motherboard, right? Just the touchpad/keyboard and the card reader.

 

Meant the torx-lock. Silly thing to overlook, sure, but still ... have forgotten that myself when hurried, battery too . Minimum boot is cpu, 1 gpu and 1 bank of memory. Keyboard's usually optional, but not always.

Reset cmos is another common advice, but well ... can't see how that would apply here.

There is a possible explanation; DC jack damaged, so no power. And 100% charge does not have to mean it actually holds power anymore. Old battery sometimes is 30 sec. deal, yet still says 'fully charged'. The time it took to redo the cpu could well have been enough to drain a near-end-of-life battery. Time for new battery and a new DC jack?

 

I've had something similar no power after removing palm rest. My problem was when I put PC back together. There are 4 ribbons on the left side of the PC. 3 located under the DVD and one right next to where DVD is attached to the MB. One of those 4 conducts power, I forget which one. I know it's not the biggest one under DVD, that's for keyboard. Just make sure all 4 are properly attached. Hope that helps.

 

That was my first thought as well, that i did not plug in some of those ribbons. Unfortunately, they are all in. Thanks anyways!

 

I agree that resetting cmos will not do anything, most likely... and I also read that it is not as easy on Alienware 18.
Tomorrow i'll stop at Walmart and get myself a multimeter. Gonna have to figure out where i can measure the voltage after the DC jack.

 

So right now i have no screen attached to the laptop, just the CPU, 1 GPU and 1 memory stick. Cannot power up with or without the battery.

 

@TankJr_ is it possible you suffered a short from the liquid pro dust, it is metal after all? Did the dust get on to the MB?

 

Nope... you'll get nothing but beeps with the LDVS cable disconnected. In fact, you can power on the system with no CPU or RAM, it will just beep but it will still power up... I've done it many times. If you're not getting any beeps and the system is not turning on, no signs of life, then you probably have a blown out component on the motherboard... a MOSFET, VRM, a fuse, or something else has failed if the AC adapter is supplying power to the jack on the motherboard and the system is not powering up.

 

I measured the voltage coming from the adapter = 19.6, so this part is ok... unfortunately

Now i need to figure out how to measure the voltage on the exit from the jack..

I still cannot believe that something is fried inside my motherboard. It turned off as usual, without any smell or sound. And then it just died... sad. Is the Alienware 18 able to power up without the battery connected to it, just the adapter? Also i wonder, is it possible to power it up bypassing the power button?

 

Nope, i'm sure not. There was almost no liquid pro left on the CPU or the GPU's. And i cleaned the heatsinks away from the laptop

 

What else can i check with my brand new multimeter to narrow down the search?

 

You can power the Alienware 18 without the battery and just the adapter, I have done it myself.
That being said, I think as Fox said, you may have a fried MOSFET or capacitor or something of the sort.

 

What do you think I should do? Perhaps anyone knows where I can drop it for diagnostics somewhere around Toronto? I don't think I should go ahead and buy a new motherboard off ebay, still hoping that's not the case...

 

New mb is a bit drastic (and expensive), test the jack first:

Spoiler: centre pins

There should be power, even powered-off; power button triggers a relay, which turns on the circuit. Test the battery too; multimeter should show ~14,5V. Two or more of the outer-most pins will be voltage, doesn't matter if it's disconnected.

 

I think the 18 is made different. I don't remember for certain and I haven't looked recently, but the jack might be connected via cable instead of soldered to the motherboard like the M18xR1/R2. Pull the palm rest and look. If that is the case, it could be the jack or cable is messed up. There could be an inline fuse or one of the cables could be a fusible link. You can test the output where the connection meets the motherboard.

On possible issue could be a problem with the power button itself. Maybe it is defective. There are a couple of power buttons mounted on the motherboard. One of them is near the RAM slots, partially hidden by the chassis. You can use that to power on the system with the palm rest removed and power button disconnected. It's a surface-mounted small silver metal square with a round flat silver button in the middle. When you see it, it will be easy to identify. I am working and my 18 is not readily accessible, otherwise I would take a picture for you. If you cannot find it, let me know and I will get a photo for you this evening.

The system runs fine with no battery installed. If the battery is charged and it will not turn on under battery power, with no AC adapter connected, then you have something going on with the motherboard or a component attached to the motherboard.

 

Here's the picture: http://i.imgur.com/JefO8vx.jpg
can't find that button ... shame on me!

I also took a close look at the board, nothing seems to be damaged..

 

And here's the jack: http://i.imgur.com/QD16zxH.jpg

I tried the 2 contacts at the middle and had 0. Adapter's cord is in and the light is constant green

 

OK, I looked at the photo you uploaded. Take note of the the square shape with the solder dots at the edge of the motherboard near the RAM slots. This is where one of the extra power buttons is normally located. Yours either doesn't have one on that side of the motherboard, or it got knocked off somehow. Some have a button on both sides of the motherboard. I snagged a couple of photos off the internet and a couple of my own.

Nothing obvious I can see there that is wrong.

 

It seems my motherboard never had any buttons, i see the mark-up for it, but those two places seem to have been always empty.

Regarding the jack, those two contacts at the middle, they gave me 0. Perhaps they're not accessible from that point?

 

I cannot see it in the photo, but this is the actual jack the AC adapter plugs into and not a socket that a cable plugs into, correct? Typically, some of the lugs are ground and some are power. Those at the corners are typically a ground and the power lugs are normally across the back side (directly opposite of the opening where the AC adapter plugs in). There are usually 3 prongs, the center being for the AC adapter ID signal wire and one on each side of that center connection are normally the actual power connections.

 

I touched the ground from the adapter's plug and one of the metal lines that goes to the motherboard and it gave me 19.6 but i'm still not able to get anything from the bottom side.

 

Yes, there's no cable.

 

Both of those power lugs give me ~19.5 with the ground from the jack itself, that means that the jack ok? I'm not sure where to find the ground on the motherboard.

 

Sounds like the jack is fine to me. I am thinking you might need a replacement motherboard. You could have a soldered joint that is bad, a bad trace... lot's of possibilities if nothing obvious is burned. You could try baking it to reflow things to see if it would come back from the dead, but if that works it would likely be a short-lived success. That is seldom a permanent fix. You could also try sending it off to a motherboard repair service. Here's one I saved for future reference, but I have never tried using their services before.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/330924507951?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK:MEBIDX:IT

 

Yeah, i don't feel like risking my cpu/gpu/ram/ssd on a fried motherboard I saw these guys as well, maybe will give it a shot. Or maybe just sell everything and buy a new laptop. I also wonder if there's a nice 17' base that my stuff will fit in? I just need to buy a base with a screen/motherboard/fans/heatsinks

Thank you guys for the help!!

 

Barebone Clevo P37*SM-A would hold everything you have now. Rjtech would've been cheapest, since you could order without any redundant parts. They don't carry it anymore, but Eurocom's build would come to CAN$1279 or US$983; order in Canadian (their exchange rate is ... questionable) and have all options set to "sub". You'd still have a few spares, selling these would net ~$400 back ... and have to ask them if the 2nd gpu heatsink+fan is included; that is not a given with non-SLI order.

Still ... refurb motherboard would be cheaper, only more work and no guarantee; might be a component, after all. Could consider the $80 for a used i3; if it doesn't pan out you might sell it again at minimum loss, if any.

Nice teardown, btw , shame it hasn't helped to nail down the issue ... since everything's accessible and you have a multimeter now; checked for fuses? Don't know this model, but maybe Mr. Fox can tell you where they are. They'll be labelled "F" on the pcb, at any rate.

 

Ppl say that it should power up without the CPU?

And thx for mentioning Rjtech! They, in fact, do sale P377SM-A barebone.
http://rjtech.com/shop/index.php?dispatch=products.view&product_id=30212
I wonder what kind of screen comes with it, IPS? It would be a shame if it is TN. Gonna ask them about the heatsinks and the fans. I wonder how 980M SLI runs on a single 330w PSU. The default config includes a single PSU.

 

Yeah , my AW 18 just died last night. I was bored and wanted to re-apply the thermal paste , since it was a little over a year old. Silly me , the AW 18 was in sleep mode ( not attached to AC , but was on battery). I decided to open up the laptop , pulled the battery , the hard drives .. etc..After i finished of re-pasting , i put all the parts back together. I press the power and nothing happened. I was stuck for a minute , and then i thought i might have forgotten to attach all the ribbon cables, but I didn't . I then finally realize that since the laptop was on , and i yanked the battery and all parts out of it while it was still on, i think i have shorted something. I took it apart again and double check every steps , but it still would not power on.

I decided to call AW tech support , only resolution is to have it sent to them and pay $430 for the laptop to be worked on , and turn around time would be 15 days. I am wondering if I should just buy a new motherboard off ebay or have AW do the job, Any suggestions ?

 

Those motherboards listed as used on ebay, there's no guarantee that it will last long. Does Dell give some sort of warranty on their repairs? There's also a service linked a few posts ago by Mr. Fox. It may be cheaper to send the laptop to them.

 

Received a mail from RJtech today. Basically, they say that 780m is not supported by the p377sm-a model and if i attempt to use it, it will void my warranty. Plus, in case anything happens - i would have to pay a round trip for my laptop. So i'm down to the used motherboard option, however i don't really feel like buying it..

Oh, and they will include only CPU fan/heatsink + master GPU fan if one doesn't buy a videocard from them.

 

There are plenty of users running 780M SLI on that. Only most had Clevo cards, since yours are AW it may need bios and/or vbios flash, that's all. However, doing so might void their warranty. Could ask Eurocom and see how they deal with this, they've done tests themselves to make upgrades to non-officially-supported gpus possible (part of their business). It's also a cheaper offer; rjtech would come to $854, so $129 less than EC's $983. Yet, that $129 would get you a 4710MQ, an 860M, 2x8GB DDR3L-1600 and a 120GB mSATA M500. The cpu alone would cover that, the rest is profit or for spares/troubleshooting.

Heatsink can be included with the order as a replacement part. Will increase cost, of course, ebay's a bit cheaper (plus spare fan and sli cable).

 

How come you can customize it to as low as 983$? The lowest i can get is 1199$. I can't get rid of the first hard drive plus some other thing, i guess, 216$ diff. Are we talking here about x8?

 

Shop smart, shop Canadian !

Anyway; $1279 CAN = $981 $980 US (another $2 $3 saved). And yes, the X8 (also check wlan). Ammended; exchange rate dropped another $1 is 15 seconds ... Of course, cc company will screw you with their 'custom' exchange rate, which always goes 2-3% the wrong way. Still preferable to EC's conversion rate ...

 

Got myself a motherboard, should i reset CMOS on it somehow before installing my stuff and turning it on?

 

You might, but chances are they've already done that before shipping. Can't harm, though; just remove button cell for half a minute.

 

Well, 'new' motherboard - no power as well, absolutely nothing.

This time it has 2 power buttons on the motherboard itself, i tried one of those, still the same.
Have I got a bad motherboard? I don't see any other reason.

 

Perhaps, did you power up without any components, like Mr. Fox mentioned? Beyond that, where did you measure the adapter for its 19.5V? There's something else with that thing as well; voltage alone is not enough, it also needs to supply a minimum amps to get started (V*A=Watts). Not sure how to measure that ... cheaply, that is. Maybe take to electronics shop and have them stress it to its maximum stable draw.

Just thought of something else:

How soon did you re-plug it? Am researching Inrush Current Limiters for a project and these are a critical component in an AC/DC adapter:

 

I'm gonna try that button on the mb today, without any components. Mr. Fox mentioned that the power circle from the power button should be disconnected prior to powering it up with it's own button.

I measured it on the plug itself.

 

Right after i plugged it out, certainly less than a minute.

 

Got some progress here!

Since my new MB arrived with 2 power up buttons, i disconnected everything except for the CPU, fans and the CMOS battery. I hooked up the adapter, hit the button, the fans spinned for a few seconds and it then it turned off.

Should i take out the CPU (as it is working) to prevent it from being damaged and try another components one by one?

 

The issue is the power button circuit. If it is connected to the motherboard, i'm not able to power up my laptop with it or with the motherboard buttons. Unfortunately, my 1st motherboard does not have those power-up buttons...

Now, everything is hooked up (including keyboard and touchpad), i get a BSOD on Win 7 splashscreen. I tried to restore it from a checkpoint - no luck, still the same BSOD, guess i have to reinstall the OS.

As for the broken button, i don't even know where to start (what component should i buy the first to try if it works? )

 

Ok, for the exception of the damn power button, everything is back on! Didn't even have to reinstall the OS.

 

It's shorting. When you force-shutdown by keeping button pressed for X seconds it does the same thing.

Well ... lot of effort for a $5 fix ... good thing you've got it solved in the end . Might try to offload the spare motherboard in the 'For Sale' section.

 

Yeah, gonna have to get rid of the second one.

In case anyone interested, here's where i got my motherboard with two power buttons on it: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/for-...erboard-fully-tested-working/32319493495.html
Delivered in ~5 days from China + 2 days took them to prepare the shipment (the order was placed on Friday). Everything works great with all slots filled with my hardware.

 

Just wanted to bump this up with what actually solved my problem: my connecting cable from the card reader to the motherboard was damaged, right at the end. I had to cut ~2 mm of damaged cable and that's it.