AW18 No power, beeps, fans, any signs of life

Hey guys: my AW18 shut down while gaming (temps were pretty normal - 70's-80's CPU and high 70's GPU's) and now won't turn back on. I first fiddled with battery only or PSU only, and had a few times it'd start up for a second or two like normal and power off. No, the power brick light does not turn off when connected, so I am confident there is no short in the system.

I did have a GPU short recently and replaced the shorted 980m with a refurb from Dell and took the opportunity to replace the bad thermal pad work (literally parts were left uncovered or half covered) with Fujipoly 11W/MK and 17W/MK (probs overkill but it was barely more expensive so why not) and the horrible stock paste job with IC Graphite (temps didn't improve much, but they are fine and I like the no maintenance guarantee on a machine like this). Besides that everything is stock.

What is the minimal boot for the 18? I tried the COU/1 GPU 1 stick of memory, and all the ribbon cables from the wrist rest but no display Connecting the display while swapping parts and all is very tedious. It should boot without the display, correct? I also tried without any GPU. Haven't tried removing the CPU yet as I have never done that and am worried. I also read it would beep if the CPU was dead.

Any ideas on what to try here? I have a second 18 with older hardware in it to use for replacement parts and debugging. I tried the whole palm rest assembly from that since I have heard the circuit from the palm rest to the mobo might be damaged. No luck. Right now the only thing I can think of is to move my drives, CPU, and GPU's into the old machine but that doesn't help me debug this issue.

 

There was a thread that Mr Fox had posted somewhere that seemed to work for me when I had this same issue. You need to only have 1 stick of ram in, unplug your battery, then unplug the CMOS battery and wait 30secs to a minute. Then plug the CMOS battery back in. Take out the last stick of RAM so you have no sticks in. Plug the battery back in, and plug wall power back in.

Press the power button, then reinsert 1 stick of RAM about ~1sec after hitting the power button. Should boot up fine after that.

 

I found the problem. Looks like my mobo died. On mobile or I would upload a picture Looks like a component (MOSFET I think) burnt out and it's all brown and melt. Surprisingly this didn't seem to affect the GPU at all. I have a Gen 1 AW18 I'm going to try to move my 980m's, 4940MX and drives into.

I did the move, but the machine doesn't see my MSATA SSD as bootable. I suspect it has something to do with the MSATA being a cache for a bootable RAID array previously in this system. Any ideas? Ideally I'd like to not need to format and reinstall Windows but I acknowledge it might come to that...

 

if you are looking to sell one of your Alienware CPU , i'm interested.

 

Common problem with the Alienware 18....don't bother repairing. I replaced mobo 3 times, all died the same exact way.

 

I've had the 18 since the very beginning when Dell replaced my M18xr4 with one after a technician damaged it during a simple cooler swap. Haven't had any problems for 4 years and then in the past 6 moths, I had an SLI cable bork (just needed to reset luckily), a GPU short (Dell sold me a replacement for $85) and now the mobo burn up. It's like it's suddenly just decided it wants out of its life.

I'm gonna repair with my spare machine to make one Frankenstein working machine and then I'm out. The day the 2080 is announced, I'm in the desktop game. It's been fun, but this last half of year has been an absurd ratio of repair to actual gaming and productivity.

@Rengsey R. H. Jr. Pm me about the CPU. I forgot the exact model after a few years, but it is the second from top 4th Gen. I can check when I am home again.

 

I will also be going the desktop route very soon, my need for mobility no longer exists, as I've graduated from university and ready to settle into my new job

 

You’ll be running back when I get a gtx 1080 running in the pre soldered Alienwares lol

 

i've had those new alienwares die if you look at them wrong....like random keys on the keyboard just stopped working, 5 different computers. Don't even bother.