Need Tech help! Frustrated w/ Dell Repair Center and my dang laptop!

Alright. Super long story. So, my m18x which is three years old this month was overheating when I played games like Garry's Mod (don't laugh). The temps would go as high as 96 C, and I would have occasional moments when the laptop's display would turn black. The keyboard would stay lit up, but the computer had stopped working, so I'd restart it. No problem. Also, the battery was going out, so I needed a replacement. Well I needed my laptop for school, so decided it would be best to keep it until I could finish some important work. Finally, I sent it to the Dell Repair Center (my warranty goes out on July 29). They replaced the battery, heatsink and video card.


The computer came back. Everything seemed fine, until I opened up Garry's Mod. Almost 10-15 minutes into the game, the computer shut off. After that, I couldn't even open a game....Heck, I could barely log into Windows. Soooooooo called Dell, and we realized that disabling the video adapter helped, so the tech guy told me to keep it like that until they could do something. Safe mode or no safe mode, video adapter disabled or not, absolutely no video games played after Garry’s Mod crashed, and STILL the display would go off.


Here’s a walkthrough in case you’re confused.

Turn on computer. Put in password to Windows. Windows comes up with all my icons. Open my browser to read some tech stuff to help the issue. Screen turns black within minutes of restarting. Keyboard still lit with colors. Sound is muffled in the background (if I was listening to something). Keyboard and annoying muffled sound continues until I press the Alienhead power button to turn it off. Sometimes I have to hold it down to turn it off, and others, I just tap it. AND REPEAT


Computer was sent to Dell again… Took them a month to repair it. I waited patiently. Same thing…heatsink and video card replaced. I was sooo excited to have it back. It was doing so well. I turned it on and left it alone for a whole day. Decided I should play Garry’s Mod. It lasted maybe an hour…or hour and 30 mins (I really like G Mod). I did notice that when a new round would start, this REALLY LOUD buzzing sound would happen for a few seconds then go away. This sound thing happened twice. Anyways, while playing, I get the pixelated screen in the post…………………Restart the computer. Put my password into Windows…Turned on Steam…Then got a white screen. It’s extremely frustrating to have the same problem even though my computer was given to them for soooo long and TWICE!


Thursday, the computer ran a CHKDSK (because I read one of my event viewer logs stating failure. I will post some of those if I have them. Tried to do a system restore as well. Have pics for that.


I don’t know if this is a way to get me to extend my warranty or simply, that they don’t know what is going on. If anyone can help, I would appreciate it.


Is my computer just done for? :/

Configuration

Alienware M18X R2
18.4 inch (467.36 mm) WLED WideFHD (1080p) display (1920 X 1 080)
Alienware M18x 240W A/C Adapter
Windows 7
750GB 7200RPM SATA 3Gb/s
96WHr 12-Cell Primary Battery
Slot-Loading Dual Layer DVD Burner (DVD+-RW, CD-RW)
2GB GDDR5 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 6 75M
Intel 2230 Wireless-N
3rd Generation Intel Core i7-3 630QM (6MB Cache, up to 3.4GHz w/ Turbo Boost 2.0)
12GB Dual Channel DDR3 at 1600 MHz
64GB mSATA caching SSD

 

IMO, the GPU's you are getting as replacements are refurbs, and are literally lasting that long before crashing... The FS is corrupted because you are forcefully shutting it down having really no other choice when the GPU crashes...

 

675M is toast. Need something more reliable like 680M, 780M, 8970M

 

GPU is dead. @maxslo is right. @Raidriar is also right.

Btw Nice wallpaper m8

 

Crap what the fudge should I do? Lol I'm not techy, so you'll have to spell some things out for me.

Lol and thanks @GodlikeRU

So many questions I want to ask lol

 

Here is a video of the tear down by @Mr. Fox of your laptop. Just follow instructions. It's a repaste job but it's the same way to get to the gpu.

 

I think you should push them to swap a card to a different one since you've got 2 bad ones already.... i'm thinking about the 680M, or atleast 670M, less power, but wont fail nearly as much as the cancer 675M

 

675M is rebranded 580M that dies very often.

 

Oops i meant the 670M

eerm, nevermind, i did write 670M....

 

675m is 580
670m s 570

the mx is kepler, iirc

 

Yeah, but the 570M is ok card, i haven't heard of anyone complaining over it

 

Whole serie had problems with soldering just like 6990M crap

 

maybe because the 580m is just pushing the temp and vrm limit to the max, hence the short lived nature
what happen with 6990M? bga solder issue? can be reballed or no?

 

BGA, need to use lead solder to make it work.

 

All this smart people talk lol. Dell keeps trying to update it, and I'm like NO that won't work. We've tried a million times.

Do you really think they'd switch it to a different video card if I ask?

 

At this point i don't see why not, it would be cheaper for them to even upgrade you to the 680M than burning thru 2 or more 675M's