Replacement R1 motherboard came in and found this. Question.

Got my replacement motherboard today from Dell for my R1. The original motherboard had tape on the underside where the audio jacks were. The replacement motherboard does not. Anyone care to guess as to why? I am thinking about putting electrical tape in the same spot on the newer motherboard. There are two sharp points that come out there. they are red in color and you should be able to see them in the second photo.

 

Called AW tech support. They did not have a clear answer as to why it's there, but said to go ahead and place my own tape there. Going to use high grade electrical tape rather than just masking tape like on the original. Noticed my original motherboard is revision F2 1136 and the new board is revision G2 1146. I am curious what has changed, if anything, with the board. We'll see.

 

Not sure about the tape, bro. I just looked at my M18xR1 motherboard and it does not have any tape there. It might be meaningless, but adding a strip of good electric tape as insurance in case it is relevant certainly cannot hurt anything.

We learned something about those numbers from the conference call with Bill B. (former Dell Social Media Manager) and Louis Bruno (Alienware Graphics Engineer) with regard to the 6990M overheating and thermal shutdown. They are only production sequence numbers and do not reflect any kind of tangible difference in the motherboard. We had gathered all of our numbers and posted them to try to determine if certain "revisions" were affected and it turned out to be an exercise in futility. (See spoiler for Update #2 in the opening post in this thread for the example of our false assumption.) Those that remember it may also remember that M18xR1 BIOS A05 was the fix for that issue with 6990M CrossFire.

 

Thanks for the response Mr. Fox.

My worst fears came true tonight. After installing the replacement motherboard it looks like both 780Ms are fried. The biggest question is what happened? I have no idea to be honest. If I install the first video card by itself into GPU slot 1 the system boots, but I still get the blue lines across the screen during the Windows 7 logo boot screen and then when the logon screen appears it is in the 800x600 16 color graphics mode. It fails. I installed the secondary GPU into slot 1 and this is where it gets even stranger. I turn on the machine and I get a black screen with a 7 beep error code which from what I have read is a CPU failure beep code. Yet if I put back the other GPU it boots up fine with no beep code, but with the lines and the low res Windows graphics mode. So I removed both cards and the Intel graphics kicks in perfectly and Windows boots up normally and the graphics look fine. So it looks like both 780M cards are goners, but I still can't figure out that 7 beep error code when I install the secondary GPU. Odd, but maybe one of you gents know the the answer???

At least I can still do my audio engineering for now using the Intel graphics chip until I figure out what I am going to do. With the 880Ms starting to get on the market and Intel may have some new CPUs coming along I may just hold for now and possibly just get an entire new system here shortly.

 

Oh, no... man, this makes me want to cry. I'm really bummed out for you, bro... how tragic.

It's hard to say. The 7 beeps obviously has something to do with the GPU causing it. Looks like something got shorted in the contacts in that PCI-e slot from what you showed before with that burn mark. Not sure what might have caused it and it may have had a problem that started brewing before your upgrade. That one arc could have damaged both cards, and as you mentioned, that problem is likely what killed the first GPU that went into the same slot.

 

Whoa that sucks. 1600 dollars down the drain for a stupid slot defect. Sorry to hear brother.

Sent from my SM-N900T using Tapatalk

 

This is the reason I dont wanna install/remove anything from a laptop.

 

I have blown up my fair share of systems. From a full cup of coffee falling into a desktop system that was powered on to power supply rails turned in the wrong direction (back in the black-on-black wire days when you could do that) and let me tell you seeing the sparks that flew that day with the purple smoke... ah yes... the purple smoke! Anyways, this time around I truly believe this was a faulty slot on the motherboard. My first 780M I received flat out would not work and I sent it back to the guy I buy them from and he noticed a very small scorch mark. He sent another and that worked for months and now this happens. I think that slot has had issues for quite some time. Do I regret losing two very expensive video cards? You bet, but I will always love this hobby even when it really hurts the wallet. I love tinkering and you have to have a strong stomach for it sometimes.

On a positive note, the guy I buy my cards from is going to look at them. He does repair GPUs to a certain degree if they are not too far gone, but no promises. It's my last shot at it and then I move on. Will it be AW this time? Don't know yet. Now that MSI, ASUS, Origin PC and others are rolling out their 880M machines I'll wait and see what AW rolls out. I also may just wait for Intel to refresh their CPUs before making a decision. I am getting a little older and so tearing down and repasting laptops may not happen as often anymore. You get to a certain point where if it works and it performs good enough, then go with it.

I started to look at my wife's laptop after my 780Ms took a nosedive and she looked at me and said, "Don't even think about it."

 

That's the right way to look at the situation. +1 rep

Everything in life carries a risk... getting hit by a car crossing the street or struck by lightning is a real danger, but we cannot let risks keep us from living life to the fullest. What happened here is not common, although no less unfortunate. Most upgrades and repairs turn out the right way, without any complications. This was an exception.

 

Im a risk taker!

 

LOL! So are they missing because they blew up or are you upgrading? That looks an awful like my R1 right now. Just sent off the cards for possible repair. We'll see if some magic can be done.

 

no, I was more lucky and my 680M cards only needed to be re-seated.