m18r2 - randomly shutting off during gaming

this started happening about a week ago and its instant shutdown, no black screens etc.... tried swapping AC adapters, trying a different outlet right now with different ac adapter

any way to narrow this down without swapping things around? its a pain to open this thing up

when the gpu crashed there was usually a black screen, when the cpu crashed there was a blue screen, this is just instant shutoff like someone pulled the power, ive even dialed back the clocks on both to test

 

i ran 3dmark loops to narrow down the issue - it's the GPU

GPU loop couldn't last 2 minutes even on lowered clocks, CPU loop ran at 4Ghz without crashing until i shut it off

i have a second m18xr2 so i just moved the drive caddy over and back and running in 10mins.....i guess ill just order another 980m

edit: i think ill swap the 980m to the other laptop to rule out the motherboard

 

putting a 780m in and running the same benchmark did not result in a crash....so $700 video card looks like

 

If it shuts down randomly its 90% GPU so you are right.

 

honestly my first guess was motherboard or power supply, BUT given that this gpu gave me issues in the past yes its a top suspect......$720 is a hard pill to swallow

 

I know your pain, that's why I stopped replacing my 980m cards after the warranty ended and just went EGPU. It's cheaper and it works

 

to me egpu or laptop watercooling defeat the purpose of why i went to laptops to begin with honestly

 

are you saying that 980m are more failure-prone than 780m?

 

ok...problem...put the 980m in the 2nd R2 which had UEFI and 780m in it....8 beeps...im almost positive laptop was already set to UEFI and not legacy

i think i have the stock R2 bios on that one...will a 980m boot on stock BIOS?

edit: legacy rom was on...amateur mistake

 

bit the bullet and got a brand new one this time

 

i put my 780m in while i wait for the 980m replacement but it's throttling with the same 353.xx J95 drivers i've been using for months.....what am i doing wrong? clocks are matched P0/P1

edit: do i have to downgrade to 345.20 for the 780m?

edit2: downgraded to 345.20...for now

 

You can try the throttle fix:
1. shut down and restart computer, get into BIOS and set graphics device to IGPU
2. Reboot into windows, let everything load, then restart into BIOS
3. Switch graphics back to PEG, exit saving changes and computer will reboot. Should remove your throttle problem. Seems to be a stuck flag problem.

 

switching to 345.20 fixed it, ill just switch back to 353.00 when i get the replacement card