Help! M15x dead?

Hi! I'm not in a good situation. My M15x has worked flawlessly for 3 years but today the screen went blank suddenly while idling in windows, the GPU fan went to maximum and I'm unable to turn the machine off from this coma without removing the battery.

I've taken GPU out, had a quick look round and put it back in but on booting screen is blank, fan is on full etc. This behavior continues if i close the lid. Only way to stop is to remove battery.

Any ideas? I do still have my gtx 460m that I might try but this is extremely stressful!

Sent from my cm_tenderloin using Tapatalk HD

 

OK its the graphics card noooooooo!

Any ideas what could have happened?
Any troubleshooting I can do?

After a quick search, people that have experienced similar problems have 'baked' their cards.
Does this imply putting it in the oven? If so any details on that?

 

This basically means, card is gone. Baking may solve it, it might not solve it.

In my experience baking works widen there is issue with cold solder joints but even baking only makes it work for small time, best is to replace the card and start fresh.

 

Except I spent all my pennies on this card so now nothing but low quality gaming to look forward to.

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didnt you just purchase this(gpu)..... any warranty?

 

Yes I've had it less than a month! No warranty as I bought it from a forum member in perfect working condition

 

Did you have all the components properly covered with thermal pads that needed them? If baking temporary fixes it, then you may need to reflow the card.

 

Re-installed card this morning and it appears to be working fine. Haven't tried any games yet.
I'm suspicious of it just dying again very soon.

 

Is this a Dell OEM card? or one from Clevo ?

 

Dell OEM on blue pcb. Also evidently Dell from the capacitors.

 

Just had a call back from Alienware Technical Support as a follow up from my call yesterday. Really nice service
The guy seemed genuinely happy I'd fixed it.

 

Glad everything's working! Enjoy the power once again. :thumbsup:

 

Could be fine! Pulling the CMOS and then doing a power drain and turning back on should solve the problem.

Perhaps stick to stock clocks and slightly undervolted for now..until I sort my cooling mod

 

Seems like the card is not working properly, maybe next time it would be wise to get some sort of warranty. How were the temperatures during gaming sessions?

 

Yes a warranty would be nice but I bought the card second hand considerably cheaper than laptopmonkey or upgradeyourlaptop offer them.
I've heard that whilst they do offer a warranty they hardly ever honour them, claiming buyers have voided the terms of the warranty by basically installing it wrong....

After 2 hours of Bioshock Infinite on Ultra highest gpu temp was 77 degrees and average was about 73-74. Not that bad but my current thermal compound is MX2 which is pretty crappy.
I intend to use ICD24 when I next disassemble M15x.

 

playing again?

 

Yes everything appears to be fine. Even played some Bioshock on a 27 inch tv! That was awesome!!! Now I want an external monitor lol.

I'm staying away from driver 13.5 beta just as a precaution.