Dell G5 5587's inconsistent shutdowns

Hi, I have a Dell G5 5587 with i7-8750H + GTX 1050Ti. I'm not having the average thermal throttling like other Dell G5 out there because I have already repasted and undervolted this thing, but straight up shut down only and only when I use the dGPU.

The first shut down started in early March, during an intensive Destiny 2 session. I thought it was overheating so I went ahead and repasted with Gelid GC Extreme + Replaced the thermal pads with Fujipoly 1mm 11W + Dusted out the fans. To my surprise, shutdown still occurred when I used the dGPU. I have already stress tested the crap out of the CPU, RAM and hard drives, yet none of them produced shut downs. Btw, I have also reinstalled windows 10 and exclusively use the drivers provided by Dell.

What is troubling me is that there is literally no consistency in when will the dGPU cause shut down. Sometimes, I can crank max graphics for 3 days straight, or even a week. Sometimes, it doesn't take more than 5 minutes into the game for another shut down, regardless of the temperature and graphic settings I use.

How the laptop shuts down is pretty random too. Most of the time, I have to unplug the AC adapter and wait for 5 minutes before I can turn it on again. Some other time, the laptop will instantly reboot after it shuts down. And then on one rare occasion, the screen will go black but the keyboard is still lit, like it went into sleep mode but I could not wake it up without force shutting down. And then on this very very rare occasion, the laptop will shut down after I ended the dGPU stress test, and then took 2 tries before it could load into windows 10.

I'm suspecting some sort of power surge caused by faulty AC adapter or battery. But the AC adapter still charges just fine and the battery still holds its charge well despite 22% wear lol. And yes this laptop uses "hybrid power technology" because the 130W charger that Dell gave me is not sufficient to power the entire system on its own lol. I haven't tried other chargers yet though. Also if it is power surge related, shouldn't it also shut down when I stress the CPU too?

Maybe it's still overheating. But I checked the BIOS for thermal event and there is nothing on the log, beside the generic "ASF2 forced off" after every shut downs. Or something did overheat, just that the BIOS did not report it. I honestly don't know. In addition, CPU used to do 100 Celcius and GPU used to do 85 Celcius, yet no shut down. They run way cooler now though. There are also other unknown temperature sensors in HWInfo64, which I suspect to be the VRMs' or PCH diode's, but none of them are really worth concerning ( like the highest one is only 70 Celcius even under stress).

Possibly fan malfunctioning too but... they spin just fine? Even at optimal speed!

I'm also suspecting drivers conflict, but event viewer didn't say anything beside the generic "the previous shutdown was unexpected".

Or faulty motherboard. But like if there is something wrong with the motherboard, the entire system will simply stop working, which is not the case for me. I have also ran the built in ePSA test (basically pre-POST diagnostic) and no errors were found.

Or could it be buggy BIOS? I have consulted with other Dell G5 5587 owners with the same 1.12.0 BIOS like me and they don't experience any shut downs, beside the usual thermal throttling.

Or the dGPU itself is simply dying. However, I'm not experiencing any artifacts in games nor glitching... But this is always a possibility.

I'm thinking about just buying a new laptop because even if I bring it to a repair shop, they will likely pop me $30 for diagnostic + another couple hundred bucks for whatever fixes they come up with (very likely a motherboard replacement for $500, which is more than half the original price that I paid for this laptop lol). And yes, my warranty is already expired so even if I contact Dell, they refuse to help me.

Sorry for the long post. Any experts know a possible explanation for this?

Bum_Bum Newbie

kojack Notebook Prophet