Charger Randomly Disconnects during high load - GT70

Good Day Everyone,

I own an old GT70 laptop which is around 5-6 years old I think and a few weeks ago, the screen started dimming for a few seconds and then back to the original brightness this happens randomly, sometimes multiple times in a row. The dimming, I found out, was because the charger disconnects - the icon on the taskbar shows that the laptop only runs on battery and when the brightness goes back to normal, the charging icon returns as well.

Another thing I've noticed is that these instances seem to occur only during high load, whenever I'm playing a game for example. The dimming is of course coupled with performance loss since the laptop shifts to the power saving mode. The problem doesn't happen on idle times or when I'm just doing simple stuff such as browsing or using a word processor, etc. Recently, the dimming got worse, from a few seconds to probably near a minute. When playing a game on battery for a few minutes, probably because my battery is already old, it just gives up and then the laptop shuts off. When this happens, I can't immediately turn the laptop on. It appears that the laptop can't draw power from either the battery or the AC adapter. After unplugging and plugging several times, the laptop will just suddenly power on and the battery doesn't seem to be depleted much.

The dilemma I'm facing is that since the problem isn't replicable due to it being random, I can't pinpoint if the problem is in the charger or the motherboard itself. I need advise on how to diagnose the problem.

Thanks.

 

Is this the 180W adapter?

 

Hello,
I'm not sure, but the details of the adapter are as follows:
Brand: Delta Electronics, Inc.
Model: ADP-180HB B
Input: 100-240V~2.25A 50-60Hz
Output: 19V - 9.5A

 

180HB = 180W.
Those were prone to breaking back in the day (ask @ryzeki about that).

Take a picture of the plug inputs on both the charger and the laptop.
If you can take a high res clear picture, someone here may be able to tell you if the Chicony or Delta 230W PSU will work in your system (the EC will still limit you, but at least you will have power). The Chicony was used on the Gt72VR and has a round circle with a single hole in the plug (I believe). The Delta 230W has a 4 pin hole system (4 pins in the laptop, 4 holes in the PSU plug).

If the 230W PSU does actually work, there may be an issue with the 19V vs 19.5V of the 230W's; I believe someone else has discussed that.

 

That's possibly the AC adapter going bad. You can replace it with similar or better specification.

 

Hello,

Thank you for the suggestions. I don't really have access to a good camera here so I just found similar models through google.

The laptop port and adapter port are similar to the ones below:

 

Yeah, that's it, and it's compatible with Toshiba too.

 

Alright, thank you for this.

However, upon further tinkering, it seems the charger is not faulty at all.

As I've mentioned before, the problem only occurs during high load, when the nvidia gpu was being utilized. The laptop has optimus, so when doing light work, the problem doesn't occur since the intel gpu was being utilized. I reinstalled the driver and somehow the problem just disappeared. I'm really not sure what happened but a few days ago I tried updating the nvidia driver but didn't work so I rolled back. I'm guessing the rolling back process wasn't proper which caused the gpu to draw more power than the adapter and battery can provide (not sure if this is possible, if it is, well, drivers are dangerous business I'd say). I used DDU and reinstalled it (the old driver) clean this time and it now works. Another thing I've noticed is that the temperature doesn't rise as high than when the problem was happening.

Really weird problem but I'm glad it's resolved, at least for now.

Edit: Okay, so the problem still exists but this time it took a really long time before it happened and I still think it's the nvidia driver. Upon booting after the shutdown, the UI was not aero - just the basic one with no transparency and rounded edges. After a few minutes everything went to normal, with aero active. It appears that the driver is crashing (?) Not really sure on this but I happen to solve it again, hopefully for real this time, by changing the power management mode in the nvidia control panel to prefer consistent performance. I need your help guys on finding out what exactly the problem is - well it could be a failing adapter as initially said but I wouldn't like to spend on anything yet as much as possible.

 

Do more stress test on the Nvidia GPU because both AC adapter and screen work fine.

 

Hello,
Thank you for taking your time helping me with this rather bizarre problem.

Alright, so the changing of the power settings seem to be a fluke because the problem resurfaced but for the past few days it did seem to work properly. I tried the suggestion of running stress tests on the GPU using furmark - the charger disconnection problem did happen for a while, but not long enough to shut the laptop down. Afterwards, the stress test just ran normally. I've noticed on the GPU-Z tool that the perfcap reason is displaying power meaning that performance is limited by power. Could this be it? After a while, when the temp of the GPU reaches 80C+ it changes to thermal, which means the performance is limited by the temperature. This one I can understand. The VDDC maxes out at 0.8750V. Is this the proper voltage for 970m?

Thanks.

 

It seems fine, and the voltage readout is normal for GPU. Have you updated BIOS & EC to the latest version yet?

 

Problem most likely is bad solder joints on the AC jack on the laptop. This was a rather common issue on some of these models. It could also be an issue with the PSU itself, but the only way to find out is to buy or borrow another PSU and test that. If the problem still happens, then unless you're somehow doing something weird that exceeds max AC power levels, it could be the port itself. You may have to consider a repair RMA. Considering some of the horror stories with people getting equipment back even worse than they sent out, if it's out of warranty, you could see if an electronics shop can possibly test and resolder for you, but then they would have to completely disassemble it, and then know how to put it back together.

 

I think I forgot the mention, but this GT70 was the model with the 675m, which was apparently a problematic card. When it broke down, I replaced it with the 970m with great help from this thread:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/the-official-msi-gt60-70-970m-980m-upgrade-thread.765058/

So currently, my BIOS & EC are flashed to the version mentioned in that thread. As of now, I seem to have no other options but to buy a new PSU. If that fails, maybe it's time to invest in a new laptop. Repairs here cost way too much and probably won't be worth it anymore since this laptop is starting to break down slowly anyway. I'll try to update once I get my hands on a different PSU.

 

Since it's so outdated, I'd just go with a new one instead of going with repair. But as you said, you can attempt a swap of AC adapter and see what happens next.

 

So I finally went to some repair shop and was able to test using a different AC adapter. It appears that the other chargers were even worse and would immediately disconnect upon heavy load. They tried opening the laptop and did some maintenance - cleaning and applying new thermal paste. They said the jack and the connections were fine and said that it could be the GPU causing problems. I guess at this point I'm already convinced that I should just buy a new one then.