Power or GPU problem? ...or both? ...or something else...?

[marines310]

Hey everyone,

 

Sad/concerned owner of an Alienware Area 51m laptop here.

 

My 18 month old laptop has recently started behaving in a strange way I was wondering if anybody has an idea what's going on.

 

A couple days ago I was playing Call of Duty on my rig when after I QUIT (not during) the game, it crashed hard with the screen turning white/beige and unresponsive to any keys. I had to do a hard restart and then the computer came back to life... except it didn't.

 

My laptop would constantly crash shortly after booting up. The screen would turn into a gray(mostly), white, blue, beige or green color and become completely unresponsive. This usually happens right after I put in my password for Windows but sometimes before.

 

For fearing some kind of hardware problem or electrical short, I immediately unplugged my adapters and waited for a while before starting the laptop on battery power where lo and behold, the device worked fine (mostly). I even tried loading up a high performance game and it seemed to run for the brief moment I turned it on.

 

My initial reaction then was a faulty power adapter or some kind of software that would drive my computer crazy however I started noticing these (see attachment) green "OK"s all over the screen which seemed more like a GPU failure. Occasionally these green "OK"s would be followed by a BSOD as you see on the attachment below.

The fan runs and it's not particularly hot and I don't smell any burnouts that I know affected some 1st gen early model Area 51Ms

 

I have updated my drivers (graphics, power etc.) and I have updated my BIOS to the best of my knowledge but I'm scared to run a test/update right now for fear that my device will crash during a BIOS update and will turn into a very expensive paperweight.

 

I haven't been able to get a diagnostics of it incase it is a shorting/power problem but if I'm safe from trouble, I'll be happy to get any missing remainder data

 

My tech specs are as follows:

PC: Alienware Area 51m

OS: Windows 10

CPU: Intel 9th Gen i7-9700K (8 Core, 4.9GHz)

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 8GB GDDR6 (OC Ready)

RAM: 32GB (2x16GB DDR4-2400MHz)

[Radium_Angel]

8 minutes ago, marines310 said:

Hey everyone,

 

Sad/concerned owner of an Alienware Area 51m laptop here.

 

My 18 month old laptop has recently started behaving in a strange way I was wondering if anybody has an idea what's going on.

 

A couple days ago I was playing Call of Duty on my rig when after I QUIT (not during) the game, it crashed hard with the screen turning white/beige and unresponsive to any keys. I had to do a hard restart and then the computer came back to life... except it didn't.

 

My laptop would constantly crash shortly after booting up. The screen would turn into a gray(mostly), white, blue, beige or green color and become completely unresponsive. This usually happens right after I put in my password for Windows but sometimes before.

 

For fearing some kind of hardware problem or electrical short, I immediately unplugged my adapters and waited for a while before starting the laptop on battery power where lo and behold, the device worked fine (mostly). I even tried loading up a high performance game and it seemed to run for the brief moment I turned it on.

 

My initial reaction then was a faulty power adapter or some kind of software that would drive my computer crazy however I started noticing these (see attachment) green "OK"s all over the screen which seemed more like a GPU failure. Occasionally these green "OK"s would be followed by a BSOD as you see on the attachment below.

The fan runs and it's not particularly hot and I don't smell any burnouts that I know affected some 1st gen early model Area 51Ms

 

I have updated my drivers (graphics, power etc.) and I have updated my BIOS to the best of my knowledge but I'm scared to run a test/update right now for fear that my device will crash during a BIOS update and will turn into a very expensive paperweight.

 

I haven't been able to get a diagnostics of it incase it is a shorting/power problem but if I'm safe from trouble, I'll be happy to get any missing remainder data

 

My tech specs are as follows:

PC: Alienware Area 51m

OS: Windows 10

CPU: Intel 9th Gen i7-9700K (8 Core, 4.9GHz)

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 8GB GDDR6 (OC Ready)

RAM: 32GB (2x16GB DDR4-2400MHz)

The BSoD gives us a clue

 

https://windowsreport.com/fix-video-scheduler-internal-error/

 

[Vishera]

When NVIDIA released the 20 series they shipped a bunch of GPUs with faulty memory,which caused this exact same issue:

This one is from an Alienware as well,so it seems like DELL does not care about having defective VRAM in it's products.

[marines310]

Just now, Radium_Angel said:

The BSoD gives us a clue

 

https://windowsreport.com/fix-video-scheduler-internal-error/

 

So I have looked at Video Scheduler Internal Error online but it seems that this narrows it down to about which continent the problem is

It could be a software or hardware issue still.

 

I haven't found anyone else on Google that had the green "OK"s which puzzles me

 

Also I have had one other BSOD that had a different error code but I can't remember which one

[marines310]

1 minute ago, Vishera said:

When NVIDIA released the 20 series they shipped a bunch of GPUs with faulty memory,which caused this exact same issue:

This one is from an Alienware as well,so it seems like DELL does not care about having defective VRAM in it's products.

This seems to be it... sounds like I have to fork out a couple hundred dollars  (warranty expired and I bought my laptop in Korea and I'm living in the US now)

[Radium_Angel]

2 minutes ago, Vishera said:

When NVIDIA released the 20 series they shipped a bunch of GPUs with faulty memory,which caused this exact same issue:

This one is from an Alienware as well,so it seems like DELL does not care about having defective VRAM in it's products.

Ouch...

Just now, marines310 said:

This seems to be it... sounds like I have to fork out a couple hundred dollars  (warranty expired and I bought my laptop in Korea and I'm living in the US now)

Double ouch.

 

I don't know if it's possible on a system like that, but perhaps (perhaps mind you) contact Dell and demand a refund based on a known defect when the product was sold.

 

Or see if it's possible to underclock the system so it doesn't place too much strain on the GFX card?

 

[marines310]

5 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Ouch...

Double ouch.

 

I don't know if it's possible on a system like that, but perhaps (perhaps mind you) contact Dell and demand a refund based on a known defect when the product was sold.

 

Or see if it's possible to underclock the system so it doesn't place too much strain on the GFX card?

 

Thank you that's a good suggestion, I will try that! I have contacted Dell customer support but COVID, EoY priorities and out of country/out of warranty issues are delaying my case I think. We'll see how this goes

 

Thanks everyone for their input. Ten minutes on LTT was far more effective than three days on Google!

[Vishera]

9 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

Or see if it's possible to underclock the system so it doesn't place too much strain on the GFX card?

 

With that kind of manufacturing defect i suspect it won't help.

some sources say it's the memory controller,not the memory itself,but it's definitely a memory related defect.

[Radium_Angel]

7 minutes ago, Vishera said:

With that kind of manufacturing defect i suspect it won't help.

some sources say it's the memory controller,not the memory itself,but it's definitely a memory related defect.

Bummer. It was a long shot anyway, but thanks for the heads up