crashes during games I found red soldered wire on laptop's motherboard + all games crashing

[ERSorrow]

Hello, I bought used laptop Acer E5-576G from repair shop and when I opened it up I found a red soldered wire inside on the motherboard. It clearly looks, that the repairmen did that. I checked the internet if the original motherboard has this wire or not and I didn't saw any. Why would they do that?

Also, all games crashing on this laptop when playing them with NVIDIA GPU (MX150). Maybe that hand-soldered wire shortens out something? Or GPU is dying?

Strange, but it's not even looks that it has any problems at NVIDIA control panel live view, no artifacts or glitches. I saw some artifacts on Far Cry New Dawn menu and I managed to get it working for about 10 seconds without crashing, gameplay was very smooth, no graphical glitches. Where could be the problem?

 

What I did:

1. Updated windows to the latest
2. Updated NVIDIA drivers to the latest
3. Reinstalled Windows
4. Changed thermal paste on CPU and GPU ( Before changing I saw that repairmen applied too much of it and it looked like a silicone paste) (Maybe that was one of the problems too?)
5. Checked if it's not dusty inside the laptop, but it was very clean

Nothing worked...

 

Also, I added a reference picture, of how it looks.

[Levent]

Probably board had damaged trace, they cut that out and wired it out. Its not technically a new practice or a bad one, but that would mean your laptop has been previously repaired.

2 minutes ago, ERSorrow said:

 I saw some artifacts on Far Cry New Dawn menu

what kind of artifacts? like these?

Spoiler

[ERSorrow]

Okay. About artifacts, yeah, little colored squares. But they're appearing and dissapearing fast in very small quantities.

[jaslion]

11 minutes ago, ERSorrow said:

Okay. About artifacts, yeah, little colored squares. But they're appearing and dissapearing fast in very small quantities.

Oh yeah that gpu is cooked then. You got sold a broken device.

[ERSorrow]

Just as I thought. Maybe there are some fixes (without reflowing)? Or It's better to try and return it? It's a bit strange, because I had other laptop, with dying gpu, but games worked even with glitches.

[jaslion]

28 minutes ago, ERSorrow said:

Just as I thought. Maybe there are some fixes (without reflowing)? Or It's better to try and return it? It's a bit strange, because I had other laptop, with dying gpu, but games worked even with glitches.

Return the gpu core is probably broken here. A reflow is risky on a whole latop board. That and it's never a given that that would even fix the issue as there can be plenty other wrong. If a card starts dying what it still can and cannot do is completly random>

[ERSorrow]

UPDATE!

I found that this laptop works perfectly if I play games with power adapter unplugged. Glitches and crashes appears only, when I'm playing with power adapter plugged in. So, turns out, that graphic chip works fine, but there are some other problem. I tried using other power adapter, but I got no luck. Also, I tried to remove the battery and use it only with power adapter, still the same problem. Tried to change power plans to battery saving - nothing changed. Everything works fine only when I have the charger unplugged. Maybe you have some suggestions? Maybe there's a problem with motherboard trace circuits when charging or something with charging port? Also, I made a photo of the motherboard, I can send it here if you like.

[jaslion]

1 hour ago, ERSorrow said:

UPDATE!

I found that this laptop works perfectly if I play games with power adapter unplugged. Glitches and crashes appears only, when I'm playing with power adapter plugged in. So, turns out, that graphic chip works fine, but there are some other problem. I tried using other power adapter, but I got no luck. Also, I tried to remove the battery and use it only with power adapter, still the same problem. Tried to change power plans to battery saving - nothing changed. Everything works fine only when I have the charger unplugged. Maybe you have some suggestions? Maybe there's a problem with motherboard trace circuits when charging or something with charging port? Also, I made a photo of the motherboard, I can send it here if you like.

Well pretty obious chip is broken BUT only when it runs at its full speed. Aka when the adapter is plugged in.

 

It's dying return it. Will die soon no saving it.