Dead Motherboard? Where to go from here? :(

M

Mowgli

Member
Hi,

Coming up to just over 2 years since purchasing, my laptop will not boot. When powered on, the keyboard backlight comes on and the fans run momentarily but absolutely nothing comes up on the screen. I have tried almost everything from plugging into the telly to check the screen, reseating the RAM and hard drive, disconnecting the battery, attempting to boot into the BIOS (get nothing).

I gave PC specialist a call and was told due to their lead times I was better off taking it to a local tech shop, I did this and upon arrival the laptop booted as normal (just my luck)! Therefore, I brought it back home and was able to use it for a couple of days, it performed perfectly (meaning that the CPU and GPU must have no issues). However, I shut it down one night and in the morning back to the same no boot state :( Thus, we believe that the problem must be the motherboard. I've spoken to PC specialist about the likelihood of sourcing a new motherboard and got a reply stating that they are unable to source a replacement. It was suggested that I look into motherboard repair specialists. Has anyone done this? Sounds like it could be costly.

Now, considering the CPU and GPU are fine, I really really don't want to just write off this laptop :( Especially considering I paid close to 1.5k for it only 2 years ago! Would anyone happen to have any suggestions on any options I have to move forward with this? I was wondering whether it would be possible to buy a laptop chassis and motherboard only so I could continue using the components that are okay? Or would it be cheaper to just bin the lot and purchase a new system?

Specs are as follows:
Proteus Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD 144Hz 72% NTSC LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Intel® Core™ i7 Six Core Processor 8750H (2.2GHz, 4.1GHz Turbo)
32GB Corsair 2666MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 16GB)
NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 2070 - 8.0GB GDDR6 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1
1TB Samsung 860 QVO 2.5" SSD, SATA 6Gb/s (upto 550MB/sR | 520MB/sW)

The chassis is a Quanta NL5A.

Any suggestions would be highly appreciated.
Thanks!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Scott

Scott

Behold The Ford Mondeo
Moderator
The difficulty you may have is the CPU/GPU interface. A lot of the time they were actually soldered to the motherboard and thus not easily removable/replaceable.

The fact that it was not-working and then working suggests that it may be a fixable problem though.

The issue is that you need to get it diagnosed to find what the issue actually is before we can even hazard a guess at resolutions.
 
ubuysa

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
Does a soft reset help? Remove battery and charger and hold down the ON button for 60 seconds or so. That discharges all the capacitors on the main board and at a guess they're the most likely components to fail and then work again - I doubt any of the ICs would be that flaky.
 
M

Mowgli

Member
ubuysa said:
Does a soft reset help? Remove battery and charger and hold down the ON button for 60 seconds or so. That discharges all the capacitors on the main board and at a guess they're the most likely components to fail and then work again - I doubt any of the ICs would be that flaky.
Click to expand...
I'd tried that previously and have just given it another shot. Unfortunately, no such luck :( Thanks for the suggestion though!
 
M

Mowgli

Member
ubuysa said:
OK. What about if you leave it powered off for a couple of days?
Click to expand...
Before taking it to the local tech shop, it had been discharged completely and powered off for just over 24 hours. It then booted up as normal. However, after trying this again in the last couple of days - absolute nada still. Worth trying again?
 
ubuysa

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
Mowgli said:
Before taking it to the local tech shop, it had been discharged completely and powered off for just over 24 hours. It then booted up as normal. However, after trying this again in the last couple of days - absolute nada still. Worth trying again?
Click to expand...
Maybe. Proving that it's a flaky component still means you have to locate which one. So maybe not. :)
 
ubuysa

ubuysa

The BSOD Doctor
One thing you might want to try was a trick we used decades ago during the early years of IC circuit boards. Get a can of compressed air. Get one with a plastic straw that lets you accurately direct the air. Because it's compressed the air is strongly chilled as it comes out and a chilled component will often work for a few minutes afterwards.

I would pick the capacitors first, spray one for 5 seconds or so and see whether it will boot. If not, try another capacitor. Once you've tried all the capacitors try spraying the smaller ICs. It was a useful tool for us in those early years, it would be nice to find it's still useful. :)
 
M

Mowgli

Member
ubuysa said:
One thing you might want to try was a trick we used decades ago during the early years of IC circuit boards. Get a can of compressed air. Get one with a plastic straw that lets you accurately direct the air. Because it's compressed the air is strongly chilled as it comes out and a chilled component will often work for a few minutes afterwards.

I would pick the capacitors first, spray one for 5 seconds or so and see whether it will boot. If not, try another capacitor. Once you've tried all the capacitors try spraying the smaller ICs. It was a useful tool for us in those early years, it would be nice to find it's still useful. :)
Click to expand...
This is very interesting and I've had lots of fun reading up on it! I will attempt to acquire a can of compressed air. Will be a few days before I can try it out though. Thank you very much!

Forgot to mention, RS do a special freeze spray... Might I be better off with this than your general can of compressed gas?

RS PRO 400 ml Aerosol Freezer Spray, -50°C | RS

uk.rs-online.com uk.rs-online.com
 
Scott

Scott

Behold The Ford Mondeo
Moderator
I wouldn't recommend that on the board. You might crack a few joints.

The air will bring the temps down quickly but not as drastically.
 
SpyderTracks

SpyderTracks

We love you Ukraine
Just to say, you’re still in warranty so PCS will fix it even if they don’t have stocks of the chassis, they’d still need to honour the warranty.
 
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