Alienware 17 R4 - 6820HK/1070M - Dead Motherboard

So this morning (03.02.18), I wake up to my machine being off (I leave it on 24/7), so I just think that it is just Windows Update messed up and shutdown the machine. It won't turn on, AC LED ring is out. I start thinking that the wire or power bar has gone bad, it wasn't that. So I start hunting down the problem and pull the machine apart. As I pull the main panel off... that acrid burnt plastic smell, the smell in the nightmares of all hardware techs. I narrowed down where the smell is coming from, but I don't have a multimeter to check the SMD.

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Can anyone tell me what that is, or even better, if there is anyone in Montreal, Canada, that can fix this cursed thing?

What is the likelihood my M.2 SSDs are still good? Could this have cooked my GTX 1080 Ti in the Amplifier? I ask because I have no way of testing any of these things.

Dell Canada wants 2639.99CAD for this damned board, best price I can find so far is 900USD for a used one, imagine how hesitant I am...

And this is after all the problems I posted here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/alienware-17-r4-various-problems.813372/

 

Uhm mate.... Bro.... pal..... cmon you can't be serious

 

Actually, I am serious, because you circled part of the heatsink, you can see the thermal pad sticking out

 

I'm aware, look at the CMD chip next to the mosfet under your heatsink. it looks roughed up. Remove the heatsink for dramatic sight.

 

That is just some dust. I looked again at the actual thing, just to make sure. Just to be clear, we are talking about the brown SMD capacitor, right?

 

It looks slightly melted on the picture. Hence I think mosfet next to it might have melted. Remove the heatsink and make a photo of that.

 

Thanks for your suggestion, I should have done so from the beginning. So I pulled the heatsink expecting to find nothing, but I found that a choke had blown, on the CPU see pic:

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I don't expect to have damaged M.2 SSDs with this, the Amplifier should be fine too, I think.

 

Well there you have it. GPU and M2ssd should be fine yeah.

Thought mosfet would have died, but nope. Low quality picture tricked me!!!!!!!!!!! ;_;

I think you should be able replace that chip yourself. It isn't exacly a small SMD or anything, but then again you don't know the cause so replacing it might end up breaking even more. You can maybe ask @Khenglish

As far as I know he's in the US but getting a board repaired with some shipping should be way better than paying for a new for a price that is basicially a new notebook or getting a used one that might have been refurbished and will die on you in a couple of weeks.

 

When you dropped that user's name here, does it notify him that he was mentioned?

I am surprised as well that the only visible damage is that one choke. I would be willing to repair it, definitely way cheaper than 900USD, if it can be done properly of course. And that isn't a dig against a person I don't know, I just know a lot of jokers who call them technicians and constantly damage stuff. I don't have a hot air station, so I won't be attempting this fix myself.

This choke could explain some of the odd problems I was having before.

Thanks for your replies.

PS. Sorry about the bad pics, I forgot to change my S8+ to macro mode.

 

Yeah he gets notified. Kenglish is known for being very competent. To Showcase what kind of guy he is:
https://premamod.wordpress.com/2017/10/10/clevo-pascal-mxm-standard/

The guy knows whatsup

 

The IC above the choke seems to be affected to, one of the legs is brown.

 

Well, yeah, khenglish would be the only choice. However, just aska local repair shop(a good one, not the scammers) and you'll be done in minutes.

Just hope the copper/gold print linings arent damaged, this could makes things tougher then you could think.

 

Then it's time to get the wires out :'D

 

Yeah you are right, if the solder pads are damaged, it would be a nightmare, that is why I don't do board level work. I am trying to find a local place that has at the very least, a hot air station, if they don't have one, they won't be able to do this properly. I am moving overseas and having it fail again... well let's just say I have had better luck fixing things with coconuts

My experience in electronics failure comes from inverters, and when one part in that section blows, you are bound to find more damaged ones. I am tempted to just replace the board. I will know tuesday what the plan is.


Thank you guys.

 

Maybe @woodzstack can help.

 

Maybe... let's find out

 

Took a look at this; you could possibly make due with an analog solder station and some good flux if you're careful. I have modded playstations in the past, and some have had damage like this. just make sure you heat the iron to just above the solder melting point on the board. it shouldn't damage anything. just make sure to replace it with silver/leaded solder as it melts much more readily than the stuff on board in the picture.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Alien...:1U8AAOSwWMhaY6eU:sc:USPSPriority!92220!US!-1

i did find this mainboard that seems slightly less capable than your current one, but it is 671$ vs 900

 

Well, if youre considering replacing it completely, why not try an experiment with your current board, i mean there are 2 outcomes
1. Your board will work
2. It wont.
If it dosent, you can just replace it whatsoever, but in chance, the first option happens, you could buy some ssds with monieee saved!

 

I can't actually find any of those inductors anywhere.

 

Measure the physical size, R15 means it should be 150nH, not totally sure, and then you need a new DrMOS/VRM IC to swap, also a decent hot air gun/rework station with an heat plate for pre-heat and its a 10 minutes job, no guarantee that the CPU wasn't feed with the full rail and its fried..

 

This is also something I was afraid of. I think the chances of the CPU surviving might not be that good....

 

I had thought about the lesser boards, I was even OK going down to a 1060, but the CPU is what I need. I use the machine with the Amplifier almost all the time, but I use the VMs when travelling and not so much the games. It wouldn't seem like a 6700HQ is that much of a step down, but when the 6820HK can hold a 4.1GHz OC on all cores... it becomes obvious and my Magento VMs show a difference.

That is my train of thought too, but I would rather someone else do the dirty work.

Thank you, I couldn't find that damned choke for the life of me and I wasn't sure how to read it. I am concerned that the CPU may have gobbled more volts than it should have, but the only way to find that out for certain is to swap the suspect parts.


It has been a crappy weekend, thanks for all your responses. I wish I had thought of my problems being hardware related while I was still under warranty. I am only 2 months out, but I suspect Dell is going to snicker and laugh at my request to get a board replaced anyway.

 

Did you originally purchase your laptop with a credit card? With certain credit cards in the US they offer an "extended warranty" as a cardholder benefit. It usually works like an insurance claim so there is a bit of extra paperwork involved, but it may be cheaper than paying for the board or a new machine outright.

 

Unfortunately, I did not.

I did call Dell and see what my options are, going to call back tomorrow and see if I can force the issue. We have ordered 100s of thousands of dollars of equipment from Dell in the last year alone. Hoping for the best.

I did learn something interesting, I could still buy an extended warranty even though my warranty is expired. The catch is that they want to run diagnostics to determine if the machine is working. Interesting detail this.

 

Just give them your order number and let them run diagnostics and after 2 weeks (in my case), you will have premium support/100$/year.

 

Most SMD chokes used in laptops cannot blow. They are typically a solid magnetic metal with no internal parts. Even if the choke was somehow shorted out the laptop would still turn on, but be unable to power up the CPU.

Typically only shorts on the main 19V system supply will prevent turn on. I suspect the power FET directly above the circled inductor died. These can die and short out the system power.

As for if it can be repaired, probably. It's possible for a short to damage contacts on the system board, but I have only ever seen this once, and that was with a blown SMD ceramic cap, not a power FET. All blown power FETs I have ever seen did not damage the system board.

 

The choke is easy to find if you can provide the dimensions, Mouser and/or Digikey will have at least a couple alternatives.

A choke can "blow", its as you say a piece of cooper embedded in a ferrite core, given the inductance and power rating it will be at most 2 turns of rectangular cooper conductor, but they can over-heat and then the ferrite looses its proprierties and its not the same inductor no more.

Also, given what happened, why aren't you making use of warranty?

 

Unfortunately my machine doesn't boot at all. The board is shorted out entirely. So I cannot get the extended warranty because the system will not pass/run the diagnostics.

On the heat sink thermal pads, right around the choke, is some scorching but not on the area touching the mosfet. I believe the mosfet to be damaged, I don't see how else the the choke can get the voltage to burn without the mosfet being damaged. But with that being said, I am not an engineer of any kind.

Unfortunately when I ordered my machine, I did not opt for the extended warranty, stupid I now know, and my warranty expired on January 13th 2018. Now there appears to some sort of 'lemon law' in my province of Quebec, and I will be exploring that with a friend who is a lawyer.

 

No 2 years warranty on Quebec? :/

 

hi, i repair notebook and the first component u named is a capacitor. if psu go down after plug -in there is a short in the 19v rail. and possibly that black tantalum capacitor. remove it and see if psu shot down again or not.

the second markedd component is a coil. clean it with isopropil alchool and see if it is ok under it or u have a burnt pcb. remove both smd and coil with an hot air station.

 

what can I help you guys with ?

 

@Maxed Out 's AW board is dead, so Dell asked quite a lot money for new Mobo. Since you know where to get the part that's priced just about right and guaranteed to work 100%.

 

You can usually negotiate with DELL to some degree too, but 1,000$ is sort of the going price all things considered it has the CPU and the GPU built in.

 

Unfortunately the default warranty term of 'consumer' laptops from Dell in most of the USA and Canada is 1 year, 3 years seems to be the default on the Latitude and Precision Mobile Workstation lines.

Hey ScruffyITA, I was mistaken in the first post, the item that is blown is the choke/coil in the VRM. For the choke to blow the mosfet probably gave up the ghost too, allowing for the voltage that killed the choke. Thank you for your response, it is much appreciated.


I will most likely be ordering a replacement motherboard tomorrow, unfortunately the place I am going to order it from will only ship to the lower 48, so I am going to have to send it to a friend in Ohio and he will forward it on to me then. Once I get the board and reassemble the machine with the repasting guide by @iunlock, I will then get the extended warranty, if it blew once, it will most likely blow again. Hopefully it is a fluke, but I can't risk it. I will be taking the dead board with me to where I am moving to and maybe they will have a hot air station to repair it, then I would have a spare. We shall see.


Thank you to everyone who participated in this hunt, great and constructive comments by all, it is much appreciated. I will be updating the my old thread about the problems I was having to point to this thread and my explanation that those issues I experienced were most likely due to the failing choke/mosfet in the VRM. I hope it helps other people.

 

Thanks for the suggestion, I will most likely be buying the 900USD board, unfortunately.

Yeah, normally, and seeing the amount of gear we have from them (about 250k) you would think they would help... no chance so far, party line all the way... out of warranty, 2639.99CAD for the board.

Do you do board level repairs with a hot air station, or know someone who does this competently here in Montreal?

Thanks again dudes.

 

You can probably source the motherboard for less.

I haven't repaired equipment like this myself in over a decade, and never something so small, so my skill would be out of the question for doing it, sorry.

There might be some people who do this on a regular basis, some shops here and there, but you;d have to find them yourself, I do not know any off hand, sorry man.

 

@Maxed Out You could ask Woodzstack and expect a good mobo from him since he will extensively test and will get great aftersales support and more value for money.

 

I think what happened is the MOSFET died and shorted the inductor in question to voltage supply or GND. This then caused an immense current through the inductor and made it melt its solder as seen. The inductor is probably fine (they are very resilient), but may as well be replaced when the MOSFET is replaced. MOSFETs often die without showing any visible damage.

If the MOSFET was fine but the inductor was not the laptop would still power on, but just be unable to power the CPU and beep at you. This is the case even if the inductor was pulled and replaced by a wire.

As for if the blown MOSFET damaged the CPU, very unlikely. Even if it shorted the CPU voltage rail to the voltage supply, the VRM is smart enough to detect this and will have all other power phases ground out the CPU voltage, overpowering the shorted phase protecting the CPU while waiting for the system to power off.

Can you get a hold of a multimeter to do some verification?

 

i have seen mofset replacements and is not too hard, i can do it myself :S you only need the right tools. people that fix MAcbooks do that all the time, those laptops blow everything

 

is not that hard as you think

 

I work in a repair shop in the U.K, most likely what has blown is the mofset as these usually blow on motherboards that have overclockable intel processors, we have a countless supply of motherboards with dead mofsets, most of them being MSI ones. Dell motherboards usually do not run into these problems but what @Khenglish is saying is probably the issue with your mobo.

Unfortunately, it is not as easy as replacing the mofset to make the board work, sometimes there are other ic's which are connected to the mofset which also blow, this depends on a short to the 19v rail though.

I hope you get your motherboard working again.

Also does the blue/white circle on the charger turn off when you plug it into the mobo?

 

You forgot one thing for newest Alienware models. Dell changed max allowed power. Aka increased TDP for the graphics long time after the models was released and out from factory (They had to do this due Azor (AW's CEO) bragged about Alienware was one of the very few OEM that used maxed out TDP specs for graphics vs, other OEM's models). The result as we all know, was the opposite. Let the hardware pull more power after finishing specs will in most cases lead to unexpected consequences. As Frezing, stutters and dead components osv.

 

@Papusan That is literally the stupidest thing they could of done wow no wonder the mofset died. You know what OP get yourself a dell precision 7710 or 7720 they are MUCH better in terms of board quality and build quality and will last you for years to come. They also have upgradable graphics and come with the latest skylake or kabylake, talking about 7920hq or 6920hq which will run circles around your 6820hk when at 4GHz.

Oh also they come with a default 3 year warranty if anything does go wrong (highly unlikely)

 

I see you have a clevo laptop, I had a p771dm and upgraded it, they are literally the best of the best, after dell of course (from experience).

 

The specifications were nailed long time before the models went out of the factory. Many months before. Change things afterward due panic aint very vise. Best advice... Maxed out Premium warranty is the only way to go.

I have two. And both works as day one

 

@Papusan nice, I wish I could afford the new Clevo P870TM-G

 

This is the 1070, not 1080 board. Nothing is out of spec with these models. The 1080 boards itself seem to be good too, except for the poor heatsink contact from what I saw.

 

Even the 1070 is out of the normal specs for 1070. Hence this card can compete with Alienware's 1080Max-Q. Aka used on the web as nice exemple why 1080Max-Q is a bad idea.

 

What is the boost clock for the 1070 mobile? I see 1645 on google but I think I reach between 1700 and 1800 by default.

Do you have som esources for it? Would like to read more on that. Because as far as I know only the 1080 received a boost.

 

I haven't the numbers. But Power target (watt) is increased. As well Dell put this in their advertising as well. I mean this was well known from before.

We all know why Dell did it!! And we have already seen results from it.