Alienware M17X R3 Black Screen

I purchased an Alienware M17X R3 120hz laptop for a LAN party this weekend on ebay. It arrived and much to my dismay, the damn thing has some issues. I have been tinkering with it today and have a fairly clear idea of what is going on, but not how to fix it.

Problem:

The screen will go black (nothing on it, nothing) after a few seconds/minutes of doing anything really. Doesn't seem to do this in the BIOS, does however do this in Dell Diagnostics, Windows, 3dmark/furmark (if I can make it there).

Details:

Interestingly enough it works fine as long as the AC adapter ISN'T plugged in (so running on battery power), no black screens, everything is fine. Obviously its slow etc. Now, the AC adapter looks a little bit conspicuous (this is a second hand laptop).

Specifications:
Alienware M17X R3, i7 2720qm, 16gb (4x4gb), 256gb SSD + 500GB HDD, 120hz panel, NVIDIA GTX 580M 2gb, 240W AC adapter.

If anybody can shed any light on this I would be very appreciative as I would love to be able to play some video games with my buddies this weekend.

Thankyou notebookreview, I will check back frequently.

 

O dear, it sounds to me like the 580m has gone bad . That is the same machine I originally purchased and dell replaced it with the one in my sig .

When on battery the 120hz model is operating in P8 state which is an unplayable 75mhz (620mhz is full speed).

The 580m and it's rebadge the 675m are notoriously poor quality chips. A few searches here should show you but I have had 2 go on me and assisted at least 5 others!

You could get lucky and using driver v314.22 it may function for a little longer. This driver saved a lot of people from replacing their hardware - for a time...

It's by no means a certainty but every time the 580m or 675m comes up it ends up with a replacement .

Did you get any sort of warranty/return option?

 

Micky thats exactly what I had thought.. (again it seems these issues with the 580m/675m are wide spread) being that the gpu is in a lower power state it doesnt malfunction. Also he has 45 days from ebay if the item does not work like it said it should in the ebay posting. i.e. not as described.

Off topic: long time no see micky, ive not been on the forums.. anyway I see you have a 680m let me know if you need any tips on overclocking it ocd and all .

 

Hi there, I supposed I will be able to return it via ebay yes.

I tried a 130W AC Adapter and it isn't blacking out. I checked the GPU clock speeds (core and mem), they are the same as on battery so I assume this is why. The high GPU clock seems to make the screen black out.

Any ideas?

 

Yeah, I never finished my sentence re the P8 and identified by Hackinto... .

The card is failing at full power and the 240w is needed for the 580m (100w card). As soon as it's not being stressed it works and is why there is a chance of an earlier driver that stresses the card less may work for you.