M17x-R3: System Shuts off

soooo my m17x-R3 has developed an issue of shutting off completely while playing games. I generally attributed this issue to the fact that i had tinkered with the OS repeatedly and i never really attempted to resolve it other than searching out the event ids from the event log which went nowhere. it started while i was stock Hardware ( 2670qm, 8gb hynix ram,OCZ vertex4, etc etc) I always have used Hwinfo64 to bump the fans up when i game, so i thought maybe it was that. ut its not installed now and still the issue persists.. I also thought it might be thermal, but the temps really never get past 90....which shouldn't be tripping thermal afaik... so I Installed Windows 8 yesterday and installed my 2920xm in it and still i have the same issue. It seems like a power issue but the psu should have been able to handle the 2670 without issue right? obviously if NO, then the 2920 isnt helping but im grasping at straws....the event viewer doesn't really help just gives me " system shutdown @ blah blah blah was unexpected"

if it is thermal are there other cooling options available , such as a 3 pipe heatsink for the CPU? or any mods?

any ideas or advice would be great

 

What's exactly the temperature while gaming?

Also, do you get any bluescreens?

 

I have the exact same issue...only it doesn't happen on a regular basis. My temps run in the high 60's to low 70's when gaming for gpu and close to the same for cpu.
I don't really overclock as the 680m will play pretty much everything at stock, but did flash it with the modded vbios from svl7 so that I could if I wanted to. I did read a post somewhere (cant find it again) that aida64 was causing similar issues which I did have installed previous so I did a search and found a plugin for msi afterburner so I removed it and any other remnants of the program and haven't had that happen since. I haven't had a chance to do some long gaming sessions since so I'm not sure if its just a coincidence or if that was really the problem. I also find that it happens more often when I have external monitors hooked up.
no blue screens for me just shuts down and does reboot sometimes.
I'm also running windows 8.

 

I think generally, thermal shutdowns occur when the cpu hits a specific value, somewhere in the region of 100c+. If you haven't already tried it, what you could do is to run some on-screen monitoring during gaming and keep a close eye on gpu/cpu temps. Mr. Fox wrote up a fantastic guide for setting up this kind of monitoring and you can find it here:

HOW TO: Monitoring CPU and GPU Temperatures In-Game/In-Benchmark with On-Screen Display

You can then see what kind of gpu/cpu temps you are getting whilst under full gaming load and hopefully narrow it down. Might be that the XM needs repasting and is causing the shutdowns.

 

I had the same issue. Would start a game and the system would just instantaneously shut off. Turned out to be a faulty graphics card. Was in warranty, so just called Dell and they had a technician come round and install a new one. Problem solved.

As for your issue, I suggest starting with a clean install of everything, check your temps, and generally try to rule out possible causes. If your OS is fine and your temps are fine, then I suspect your GPU has died just as mine did.

 

my temps range from 85-92 on the XM cpu while gaming. pre- Rebuild of OS, after installing fresh windows 8, im sitting at 83-90 so far. occasionally i would get a BSOD, but not often mostly it just turns off. the mini dump indicated the antivirus was to blame for those specific issues, so i didnt correlate them. when it shuts down id turns off, does not reboot.

 

I will try this. are there any cooling techniques/mods i should employ?

 

I'd start off simply by propping up the rear of the machine by an inch or so, just to ensure adequate airflow. Notebook coolers can maybe shave a degree or two off temps, but don't rush out and buy one until you've seen wether just raising the back a bit helps out just as much.

If you run the above in-game monitoring, you should hopefully be able to see cpu/gpu temps and maybe you can associate those temps with the crashing - kind of using it for troubleshooting, it could help you tell which component is getting too hot and causing you grief.