R4 dead ?

17xr4 died today. This is the second time playing a game in the two weeks I've owned it.

While playing Unreal tournament it just shut off and the power pack connector light just blinked.

I unplugged the power pack and plugged it back in but it wouldn't turn on. In fact as soon as I plug it in the light on the power pack goes goes out and it won't come back on until I disconnect it and then unplug it from the wall socket.

I tried starting from the battery and no go. I removed the battery for about 30 secs then put it back in and tried to boot with just battery. No boot. I plugged the power pack back in and same thing the power pack connector light goes out.

The only thing I did was add an SSD but that was the first day I had it.
i guess it's toast?

 

Maybe you should try a power drain, remove battery and adapter and hold the power button for 1min, then try again, gl

 

Tried and no go.

Well finally got it to boot and I smelled burnt electronics. Tried playing Far Cry 2 and it seemed to be alright for about 5 minutes. Fans were running high and a lot of heat coming out the back. Then started having BSODs and video driver error boxes popping up. I wonder if the 7970 bought the farm?

 

That sounds like GPU cause hardware meltdown...Man there has been awfully lots of issues lately since R4 has been released on the hardware side, unlike R3. Moreover these days it seems like genuine hardware failure rather than Dell's inefficiency. Perhaps vendors supplying Dell are cutting cost in turn reducing quality and durability just to have a satisfying bottom for the fiscal year. Realistically speaking this is very probable.

 

Now today I decided to do some more testing before calling Dell on Monday.

Ran Heven for over an hour straight no problems. Ran prime 95 and Heaven at the same time for 30 minutes and no issues. Then ran Furmark 15minute burn in 4 times and no issues.

I'm totally confused? I now seem to have no problem. I know what I smelled yesterday was buring silicon. Something got hot and shut down the laptop. Not sure what to do?

 

It could be that some foreign object ie: piece of dust or something was burning on the motherboard.

 

Hardware usually has a habit of just about working for a while before it fails completely.. What you described sounds pretty bad (BSODs, crazy fans, overheating, burnt smell) and sounds like a toast or nearly toast GPU for me. I say keep using it for now since it seems to be working fine, bit call up Dell and tell them what happened anyway. Also, have you tried taking a look inside to see if there's any visible damage?

 

Good idea. Ill call Dell and take a look inside tonight. Repd.

 

If you continue to have issues you can send an e-mail to [email protected] with your tag, phone and a brief description of the issue. Also you should be monitoring your temps at all times

 

Be careful bro...we dont want you burning your house down....Hope they resolve it. I mean its either GPU, CPU or some part of the motherboard. You said second time. Do you mean it happened twice or it happened when you were playing the game for the second time. Its a good thing it shut down. That means safe fails have kicked in.

 

No it happened within the first 15 minutes of playing Unreal Tournament (not a very system stressing game now days) a lan party. How embarrassing since I was was bragging the system up to everyone there. I have smelled burning electronic parts before and this was it.

Called Dell and told them what happened and the guy wanted to give me a refund and then have me order a new one. I said that wont work because my son is taking it to college and leaves this Sunday . He said maybe we can troubleshoot over the phone. I said there is nothing to troubleshoot because the system does boot but something got hot and I don't want this thing to die when my son has it in college. I said this is in the 21 day warranty period and he said that is all he can do. Bonk!

 

I would've taken the option to refund/order a new one rather than send an iffy system off with your son to deal with. Seems to me that offer and the offer to troubleshoot cover the spectrum of things the tech could do for you. I don't know what else you might have hoped for.