Asus G73 JH HELP!

Hey guys, Im looking for some much needed advice here. So I have an Asus G73 JH that was part of the 95C club. I repasted and brought temps down dramatically but unfortunately she has taken all she could

My GPU is fried to the point where no flash videos would load without causing a BSOD and the computer finally wont even turn on. The GPU is toast. It was a Mobility Radeon 5870.

So heres my question. Does anyone know of an affordable solution to my problem? I am a junior in college studying mechanical engineering and I am broke. I really dont want to spend $300 on a brand new graphics card. I already owe a shop for the repairs they tried to make (i could have dont them myself but I have absolutely no time and the guy is a friend) hes a great guy and is so far losing profit to help me. So back on point, I would prefer a new GPU to avoid future problems, unless someone knows of a used one I could get at a very affordable price that won't crap out on me. What do you guys recommend? Would any NVIDIA cards work in my laptop? What is the best, affordable option? Im not against spending money but if I can buy a new laptop for the price of repairs, that seems like the more logical route.

THANKS!!

Justin

 

Just to be sure it is broke do you get any display on an external monitor? does it boot and just nothing show up on the screen?

If it shows on an external you could easily have a loose connection when you reassembled to the top connections to the motherboard or have trapped a wire.

As long as you applied thermal compound correctly reseated the heatsink and of course reconnected the GPU fan cable I do not see how it could just fry.

 

Yiddo is spot on. After trying his suggestion(s) try removing battery and AC cord and press and hold the reset pin hole on the bottom of the machine.
http://www.legitreviews.com/images/reviews/1248/ASUS-G73JH-bottom.jpg it is the small hole to the left of the removable cover. Then retry cold boot. Also try boot with AC only and Battery only

 

Thanks you for the quick responses! I will try and see what I can do. Right now the shop has my computer but I am going to see him later today. He described the problem to me as this:

Anything graphics intensive completely shuts the computer off. After my re paste nearly 1.5 years ago, I was getting good temps. When he first got my G73, temps were ok but then suddenly started spiking. The GPU was idling at 105C. He did a re paste for me with AS and dropped the idling GPU temps tremendously to about 70C. He also checked CPU temps but those were fine.

He had a very tough time installing Windows on my machine. He would try to install it but it would turn off halfway through the installation. (after the first BSOD I wanted to do a fresh install). We have tried the latest ATI Drivers, Asus ATI Drivers, and 11.6 and 11.7. Nothing seems to help. Any time something graphics intensive (gaming, flash, etc) starts, it nearly immediately shuts off. Now the computer will not turn on at all.

I can try connecting to an external display tonight. As well as pressing the reset button on the bottom of the laptop/various start methods. Any other suggestions?

Thanks again!!

 

Hmmmm idling temps of 70oC are very high so I don't know what he did when he repasted but that is why we do it ourselves on here 50-55oC is a must on these models.

Sounds like a thermal shutdown or faulty hard drive during boot and the reason he was having trouble with drivers is because of the VBIOS. If he had just googled your model he would have known that....

Hopefully he will be able to fix it for you but before he says he cannot, get it back and post back on here. I bet I have more chance at fixing it by typing than he does with his shop

External display is your first point of call to determine the fault, a repaste again done properly yourself is the next.

 

Thanks again! Well let me back up a bit.... I got this laptop a little over two years ago from BestBuy. After receiving it, I Realized the posible overheating issues and about 6 months after I bought it, it began overheating. I updated the VBios and Bios myself to the most current versions at the time in order to run more up to date Catalyst software. When my vbios conflicted with my graphics drivers, I got Grey Screens rather than blue.

Up until recently, I was running the Catalyst 12.6 drivers with great success. I bought a 128GB SSD drive and created a 100 Gig partition of my original 700GB drive. I cloned my drive to the SSD (using 65 of 128 gigs) and everything was blazingly fast and worked wonderfully. I downgraded to Catalyst 11.6 because 12.6 stopped playing nice with my sound drivers and I wanted audio to only come through the headphone jack not the jack and subwoofer. I was running this SSD successfully for two months. One night, I was watching hulu and typing a MS Word document. I went to turn on my laptop and the only thing I get is a BSOD listing an ati conflict. (I did not do any driver updates, windows updates etc and I always run DriverSweeper in safe mode before installing new drivers) I loaded the micrsosoft recovery disk to see if it could fix the startup issue. It didnt work, so I swapped back to my 700GD drive since I did not touch the partition (that drive has the 12.6 drivers). It still went into BSOD's and would not go into windows. This is when I brought it to my buddy.

My question is this: the old hard drive should have worked right? And why wont my machine let my buddy install windows? is it running so hot its overheating? After my first repaste, my temps idling were 60C or so and under Furmark, it only got up to 92C and would run it for hours. When my friend finally got it to boot into windows using another drive, idling temps were 105 C. I regularly clean out the vents (2 times a month) and monitored my temps closely. He has worked on a number of these G73 laptops and done quite a few repastes. Why is the idle temp so high if the GPU is not fried?

Thanks!!

 

You need to establish if the GPU is fried by running it on an external screen, but the only way the temps will idle at 105oC is if you have not reseated the heatsink properly or not applied thermal compound correctly or the fan is not connected or not working.

 

I will check today to see if my external display will still connect. If the laptop will not turn on at all do you feel this would be a symptom of a bad GPU? or would a bad PSU/other problem likely be the culprit?
Thanks again for the help! Im really hoping the GPU isnt fried

 

If the system will not turn on at all then it speaks to a problem in the motherboard.

 

Hey guys so I picked up my laptop today. The guy I had working on it did try connecting to an external display and the computer froze. He got it to run before that but it was choppy and would constantly freeze. Now my laptop will only turn the blue light bar on but the screen stays black. I tried a hard reset, battery out, and just from battery. No change, laptop still wont boot.

Ideas? I still feel it is the GPU...

On a side note, will a NVIDIA GTX 460M work in my G73?

I still dont know which temp sensor was reading 105C. It was not one of the three primary GPU sensors and it was not the CPU temp sensor. He ran another program (not GPUz) and it listed a fourth GPU temp.

Thanks,

Justin

 

Possibly the power circuitry I guess, or just a dud reading. I believe some models shipped with the 460m?

 

Yep I kind of wish I had gotten an NVIDIA LOL

Mines one of the overheating infasmous BestBuy models with the Mobility Radeon 5870. Does anyone know if the Nvidia 460 is interchangeable with the ATI 5870? I have heard they are NOT but have not been able to find any conclusive evidence why not. All I have heard is that people who have tried the swap have not gotten it to work.

Any way I can conclusively tell if it is the GPU or mobo? Im fairly certain its the GPU and am thinking about taking my GPU out and baking it to see if that might fix it for a while longer.

 

Only way to test individual components in the case of no power on is to try them in something else or get a substitute.