Broke my XPS.

As the title suggests, I think I may have broken my XPS 15 9560.

I recently repasted the XPS with Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut. I thought it went fine, and the computer worked well for a short while. This proved not to be the case for long as while I was using it, coloured bars appeared across my screen, and it froze. I restarted it, checked the motherboard, but everything appeared fine.

After calling Dell and getting directed from out of warranty, to in warranty, to XPS services, and back to out of warranty, I decided to try and figure out what was wrong myself and see if I could do anything first.

When I tried rebooting it, the screen stayed black and the light flashed 4 white, 2 amber, indicating RAM / Memory failure. I tested the memory by checking each memory slot with a working stick of RAM, and discovered that my 2nd slot was not working. If I I turned on the laptop leaving the 2nd slot empty, the laptop worked fine, albeit with half the RAM. I booted it as so, and went into diagnostics. This image is what greeted me. I thought I was careful enough with the liquid metal thermal paste, but I guess not.

Anyways, I posted this story as not just something for someone to learn from, but for a call for help; Anyone got any suggestions for what I can do? Thanks!


EDIT: Not five minutes later, a development! Now both slots are broken and the laptop won't boot.

 

http://imgur.com/gallery/qyIGiIr

 

Well, have you removed the heatsink and checked for excess LM floating around?
Did you use any protection for the motherboard around the chips?

 

No visible LM anywhere, and I used electrical tape around the chips. I'm thinking some must have brushed some on the motherboard by accident.

 

Did you try repasting with regular paste (in case the gap was too wide, no contact)?
There were cases when folks damaged the mobo (tiny SMD elements) around the chips when cleaning old paste, not LM fault.
LM spilt over the mobo can cause weird damage because gallium migrates from LM (galinstan) into other metals. Al is particularly at risk, hence totally incompatible with Al heatsinks

 

For all the XPS' flaws, we rarely see motherboard failures on the forums.

Maybe some LM migrated or contacted other components. I seem to remember reading about at least one LM case where RAM soon failed but can't be 100% sure.​

I don't know how to diagnose or fix your problem; so do some more research. There are several LM threads here on nbr.

Maybe carefully remove heatsink. Find a way to carefully blot up and remove the LM from the die and the electrical tape. Then carefully remove electrical tape. Inspect CPU area with a magnifying device looking for potential migration-damage.

I generally use high-quality isopropyl alcohol (99.99%) for electronics cleaning but I'm not sure what is appropriate for LM.

You also can inspect the RAM and the RAM slots with a magnifying device to search for damage or contamination. Do not touch the gold contacts on male/female side as any contamination can cause failure. My colleague managed thousands of servers and has data to back that assertion, so he was paranoid about not touching contacts. I don't know best practice for cleaning the contacts but I might clean the ram card contacts with alcohol; I don't think you should touch the female pins as they are so delicate.

Good luck.

 

Haven't tried repasting with regular paste yet, I'll give that a try. Thanks.

 

Thank you for the response. I have Arctic Clean, so I'll give cleaning it up a try and an inspection with the magnifying glass, and I'll make sure to remember your warnings regarding contact.