How Often Do Your Gaming Laptops Break Down?

When I bought my $2560 Dell E1705 with a 7800go vc it's was one of the most powerful laptops for it's time. I bought it with a 4 year + Accident Protection warranty that probably cost me $420 extra, but this warranty was all worth it as I had 2 screen replacements, 1 keyboard, 4 video card replacements, 1 motherboard, 1 wifi card, and a total rebuild after the latpop fell a flight of stairs by accident. My first bad experience buyins a $2500 Sony laptop in 1999 and after 1 year the motherboard went bad and it would have cost me $1300 for repair taught me a big lesson in that you should buy a good long warranty if you spend a lot on an expensive laptop, especially if it's used every day. My E1705 was my main computer and gaming rig from Feb 2006 to Dec 2008 when I bought an i7 920 desktop. So in heavy every day use my laptop broke a lot, but maybe the initial fall down a flight of stairs predisposed it to more breakdowns. I had Dell EPP so I was given premium service. I don't know how Dell regular service is.

So how about you? If your laptop is your main rig how often does it break down and what have you replaced? What warranty did you get and for how long. Was your warranty serviced well? Dell was fast and quick with mine.

After my 4 year warranty expired in feb 2010 I rarely use my laptops. I only use them for vacations, school, and gps when traveling by car.

I don't need a gaming laptop, I prefer gaming on a desktop. But I think 2014 with Broadwell and Maxwell out, that will be the time to get a new laptop.

 

Mine laptop has survived well. I picked it up in april 2010, and have 1 problem with it that I didn't cause. The GPU died on me. I sent it in to get replaced and that was that.


the only other issue was my hard drive crashed, but that was my fault as I dropped the laptop a short distance when it slipped out of my hand when i was transferring it from the couch to a coffee table while it was running.

 

clevo m860tu gaming lappy. bought 2008 and still going strong. 9800GT gpu died and was replaced under warranty. hard drive bad sector which was also replaced. no other problems.
clevo P150 bought 2012 so too early to tell if anything will fail.

 

Other than a wine spill on my laptop, all my others have lasted indefinitely. I can understand the desire for an accidental warranty if the price is reasonable, but usually for the price of the warranty, you can replace one or two major components yourself if you're so inclined. I find the cost of warranties from most OEM's absurd to say the least. 20-25% cost of the laptop? Regardless the cost of the laptop, after 2-2.5 years the value of the laptop is likely to be less than 25% of original cost. Most motherboards can be bought for $250-350, depending on what's embedded, and you can usually easily find a replacement LCD for $100-$150. Even so, after 2-3 years you can likely buy a new laptop for $700-$800 that will outperform it.

In the case of the OP it worked out, but that's more the exception than the normal.

 

Apart from my own stupid fault involving water spillage my laptops have lasted fine so far *touch wood*

 

My 9800m gts has worked wonderfully well for gaming up until about 6 months ago. After that to prevent Black screens crashes I have to Underclock it to maintain stability while gaming. Really frustrating, looking to buy a new Gaming rig asap

 

Inspired, the last comment you made is spot on. I just hope they don't push the release back, which is possible. Oh, and I've never had a gaming laptop break down, per say. I've had my four year old XPS M1530 go dead, but I didn't take great care of it.

Warranties are a life saver. I just hope whatever Michael Dell decides to do with his company, he doesn't change warranty policy.

 

Everything that's wrong with mine is my own fault. It slid off my lapdesk and damaged the power connector but it still works so no foul there really. Also my wife was rough housing when I had it on my lap and she damaged the headphone socket (they were plugged in at the time). It's loose but still works just have to treat it like it's about to break. I use USB headphones (plantronics gamescom 780) now anyway instead of the beyer dynamic 770DT I was using.

 

EDIT: DELETED

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk HD

 

My Acer 5930G (in the signature) is what I use to this day (it costed me 600GBP when I got it 4 years and 3 months ago, or $896).

The only thing that basically failed about 2 months ago was the backlight (everything else worked and works fine - am using an external monitor for now until I can replace the backlight).

Heck, even my 6 years old DELL Inspiron 1300 had a backlight and HDD failure months after I dropped it accidentally on the floor (in 2008 - which were replaced of course and the laptop has been running fine ever since).

Personal lack of care towards the laptops aside, I find it odd that much more expensive 'toys' people get experience many problems, when far cheaper ones (in my experience) almost never do (unless it was somehow instigated by my own negligence).

Acers for example were stated to have a lousy build quality and that they break down way too fast... and yet, all of my experiences were a complete opposite.

Just what are people DOING to their laptops?
Barring you getting an edsel from the manufacturer... if you treat it right, there is no reason why a laptop shouldn't last a long time, regardless of the manufacturer.

 

My Clevo P170HM is going on two years (bought April 2011),and has had no internal hardware failures, or reasons to RMA. There's damage to the LCD hinge, but that is my fault for dropping it so much.

 

Tweaking, overclocking, overvolting, and vbios/bios flashing are common causes of failure on high end systems. People with these systems tend to try and squeeze all the performance possible out of their laptops.

 

You should rephrase your question: Does your gaming laptop break down often?

 

The laptop in my sig has been used every day for 4+ years. Not a single thing has failed save the cooling fan which simply wore out and I replaced for free from a friend's scrap.

While it is no longer my main gaming device, and my new job has replaced it for work, it is still used every day for light gaming or browsing and has no issues save being behind the tech cure now and a lowered amount of time for battery.
(About 90min down from 2 hours... I don't have a reason to replace the battery at this time.)

 

All four laptops I've owned have been my exclusive gaming machines when I bought them. They're not really "gaming laptops" but they've served that purpose for me in addition to being general purpose laptops. I have yet to buy a new laptop that hasn't experienced hardware failure and needed warranty repair. The old HP z5000 had a motherboard replacement early in its life and the AC adapter blew shortly before I sold it (the adapter was, of course, replaced before I sold it). The Inspiron had a motherboard failure after maybe eight months that caused keyboard problems but allowed it to run in a somewhat input-crippled state, and I wasn't able to get it fixed until I returned to the US around eleven months into the warranty. The Envy 14's GPU semi-failed after about four months but couldn't be replaced until around the eleven month mark for the same reason. I had the fans repaired once for loud, grinding motor noise and then replaced half a year later for the same reason, but those were both off-warranty.

So while my experience doesn't give much insight into repairs in "gaming laptops", it's a roll call of problems I've seen on laptops that have been used for gaming...

 

Although not designed as a gaming laptop, that's been one of my laptop's primary uses, and it was powerful for its time, so... close enough.

So far, the answer to how often it breaks down is "never". It's been going strong since mid-2007, main rig for 4.5 years, and everything is still working like it's supposed to. A few things have been upgraded along the way, of course, but it's all been for improved performance, not due to failure. The original HDD is still in use as an external, too, and is doing well.

Amazingly, this is in spite of the fact that it has a GeForce 8. Warranty was for 3 years... would've got standard, but it was very cheap to upgrade it at the time, surprisingly. I can't remember if it included accidental damage coverage or not... either way, didn't need it. Have yet to spill anything on it - got a few snowflakes on it a couple times, but not so many as to be harmful.

AC adapter was replaced due to decreasing reliability, but I don't consider that the laptop itself. And it started after I disconnected the wall-to-adapter part from the adapter-to-laptop part: lesson learned, don't try disconnecting those again. Technically the old one still works if it's happy enough, but I'm glad I got a new one for $12. Battery has been replaced too, but that's to be expected.

The rate of failure expressed in this thread so far does seem kind of high.

 

I think most people's gaming laptops fail from over clocking, and the additional heat just adds to it. It's like racing a car every day or frequently red lining it. Parts will wear out fast and fail.

Sent from my SPH-L900 using Tapatalk 2

 

My G73 is the first laptop I've had that I haven't replaced in less than two years for the need of better performance. I needed a new HDD and battery for it this year, though I've decided to run without the battery since I've been almost 100% plugged in since I bought it almost 3 years ago now.

Modern laptops don't run nearly as hot as TC's ancient Dells, which is probably the cause of some of the repairs he had.

I've been focused on Broadwell as my replacement too and Maxwell is impressive as well, but I'm not set against going with AMD since they have the console GPU market exclusively, which should give them a jump on optimizing their drivers on PC. Before AMD's success goes to their head and their GPU prices find some headroom, Crossfiring a pair of 9870m may be the best bang-4-buck option. I'm certainly going to be considering it as it quite possibly could offer enough GPU power to hang with consoles much the way through their life cycle.

...it's just the matter of finding the money.

 

From a OEM point of view, 2 years and still going strong.

Had one self installed upgrade failure. (7970m)

 

I did the same thing with my 'cheap' laptops and didn't encounter such failure rates.

 

Forgot to mention the Inspiron's 8400M died after warranty but it was fixed by a local repair shop for about $30. Not many ovens in China so I think they did the reflow the hard way.

 

My Asus C90S lasted me 2 years until I sold it. THen the C90P lasted till I parted it out. Currently running a used M15x which is now I believe 3.5 years old.

Still running strong. Touch wood of course!

 

So far no problems with my 2 month old sager, knock on wood.

My old gateway (in my sig) ran from Jan/3/2008 until about 6 months ago when it started getting the black screen of "Oh, you were in the middle of a team battle in DOTA 2? Great time to turn myself off". Had to replace the hard drive once, but that was it. I have been meaning to see what I can do to repair my old gateway, but it still acts as a TV in my bedroom.

 

Sounds like GPU failure or overheating.

 

I'm not saying overclocking causes all laptops to fail, or even that overclocking is bad (I run overclcoked 90% of the time.) Just pointing out that it can contribute to more stress on components, leading to hardware issues for some people.

 

I run OCed 100% of the time on both GPU and CPU.

 

I've never had a gaming machine break down and be the reason for upgrade. Now I have had to RMA a few times, bricking with BIOS flashes and my favorite, Nvidia GPU burning up 3 times, Nvidia's fault for shoddy manufacturing.

I run OC'd all the time. My old G73JH is now being used a co-worker, and it's still running strong OC'd for him.

 

I'm aware of that, it just seems odd that certain people will pay a ton of money and experience all sorts of failures, whereas very often those who buy cheaper and treat the tech properly, they experience next to no problems (unless they themselves caused them).

The notion that 'cheaper = worse' (or the implication that 'you get what you pay for' was used in a negative capacity when cheaper technology was purchased) often demonstrated to be false.

 

I'm not sure. I poked around the gateway (sorry, Acer..ugh) forums since it is a common issue. What is strange is that it does everything else flawlessly, even HD video. Anyways, wrong forum for that.

I also wonder if an increased rate in laptop failures is due to increased longevity of the machines and tech components in them. After all, even a lowly single core cpu is enough for a lot of peoples computer needs, so maybe the fact people are keeping their rigs longer gives the perception more are breaking down.