Laptop PSU problem! Flickering led

The 240W PSU for my M15x has developed a defect perhaps. The blue led ring on the power cord that is usually a solid blue often flickers and consequently My laptop changes I assume power modes for tenths of second as the browser window I have open is unoperational for that time. Also when this happens the alienhead power led changes from blue to yellow for the same amount of time ( a split second)

Does this mean my PSU is dying?

As a side note I also recently noticed that my 7970M throttles no matter what whenever I try to game. I thought it was bad thermal pasting but it appears the problem stems to this PSU issue? Temps are all normal.

Thoughts..:thumbsup:

 

Yes, sure sounds that way. If your laptop is still under warranty, Dell will replace that defective PSU for you.

And it's very possible that your 7970M is throttling due to unreliable PSU. Laptop mobile graphics chipsets will often set themselves by default to Max Performance while on A/C power, and throttle itself down while unplugged to try and conserve battery power. It sounds like your laptop PSU isn't delivering steady power to your machine, causing your machine to believe that is constantly being un/plugged from the wall A/C outlet, and therefore switching between Max Performance and throttled GPU performance. You can test this by changing your GPU settings to always run on Max Performance (for both plugged in A/C power and battery power).

 

I have a 150W PSU also that I will test. Also a 6 cell battery that I can swap out for the 9 cell. I will test this week to see what is the culprit. I hope it isn't on the motherboard side of things.

 

PSU is the culprit. Plugged in the 150W original and no problems. Even the screen had started to constantly dim!

Why would the PSU die so quickly (1.5 years or so) seems a little too quick for liking!

Should I buy another 240W slim PSU or look around for the 210W PA 7E adaptor instead?

 

Buy the slim they are cheap enough, and relatively robust for me when I game/stress it anyways.

 

That's problem I want it to last longer than 1 year or so. I am guessing the past 3-4 months I have been having issues that I now know come from the broken brick.

 

Can't say about reliability, mine have been going for 6+ months without issues, although I do have multiple bricks, and power output wise they can sustain 240W+ if required of them (from what ive seen on the forums). I only usually run my CPU/GPU on adaptive mode so they can downclock if they want during gaming and browsing the internet.

Might be worth trying the 330w charger but I'm not sure if they are compatible.

 

I was thinking that but it is quite expensive and the M15x shouldn't be able to draw much past 200W (unless I voltmodded the 920xm lol). 240W would be adequate. Just want to make the right decision for replacement as this last one has been gradually going bad and could have caused damage to the laptop's voltage regulators.

 

Should be fine with another one, not every single one will be perfect, if the next one works fine consider yourself lucky, otherwise it might be something else more expensive to fix.

Those old 200+W bricks look huge anyways, the slim one is more useful and seem more reliable than other laptop ones (sager etc) they look pretty big as well.

If its cheap enough for you (£30-40 for a genuine one) for me, I'd try another one.

 

I may try another. Perhaps will just steer clear of Flextronics ones lol

Thanks for the reassurance!

 

As long as they are a good price I wouldn't worry which one you get.

Oh dear, mine seem to be all Flextronics ones TBH....