485M black screen

Hi guys,

Earlier this month I bought a P170HM3 (3D version of P170HM) from Malibal with a GTX 485M.

I've been experiencing a problem when gaming where the display will suddenly go black. The problem is somewhat intermittent, as it will happen anywhere from 5-75 minutes after I start playing. It's not exactly a hard lockup (indicator lights still work, laptop responds to the power button, etc.), but it can't be fixed until I restart.

The problem manifests with Nvidia drivers 275.33 (WHQL) and 275.50 (beta), with the latter seeming a bit worse. Using the Nvidia drivers from Clevo (265.77) seems to fix it--I haven't tried them long enough to say it's definitively gone--but the problem worries me.

Is this just a bad driver series from Nvidia? Is it a hardware defect? I'm a bit concerned about potentially being stuck on the old drivers forever, since that would mean no updates for games, 3D vision profiles, etc.

 

I'd talk to Malibal about it if I were you

 

Have you checked the load temps?

 

The load temps seem okay. I haven't measured them while gaming, but Prime95 + FurMark for an hour gets the GPU to ~90C and all cores on the CPU to ~75C.

If this isn't a known incompatibility between the 485M and the latest Nvidia drivers, I'll contact Malibal and see what they say about it.

Thanks for the help, guys.

Edit: It still happens even with the Clevo drivers, so it must just be defective.

 

I was just about to mention something about booting into safe mode and seeing if it still works, but if you've just bought it from MALIBAL it's still under parts and labor warranty. I'd contact them and see if you can return it for repair.