P150SM upgrade to 980m Failed after 1 week. Laptop won't boot. Need help!

I have a p150sm which has a seemingly dead 780m due to a perpetual error 43 which came after a big BSOD about 6 months ago. I upgraded the laptop to a 980m and modded the inf files. The upgrade was perfectly fine for a week. One day, I left the laptop and something related to sleep or power may have caused the laptop to shut off. Since then, the laptop with the 980m won't boot. I tried many things like resetting cmos, holding the power button for a minute with no power, taking out the hardware and putting it back in, and resetting bios settings, and using a 230W adapter. Nothing worked. The laptop works fine with the old dead 780m in there, but now when the 980m is in there, holding the power button generates green power light flashes and ticks. The power LED goes back to orange upon releasing the power button. I'm using the backplate that the 980m came with and not the 780m back plate but that doesn't seem relevant yet. What is left to try?

 

Most probably your 980m is somehow shorted. Mosfets failing is common on those cards, especially if they are not properly cooled.

 

I got the same problem, pretty sure the GPU is just dead as mine worked fine with the old 770M, tried the 980m in two different laptops and they all do the same thing.

 

I could see a scenario where the mosfets shorted but I really don't understand why it would happen. I barely had the card in my laptop for a week and it had proper cooling based on what I saw. Did the card come in already damaged or did the p150sm have something broken with it that ruined the 980m in a similar way to the 780m? If that's the case, why does the old broken 780m allow the laptop to boot with the error 43 as opposed to the 980m which stops booting on the laptop? Would a mosfet repair be worth it or is it very expensive and would break a week later in the same way?

 

Not expensive, but you will need to pinpoint the problem (test for shorted mosfets with a multimeter in diode mode), you will need mosfets, a hot air rework station, solder, flux and a very steady hand.
Might as well leave it to the professionals.

 

Seems like it would cost more than the cost of the card to have a pro repair it, and it seems like no one will even do it anyway except for a few hobbyists. Is the card doomed? What would happen if I put the 980m in a p150hm, would it brick it and ruin the card further? That p150hm has a dead 6990m in it.

 

If the card has shorted mosfets it will trip the charger when trying to boot.

 

What about the other questions I have, does anyone have an answer for those?

 

Cards can fail in multiple ways, it depends what dies. If it's a mosfet it will short and kill it stone dead. If the GPU core has one shader die then it wont 3d render but it will report sensor data to the machine and boot.

 

So, I understand that the card is likely dead right now. Would hiring a person to replace the mosfets and mosfet drivers work permanently? Who even does this? Do people usually avoid this and get new cards because of cost/reliability of the fix, or do people just do it themselves because there is no one doing this?

 

Depends what passives it took with it and if it spiked the core. You would need a BGA/device repair specialist.

My own 980M cards I actually re-enforced the stock vrm from 3 MOSFETs to 6.

 

Here in the UK I have not found anyone that dose this type of board level repairs . Only ever seen people doing repairs in Russia and China .

 

The UK is usually not too bad for that sort of thing. I think I sent mine off to Wales.

 

Mark do you contact details of someone that can do this type of repair please

 

I can't recommend a place currently in action but anyone who does board level repair on mobile or BGA should be able to do it.