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Thread: Nvidia GPU's kill Dell and HP laptops.

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    Nvidia GPU's kill Dell and HP laptops.

    Just been reading an interesting story of how an Nvidia GPU used in laptops overheats and fails.

    More interestingly however was the fact both Dell and HP were aware of the problem but, Continued to sell them with this chip and tweaked the BIOS to make the fans run at full speed all the time. This made them just exceed the warranty before the chips failed meaning customers would then have to pay for the repair themselves.

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    I R Toff Pandi! TAKTAK's Avatar
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    Re: Nvidia GPU's kill Dell and HP laptops.

    It's a well known issue

    Caused by "weak die/packaging material"

    Reared it's ugly head almost a year ago

    And the ramping up the fan was just a last ditch attempt to stop the amount of failures from sky-rocketing even more...
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    Re: Nvidia GPU's kill Dell and HP laptops.

    Quote Originally Posted by TAKTAK View Post
    And the ramping up the fan was just a last ditch attempt to stop the amount of failures from sky-rocketing even more...
    Didn't help people that had to pay £280 for repair just outside the 12month warranty did it? Surely they must be able to claim something back if it was a known issue?

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    Re: Nvidia GPU's kill Dell and HP laptops.

    Unfortunately I doubt it. I believe this may actually be a whole chipset issue, and predate the 8000-series chipsets for which it acheived notoriety: I have an NVidia-based HP compaq which died a week *before* the warranty ran out with both battery and start-up issues. I got it repaired under warranty (about 18 months ago) and it has now died again in a way that makes it quite clear that the problem is the graphics chip (it sometimes starts and runs OK if I uninstall the graphics drivers: with the drivers it BSODs as soon as it tries to display the desktop). I suspect the same root cause for both failures - overheating. Unfortunately, it looks like the Intel-based HP I bought a couple of years ago as a spare laptop may now be headed the same way. I'm beginning to think that mnodern laptops aren't worth the effort. My ancient Dell C600, incidently, allowed me to play Diablo II for several hours despite the fact that the fan is completely fritzed! They don't make them like that anymore

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    Senior Member this_is_gav's Avatar
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    Re: Nvidia GPU's kill Dell and HP laptops.

    Quote Originally Posted by Sputnik View Post
    More interestingly however was the fact both Dell and HP were aware of the problem but, Continued to sell them with this chip and tweaked the BIOS to make the fans run at full speed all the time. This made them just exceed the warranty before the chips failed meaning customers would then have to pay for the repair themselves.
    I can't vouch for HP but the Dells certainly aren't set to run the fan at full speed all the time with the BIOS update that addresses this issue. Just like before it ramps up and down depending on the temperature, but I'd imagine the trigger values have changed so it just ramps up a bit earlier.

    The fact is that some affected laptops will live a normal life before getting binned due to other problems. Others will die after a few weeks, just as some electronic goods do. If we didn't live in a media-frenzied blame culture now, most would just shrug our shoulders, call ourselves unlucky and move on, either a bit worse off in the pocket or with an RMA to sort out.

    I'm sure there are hundreds more "known issues" out there with our laptops that we don't know about. It just so happens that this one became public, just like the battery issue of a couple of year back.

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    Re: Nvidia GPU's kill Dell and HP laptops.

    Only certain GPU's are affected, and now I think the issue is resolved. I think it was the 8400 and 9400 chips, so the others are safe, and the rate of failure is pretty low anyway, I haven't had any of my friend's laptops fail with Nvidia GPU's. ATi aren't free of problems either, I cannot update the catalyst version, when I try it doesn't install a display driver. As for overheating laptops aren't very effective at cooling the hardware inside, my cpu gets ti 65-70C under full load, and gpu reaches 80-85C...

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    Re: Nvidia GPU's kill Dell and HP laptops.

    Mine failed.. luckily I have a 4 year warranty (5 on the graphics card now). Was fixed the next day.

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    Re: Nvidia GPU's kill Dell and HP laptops.

    My HP has a 8400 but it wasnt listed on their site as having some of the defecive chips???

    But I guess I am lucky. I have had it for almost 2 years and have used to it play alot of games and it is still going strong.

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    Re: Nvidia GPU's kill Dell and HP laptops.

    The first thing the engineer asked me was, do you use an external monitor? I said yes for about 50% of the time.

    I played games on the external monitor as well.

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