ADLINK RTX 3000 MXM suddenly died?

[Hussain Alhadher]

Hi guys,

My RTX 3000 suddenly shut the laptop off while gaming.

Now the charger LED goes out immediately when I plug it into the laptop with the RTX installed.

I tested with battery removed and i had the same issue 

I removed the RTX and the charger light stays on 

I plugged in my old 765m in and charger works normally 

 

So it looks like the fault is on the RTX 3000 itself.

I don’t see any obvious burnt components. Could it be a shorted mosfet or capacitor or vrm component, and is this usually repairable?

[SuperMG]

1 hour ago, Hussain Alhadher said:

Hi guys,

My RTX 3000 suddenly shut the laptop off while gaming.

Now the charger LED goes out immediately when I plug it into the laptop with the RTX installed.

I tested with battery removed and i had the same issue 

I removed the RTX and the charger light stays on 

I plugged in my old 765m in and charger works normally 

 

So it looks like the fault is on the RTX 3000 itself.

I don’t see any obvious burnt components. Could it be a shorted mosfet or capacitor or vrm component, and is this usually repairable?

Maybe it's shorting between the heatsink and the GPU's components? Happened to me. Make sure to have a properly set heatsink with the correct thermal pads.

 

No burn marks on the tiny capacitors?

 

Was your GPU heavily thermal throttling before?

 

If it's completely dead then...

 

There are options to upgrade to a 120Hz display and to a better RTX 4060/4070 card.

[Hussain Alhadher]

[Hussain Alhadher]

[Hussain Alhadher]

I also thought it could be the heatsink, but I tested the RTX installed without the heatsink with the laptop powered off and just plugging in the charger still makes the charger LED shut off. With the RTX removed, or with my GTX 765M installed, the charger works normally.

I don’t see any obvious burnt capacitors either. Before it died the GPU was usually around 68–72°C at 96–99% load, so it was performing well and wasn’t heavily thermal throttling.

So I’m thinking there may be a short somewhere on the RTX board itself.

[SuperMG]

19 minutes ago, Hussain Alhadher said:

I also thought it could be the heatsink, but I tested the RTX installed without the heatsink with the laptop powered off and just plugging in the charger still makes the charger LED shut off. With the RTX removed, or with my GTX 765M installed, the charger works normally.

I don’t see any obvious burnt capacitors either. Before it died the GPU was usually around 68–72°C at 96–99% load, so it was performing well and wasn’t heavily thermal throttling.

So I’m thinking there may be a short somewhere on the RTX board itself.

Can you use some kapton tape to cover the X-bracket metallic zone? And retry?

 

Does your motherboard still have the black plastic filter next to the MXM slot? It's to avoid short-circuit.

[Hussain Alhadher]

The black plastic insulation next to the MXM slot is still there. I also insulated the X-bracket area with a tape but the charger still trips. With the RTX removed or the GTX 765M installed, the charger works normally. So it looks more like a short on the RTX board itself.

[SuperMG]

2 minutes ago, Hussain Alhadher said:

The black plastic insulation next to the MXM slot is still there. I also insulated the X-bracket area with a tape but the charger still trips. With the RTX removed or the GTX 765M installed, the charger works normally. So it looks more like a short on the RTX board itself.

You should look with the multi-meter, every components then... But is it worth it?

 

Did you buy the card brand new or used? How was it used before?

[Hussain Alhadher]

I bought it back in May as open box condition from ebay for $305, so I don’t really know how it was used before I got it.

It worked fine for me and temps were usually around 68–72°C under load, then it suddenly shut off while gaming.

And I don’t have a multimeter to check the components🫤.

 

[Hussain Alhadher]

Here’s the link from ebay

https://ebay.io/m/S2OXcM

[SuperMG]

2 minutes ago, Hussain Alhadher said:

I bought it back in May as open box condition from ebay for $305, so I don’t really know how it was used before I got it.

It worked fine for me and temps were usually around 68–72°C under load, then it suddenly shut off while gaming.

And I don’t have a multimeter to check the components🫤.

 

For that price and with a bit of extra money, you could have bought the RTX 3060 or 4060 MXM! RTX 3000 = RTX 2060 Mobile.

 

I sell an RTX 4070 MXM, compatible with 120Hz M17X R4 and AW17 R1.

 

Any warranty of the 3000?

[Hussain Alhadher]

At that time I didn’t really know what else I would need to change. My M17x R4 has the 60Hz LVDS display and the 3-pipe heatsink, so I wasn’t sure what would be required for a 3060/4060 upgrade. That’s why the RTX 3000 seemed like the safer option at the time.

Unfortunately I don’t think I have any warranty on the 3000.

[Hussain Alhadher]

I’d like to upgrade to the best GPU I can if i got a very good deal, but I’m worried about the bottleneck and whether the performance would really be worth it with the 3940XM. I’m also not sure if it’s worth doing the whole 120Hz eDP cable setup and all the other modifications.

[SuperMG]

3 hours ago, Hussain Alhadher said:

I’d like to upgrade to the best GPU I can if i got a very good deal, but I’m worried about the bottleneck and whether the performance would really be worth it with the 3940XM. I’m also not sure if it’s worth doing the whole 120Hz eDP cable setup and all the other modifications.

You can get the Alienware 17 R1 120Hz, sliderfra has one. It has AVX 2 instructions for the CPU and it's compatible with RTX PEG. You can sell back the M17X R4 if you want or not.

[janepa]

18 hours ago, Hussain Alhadher said:

 

So it looks like the fault is on the RTX 3000 itself.

I don’t see any obvious burnt components. Could it be a shorted mosfet or capacitor or vrm component, and is this usually repairable?

Hi

It could be any of those of course.

I can try to help you in the simplest way I know. If this is still relevant.

[Hussain Alhadher]

 

59 minutes ago, janepa said:

Hi

It could be any of those of course.

I can try to help you in the simplest way I know. If this is still relevant.

Hi, yes it’s still relevant. I’d really appreciate the help.
Right now im using my old 765m 

Should i go to a repair shop? 

What would you suggest I check first?

[Eban]

A very hard visual check will most often NOT find the fault, even with a microscope.....you can get lucky but don't count on it. Try your phone on magnify and go over EVERYTHING. Twice.

 

Without being able to power the laptop with card installed means you can't even use heat to pinpoint a shorted power rail component. 

A variable power supply would let you low power the card by itself to find a short, but I don't recommend you do that first.

 

A cheap multimeter will get you a better idea. 

[JadeRover]

13 minutes ago, Hussain Alhadher said:

What would you suggest I check first?

 

Seing as your charger shut's off immediately, it is safe to assume that the main power rail (+19v) of your MXM gpu is shorted. The charger supplies the MXM slot directly, making it cut out with GPU installed = the MXM card is main power rail shorted.

 

This is either due to a capacitor that shorted itself or a high side  mosfet short, the high side mosdfet are driving a secondary power rail (+VCC_CORE, +VCC_VRAM, +VCC_PEX, +VCC_1.8v)

 

Best case is a capactitor as it can't damage anything else, mosfet is more problematic as the secondary power rails I mentionned are all at <2v and they suddenly received +19v for a few milliseconds, this is enough to internally destroy the core or the vram chips.

 

I would highly recommend you get a multimeter, even at your local hardware store it will be less than <10$ and very useful for future projects/life. 

With the multimeter you can trace down the short and then you will need a controlled power source, such as a lab bench PSU to inject a small voltage of 1v @ 2-3 Amps so that the shorted components warms up. Then the component must be replaced (this is more complicated)

 

You can also go to a repair shop and tell them you think it is main power rail short because of charger cutting out immediately, if they do actual motherboard level repairs (not a given) they should be able to confirm it and tell you if the card is fixable.

[janepa]

Okay, first we need any ordinary contact cleaner spray based on isopropyl alcohol. There are tons of options on the market, but it has to be a pressurized can not a manual sprayer. Second you’ll need two or better three nearly dead AA or AAA 1.5V battery cells like from a TV remote control plus two pieces of any kind of wire or even a paper clip will do.  

If it's (in the best case) just a shorted ceramic capacitor it can be removed mechanically for example with a small screwsdriver and no soldering is needed. There are lots of them and the card can operate without one as well. No worries.

 

Any ordinary inexpensive basic multimeter is obviously a big advantage, as other forum users have mentioned here.