Please help....My Laptop is dying

[The Bong Druid]

Hello
I have owned my Octane IV 15 for around 2 years, and up until about 2 weeks ago have had no issues whatsoever. Over the last few days though, the whole system keeps crashing about 10 seconds in to any game I play.
GTA V online and Witcher 3 kept crashing, so I re-installed both, to no avail. They either crash to desktop, or the laptop freezes and the laptop reboots. I got Assassins Creed Odyssey for cheap on Epic Store, and that wouldn't even get past the menu. My laptop is running with a GTX1070 and i7-8700. I've rolled back my graphics driver from the April update to the March one, I've re-installed windows and nothing had changed. The problem seems to be worse when the laptop is plugged in.....Can't even run any benchmarks with it plugged in, and even when I manage to run them on battery power, my graphics card is now classed as a "Tree Stump" on userbenchmarks. I thought I would try out this forum before sending it for repair. Any ideas?? Could it be the PSU? I'm using the 330w lite-on that came with the laptop. When plugged in, the fans just go mental and everything freezes, although msi afterburner is showing temps of no higher than 70 when it crashes....usually mid 60's. I've tried to clean out dust, I've checked my RAM is working ok, checked for viruses....Nothing seems to work. I did get GTA V to run at 720p on medium settings for about 30 mins, but was used to playing 1440p/60 with most settings at very high. Please help

 

[SpyderTracks]

Hello
I have owned my Octane IV 15 for around 2 years, and up until about 2 weeks ago have had no issues whatsoever. Over the last few days though, the whole system keeps crashing about 10 seconds in to any game I play.
GTA V online and Witcher 3 kept crashing, so I re-installed both, to no avail. They either crash to desktop, or the laptop freezes and I the laptop reboots. I got Assassins Creed Odyssey for cheap on Epic Store, and that wouldn't even get past the menu. My laptop is running with a GTX1070 and i7-8700. I've rolled back my graphics driver from the April update to the March one, I've re-installed windows and nothing had changed. The problem seems to be worse when the laptop is plugged in.....Can't even run any benchmarks with it plugged in, and even when I manage to run them on battery power, my graphics card is now classed as a "Tree Stump" on userbenchmarks. I thought I would try out this forum before sending it for repair. Any ideas?? Could it be the PSU? I'm using the 330w lite-on that came with the laptop. When plugged in, the fans just go mental and everything freezes, although msi afterburner is showing temps of no higher than 70 when it crashes....usually mid 60's. I've tried to clean out dust, I've checked my RAM is working ok, checked for viruses....Nothing seems to work. I did get GTA V to run at 720p on medium settings for about 30 mins, but was used to playing 1440p/60 with most settings at very high. Please help

I'm fairly certain it's likely temp related.

When you say you've cleaned out dust, did you remove the cover and clean the heatsinks or just blow from the outside?

If you install HWMonitor and reboot into the desktop without anything running and then take CPU package temps and post the numbers, also take resting GPU temps?

HWMONITOR | Softwares | CPUID

HWMonitor for Windows® x86/x64 is a hardware monitoring program that reads PC systems main health sensors : voltages, temperatures, powers, currents, fans speed, utilizations, clock speeds ... The program handles : CPU and GPU-level hardware monitoring...

www.cpuid.com

 

[The Bong Druid]

Thanks for your swift reply. I removed the covers, unscrewed the fans and removed most of the dust....There wasn't too much to be honest. I will download the software you suggest and give it a go. Cheers

 

[SpyderTracks]

Thanks for your swift reply. I removed the covers, unscrewed the fans and removed most of the dust....There wasn't too much to be honest. I will download the software you suggest and give it a go. Cheers

Ok, yeah that's the right way to go about it.

It's very possible that at least the CPU and possibly the GPU will need a repaste job, but it's very easy to do, don't be put off.

The temp results will tell us if that's the cause of the crashes.

 

[The Bong Druid]

Cheers mate. I'll send you some screen prints in a few minutes

 

[The Bong Druid]

Here are the readings with nothing running

 

[The Bong Druid]

These are with my laptop plugged in.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Here are the readings with nothing running

Thanks.... Ok, so the only thing that stands out particularly from that is that the RAM and SSD temps seem higher than I would have expected but everything else isn't too bad.

Can you now try keeping the HWMonitor window open and run something like Prime95 to stress the CPU firstly, and take the same screenshots when it's in the middle of it? You can leave all the default paramaters and just do a standard run.

Download Prime95 version 30.19 Build 20

Download Prime95 - a handy tool for overclockers and system stability checkers, Prime95 has a feature called "Torture Test" that allows maximum stress testing on the CPU and RAM. There are several options allowing the stress test to focus on the memory, processor, or a balance of both.

www.guru3d.com

Then lastly we'll do a GPU test.

 

[The Bong Druid]

Hi...I've tried downloading twice, but it won't open

 

[The Bong Druid]

?

 

[SpyderTracks]

?

Are you sure you installed the 64bit version?

 

[The Bong Druid]

Cheers....ok....I downloaded the correct version now. What do I select to run the test?

 

[The Bong Druid]

.

 

[SpyderTracks]

Ok, so your CPU is not the issue, it is pointing to the GPU possibly.

Lets do the same thing but with furmark which is a gpu torture test... I'll get the right link this time

So this time, just need to monitor the GPU load and temperatures, can you also snapshot the SSD and RAM temps?

FurMark Homepage

FurMark - GPU stress test and graphics card benchmark

geeks3d.com

 

[The Bong Druid]

Will do

 

[The Bong Druid]

It did what happens with other benchmarks.....Black screen after about 5 seconds and restarted PC. Fans going mental. I can try it unplugged? When the laptop is plugged into the PSU it seems to just crash constantly

 

[The Bong Druid]

..although I set the resolution to 4k....Should I run it at the default?

 

[SpyderTracks]

..although I set the resolution to 4k....Should I run it at the default?

Yes, just straight 1080p res.

 

[The Bong Druid]

OK....Laptop plugged in.....Took screen shot when the fans went full Ilkley Moor about 3 seconds before it crashed again. It was working fine unplugged but stuck at 30fps

 

[SpyderTracks]

Ok, that's really weird. Can you run furmark one last time and record CPU temps?

There's a power limit flag and temperature limit flag raised so I'm missing something somewhere, but those GPU temps are perfectly healthy also.

It's It's possible the PSU is flaking out when it's under extreme draw, in which case, perhaps getting a replacement would fix it.

The reason the laptop is only running at 30fps when unplugged is that it will put itself into power saver mode and clock everything back.