Anyone with advanced knowledge of motherboard repair experienced this?

[jagiro84]

My laptop has those issiues:

Sometimes it would start up with no issues

Sometimes when I press power on button it shows blinking light 2red and 3 blue (which by Dell Alienware code means ram not found .

Then it would take me few power on and power offs for it to start up normaly

When the laptop starts up normaly I can work with it for days and days as long as I keep it on or standby I have no issues at all.
Also laptop performance is top noch, 0 slow downs, as long as it starts up I have no symptoms of anything been wrong

Once I hit in Windows restart (mostly) it would end up showing the 2 red and 3 blue lights and it would stay that way until I forcedly shut it off (btw screen stays black during this error)

Since the 2 red and 3 blue means ram error I decided upon when the system do start up to run prine95 memtest/cpu for whole day . 0 errors showed.
I have runned also 3dmark , the performance is just perfect, no complaints no slow downs nothing.


It's intel i7 12700h
Rtx 3070ti 8gb
16gb ddr5 ram

My logic would say, when I press the power on button there are certain checks done before system is powered on.
Is it the chip responsible for doing those checks malfunctioning?
Or is the ram truly the issues, since it doesn't make sense that the ram is faulty as I have runned full diagnostics on the ram once it powers on

[mon2]

Is the ram removable on this model or soldered onboard? If removable, test with a fresh known good ram stick from Amazon. You can return it if not required. Test after cleaning the old ram stick contacts using ipa (alcohol with a cotton swab).

[jagiro84]

Is the ram removable on this model or soldered onboard? If removable, test with a fresh known good ram stick from Amazon. You can return it if not required. Test after cleaning the old ram stick contacts using ipa (alcohol with a cotton swab).

Hello it's not removable, if the ram was faulty wouldn't have it shown signs throughout the daily testing and all the memory testing I have done ? Like I mentioned, the laptop is working fine once it turns on, as long as I don't reboot or shut it off.

So right now I am just placing it in sleep mode once I am done, and it wakes up without hustle.

Do u think it could be the super I/o chip is faulty? Or bios chip. I am not sure which one of those 2 is responsible for the power on test

[mcplslg123]

There can be number of reasons for such behaviour. First, check the board physically under microscope for liquid spill,corrossion-this is the most common cause.

Sometimes replacing the output caps for 3V & 5V coils by Tantalum caps fix this as the old caps has ripple in output(can be observed only with DSO).

There remains many other possibilities and bios is also one of them. Will suggest to go for a bios update when system boots fine.

[jagiro84]

There can be number of reasons for such behaviour. First, check the board physically under microscope for liquid spill,corrossion-this is the most common cause.

Sometimes replacing the output caps for 3V & 5V coils by Tantalum caps fix this as the old caps has ripple in output(can be observed only with DSO).

There remains many other possibilities and bios is also one of them. Will suggest to go for a bios update when system boots fine.

Hey thanks for your input and ideas. I already checked everything under microscope no liquid, no clear signs of any damage. As u can see from the specs it is a recent laptop.

But ofcourse with very strange sickness behaviour that would appear only during the power on stage checks, as once it turns on it is a horse working machine and can work for days and days as long as I keep it in sleep mode after finish work and don't turn it off.


Since it is a recent laptop there is no available schematics, only bios and ec dumps online

I have already done a bios update from windows, after the update I did notice the laptop can reboot, shut off and on without issues for few days.

But few days later it would begin to show same symptoms again.

I have already ordered a new bios chip, which I will program once it arrives to exclude this as beeing issue

Now if this doesn't fix the problem, my logic would tell me to replace the ene EC chip as wel. But only issiue is, the EC chip is a kb9542gf BGA128 and I doubt my t48 programmer can program it. And to be honest I don't have experience programming EC so it would be a challenge as wel

A small note, I did notice during the Bios update procedure, I assume on last stage when it start programming the EC firmware chip after it's done programming the BIOS, the laptop reboots at 0%.
Now this could be due tue maybe EC programming size is very small so it can't be observed from 0-100% . Not sure about it

[mcplslg123]

Replacing a BGA SIo requires skills as well as tools. Programming that are also bit tough and you may encounter a lot of issues trying to program EC. Need a programmer like SVOD/vertyanov to do the job.

I strongly suggest not to play with EC chip unless you find the root cause of problem and can relate it to EC. Else may end up with a dead motherboard.