Acer Nitro VN7-593G dead? dGPU

[mrsz1]

Greetings,

I have an Acer Nitro that suddenly turned off while I was using it. No lights, no power, stock DC power supply goes into safe mode when plugged, battery connector is also seem to be shorted while the battery is connected. No visible faulty components are on the board.
Narrowing down the issue I found shorted dGPU 1V_VGACORE rail to be a suspect.
Removing PU8510 (and PU8511) seems to eliminate the issue, the laptop is working on iGPU, charging (new battery) is also fine.
Replacing PU8510 or PU8511 did not seem to solve the issue, the same symptoms come back again so I would need some guidance what to check further (PU8609 driver IC?) hoping the dGPU can be still revived. Or perhaps not...
Any comments are welcome!

[mrsz1]

...some new findings: when PU8510&11 are removed and the board is turned on, the 1V_VGACORE_S0 is 0.8V (measured on the PL8501-3 coils) - so this rail seems to be not shorted, and PWR_VGA_GDDR is 1.35V measured on PL8604, but this coil becomes very hot eventually (dGpu remains coldish)..
What is strange, that the resistance to GND at PL8501-3 is about 1.8 Ohms, and at the NVVDDS (PL8508&9) it is ca. 50 Ohms (without PU8510&11). Aren't these outputs the same 1V_VGACORE_S0 ? There shouldn't be this big difference in resistance to ground --> would this indicate a faulty PU8609 (RT8816A) or some tricky shorted caps that mysteriously have a ca. 50 Ohms short?