Dell XPS Graphics Card, long story ;)

stesaurus

Ok so got home this evening and my M1730 decided to not boot. All I had was lights but no display.
After a looksie around some forums it appears my 8700m was to fault.
I decided to give the 'bake in the oven trick' a go :eek:

It took a lot of willpower not to turn off the oven when there was a bit of a smell starting. Anyway I got through the 10 mins and took her out to cool. After it had cooled and I'd applied some new thermal(thank you Xbox 360 repairs) I gave her a whirl

Nothing, nada! Balls, GF coming home and now I'll need to explain why it appears I've used the oven to make her something nice but actually I'd been cooking my graphics card. Hmmm this is going to take some creative thinking.

I put her back together with the intention of bringing it to someone little more qualified for the task. After I had all the screws back in I tried it again just to see and Bingo!!!! We have life. Oh how I'd missed her!!!

Anyway long story short. This must be only a temporary fix at best so what are my options. I know feck all really about building pc's so I've no idea what sort of card I'd need compatibility wise.
Am I stuck with a refurb Nvidia 8700 or can I go with something a bit more powerful? Or do I even have to stick with an Nvidia?

I'd prefer to spend 200-300 max. I'm not a big gamer so I don't need anything high-end.

Any ideas?

Overheal

...what, exactly, did you use as your scientific method for baking it?

stesaurus

Overheal wrote: »

...what, exactly, did you use as your scientific method for baking it?

The undoubtable youtube proof of concepts.

figured its much the same as the xbox heat gun fixes and had nothing to lose really

Monotype

It worked for my laptop too but only for two months. It takes so much time to assemble/disassemble that it was too much of a pain.

How can you say that you know feck all about building PCs when you stripped out pieces, annealed a GPU and put it all back together?

Anyway, is the GPU stuck onto the board or is it a mini-PCI-E card?

seyeM

Monotype wrote: »

How can you say that you know feck all about building PCs when you stripped out pieces, annealed a GPU and put it all back together?

This

If you can do the above, you could easily assemble components into a working PC having looked through a few online guides.

stesaurus

Monotype wrote: »

Anyway, is the GPU stuck onto the board or is it a mini-PCI-E card?

That's the thing I don't really know the difference. Its an Nividia 8700m GT and its an sli so there's two of them.

Is there anywhere online that you can check compatibility with other cards?

Also where's the best place to buy graphics cards?

Monotype

I looked it up, it's a huge card. With some of the other laptops, you had to take out the whole motherboard as the GPU was soldered into it. At least you won't have to do that here. However, it doesn't follow mainstream standards and your options are limited to 8700M GTX SLI, 8800M GTX SLI and 9800M GTX SLI.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/515223-dell-xps-m1730-video-card-upgrade.html

Looking at the prices online of these cards, the laptops themselves are nearly the same price. I assume warranty is all gone? Dell extended warranties for a year for nVidia problems.

Unless you can find a good priced replacement, I'll have to say to save for a new system. I'd be very wary of some of the refurbished cards on ebay as they could be cards suffering from the same condition as yours!

stesaurus

Monotype wrote: »

I looked it up, it's a huge card. With some of the other laptops, you had to take out the whole motherboard as the GPU was soldered into it. At least you won't have to do that here. However, it doesn't follow mainstream standards and your options are limited to 8700M GTX SLI, 8800M GTX SLI and 9800M GTX SLI.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/gaming-software-graphics-cards/515223-dell-xps-m1730-video-card-upgrade.html

Looking at the prices online of these cards, the laptops themselves are nearly the same price. I assume warranty is all gone? Dell extended warranties for a year for nVidia problems.

Unless you can find a good priced replacement, I'll have to say to save for a new system. I'd be very wary of some of the refurbished cards on ebay as they could be cards suffering from the same condition as yours!

Thanks for the help. Hmmm yeah the prices seem a bit prohibitive for those nvidia cards but another system with a full HD 1920x1200 17" display is looking a minimum of 1800. Feck!

My feckin warranty ran out last week. It was a 3 year warranty. I hadn't heard of any additional 1 year extension. Have you any more info on that?

Monotype

http://en.community.dell.com/dell-blogs/direct2dell/b/direct2dell/archive/2008/09/12/nvidia-gpu-update-limited-warranty-enhancement-details.aspx

I don't see yours listed but it is one of the faulty GPUs, so I'd still send them on an email.

http://en.community.dell.com/dell-blogs/direct2dell/b/direct2dell/archive/2010/09/30/nvidia-gpu-update-nvidia-class-action-lawsuit-and-limited-warranty-enhancement.aspx

M1730 is listed.

stesaurus

Monotype wrote: »

http://en.community.dell.com/dell-blogs/direct2dell/b/direct2dell/archive/2008/09/12/nvidia-gpu-update-limited-warranty-enhancement-details.aspx

I don't see yours listed but it is one of the faulty GPUs, so I'd still send them on an email.

http://en.community.dell.com/dell-blogs/direct2dell/b/direct2dell/archive/2010/09/30/nvidia-gpu-update-nvidia-class-action-lawsuit-and-limited-warranty-enhancement.aspx

M1730 is listed.

Cool that's brilliant. Hopefully they honour it now, I'll ring them Monday to see.

I don't think I'll mention that I've fixed it myself. hehe

stesaurus

Rang up today and got my 1 year extension for the graphics card, wohoo! As soon as it fails again I'll get it fixed by Dell.

Thanks for the help lads.