MSI GL62M7REX laptop motherboard - my greatest challenge

[cncjerry]

My son has had an MSI gaming laptop for three years.  I gave it to him when he was accepted into business school so it has some sentimental value. This laptop had been working fine and on a warm day it decided to power off.  That's been it. 

MSI had a service for $70 so I sent it in and of course all they did was try to reset the motherboard and then told me "mainboard failure, mainboard $900". The laptop was maybe $1,000.  I got a little upset with them because I had asked what the typical estimate would be and they said $260.  So I figured fine.  After some hate mail they waived the diagnostic costs, stuck a new tamper sticker on it and sent it back.

Reading online had you do some power off/on tricks, etc.  All failed.  I also saw where someone had said it was a voltage regulator and a somewhat simple repair, but didn't point it out the regulator or reply to emails.  I opened it up and disconnected as much as possible to see if I could find a culprit that might be causing an overload on the power supply.  No luck.

To date:

1) I pulled the battery and tried all different power supplies.

2) Tried all the power tricks, power off, etc. on the web

3) I then traced the power to the mainboard and it is getting there.  Small voltage regulators are the size of an ant these days and it can be anywhere on that board.

4) Also not the power switch.  I lifted the small board under the switch, checked the switches and then with power on, see 3.3V at the switch dropping to zero when pressed.

So that's where I am. I plan to open it up again and do another web search to see if maybe I can find something new.  Also going to try to trace the power again.

Thoughts?  Pull the hard drive and dumpster?

Model is a GL62M7REX-1896US
SN: K17N0023408

Thanks

[fzabkar]

Unless you have a service manual, I would start by identifying all the DC-DC converters. Then I would measure the resistances between Vout and ground. Assuming none are shorted, I would power up the board and measure the output voltages.

I could help you with this, if you can provide detailed photos.

[Firefrost]

I have the same laptop, my motherboard just up and died on me a few months ago as well

The repair shops have told me it’s water damage (I only saw a tiny point of corrosion) and finally I’ve gotten the report of a damaged chipset and I think it’ll have to be a new motherboard put in.

since I would rather spend a few hundred on a replacement motherboard than buying a whole new laptop... any help on where to get one would be greatly appreciated!

Sol

[Rasz]

MSI gaming laptop

in name only, GeForce® GTX 1050 Ti with 2GB GDDR5

sentimental value

;----------), around $500 fully working second hand unit

size of an ant

well, this might be a problem. Do you want to learn microsoldering, or rather spend $500 and get on with your life?
It might be something small and easy, might be corrupted bios, but it also might be fried southbridge/KBC/CPU