Fried Alienware laptop, needs hard drive?

[mildgamer001]

Hello, my friend has an alienware m15x laptop, he was playing CoD one day and it fried i guess, he looked at the hard drive and it was all burn or so he says, i didnt get a very good look at it for myself, we plan to fix it and use it as a minecraft server (i know laptops arent ideal for servers) but it should be cheaper we hope rather than building a nw computer completely. So, i also couldnt tell because his battery was dead and he didnt have the charger with him. so, im just going by what he said, which wasnt much, his warantee also expired before he could send it back to dell. Should we buy a hard drive for it and see how it goes? or just forget it and build a new one? also could we use just any old laptop hard drive? or does alienwae need a special type?

 

[GenericUser]

You won't need a special hard drive, any old 2.5" hard drive will do. However, are you sure it's really the hard drive? I've never exactly heard of a hard drive getting burnt up, so it would probably be better if you got a good look at it yourself. If anything did burn up it would likely be the GPU. In any case, you should make sure that the hard drive is really the component that went.

 

[holdingholder]

If it's just the hard drive the laptop should still boot and give you an error message about no hard drive and os. Try that before you end up buying a hd for a dead laptop. Like the previous poster said, I find it very unusual for a hard drive to just "burn up" if anything is likely to overheat it would be the cpu, gpu or the system bus.

 

[lupinesithlord]

i have had chips on western digital hard drives burn out before, but it is rare. Rule 1 of computer repair...never go by just what the user said.

 

[mildgamer001]

well first of all, i couldnt check because the battery was dead and he forgot the charger, and he does know a little about computers, i didnt have the screwdrivers or time to open each part up and look at it, he said it was burnt looking though, next time i go hang out with him ill have him let me take it home and ill see myself what is wrong with it. if it is anything that will cost over 200$ to fix we probably just wont do it, since we could build another for what we planned to use it for, we were going to build a new one for about 300 for the server but thought fixing it would be cheaper and it would probably be better performance for it anyway, which im not sure of. anyway, i probably wont have a chance to look at it for a little while, but any ideas what might be the problem? he said it just shut off when he was gaming and wouldnt work after

 

[mildgamer001]

and it is a laptop, so if it is the GPU that died, we would hav to replace the motherboard entirely, sinc ethe GPU is soldered to it, along with all the other GPU parts. im guessing t would be way too much effort to find the correct one and also much more expencive, especially if it took some other components with it...

 

[mildgamer001]

thread got old and inactive, but any thoughts on maybe what we would have to do or get if it was the GPU? the CPU would be replacable, i dont think it is soldered in, i didnt want to mess with it because my friend didnt really want anyone getting into it too much, at least not yet, but i couldnt test it, anyway if it was the GPU would there be any way of replacing without the whole motherboard/GPU assembly? i dont have too much experience with laptops, especially alienwares.. if it was the GPU, any ideas on how much it would cost?

 

[lupinesithlord]

on the m15x the gpu is replaceable, either 460m or 6970m (double check) the M14 x the gpu is soldered on mb. Nvidia fx 2700m on ebay right now for around 100., youd have to be comfortable with disassembling lappy, replacing peices and getting it back together...

 

[mildgamer001]

so it is replacable on the m15x? okay ill see about getting a better look at it then, i thought all laptops had soldered gpus, and i think he has the 460, not sure though. maybe i should just have it sent to a nearby repait shop, just because they probaly have more experience with laptops, and i dont have any good way of really diagnosing it because i dont own it and it isnt at my house, and im not sure if he has the charger for it lol. anyway thanks for the help if i need more ill probably reply in this thread again.