Aorus X7 Pro Gsync Hard Lock Issue

[likeabrandit]

Hey all,

First I'll give a quick history. I bought an Aorus X7 Pro Gsync about half a year ago from XoticPC. Here's a quick spec sheet from Aorus: http/www.aorus.com/Product/Spec/X7%20Pro-SYNC

I bought the laptop with the following:
2x 256GB SSD (RAID 0)
4x 8GB Ballistix 1866MHz RAM
1x 4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-4870HQ (2.5GHz-3.7GHz)
2x GTX 970M
1x 1TB 7200 RPM HDD
Windows 8.1 (Upgraded this after receiving it to Windows 10)

It ran phenomenally for about 2 weeks, when during a gaming session I had a hard lock. I waited about 5 minutes to see if it would BSOD, but it didn't, so I held the power button and powered it off. Before I could power it back on, it auto-powered on. It then failed to POST, it simply gave me a black screen. I waited a minute or two, and attempted to hard power off again. It again powered on automatically, and again wouldn't POST. This repeated a couple more times with me trying to keep it powered off, when it suddenly just decided to POST on one of its power ons.

Skip forward about 3 days. I ran stress testing and monitored heat via OCCT, MemTest86 for a complete pass, and graphics testing via Unigine Heaven for about 6 hours. No issues at all. I had started trusting it again, when I get a hard lock while the machine is idle (I was using my desktop). Same process of no POST for about 15 minutes, can't keep it powered off, then it POSTs. The hard locks continue randomly for about another week. I tested the SSDs, the HDD, CPU, RAM, and video card again, and long story short there are no heat issues, no hardware problems, no bad sectors, etc. Basically all clear all around.

Finally I send it in to XoticPC for RMA. They receive it, run their gambit of tests, and find no issue. They claim OS corruption, reload it, and send it back. I'm not ecstatic about it, nor am I an idiot, the POSTing issue after hard locks directly indicates hardware. Anyways, I set the laptop up again, and within a couple days right back to random hard locks/no POST. I even loaded up Cinnamon and ran it for a few days, but I had the same exact hard lock/no POST while running it.

Fast forward another week or two of pain, and this time they have me send it to Gigabyte for RMA (Aorus' parent company). They run THEIR tests, find no hardware issues, claim OS is bad and reinstall then send it back. I'm really not excited by now, but I re-re-setup my laptop and continue to use it. Miraculously it works for 2 months without an issue, and I begin to suspect I'm insane... During that time I did replace the 256GB SSDs with 2x 1TB Samsung 850 EVO mSATA SSDs, because I like lots of SSD storage.

Finally after the couple months I'm suddenly back to the same pattern of hard locks/no POST, although this time it ends with the machine not POSTing at all even after a day of waiting. I decide on sending it back to Gigabyte once more while it won't POST so they HAVE to see that something's wrong. I contact the support team and push them to hold onto it until they experience the issue as well. They claim they stress tested the machine for about a week without ever seeing the issue. My response is along the lines of "I can't use it for more than a papwerweight if it's unreliable. We have to do SOMETHING." They decide they'll replace the mobo, then change their minds, and I promptly change their minds back. A couple weeks later I get the laptop, but the RAID still exists according to the BIOS which makes me wonder..

Anyways, not 30 seconds in, while in BIOS, the laptop hard locks. Back to the same thing already I guess. I pull the two 850 EVO drives (Gigabyte found a couple bad sectors on one) and replace with the 2 256GB drives, but this time I leave off the RAID completely. I reload (painfully, as I have the issue a couple times during loading Windows and once after it was loaded) and now I'm contemplating what to do next.

I guess half the reason I'm here is to vent, and half the reason is to hope that someone has a miraculous idea for me or has seen something similar. I REALLY don't look forward to sending it in again, and I don't imagine it'll get me anywhere anyways.

~LikeABrandit

 

[Im Spartacus]

If not all ready tried.
Try the following go to control panel find your power options in settings select your power plan your using and turn every thing off through out all options. This is common power plan can cause a device to sleep and not respond when needed. See if it works then you can work out what is being turned off/affected by slowly turning options back on one at a time.

 

[likeabrandit]

If not all ready tried.
Try the following go to control panel find your power options in settings select your power plan your using and turn every thing off through out all options. This is common power plan can cause a device to sleep and not respond when needed. See if it works then you can work out what is being turned off/affected by slowly turning options back on one at a time.

Thanks, unfortunately even with all sleep modes disabled (I hate sleep mode activating automatically) the machine was still hard locking. The key here is, this definitely doesn't appear OS related, as I've had the problem when in the system BIOS, when running memtest86 from boot (it hard locked one me while trying to test the RAM, I managed to succeed at a full pass on another try and it found no issues however), and running Mint as noted above.

My best guess has been either RAM or RAID controller (it's an onboard Intel RAID, notoriously bad from my understanding). But since it died out in BIOS, it made me lean towards RAM. I've also tried the use "1 DIMM at a time until I find the issue" method to isolate a bad stick of RAM, but no dice. It kept hard locking no matter which one I tried. Still possible it's a problem between the RAM and the Mobo (i.e., it doesn't like the OC'd RAM), but I would have imagined it would be known by now since XoticPC sells the laptop in this configuration.

 

[Im Spartacus]

If it;s still under warranty i would send it back as it could be a bad/leaking capacitor on the motherboard or one going bad/defective.
Lock ups...PVR,TV'S,DVD, ETC all suffer these symptoms until the component final.goes and you are unable to get any further.