Hardware issue: Netbook screen flickered, now completely fails when entering native resolution

doty

Honorable
Jan 9, 2014
4
0
10,510
I got this Samsung Q45, starting up sometimes, with flickering on high (native display) resolution. Most of the times the screen just stayed black, with beep error code that means "GPU failure".
I've done a reflow of the GPU and MCU. Then it ran for a week, but the screen still was flickering a bit, and more when moving the display or by light pressure on some areas of the case or the mainboard, even just holding my hand under the netbook (electrical field? Antenna effects?) caused flickering. Battery or AC didn't make a difference. So I checked all connectors, related to the display and put contact spray on them. First there was nothing at all on the display, but I didn't connect the keyboard, maybe that prevented it from booting up.
And now: it runs perfect on a low resolution. If a Linux boot stick or the Linux on HD switches to native resolution, the screen fails (only background light on).
So it looks like the GPU or MCU is half broken? Which one should be replaced?
 

Diox55

Estimable
Feb 21, 2014
210
0
4,910
I just read an issue like that for this series, but he had connected it to an external display, and it still didn't turn on so that was a blown GPU. Try to plug it in to an external display, then we can know..