I had an Asus G51JX-A1 that I had given to my brother. Recently, it died on him while it was in screensaver. His screensaver was just a slideshow and he noticed the picture hadn't changed in a while. He went over to it to wake it up and it was frozen. He killed the power and tried rebooting. The lights on the back of the monitor, and the HDD and other power lights illuminate, but no fan starts up and no video shows up.
He had taken it to a computer repair store and they said it was a bad motherboard, and possibly a bad graphics card. It would cost about $500 to fix it. Instead, he bought a new motherboard and I replaced it for him (I've fixed/built countless laptops and desktops so I'm confident I didn't damage anything new). The trick is, the computer behaves the exact same way. Lights come on, no display, no fan. After running for a bit, the heatsync is warm from the CPU, so I know it's doing something.
I also noticed it does not POST, no beep codes, nothing like that (even when I remove the RAM in an attempt to force them). If it was just a bad graphics card at this point I would expect the fan to turn on and there to be more activity from the computer. In my experience, this is not how a bad GPU behaves.
I'm worried the problem might be a bad CPU, or perhaps the motherboard he ordered was DOA.
Does anyone have any ideas? The goal is to fix this thing without spending too much money. For $500 he could get a new laptop. So I'm not looking to have a store repair it or to spend a bunch of money on random parts.
I appreciate any help I can get!
He had taken it to a computer repair store and they said it was a bad motherboard, and possibly a bad graphics card. It would cost about $500 to fix it. Instead, he bought a new motherboard and I replaced it for him (I've fixed/built countless laptops and desktops so I'm confident I didn't damage anything new). The trick is, the computer behaves the exact same way. Lights come on, no display, no fan. After running for a bit, the heatsync is warm from the CPU, so I know it's doing something.
I also noticed it does not POST, no beep codes, nothing like that (even when I remove the RAM in an attempt to force them). If it was just a bad graphics card at this point I would expect the fan to turn on and there to be more activity from the computer. In my experience, this is not how a bad GPU behaves.
I'm worried the problem might be a bad CPU, or perhaps the motherboard he ordered was DOA.
Does anyone have any ideas? The goal is to fix this thing without spending too much money. For $500 he could get a new laptop. So I'm not looking to have a store repair it or to spend a bunch of money on random parts.
I appreciate any help I can get!