Solved! Lenovo IdeaPad gaming 3 shut off starting up a game and won't turn back on

[Nazarath]

I purchased the Lenovo IdeaPad gaming 3 3060Ti on Sept 11 which I received on the 15th. Today I woke up to play some Destiny 2 and the second it loaded up the laptop shut off. I immediately checked temperatures on the keyboard area, back vent and on the bottom and nothing felt more than a normal warm at most.

I afterwards flipped it over and took the back off and did some minor self diagnostics by taking out the hard drive, then one stick of ram then both, afterwards I unplugged the battery and then I held down the reset button for 30 seconds.

The only sign of life I'm getting is beside the left fan which I assume is the CPU which is 2 very faint clicking noises at the rhythm of a heartbeat. If the battery is plugged in it will make this sound, but if I unplug the battery and plug in the power cord it will not make this sound.

I'd assume typically it's the power cord but considering it was on idle throughout the night albeit no task opened the battery alone would've died by the time I woke up to get back on, plus it was a hard crash immediately upon opening Destiny 2.

If anyone has any suggestions on what to try next I'd be greatly appreciative, also since I purchased this on eBay with an "authorized dealer" called antonline would I need to go through them or Lenovo to find out about my warranty and what would you guys recommend doing once I find out about my warranty? Would I want to ship this to whomever or go to a brick and mortar store like best buy or something? I've never had this situation happen in the last 20 years so I'm a bit clueless what to do.

The last thing is I was using the "performance mode" with their built in overclock function with the Lenovo app, I didn't go past their recommended usage by increasing CPU/GPU levels so while this could be an indicator as to why this has happened Im hopeful it isn't since its part of their built in function and I didn't exceed it. From what I'm reading online it's potentially a faulty motherboard but I'm also concerned everything was a coincidence and it's the power supply since it clicks when the battery is in but does absolutely nothing when plugged in with the battery out, the only thing I'm scared to troubleshoot is the CMOS battery since it has a black tape all around it and will clearly indicate I've tampered with it if I were to cut it off.

Anything help whatsoever is greatly appreciated!

Laptop Build
RTX 3060Ti
Ryzen 5 5600H
12GB Ram

 

[mrmike16]

Sounds like a short- something was not connected or soldered on correctly.
You could try testing it with another power supply to rule that out, if you or an acquaintance has one.
If you have a dGPU, you can try removing that. However, if there are any signs that you tampered with the laptop, such as a sticker above one of the screws that had to be ripped in order to open it (Or the black tape on the CMOS battery like you said), your warranty has probably been voided.
Also, try removing the battery and power supply and pressing the power button for a few seconds to make sure the laptop is powered off completely. Then turn it on (With the power supply).
You can also check if it shows anything on an external monitor, though I would doubt that in your case.

But you can try Lenovo anyway. Check on their support site if your laptop is in the warranty period- just go to support.lenovo.com and click Detect Laptop (If you hover your mouse over PC you'll see it). If they refuse to help you, try the reseller. Or the other way around- It's a matter of preference. I don't know the reseller (nor have I used Lenovo's Customer Support for that matter), so I can't tell you if his support would be better than Lenovo's or not.

 

[Nazarath]

Sounds like a short- something was not connected or soldered on correctly.
You could try testing it with another power supply to rule that out, if you or an acquaintance has one.
If you have a dGPU, you can try removing that. However, if there are any signs that you tampered with the laptop, such as a sticker above one of the screws that had to be ripped in order to open it (Or the black tape on the CMOS battery like you said), your warranty has probably been voided.
Also, try removing the battery and power supply and pressing the power button for a few seconds to make sure the laptop is powered off completely. Then turn it on (With the power supply).
You can also check if it shows anything on an external monitor, though I would doubt that in your case.

But you can try Lenovo anyway. Check on their support site if your laptop is in the warranty period- just go to support.lenovo.com and click Detect Laptop (If you hover your mouse over PC you'll see it). If they refuse to help you, try the reseller. Or the other way around- It's a matter of preference. I don't know the reseller (nor have I used Lenovo's Customer Support for that matter), so I can't tell you if his support would be better than Lenovo's or not.

Thanks for your input on the situation, and yeah I was very mindful of what to diagnose to not void the warranty, plus it's been hooked up to an external monitor the entire time so it's in absolutely pristine condition on the outside out of reach. I think since I've had it less than a month I'm just going to send it in even if it's something insignificant so that I don't void the warranty potentially costing me hundreds. I do sort of want to try another power source but no one has one since it's the usb-C looking type, I can't even find one at a Walmart/best buy so I gotta decide if it's worth spending $40/50 Amazon to buy a decent one for potentially nothing or just send it in which is looking like the smarter choice. Thanks again for your insight.

 

[AlHuneke]

I would not have opened a new laptop and started messing around. It should have been returned under warranty. Hope you didn't kill your warranty by trying to fix it.

Does your laptop have a hard drive rather than an SSD? If ir does, the clicking could be the hard drive trying to read data (as the previous person suggested. However, even if the hard drive is bad, you should still be able to go into the BIOS. Try to do that.

 

[Nazarath]

I would not have opened a new laptop and started messing around. It should have been returned under warranty. Hope you didn't kill your warranty by trying to fix it.

Does your laptop have a hard drive rather than an SSD? If ir does, the clicking could be the hard drive trying to read data (as the previous person suggested. However, even if the hard drive is bad, you should still be able to go into the BIOS. Try to do that.

Nothing was tampered with other than unplugging a battery, taking ram out and putting it back in, and taking out the hard drive which is like a 3 inch by 1 1/2inch little chip versus a normal SSD or anything I've ever seen. The problem is the power isn't even turning on keyboard, mouse or anything and the harddrive can't even make a clicking noise due to what it is.

 

[AlHuneke]

The problem is you may break a seal and the vendor will not fix it since you opened it. Your drive is an SSD (what you describe is the current M.2 format). That means the clicking sound is not an indication of a failed hard drive. You really need to send it back for warranty repair.

 

[AlHuneke]

BTW, if you didn't follow good ESD practices (look this up if you don't know what it is) there is a chance that touching parts inside the laptop will damage them. I see that happen a lot when people are fooling around inside there machine. Every PC service manual warns about this potential problem. The youtube "experts" ignore this. It is a real issue.