What could've killed my laptop's dGPU?

CyberDevil

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Apr 6, 2015
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I had a Lenovo Z51-70 80K600VWIN of which discrete GPU (AMD R9 m375 4GB GDDR3 75W TDP) died. I should mention that laptop is poor quality for its price and hardware. Soft aluminum and plastic exterior.

The time it died I had AMD Crimson 16.11 and Windows 10 1607 14393. The dGPU ran pretty hot because of the poor cooling solution by the OEM. It had two thin and wide copper heat pipes that were attached to both CPU & GPU and exhausted with a 45mm fan I believe.
So my question is, could W10 14393 or AMD Crimson 16.11 somehow have killed the GPU?

Note: Laptop BSOD'ed or crashed whenever dGPU was enabled in the BIOS and ran fine off the iGPU (when the dGPU was disabled). The dGPU is confirmed dead. Combinations between various OS'es and video drivers did not work, what did work was reflow the GPU by heating the board in oven. dGPU worked for a week, died again. I bothered not to do that again and finally sold the laptop.
 
Solution
Well, it's possible that there were power management and/or thermal management coding in the OEM drivers and when you installed standard AMD drivers it didn't include them. Which let the GPU run outside the thermal and/or power limits Lenovo designed the cooler for.

The cooler you describe is not that uncommon today. My ASUS laptop has a heatsink that connects both CPU and GPU with shared heatpipes, however, my laptop has 2 fans. I made sure to get a laptop that didn't use both iGPU and dGPU. Yes, the battery life isn't as good, but I can use the latest drivers from my GPU manufacturer.

Martell1977

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Oct 26, 2010
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Have you tried removing the AMD driver and install the latest one from the Lenovo? from what I saw on an Amazon listing, that laptop uses the Intel iGPU and switches to the dGPU when needed. Drivers directly from AMD likely wont support this function and so it may just not be working properly.

If you haven't:
Download the Lenovo driver
Use DDU(Display Driver Uninstaller) to remove the AMD driver
Reboot as DDU recommends, then install the Lenovo driver.
 

CyberDevil

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Apr 6, 2015
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I should've probably mentioned in the post itself that the GPU is dead. It died because it overheated.
To answer your question, I tried every combination of OS between W8.1/10 and AMD Catalyst/Crimson.
 

CyberDevil

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Apr 6, 2015
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Stock power adapter. The R9 m375 ran very hot, and I think that it ran hotter after upgrading to W10 1607 14393 and 16.11, I could be wrong though. There's also the poor quality from the OEM not just the easily damageable aluminum/plastic body but the cooling solution inside it, to factor.
 

Martell1977

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Oct 26, 2010
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Well, it's possible that there were power management and/or thermal management coding in the OEM drivers and when you installed standard AMD drivers it didn't include them. Which let the GPU run outside the thermal and/or power limits Lenovo designed the cooler for.

The cooler you describe is not that uncommon today. My ASUS laptop has a heatsink that connects both CPU and GPU with shared heatpipes, however, my laptop has 2 fans. I made sure to get a laptop that didn't use both iGPU and dGPU. Yes, the battery life isn't as good, but I can use the latest drivers from my GPU manufacturer.
 
Solution

CyberDevil

Estimable
Apr 6, 2015
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http://laptopmedia.com/highlights/inside-lenovo-z51-70-disassembly-internal-photos-and-upgrade-options/
The page here has photos of the inside of the laptop. The heatpipes run over the i5-5200U (15W TDP) and R9 m375 (75W TDP). I really hope it was the crappy cooling solution from the manufacturer that overheated the dGPU to death.
 

Martell1977

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Oct 26, 2010
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here a pic of the cooler in my laptop:
https://www.bing.com/images/search?view=detailV2&ccid=oFQ8mGDc&id=5F5CC4A7A4DB7E3DCA095FB846E042843AB86AB4&q=gl502vm&simid=608018902043853151&selectedIndex=13&ajaxhist=0
It has 2 long heatpipes with the CPU and GPU in the middle, connected and a third small pipe connecting them at a lower point near the exhaust, however, I don't know if it cools anything itself. Then the 2 fans blowing out.

The cooler in yours is similar to my old Dell laptop, the CPU doesn't get as hot as the GPU so the GPU is down the pipe from the CPU. Probably not the best design but it should have worked. You have to remember that they sold hundreds of thousands of those laptops, if they were burning up, there would be a lawsuit of recall.

Is you laptop by chance still under warranty?