I had some unpleasant experience today:
I was at work, using my Pangolin when it suddenly shut off (no warning, like an unplugged desktop) (I was only browsing and listening to music)
I turned it back on and heard a very loud repeated beep (good I was using headphones), then ubuntu started to load, got to the load screen, I entered name and pass and started loading Gnome. Then it shut off again.
At this point I was thinking "heat". I started it again and listened for the fan. No fan and no air flow, just the beep. I couldn't get to gnome to check the temps and BIOS has no PC Health section. After about a minute in the BIOS is shut off again. Plugged/Unplugged cable/battery made no difference.
I went home and opened the back panel. Disconnected the fan (carefully of course) and placed the opened laptop on a fan-mat. It booted normally and I started watching the temp. With the mat on, it was OK (CPU/GPU 20/50), then I decided to push it a bit. I started a video and played with the cube while watching the temps, those went to 45-50/65, then it shut off again (my theory, it tried to turn on the fan, did not find it, paniced and correctly decides to shut off)
The fan had just a few dusty lines, I cleaned those. There was little dust on the north-bridge heat-sink (I am assuming it is the NVIDIA NB, the biggest heat sink anyway)(I've had the laptop less than 2 months). Then connected back the fan and the thing ran. Fan is now working and the temp stays below 40/60.
There was too little dust to make a difference and the fan looked well connected. There is no issue right now, just want to give a preliminary report. If it starts to happen regularly, I will ask for the problem to be repaired.
One extra note: I don't think it is sys76 fault, but there are very few vents on the bottom. Also the fan is small and it could definitely be made to provide more air flow. Normal operation temps are fine, but CPU intensive work tends to push (50+/65+). I have not tried wine games on it (and am afraid to). My issue is that I cannot benefit from an fan-mat, I am always stuck with the small internal fan.
Precise stats: NV 9300M, 2.4Ghz CPU, 4GB ram, the rest was standard.
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