Hello,
I have a problem with my laptop related to the shut downs and I am not sure what is the issue, but it seems to be hardware related.
After I turn on laptop normally, it can work for several hours without any issues or it can shut down within minutes (sometimes even before Windows/UBUNTU finishes booting up).
It's always a shut down. Never restarts. After shut down, I can easily turn it back on again as if nothing happened. No BSOD, no minidump, no useful event viewer message, etc.
Thought that it could be heat related issue or power supply, so I got a spare AC adapter to try it and the issue is the same. However, when I try to run it on battery only, it shuts down much faster (within minutes) and after a few tries like that it starts giving 7 beeps after turning on and nothing more. I looked into it and it seems that it could be some sort of processor failure (the BIOS beep message). Despite this, it works just fine with the AC adapter until the random shut downs happen. Can watch videos, play games, etc.
I tried to disconnect some things physically, so ran on each RAM module (8GB each and in different slots), tried without HDD and just ran off USB flash UBUNTU, but same issue.
Cleaned whole laptop except for the bit under the heat sink (cleaned the fan, though). Still no changes at all.
Although, after playing with it around for some reason laptop cannot find its second graphics card (AMD 8730). Did I somehow manage to disconnect it? It has no cable as far as I know, because it is soldered onto the motherboard itself. I am also not entirely sure how does it look like and where is it on the motherboard.
Checked the DC cable. For some reason I couldn't unplug it (was scared to use more force as cables are fragile and can't see how it's so fixed in there). Realized that even if DC cable is somehow faulty, the battery is connected in a different way, so it should be fine, if the battery was good, so bought a new battery just in case, but the result is the same (7 beeps after a while).
Laptop shuts down even when CPU temperature is around 40C, so I am not entirely sure that even if I replaced the whole fan/heat sink area it would fix it.
I am worried that it could be the motherboard and if it is, then CPUs and both graphics cards need to be replaced as well, which might as well be the new laptop unless such a motherboard with all these is cheap.
What would be your suggestions? Any fixes? Should I bring to the technician? Not bother and just look for a new laptop? This laptop works really well aside for the shut downs and if they stopped happening and I somehow sorted out what happened with my second graphics card, then it would be perfect.
Attached pictures of motherboard and whatever else is visible, if that helps.
Dell Inspiron 5521 15R laptop
Intel 4000 HD graphics card
AMD 8730 Graphics card (on motherboard)
Windows 7 Professional SP1/Ubuntu 21.10
