Issue with Lenovo Legion 5 Power Module – SMD Explosion Reported in Model 15
Issue with Lenovo Legion 5 Power Module – SMD Explosion Reported in Model 15
Hey everyone, I was just enjoying some music yesterday and didn’t even lift my laptop. Suddenly it went black and wouldn’t restart. After checking the usual fixes, I opened it up to check for issues. While searching, I noticed a loose screw at the spot shown in picture A. It seems one of the screws I took off while installing the second M.2 SSD might have come out and slipped through the case before damaging the power supply. Using my tweezers, I carefully removed it, but I saw an arc in that area. Even though it booted afterward, things were still problematic. Once I plugged it back in, it slowed down significantly—sometimes taking over ten seconds to open Task Manager. The charging indicator was flickering on and off. When I cut the power again, everything worked perfectly. Looking closer, I found two soldering marks with a gap between them. It looks like an SMD component broke while I was removing the screw. The area is marked in picture B. My basic multimeter says the left solder joint has no voltage to ground, and it reads 0.7V when powered up, while in battery mode it’s 20.5V (the external power brick provides 20V). I might need better tools to fix it, but I’m not sure what was damaged. Task Manager shows CPU, GPU, RAM are all recognized and seem fine in battery mode. It doesn’t seem related to that. If anyone has ideas about the SMD part or ways to restore it, or if you know of another method to get my laptop working again—thank you all for your help. P.S. All my important files are backed up twice. Mostly Steam games are there; otherwise, PPS: It’s not charging even though the light is wobbling. My specs: Lenovo Legion 5 15 (about 4 years old), Ryzen 5 5600H, Radeon 6600M, 16 GB DDR4 RAM, 512 GB SSD as boot drive, 1 TB M.2 SSD from WD.]
The gray square functions as an inductor, formed by a coil of wire wrapped around ferrite and housed in its protective gray casing. It's integrated into a DC-DC converter setup, much like the one visible on the left side of the second image. The chip with AWSDPR is the controller, the square marked R56 contains the inductor, and you'll likely need to remove the DIMM shielding above it to inspect the actual components—capacitors or diodes possibly present. Labeling on the board will help; codes starting with "C" indicate capacitors, while those beginning with "D" point to diodes. You can also locate the controller chip and consult its datasheet, comparing it with example circuits in the documentation to identify the missing parts by matching the schematic. Most manufacturers stick closely to standard examples in their datasheets.
Always remove the battery when working with internal components. About 99% of these failures don’t affect the part itself. If you’re familiar, here’s what I suggest: Inspect the solder joints using a multimeter—one should be at ground potential because it’s a cap. Replace it with an identical size. Also verify the 3.3V level; check the bios IC by measuring ground on the 8-pin connector. If there’s a short, disassemble and contact the supplier. If both ends show ground, it’s likely a short—remove the battery and wait 10 minutes before testing with just the charger. If nothing works, the issue is probably elsewhere.
So, first of all thank you very much for the feedback. A quick update: I don't know, what I measured yesterday, but in battery mode one side is battery voltage and the other is ground (has less than 1 Ohm resistance to ground). When plugged in, it was supply voltage. I removed the battery cable and it's running fine when plugged in now. I suppose it was some kind of cap there, but I don't know the value, as it is basically vaporised. I guess I've now rendered my Laptop a Desktop PC. It's not that big of a deal, as I plug it in everywhere I go anyways. If anyone has any idea, what value the cap could be, let me know. I suppose it's just a stabilising capacitor that I don't need when only one power source is used. Edit: I think I could get the right cap and the equipment to solder it in, but I need to know what kind of cap and the capacity that I should probably use. I guess Lenovo isn't gonna tell me.
I noticed another potential problem. In Task Manager it indicated that sometimes the boot drive's average response time could be several seconds. I checked CrystalDiskMark and the numbers looked similar. For an M.2 NVME SSD it shouldn't be this slow, though it can still feel laggy at times. Should I attempt to reinstall Windows on the other drive? It would run much faster and respond quicker. Edit: Even after rerunning the test earlier, the results were comparable, but now it seems noticeably better about 15 minutes later.
Thanks for the reply. It seems like you might not have any nearby repair services, but you feel confident handling it yourself. Gaming on it feels quite unstable right now. I suspect the cap was added to stabilize the incoming current for the power supply. I’ll likely just use the biggest fitting cap available.
Checking low resistance between ground and voltage pins after removing the battery can suggest a shorted MOSFET or DC-DC controller/battery charger chip. The capacitor might have failed because of excessive current from the short. Regarding performance issues, it could mean the BIOS is capping CPU power usage—often around 20-35W instead of the rated 65W or more—due to safety limits on combined CPU and GPU power consumption. You might want to use HWInfo64 to monitor clock speeds and frequencies while gaming, opening it in window mode for detailed insights.
I just said I measured no resistance between one of the pins, supposedly ground of the cap and ground. The other pin is fine and reads either battery voltage when not plugged in or supply voltage when plugged in. I took a look at that. The highest I could get to in HWInfo64 was 27 W(sum of core power; TPD is 45 W) and when I ran FurMark for the GPU it switched between a limit of 40 W and 100 W for the GPU every 2 seconds or so. I hope replacing the cap will flatten the voltage peaks and nothing further was damaged by the short.