Laptop issues arise from lack of knowledge, causing frequent crashes.
Laptop issues arise from lack of knowledge, causing frequent crashes.
I attempted to improve my 5-year-old Lenovo Y700 using GTX 960m and i7-6700HQ. Because of my lack of knowledge, I left the battery connected and changed the thermal paste. I accidentally touched the heat sink on the motherboard and noticed a spark. The laptop started working but under load it triggers BSODs with various errors. In Event Viewer, I see the same sequence before the crash appears. It might be that the power controllers for the CPU and GPU on the motherboard are damaged. I’ve looked online but couldn’t find a solution or explanation. Please help me troubleshoot this issue. Thank you!
I believe you messed up the board completely; fixing it yourself isn’t possible. You’d need to leave it as is or replace it entirely. Static is a big deal here.
The heatsink is likely floating or grounded, which probably caused the spark you saw. It seems unlikely you damaged anything significant—possibly too much thermal paste or insufficient pressure from the heatsink to cool the CPU properly. If the issue relates to the battery or its charging circuits, removing the battery and running the laptop on DC power might help. Check temperatures using HWinfo; adequate cooling is essential. A faulty chip usually fails completely under load, so minor temperature changes often mean a hardware problem. Capacitors are also prone to issues, especially with temperature sensitivity.
OP says they didn't remove the battery, so there is a good chance the spark from power flowing from the battery to the ground. That could've damaged power-delivery. I do agree OP should try re-checking their heatsink and all that, though. Personally, I'd also check with Ubuntu what happens -- never hurts to try and see in multiple OSes and compare the results.
The issue seems linked to static discharge rather than the heat sink spark itself. I’m unfamiliar with static damage effects, but could you clarify if there’s anything particular you should investigate? You mentioned no visible marks after touching the heat sink on your MB, so reapplying thermal paste might not be necessary. The SSD upgrade to Crucial P1 NVME and adding an 8GB RAM stick on the same day could contribute to the problem—BSODs often occur under heavy CPU load or during intensive tasks like gaming or using Zoom meetings with integrated GPU. They’re not rare, happening occasionally or even several times a day. Another scenario where BSODs appear is with the Deluge client. Let me know if you’d like more details on any of these points.
The day I replaced the thermal paste, CPU and GPU temperatures dropped from over 90°C to around 70–75°C, functioning smoothly about two months ago. Now I’m unsure and plan to test again. I also ran several tests on new RAM, SSD, and performed a full hardware check using Lenovo’s official diagnostics tool, which showed no errors.
Only for those skilled in basic low-level electronics might this be feasible, though you may need the motherboard schematics—which could be difficult to secure.