Ionico ocasionally failing to boot

[manuelm]

Hello Everyone,

My beloved Ionico ocasionally fails to boot. This used to be fairly rare, but its fairly common now (once a day, every other day?).
When I turn on the laptop, the backlight of the monitor turns on but no picture, no pcspecialist logo or anything, just fan noise. To fix it, I usually just force shutdown with the power button and turn it back on, this does this trick.
Also my laptop seems to take much longer to get into windows than it used to. I have tried to format the laptop and reinstall windows, but no change.

Any help in diagnosing the problem would be helpful. Below I attached my laptop specifications and a screenshot of the SSD in Crystaldiskinfo

Thank in advance

Chassis & Display
Ionico Series: 15.6" Matte QHD 165Hz sRGB 100% LED Widescreen (2560x1440)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 Eight Core Processor 10875H (2.3GHz, 5.1GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair 2666MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 3060 - 6.0GB GDDR6 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1
1st M.2 SSD Drive
Sabrent Rocket 4.0 1TB
Memory Card Reader
Integrated Micro-SD Memory Card Reader
AC Adaptor
1 x 230W AC Adaptor
Power Cable
1 x 1.5 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Battery
Ionico Series Integrated 62WH Lithium Ion Battery
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND APPLICATION
Sound Card
2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Wireless Network Card
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® Wi-Fi 6 AX201 (2.4 Gbps) + BT 5.0
USB/Thunderbolt Options
1 x USB 3.2 PORT (Type C) + 3 x USB 3.2 PORTS
Keyboard Language
IONICO SERIES RGB BACKLIT PORTUGUESE KEYBOARD
Operating System
Windows 11 Pro
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Keyboard & Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 1MP HD WEBCAM
Warranty
3 Year Standard Warranty (6 Month Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)

 

[TonyCarter]

How old is it? Have you ever opened it to dust & repaste?

 

[manuelm]

How old is it? Have you ever opened it to dust & repaste?

2021.

I have. However, if it was cooling / high temperature I would expect issues when running the laptop at full power (i.e. gaming)? Which i dont have. Only booting from cold.

 

[BlessedSquirrel]

2021.

I have. However, if it was cooling / high temperature I would expect issues when running the laptop at full power (i.e. gaming)? Which i dont have. Only booting from cold.

When did you last repaste it? If it's heavily throttling it would affect normal desktop performance. Doesn't need load on the processor or GPU to create throttling temps, if the paste has degraded, from cold boot to throttling could take a few seconds.

 

[manuelm]

Any advice on identifying thermal throttling? i just checked and on baldurs gate 3 cpu is around 80c. hwinfo says its thermal throttling (not sure its accurate, it ocasionally has spikes to 95+c when pc is not in load) but i see no dip in the core clocks. Any way to check this for sure?

I just ordered some Noctua NT-H2 as changing the paste is probably a good idea anyway.

 

[BlessedSquirrel]

Any advice on identifying thermal throttling? i just checked and on baldurs gate 3 cpu is around 80c. hwinfo says its thermal throttling (not sure its accurate, it ocasionally has spikes to 95+c when pc is not in load) but i see no dip in the core clocks. Any way to check this for sure?

If you haven't repasted it within the last year, it's overheating, that's a given.

HWInfo doesn't report false info.

What are you using to stress it? A gaming load isn't how you identify throttling as that will a dynamic load that heavily fluctuates.

You have to run a stress load ie 100% for around 10 minutes to soak the system, then take readings at the end of that WHILE THE STRESS IS STILL ONGOING

Need to take readings of temps per core, any flags like power limit / thermal throttling, plus peak frequencies and current frequencies.

If it's hitting 95 at all, it's unquestionably overheating, no doubt about that, under 100% load it should be under 90c on a healthy system.

I just ordered some Noctua NT-H2 as changing the paste is probably a good idea anyway.

I really wouldn't bother, paste is old fashioned now on a laptop, a Thermal Grizzly Kryosheet is a set and forget solution, never degrades like paste, and actually performs almost up to liquid metal levels as well.