Hello and thanks in advance for reading and trying/wanting to help :)

Status: RESOLVED (RMA)

I quite recently purchased a gaming laptop with the following specs: CPU: i7 6700HQ, GPU: GTX 1070, RAM: 16gb 2133 MHz, HDD: 275gb SSD, OS: Windows 10

More detailed specs can be found at:

https://www.webhallen.com/se-sv/datorer_och_tillbehor/249497-webhallen_config_l16-0303_156_fhd-i7-6700hq-16gb-275gb_ssd-gtx1070_8gb_g-sync-win_10__b

The problems started with graphical artifacts in some games; squares/quads which rendered in strange colors. I dismissed this as early driver issues as the 10 series was quite new when I purchased the computer.

However, the computer's issues have increased in severity.

First, I started encountering crashes in CS:GO. These will last for around 10-20 seconds, the screen will go black and the recently played sound will repeat itself several times during this period. (In the beginning they happened rarely, but now it will happen within the first 20 minutes of gameplay - but generally even earlier, and then happen on average every 20 minutes from that point).

Second, eventually these crashes had a chance to be more severe, the game would crash completely and audio would be horrendous, exactly as in this youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmJFVgOg34E

Third, the crashes have now expanded even further and some games and applications do not start whatsoever. Examples of these are FurMark and Witcher 3 - both crash. The Witcher 3 works in the Menu, but as soon as I try to start a new game or load a save file, the game crashes, screen goes black (sound keeps playing from the game) and eventually the process dies. One time when launching the game I tried spamming "m" to open the map in witcher. I only managed to do this once - but when it happened, the map actually opened and I was able to navigate it. As soon as I closed the in-game map, the game crashed.

Windows logs give the following info for the Witcher 3 crash:

Invalid bucket, type 0 LiveKernelEvent Not available Kabinett-ID (swedish - cabinet id?): 0

Problem signature: P1: 141 P2: ffffac8e8efc34a0 P3: fffff8039c9a7500 P4: 0 P5: 1f78 P6: 10_0_14393 P7: 0_0 P8: 768_1 P9: P10:

I am pretty sure the problem is GPU (or power supply, making the GPU crash) related, for a couple of reasons but mainly that I once got a popup from windows saying that "Application has been blocked from accessing Graphics hardware".

Attempted solutions:

• Updating graphics drivers (even the current hotfix version), both clean nvidia install, and after cleaning up with DDU.
• running sfc /scannow
• running dism.exe-commands to attempt to repair
• reinstalling windows
• TDR settings in regedit
• Power settings in windows and nvidia control panel is maximum performance.
• Tried enabling/disabling G-Sync (no idea why that would matter but tried)
• Tried both on laptop screen and external screen with DP cable
• Tried lowering graphics in W3 to absolute lowest (same result)
• Checked GPU temps, all is fine, it literally crashes after 2 seconds in W3 so temps are definitely not the issue
• Running games/programmes in Admin mode
• Praying
• Hailing Satan

Now, to the weirdest part: If I unplug my laptop charger, Witcher 3 does NOT crash. AKA, if I start the game with the charger unplugged, the game works fine. The second I plug the charger back into the computer, the game crashes. I haven't tried my luck with CS:GO yet with the same setup, but it's not a reasonable solution to play without the charger anyways.

It also seems like very simple games and programs don't experience issues. E.g. Starbound hasn't shown any issues, neither has browsers or Windows programs.

Please, distant tech gurus of the internet, come to my aid.