The PCH exploded?!?

[raldone02]

I have never dropped the laptop. I have never spilled anything on it. I have never dropped anything on it. I can't imagine it ever got physically stressed.

Last week I closed the laptop and it went to sleep as usual. But when I came back and opened it, it wasn't running any more.  I tried to start it up without success. (I followed a start up issue guide. Remove the battery hold the boot button for 60s. Start without battery. Start with battery etc.) Later I noticed, that the charging LED didn't light up. The boot button LED didn't light up either.

When I picked it up I noticed that something inside was loose. When I opened it I saw the following:The exploded PCH.

The PCH (Platform controller hub) had shattered. I have never seen anything like that. I was really happy with my device and I am sad to see die on such a weird and uncommon hardware defect. I couldn't find a replacement mainboard anywhere and sending it in to repair would cost me 400EUR which isn't worth it.

Mainboard overview:

The whole mainboard

I would like to know if hardware defects are common with HP laptops because if that's the case my next laptop won't be a HP for sure. I expect my laptop to work for at least 5 years if it has been handled with care (no dropping, spilling, etc). I bought this laptop for 1300EUR 3 years ago. I would also like to know if I did anything wrong that could have caused this.

Disclaimer:

I installed an additional SSD in the top right after two years of use (one year ago).

[asmita6658 · Accepted solution]

Hi @raldone02

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[raldone02]

The customer support was very nice. Their reparation offer not so much "416,87 €, instead of 4890,44 €" instead I received an adequate compensation for the weird hardware defect.

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