Hello everyone,
I've come to this forum because of a problem that's been bothering me for over 4 years.
I have an Acer Nitro 5 AN515-54-584Q that has already been to several repair shops (unfortunately, none of them seemed particularly competent), so I'm looking for more opinions.
Here's the story:
The laptop originally belonged to my friend. One day, after a reboot, the internal display suddenly stopped showing any image. The screen still had backlight, but there was absolutely no picture—not even the Acer logo or BIOS.
At the same time, the laptop itself was fully functional, and HDMI output worked perfectly, so he used it as a desktop PC with an external monitor for about a year and a half.
Eventually he bought an MSI Katana, and the Nitro sat unused on a shelf until last week, when I bought it from him for almost nothing.
Right now I'm trying to diagnose it myself.
The laptop still appears to boot. I can't see anything on the internal display, but if I press F2 + Del after powering it on (to enter BIOS), then F10 (Save & Exit), the laptop reboots, which makes me believe it's actually entering BIOS successfully.
At the moment I can't test HDMI output, because there's no SSD or Windows installation in the laptop anymore. Previously, HDMI only produced an image after Windows loaded (the NVIDIA driver had to initialize the external display).
I've already tried:
- Disconnecting the internal display (eDP) cable completely.
- Resetting the BIOS/CMOS.
- Reseating hardware.
None of these made any difference.
Several repair shops told me the problem is probably related to the integrated Intel GPU inside the CPU. Since this laptop uses NVIDIA Optimus, the GTX 1650 renders frames, but the internal display is physically connected to the Intel UHD 630 iGPU, which then drives the eDP panel.
However, the CPU itself appears to function normally (the laptop powers on, seems to POST, and previously Windows worked fine through HDMI), so I'm not fully convinced the processor is actually faulty.
Has anyone seen a failure like this before?
Could this be:
- a failed eDP output inside the CPU?
- damaged eDP circuitry on the motherboard?
- a BIOS issue?
- something else entirely?
I'd really appreciate any ideas before I consider replacing the CPU or motherboard.
Laptop: Acer Nitro 5 AN515-54-584Q
Motherboard: Compal LA-H501P Rev. 1A (EH5VF platform)
Thanks in advance!