dell's solution will be to replace the motherboard.  how this will occur will depend on what type of warranty you have.  if it's on site, a tech will come and replace the board.  as you will watch him/her, just make sure that no parts like your ram disappear.

 

if you decide to mail it in, remove any parts that you added (such as ram).  you don't need to replace this with the original ram -- sending it with none is a perfectly fine option).  you might also consider removing your hard drive as it's unrelated to the problem and it's always possible for them to decide to wipe it.

 

might be worth noting that the metal around my ethernet jack on my i5100 fell off a few months ago.  hasn't hurt anything *yet* so I don't feel like losing the computer a week for repairs :/