15 R3, 2 red 3 blue led flash

Question

I’ve had my R3 for nearly 4 years now and had to replace the fans twice, but the other week I noticed the CPU fan wasn’t spinning and after running a Triple A game (cyberpunk) for about 2 hours and started to notice the keyboard getting warm on the left. I ran BIOS diagnostics then noticed the CPU fan wasn’t detecting at all.

after trying a few basic things like unplugging the battery and holding the power button 30 seconds I decided to take everything apart again till I got to the fans again and everything seemed fine after checking all connections, I always watch a dell employee video on youtube for disassembling the laptop and made sure I did everything correctly.

After booting the laptop back on the GPU fan runs as usual aswell as the custom lights coming on but no beeping or display on the screen, just 2 red flashes and 3 blue indicting no memory/ram even though the RAM sticks weren’t messed with. After some basic troubleshoots such as reseating the RAM, switching spots, trying 1 RAM at a time.. holding D while pressing the power button, unplugging the battery and holding the power 30 seconds. All these didn’t change anything

Then I decided to try and take it apart once more because someone suggested resetting the CMOS battery so once I did that (unplugged and replugged) and then tried turning my computer on I get the same 2 red 3 blue LED first then after it just flashes 3 red 1 blue indicating the CMOS battery failed?

At this point I’m wondering if maybe the motherboard is just fried (maybe from overheating while trying to play a game before noticing the fan wasn’t working, but it didn’t get that hot compared to how hot it’s been before, and I received no warnings about the fan or overheating, I just ran a BIOS diagnostic and realized it wasn’t detecting after noticing it wasn’t spinning) but then again not sure why the fan didn’t work in the first place. The reason I had to replace the fans last time was because after trying to carefully clean them with a compressor the CPU had blades break off)

I’m now thinking I’m about to have to toss this laptop in the garbage and buy a nice custom rig, if anyone sees any hope for this laptop or has a good idea what went wrong please let me know

Kalluminate · Answer

idk if this is needed but the

crimsom · Answer

Hi @Kalluminate welcome to this user to user forum.

Dell Support for Alienware 15 R3 Documentation includes Diagnostics light pattern codes.

Please visit 17 R4, reseat the memory message? which is an ongoing discussion about a phantom instruction to reseat the RAM cards. Seemingly there is nothing wrong with your 15 R3, unless you have subsequently changed something.

Kalluminate · Answer

I already mentioned doing that by swapping positions of the Ram in every possible way, and with 1 at a time. Only changes to the laptop are a new battery and new fans.

There are currently 3 problems with it. Starting with a fan replacement, one stopped detecting & yes it’s plugged in. After checking that all is plugged in by taking it apart to get to the fans again and putting it together I got the 2/3 led lights. After trying to reset the CMOS as someone on this site suggested I get the code 3/1 on top of the other code. I doubled checked the CMOS being plugged in all the way by taking it apart again with no success. So now I have 2 blinking codes and a fan not detecting. The pc was running beautifully before the fan broke. I copied a dell employees youtube video on taking it apart correctly & used all the proper tools. However I did noticed a wire came out of the led cable which I’m not sure from when and then I reseated it in the plug (not sure of any differences with the led cable because my lights all work fine and not sure if reseating it worked properly)

Alienware

15 R3, 2 red 3 blue led flash

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