Alright folks, looking for some opinions here. This laptop was great back in 2012 when I traveled for work and enjoyed my WoW/Counterstrike sessions at the hotel. I've since changed jobs and it got shelved for quite some time. Eventually I got back into WoW with a coworker and the laptop was dusted off and brought out for some remote gaming at a friends house. It did the job, but was nothing compared to my desktop at this point and the financial adviser (wife) was against me spending the money on something better. So i went the route of the SSD, more ram, and found a SLI card on ebay for cheap. Yes, dear, it'll only be $100 Oooo, it was nice, But still, not what I wanted it. So i went the route of overclocking... slightly. Alright, now we're cooking, literally. This isn't great but still on par with my friends aging desktop.
I mean cooking! That laptop got HOT during some of the longer sessions. I always kept it on a flat surface but never really thought to use a cooling pad or raising up the bottom of the laptop. Yes, I did keep the fan clean and blow it out once a month or so. Trying to alleviate the issue I replaced the heat sink pads that were kinda falling apart with new. This helped some but really didn't do much. The fan exhaust was blasting super heated air.
After some time I noticed that the video would get a little flaky with artifacts so i turned the overclocking down. Problem is it still got pretty damn hot. After about a month of 1-2 5 hour sessions a week I'm at the point where the laptop display will stay black unless the laptop sits for ~30 minutes on. At which point I can restart the computer and i'll get the Lenovo screen and it'll boot as normal. Problem is after a while the display locks up and craps out. I've tried reinstalling windows, removing the second video card, installing new drivers, installing slightly older drivers, removing the SSD, installing the old ram and just about anything else.
My suspicion is the video chip got too hot and the BGA solder balls are messed up. The laptop display "works" warm, but not cold and this this is why i suspect the BGA.
A replacement motherboard isn't in the options due to expenses, but trying a DIY "reflow" is something that I'm willing to do. Any thoughts on this? Is this the route I should take? m I'm really not in a position to buy a new laptop or really put any money into it.