Recently we have seen a large increase in thermal problems on laptops that have high performance graphics chipsets. In particular, laptops that are using the 8400M and 8600M chipsets based on the Nvidia G84 and G86 GPUs. Nvidia did acknowledge these faults last year, but claimed the problem only affected a small amount of graphics processor units (GPUs).
What we’ve seen here, first hand, in the hundreds of cases with Nvidia graphics chipsets and thermal-related problems is evidence that their GPUs are actually responsible for most of the failures. In some cases the heat can even melt the plastic components inside the computer, including the fans and casing. Of course all that heat damages components on the motherboard such as integrated circuits, capacitors and resistors.
In response, several vendors, such as Dell, HP, Sony and a few others have issued limited extended warranty programs to repair systems with these defects even after their warranty expires.
Sony customers see here: http://esupport.sony.com/perl/news-item.pl?template=EN&news_id=349
HP customers see here: http://h30434.www3.hp.com/psg/board/message?board.id=Hardware&message.id=280
Dell customers see here: http://en.community.dell.com/blogs/direct2dell/archive/2008/09/12/nvidia-gpu-update-limited-warranty-enhancement-details.aspx
