what brand is it? I bought an asus gaming laptop an it's still going strong for like 5 years now. Granted the thing is massive and isn't really suited for travel, but now I just use it for youtube and twitch since i got my actual gaming pc.

an MSI

oh derp, you said that right in the journal. honestly never heard of this brand.

MSI is one of the main video card manufacturers, along with ASUS, EVGA, and Gigabyte. That's more what they're known for, but like ASUS, they've branched into making other components. They're much larger in the desktop world.

Mhmm, hence why I wont bother buying another after this model.

i need a new laptop myself. hope you find one asap.

...I knew MSI made motherboards and GPU boards, but I had no idea they marketed their own laptops. Seems like such an off-brand type of deal that I'd avoid them either way. The only company I ever see talked about in terms of actual gaming laptops is Alienware, which is pricey, but tends to do really well. Also, if you get another laptop for gaming, Alienware or otherwise, invest in a laptop cooler; one with good fans and ventilation.

Sounds like you got a lemon.

I have had 4 laptops in the past 16 years; never once had such dire issues like that.

But I agree with what a previous poster said; if your gaming in ANYWAY, you NEED to invest in a cooler. I have always had a cooler, and never had a problem with overheating and subsequent crashing from it, even when playing resource heavy games that max out the CPU.

Is it still within warranty?

I know you're probably USAian (in which case, you may be fucked anyway), but I've had fantastic service from Dell with getting my laptop repaired (one mobo replacement, two hinge repairs). Even with Australian Consumer Law being pretty fantastic, this is unusually good service.

Perhaps MSI will do the same?

Perhaps a few tips for you, and I am in no means an expert, and might be wrong with some of this stuff, but it's what I've learned thus far: Dollar-for-dollar, and in terms of performance and quality, desktops are where it's at. Let me clarify. Building YOUR OWN desktop YOURSELF is where it's at. Also, opt for Intel over AMD.

Reasons:

If a component fails in a desktop, you're not forced to buy THAT ONE from the original manufacturer. This drives competitiveness, which makes for less expensive parts, and gives you upgrade options. Laptops are not the same, and none have the same motherboard or layout. Some components are swappable and upgradeable, some are not.

Components can be larger in a desktop, which means they can be made more cheaply, more robustly, and to perform better. There's a reason laptop Skylake i7 CPU's are still only dual-core, where the desktop versions are quad-core with a larger cache...the chip's smaller, and motherboards are smaller/more compact/fewer features, and can't do as much as a result.

Because everything is micro-sized in a laptop, they're more prone to failure if you can even pay for the equivalent laptop version of a part. This is especially true, in my experience, with hard drives, USB ports, power supplies and RAM. With RAM, there's no room for a heat spreader in a laptop, which isn't all that necessary until you punish your system with insane gaming/work.

Cooling options for desktops are leagues above those for laptops. There's just no comparison here. Cases, fans, CPU radiators and heatsinks are all much more able to siphon heat away in a desktop. There's no room for an intelligent cooling system...or airflow, really...in a laptop. Hence, the cooling pad is absolutely necessary...and it doesn't work as well as even a mediocre desktop cooling system.

AMD has good chips, but dollar-for-dollar, they don't perform as well as Intel chips at the high end of use. They're not as efficient, which means they cannot run as fast and crunch as much data as the comparable Intel. If you buy an AMD chip, chances are, the 1-tier-lower Intel CPU will be cheaper and outperform it in clock tests.

Zzzzzzz...zzz...if you're still awake:

I build gaming PC's for people, and just did an overclockable rig this summer. It runs an i7 6700K, ASUS Strix ROG GTX 1070, 32G DDR4 RAM, ASUS mATX motherboard, 540G SSD with 3TB of auxiliary space, and a tower cooler with a fully fanned-up windowed case for just under $1500 USD all parts at my doorstep (Amazon). It's not hard to build them...people use me more for my ability to pick and obtain quality (and waranteed) parts, and do proper cost/benefit analysis, than to actually put the thing together.

That same desktop, to buy, would be either (a) the same price with horrible components, or (b) over $2300. The same laptop is not the same, because the components don't work as well, and runs $2000 for garbage parts and $2700 for good parts...obviously, this all depends on who you choose to get ripped off by. This is, in itself, the reason I build PC's for people. I don't need the money. I want to keep good people from getting ripped off.

Anyway, hope that (any) of this helps.

laptops where never designed for gaming purpose in the first place. not sure what you was thinking there.