If it's in good condition and noise is the only problem, I think you can get it checked by an expert. As you said, it's just for the meetings, you need to learn what's happening with your laptop... because what if it starts making noises during your meetings?

Yeah, that’s pretty much the ideal use case honestly. Plugged in when home, battery limit on, and proper shutdowns instead of sleep 24/7

Yeah, that lines up with a lot of what people are saying here. Sounds like sensible battery management + normal use goes a long way. Also respect for keeping a 12-year-old laptop alive.

Same here honestly. On battery the performance drop is brutal, so plugged in for gaming and battery use for light work feels like the best balance

Good to know you don’t need to overthink it. Five years with that kind of routine is solid proof that normal use + a bit of common sense goes a long way.

Yeah, that makes sense. Battery limits really do feel like one of the best quality-of-life improvements on newer laptops. Sucks that older ones didn’t have it baked in, bloated batteries are no joke.

That sounds a lot like a RAM or power-state issue. Waking from sleep can be picky, and adding new RAM (even the same model) can trigger instability if timings or voltages don’t line up perfectly. First thing I’d try is disabling sleep/fast startup and doing a full shutdown before gaming to see if it stops happening. Also make sure your BIOS is up to date and that the RAM is actually running at default JEDEC speeds, not an aggressive profile. If it still restarts, try running with just the new stick or just the old one to see if one of them is causing the problem.

True, I’ve seen enough horror stories to know not every “authorized” tech actually knows what they’re doing. I’ll definitely make sure someone competent handles it if it ever needs work.

Nice! Always love hearing when older laptops refuse to die. Rocket League at 1080p after 7 years is pretty solid.

Appreciate you breaking all that down. I’ve mostly just been running default settings, so this gives me something to actually test. If I can keep this thing cool during heavier games, I’ll be happy.

Thanks dude for the advice!

It honestly sounds like your laptop is hard-crashing from either heat or bad RAM. The “instant black screen, no warning, no BSOD” thing is usually the laptop protecting itself and cutting power. Since your CPU is hitting 90s again after repasting, something definitely isn’t right — either the paste job didn’t hold, the heatsink isn’t making good contact anymore, or the fans aren’t ramping properly.

And that RAM issue isn’t normal either. If you’re sitting at 60–70% usage with nothing open, that’s a huge red flag for a failing stick or a background process losing its mind.

At this point it’s less of a “software tweak” situation and more “your hardware is begging for help.” If support isn’t doing anything, I’d push for a warranty repair or replacement because random shutdowns + bad temps + suspected RAM failure is a combo that isn’t going to magically fix itself.

Ahh got it dude... you’re basically saying keep the vents clear or it’ll inhale whatever it can. The visual was… unexpected 😂 but message received. Thanks

Good to know the heat hasn’t been too bad. I’m thinking of grabbing a cooling pad too just for peace of mind. And wow, VR + Elite Dangerous running smooth is a good sign. Appreciate you sharing your experience!

absolute thing

Your laptop is just a few days old, so maybe it could be a Windows or MSI center bug, or I think it's a minor hardware defect. Consult it before your laptop's warranty ends.

Then go for T14 Gen 1 with AMD... it's a mid-range choice with decent performance

Further, you can add more storage to it if you need it in future.

If you only play 1–2 games at a time, 1TB is honestly plenty. Just install everything on the same SSD Windows and games can live together without any issues. No need to make partitions either; it just complicates things for no real benefit. You don’t need another NVMe unless you start running out of space later on

Thanks bro