Screen flashing with 660M, vid card or other problem?

[Spike]

I have a 2+ year old Y580 with a 660M chip in it and it has served me well as a mobile gamer when I travel for work. However, on my current trip the screen started flashing while playing through Far Cry 3. Once I exited the game and the GPU fan ramped down, this flashing went away. Started the game up again and as soon as the fan cranked up, I got the same problem.

I updated my drivers to the latest and that seemed to fix it for a couple of gaming sessions, then it started up again. Now it's progressed to happening randomly even at desktop and even if I go the the nvidia control panel and set it to use the integrated graphics.

Any ideas? I took a video of what I'm seeing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjwgGBydYdQ&feature=youtu.be

Could it be dust buildup? Part degradation? Anyone have any experience with this type of error with integrated graphics? I'd like to keep using this laptop while traveling, but it may be near the end of it's days.

Thanks.
Thanks.

 

[nsafreak]

Dust buildup with the GPU & iGPU overheating. Time to take the laptop apart, blow out the dust and you should be good to go. Hopefully you don't have to re-apply the TIM to the GPU as that can be a real pain when it comes to laptops.

 

[Spike]

Hmmmm, ok, I'll see about pulling the thing apart. I have to be well outside of any warranty anyway and it's pretty much unusable as is. My last test will be to hook it up to an external monitor and see if that does anything. Obviously if it's dust buildup, then no way, but if there is a bad connection in there then that an external should work.

Thanks.