I purchased an XPS laptop at the end of 2017. Just the other day, it wouldn't turn on, and the LED indicator was blinking 2 amber, 1 white, which apparently indicates a CPU failure. This is pretty frustrating because it hasn't been 3 years yet, and it's been used only very very lightly. I've tried performing a system reset and power cycling, but no luck.

Although it's out of warranty, I noticed that I could renew it for about $100, and thought that perhaps it would cover the diagnosis and repair costs (wishful thinking, I know). In the link above, someone noted that the repair (replacing the motherboard) would cost $300+, which is more than I'd like to spend. But $100 including a year of warranty? That would be reasonable.

Just to make sure though, I jumped on the Dell support chat, where the representative kept telling me that I would need to have it diagnosed first for $59, get the laptop repaired, and then I could renew the warranty. This didn't make sense to me, since I could literally press "checkout" on the warranty renewal right now. He asked me how much I thought the repair would cost, and I said "at least $300 to $400," to which he replied "it would cost $278 plus tax" (how did he know it would cost that much?). So anyways I told him that that was more than I would like to spend, and he said "I understand. Thank you for choosing Dell."

I'm not sure what I want to do right now but it's just annoying to have a high-end (ish) device die like this after not even 3 years of light use. I really like the XPS, but man, I'm not happy with Dell at the moment. If anyone has any advice (is it hard/expensive to replace the motherboard?) or anything to share, that would be great.