Eurocom's Garbage Support & Co.

Hey Everyone!

Things have built up with Eurocom, and I've finally decided to write a proper post detailing their subpar support and systems.

I've bought this laptop, Eurocom Sky MX5 R3 back in 2017. I reside in Canada and it's tough to get a decent Clevo laptop around here. Initially, I wanted to have a Sager, but the possible shipment fees and taxes drove me away. I've purchased the laptop with a 2 year warranty and the following specs.

CPU: i7-7820HK
GPU 1070 GTX
TP: IC Diamond
Screen: 120 Hz 1080p

I'll go over my sentiments to these one by one, but I'd like to initially voice my first impression. This is probably the noisiest laptop I've ever had to deal with. I've read complaints before purchase about the sound level, but I thought, hey it can't be that bad. Well, it was, is and never really changed ever since the purchase.



I dropped nearly 3 GRAND on this laptop. When you're shelling out this much money, you'd expect nothing but stellar experience. Eurocom definitely started off on the wrong foot here. But, when compared to what's coming next, this was just a minor inconvenience. I'll separate my issues in a few sections in increasing emphatic order.

Expensive OEM Configuration
I've added an additional 16 GB of RAM on my own as the OEM's upgrade configuration was DOUBLE the price. Same goes for the Samsung 960 EVO that I've added. Choosing those to be pre-configured on the laptop purchase would carry a hefty cost that can be avoided.

High Noise Levels
We've gone over this; it was bad but given I wear a headset almost always, I was able to mostly ignore it.

Disappointing Thermals
The thermal performance of this laptop is horrid. I was hitting 90-92 degrees on games like PUBG. As ****ty and un-optimized that game was in 2017, it stressed both CPU and GPU simultaneously. While this didn't hit the PROCHOT initially, they were concerning temps that I didn't like to maintain on such a high level. More on this later, as I've tried changing TP, thermal pads and undervolting.

The Overclockable but Cant be Overclocked CPU
Due to the horrible thermals, this laptop just simply can't be overclocked. You can't even hold 4-4.1 GHz (100 MHz above rated) without reaching PROCHOT. This was the 3rd letdown. I shelled out the extra money for the CPU, only to be be in vain.

The PREMIUM Thermal Paste
Eurocom charges an additional $58 for the GPU and CPU IC Diamond thermal paste SEPARATELY. This means, if you want this paste applied by the reseller, you'll shell out an additional $116! T his would only set you back $25 if you apply it yourself.



The Keyboard Ghosting
The keyboard suffered from ghosting on day 1. I couldn't RMA back then 'cause I really needed the workstation for my work and research. There are specific combinations that can't work together (pressing SHIFT + L + M together would only yield one character).

A few months later, things on the thermal side started to get worse. I decided to buy your trusty old MX4 and and apply the TP myself. As I detached the heatsink, the horrid OEM thermal application unveiled itself. A bucket load of paste was applied unevenly on both the GPU and CPU. This doesn't always affect the temperatures, but whoever applied the paste was surely no expert.

Once replaced, the thermals didn't really change.... That's when I started exploring more drastic measures. I've tried again with liquid metal and better thermal pads. Guess what, nothing really changed either on the long term. At this point, I was hopeless, but I still couldn't let go of my laptop to RMA just yet.

The Garbage Support
Fast forward a year later, I've graduated and have some time on my hands that I can spend away from my workstation. I opened up a support ticket. It was rather simple, an explanation of the thermal situation and a request for keyboard replacement. I"ll let the chat speak for itself. Read the following attached image.



Please check out the timestamps on this chat. The engineer intently ignored my inquiries twice. The first time, I urged him for a reply; the second time, he CLOSED the ticket.


In summary, keyboard can't be serviced for free and the support engineer decided that I have a very petty situation that doesn't require attention.

The laptop is consistently hitting PROCHOT and thermal throttling. Obviously, my games stutter and suffer from severe FPS drops due to this.

I'm done with you Eurocom. You expect people to pay the premium price for your laptops, but never live up to their expectations in terms of quality and support. Shame on you and shame on every other company that condones such practices.

I apologize for the lengthy post, here's a tl;dr: terrible thermals, noise levels, overclockable cpu can't be overclocked, restricted warranty, keyboard ghosting and horrid support make for the worst experience I ever had with Eurocom.

 

Have you contacted @woodzstack ?

 

I'd rather pay taxes, shipping fees, anything needed and NOT deal with Eurocom. Don't get me started but basically, their customer service is appalling.

 

He wasn't my customer though, but I'd help a fellow Canadian out if I could. What goes around comes around.

 

I will, thanks!

It's a shame that I genuinely love Clevo laptops, but it just needs the right OEM...

Thank you for looking at this thread. I'll hit your DMs soon.

 

Even with taxes and shipping fees its still cheaper to buy spare parts/GPUs from anyone but Eurocom.

Spoiler

 

I just purchased a laptop from them yesterday. Hope they fulfill their side of things properly :/

 

something i realized recently is that although these laptops are premiumly priced it is only for the customer not the seller
although the laptops are expensive the seller doesn't make much money out of it (i might be wrong) but that's what i see
so support is not something they want to do even big companies like apple dell samsung all outsourced their repair to (as far as i know) cheap labor companies but the difference is at least for apple they have their own call center so you get fast response on rma and other support
not sure how as a community of gaming laptop enthusiasts we can change this but if anybody has a good idea please let us know
in the past i was really angry when i spent $2000 on a computer and then get a crap support but now i can see that the seller doesn't make much money out of the $2000 so their response is less than desirable
well just ranting

 

While I do not know how much they might make, I am sure they are in it for the money. No one gets into this business for charity imho.
If they have regrets, they can move onto other avenues. Any business needs to put ethics first, money automatically comes through long term relations and customer networks. Margins must be high because these ones don't sell by volume afaik.
Anyway, good service is a mandate for any business if they are in it for the long haul.

 

Reason for temperatures getting worse down the line, is mostly likely due to liquid metal bonding with the copper and diffusing into it over time. If you reapply LM on both surfaces it should be good again. Worth noting, when you use LM, the thermal pads might need to be replaced with slightly thinner ones. As LM hates even the tiniest of gaps.

 

Thought I'd update you all on the state of my laptop.

Thanks to @woodzstack for offering his repair services. I've shipped the laptop to him. He gave the laptop a thorough cleanup and reapplied the LM properly. The temperatures are definitely better at idle, but I still see PROCHOT being hit (all cores getting to 94-96 celsius) on longer gaming sessions.

Interestingly, a guy named Mark from Eurocom reached out with this and I quote:
"""
I understand that you are unhappy with our support that you received. Is there anything that we can help you?
Sky MX5 R3 comes with BGA based CPU and GPU and it has limited thermal envelope to keep physical size down so it can't be overcloked the way you would overclock full size laptops such as Sky X4 series.
Why you didn't report keyboard ghosting right away? ‎ We would just ship you replacement keyboard in advance and you would just replace yourself and return back defective.
Sky MX5 R3 is very good lightweight laptop with certain thermal limitations, it uses mobile versions of both CPU and GPUs with fixed thermal specs and therefore it was not designed for overclocking.
We stand by our products and service and are willing to work with you to be happy with our products.
Best Regards
Mark
Love Your Laptop | Eurocom Support Team | @EurocomTech
"""

Ye, " willing to work with you to be happy with our products". Honestly, I was glad that someone was willing to help me out from Eurocom. I've replied, reiterating what has been said in the first post. Guess what? I haven't received a single reply afterwards. This is TWO MONTHS ago. I've been told that this guy could be the CEO of Eurocom. Well, I guess now we know why your support is utter garbage.

I don't think there's anything else I can do to improve the temperature situation with this laptop. It's working alright now, but it bothers me that these high temperatures have to be hit. I can't be sure, but do you guys, other Sky MX5 R3 users, have the same temperature issues? I'm gaming at a -100 mV, with an external fan and LM applied.

 

Unfortunate about your experience with the reseller.

Are you gaming with the fans on max when hitting these high temps? (fn+1)
Also be vary that some cooling pads can be obstructive for airflow.

From what I see your laptop is using a shared heatpipe design, as the heat from the 1070 is also getting dumped into the cpu heatsink.
You could try and undervolt the 1070 to see if this helps to reduce throttling. @Mr. Fox has a great guide on how to do so.

 

If you asked Woodstakz politely he might do BIOS mods as well.
Use throttlestop to disable BD PROCHOT and see if it helps!

 

Yup, this is mostly my experience as well. It's kind of sad how often I had to push to get a reply from them...

To this day, I bought it nearly 2 years ago for my birthday, it has remained my greatest regret purchase.

Oh well, live and learn! I wish I had bought a desktop at the time, but I didn't know if I would be moving. Unfortunate, but that's life ahha

 

rarely do bios mods myself, I'll do it to my own hardware, but if I'm not willing to pay for damages if done to someone else's PC' I won't risk it usually. Just saying.

 

There are two Marks from Eurocom. If you see the name Mark in the reply/email, probably not the CEO. The CEO usually doesn't use a signature from my experience. Check the last name, not just the initial.

 

It been a year!
Do you start a new PC division called Alezka?

 

Eurocom is a reseller. They don't design or manufacture the laptops they sell. There's very little they can do to rectify a bad design on Clevo's part beyond doing a paste job. Getting upset with Eurocom won't solve your problems because ultimately they can't fix them. You should be upset primarily with Clevo. Have you voiced your complaints with them?

Personally I've always been unhappy with Clevo designs, and I've become extremely unhappy with them over the past half decade. Unfortunately there are no other options for notebooks with standardized or semi-standardized socketed cpus and MXM graphics so I've been stuck buying Clevo. It sucks for the average person who doesn't know what they are getting into, but if you want a Clevo to run cool and get the most out of the hardware, you'll need to rework the design of the laptop yourself (like most of us on here have done in one way or another).

 

Agreed that Eurocom can't do much with a bad laptop, but least they can do is talk to the customer and not ghost them. As per this thread, they just didn't bother to reply. That pains the most.