Clevo P157EM ;)

Hi, I was angry with Clevo that limited the potential of P150, relative to P170. Fortunately, there is a way.

 

AWESOME!
But, didn't Mythlogic do the same thing (P150EM@P170EM) and it burned their motherboard during testing?

 

Hey

Yea trust us it may boot but its not the same thing. The boards are slightly different and the failures will be for sure bad times. The EC makes certain assumptions about size etc and Yea we smoked a lot of components.

Trust us it won't be pretty

 

I have not heard what Mythologic did.
And here is a little bonus from me (present SATA Port 0).

Spoiler

 

I think you deserve a big rep from everyone!
Your are having balls of steel.

 

Thats just the BIOS being wrong, its not really SATA Port 0. It just makes assumptions about order.

And yea, I would really cross flash that back, its really obvious when you smoke the board on the board itself Also we cooked the CPU and GPU also when we did it, it was really not good to watch $1300 worth of stuff go poof.

 

I modified the SATA bridge. Both fast (SATA III) ports are available.

 

Ahh OK so you just jumpered the pins to get it to the other port? Also that will still work in the P150 flash. You just won't see it.

 

Thank you PREMA
Flash itself is easy, it's just a question of determination.

I understand your fear, but it is not true that there is any differences between the PCB of the P150EM and P170EM motherboard. The only significant difference is the power plug.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-2920XM Processor,CLEVO P170EM score: P6652 3DMarks

 

That's really tricky - well done.

Though I would follow Mythologic advices as I don't think it's worth the risk especially considering your 2920XM @4.2ghz is just on par with the 3610QM - anything above (3720/3820) would be significantly faster than your CPU unless you overclock it at 4ghz@4 cores.

 

Oh my word

 

Wait so you flashed the P170EM bios onto your P150em?

I'm guessing the same trick wont work on the P150HM (using the P170HM bios)?

Also what did you gain from this (how was rthe P150EM bios limited)?

 

XTU support I would guess.

If this is proven to be safe it could work wonders with my incoming 3740QM.

 

With P150HM is otherwise. To upgrade (mobo) to P170HM You have to physically modify the motherboard. But it is absolutely possible. Anyway, I already did that.

 

Can you please tell me how it's done?

 

The easiest way is to pick up HM65 chip and solder HM67 in place. Then flash to P170HM.
Another possibility (which I took) is solder on the P170HM mobo, one by one, all necessary connectors (power button+diode, keyboard connector, LED indicators connectors, and most difficult - battery plug) from P150HM.

 

I'm sure all this thread will be in the interest of Meaker...I'm amazed he hasn't posted anything yet in here.

 

For us less informed noobs, what did OP do? Flash P170EM BIOS to P150EM? I'm confused. And what exactly is limited on the P150EM vs P170EM other than available SATA ports?

 

Haha great you figured it out HTW yeah he did while mythologic didn't recommend it.

 

Speaking of which, I don't understand why they made the optical drive bay SATA II considering housing another SSD / HDD there is becoming somewhat common practice. Also, is the eSATA on the P150EM SATA II or SATA III?

 

The P170EM has Intel XTU support so you can overclock 37x0QM (+400MHz), 38x0QM (+400MHz) and 39x0XM CPUs.

Means a 3740QM will run at 4.0GHz

 

Ahh, ok. Guess I never considered the XTU. Thanks for clarification. That is crazy fast though. But instead of risking frying your $2000 laptop seems OP should go with a P170EM then. Although curious to see how well it works.

 

That's the nice one) Also, here's a different funny story... posted this in P170EM section few weeks ago.

Received the system Sager NP9170 with such a bios



Thean Installed the new one from Clevo and it looked like that



Updated EC



And finally was able to overwrite to the latest provided bios from Sager)

The sticker under the bottom cover looked just fine



There were almost no issues with the machine, except the kb backlit was a little dimmer than it should be and a few colors like yellow, white worked as red when you switch it (no biggy). All in all special thanks to Larry for helping out with this one and Sager for providing all those custom bioses!

 

Eh, say what?

 

Good question.. I know it's USB 3.0.. but SATA-III or not ? curious too

 

HM77 chipset has two SATA III ports (Port 0 and 1). mSATA and eSATA is SATA II. P170EM uses both SATA III ports for two HDD bay. P150EM uses one SATA III port for HDD bay only.

 

What would happen of you flash the p170hm bios without changing the Hm65 chip?

 

Maybe nothing, maybe you would have to reprogram the EEPROM.
Anyway, it makes no sense because HM65 does not support RAID0 and Intel XTU.

 

Thank you for the answer.

Since you clearly do a lot of soldering.
Have you ever considered a PLL pin mod ( like this)?

Do you think that could be possible on these systems?

Also did you ever find the service manual for the P150EM?

 

I've never tried a PLL pin mod, but it seems that Intel XTU is a better solution.
http://www.eurocom.com/download/m219_ServiceManual.pdf

 

Why you want to change Reference Clock ? You don't use any mini pcie cards in your nb ? With this mod will be high unstable.
I think this is not best idea - better use softmods and bios patches to open hidden functions.

Regards

 

The thing is, the clock generator used in this case has 4 PLLs.
And the PLL that generates the reference clock for the CPU would be the only PLL affected by this mod.

The PCIe bus should be left untouched.

This mod should be stable and give a 33% overclock for any CPU. And it's such a simple mod. As long as the source for the SRC/SATA clock is set to PLL 4.

 

Probably you have right. I am not an expert but I know that Ref Clock is used to build other clock signals using clock multipliers & dividers net.
If you change base clock you change other timings - i think i seen here thread about this issue, but on other nb platform.

Maybe i will check this mod when i get new frequency analyzer.
I will be surprised if it will work stable with 133MHz ref clock

Need to look at mb schematics - i dont like hardmods, kills warranty

 

It might be it

I found two resistors that set ref clock on P150HM board - you can find it on left side of cpu socket

first R312 100K ohm - just set 3.3V CMOS level to low state (1V)
second R313 on circuit diagram is 0 ohm / on board not mounted - i didnt check shortcut of resistor mount pads but probably is.

If not I think it need to be connected.

all we need is change voltage on R313 pad from low (1V) to high state (1.05V) and check how long it will work with this OC

Strange is that in datasheet you can find information that when R313 is not connected to sandy bridge pin then it took high state

I will think about it later when i finish my play with XTU on my P150EM and other opened projects

Regards

 

That's great to hear.

If you get a chance to take a photo of these 2 resistors please upload it so we can all see

I have yet to receive my P150HM barebone in the mail.
But I did get meakers 7970m a couple of days ago.

 

I make a fail i feel little tired and schematics diagrams are little bit messed

Signal needed to change is called PROC _SELET and can be pulled up near R354 (bottom side under cpu socket) i will post mb picture later bc forum got file size limits and i need to go sleep

Regards

 

Anyone have any insight on what's the purpose of BIOS_REC on GPIO22? (BIOS Recovery = Disabled by default)

 

I know two but i am not sure which one is used by

1. Fn+B - probably this is it because GPIO22 pin was designed as SCREEN LOCK button signal

2. ITE bootblock contains also 4kB BIOS Recovery block (0xfff) called only when data on main flash chip are corrupted - this one is also possible because last P170EM bios was first containing data for both flash chips, first I seen

Regards

 

Wait, of course I had not seen this lol! Thanks iaTa.

Now for the P150EM do I just flash the latest P170EM bios?

While it's likely bad for extreme clockers to go all out I doubt adding 400mhz to a partially unlocked CPU is going to cause issues.

 

Yes,
if You are not afraid.

 

How did you flash? I get error 25, it says the host CPU does not have access....

 

nvm, skipped the batch files and did it manually, also had to add in /X to ignore ROMid.

Yes it did work.

Mwaha.

 

For P170EM_B07 BIOS update:
1. Plug in AC adaptor.
2. Run MeSet.EXE under pure DOS, the system will auto cold boot.
3. Run FlashMe.bat under pure DOS.
4. The system display flash complete message after flash success, if the system doesn't shut down automatically please press power button to power off.
5. Plug off AC adapter for 5 seconds then plug in AC adapter.
6. Power on system, the system will shut down automatically.
7. Power on system and enter CMOS setup to check BIOS version and load system defaults.
With x of course.

 

Its fine, I just did it the manly manual way instead

 

Yes for EC flash you need to add /x option to ignore ROMID
Before flash BIOS file you need to unlock flash chips using setme.exe other way spi flash software will give you error 25 and doesnt flash bios chips

Regards

 

Well I just entered AFUDOS.exe BIOS.rom /p /b /n /X and it worked just fine.

Both the bios and the EC needed /X.

 

What is size of your ROM file ? 6MB (BIOS 1.00.07) or 4MB like old bioses ?

I need to disassemble bootblock of old and new BIOS and check what is stored on small flash chip. it could be STUFF for BIOS Recovery or BIOS part from bigger flash

 

This is awesome.

Any negative side effects noticed yet Meaker?

Did you flash BIOS and EC together or did you reboot in between?

 

I flashed both to avoid issues.

Everything had to be re-installed driver wise lol and windows re-activated.

It was the 6MB bios I flashed.

 

I reckon that you'll make a new benchmark when your 3740QM arrives..