*** Official Clevo P37xSM-A/Sager NP9377 owner's lounge ***

Am even more worried now .... I don't think I'll dare to flash my cards when mr.john and his friend release the unlocked bios ......
Scary as hell what happened to you .....
Don't just give up ethrem , if 880ms are on the high side go with the 870ms .... They could even be less of a hassle with lower issues.
Or try sell you expensive CPU and 16gb ram and replace with 4810qm and 16gb so u can get the
880ms.
I'll find a way put of this .... You certainly got the heart for all what you did.

 

Well, to be fair, its very rare that something like this happens but its always a risk when you're flashing any type of BIOS that you could fry it in the process. The BIOS that I flashed was indeed a test of that BIOS release but I highly doubt it was the BIOS itself, just things went wrong with my machine. It works for Prema.

I just pulled the machine apart and tried both cards individually. Still dead.

Gonna put everything back together, package it up, and decide what to do from there. I'm dreading making this call on Monday... Ugh.

Maybe this was the universe's way of telling me to build a desktop while I have the money in case something happens to my machine. I won't have the money for these things (or for anything in general) much longer, maybe a desktop for a backup is a good investment after all.

And yeah, I'm amazed how well I'm taking this. If it was just 7 or 8 months ago, I'd be fuming mad, getting drunk and cursing the world and blaming everybody but myself. Heh.

EDIT: Stuck a GTX 260M in there and it passed POST (screen was off but the hard drive activity was there plus the white light that comes on in the front came on plus it didn't reboot shut off and restart). If I can get a Clevo 260M BIOS and flash that card in my Alienware, I believe that I'll be able to flash both of those cards back to working condition. Now to see if anyone has a Clevo GTX 260M vBIOS dump lol.

 

If the "heat spreader on the back" is what I think it is, there should be 4 screws that you need to unscrew before it will come off. At this point I still thinking reflashing the cards with the M17x is worth a shot. If nothing else you'll be able to determine if this was indeed a vBIOS gone bad, or an actual GPU failure.

 

Yeah but I don't have any replacement TIM right now which is why I didn't go through with the Alienware.

I have, however, located a G92 Clevo BIOS which I am going to use on one of my two 260M's. I don't care if I fry those, I don't use that machine.

I tell ya what though... I can pull the video card and reinstall it in 5 minutes now lol.

If it was a GPU failure, it should work with one as its highly unlikely both failed at the same time. Since I've tried each of them as the master card (left side) - the SLI cable says its the master so I'm assuming that's the case - with the same no POST, reboot issue, I'm leaning towards bad vBIOS flashes. Luckily I have a dump of the updated 880M Clevo BIOS I can use.

Thanks to slv7's flashing guide on TechInferno, I found out that I can use nvflash -a to list the cards so I make sure I don't flash the 260M on accident. It *should* work.

 

Don't flash the 260's, just connect an external monitor and you will have picture!

Use one 260 as master and 880 as slave and flash the first 880 with the svl7 to the stock vBIOS.

After that use that 880 as master and flash the other one back to stock. DONE

 

I'll have a picture on what, the 260M with Alienware BIOS in the Clevo machine? I've literally got the G92 Clevo BIOS ready to fire on one of my 260s right as I type this, nvflash is sitting confirming I want to flash (I had to look up vendor 1558 to make absolutely sure its Clevo and it is)

 

The 260 will probably work on external monitor in the Clevo.
It's mostly not a vBIOS issue...
You have a 120Hz eDP display which that old card may not support.

 

The problem is that HDMI doesn't initialize outside of Windows and there is no VGA out on the machine.

 

Disconnect the internal monitor cable on either end and HDMI will work before Windows.

 

Oh man, I have no clue where that is in the machine. If I poke around in there too much, I might do more damage to the machine and make it even harder to actually get it fixed.

I'll pull the service manual for the 375 and take a look.

 

Here you go:



If you can't reach it then disconnecting the LCD end will be the easiest route.

 

Is that reachable under the keyboard then?

Man what a mess I made.

 

Damn Ethrem, I'm sorry I hope you can get everything back up to speed soon.

 

Yeah the LCD connectors are under the bezel area, so you'll have to do a pretty complete teardown to reach them. I thought about doing this previously since I wanted to be able to access the BIOS without using the internal LCD, but I felt very uncomfortable doing a teardown without a full diassembly guide.

Eh that picture is wrong, #3 where it says LCD cable connector, it's actually the speaker cable. I know because I tried and got fooled. "where did the danm sound go?" :laugh:

 

That's from the P375SM service manual, let me get you the P377SM-A version, one sec...

EDIT: Looks like it's covered and your the easiest way is to just open the LID and disconnect it on LCD side:



EDIT 2: P377SM-A Service Manual shot:



(Shows the same location though... )

 

Sorry to derail this, but Prema do you know what thermal pad thickness do I need on the PCH if I want to use the keyboard as a heatsink? I'm going to guess 2mm?

 

No idea, you will have to measure.
I don't own any of these Notebooks myself...too expensive for me.

I am uploading all SM-A model service manuals incl. this one to my blog, should be up there in the next 10 minutes.

EDIT: Done, all up!

 

I FIXED IT!!

Finally took the back off one of them and put it in the Alienware. The Alienware heatsink wouldn't screw down (screws too big) but because of the design, gravity held the heatsink on top of it and I was able to flash it.

Then I stuck it in the Sager and flashed the other one.

Thank god that's over with!

IC Diamond will be here on Tuesday since all of this messed up the paste, no gaming til then but one is idling in the 35-40C range, the other is idling in the 40-45C range so I'm not crazy worried about it for casual use.

Man, never would have thought that old Alienware would have bailed me out! Learned my lesson!

Also, I may have found the cause. I didn't realize this but the Rufus stick used FreeDOS. I don't know if that causes a problem or not but to make sure, I used my 17R to make a new USB with MS-DOS and it went without a hitch. If that was what caused it to brick, that sucks, because that was the default Rufus option.

If I ever get the balls to do the flash again, I'll flash ONE of them that way I can undo it without a second machine but I think I'm going to leave well enough alone. >_>

 

Special thanks post to Prema and svl7, I never would have gotten this fixed if they didn't take the time to help me with it.

 

SUPER happy it worked out for you. I think after reading about this I will probably not flash my 880m's and just keep them stock. I was already kind of iffy on the prospect of it to begin with but I definitely don't want a 3,000 dollar paperweight.

 

Yeah man, scared the living daylights out of me! If I didn't have the Alienware lying around, I would have had to send it back and there's no telling what they would have charged me to fix it, could have been on the hook for two new video cards rather than a BIOS reflash.

The chances of it happening are pretty slim... I'm apt to believe it was FreeDOS that did it but yeah, things can and do happen. Just happened to be my turn on the merry go round I guess.

 

Yay! Just goes to show a bad flash isn't the end of the world, and as long as you have something that can run off the IGP you can reflash it back to life.

For this reason I'm actually tempted to pick up a used M17x or M18x just for situations like these.

 

Yeah, the M17x was a huge life saver... Never thought it would be... but that old POS was good for something after all!

Now I'm kind of wishing that I didn't have the 120hz screen though so iGPU would be an option but at the same time, Optimus is hell. I think the moral of the story is if it ain't broke don't fix it. Although in this case, the vBIOS is broken... and will remain broken unless I try a new flash at some point. I guess when I become dissatisfied with the performance of the cards, it will be an option on the table.

The way that the Alienware is designed which used to annoy me... no longer annoys me now. If the heatsink was designed like the one on the NP9377, I would have had to take the heatsink or some other craziness and pray that it held.

Now excuse me while I make my order for the desktop I've decided to build in case something happens with my laptop again. It sucked not being able to play Watch Dogs today and now I can't play til Tuesday LOL

 

It's not the 120Hz screen, all Clevo SLI laptops have the IGP cutoff from the hardware front, as the display traces are routed directly to the master GPU. The best solution is to do what Alienware did and add a MUX so the user can choose whether the system boots off the IGP or the discrete card.

 

Good to know, I knew that the 120hz wasn't compatible with the iGPU and figured that was why it was disabled. Guess I'm fine with it.

 

Just a quick update to let everyone know that I will be creating a 870M SLI benchmark thread tonight or tomorrow evening (EST) depending on how time allows. Will get it out ASAP, I apologize for the delay.

 

Hopefully it's an issue that gets solved next gen since the hardware should be capable of it.

 

Very few people are going to cry foul over not having Optimus on their machine. Linux doesn't like it, OS X doesn't like it, and Windows doesn't do a fantastic job with it either for that matter. Hybrid SLI worked better than Optimus does.

 

so I just received my sager like an hour ago ...
this machine really looks so elegant and its really awesome ,so I basically having a fast overview of it and everything seems working great.
ethrem i have like no flex whatsoever on the screen,i forced my hand from the back on the lower right and left and center and seen no ripples on my screen at all , looks solid on my part.
but i have received mine without the SAGER logo on the back , so no idea if it is related or not ... i will contact Donald and enquire why my laptop was shipped without the sager logo.
track pad buttoms are both working perfectly bust must say the position if the mouse itself is kinda wrong , am typing with it now and mouse cursor always moving while typing.
ill be installing games and checking on stuff in the next few days and see how it will perform.

 

Glad to hear yours is flex free. I wonder if its the 120hz panel, I'm the second one with that panel to report it (last guy returned it and got an alienware)

Sucks mine has it but I'm glad to hear you're does not. Enjoy the machine!

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

 

I don't see any screen distortion when I press on the lid of mine but the lid itself is veeeeerry flexy. I don't really mind too much though; as I always tell people, if I cared that much about the exterior then I would've paid the money to have my crappy Inspiron 17R gold-plated instead of buying a gaming laptop :b

 

I am looking forward to buy this laptop. But before placing an order, I want to know the difference between the NP9377 and NP9377-S. Can anyone please tell me?

 

the Np9377-S and the np9377 are same in terms of quality build and shape.
the S just offers more discounts and free items from sager like free ic diamond thermal paste and a free upgrade to 120hz if u purchase the 880m,30 day no dead pixel guarantee,and gives u the intel ac-7269 wifi card and an i7-4810qm.
if you let me know what specs u aiming for we could help you choose which system.

 

I think I will choose the NP9377-S model because it offers some free stuffs. I will be ordering within this week from XoticPC. So I need to know what I am ordering. My specifications will be :

- 17.3" FHD 16:9 "Matte Type" Super Clear Ultra Bright LED Anti-Glare Screen (1920x1080) [Standard one, though it's free upgradable to 120Hz, but I don't know what that is, only I have heard 60Hz. Will it be good if I upgrade to 120Hz screen? it's free upgradable on NP9377-S]
- 4th Generation Intel® Haswell Core™ i7-4940MX (3.1GHz - 4.0GHz, 8MB Intel® Smart Cache)
- SLI (2x) - NVIDIA® GeForce™ GTX 880M (16.0GB total) GDDR5 PCI-Express DX11 [User Upgradeable]
- 16GB DDR3 1600MHz [2x8GB] Dual Channel Memory
- 250GB Samsung 840 EVO Series mSATA SSD - Preconfigured as an OS Drive ( Operating System – Drive C: )
- 1TB 7200RPM [SATA II - 3GB/s] x2 (primary and secondary)
- 6X Blu-Ray Burner + 8X DVDRW/CDRW Super Multi Combo Drive (Sager)
- Bigfoot Networks Killer™ Wireless-N 1202 + Bluetooth 4.0

And that's it. My questions are :

1. How is the battery life of NP9377-S?

2. How is the noise level during gaming and on idle?

3. Does it overheat or stays cool?

4. Can I do gaming of atleast 2-3 hrs without overheating issues and stays cool?

5. Will it worth upgrade to 120Hz screen (free upgradable, since I am taking 880M SLI) or I take the standard?

I will be ordering within this week. Please help!

 

I have that machine... Here are some thoughts

Get the 120hz panel. 120hz means that it can display up to 120 frames per second with no tearing - this offers smoother game play. It also is quite a nice LCD and I'm pretty sure they only have one option for the screen as opposed to multiple possible suppliers for the other panel options. It is worth the upgrade.

Drop the 4940MX... Its a fire ball of a chip, the cooling in the laptop isn't adequate enough for it to really be pushed with overclocking. The most I can get stable on mine with all four cores operating is 3.69GHz and that's after a 50mV undervolt that your chip may not be able to handle. Save the money and get a 4910mq or even a 4810mq instead.

I'd take some of that extra money and get two SSDs for RAID0 if it was me

Change that Killer to Intel 7260 and save yourself a bunch of networking headaches

I can't talk about battery life because I've never run mine on battery yet but this machine isn't meant to be used on battery, I'd estimate an hour and a half with it on the power saving mode in the control panel

As for overheating... The processor runs 85-90C with a full load, GPUs run 80s under load, that's with the IC Diamond thermal paste. I have not overheated once (meaning the laptop shut down due to heat) but the graphics card and the CPU both throttle based on heat anyway so I wouldn't worry about that. And no, under normal circumstances, it doesn't throttle other than the normal throttling you will see with a mobile nVidia card but its not terrible.

Noise... Idle is pretty quiet but full load is pretty loud. When you get the volume up over halfway on the speakers, the fan is barely noticeable when gaming unless it passes the 90C barrier and goes into maximum fan mode at which point they are extremely loud. No worse than other gaming laptops in this department and actually better than my old Alienware M17x in that department.

 

Ethrem. Thanks for the reply and helping. I will get the 120Hz screen and the Intel 7260. Will the i7-4940MX processor do good if I don't do overclocking? (Also, I normally don't do overclocking and stuff)

 

pretty much what ethrem told you.

go for 4810qm , its a very powerful cpu and is more than enough for gaming , and it runs cool.
expect the dual 880m to run hot , they will prob hit the 87c under heavy load on stock clocks.you will experience some throttling but its
not that bad for gaming.it will not overheat tho under normal conditions.

palm rest area gets warm if your gaming on the HDD as they are located under the palmrest.

the w-s-a-d area also gets bit warm during heaving gaming seasons,something i didnt notice on my other sagers.

the 120hz is the way to go , get it. its a very nice screen and it can run both 60hz and 120hz( adjustable via nvidia panel).
battery life is around hour during load and 2 hours with no load.

as for the system noise i have seen louder on laptops,i wnt classify this as very loud .. its not that quiet as well...i would say bearable.dont worry about it.
the trackpad on this machine sucks, i think it deserves a top notch trackpad,i almost always hit it when typing and generally looks kinda cheap. clevo havent been that much good in this department anyways.

speakers are good, but not the best.

overall build quality is great,its basically all plastic...thinks its better that way as rubber surfaces seems to peel off with time.
keyboard is also good , its a carry over from last year.

and its super POWERFULL.

hope well helped...if there is anything else you need to know just ask.
goodluck with your purchase.

 

After reading this issues with the laptop, make me sad. Should I go with alienware m18x with the same specs as above? Because I need something for quieter, cooler and BEAST laptop. I think alienware m18x will do good with the above specs. But that will be extra 900$.

 

It really depends on what you want. The Alienware largely you are paying for the case and the warranty. Internals will pretty much perform the same.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Alienware throttles out of the box but the temps are lower than the Clevo. WIth that said, the fan tables on the Alienware were pretty messed up and Dell took forever to fix it. From what I understand, they still aren't quite right so check around the Alienware part of the forum.

Clevo sets a high temperature threshold before the fans go full blast to keep system noise down but these temperatures are well within operating specs for the components inside the machine. You also have manual fan control where you can set the fans on maximum with a simple key combination (FN+1) which is unique.

You're going to pay a lot more for an Alienware that is less capable than a similar specification Clevo machine. And quite frankly, Dell's support is garbage. Its all outsourced from start to finish whereas everyone I've dealt with at XOTIC was here in the US.

Seriously when it comes to noise... my desktop with a 780 Ti and a Corsair H100i is louder under load than my laptop is.

 

I got my screws today so I decided to put IC Diamond on one GPU and leave the MX-4 paste on the other.



Can you guess which got IC Diamond?

Now, those look nice... But its not the full story. During benchmark with the Valley benchmark, the brand new IC Diamond (I'm assuming it has no break in period based on the performance because that was maybe 5 minute old application while the MX-4 has been there a week) was an average of 6-8C difference from the MX-4. Also, while the temp shows it hit 87C there that's because I had fans on auto. When fan was on max, the second GPU hit 91C while the first GPU didn't pass 82C.

I am going to repaste the other and after that, no more heat problems with these cards!

I think that with this heatsink design, it requires a thick paste like IC Diamond, there must not be enough pressure to use a thin paste like MX-4 as a 6-8C disparity is quite contradictory to the 1-2C I see in reviews everywhere. I'm certain I applied it properly, it was done 6 times because I couldn't believe the heat I was getting with it and each time I took the heatsink off, including this last time, it was spread properly with no big overflow down the sides or big blobs on the edge where it got compressed out by the heatsink.

Anyway, the temp on the repaste is about 5C lower than the stock thermal paste job which had a thick cake of IC Diamond on it so if your temps are high, repaste!

 

Thanks for the help. You again changed my mind by hearding those issues with alienware. I think I will go with the Sager NP9377-S which also costs about 900$ less than alienware with my own specs. All are good to go for me but I am worried about i7 4940MX processor. Just one last question, will the i7 4940MX do good if I don't do overclocking (normally I don't do overclocking and stuff).

 

Could you elaborate for the group on why you want the 4940? Really, the only reason to get that processor is if you are fighting for every last bit of benchmark score. The 4810 has been proven to be more than enough processor for the 880m SLI. It is what I have in mine, and I never see temps above 75C.

Additional comments about the system: I have had mine (9377-s 4810 880M sli) for about 2 months now, and don't regret it one single bit. I had a little bit of a GPU heat issue at first, but I re-did the thermal past with some Turniq TX-4 (rather thick paste) and haven't had an issue since. The Witcher 2 was pushing the temps the most, but I am now using MSI Afterburner to limit the framerate to 60FPS and now my temps stay right around 70C with maxed settings. Before limiting the framerate, I was seeing about an average of 80-100FPS and 80-85C. The performance of the lower framerate is pretty imperceptible on a game like this. However, I still play BF3 at 120 fps, but it doesn't push the temp as much.

I always play my games with the fans maxed since I play with headphones and can't hear them anyways.

I never operate the laptop on battery, so I can't comment on how long it will last. To me, a battery on a laptop like this is more like a UPS.

Hope this helps,

Kevin

 

If you don't overclock then getting an MX CPU is a complete waste of money and extra heat.

 

Technically the higher TDP setting will let you turbo for longer, so while you get extra heat you also get higher performance.

 

The reason I am choosing 4940MX is that I want the highest end processor in the notebook (which also runs at 3.1Ghz compared to 4810MQ 2.8Ghz) and same goes for 880M SLI.

After 5 and half years, I am upgrading to this Sager Np9377-S notebook and this will be my last notebook (I won't be upgrading anymore). So I am getting the highest performance laptop as I could. All are good to go for me but I am worried about 4940MX. Does it run very hot while gaming? Does it even cross 90C? If anyone has experience, please share!

 

The CPU can always be upgraded down the road if you find the performance is insufficient. I know you said you won't be upgrading anymore but hear me out.

I bought my system with a 4900MQ, but had the opportunity to try a 4700MQ for a week. I honestly could not tell one bit of a difference between the two from light usage to several hours of continuous gaming. There's 400MHz difference in speed between the two, and I could not tell a darn difference. Unless you play Flight Sims or RTS games for a living, that +300MHz on the 4940MX will not be meaningful, especially since you're not going to be overclocking it.

Now if you are going to overclock, I would still get the 4910MQ over the 4940MX. You can overclock the 4910MQ by 600MHz, all the way up to 4.3GHz. And at that point thermals are pretty much out of control anyway, so no point going beyond 4.3GHz for gaming.

If you opt to buy 4940MX a year later, you could probably get it for less than half the price (<$500). So unless you need all that performance upfront now, save that money and put it towards something else. Worst case is you buy the 4940MX a year later, and you'll still win (whatever processor you buy with the 9377 + 4940MX, vs just the 4940MX now). I'm assuming the upgrade from 4810MQ to 4940MX is more than $500, but I don't think I'd be too far off.

 

I don't want to go to further trouble upgrading processors later (I don't even know how to change processors on laptop). And I have never heard of upgrading laptop processors nor you can buy separately. So I think I will get the 4940MX now only from XoticPC as they customize laptop safely if the 4940MX doesn't hit more than 90C without overclocking.

 

Well, it might hit 90C even without overclocking unless you clamp down the TDP values and undervolt it slightly. I'm sure Ethrem can pitch in on this.

Also, it's a good idea to learn how to perform basic maintenance, especially repasting the CPU if you insist on going with the 4940XM. It'll just keep running hot and hotter if you don't repaste every now and then. Same applies for non-MX CPUs but to a lesser extent.

Anyway it's your choice. But since you seemed concerned about temperatures and are not willing to open up your laptop, I would personally stay away from MX chips.

 

Okay I have dropped the 4940MX processor, if you all are suggesting me not to go with this processor (that's a good thing, helping me choose the right one for me). So instead, will the 4910MQ processor do good with gaming? Also will 4910MQ runs cool and will it cross over 85-90C?