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

If I was going to sell, it would be on NBR for sure.

I would give up the 120hz panel and just get a G-Sync one honestly. Its a compromise but it is what it is. I believe it was either Prema or Meaker who said that the 120hz mod just isn't possible so that pretty much puts the nail in that coffin.

Do you use max fans, a cooling pad, etc? My big issue is that the heat problem was not there back in December and crept up over time to where I went from having a quiet machine to having to pump 70dB worth of max fan noise the whole time and still being in the 80s.

I can kick the temperature down... by turning off advanced AA and complex geometry but why did I get flagship video cards if I have to turn off features in order to use them? With DirectX 12, its going to get worse, not better and its not an acceptable compromise for me.

 

I don't use max fans or alter the fans in anyway, just let them run as they came in the box. I have it placed on a Coolermaster Notepal cooling stand to allow airflow but I do not use the fans that came with the stand. I try to maintain the room at a cold, dry ambient temperature and humidity and that noticeably reduces fan usage/noise. For example, I don't even hear any fans playing Deus Ex: Human Revolution and temperatures are EXTREMELY low in that game. Moving to a more humid and warmer environment noticeably increases the fans even when not playing a game. One other thing is that I'm running 60 FPS with VSync always, so GPUs aren't putting out a huge amount of frames which I have read helps reduce usage and temperatures. Since you're presumably putting out double that amount at 120 Hz that perhaps could contribute to the increased temperature? You'd know better than I would.

If it was fine in December perhaps the colder weather helped as well.

I think when it comes down to it if the GPUs and CPU are powerful enough to not be a "bottleneck" then temperature in a notebook can be, which is why I am curious to see how this new GTX 980 desktop card runs in these notebooks.

 

Well I keep the ambient 70-71F year round and I live in Colorado so its not exactly humid. There really was no logical reason for the temperature increase however both pairs of 880Ms exhibited the same behavior with rising temperatures. I tried three different thermal pastes even to try to get the temperatures down on my 980Ms without any luck.

I was using vsync for 60 but Witcher 3 as we all know doesn't really stay at 60 and I wasn't willing to cut my framerate to 30FPS when I shouldn't have had to. The largest measure of temperature difference though? Heaven 4.0. It was maxing at 78C and averaging ~1100MHz core clock when I got the machine. Before I sent it off, it was 87C and throttled down to ~1000MHz. That's a rather large disparity.

 

According to Prema, what needs modding is the new gen eDP cable (1.3) to the 1.2 standard. He seems to think it's possible, and that all that needs to happen is the panel needs to fit in the LCD cover. I'm really interested in this since nobody ever took the modding plunge with the P770ZM to get it working.

 

Well Sager is shipping my computer back tomorrow. They propped the back up a half an inch and no more throttling. Saw the pictures. Since I prop my laptop up by 3/4 of an inch and I have a much lower ambient, the heat should be a lot lower. Here's hoping. They'll ship it out tomorrow.

 

Glad to see that the throttling was figured out and it is shipping back. Let me know how it runs when you get it back, and if there is anything we can do to help out.

 

Thanks Pat. I'm going to forward the whole conversation to Tanner today so you guys have a record of everything that went on. That was a lot of work but at least it ended yesterday and I can relax on my 31st birthday today

 

Congrats

Enviado do meu SM-N9005 através de Tapatalk

 

Yeah, I forgot you mentioned that previously. Sorry you weren't able to have it on hand for the birthday, but still, happy birthday!

And yes, any info you can provide, just in case this comes up with anybody else, is always appreciated. Thanks!

 

Happy Birthday old man! ;-) Haha, I can't talk!

 

Happy Birthday brother Ethrem!

 

Its all good. As long as they got it all fixed, I'm fine with it. One less thing to stress about today though. I forwarded the whole thing to Tanner. Thanks for the birthday wishes

Thank you both. I don't really care too much about birthdays. Never really get to do anything. But its nice to have less stress. Just paid all the bills for the month, will hopefully get my tracking number from Sager later today, and I am going to go binge on TV. lol.

 

What good news that you're getting it back and just in time for the release of Wasteland 2 Director's Cut, SOMA and Fallout 4. Too bad Wasteland 2 and SOMA to some extent don't utilize SLI though.

Happy Birthday.

 

Or bad news for your wallet

 

Well I finally gave up my mobile games with their in app purchases so that will help my bank account a bit, especially when I pay off the credit cards next month.

I just want this whole ordeal to be over with so I can enjoy my machine. I am right on the edge of leaving PC gaming for consoles. Diablo III has been filling my gaming void quite nicely and it is much more convenient to play with a controller than with a keyboard and mouse, as sacrilegious as that sounds

 

You can hook up a controller to the pc too

 

And I do. My Xbox or PS4 depending on the game. The problem is that Blizzard removed controller support entirely from the PC version for some dumb reason (I remember the days of giving myself carpal tunnel playing the original 2 games) so I bought it for PS4.

 

Excuse the naive question, but I've been out of the laptop loop for a while... Is this model still available for purchase? If not, does Sager still offer a dual-GPU laptop? The only models I see for sale at resellers now are only single GPU.

 

Sager discontinued this model. The new P775DM and P870DM will be replacing the SLI models and should be available very soon. The P870DM should be shipping in November from most resellers. I do not know what Sager is calling it internally.

 

It makes sense considering the crowd interested in this class of machine to go with the desktop cpu.

 

Agreed and besides, the size of the P870DM isn't that much off of the P377SM-A anyway and packs a whole lot more power and cooling potential.

 

Yeah I think the jump from 75w to 100w kind of caught the 3xx series off guard, they had to sacrifice some cpu cooling in the end, this time though

 

So to confirm, similar to prior model numbering conventions, the P775DM will be the laptop CPU model, and P870DM the desktop CPU model?

Any word on display options yet on either?

 

No. P7xxDM models *ALL* use desktop CPUs. P6xxRx models use mobile CPUs, as do the N1xxRD models.

 

Sweet fancy Moses, that's exactly like I was looking for... something like my old x7200 (hopefully, with a bit better/slicker design).

 

Ooo. I had the D900F, the X7200 pissed me off so much; it didn't use any of the parts my D900F did and I had hell finding replacements XD.

The updated version of your X7200 is the P570WM. The P7xxDM and P870DM use desktop mainstream CPUs. Our D900F/X7200 and the P570WM use desktop enthusiast CPUs.

 

I loved my x7200 with dual 485s. It was so easy to work on (and weighed as much as a cinder block ). Total beast for its time.

 

At least they've kept that easy to work on chassis, and reduced it to only half of a cinderblock

 

Yeah, though your back will appreciate the drop in weight, the P570WM and similar chassis types were always surprising to hold when you have worked on other machines for a while.

 

0I love my laptop I have had some small stupid problems with the display but of course my buddy @pat@XOTICPC was there through the whole process of getting the display replaced and all my stupid questions I had while I was waiting (which was actually super fast Sager had my laptop for less than a week I think they had it 3 or 4 days). Now the other day I go to boot up my laptop and the post screen that says "Sager" when you turn the laptop on was all artifacts and all crazy looking, but that happened a few days ago and I haven't seen it happen again (does make me worry that is will just stop working again). So hopefully that was just a fluke. I am excited to see if anyone gets 1 or 2 of these new "desktop class" 980's into a laptop like mine....btw I still have my freaking 120hz display and the edp cable......I dunno what to do I was thinking maybe I will sell it and try to find a nice IPS display that will fit in this laptop? BUT I can't seem to find out which IPS displays will actually work and fit into this laptop which currently has the Chi Mei 173HGE-L11 which I think is suppose to be LVDS 70% NTSC, but other than that I don't know crap about it....I have done some brief searches on google for a 17'3 IPS LVDS display and there are a few but how do I know which ones will actually work with my laptop? Anyways so happy I was able to buy this laptop when I did for a crazy low price with lots of freebies...Still want a freaking Xotic PC t-shirt or hat or something so I can rep them when I am out at LAN's and gaming with friends.... *cough*cough* thanks

 

Glad your machine is back and working fine. I should be getting mine today provided the UPS driver is actually on time. If it artifacted during POST, I'm not really sure what to make of that, especially if it went away. I wouldn't worry about it, probably just a glitch. I can't help you with the display options. Last I heard, I thought these machines couldn't be fitted with an IPS panel but I've never looked into it.

 

Well I got the machine back and I'm not terribly impressed right off the bat.

Spoiler

Spoiler

22.2C/72F ambient, back propped, auto fans, Heaven set on Extreme with no modifications.

They left Heaven on the machine so I got to see what settings they were using... Custom 1080p with no tessellation and no AA. Unacceptable.

The situation does change, however, with forced max fans.

Spoiler

Spoiler

The first is again the standard extreme. The second I changed the settings to 1080p fullscreen while still running the test which is why the temperatures start off elevated like that. The maximum temperature on the master was 78C and the slave 75C with max fans which is acceptable but the noise is not.

Sager also did not update my BIOS to the 1.05 version that Clevo released for Windows 10 support. I suppose that it is possible that they do not have an SM-A system BIOS since it is an EOL machine. Not the end of the world.

At least the temps are lower per clock, even if they're not as low as they should be. I don't know why Sager was completely unable to get the cards working how they should... I shouldn't need max fans to not thermal throttle.

It wouldn't be such a big deal if the custom fan curves worked on my machine. The GPU fans aren't the loud fans, the CPU fan is. If I didn't have to force max fans I would be fine.

I was able to confirm that they did swap the motherboard (ME FW doesn't ever downgrade and my machine was on 9.1.2, this one is 9.1.1) and both video cards (ASIC quality - old cards were 78.8% and 72.7%, new cards are 74.1% and 72.1%) so while it took a month, they did do what they said they did. It just didn't bring about the results that should have been expected.

Another thing that they did which I think I'll keep is they put my two 1TB HDs in RAID0. The performance is pretty impressive...

 

What vBIOS are you running that thermal trottling is an issue, are you running stock? Prema's doesn't throttle until 92c and if you're hitting 92c then you've got other issues to deal with.

You could always make your own vBIOS, undervolt, etc.

Are you SURE that ME FW doesn't ever downgrade? I was under the impression that you could go from 9.1 to 9.0 if you flashed Prema's BIOS for example.

 

Its the stock vbios. It hits 87C and throttles. It shouldn't throttle on auto fans. Max fans it hits 78C which is acceptable but the annoying thing is that 78C is the temperature that my cards ran on AUTO fans when I got the 980M upgrade in December. I never needed max fans. Maxwell can not be undervolted and I really don't care to make any mods to the system when it should work properly out of the box.

The ME firmware does not downgrade to my knowledge. I'm sure there is a way to do it at risk of a brick but I don't see Sager doing that to avoid replacing a motherboard.

 

@Ethrem What kind of temperatures would you say are normal for Heaven? My 980m SLI seems a bit toasty as well (I think, but I'm not 100% sure what is normal, so I thought I'd ask). I opened up Heaven on extreme default settings, maxed fans and a cooling pad, and started a benchmark immediately. By the time the bench was over, my cards were hovering between 84-85C and 86-87C. Ambient is around 70F/21C.

 

Reviews have put Heaven in the 78-84C range. I'm going to game test it today. If you aren't experiencing throttle in games it doesn't matter. Clevo really messed up with the fans when they upgraded this machine to 980Ms from their 880M origins. Back with the old 880Ms, if the cards hit 87C the fans kicked on high (about 80%) and remained on high until the game was closed. With the 980M the fan stays on low (I'd estimate 20-30%) until the cards hit 90C. Since the cards are programmed with an 87C temperature target, the fans never kick up past their lowest running level. You can force max fans using the FN+1 key combination but that shoots the screeching CPU fan up to 100% as well. Supposedly our model is supposed to support fan curve control but I've tried it and it doesn't do a thing. I've asked @Prema about it in the past and we never got it working. Testing has shown that even when the cards hit 90C on an unlocked vbios the system only kicks the fans on until they're back around 87C then they shut off again. It was a stupid decision by Clevo to break the fan tables. The point remains though that when I purchased the 980M upgrade back in December, I didn't have any heat issues and I had the same ambient range I have now (we keep it 20-22C year round, both myself and my roommate can't stand heat). It's much more promising that the cards maxed at 78C and 75C with max fans though. Max fans before I sent the machine off got me down to 84C and 81C in Heaven so it's a good sign that gaming won't have issues.

 

Okay I'm officially mad now.

I turned on my computer this morning to a lovely "Windows cannot be activated" message. I go into why it can't be activated and it says that the key is blocked. Well that's lovely because I don't have any materials with the key to call Microsoft with. Third party tool shows that my BIOS has a key and Windows has a different key installed. Call Microsoft and they confirm that the key currently in use is invalid (its a Sager OEM only image - apparently its not supposed to be used outside of internal testing) but the BIOS key is valid. I go to put in the BIOS key and it says that its invalid. I look at System... Its regular Windows 8.1, NOT Pro and its not possible to use my key to upgrade this version to Pro. Guess what I get to spend the next few hours doing? That's right, reinstalling Windows. >___<

 

Window's activation catch 22s are the worst, sorry to hear you ran into one

 

Well it wouldn't have been a problem if they had bothered to install the right version of Windows.

I got 8.1 Pro on it, used all the drivers from Sager's website but went to nVidia's 358.50 drivers.

XTU -85mv, 40x 4-core, 60W power limit, 100A.

3DMark 8.1 vs 10

http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/6175320/fs/5687388

Now I'm going to turn on Windows Update then make a Reflect image and then its time to see how these new cards work with gaming. I noticed that the master has coil whine when I was installing 8.1 but it went away now.

That snafu with Windows made me really mad. If I wasn't able to troubleshoot on my own, it could have turned into a huge mess trying to figure out what happened. It still might have if I didn't notice it was running Windows 8.1, not 8.1 Pro. You would think that such a simple thing would not have been overlooked when they were working on my machine from September 4th until October 3rd...

 

Hi

A question about SLI in the Clevo P377SM-A : is there anyway to run only a single GPU, and choose which one will it be? has anyone tried Prema bios mod?

Thanks

 

Except for the fact that Maxwell cards DO throttle randomly even at temps lower than 87. Hell, if my GPU was hitting 87, I am pretty sure I would want it to throttle... Like I said, you could still make your own vBIOSes with undervolting, or even message/email someone like Prema and pay him money to give you undervolted vBIOSes. He will appreciate the money and you will appreciate the lower temps.

I agree that things should work properly out of the box, but why wouldn't you want to optimize them so they could work BETTER? A good percentage of why I go with Clevo laptops in the first place is simply because you can customize the ever living hell out of them. The hardware, software (firmware, BIOSes, etc) are all so amazingly customizeable and it's fairly easy to do so. If you know that you are getting throttling, instead of just saying that it shouldn't work, you should try to do things to work around this that way you can be perfectly happy with your purchase and you can use it to it's full potential.

 

You're missing the point entirely. They failed to restore my machine to the operating capacity that it had when I received it from them. That's a failure in my mind. Of course I want it to throttle when it gets too hot - my point is that it shouldn't be reaching that point in the first place. I don't find it to be an unreasonable expectation to want my machine to function in the same capacity that it used to when I send it in for repair, especially when they have it for a month. I'm well aware of Prema and his talents but I shouldn't need them to run my cards at stock. Even further, these cards have a stock voltage of 1.012v and 1.018v which should translate to even lower temperatures than the voltage that his vbios has stock. These are high silicon quality cards thus they use less voltage per clock and should ideally run cooler than your average Clevo cards.

 

Of course it's a failure but sometimes in life that just happens and you need to work around it. I have all of my cards running at 0.90v and I can guarantee you that they run WAY cooler than they would at like 1.012v or whatever they were when stock.

 

You can disable SLI from the nvidia control panel.

 

Its attitudes like yours that let companies like Microsoft get away with the things they do. There is nothing wrong with demanding quality, especially when you paid for it. I paid a nice chunk of change for this machine and this was my third RMA since I bought it in May of last year. Along with that purchase, I bought a 3 year warranty. It is well within my right to demand that the machine works to the specifications it was designed for and I know this machine was not engineered to be a throttling mess. Clevo adjusted the fan curves because of how cool Maxwell should run.

What is your ASIC quality that your cards work at 900mv? That's pretty insane.

 

This, or physically remove the cable and secondary card.

 

Or you can disable it on a per-app basis.

 

One of the things i suspect that is crippling your P377SM-A must be the fans not being able to dissipate the heat from both GPU's and CPU and you having heat problems in the end due to the fans ...

And yeah the fan table from Clevo being totally messed up. Any way my friend Ethrem i'm really considering on keeping the P377SM-A and getting the new P870DM-G with dual 980M's or a single 980 (i still need to see the benchmarks on those two configurations to decide).

I suspect the P870DM should have better fans and it will compensate where the P377SM-A fails (heat).

when i start working i'll start gathering some cash to buy it

PS: @Prema can i have a word from you? (on the 980M's in SLI vs 980 200w)?

 

The fans in this thing move more air than Alienware fans do. I obviously got a flat heatsink for the CPU this time around because 4GHz on the last heatsink would hit 90C doing hardly anything no matter what paste I was using.

Don't get me wrong either. Forced max fans = no throttle on CPU or GPU. I just personally can't stand the noise. I'm testing the machine inside and out and I'll probably put it up for sale once I verify everything works, especially considering that I found out the warranty goes with the machine. Its a lot easier to sell a machine knowing that it has a warranty until May of 2017. It even has an LCD accidental damage warranty.

 

I don't really think my attitude is an issue. I love modding the absolute hell out of all of my devices and making them truly my own and making them the best they can be. I agree there is nothing wrong with demanding quality especially when you pay for it. However, if I didn't take matters into my own hands, I would have had to RMA my machine twice already - once for high temps on GPU, another time for brightness control not working. I saved money by not shipping and now my machine is better after not RMAing than it would have been if I had RMAed it, plus I learned more this way too which is always nice. I know that it wasn't engineered to be a throttling mess, but a lot of the time, Maxwell GPUs (especially 980m) can throttle at lower temperatures and hit higher temperatures when they aren't supposed to. Another thing you could look into is capping your frame rate if it isn't already capped. If your card is pushing 300+ FPS, you're going to have a lot higher temp (10-15c higher) than if it is pushing like 120 FPS. This may be the thing that requires you to not even need to undervolt.

My ASIC qualities are like 72% and 75%.