Official Sager NP5165 / Clevo W150HR Owner's Lounge

Try taking out a memory stick and swapping them if the issue still happens.

 

Hi WasDyn, all,

I am having exactly the same problem. the screen flickers often, and turns black regularly. The last few weeks it happens very often.
I opened up my machine, tried disconnecting & connecting a few connectors + cleaned up some dust to make sure ventilation would work well.
Didn't change a thing so far.

Did anyone find a solution for this ?

My model is the W150HR with i7 -2670QM & NVidia Geforce GT555M.

thanks,

 

It's specifically the display cable you need to look at and reseat on both the motherboard and back of the LCD panel.

 

thanks for the tip - I tried this (on the motherboard) but with no succes. There an important strange effect though: when I connect an external screen (on HDMI) to become the main screen - than it is this screen that flickers & turns black once in a while - the laptop screen works flawless in that case.

I am afraid this means it's not cabling

 

What happens if you change which is the primary display?

 

I am experiencing the same exact issue.
Seems like the mobo-attached GPU needs reballing, as it works fine until it gets stressed.
(I have experienced similar issues with other computers, and reballing is usually the cheap solution to this isssue).

 

It's something up with the display driver chip connection of some sort. It may be one of the clock signals the chip can generate is fishy and that could be a weak BGA connection yes.

 

Has anyone else experienced your computer boot into what appears to be slowmotion?
I've had this happen maybe a dozen times in the duration of owning the laptop, even really early into getting it
The computer will take a little longer to boot than normal, the login screen slooooooooowly fades out, and all of the windows animations are extremely slow..the only way to fix is it to reboot
Not sure what causes it but it happens

 

It could be an I/O conflict issue.

 

I'm currently running an unlocked 1.09 bios, is it possible to change the CPU multiplier with these unlocked settings?

 

Well, what does your BIOS say?

 

No the 2xxx series is locked without having the extreme edition 2920xm or 2960xm.

 

Using MSI afterburner I can see my idle temps ride up to 50gpu 60cpu and up into the 75gpu 90cpu under load in games
this feels kinda high and thats with a cooler master fan dock...
What are expected/acceptable temps to be getting with this laptop?

 

That's about normal for an x8xx series CPU in a machine of this size. GPU temp is safe.

 

Those do look like normal/acceptable temps for this model. 90C for the CPU can look a bit high, but for a chassis this style you see similar across most brands.

 

These are the features that my unlocked bios has
These settings allow for some form of overclocking?

Screenshots:

Spoiler

Thanks

 

Looks like that only the frequency is changeable.

 

but only for DIV-1S GFX, graphics card?
I guess I'll look into this more, does anyone know how to use these settings by chance?

 

Hi. New to forum. If this is the wrong place for this post, please let me know. Have a Clevo W150HRM I bought from CyberpowerPC in 2011. i7-2720QM / 8gb Ram / GT555M. Still stock except for addition of Intel AC-7260, an EVO 840 SSD and Win 10. All drivers stay up to date.

Battery interaction has always been flaky - unplug the charger and whether I was using Battery Care or the Windows battery icon, the indicator would flash back and forth from showing AC power to battery power for several minutes after unplugging. Would finally settle down to showing just battery status. Just decided to live with it and not worry about it.

Recently, however, something new developed. When my battery (relatively new) get's to about 50% the laptop starts a slow, steady beeping. It beeps for about 30 secs and then shut down. Tried my old battery - same thing. Just prior to this starting, battery life was close to 2 hours depending on what I was doing. At first when the beeping started, if I plugged in the adapter the beeping stopped and the battery started charging. Now even if I plug the adapter, it shows to be charging but the laptop keeps beeping and shuts down. BTW, the low battery alert beep is disabled in both the BIOS and in Windows. I have tried uninstalling both the Microsoft AC Adapter & Battery Control drivers and allowing them to reinstall but that hasn't helped. I am open to any ideas to cure anyone may have.

Would it hurt anything to re-flash the original BIOS? Is it possible for the BIOS to become corrupted?

On another thought - on ebay I have seen chargers that allow you to charge laptop batteries externally. They have a power brick and the connector plugs directly into the battery so you can charge one battery while using another. Anyone have any idea where I can find such a connector/adapter cable to build an external charger for the Clevo W150 battery?

Thanks in advance for any assistance.

 

Flashing always has a small risk of causing corruption but most times is fine if done through DOS.

It could be the battery charging/sense circuit on the motherboard slowly getting worse.

 

So after 4 years or so of owning my NP5165 I'm thinking about upgrading. I'm really not sure whether it's worth upgrading quite yet, or maybe just swapping out the processor and waiting a little bit.

Current Specs - Sager NP5165. i7-2630QM (Sandy Bridge) / 16GB G.Skill DDR3 1600 RAM (Upgraded) / GT555M & Intel 3000 graphics / Intel 520series 120GB SSD (Upgraded - Still have original 500GB HD in CD slot) / AUO v.4 15.6" 1920x1080 94% Gamut Screen (Upgraded)

I haven't gamed much for a while, but do quite a bit of photo editing and 1080 streaming to my HDTV. With my current setup, playing/streaming full 1080 (ripped .mp4s via mpc-hc) is a struggle at times but is manageable. No real complaints about processing photos, but I'm always looking to make it faster/better. I upgraded the current system with the 16GB RAM, SSD and screen for this.

I'd like to have a backlit keyboard but not enough to upgrade for just that. I'd also like to keep it under $1,200 for a new unit, so if I can't do that I'd also keep what I've got until I need to change and spending the $ elsewhere.

If I was to upgrade units, what would you guys recommend to start looking at (model, processor, etc)? Is there anything on the market in my range worth the upgrade from what I've got, or am I throwing $ for marginal gains and a lighted keyboard. If so and I stick with this one for a bit longer, what processors would be worth the upgrade from the i7-2630QM? I know the i7-2820QM was also available in this machine but believe I might be able to upgrade to an i7-2860QM (or maybe Ivy Bridge?). The 2630 has run hot since day one (seeing 90's on a daily basis) but never overheated to cause concern after some arctic silver and keeping the lappy elevated. TIA.

 

A cheap 2760QM and a larger SSD would give you some extra performance, 10-20% extra. A new system would be more if you are doing intensive tasks, it comes down to cost.

 

Thanks, Meaker. While I've been using computers since before the PC, I am a little confused right now about my own laptop. If I go into the Setup, the screen says that I have AMI BIOS Version 2.10.1208. However, HWInfo64 says AMI BIOS Ver. 4.6.4. Which is correct? And, regardless of which is correct, are there any upgrades for my BIOS? Don't think I've ever seen one on the Clevo download site - just driver upgrades. Again, thanks for any help in clearing this up for me.

 

Thanks. Any reason for the recommendation of the 2760QM (6mb cache) processor vs the 2820/60QM (8mb cache)? Will the others work as well, cause issues, not work? Or just cost value of the 2760 is a better pickup? I see a couple of the 2760s on the bay for ~100/120 and the 28xx's in the 150-200 range.

 

Can you post a picture of the BIOS page?

I found in the past it was cheaper, but prices will change in the 2nd hand market, any of that ilk will do well. Performance differences between the 27xx and 28xx are very small.

 

Meaker,

Sorry for the delayed response - just saw your post. To post a pic, do I first place it in my Media Gallery? If so, where do I find that? I don't see any option to simply attach or insert a pic to the post

 

Create an account at imgur and upload it there, always good to have a place you can upload images to.

 

Meaker - Thanks for the tip on imgur.

 

I'm assuming you already made a decision by now but for what it's worth I have the same laptop and just about maxed it out

I7-2860QM 2.5Ghz - ~$200 ebay
Corsair Vengenace 16GB 1600Mhz
Crucial SSD

Upgrading to the i7-2860 from my i7-2630 raised my temps a lot but gave marginal gain, Upgrading from 8gb 1333 to 16gb 1600 gave marginal gain, I pushed my GPU overclocking which raised temps but marginal gain, I flashed a custom GPU BIOS which overvolted my GPU allowing for an even higher overclocking which drastically increased temps but even more gains, I flashed EC_02SA for fan control (fn+1 = 100% fan) because EC_03SA removes it and it makes a huge difference when you need to drop temps, I got a fan dock which brought temps down a few degrees, I got a vent vacuum which brought temps down over 10 degrees

The laptop ran fast but hot..but it still wasn't enough, the laptop was fast and performed better than ever but I still couldn't play the games I wanted like I wanted so I got an eGPU dock and a GTX970 and now I can play games on max settings, borderlands 2 use to kill my laptop on low settings low res now it plays maxed out, my laptop couldn't open rainbowsix seige but now it plays it on max settings

Also by using an eGPU my dGPU (which shares the same heat sync at the CPU) no longer causes the laptop to get to high temps
So the laptop gets massive performance increase and a massive temperature drop

 

I'm curious what product are you using?

 

Opolar LC05 Laptop Cooler with Vacuum Fan
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00XKU47Y2/ref=cm_sw_r_other_awd_2UD6wb2HXTX30

Cooler Master NotePal X3
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0079T2KHG/ref=cm_sw_r_other_awd_VXD6wbWJ222J4

I've been using this vacuum for about 8 months and it's just now starting to make a rattle noise, I think it might be a bearing, I'll take it apart if not buy a new one but it still works just fine
I've used a fan dock for years because "you have a laptop you gotta get a fan dock" but honestly monitoring temps showed it didn't really do anything
Now of course rolling back to SA_02SA giving me the ability to set fan to 100% is a huge perk but nothing tops the vacuum
100% fan and vacuum (and kinda dock) are sweet
Of course it can get loud if I max everything out but if I need to drop temps I have the option
The vacuum does cover one of my (faulty) USB 3.0 ports but I use a USB 3.0 hub so I don't notice

With all the overclocking and overvolting the only way I was able to do it with acceptable temps was because of the vacuum

I sound like I'm sponsored but I honestly wish I picked one up sooner

 

is screenintaipei out of business? I would like to change the lcd and fit the higher resolution monitor.

 

Out of curiosity but given how both W150HR and W170HR seem to have SODIMM size support up to 4GB per module, have anyone tested successfully 8GB modules so both slots accept a total of 16GB of RAM?

 

I've had 16GB(8x2) of RAM in my NP-5165/W150HR since 2012

 

Thanks for the info. Could you post details on the modules, please, like at what speeds they're rated, CL, brand, etc?

 

Of course
I initially upgraded to these in 2012 " Corsair 16GB Kit (2x8GB) DDR3 1333MHz SODIMM 9-9-9-24"
Last year I got these in 2015 " Corsair 16GB Kit (2x8GB) DDR3 1600MHz SODIMM 10-10-10-27"

Never had any issue using these memory sticks, they worked like a charm
Upgrading to the 1600 from the 1333 didn't make any noticeable difference for me though

 

Thanks for the info. I finally ended up upgrading the VPN to the 2760qm a couple months ago and noticed marginal gains, but definitely noticed the heat increase. I installed new Kryonaut thermal paste which helped but I still have to keep an eye on the temps.

I saw the vacuum cooler and tried it out but ended up sending him it back to Amazon to replace for the OC06 upgraded model. Going to see how it does.

Not really gaming much any more so the machine is keeping up with my needs pretty well still. You have a link to the EC02SA files by chance? I'm on 03 right now but would downgrade if possible to go ahead and gain the fn+f1 fan control. Any known issues with downgrading?

Thanks
J

 

Cleaning my chips and applying new thermal compound made a big difference but the CPU is still much hotter than my original
I've since invested more into making my desktop a beast so I stopped gaming on my laptop, removed the eGPU, removed the dGPU bios mod, now I just use it for basic mobile tasks and it doesn't struggle to keep cool (obviously)
I also recently picked up a Intel 7260 dual band wifi card so I can utilize my 5GHz wifi, nice speed increase and the microwave no longer kills my laptop wifi

I'm not aware of any adverse effects of using EC02SA, as far as I'm aware Sager only officially released bios version EC02SA, I had upgraded to the Clevo EC03 before, didn't notice anything different other than fn+1 100% fan control was removed...and considering I upgraded the CPU and overvolted the dGPU that was unacceptable for my needs

I flashed back to EC02SA twice and never had any issues

You can contact Sager support vis phone or email and they can give you the file, or you can use the one the gave me
https://www.mediafire.com/?8zkzr07ooyl2zel

You'll have to burn the ISO to a disk, you'll want to make sure you're plugged into the wall
This is for the Sager NP5165

 

The heatpipe on the CPU might not be performing as well, that can happen to some units over time.