*** XMG Apex 15 with Ryzen 3950X / Clevo NH58AF1 Owner's Lounge ***

I could have sworn I put the SSD in the same slot the original one came in...unless aftershock put it in the slower slot too :X

 

PC Specialist also got it wrong. I had to move it over to the other slot too.

 

You were 100% right, somehow the simplest explanation slipped my mind, lol.

 

Don't feel bad. I would have a hard time paying attention to details if MyHandsAreBurning.

 

Yeah, the PCIe Gen2 on the second NVMe slot is a real bummer. Not only is Gen2 half the bandwidth of Gen3, we lose 20% of the Gen2 bandwidth to overhead (Gen3 overhead only 1.5%). So of the theoretical Gen2 max of 2GB/s the most we'll see from drives in that slot is ~1500-1600 MB/s

 

Tried to do this, I get bsods and can t even install windows. No problems on the other slot. Tried with another nvme also, same problem :-( any ideas on this ? I would greatly appreciate

 

What is the bugcheck (BSOD) code or description you are seeing? That is very important and could be quite useful in isolating the problem.

If more than one NVMe SSD has been tested and both malfunction when connected to one M.2 slot and both work correctly in the other slot it sounds like either the M.2 slot has a problem or maybe a BIOS setting is not correct.

 

In most cases, it is either some setting or an underlying hardware issue. We don't really have much in the way of BIOS settings, so most probably something is wrong with the laptop (not saying for sure!). I would suggest running something that doesn't involve activating the SSD itself (while still in the faster slot), like a bootable memtest86 ( https://www.memtest86.com/). If that completes without errors then you know that it is not CPU/Memory related and you can assume that it is most probably a motherboard issue (though the PCIe controller is still in the CPU).

With computers, you can't know for certain when you get a BOSD but it can be narrowed down most of the time.

Did you manually OC from RyzenMaster maybe? If you stress the CPU SOC by attaching a 4x PCIe SSD to it, it can become unstable. Maybe you undervolted it... (!!! the setting/changes made by Ryzen Master can't be cleared from the BIOS without a full BIOS Flash !!! not even if you reset the settings to auto in RM of you clear the BIOS settings by removing the CMOS battery)

 

Puski and Mr Fox : thank you so much with your answers. This is a great forum, and I m glad I found it
Bsods are not consistant, I sure played with Ryzen master but didn't dial any manual oc or UV, just use the power plan profiles (Ryzen high performance with 99% max speed), but what is certain is that right now I cannot install windows on this port and get an error : 0x800701B1 (which usually is because of a faulty or used drive). Everything is smooth on the other port. I guess the only way to default the setting is to install CCC and chose the performance setting there and start to test everything again.
Memtest ram without errors so it isn't on this side.
Again, thanks for your help guys
This surely points to a hardware fault, but I want to check everything before having to rma...

 

Ok so the plot thickens ! After setting the performance plan in CCC, Tried to install windows from a different usb port and managed to go through most of the steps windows install. When choosing the customisation options (account settings) the thing jammed again (HDD led being lit up continuously). This narrows down to a hardware fault. Think I got a lemon :-(

 

Btw the CCC update is out on clevo site ver 2.34 as well as New Intel wifi BT drivers.

 

More updates on Linux:

Software solutions are hard to find in Linux, but I stumbled upon two particularly good links:
https://forum.level1techs.com/t/overclock-your-ryzen-cpu-from-linux/126025
https://github.com/irusanov/ZenStates-Linux

Using the OC mode and P-States, I was able to force my machine to run all 16 cores on 2.8 ghz/0.8V instead of boosting into oblivion. The fans run relatively noiselessly now and the machine is chugging silently away on yet another heavy build.

I have not tried making it run immediately upon boot since the linux drive is purely for work and I don't want to run the risk of bricking my ubuntu installation, but it should be pretty easy to do if you follow the instructions.

 

I meesed up... Since I was having persistent trouble with my RAM after RyzenMaster and reading that changes to memory timing there can become baked in and only resettable via reflashing BIOS, I decided to re-flash BIOS. I'm not 100% sure what went wrong, it's possible I used the wrong version of the XMG BIOS (XMG bios were already running on my machine). Now it's broke....Already went through a lot of troubleshooting. I was able to get though POST a few times but the SATA drive where windows was isn't detected. I tried clearing one of my NVME drives and loading fresh windows from a USB loader and got yo install screen and entered option and install started but froze with a black screen. I've tried restarting a few times and now only get black screen, no POST.

My thought is to try flashing again, ensuring the right EC and BIOS but no idea how to do that if I can't get to windows...is there a way, assuming I can get back to boot screen again?

Barring that, I probably need pro help. This started as an RJtech barebones....Maybe I can buy a new motherboard? Maybe pay for install?

I got too impatient. Live and learn.

 

You can reflash BIOS/EC directly from EFI shell ( https://download.schenker-tech.de/package/bios-update-via-efi-shell/)

 

Were you able to download the CCC update? When I try it says "file not found".

 

The Asian servers are Ok. But be prepared to wait I went back to the 56K years maybe that was because they d just uploaded the files.

 

I steered clear of changing RAM timings with RyzenMaster. SOC voltage settings also persist - although I'm not sure if its possible to brick your PC with overeager SOC undervolting and am not particularly enthusiastic to experiment there.

Good luck fixing your BIOS; hopefully a reflash is possible.

 

No luck. I can't get back to a boot screen.

 

Have you tried removing cmos battery before flashing the new bios? Already did it after tuning dram to non bootable timings and sucessfully restored all the stock timings/voltage.

 

I tried that.

 

CMOS battery out, along with the main battery out, and holding power button down for ~30 seconds to make sure the capacitors are discharged? If you put in a bootable USB and spam F7 key you don't get a boot menu?

Once upon a time in a different life I was an A+ certified PC Tech. I don't want to tell you to do again all the things you've already done, but a true brick is kind of rare so let me summarize and make sure I understand your situation correctly:

You attempted to flash your bios from within Windows, not a CLI on an external drive, correct? What was the name and source of the file that you tried to flash? I noticed in the XMG/Schenker downloads there are actually two systems named Apex, one of them being a three or four year old Intel system. Did you use the correct file?

You said at one point you were able to boot from Windows installation media though the install failed. Do I understand correctly that you are no longer able to boot off of that media? If you copy the XMG EFI files linked above by @nalim to a USB drive are you not able to boot into its EFI shell?

 

There's a new XMG BIOS, 1.07.07RTR1. I haven't tried it yet but on Reddit they say you can undervolt from within the BIOS!

https://download.schenker-tech.de/package/xmg-apex-15-xap15e20/?wpdmdl=3757&ind=1597393827518

 

I did all of that except I think it's f2 rather than f7?

Yes, from within windows initially. I can't access the file I downloaded because I can't get in the drive it was on...it had the right numbers (1.07.etc) as my existing BIOs which I looked up before downloading, but there were two versions...one for a slightly older version of the board (there is an 18 in the name instead of a 20) and I'm "pretty sure" I did the right one.

In any event, it failed.

I was able to pull CMOS and do the button hold, etc and get it to boot to UEFI which is where I saw it no longer detected the SATA drive. I tried to load windows on to a nvme drive but it failed and after that no boot at all.

Based on advice here I got the loader to skip windows and downloaded what I am certain is the right BIOs and EC files onto a 4gb USB. But since the failed windows attempt I only get a black screen. Tried several times with and without first removing CMOS battery and replacing it and/or the 30 second hold.

When I press power the keyboard goes through it's normal color cycles but nothing appears on the screen. The power button remains lit and it just stays like that. I know it can be on that state "for a long while" with a new boot but after leaving it for maybe 20 minutes I was worried something might get physically damaged so I powered off with a 10 second button hold.

 

Edit: As I was getting to the end of writing this long post I had a bit of a revelation possibly connecting your current problem to one I experienced a couple weeks ago. Skip to the last paragraph and try that. If it doesn't work then you can come back and read the rest

Just FYI, F2 calls the BIOS, but F7 will let you skip that and go straight to the boot menu. And yes, the 18 (XAP15E18) is the old Intel Apex, looks like from 2015, and ours is XAP15E20. To make matters even more confusing the XAP15E18 also has a BIOS file 1.07.07TR1 (ours is 1.07.07RTR1). Based on what you said I'm pretty sure you use the correct file but I wouldn't be surprised if somebody eventually does flash the wrong BIOS.

With regards to your problem, boy this is a puzzler. The good news is that based on what you have told me the EC is intact (keyboard colors on boot), and that you were able to get in to see that your drive was no longer detected tells us that the UEFI was at least mostly intact and still should be because I don't believe any part of the failed windows install process would change that.

So why the Black Screen??? I want to make sure I understand exactly what you are doing and seeing:

When you remove the CMOS battery you are unplugged and the laptop battery has been unscrewed and removed as well?

If yes to all that, do you have the EFI Shell @nalim linked to unpacked on a USB drive? Starting from a powered off state with the USB drive inserted, then powering on and immediately pressing F2 (full BIOS) or F7 (boot menu), when the keyboard turns back to blue (it starts out breathing blue, then green, then red, then back to blue, off and back on quickly, then the menu should appear) when the keyboard turns back to blue and key still pressed you do not get anything on your screen?

Assuming yes to all the above it could be something has changed in the BIOS resulting in a hardware incompatibility. Do you have any other RAM you could stick in there for a test? When I first got my machine it refused to load the Windows installer on my USB with constant random blue screens. I was able install Ubuntu and Memtest on the USB ran for days w/ no errors. The ram modules I had were G.Skill I bought because u/coreZair on Reddit ( the guy from this video) told me they worked great for him on his Apex and I figured they should work the same for me on my Thicc. Wrong. After 5 days of trying everything including setting up a PXE server I finally call Eluktronics support and they say, oh yeah, someone else had the same problem it's your RAM. I was sure they were wrong but switched out the G.Skill for Kingston HyperX Impact and problem solved! So the RAM that worked great for coreZair were incompatible with my Thicc, and the only difference between the two the BIOS. Maybe something changed in the BIOS and it doesn't like your RAM anymore? I'm reaching here, but it's possible and bad Ram can cause all sorts of weird errors like black screens and missing drives.

And about your missing drive, I already had a NVMe storage drive die on me, it was there, I rebooted, and then NO POST, and it wasn't even my OS drive. Maybe our motherboards are killing drives?

Actually now that I think about it, with the bad storage drive I had all the same symptoms as you, no post, clearing CMOS didn't help, power light on but black screen, no BIOS, I thought she was bricked. I took out the bad drive and boom problem solved, bios access restored and I booted right into Windows. It didn't matter which port the drive was installed on, as long as it was installed I owned a brick. If you haven't already, remove your drive and see if that makes any difference

 

So I tried 1.07.07RTR1 and I am thoroughly underwhelmed. Your mileage may vary depending on your preferred settings and use case, but the best I can say is that it's a step in the right direction from Clevo and it gives me hope that we have not been forgotten and may still yet get a real BIOS.

I had pretty modest expectations for what, if anything, we would ever get in a BIOS, but even still I am disappointed. I think the implementation of our new "advanced" options are very limited and poorly done to the point of making them worthless to me. We can choose a clock speed in 300 MHz intervals between 600 and 3900 MHz. Same with voltage, 0.025 intervals between 0.975 up to Holy Smokes 1.55V! My biggest problem with the implementation is that the intervals are too big! My sweet spot is 3.925 MHz at 1.06125V so I won't be disabling my ryzen master launcher task anytime soon. Only as low as 0.975 on the core, and as high as 1.55V? On the desktop or in a server but not super useful on this platform.

 

For a BIOS that was supposedly only going to allow undervolting, that it goes up to 1.55V is rather....unusual

 

Hi guys,

the new BIOS is supposed to be used together with a new Control Center. Find all information in this thread:

• New BIOS and Control Center for XMG APEX 15

Please try this Control Center and update the results in your posts above. I will send your collective feedback to my ODM contacts for review. Please try to be fair, balanced and data-driven. Bonus points for Excel sheets with logfiles or generally tables with before/after benchmarks/temps/voltages/results.

Cheers,
Tom

 

So the new "bios settings" only work with the new CCC installed, otherwise you boot into profile PBO as before. Inference: nothing is set at the hardware level in the BIOS, the values you supposedly set in BIOS are just passed along to the control center and set in software like a less robust version of Ryzen Master. The part in the BIOS is just a placebo from Clevo to shut us up by giving the illusion of control?

You can change the values you "set" in the bios later in control center and go as high as 4.3GHz. Errrr, Allegedly. At 3.9GHz in the BIOS and control center, @ 1.075V just a smidge higher than my usual 1.06ish because I have to, when I run CinebenchR20 I see CPU PPT spike to 135 Watts followed quickly by Black Screen. I kept lowering the voltage to the point Cinebench would not run, but if it ran it crashed.

When using profiles and PBO the control center did a good job of keeping it near the 88W Performance PPT, as high as 99W before, but the Control Center in manual mode is acting like this is a desktop. That, and the values enabled for core voltage, make me wonder if that's not the case: whoever designed this did not properly understand it was for use in a laptop, or did not realize the numbers they were looking at in whatever chart they were referencing were desktop not laptop specs? Okay probably not, but I'm just scratching my head wondering why it's been done this way.

Regardless, unusable IMHO. What I wanted was a real core voltage limit I could set and then run PBO with that limit in place we can't do that in Ryzen Master. If you do not already know, if you uninstall or disable FNkey.exe (FN Key and OSD) it will stop CCC from loading while retaining use of fan control and keyboard LED apps. If you want control center back you can reinstall FN Key and OSD from the Microsoft Store.

 

And down only to 0.975V. It's like these values are for a desktop

 

My stable voltages under load are roughly linear from 2.8Ghz/0.8V to 3.5Ghz/1.0V to 3.9Ghz/1.1V, with possibly a little more wiggle room. 0.975V - 1.55V is kinda hilarious. Given that ZenStates-Linux works like a charm - it actually runs cooler than Windows, I'm probably sticking with what I've got now.

One gripe I have is that surface temperatures around the left hand area are rather warm as compared to other laptops, even at the same CPU/GPU temperatures, whether or not the drive bay there is filled. I'm using the Targus Chill Mat when having the laptop on my lap which works for its intended purpose, but in terms of raw cooling power it is about as good as any laptop stand (or two erasers). For heavy long running tasks, I'll have to look to better cooling solutions to push beyond 3.9Ghz - such a pity Clevo did not put this in an 17 incher

 

IKR!!!!!!! For so many reasons. Hopefully ours will be sufficient Proof of Concept and there will be a follow on model some day

 

I already tried various drive combinations and also connected thee drives via USB externally to another computer and they all seemed fine...at least fine enough to be able to open file browser and see what looks like it should be there.

 

Dis you try to format the usb stick in fat32 in case it's not recognised ? Sorry for the obvious question

 

Did anyone try to run the laptop upside down with the bottom exposed (without cover)? Since I mainly use it connected to TV/ External Monitor I'm getting way better temp readings across all components. 10ºc + diff on CPU/GPU

 

I jokingly suggested that a few pages ago, lol. Good to know it works

 

Well, I've done some testing and it's really great. Just have to be carefull not to spill/touch anything ofc. I can't recommend other's to do it, as it is risky running an exposed piece of hardware. But... If you're willing to take the risk, the results are awesome.

 

I did.

 

Before I broke mine with memory and BIOS issues ...

I modified the back panel with a dremel tool to open it up and mounted three 120mm pressure optimized fans with an external 12v supply. All my tests and benchmarks I never got above 72degrees and I had a hard time getting the GPU fan to even hit the 45 degree threshold to turn on.
That was with 3900x at 4mhz on all cores undervolted to 1.125. Cinebench scores in the 7200+ range and Resolve running like butter.

 

Just have a giant desk fan blowing on it as well and add some ramsinks

It will cool it certainly.

 

Actually I don't really need more than stock cooling with my setup, it's great, I'm getting less than 70ºc under load (before with same fan curve around 80-85ºc - lid on) R5 3600 + RTX 2070. I think the bottom cover design could be less restrictive. The way the vents are positioned and cut generate more noise. A metal mesh with round holes besides being more expensive to build I believe could get way better thermal results and less noise. I'll attempt to buy another bottom cover "if I find any" for further experimentation.

Atm I'm getting about 50db at 15cm while playing, that's a major improvement over the 61 I was getting with the cover on. Ofc due to faster fan spin over higher temps.

Cooling mod's as you suggested could benefit further but there ain't a lot of space to play with (only gpu) if you want to carry it with the lid on.

P.s. (I'm using it in a safe place without any metal piece/liquid around) and always with supervision. Really don't want an expensive paper weight

 

Having a spare cover before modding is never a bad idea. Also be aware that you will impact airflow within the machine itself over things like storage when you mod the holes.

 

Here are my 2 cents on the new 07.RTR1 BIOS...

First of all, it works fine with the new (3.02) CCC and the previous version(2.24), I didn't see any difference at all. Both have the manual mode if the new BIOS is applied.
It does make removing the power limits and setting manual voltage/frequency a lot easier, though smaller steps are lacking on both.

Most importantly... and this is for XMG if you guys are reading this thread... The PBO modifications that work great on your old BIOS are missing from this one. The Performance mode is ok, but the 32W/45W PPT variants of the Power Saving and Quiet modes are gone and we have the stock Clevo 28W/32W variants instead . I would gladly use the new one, and I even appreciate the manual option but bring back the modded settings that you had in your older BIOS, please. Until then I'll be reverting back to the 04.RTR3.

Now that all that is out of the way: 4200/4300Mhz for my Ryzen 3900 are useless (no surprise there ), but 3900Mhz and 1.075V yields ~5% extra performance and gets me from a CB20 score of ~6370 to ~6750. At this point, temps are still under control with PPT around 95-100W. For XMG there is maybe an opportunity to tweak the Performance profile even higher (setting PPT/TDC/EDC higher accordingly). I would like a 1 click solution for even more power , then a 1 click solution back to a more every day setting when the computer is done with the render (I like to tinker with settings manually, but I also like convenience in my daily tasks). A lot of non-techie users would benefit from this too.

 

You're completely right. For that matter I would be using laptop stand with active cooling to keep airflow on the central air intake Anyway atm the beast is tamed, besides not being the most aggressive one (R5 3600 as previously mentioned). Seeing 70ºc max on the gpu+oc with only 60% fan speed (>200Mhz Core / ~700 Mem) and 60-65ºc on the Cpu 3600Mhz Allcore at 0.900v. Great framerates overall and snappy in everything I throw at it. All tests with 24ºc room temperature. Already ran some gaming marathons and everything including temps are stable within the margins above.

 

Who sells a spare cover? I'd buy one.

I have a huge amount of airflow over all components. The three fans I added move more air that the 2 built in blowers move at much lower noise levels.

 

Is there a different app other than prime95 and furmark to test an OC/undervolt for notebooks?

 

depends on what level of stability you want to achieve and how much time you want to invest

For a simple and quick verification on CPU settings, you can use CBr20... the first sign of a problem is that the app gives an error; if you go too far your system will hang/crash

Furmark and Prime are ok for GPU/CPU longer stability tests, just don't use them at the same time if you try to OC to far because they will cause an "unrealistically" high power draw on the respective components.... and this is a 230W limited laptop

 

How to Stress-Test CPUs and PCs (Like We Do)
Aida64 and Heaven simultaneous is a better choice for notebooks.

 

Yes, still a good load and not silly and more reliable.

 

You could try asking support, they could check.

 

Thank you for the help!
I tried everything again except I pressed f7 instead of f2 and was able to get to the boot screen and load from the USB. I started with the EC thinking I should repeat the whole process and it seemed to fine. I was able boot all the way to windows. The version number was the old BIOS still so went back to the boot screen to flash the BIOS since it seemed the original flash didn't happen or went badly but then I'm back to black screen again. Tried removing CMOS, etc as you described and just black screen. Cycled a few times to be sure and then left the black screen and blue keyboard for a good while thinking maybe it just was slow but no luck. Came back from the store and the bank to still find black screen

This stuff is complicated. LOL