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

The laptop is about ~2weeks old so I'm assuming the paste is good. I'm going to send it back for a keyboard replacement today. It doesn't seem like anyone's experienced this issue so it's the safest play. It's a bummer since I just got it and finally got the temperatures under control.

 

Been using Obsidian Fancontrol app for a while on mine and never had any issue.

 

If it's an issue that early on that's a safe bet.

 

The samsung 32gbx2 kit arrived and I popped it in; it worked without any drama, which was a pleasant surprise.

The laptop works on linux after getting past some minor annoyances due to NVIDIA drivers by googling. I have settled on using the tuxedo control center for fans, and zenstates to undervolt, which works like a charm. Since then its been my compile worker and man is it fast. 32GB ram was being a bottleneck previously, so I am quite excited about the ram upgrade.

 

All the timings and such looking good? What speed?

 

I wish I could say the same. My Samsung RAM still crashes every time with 64GB installed. Take out one stick and it's stable.

 

Samsung M471A4G43AB1-CWE
Its 3200Mhz. I did a casual benchmark while still doing my daily browsing/youtube/etc (system has been undervolted and limited to 3.1Ghz for comfort):

https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/33003154

It is very marginally slower than the Klev memory that came with my laptop and with about 10ns more latency. The ebay listing says its CL16, but I am reluctant to play with memory settings just based on that. edit:found some other websites saying it is a CL22, which appears more credible.

 

If you need the ram the amount matters more, timings will be a bit more lax with 4 sticks.

 

If you have a Windows installation as well you could change timings in Ryzenmaster, others that have tested say they stick on boot. If it`s Samsung B-die you could lower tRC and tRFC quite a bit, that will affect gamingperformance and certain applications significantly. Also lowering tRRDS and tFAW plus tWR and tCWL (keep at same as tCL) should be helpful. At 1.2V pimaries of 18-18-18-36, 54tRC, 350 tRFC, 14WR, 18tCWL, 5tRRDS and 20tFAW should be possible. Stock they are probably 22-22-22-50, 80tRC, 560tRFC, 22tCWL, 8tRRDS and 34tFAW, that is a low slower than what I`m suggesting.

 

Thank you, that is very useful information. I probably won't be trying it any time soon (since there's no real need), but some things I would like to clarify:

1.) I'm pretty sure ram settings will stick on boot - I've previously used RyzenMaster to lower my SoC/VDDP/VDDG voltage and it persists through boot. Will clearing CMOS be enough to revert changes if I go too far and get an unbootable machine?

2.) What is the general workflow like for overclocking the RAM - how do we test for stability in particular.

I've also attached my timings from RyzenMaster, although I'm not quite sure which are safe to touch and what they even mean, for the most part.

 

I would change primaries first. Try 20-20-20-40, then continue. If you get instability go back a step, no boot go back a step. Use ryzen dram calc memtest and run for 100%. Gives you a basic test of stability.

After prims, change tRC, then tRFC, then tWR, then tfaw/trrds and last tcwl.

Tell me how it goes If you don't get boot, clrar cmos to reset, it should reset all.

 

I'm back after a quick cmos reset going from 20-20-20-40 to 18-18-18-36 (maybe i should have gone to 19-19-19-38 first?).
Previously, I had undervolted the SOC/VDDP/VDDG to 1/0.85/0.9 from the original (1.1/0.9/0.95) for the sake of thermals. Does that affect the stability when overclocking the RAM?

 

SOC voltage can.

 

Try slightly higher SOC-voltage. Also try 19-19-19-38, but I bet gear down mode is active so CL will then be 20 instead of 19. Have you found out if your ram is Samsung B-die? You can use thaiphoon burner to identify them (works most of the time). If you have Hynix or Micron-chips you must tune them differently, especially timing no.2 must be higher.

If a bit higher SOC does not make 18-18-18-36 work I would stick with 20-20-20-40 and go to the other subs. If you have Micron or Hynix your tRC and tRFC can`t go as low as B-die. With Hynix I guess 55\450 and Micron 60\500.

 

It is probably an A-die due to being a 32GB stick. I am chugging through a massive compile right now on Linux, but I'll confirm it on thaiphoon burner when its done.

 

Okay, then you might don`t get as low on the timings. 60 tRC and 400 tRFC should be possible though. Try lowering them both a bit if that is stable.

 

Plus timings always suffer with the higher capacity modules due to the loading.

 

Thaipoon burner confirmed that it is an A-die. I don't have any major performance needs in terms of ram speed so the SoC voltage is staying where it is (that 0.1V is about 1C at idle-low load, which matters a lot more to me in the tropics). Made the suggested tweaks and gonna leave them as it is.

Thanks for helping out!

 

Sounds sensible to me, ram tuning is eeking our that final little bit and should be balanced with your targets.

 

I've been gone for a few weeks now, classes started and stuff got real I just took the heatsinks off because it didn't seem to be cooling efficiently and found the following mess. I can't believe a laptop assembler would know so little that they would overapply thermal paste to this degree. Maybe they're generally incompetent, and that's why it took them 6 weeks to ship a laptop that needed Kingston RAM and a Crucial SSD, because I can order those parts on Amazon this evening, get them at my doorstep tomorrow, and still pocket the 40% markup they charged relative to Amazon prices (let's be honest, if they're paying Amazon prices they probably wouldn't have stayed in business.)

That is a caked on mess. What surprises me most is that it worked as well as it has with such an over-applicaton made worse by carelessness that missed the bottom of the processor. I noticed that after using the computer all day writing programs, doing Excel and Tableau analysis, etc. (nothing all that heavy on the processor overall, with a minute or two here and there where it would work hard but nothing sustained) it would steadily require more fan. Whatever they do in assembly, it isn't rushing for better productivity - 6 weeks to install two readily available parts and test the OS, burn-in, and pretty much nothing else tells me that they were definitely not in a hurry to do their work.
More likely they had an important text message or YT vid to watch.

I removed the mess with an old credit card, then with a micro fiber cloth and alcohol based solvent, let that dry, then used the best method I've seen in testing of two modest lines from corner to corner (an 'X') and now it idles at 50C or less even before temp cycling, before changing the paste it was more like 55 to 60. As usual, I want to say the the vendor I purchased from is not one that has a presence here. I used them in the past and had good results, but it's unlikely that I would go to them again in the future after the ridiculous time to ship, lack of response to my message about the power supply (that wasn't their fault, it came from Clevo, and I didn't want a replacement but received no acknowledgment that they received the message at all) and then this discovery.

I want to thank the person here who suggested that I reapply thermal paste. My assumption that those installing it could manage to do this reasonably well was incorrect. Unfortunately I forgot who suggested it, but thanks, you know who you are!

 

This is all strange to me. I have Kingston 3200, 1X32 and it's worked flawlessly. Recently I took the old laptop apart to donate parts to other machines in the household and there was 16GB mismatched Kinston 2666 that I gave a try, and it actually recognized the 48GB. With all the people having trouble with RAM I was sure it wouldn't work. Of course it isn't optimal to run slower RAM like this and I wouldn't recommend doing so, but there is no noticeable difference in performance.

I wasn't using the 32GB available, apparently, and haven't been doing any gaming. Having 48 instead of 32 for ASP web app development and data analysis with spreadsheets and databases (these aren't RAM hog processes) isn't likely to matter at all. I haven't had time to even seriously consider playing a game for several weeks now, but it probably wouldn't matter there either. I guess I should run the benchmark again and see if anything changed.

 

I may have mentioned this before, but when I started exploring Azure with the 'free' education license they give university students I found that nothing that was useful was actually free. To use it you still had to subscribe and pay for services, so I quit trying. There were always alternatives available to any of their services that met the needs of my classes. One day I will probably have to learn to use that, too, but I am going to put that off as long as possible. Visual Studio seems solid, but Excel and Windows are nightmares for me. I hate the 'user friendly' crap they do that doesn't make sense to my engineering mind.

 

You have to know where to dig to get the info. Company environments to explore too for azure.

 

It allowed for setting up a nice virtual environment without having to install and manage everything across several machines in your information system, and I don't even know exactly how to get such a system up and running myself so hey, it's good as far as I know. I just feel like they should have a version that's truly free for students in a computer related bachelor's degree program at an accredited university.

 

Yeah they should, that's down to the uni and their ties basically.

 

Does anyone know what kind of RAM this computer accepts? For instance, will a normal desktop RAM chip work in here, or will I have to find some custom type?

Sent from my Pixel 4 using Tapatalk

 

260-pin DDR4 SODIMM

 

Been stalking this thread for a while, as I am addicted to laptops with desktop processors (I say as I type this on my Asus ROG Strix GL702ZC). But after having been burned by Asus on the CPU non-upgradeability of the GL702ZC, I wrestle with the idea of plunking down for this unit that theoretically could support next gen desktop Ryzen IF a bios update was eventually released that supports it...and history seems to indicate that it ain't gonna happen. Add in the fact that the graphics aren't upgradeable, the apparently continuing memory configuration problems, and the lack of NVMe PCIe 4.0 support...AND...the fact that the 17 inch version of "this" laptop was built with Intel inside, I just get the feeling that this desktop AMD CPU unit is another one-off that, like the GL702ZC (and the Acer Predator Helios 500 PH517-61-R0GX), had one foot in the grave when it came off of the assembly line.

 

I felt the same way, having bought a GL702ZC myself, but even if this doesn't get updated, a 2070 it pretty sweet for a few years and a 3950x is prettyr sweet for the next few years too. So when zen 3 ships, the options are clevo update the bios and I get a zen 3 cpu or 3950x chips start getting cheap and I upgrade there! win win.

 

I feel you bro...but that's not enough for me. Give me Ryzen 4000 support; give me a 17 inch model with PCIe 4.0; give me screen options; give me 2 more ram slots and memory configurations up to 128GB that are easy to implement; give me upgradeable graphics...etc. Maybe I'm asking for too much though...

Despite all that, if you need the processing power this machine has it, and kudos to those who buy it...but I need "more".

 

No laptop uses full size Simms. Too space expensive.

 

That could be the case, but I don't think so. My database class professor literally wrote the Cengage database textbook, it's just a state school, but it's a legitimate one. We get Windows Enterprise versions and Office 365, Tableau, everything else on student accounts for no cost (sure it's included in tuition.)

Business strategy class is opening my eyes to why they(Microsoft) do things the way they do. This is how companies that stay competitive for more than 10 years can manage to do it. You have to have a sustainable competitive advantage and you have to protect it. Microsoft, AT&T, other huge companies able to pull this off do it by protecting their competitive advantages. That all makes sense, but unfortunately for the consumer it sucks when a big company dominates a market year after year because without competition we pay more than we should.

Anyway, none of us have time for business class right now so I'm gonna leave it at that.

 

All laptops use SODIMM, the latest type is 260 pin DDR-4

This isn't a custom type of RAM. These are standard RAM types.

You've already had the question answered, but it seems like we could help you more with your issue. Do you have this computer? Are you interested in a RAM upgrade?

I ask because what I'm seeing here tells me that you don't know a lot about laptops and this particular laptop is more specific than most. A lot of people here have discussed issues with RAM that would never happen in a mainstream machine, and your question shows that you don't understand a much simpler mainstream machine.

We can help you with that, and potentially save you time and money, but we'll need a little information to do it.

 

No, I don't really need more help with it, I just didn't know if any laptops were capable of accepting the more common types of RAM you find marketed for desktops. It makes sense that they can't, I just wasn't quite sure. And I don't have this laptop yet, but I have ordered it and wanted to know what RAM I should buy if I ever want to upgrade. Thanks for asking, though

Sent from my Pixel 4 using Tapatalk

 

I'll say that upgrading graphics is never going to be a thing for laptops. We'll be lucky if upgrading processors continues to be a thing at all in laptops. You go ahead and wait to see if Clevo updates their BIOS for next gen CPUs, but I am going to go forward feeling safe in my assumption that they will not. If they do I will happily eat my words (and my hat, for that matter.) I'm not too bad at math, but too busy to apply statistical analysis, still I am going to say the chances are below 1% that Clevo upgrades BIOS to allow next gen AMD processors to work on this motherboard.

A computer building company exists to meet the needs of a niche market created by us. They have to generate reliable and consistent sales to continue to exist as a company. Making this laptop capable of using a processor that might come out in a year or two, when it already uses one that will probably be at the top of laptop performance for several years, makes no sense for any business success factor.

It isn't going to happen. If it does, get ready to say goodbye to Clevo as a company, because their decision makers have become unstable and they'll be going to hell in a hand basket quick-like.

 

Ok, no worries, I misunderstood the question and read too much between the lines. I've also looked with envy at desktop RAM, it's price for speed and size is so much better, so that makes sense too.

 

Look at Clevo's history, they do quite a bit of BIOS updating but they do not update for new gen processors. Almost every laptop made has the processor soldered into the board. Still, if you manage to desolder a processor and resolder one from the same family with the same voltage requirements without heat damaging and destroying everything else on the board you would probably get it working on a Clevo, they don't actively whitelist processors the way HP or others routinely do things.

If their next gen processors work on the amd4 platform, and they have one that runs at 65W or whatever this motherboard uses, then it will probably work without a BIOS upgrade. It seems like I read something about that a couple of months ago but I don't remember all the details. I'm just casually guestimating here.

I have no memory config problems. I've done something that probably shouldn't work with my RAM and it works fine. I have two NVMe drives in my laptop and both work well. One is 1TB Crucial (slower) and the other a very inexpensive 2TB Mushkin that incredibly hammers the Crucial in benchmarking and real world use. I dunno about the 4.0 version, but I will tell you that I can make a cup of coffee or get a cold beverage from the fridge after debugging my program while waiting for my professors program to load the debug page, and when I switched to the Crucial drive debugging went from a process taking less than 5 seconds, to one that took up to 10 secs. Sometimes my professor, on their desktop, is waiting 30 - 45 seconds for the same page and the same code to load. That's pretty fast, and I don't think the difference between a PCIe version/standard is going to make much difference. At this point, with an NVMe drive running and setup optimally, the bottleneck is elsewhere.

You're right about the graphics card, but even if you could upgrade them where would you buy a laptop graphics card? They are very difficult to buy business to consumer, and even if you found one, the price to buy one and only one card is so incredibly high that a new laptop isn't much more than just a graphics card. It's a lose-lose and I can't see this ever changing. The computer industry is moving away from modular and replaceable systems, at least in the business to consumer segments.

 

It's a good thing for a consumer to know really.

 

My review video: Let me know if anyone has any questions.



Don't know if @taraquin wants to add to the original post.

 

Nice work.

 

I am surprised Tom from XMG didn't post this here because it seemed sorta big to me. Did everyone already see this?:

Statement on Zen 3 in XMG APEX 15 + Call for Feature Requests

Also, 1usmus is releasing his CTR Clock Tuner for Ryzen utility today @ 4PM GMT / 9AM US Pacific Time
Automatic Per Core Overclocking for any Zen 2 chip in an AM4 board?

 

Will do Good review!

 

Yeah I've seen it, will be curious to see how Clevo reacts to these inputs.
That CTR Clock Tuner app looks promising, is it something that would run on the Apex? Then I might give it a try

 

I ran the diagnostics which recommended a reference starting clock of 6000 MHz @ 1250mV!!! I reset those to known good 3600 MHz @ 975mV and started the tool which completed one run of Cinebench R20 @ 3100 MHz followed by Black Screen and automatic reboot. I'm not sure if it is the tool or our lack of BIOS options. A lot of people are having problems, but also we are supposed to change certain settings in the BIOS that have been taken away from us so I don't know if it will eventually work or never work.

 

That's too bad, I. Had great hopes on this one :-(

 

So i've tried the Ryzen clock tuner, defitnitely has difficulties with our setup. I'm using the latest XMG bios and EC. In order for the tool to work at all AMD overclock UI needs to be turned to manual in the bios.

From there I've observed that it has difficulties understanding that this is a laptop and it doesn't benchmark in a way that stresses the system as much as cinebench does.

Results with a 3900

To get it to complete a cycle I set reference voltage to 1100mv reference clock to 3600 and max overclock to 4000mhz. It passed the tests settling at 3850mhz however when it boots up cinebench it very quickly gets way to hot and PPT goes as high as 115w despite it never going over 88w whilst testing and subsequently crashes cinebench

It thinks it done this at a ppt of 38.5w so something very funky is going on.

For now I've just reinstalled control centre to limit all core boost to 80w

I have a feeling that with this particular laptop it's better to just have it " as is" or opt for a static all core overclock and tune it to not exceed 88w. The tool isn't that much faster than manually overclocking anyways but it's CCX performance scores are handy for A syncrhonus clock speed in a manual overclock.

 

Coming from the days of the P570WM, when one of my slotted 780M graphics cards quit on me I decided to yank it out and chuck it, yank out the other and keep it as a spare, and install a single 980M. Believe me, that card was easy enough to find on too many Internet sites to count. Having 2 upgradeable graphics cards in that machine along with an upgradeable processor is the reason why I purchased it used some years after it initially came out. Other Clevo beasts have come out since with upgradeable graphics and processors...but these have always been Intel-based machines. Why AMD desktop CPU laptops always seem to get gimped is a bit frustrating (granted, there have only been a few...but still...). I mean, this machine has BGA graphics, only 2 RAM slots, 1 screen option (2 depending upon what part of the world you live in), 2x NVMe Gen 3 slots but only one of which works at full speed, and only a 15.6 inch form factor. Take a look at the Clevos rocking desktop Intel processors, and tell me how these features compare to the features on those machines.

When the GL702ZC came out I was excited to purchase the world's first AMD desktop processor laptop, despite it having similar drawbacks to this machine. The price of entry was low (like on this machine), so I bit. But I'm hesitant to do it again, because the graphics processors seem to die before most anything else in a laptop, and with BGA you either find a new motherboard or use your failed unit for target practice.

As for the CPU upgradeability on this laptop, seems the AMD 5000 series chips are due out in about 3 weeks...same socket...similar TDP to the 3950X for the 5950X...so I'm cautiously pessimistic to see where things head from here.

 

They only started making good CPUs again recently.

 

So I tried changing the memory speed of this computer, and now it just won't start. I've tried all of the BIOS access keys I can think of, but nothing seems to work. It cycles the keyboard colors until it gets to blue, then stops doing anything. Please help!

Edit: Removed and re-inserted the CMOS battery, no change.

 

I removed all batteries, unplugged, and let the machine sit for 5 minutes when going too far on the memory overclock, which worked. It did take a little longer to boot though.