*** MSI 16L13 (Eurocom Tornado F5)/EVOC 16L-G-1080 15.6" Owner's Lounge ***

Cripes, but that is a friggin' brilliant desolder technique. I've been soldering since I was about 14 years old, and I'm in my 50s now. I'm ashamed to admit that I'd never seen this technique before. You and @t456 and @Prema are my heroes today.

 

Could you post your settings for clock and voltage, and the versions of FireStrike and the Nvidia driver? I was getting scores in your range, but not now, and I'm trying to figure out whether an Nvidia driver update killed GPU performance, or if it's just that I have the new FireStrike version and it calculates differently. Thanks!

 

That one works great for desolder, but needs a tough and thin wire imo. But works amazingly well with chips that have a slight gap under the legs.
I personally use hot air to desolder and then while soldering it back just tack one leg on and then use a well tip to solder on the rest of the legs while holding down with a tweezer.
It was @Mr. Fox and @Prema who introduced me to that technique as well!

 

We are about the same age (I am 54). I thought you seemed unusually intelligent. Now I know why. *HUG*

 

Does this help?

 

Absolutely. A500, 100% B-Die. This is amazing news, and I will certainly be grabbing this kit for my laptop. Both are B-Die as well, which is extremely good news. I imagine throwing 1.3-1.4vdimm at these things (with safe VCCIO/SA values) one could easily hit 3400-3600mhz assuming the traces on the board hold up. That's going to be the biggest issue for laptops, as memory trace topology is niche as it is for desktop boards (with the OCF and Apex boards being the only two that focus on them) so finding a laptop motherboard designed with memory overclocking in mind will be tricky.

Good news is, frequency is not the be all, end all for memory performance. Throwing more volts at it, we can go in the opposite direction and focus on lowering latency. That will likely be my primary focus, as we've already achieved copious amounts of bandwidth (far beyond what our CPU's are capable of handling outside of AVX2 efficiency requirements) so latency certainly needs some love. From what I've seen, no mobile bios (custom or not) offers access to tertiary timings, meaning you will be at the mercy of your IMC and motherboard's automatic training of tertiary/RTL/IO-L's to remain stable during this process. While I hate the idea of not having control over those very important timings, I can't deny the fact that I enjoy the challenge with those limits being imposed. Besides, primary/secondary timings can still have a big impact on latency, just not as big as it could with additional love being made to tertiary timings.

I gotta say @Mr. Fox , you've given me a lot of faith for these laptops. The memory department was the one that worried me the most, as it's been nearly impossible to find good SO-DIMMS after Elpida went the way of the dodo. Seeing G-Skill take this seriously enough to use arguably the best ram IC's to exist (outside of the old Samsung HYK0 magic IC's) means we can truly replace our desktops and enjoy yet another niche overclocking discipline. Thanks for that.

 

Excellent. Thanks for saying so. Faith is one of those things you never want to run out of. If you do, life sucks from that point forward.

 

If wisdom is gained from one's mistakes, I must be wiser than Buddha by now, 'cause I've surely made my share of blunders.

 

Have you ever used the #40 AWG Kynar-insulated wire that used to be used in wire wrapping? I've still got spools and spools of that stuff in my basement (not to mention the wire wrapping tools to go with it). The reason I suggest that wire is that it's tough, thin, resistant to bending fatigue, and (relatively) unadhesive for solder. If I recall, the Kynar insulation is also fairly heat resistant, but I'd have to retest to refresh my memory. I last did wire wrapping in 1985.

 

Everything is set as it was from HID with the exception of a core voltage offset of -90 mV. It's still running adaptive core voltage. GTX 1080 driver version is 21.21.13.7892. Firestrike is version 1.1.

 

Wow that would be pretty amazing. I couldn't find anything thinner than 20-30 awg.
Where can I buy some of that ?

 

We have different Nvidia driver versions. I've got 22.21.13.8178. As @Mr. Fox points out, that's quite possibly my issue. Our FireStrike versions are the same, and since I'm not thermal throttling I think the voltage is not at fault.

 

I apologize; the wire I have is AWG #30, not #40. A good source for this kind of thing is Digi-Key. I first did business with them back in the 1980s.

 

Further investigation: I re-ran FireStrike and compared against my previous runs. The CPU (Physics) and Combined scores are identical within a fraction of a percent. It's all GPU making the difference. Since I'm running an Nvidia driver, I conclude that the difference is attributable to that and not to Microsoft's Win 10 update.

 

I have been running Doom at max settings around 200 fps, and my system got much warmer than I'm comfortable with. I downloaded RTTS to limit the fps to my screen refresh and that dropped temps considerably. I'll still max the gpu around 90 C, which I'm not thrilled with, but my average temps drop way down.

 

I am hearing Doom tends to really heat up all GPU’s. What temps are you getting with other games?

 

I've only played Doom and Wildlands. If I let either of them run at unlocked frames maxing the gpu the system gets really warm. I limit the fps on both games for different reasons. Wildlands stutters with how much the fps fluctuates and Doom doesn't need to run 200 fps.

@Mr. Fox, when you've modified the U3 Cooler Master was it worth it to run 1 massive fan or was there a point where the drop in temps were no longer worth it?

 

In case anyone is puzzled by these comments, this quick video will show what I and Rage Set have been struggling with. A couple of things to bear in mind... Even with a 4.8GHz performance limit with MSI's cancer firmware, this still destroys anything else in a 15-inch form factor. The only notebook that performs better in terms of CPU performance is the 17-inch P870DM3 leviathan. It also had gimped performance with stock firmware. (The Clevo P870KM1 currently has similar problems as the Tornado F5 because it also has cancer firmware at the moment.) So, if you're not an overclocking enthusiast and are looking at this product for gaming or as a business machine, this unfortunate nonsense will not have any effect on you whatsoever. Your experience will not be impaired by a 4.8GHz threshold. You can buy in confidence knowing you will have the best 15-inch beast money can buy, notwithstanding this unresolved issue.

That said, there is still no legitimate excuse for it and MSI needs to correct their mistake. Nobody should have to settle for anything less than full-bore overclocked performance from their CPU if that is what they wish to pursue. Artificial impediments and gimping always sucks. We should never see this from MSI, Clevo or any other manufacturer. Those that bought it to escape the crippled BGA stupidity definitely should not have to put up with it.

 

Still very true...

Couple of new personal best scores with the 15-inch mini-monsterbook... thank you Brother @Prema


http://www.3dmark.com/fs/12652176


The minutia...

Spoiler: Power & Temps

 

My best Fire Strike score (with this machine) above was using the same older driver as my previous best score (with this machine). Brightness control does not work with that driver like it does the new one, but that's OK. I'll take performance over brightness controls any day of the week. I can always install a newer driver if it ever becomes more important to be able to dim my screen some day.

 

Just purchased the used F5 @win32asmguy was selling for my wife! The thought of buying a BGA poopbook for her was just too painful to bear, even though she wouldn't know the difference at all.

TBH though, I'll probably just rip it apart and use it as a guinea pig for all sort of crazy stuff...

EDIT: @woodzstack , I was told by the seller that we can either send the laptop to you for unlocked BIOS flash, or wait until the remote flashing becomes available. Could you please let me know when the remote flashing might become available?

 

On the vapor chamber heatsink front, I've engaged 5 different companies who might be able to help me get the job done. Couple of them are hesitant cause they are not really used to working with laptops, but some seems to be eager to take on the challenge. Haven't discuss the most important part yet, which is $$$, but I'm very curious to see how this will all play out.

On the fan front, Aavid is still looking for a different blower solution for us. Will let you guys know as soon as I have an update.

 

thanks, will like reading the article. im not sure why i wrote low quality, but with low quality same scene takes no more thn 7-8 hours but shadows are very dark and ambient doesnt look good. i prepare and set environments for mobile games and local construct companies. baking huge cities takes alot of time, my highest being 28 hour( had to increase page file to 20gb and cache size to 100gb to even successfully completely atall) and that was without final gather.
unfortunately i dont have luxury of using realtime lights, these environments are either used on mobile or some companies that are still using very old PCs by today standard.

progressive lightmapper is really broken for me in current state. it crashes if i have over 1000 objects, maybe my 16gb too low for it. also it can not bake huge environments as good as enlighten does(just my observations tho).
also note that same scene took more thn 48 hours on a mobile 4th gen and was failed during final gather, so yea this 4ghz+ is huge for baking.

 

Hey @rancid

I finally did the GPU repaste with Gelid Extreme GC and now "The Witcher 3" (Ultra settings + Hairworks on) and temp is around 88c! Still high in my opinion but no more crashes. Thanks!

I'm also thinking about getting a laptop cooler to decrease temps a little bit more...

@Mr. Fox thanks again for the teardown video on youtube. Helped me a lot!

 

Your kind gift has reached. Thank you brother Fox!

No more excuse for me now to not run AIDIA benches...

 

Depending how this goes and if it comes to fruition and makes a difference and depending on cost I would definitely be interested in something like this. (I know this isn't your specific post asking who would be interested, but here you go! )

 

Defiantly interested in this. Also I'm sure a few of us, including myself, would be willing to fund a wee bit if things progress and need a kickstart

Sent from my SM-G950W using Tapatalk

 

I'm counting on it! I can probably fund the initial prototype, but i assume it won't be cheap to get it produced and what not. I'll let you guys know more once I have some solid $ figures. Thanks for offering to help!

 

We too may well be interested in getting this over the hump.

 

Brother Fox, I completely agree with you. Nonetheless, I also think that everyone should be appalled, whether they seek to OC or not. I knew going into this purchase I would only achieve 75%, potential wise, of my 1080. I did not think my CPU would throttle though. You know that is the one reason why I returned my P870DM3 to Sager/XoticPC.

With that said, I understand @Prema has the knowledge and uncanny special abilities to cure what ails the MSI 16L13. I know it is too late for me as I purchased mine from Eurocom but my EVOC brothers will hopefully be unshackled.

That's amazing! I look forward to seeing more!!!

 

Yes brother. Let's see some stress tests.

 

Yes, I know that is why you returned the Sager. I would have as well. It irks the crap out of me that this little guy has the same problem your Sager did. But, I do understand a lot of people don't care and that is why OEMs can get away with selling castrated stuff. I can't call either machine a piece of trash because they are awesome, but cutting their man parts off and thinking that's OK is not acceptable.

Brother @Prema has made a massive improvement in the CPU throttling problem. Something still isn't 100% what it should be. We have not identified what is messed up (yet). That video was made for @Eurocom Support so they could have that, along with an Excel report and graphs I had already given them, to hopefully get MSI to take ownership of correcting it. It does not drop from 5.0GHz to something less in Fire Strike or 3DMark 11, and usually does not in wPrime 32M. But it still does in wPrime 1024M and Cinebench. It seems to either be time-based or load based, or a combination of both. Before he started on it, it would not pass hardly any benchmark without throttling if the CPU was clocked beyond 4.8GHz. It is identified as a Power Limit Exceeded error in HWiNFO64.

I'm sure Brother @Prema can exorcise the rest of those demons, but MSI still needs to fix it for all of their customers. It should not be necessary to have a Prema BIOS or a Svet BIOS to circumvent malfunction. Everything should work right as it ships from MSI (or Clevo) and the firmware mods would be only icing on the cake. I'm pretty sure Prema would agree that having to fix one screwed up firmware mess after another takes some of the fun out of the process. You get a sense of satisfaction from fixing something broken, but I think we could all live without the unnecessary frustration.

Again... not dissing this amazing product. But, I am dissing MSI for the same reasons I have qualms with Clevo. This firmware cancer crap they got going on needs to stop. They need to be held accountable for selling broken junk, as do all of the other notebook OEMs. We're talking pretty much 100% failure rate for the industry and I'm about fed up with their bull-hockey. The only thing we can count on any of them for is a hearty serving of nonsense.

With respect to the BGA turdbooks and their debilitating performance anxiety disorders, all is can say is, " Not my clown, not my circus."

When it doesn't throttle, clock-for-clock performance of the CPU in the Tornado F5 is virtually identical to the P870DM3. We should expect that. Working right, including overclocking, is the price of admission. If they can't do that, then they don't have a horse in this race.

 

Did you share with us what your new PCH temps look like? I could not find a post with that info. Did it solve your PCH thermal issues? I'd love to know how much (or little) this helped.

 

man, I so agree with you it is not even funny.

I always wondered whats stopping these companies from just trying to hire these guys or train up someone for that exact skillset so they can fix bioses all day long.

I'd like to oneday see a SVET and PREMA collaboration and work on something truly epic and available to any Clevo or MSI company and not "exclusive" , not that I do not think they should get paid for it, i think the people paying should be at the OEM level.

You've had some one on one experience with prema assisting you with some projects over the years, and shown some of the work, whats in your opinion, holding this back from being a thing ?

Why do OEM's not have people who working on adding features and fixes to bioses, or why not negotiate and make it worth Prema or SVETs time to work for them or something (or training other people.. not saying Prema or SVET should be forced to work for someone... )

Whats holding this back, why does the industry not have this, its such a prevalent thing, for soo many years being an issue. Desktops have great motherboard support, but laptops - it's a joke !

I'm just asking you cause your the sudo father mentor to many on these forums. I'd strike a convo with you good sir anyday on the topic, but I can;t seem top PM you.. :S

 

PCH's these days are and well have always been an issue, but so many more people are aware that these need to be kept cool, or relatively cooled down with a small heatsink or something, that I'm surprised when I see a laptop with nothing on them - it just tends to cause the motherboard to break in the long run as the temps bleed into components adn causes throttling all over..

It's like the pet peave of laptops in general since 2015-2017 (recently cause of all the BGA's - please don;t flame me )

 

Yeah people can send thier laptops back to me relatively cheap, I'm very transparent with my business, I even show my profits when asked, so people understand I'm not running with thier money and jumping for joy or anything, what I mean to say, is I have recently begun insisting people remember my service and come back to me when they need it again, no harm in tallying up shipping costs and whatever small amounts for simple services like flashing or testing or re-pasting or upgrading etc..
but when it especially comes to the bios on these laptops, it's a bunch more involved than it used to be, to flash these laptops. I personally have always had SVET help me, or I followed his instructions like my life depended on it, lol. My option to send it to the techs directly with Eurocom is also available, if I need, infact they insisted I do so each time, but I haven't always (actually I don't think I took them up once, I did them all myself, but the offer is still there if I can't do it)

Sorry if I ramble, I shouldn't be let out in public and allowed to speak at this late hour hahaha!

 

For this, I would ask we speak on the phone and clear a good 30-45 minutes to do it, but remotely by connecting to the laptop directly - I know little next to nothing about doing this, it's something I didn't have time to follow up on yet, if it is even becoming a thing, I have yet to do it myself with a Clevo. Dell's are different, used to be one of thier migration specialists contracted to them to do this very thing all day everyday for awhile, but the tools we used were not my own, but some inhouse stuff thanks to a great team in Toronto.

 

Check your PM.

 

Fortunately, my application only has to run on my own laptop and a carefully-specified subset of other hardware. I'm doing non-game renderings, and not marketing a "product" to consumers, so I have more control over the target environment. I probably will bake lighting, but the point is that I don't have to worry about it until late in my project. If I make performance acceptable with realtime lights, then any gains from baking later are a bonus rather than a necessity.

I've had some issues with it, but not crashes per se. To be fair, it's still an "experimental" feature. Overall, although I really love Unity in almost every other way, I think their lighting system needs a lot of work.

 

@woodzstack , I for one enjoy your 'ramblings' I have no issues with shipping cost and your profits, a mans gotta do what hes gotta do. I truly appreciate you making it easier for people to get this service done from you and you working to be transparent.

I'll PM you to discuss the details, thank you!

 

Would definitely consider one of those!

 

i see you have 32 gb ram, so that is one of reason for no crash. unity has really improve their GI but other thn that the baking is really broken compare to BEAST that was in unity 4. it was much faster. i really hope they can fix lightmapper and make it stable since it has alot of potential compare to enlighten.

 

This stuff is pretty good for the bottom cover mod, it is fairly rigid and allows good airflow. The stuff I had used previously, was more material than holes, it was also a bit flimsy and I had poked my finger through a couple of times when moving the laptop.

 

Oh nice, look forward to it man !

 

Hi, everyone. Been reading as much of this thread as possible - lots to go through. Lot of great contributors too.

I'm going to take advantage of that 10% off sale. At what point is the 330w power adapter necessary? For what it's worth I'm looking at the 7700K option with the 1070.

 

Where are you located? Have you checked with HID? They will delid the 7700k for you. That proc runs hot without a delid in this smaller chassis. Unless you are comfortable with doing it yourself, I would highly recommend it.

Great choice by the way!

 

Eurocom (and maybe others?) will sell a 16L13 with an NVIDIA GTX 1070. HIDevolution's website (at least) doesn't list the 1070 option (but maybe they have it and they just don't advertise it?)

Overclocking. Other than your wallet just being like $67 lighter in the end, the 330W AC Adapter is roughly the same dimensions and weight as the 230W one. Might as well go for the headroom, IMO.

 

We don't have the EVOC 16L-G-1080 with the nVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 or nVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 because our EVOC P750DM2-G has those.

The nVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 is what makes the EVOC 16L-G-1080 unique, and special, one of a kind.

 

Finally got the Tornado F5/16L-G-1080 in the top 11 scores.

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/12667590

 

@Donald@HIDevolution I think you'll like this one. For now, it's the top score for single GTX 1080 Time Spy. Even beat my P870DM3 with SLI disabled, LOL.

Got to love the @Prema magic.
http://hwbot.org/submission/3554310_
http://www.3dmark.com/spy/1777929