Problems with Nox A15 (and horrible customer care)

I received my Nox A15 last friday to replace my broken Zepto 6625WD. My 6625WD broke last december and I had to wait 1.5 months before Zepto bothered to answer to my mails, I also tried contacting through their support chat but I never got in even after waiting for 3+ hours several times. The repair including waiting time for the replies took over 3 months so I can't say I'm satisfied. Anyway there's now new problems with my Nox A15.

I tried contacting Zepto through LiveGuide, but I got really harsh customer service and the person in the chat made me wait for 25 minutes without saying anything and then just left after throwing me that I should contact RMA manager before the left (after making me wait for 25 minutes). I also did not get a change to finish my thing because he left before I got to ask my questions + he never answered the ones I made.

Well, back to my problems, first of them is the battery situation. I got 2 separate versions of my machine's bill. The first one I received clearly states 1 x 6 cell, 1 x 9 cell and again 1 x 9 cell. I went to livechat to ask about this and this person promised me that I would get 1 x 6 cell and 2 x 9 cell and that this was the decission of the RMA manager and that they didnt feel like opening the box anymore because the additional battery was added to the delivery after they had packed the rest of the machine. I just now noticed that the bill I got later by the delivery of my machine states only 1 x 9 cell battery so I feel cheated with this thing. I was clearly promised to get 1 x 6 cell and 2 x 9 cell batteries and I have had a conversation about this thing in the support chat. I cannot accept this kind of change in my order especially after promising me 2 9-cell batteries with the same price.

Also, from the received 1 x 6 cell and 1 x 9 cell batteries only 9 cell battery works. The 6 cell battery does not physically fit into my Nox without major force and it feels like it's bend somehow that it is only possible to lock from another side at a time and it is really tight to get in and it won't be locked. I'm certainly sure that it is not how it's meant to be and it's faulty because it's really _major_ force it requires to fit into the machine. I have not tested if it works though, because it should be changed to new anyway for safety reasons.

So, basically I have now 1 working 9 cell battery and 1 not working 6 cell battery and I'm missing one of the promised 9 cell batteries.

Another problem I have is that my machine can't stand under stress and it boots itself after 5 - 10 minutes of max stress. I have tested this with test programs and I can stress either processor or GPU alone but if I stress them both at the same time my machine goes down in 10 minutes. I'm sure it hits some secure limits for temperatures. The GPU temp has been around 81 celsius and processor at 60 celsius and the highest temperature from the sensors is the gpu's 81 celsius. I have set up from bios to fan start cooling at 55 celsius (minimum) and start throttling at 85 celsius. However, it will never throttle even at the lowest possible setting because it only reaches 60 celsius degrees.

Those temperatures doesnt sound so high to me, but sadly there is no way to set up the booting temperature for the machine. My old 6625WD run as idle with the Nox's stress temps and even higher. Also, then fan is completely clean and out of dust because I received this machine last friday and yes, I have used my machine on a desk so that it gets air from the bottom. So do we end up into a conclusion that Nox's cooling system is not efficient enough for my machine (P9600 + Geforce 9650 GT)?

I am completely fed up with Zepto and their horrible customer service. If I just can I am going to take my money back and buy some another manufacturer's laptop.

 

Where you located at ???

 

I live in Finland so this is Zepto Europe's problems...

 

Yes.. please be clear on that

As far as the heat issues, is the fan coming on? If it is its most likely a bad application of thermo paste.

Send me message to Zepto USA (not ZeptoUSA which is me) and he will get someone in Europe to help you.

 

Yes the fan is coming on. However I don't understand why thermo paste would affect on this because the sensors are still giving ok'ish temperatures? Oh, and also I have already contacted Zepto Europe about this thing (mailed today to several ppl). The only thing which worries me now is that I need to send this machine back and it takes _another_ 3 months to get my machine repaired and then when I get it nothing's changed. I wouldnt be surprised... =(

So, Zepto has tested anyway that Nox A15 is capable of running the most powerful components from your webstore at a maximum load without problems? (I have P9600 and geforce 9650 gt)

 

pm me with your RMA number and i'll keep watching the timeframe

 

I don't have possibility of sending pm's here, maybe they have disabled it from the new users or completely. When I try to do it I get "nox_user, you do not have permission to access this page.". Also, I don't have RMA number for this new problem yet, only for the old 6225WD repair.

 

You need a certain amount of posts to be able to PM.

Also, Yes the Nox is very capable of running the top performing components under full load with no issues.

There are only sensors on a few things, sometimes temp readings arent the end all tell all of heat issues. It is still possible.

 

Your issue might be other issues. What driver are you using and what operating system are you using?

 

Vista home premium 64-bit and the latest Nvidia's 174.xx drivers. I'm kinda sure that it's heat issue because it takes longer (close to 10 minutes) to get it down first time but after it reboots first time and I start stressing again when it loads Windows it goes down in less than 5 minutes. And all it takes to reboot is stressing, it stays hours stable idle but under stressing it always goes down. Anyway I can't trust processor sensor's temperatures at all because it has shown ridiculous stuff like 19 celsius under stress so who knows what's the real temperature even though it states 60 degrees

I wish I would get some kind of answer from Zepto during this week.

 

Do you have a turbo memory installed.

 

why you don´t try the NVIDIA driver from the website for Notebooks, it should work with your Nox as well

 

I don't have turbo memory. I also just tried the newest Nvidia drivers and they made no difference at all, can't get even the first test in 3dmark2005 finished before it reboots. Same results with SuperPI and Atitool gpu stressing software.

 

I just wanna be 100% sure. How do you know the GPU isnt over heating? It very well could be a software issue itself.. have you tried reinstalling windows?

 

I have never stated that it was not the GPU overheating, I was just saying that the machine was overheating without pointing out any specific parts. No I have not tried reinstalling Windows because I got my machine last friday from Zepto and it has been unstable since that. I might be doing it tonight even though I doubt it helps and run some tests with the machine.

 

It's either a software conflict or the GPU is over heating. At least this is what I think. Like I originally said, it could be a bad application of thermo paste.

 

I kinda confirmed that it's not a software conflict, something's overheating and UPS is going to get this machine tomorrow and ship it to Zepto so that they can do something for it. Like I said one of the things that makes me really think that it's overheating and nothing else is that getting it to reboot first time from cold temperature takes bit over 1 run of 3dmark 05 and when i try to run it again after reboot it makes my Nox reboot again in less than 15 seconds. If I let my machine cool down between the runs it takes again longer run before it reboots.

Can't wait to see what they think about the problem (and also about the 6 cell battery), all I got from them was RMA number and UPS number without any kind of emails so I guess I'm just going to send them my Nox and my 6 cell battery. I wish they would at least inform people better, it's not that everyone would be familiar with taking machines back to repair.

 

Can you email us the RMA number so we can follow up on it for you?

[email protected]

 

Done, RMA sent to the email.

 

So, I got my machine back approx 3 - 4 weeks ago and I ran some tests on it and it seemed to work fine but I never made any game-based tests, only stress tests with some generic programs. Now I tried playing something and the same story goes on again. My laptop reboots after approx 10 minutes of gaming, the fan is clean and works like it should but the machine just overheats. Once I got artifacts on the screen and other times it has just booted itself. It certainly looks that Nox A15 is NOT capable of cooling down P9600 + Geforce 9650. I'm getting really full of Zepto and I'm wondering what are my rights to request my money back from the machine.

Also I tried putting empty cd-boxes under the corners of the machine so that it's lifted a bit from the surface of the desk and that would give the fan more space to get air from the bottom but no, still the same result. Also the fan is really extremely irritating, it does not have slow-mode at all. It's either off and when it starts cooling it is stupidly noisy, why it is so hard to add slow-mode between these two fan speeds? Needless to day, Zepto does not offer any program to control the fan speeds.

I'm going to discuss about these things with Zepto support on monday (if they are online...) but I just wanted to let you know how my case is progressing. It just annoys me that I cannot use this machine because the manufacturer of it (Zepto) haven't bothered to run enough testing and certainly don't know what the cooling system of this machine can take and what it cannot take.

 

Are you gaming with your battery inside or without your battery? And the power supply, is it the old one or a new one?

 

Without battery + powercord plugged in. My machine is less than 2 months old.

 

is it bad for the battery to play games with it? :\ i tend to do that

 

To maximize your battery life I wouldn't recommend you to keep the battery in with powercord unless you're charging it. Of course lot of ppl state that it doesn't matter anymore nowadays but I can tell from own experience that keeping your battery in all the time you will reduce the battery life alot faster than taking it out when you don't need it.

 

Try putting in the battery and see if it reboots when playing games. Your battery actually acts as a sort of UPS in the event of electrical spikes and all sorts of other activity.

 

I'm gonna try that. There really isn't any way to control Nox's fan? It is really really annoyingly noisy when it's running, I can't understand what they were thinking @ Zepto when they didn't put any mode between the slowest and off modes. If there is no way to control the fan I'm open for all the other ideas to make it more quiet.

 

I've heard rumors about a new BIOS on the way with a completely new fan control. Don't know if the rumors are true though.

 

I'll cross my fingers for that update!

 

What version of BIOS are you on?

The 35 32 version seems to have quieter fan control. For those that complain about the fan being noisy, they only need to update the BIOS to the latest version. You can control the fan temperture in the BIOS settings. Normally updating to the latest 35 32 is good enough.

 

lol, making the fan activate at a higher temperature doesnt help anything.. it just get hot, then starts with an extreme noise, then stops for a min or two then starts again.. making it start at 55 celcius, is better because then its less noisy IMO..

 

My bios shows some version 0.32 and 0.35 and it's been made 17.10.2008. It lets me set up 2 temperature limits but this is really what I've been looking for. Like I said the slowest on-mode for the fan is too noisy, it would help a lot if there was an option to make it run all the time but slower than it does on the slowest on-mode at the moment.

 

If this is the case, the best solution so far is to use "balance" or "power saver" power profile. Try not to use the "performance" profile as this clocks the CPU on high unnecessarily.

 

I use it always in balanced and because this is a P-serie processor undervolting it manually won't do much anymore, especially when the undervolting software (RMclock) won't let me go under 1 volt. With T-serie one can easily gain approx 10 celsius lower temps by undervolting. (P-serie is technically the same as T-serie but running already with lower volts).

 

Zepto should just, liek you said, make a bios where the fan ran at all times but very slow.. that would probably be enough to cool it while idle/internet/basic non-stressing stuff, and then it would simply just go up whenever needed.. If zepto could just spend some time on this, to satisfy their customers just a bit, it would be awesome.. but my guess is that they dont give a rat a**, and wont release this.. It doesnt help that the nexus (mine) is discontinued now.

 

Most customers are fine with the fan after the 35 32 BIOS update. For those that are hyper sensitive to the fan, you can try to lift up the bottom of the laptop so that you can reduce hearing the airflow. There are accessories you can buy for this. Its unsure whether RMClock affects fan control.

Changing the speed of the fan may or may not be possible.

Eventually it might be better for you to have a cooler laptop than a quieter laptop. There are other quiet laptops like the HP dv5 but they will not remain as cool as the Nox/Mythos range.

 

Well it doesnt bother me no more.. Im so happy with the laptop at all other points.. Just saying i wouldnt mind, hehe.

 

I would not say that I'm really sensitive for the fan, but after 6625WD all I can say that most of the time my Nox is way more noisy than 6625WD and most of the other laptops. Lifting the machine from the table does NOT make the noise any less significant. I certainly would not have bought new Zepto anymore but I had to take this because I couldnt take my exchange machine from quarantee as money.

Also Zepto continues their horrible customer care. I asked them why none of the programs (Sisoftware Sandra Professional and Speedfan + couple of other free ones) show my CPU temperature correctly (referring to this fan -thing) and I got a mail stating that 64-bit Vista has an update that blocks CPU temps from the free programs. Alright, well point is that Sisoftware Sandra Pro is not free and my friend gets CPU temps with ALL of those programs and he has fully updated 64-bit Vista so they were feeding my again some BS. I went to ask about this to their support chat and now they stated first that MS's update blocked CPU temps from ALL of the programs, which I again showed to be incorrect information. Then I copy-pasted the short mail I got from this Matts from Zepto Denmark I guess and I got really picky answers after that like "I know what I wrote............" with all those dots and it just kept going worse after that. I waited for 50 minutes and tried to ask if he was there but I never got an answer. I have also encountered it many times that I have asked something which they couldn't answer and then they just leave me waiting on the line for hours and no one is responding to me.

I certainly wish that I wouldnt need to be in any contact with Zepto anymore but I will not leave this thing here. Also, Zepto has no intentions to improve their customer care and they certainly do not care customers at all, all what matters is the money and after they have got the money customer can go and better stay quiet. So far, owning Zepto has been the worst computer experience in my life. Sure, it has nice specs but that is not enough if customer care is horrible and replacing broken machine takes 4 months.

 

I've had the newest Bios from the beginning and always use power saving-mode. ONLY after i bought a Zalman NC2000 cooler the fan stopped spinning for that irritating (10 seconds after 2-3 minutes of silence).

Heck, i even applied Arctic Silver 5 compound to the CPU and GPU but the results are still the same. Maybe a little cooler when under rigid use.

 

The reason you're not able to read temperatures is probably because you have a very unique CPU, the P9600. The more common P9500, P8400, P8600 CPUs are probably are easier to read because the software authors have already gotten information for these CPUs. Your best bet is to contact the authors of the hardware monitoring software like CPUz/HWMonitor etc and give them the code they need to obtain information about your CPU temperatures. For specific software, you will need to ask those specific software authors. Since you're using RMClock as well, it would be helpful to submit your CPU/Mainboard info to the RMClock/Rightmark people just in case so that you might not suffer some adverse side effects from software that might not use your CPU properly.

As for cooling laptops, our local tech media seems to have arrived to the conclusion that the most effective cooling for laptops are those half balls like the ones in this link:

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/Cooler-Stand...temQQimsxZ20090517?IMSfp=TL090517129001r20453

For cooling, You could probably follow what Thorne did as I don't think Zepto DK is using Arctic Silver 5 or MX2 unlike the distributors in USA and Asia/elsewhere. We have to use it here as we are located near the equator and its hot all year round. Most other brands here will just overheat while our temperatures are generally the coolest around.

 

According to Zepto, they do infact use AS5 on their notebooks. At least that is the case for the Znote 6xxx series. I found that although this is probably true, they seem to put way too much on and after a serious amount of cleaning my notebook GPU and CPU dropped by nearly 20C when playing GPU intensive games. That has got to be bad for anyone. I have contacted Zepto about this issue nearly 1 year ago, they said they would look at re-training the assembly personel at Zepto DK. I would at least have a look at seeing if they have put too much on as this may be the case, bear in mind that anyone doing this would need to have new AS5 or similar to re-apply correctly.

 

Horrible customer care continues, went to chat to find solution for my machine's overheating problem and they pretty much ignored me. Here's the chat convo:

I waited reply for a long time and then I thought I would disconnect and go to the chat again and it was offline... I'm not sure why Zepto doesn't care about their customers but if this keeps happening every time I'm certainly going to take this further and I will return to Zepto with some legal assistance.

 

nox_user - i understand your frustration, i havd a similar experience today.

I have a 6625 wd , been in service for GPU and keyboard twice, received it last week , still problems with the keyboard and GPU temps reach 96 C , at this point shuttering is making the game impossible to play. Oh an on top of that they've scratched the back of the laptop in 3 places.

Spoken with the RMA manager (Jonathan) he suggested i should not play games then. The ignorance of customer service is dreadful. This was this replay to one of my e-mails :

"I am sorry that the repair is not as you expected, You have the possibility to send us your computer again and I will look at it.

I also have the possibility to sell you this computer, cheap.

http://www.zepto.dk/Shop/Product.aspx?ComponentID=1443

It costs about 1.750 GBP today and I can sell it to you including freight for 650 GBP.

This computer is the newest product we have and has received the highest test results so far in our production line.

This solution does not require you to send us your old computer, you can keep it."

Unbelivable - insted of getting a refund, for this rubbish, he offers me to buy another zepto machine....

If you're in the UK :

http://www.berr.gov.uk/whatwedo/consumers/buying-selling/sale-supply/sale-of-good-act/page8600.html

http://www.adviceguide.org.uk/index....htm#Types_of_case_dealt_with_in_the_small_cl

At this stage I'm taking zepto to the court of small claims , which cover anything up to £5000. And the process is quite straight forward.

Good luck with your case.

 

I completely support your acts and I see no reason why anyone should give up with their rights against Zepto. Also, they often give wrong information in their support chat, everytime when I have asked earlier it has been ok to add memory myself into the machine and such and now when I asked it, it is strictly banned and causes void of my warranty. What? =D They self tell first something and then after that change their story.

Also, the fan of my machine is completely broken, it resonates alot and I guess that tightening the screws could help BUT I'm not allowed to open the machine and the screws in the machine are some stupid kind of screws which have way too small cross in their base so not any normal screwdriver fits them. Now if they are going to make me pay this 110 euros from them either screwing the screws or then telling that nothing is wrong with your computer I'm going to take this further too. I have took a video of my machine so that I can prove my words about the fan though.

Also whats up with Zepto changing Nox A15's name to Znote G15a in their shop? Looks like the same machine but has different name. I'm just waiting when they announce that they don't offer support for Noxes anymore no matter when you have bought it

 

I'm also from Finland and I've also had it with Zepto. My Nexus A15 has been in Denmark all summer, and now nothing is happening altough they promised to sent it last week. (Earlier they promised to sent it the same week, but that's almost a month ago).

Last month I called their customer service and the guy who I spoke with, did't have a clue about my computer's situation. And yeah, this is the second it is in for repair for the same thing: the panel under the screen, which has the Zepto logo on it, has broken. Also the other LCD-"hinge" is broken.

I think I should sell my computer (if it ever comes back), and buy a new one tough I will have to pay extra...