TONGFANG GK5CN5Z / GK5CN6Z / GK5CQ7Z / GK5CP0Z

To anyone having trouble getting Sound Blaster Connect working.

I got my Recoil iii from Pcspecialist a few days ago and couldn't get SBC to work. I've been on their tech support trying to figure it out but their drivers wouldn't work. I did manage to get Dolby Atmos Gaming working from a pack I found but was on a mission to get Sound Blaster working. I've been trying any realtek driver I could (I spent most of the day yesterday at it) find and finally stumbled across this...

https://puresoftapps.blogspot.com/2018/12/realtek-modded-driver.html

Make sure to do a clean install, removing anything related to realtek before installing the above.

This is the only thing that worked for me and I'm glad it did. The difference in volume and overall quality is night and day.

Hope this helps someone.

 

I've started experiencing game freezing recently after refreshing my TIM. I'm using IC Diamond and happy with the results. The last application was ICD and lasted a long time, but it was reaching up to the 90's again so I refreshed it. Temps seem good again, but I'm getting freezes now, just for games. I can go to task manager and kill the game, so its not the system. I'm wondering if the thermal pads in there need to be replaced as I cant monitor those temps, but the top of the chassis does feel very hot above the keyboard and to the left of the fan button.

Think replacing all that thermal pads should help this? And if so, what would be a good recommend product to use?

EDIT:
Just had it happen but all of windows locked up then BSOD. I'm going to ease up on my undervolt a bit. Not sure why its been fine up to now though with these settings.

EDIT:
I was just checking some temps. During gaming I've got 68 on CPU, 69 on GPU, and PCH is up to 80 so far. Could a high PCH temp cause this?

 

I'm still having the 800MHz issue when the battery is getting low, do you know if there is a way to activate this setting directly in the unlocked BIOS? I haven't installed XTU or Throttlestop, I undervolted directly in the BIOS.

 

I have an Overpowered LP-2 (TongFang GK5CN6Z), From time to time upon turning the laptop on, I would be taken to the BIOS. Keyboard unresponsive and keyboard backlight off. This issue would go away after a couple a turn on/off attempt. Eventually, I opened the laptop and decided to disconnect and reconnect the keyboard ribbon connector to the motherboard. Issue would go away for 2/3 months. Now issue seems to be permanent. Any suggestions? Do I have to replace the entire keyboard? Or can I find the ribbon cable only?

 

Was looking for this on my Mech-17 9750/2080MQ and that was a huge increase! now to work toward the 2080 performance increase. I couldn't understand why after I repasted with LM and getting a max temp of 58-62c It was throttling lol.

 

Anyone has a service manual or guide on how to disassemble the GK5CN6Z ? I will need to replace the cable going to the keyboard.

 

@Mr. Fox
I ended up restoring the computer to original components, as I was getting ready to send the machine back to OP. I took out my SSD, took out a stick of ram, put the spinning drive back in, put the stock battery back in, did a 100% fresh install on the spinning drive and reset bios to factory settings......

Computer still has flickering issues... UNTIL...I install all my old drivers and update windows. Flickering issue only apparent at 80-100% brightness, (Up from 10%), and now after another restart, its working normally.

I have no clue how to diagnosis this, but it felt like some sort of driver/bios/windows conflict? I'll keep this post active if I begin to experience flickering again once I restore the computer to the upgraded hardware etc.

 

That is really interesting. You should test your upgrades one at a time. Like start with adding the stick of RAM and use it a few days. If no issue, put the SSD back in and use it a few days. If the flickering returns, swap the HDD back in. If the flickering goes way, try cloning the HDD to SSD. Lather, rinse, repeat.

 

Wow. And the Flickering is back....

You were correct in your analysis above in terms of diagnosis.

I added my NVME SSD back, and added the RAM back. (So effectively now laptop is running dual channel RAM, and utilizing NVME HD).

Everything works normal, until I accessed my NVME drive via the explorer and opened a folder on that drive. Immediately my screen starts flickering and now the problem persists, even after removing the NVME SSD drive....

It almost seems like accessing the NVME channel caused a short, which impacted my display.

I'm going to try to remove the RAM, tinker some more, and then if that fails to fix, i'm going to repeat my clean/driver/wipe, and see if that re-fixes the problem. I think i'll end up with a solution eventually... If not, i'm going to ship this back to manufacturer and see if they honor my warranty (sticker broken--but everything is stock and machine is flawless)-- Fingers crossed. Any other ideas?

 

Try doing a clean install of Windows on the NVMe and see if the flickering returns. Use old drivers like what the HDD has installed. It may not be hardware related.

 

Ill do that and see what happens. Thanks for the ideas good sir!

@Mr. Fox

So I put the NVME SSD back into the machine; launched up the computer on battery power.. issue persists. I plugged the machine into AC power (Still have spinning drive inside, and stock battery, running dual channel ram though); and now my brightness flickering has stopped completely, even after accessing the SSD drive via windows explorer.

Unplug the AC power. Nothing changes. Running Fan in Turbo mode. No Change. Left unplugged, and turned fans to 0 in gaming center and going to let the machine get hot and see if the screen flicker starts....

Back to the drawing board of isolating the problem... I need a problem I can repeat and classify before I can attempt to solve it!!! Dangit.

Side question --> What drivers or BIOS component would control the 2-USB-A ports on the right side of the machine? Can't use these two ports anymore and not sure if I disabled them in Bios when I reset to factory settings, or if I disabled them manually when I removed some of the internal components.

Guessing Its a driver issue, but can't quite tell

 

If you are using Windows 10, almost all of the hardware drivers would be included natively in Windows 10.

For downgrading to older drivers, or those the manufacturer actually intended to be utilized, you can get them from the Eluktronics product support pages. Other than GeForce drivers, there is really no point in using drivers other than those provided by the manufacturer or laptop distributor. Updating to newer drivers for anything other than the GPU is kind of pointless unless the driver they provide is buggy. "Upgrading" drivers only because they are newer is a great way to make a stable machine malfunction. It is rare that a newer driver improves performance.

Anything to add @Papusan?

 

@Mr. Fox

- Yeah, can't seem to figure out the USB ports not working on the right side of the machine. They are the ports that are connected to the same chip as the card reader. I've tried updating all the drivers, inspected the physical components and everything seems fine. Only change that could have impacted would be less available power with the smaller 3cell battery back in the laptop.

I can't seem to find anyone else that has had USB port issues, so i'm guessing its something I caused.

 

Does Windows detect anything attached to those ports? If not, check the ribbon cable that connects that little daughterboard to the motherboard. Is the SD card reader still working?

What devices are you connecting to those USB ports if you plug something in? A USB flash drive, mouse or something else? Or, it just acts like nothing is there?

For the record, I have had some minor issues on those USB ports with a high capacity USB (128GB) thumb drive and 1TB SSD, and a wired mouse having stuttering problems. I think the ports must be very low power output or something. After connecting a powered USB hub those issues I was having with the wired mouse disappeared. That wired mouse also has RGB LEDs and probably required a lot more power than a standard wireless USB mouse transmitter. The high capacity thumb drive and 1TB SSD also required more power than a wireless USB mouse would need.

---

Edit... This is what I have in Device Manager for USB. Does yours match this? If not, post a screenshot so we can compare to see what is missing or different on yours.

 

@Mr. Fox

Attached. No USB devices attached to computer.

When I attach a USB mouse to the single port on the left side of laptop, another USB composite device shows up. Correspondingly, when I plug the same mouse, or a keyboard, or a usb flash into any of the two USB ports on the right side, nothing happens, no functionality, no device recognition.

It feels like the hardware isn't recognizing the ports.

 

Comparing the two Device Manager screenshots, there is clearly a problem. Either that little USB daughterboard is fried, or the ribbon cable is loose or broken. Did you check the ribbon cable already?

If the ribbon cable is secure and doesn't seem to be cracked, then I would contact Eluktronics and see if they can order a replacement daughterboard. I cannot imagine that it would be very expensive. There isn't much to it. If I remember correctly, @Trevayne10 had the same or a similar issue.

 

Dealing with the same issue. Any issues using the warranty even after laptop was opened to add memory? Overpowered?

 

Did you ever figure out what caused that.

it is not legal to deny warranty for opening or working on the laptop. Unless something you did caused the problem, like breaking or damaging something, there would be no merit or legal basis for denying a legitimate warranty claim.

 

Any way to keep the keyboard backlight on while on battery only?

 

Yes, open the control center app and move the brightness slider up all the way to the right. When you switch from AC power to battery it automatically moves the LED brightness slider all the way to the left (off).

 

My problem was a wonky 3.5mm headphone jack on my OP-LP2 laptop. Looks like it's gonna be a PITA getting a daughter board from Eluktronics... so, here's what I did: I put a tiny little dab of LocTite crazy glue (cyanoacrylate) in the little "valley" near the tip of the 3.5mm plug on my Audio-Technica ATH-M50x phones, then quickly sprinkled some baking soda on it, then did the same thing on the long portion of the plug, around the other side. I let it dry for a couple hours. Fits into the plug nice & snug, no more wonky connection / no more headphone plug popping in and out of the jack. Signal is loud & clear. Been a few weeks now. End of problem.

- Trev

 

Hello everyone. I just updated my Intel integrated grphaics drivers and my Nvidia Drivers and my battery consumption has tanked. At idle I used to draw 2-4W power and now I'm drawing 12-14W according to Throttle Stop. Can anyone help me?

System specs... GK5CP6Z (9750 + 1660 Ti) - Eluktronics Mech 15 G2rx

 

Hi and happy Sunday.

As it seems to coincide the driver change, that's where I would start undoing things. Try downgrading the Intel driver and set the system power plan to Balance or Power Saver.

The best rule to apply to drivers and firmware is to never update them unless there is a compelling reason to. Never do it just because a newer version was released. Sometimes certain games require newer GeForce drivers because they'll nag you the crap out of you or even refuse to run if you don't update the GeForce driver. But, everything else is better off left alone if your machine is working correctly. Newer drivers and firmware are frequently inferior rather than better.

 

The version of Intel GPU drivers that works the best for me is 26.20.100.7528. Any other causes similar issues to yours. For some reason it doesn't enter deeper C-States and power draw remains high even on idle. Right now it's ok for me, except when I use external display or use dGPU in general. dGPU active means no deeper C states.

 

Nope, I gave up on this piece of crap and bought a new laptop....why?

 

Why? Just curious. I'm guessing it was something simple. Thought maybe you had resolved it and could share what it was in case somebody else experiences the same thing later.

What did you replace it with?

 

I gave up on it because I don't have the time to tear it down replace cables, replace a bad battery, etc. I'll get to some day. I replaced it with
Lenovo Legion Y740 15" - Iron Grey
Part No: 81UH0001US
Configuration Details
● Processor: 9th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-9750H (2.60GHz, up to 4.50GHz with Turbo Boost, 6 Cores, 12MB Cache)
● Operating System: Windows 10 Home 64
● Display Type: 15.6" FHD (1920 x 1080) NVIDIA® G-SYNC, 144 Hz, Dolby Vision HDR™ 400, 500 nits
● Memory: 16GB 2666MHz DDR4 (2 x 8GB)
● Hard Drive: 1TB HDD 7200 RPM
● Warranty: 1 Year Depot or Carry-in
● Graphics: NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX™ 2070 with Max-Q 8 GB
● Second Hard Drive: 256GB SSD PCIe
● Camera: 720p HD
● Keyboard: RGB Backlit - US English
● Wireless: Killer Wireless 802.11 AC (2 x 2) + Bluetooth® 5.0

 

Hey guys just curious what sorts of temperatures you get on your Tongfang gk5cp0z with the i7-8750h?

Currently in games such as kingdom come deliverance I get like... 85-88degrees. With an undervolt of 120 on core and cache.

Seems high? I have applied liquid metal two times to see if I had done it wrong the first time... Still rather high temps? I even lowered boost clock to only achieve 3.4ghz instead of 3.9.

Any ideas or is this normal?

 

Thanks for the reply, unfortunately Intel does not have that version of the driver available for download anymore. I guess I'll just try an older version of the driver or accept my battery life will be less than 2 hours from now on......

 

Just wanted to update everyone. I used DDU to wipe out my current install on NVIDIA/Intel and then installed the most current Nvidia driver and Intel's 26.20.100.7642 for UHD Graphics 630. Everything is back to normal now.... system idle is now 3-4W.

 

Exact same issue with the same laptop. I'm amazed so many people are having this issue. It's clearly hardware as I'm getting flickering in the BIOS as others have reported. Has anyone actually fixed this issue yet? I've emailed Eluktronics to see if I can do an RMA but if it's something user serviceable I'd prefer to do that. My screen lasted just over a year... pretty awful durability. I've been using the laptop pretty extensively for computations, so maybe it is heat that killed the thing. Maybe wrapping the cable in heat shield would help? Grateful for any ideas anyone might have.

By the way, this solution

]

actually made my problem worse. I had somewhat legible brightness and no flicker on ~20% brightness and after adjusting the brightness up and down a few times, all brightness levels flicker.

 

Hello,
I have a model GK5CP6Z and i'm not hable to turn off the keyboard backlight or even change color. I've tried on bios, uninstalling and reinstalling Gaming Center/control center, installing various versions of theese, still not working.
How can i manage this?

Sorry if the solution was already debated here but i couldn't find it.

Thanks.

 

My Sound Blaster Connect application suddenly stopped working. All it shows is a blank screen. I think it stopped detecting my audio? Now I have pretty bad audio. I've tried different drivers of Realtek. The audio driver that came with my laptop, the latest available one, and an old one (version 8720 I think?) that was said to work with sound blaster. I've also tried uninstalling then reinstalling the sound blaster app from the microsoft store but still, it won't work. Anybody have a solution or experienced the same thing? Laptop is Mech 17-G1R from Eluktronics bought summer last year.

Here is an image of my sound blaster app: https://imgur.com/a/FICoRnQ

 

New Drivers from Turkish manufacturer Monster, dated 28.04.2020:
Control Center 1.1.0.25 etc...
https://www.monsternotebook.com.tr/T7_V20_2/
This computer is just released with i7 10 series CPU.

 

I hate to tell you this but what you are describing are the first signs that your keyboard is failing and will eventually stop working all together.

Could you please share a link to the exact place you got your cable please?

 

Thank you for your reply. I'll try to contact the service for the laptop, since i have it only for 5 months and seems i can't find a reason for this.

Another question if somehow someone could help with the same model, i have a USB-C Hub (satechi multiport v2) and it's not working at all and it did on the past. The same hub works on other laptop. The reason could be related to some driver that was installed recently?

Thank you.

 

https://a.aliexpress.com/_BUodao
Select 40pins Type A

I previously bought one on Amazon that worked about 3 days, don’t know if I damaged it shaping to fit or what. Now I’m waiting for these from AliExpress to see if it will work again than I’ll decide if send to seller for a repair. I could have a problem in the motherboard because when the keyboard doesn’t get recognized also the battery (new 4 cells) doesn’t get recognized showing the “x” on Windows battery and not powering on if not connected to the power adapter. Same thing it did before buying a new battery and the keyboard cable. I don’t know how they could be related but this is, I’ve done a lot of testing...

 

Hi @lKinder_Bueno, ive been trying to use your Fan Manager (thanks for your work!) but ive been having problems with setting up my graph in advanced fan mode. It opens up fine and i can move the first 4 circles but when i try to use the others the program crashes. I can start it again and it does the same, purple pink and red are not movable for me. Do you have an RTX version i could test? My ideal, because i dont want to keep changing modes or manually select Turbo Mode and i dont mind the noise is to have a normal graph until gets 80º (CPU) and then automatically fires turbo mode until it comes back down.

Also i got an unlocked Bios thanks to @nimaim and Lost_N_bios where i would like to set this graphs but i dont seem to be finding where i can do this with multiple stages 40º-0% // 60º-70% etc.., if anybody could help me with that i'd appreciate it.

I got a PC Specialist LTD Recoil III Tongfang GK7CP7S // 8750H // RTX 2070 Bios N.1.03 EC1.02.09 from may 19.

Thanks a lot to everyone in this thread, just spent my quarantine going over this one and the 17'' and over at win-raid and i've been having a blast.

 

Does anyone have a problem with Windows 10 becoming super slow (slow animations) after some time?

It happens everytime to me and games and movies become sluggish too.

I don't see any throttling occuring on ThrottleStop.
I already checked disk and ram and pagefile, no problems there.

I don't see any processes taking too much, and if I kill all of them and just leave Windows processes, it still continues, only solution is to restart explorer.exe.
I already had this problem before, I reinstalled windows and it worked for some time, but the problem comes back again.
I'm not sure but I think I fixed it for a while with some drivers, not sure if it was some intel disk drivers, or what kind of drivers they were, but it's a really weird issue.

I also already disabled Windows Search and Defender, as I was thinking it could be the problem, but it was not.

Don't know what else to do

 

Hello, I need to do a factory reset and reinstall windows on my walmart overpowered 15" laptop? Can someone guide me on how to do this? Is there any link or documentation which has step by step instructions? My main question is after we format the drive, how do we install the fresh copy of windows 10? I dont remember getting the windows 10 license keys for it. Pls help guys. Thanks in advance for your time.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/windows-10-clean-installation-guide.781178/

 

Question for everyone. Is there a way to disable integrated graphics and run things only with the d-gpu? Intel integrated graphics is causing ReShade to crash on me.

 

@Scott Michael: Yes in my (XMG) Control Center i have an option called "discrete gpu". this should be what u looking for.

 

Hi. Thanks for the response. Unfortunately, that did not solve my problem. I'm thinking there is a much deeper issue causing the crash. If I disable the dGPU, launch X-Plane 11, ReShade runs and the simulator runs, however performance is terrible since the iGPU is being used. Any time I use the dGPU, whether its set as preferred or "On" via the Gaming Center, my simulator crashes. I think there is a point where the iGPU hands the process off to the dGPU and that causes X-Plane 11 + ReShade to hard crash to desktop without error.

 

Hi everyone, I have a GK5CN5Z. I am trying to buy a replacement HDD tray. This silver thing: https://imgur.com/a/ANLRre9
Does anyone know who sells them? I am in Australia. I have tried ebay and amazon and can't see anything with the screws in those specific spots.
Thanks!

 

I actually flashed the same ASUS 90w vbios unto my Dell g7 7790 which had an 80w tdp originally on the 2060 gpu. I was wondering, I dont know how to private message soemone on here but if you had the razer 90w VBIOS?
I think my monitor isnt allowing a 120hz refresh rate through HDMI anymore as a result of flashing the ASUS bios so im hoping the razer will allow it...

 

I made a mistake. The razor vbios is target 80w and limit 90w. From my experience you ideally want 90w/90w.

Here is link if you are interested still.
https://onedrive.live.com/?authkey=!AOa7QAH3uuK6N48&id=17411AD72CBC0DB8!9556&cid=17411AD72CBC0DB8

 

I want to use 144hz monitor on this laptop, is this possible or would I be stuck at 60hz?

 

I have had the OP-LP2 since December 2018 and upgraded to dual channel (2x8) and repasted a few times with IC7, undervolt CPU core & cache -.0125 and have been running Afterburner with +100 core +400 mem with no problems except when the power goes out every now and then and the laptop switches from plugged in to battery and completely shuts off.

A quick reboot always fixed the issue, until now.

I was playing Destiny 2 and the laptop shut off last night. Upon reboot, the Bios OverPowered logo was very dim, and when it loaded into Win10, everything was dim and flickering at over 10%. Sometimes 20% could be stable for a few seconds, then it was like I was at a light show..... Anything over 20% was like being at 0% brightness, but minor flickers.

I am within the 2 year warranty (5 year in the manual but whatever...) and have tried the F11/12 process all day, tried loading on battery power (worse), tried to load a GPU intensive game and pulling the power plug again to get it to completely shut off and maybe reset with no prevail, took it apart and repasted the CPU/GPU and made sure nothing was smoking, ran the battery all the way down and tried to reset. I had a windows update install 2 days ago, and reverted that with the problem still here.Re-installed both intel and nvidia drivers w/ ddu. Reset Bios to factory setings.

Nothing has helped so far. I will keep trying things until Monday and them get ahold of support and see what possibilities are available since they are not selling this version anymore on their site (or they are just out of stock for now?). Hopefuly I can just return under warranty and upgrade.

 

If you have warranty, try that first. My problem with flickers is solved and still away. I dont know why my method is not helps to you, maybe some chip is strongly damaged than my was. When you reach stable 20% brightness, dont raise it to 30% immediately, i played again from 0 to 10-20 few minutes and after i can up to 30% etc.