[The big Race] The worst Clevo of my life. (How to put 6 grands in a paperweight)

Intro:

Hi,

I came here to have eventual advices and eventually genius idea to sort out... like the worst case of computer firewire ups I ever encountered. Yes, I'll mop up bad words with bad computer tech.

It's actually a shout out of a lasting situation I'm SICK of. I'm really, so so >DONE<.

First things first, yesh, my english is broken, I'm not from an english country.

The dream:

This whole deal started when I purchased a "Panther 5" from the (for me) overseas company Eurocom™, in 2014. It's built from the base of a Clevo P570WM/Sager NP9570 for info.

Purchased with a i7 4960X, 32GB of ram, and a crossfire of HD8970M, for about 5200€, without shipment.

Yes, I've been going for AMD GPUs at the time, and put pretty much my whole savings into this computer, as for my skills I was to be hired as a remote 3D artists, and the render we used was better polished for OpenCL than CUDA (which is... already weird).
+ the last nvidia GPU I had was a freaking leaf blower and had no issues with AMD for about a decade, so I was quite chill at the time of purchase, with no regrets.

It changed quickly.

First lap:

At first boot, drivers preloaded and so called "QC tested", cinebench triggered a BSOD related to amd drivers.
Upon reboot, the crossfire case to select was grayed.
And I also noticed the keyboard wasn't working properly, as half of the numpad keys was unresponsive.

Sending Eurocom™ a mail on the same day the computer was delivered, I waited few days for the answer. After that, for each mail I sent, the answer time grew exponentially, till I had months without answer, despite of sending more and more reminders.

It's only on the ending edge of my 1year warranty that I managed to send it back to them in RMA (still paying for about 350$ of shipment), the keyboard and one of the GPUs were replaced.

(yes, 1year for just being able to send it back... no need to say I actually lost my job offer to that I didn't had the required hardware to work)

Second Lap:

Boot, cinebench, BSOD.
Reboot, crossfire disabled and can't be enabled, even through a restore point or CMOS clear, load world of warcraft just for testing purposes in single GPU, hard freeze of the computer, needs to reset again.

Send mail. No answer.

Send more mails, open tickets. No answer.

I call them, tell the guy the issue, he tell me to send him the whole mail history. I export it in html format with attachements and stuff, send the whole zip archive.

No answer after that.

Remember, I bought it in May 2014, lost my job offer, put almost 6k in this computer (with shipmentS), and here we are in mid 2015, and I still can't use it, and they actually bail on me.

Windows 10 came along, but encountered the same issue. So it wasn't OS related.

I obviously eventually harassed AMD at some point, but they told me, and were right, that it was to Eurocom™ to get it fixed.

Flat tires:

I kinda went into depression, unable to mop up the big hole in the wallet, and had to do side jobs (cause no hardware to do jobs I'm better at and which pay more) until 2017 when I got sick... and got a bit of time to harass them again.

In the mean time, I had it kinda working after freaking pulling out one of the two GPUs, but I ended up like turning it on once every two week to play a game or two, as I had no job to do on it anymore, as it still had some hick-ups.
I was just so sick of it I still used an Asus K72jr as my main computer, even for most games (core i5 540m, 8bg of ram, 5470m)

New Green Engine:

When Pascal GPUs came along, and were announced to exist in MXM 3.0b form factor, I saw an eventual highway outta hell.
BUT, for that, I actually needed them to answer questions about compatibility... so... I needed them to answer at least once!

I opened up a new ticket (quoting the existence of older ones), resumed the whole story, specified I had the so much required eDP 120hrz screen and EVERYTHING WAS SO PROMISING!!

I even harassed them on EACH twitter post I caught of them from december 2017 to april 2018!!

AND they finally sent me a mail (oh surprise, they do remember it) when random people started to try to figure out how badly they firewired up.

>BUT< it wouldn't be Eurocom™ if they didn't made everything wrong until the end of it all.

SCSIest finish line:

I bought the panther 5 on the dusk of its existence, with a Dual GPUs config, maxed out ram, and extreme processor... AND THEY GAVE ME AN EARLY REVISION MOTHERBOARD !

SO early revision, I actually had an employee at Eurocom™ doing the test on his side on the same board that nothing above a 680M passes on it! No 780m, no 880m, no 980m... he didn't bothered trying 1060.

SO now, the person I'm in touch with is actually offering me to buy a freaking motherboard on top of a GPU, that I'll have to put in by myself. I do have the skill, but just... does this company have any sens of honor or pride somehow?

4years,
Almost 6k$$,
Lost my job offer,
I'm broken as firewire, (too broke to sue)
Lost 20kg and ended up being 56kg for 1m87,

And I'm basically ask a grand and have to rebuild it entirely to have it FINALLY working?!


The End of the Race... for now

So, all in all:

-If you have a magical bios mod that would allow a 1TP570WM3050158 v2.1 motherboard to freaking rock a maxwel or pascall high end MXM3 GPU, I'm all ears out.

-If you are willing to call for a riot to have an offer that doesn't sound as much as a scam as what I'm actually offered, feel free to use 69 thousand decibel megaphone

-If you just sadistically enjoyed the story with popcorn... at the very least, share it! (the story, or the popcorn, or both).

 

I am pretty sure that the v2.1 motherboard had only problems with 7xxM and 8xxM GPUs and that 980M and 1060/1070 MXM-b GPUs work just fine if done right...

@Johnksss @Trafficante @Mr. Fox @Meaker@Sager

 

Well Eurocom™ do put on their website that the P570WM needs a rev 2.2a or above to be compliant with Pascal GPUs.
http://www.eurocom.com/ec/upgrade(2,282,0)CLEVO_P570WM_SAGER_NP9570

Given the "long experience" I had with them, I can tell they are sometimes full of SCSIt but I really can't afford to try for my luck.

Btw, here's the link I originally made the purchase from: http://www.eurocom.com/ec/configure(3,224,0)Panther5

And btw @Prema you should take a look to Eurocom™'s bios... it has less features than most of my 2008-2010 laptops.
Better for you, bios modder, than r/techsupportgore if your into that kind of stuff

I run a computer repair shop and actually kinda survive for now, doing that. And what's making me sick, is repairing dozens of computers a month, but not being able to fix my own...
If I throw money on it and doesn't work, and can't go do 3D stuff to mop up the expenses, I basically sign in for bankruptcy...

 

too bad you can't chargeback now

 

Eurocom™ actually refuses returns&charge back, even upon delivery. Sweet uh?

If I wanted to do it anyway, I would have had to sue them. And after such a purchase, and losing a job offer, and just recovered from some health issues, I wasn't able nor prepared to take on a company, nor able to afford to pay an lawyer to do it... Aaaand the consumers defense organisations I got in touch with, else didn't cared much cause it's an overseas company, else actually asked me money for them to pledge for my cause (really...)

 

@woodzstack can you help this gentleman with something, you helped me before with my Eurocom GPU's issue.

 

Yes, with your BIOS mod, the 980M SLI worked really great in the P570WM that I had. No problems at all with stability or function.

 

Same here. Mine ran like a champ.

 

That's some great news, tho if someone is running a 10xx on a rev2.1 motherboard, it would be great.
Feels a bit wrong to pay more for a 980m which would roughtly score half the perfs of a 1060/1070 in renders and live previews, while still costing less in some places!

 

I believe that 980M and 1060 are basically the same performance level. I am not aware of 1060 performing better than 980M based on what I have heard. I've never owned a 1060, (or a 1070,) so I cannot be certain about that. Maybe compare results on 3DMark.com and see how they stack up.

 

Seems to be little difference when overclocking... In fact, 980M runs almost the same as a 1060 with lower clock speeds, at least in this comparison. These are not high scores, but they are overclocked. I chose scores in the similar range to see how the GPUs and CPUs were clocked and this is really close. Looking at this comparison, it seems performance is slightly tipped in favor of 980M. It is hard to find stock comparisons that are reliable, since people that run benchmarks rarely run them stock and the "professional" reviews are about as reliable as a worn out Edsel that has been abused. Close enough to the same that I would say spending money on 1060 if you already have 980M would be a total waste and not a real upgrade. But, if you were buying 1060 as a replacement for a defective 980M or something older like a 780M, then I would go with the newer GPU and not expect it to be significantly better than 980M. Just my two cents, and about what it's worth based on a down and dirty comparison.

https://www.3dmark.com/compare/3dm11/12520447/3dm11/9845391/3dm11/11398936/3dm11/12483147#

 

Actually, a company can't refuse a chargeback. It's your bank that does the chargeback.

 

@Mr. Fox True, but 3D mark still a "game oriented" benchmark.
Tho I won't hide I'll probably game quite a bit on this rig, the primary idea is to do 3D renders and encoding stuff. And CUDA cores count, better support of the lastest APIs and stuff are a big game changer to me.
As I'm sure a 980m would still be a really suitable GPU for 1080p gaming, and probably be a slight bit faster than a 1060, tho it will fall way behind a 1070 no doubts in everything, especially render tasks.

And TLDR for the original post, I have a non-working crossfire of HD8970M... non working, so I had to pull out one of the two GPUs to even get to the w10 desktop.
So yeah, 1060 would be quite an upgrade.

Also, as I won't probably get to be the richest rich of the rich people any time soon, if I buy a graphic card for this rig, I'll *probably* (surely) still have it in 4 or 5 years (with upgraded storage tho) as a main computer.

I really want to take the best chances of a long term support, so buying the newest card compatible is the safest bet I can make.

And god, I still hold up to my n610c as a retro gaming computer, it's a 15years old 15" laptop! Tell me about rentability, I'll probably still have the panther 5 running in a corner in 2039 !

@Mobius 1
Well my bank pretty much don't give a firewire about anything I say.
Actually took 3 calls, and 2 tracked mails and one identity check at their office to just have them SEND the money to Eurocom in the first place.
That's why I told them to firewire off in 2016 and switched to an other.
I'll tell you how much I hate them:
I'm one of those early birds that went for bitcoin in december 2011, when it was 2$ each. I went for buying for 100 bucks of it, and the bank blocked the transaction, and locked down my account for "unsafe use", sent mails, called them.
One week later, I had to drive to the bank and confirm my identity for them to unlock it... one more week later.
Since then, I knew the joy of looking for pennies under the couch to buy a can of tuna, so me and my cat could both eat a bit on the cheap.
Given what I missed cause of those dirty bugs, you might have a rough idea of my hatred.

I've seen some SCSIt man!

 

So, all in all:
-Eurocom bios is SCSIer than their stock management of old parts,
- & using Prema Mod on a rev 2.1 motherboard is supposed to get me easily to maxwell GPUs?

No record of a Pascal GPU successfully running on a rev2.1 with prema mod (or other bios I could grab somewhere)?

 

I don't remember who it was now, but I think somebody had 1060 working in a P570WM. Maybe check in the P570WM Owner's Lounge for posts or signatures.

Edit: here is a link to it, bro...

**Official Clevo P570WM | P570WM3 / Sager NP9570 Owners Lounge**

 

OP please contact your local consumer affairs / consumer protection bureau they exist to help people in positions like yours in pushing a case uphill against nonresponsive aftersales support. (Who / where they are and what they are called depends on where you are in the world)

In Australia for example there are provisions under our consumer law where
1) an issue originally reported while under warranty period and not adequately fixed can still qualify for repair under warranty terms after the expiration of the warranty;
2) warranties can be extended beyond (the statutory minimum of) 12 months for high value products in the expectation they will be better quality (though in this situation not buying an extended warranty would be held against you)

... but it's not just going to fall into your lap, you have to get out there and find the help.

Chargeback wouldn't be an option given time elapsed.

 

@Mr. Fox well the thread is THICC!
I'll have to dedicate a good couple of hours to scrub through it, check if someone got a rev 2.1 motherboard and a 1060 / 1070 working together...
And I can confirm that the Eurocom bios is nowhere near the prema mod one... not even a quarter of the options are there, and most of the motherboard infos are not even filled! (in HWinfo or CPUz, multiple lines display "To be filled by OEM"... seriously... )

@bennyg Given I don't even have the same bank, surely chargeback wouldn't be an option anymore for already quite a long time.
As I already did said, I did got in touch with consumer protection organisations, and they else didn't cared because it was to an overseas company, else asked me for money to open a case, money I didn't had. And as of today, I don't have the money to get a lawyer to actually take actions.
And sure they still could held against me that I should have bought a 4years waranty for a day-one issue they didn't cared to fix... so why would I get to throw even more money on a case I might loose and have to pay for THEIR lawyer's bills, when I can just get a bios mod, graphics card, a start making better money again, while still whining to their support, as I france, as long as a debt is talked about as pending, it doesn't expire.

I can still open a file when I do have a working computer and make better money, instead of doing it right away when I'm broke with low income and a paperweight instead of a working tool.

 

Edit after initial digging:
@Mr. Fox
Actually, I just looked up for "rev", "2.1" and "revision" in the forum threads, here is what I found:

Guess it means I'm just deeply firewired.

The thing is this person is the only one I found referring to this issue... and they never told if it worked or not... so I still don't know if it would work or not with a flashed bios to perma mod, and the answer from Meaker wasn't a sure answer, but a supposition.

If all there is to this rev is freaking adding 1 connection across the whole board, and swapping 1 capacitor for an other, I have a soldering iron and steady hands, but god, if only a bios flash would be enough... or if I just have to buy a new motherboard, I would better like to know it before buying the GPU, so I know what's coming before starting to make new expenses.

 

Edit after more digging
And digging deeper, stumbled across someone using a Panther5, just like me, with a rev 2.1a board, just like me, and who has no issue with his 980m... OK I'M LOST.
I don't know if it's an humblebragging or a full straight true statement... still nor if a 10xx would finally work... as the 9xx wasn't supposed to, coming from someone actually working at Sager apparently...

I think we are in need of some kind of an expert of old crappy rev motherboards to come to the rescue to have a final answer.

 

@Prema would likely know the answer to this question.

 

There is also @SFVogt who seem to have great fun, and who actually is the person saying he had no issue with 7xxm 8xxm 9xxm cards with rev2.1a .
Also, given since this post Eurocom actually provide some 1070s fitted to the P570WM, this man is ahead of the curve.

This one handy terminator seems to be used to tinkering with his P570WM. He could have the answer too!

 

let me take a look, see whats what...

 

Ouch what a story, though to be fair, you losing your job has nothing to do with your experience with EUROCOM, thats not on them, and shouldn't be brought up here, just detracts from what people are reading, even if you feel it is related, because you decided to trust them on some delivery timeline and your job required you to have this laptop - thats a dcecision that was on you.

now about the part about them not getting back to you and such in any timely manner, yeah - we all sort of know how that is with them, I deal with them on a daily basis, we all know eachother, and sometimes I find it frustrating as well not getting a reply the same day or sometimes ever.

They have thier reasons, I'm sure, maybe Eurocom was not so large back then, and lacked personnel or everyone thought someone else specifically was going to take the email and no one did. I of course have no idea... it still trumps me.

In retrospect, hindsight being 20/20, you should have sent TONS of emails until they replied, and maybe brought up the issues sooner to a public audience to net thier attention.

Anyways, I would like to help you, and not have to sit here and make some post damning EUROCOM, better things to do with my life, and I can say just as many good things about them too.

So, I have a few questions, did you make it known to them there was an issue when you received it ? (after the RMA)
how long was the pause inbetween ? If i understand correctly, your saying you spent 5-6K on this laptop, and never used it, and it still doesn't work, and you never got a refund ?
Or did you get it working , had it working, used it for years etc... and now there is another issue ?

Did at any point you stop having issues and stopped contacting them monthly ?
Because if you had a ticket open, and kept it open and they never responded or fixed the issue, you should just ask them to replace it with something newer or current, but if you were using it, or had the ticket closed and no issues for awhile at any point, and it was out of warranty, then it becomes a big mess.

I just want to understand what your saying happened, because 3-4 years is a long time, and I can not think of anyone who would sit on an issue that long.

many people come to me to buy EUROCOM products, and I act as the QA to make sure a working product gets shipped out, as well as I can make recommendations and such too, to help avoid wasting money or such who knows.

You could find someone in the future to do much the same for you, a sales person that does not work for the company specifically, who might be able to help you as a third party.

in this case, if you had purchased from me, as an example, I'd have been able to make sure they do not ignore me, and I could have kept you up to date without ever ignoring you, I know hindsight is always 20/20 so I'm not trying to poke fun at you or make this sour.
Just some customer service experiences differ from one company to another etc...

Anyways, whats the current issue you have, you want to upgrade the laptop or fix the current AMD stuff ? I really, n all honesty recommend you abandon the AMD stuff, it's not worth the price in laptops. In desktop its a good idea sometimes to buy an AMD card if your planning to throw it away in 6 months when its about to die anyways.

What is it you need or want at this point, maybe I can help , if its communication with them, I'm not going to act as a mediator or anything, that would be sticking my nose in it, but if you need parts or service or upgrades I can usually help or point you in the right direction.
Like you have Prema's attention here in this thread, he can surely help you with a bios if that's what you need.

 

Well to answer in order:

Job part
-Yeah I know the "losing job offer" part isn't the most sharp thing to assossiate with the story, but actually it's not just about timeline, but about professionalism. Even being 1 month late in delivery wouldn't have been an issue for the project I was tied with... but there it's not just timeline, it's buying a car on which you can't use anything but the headlights and the air conditioner. Aka, what I paid for was never delivered. It's way worse. And supposedly, a taximan scammed by a by a garage would loose his job to the garage having scammed them, not cause of himself. So please.
Also, as mental state can trigger physical reaction, some dormant non-ignorable and disabling health issues have been getting back on track at full speed after the initial event. It didn't help at all.
I'm not saying it's their fault for my health, as the eventual death of a relative could have trigger it back wouldn't be the fault of the deceased, but if they are not the powder, they still are the trigger.

You made me sound like a freaking mac-donald-only eating feminazi accusing all men to be the cause of her being stuck in a mall-door, that's harsh

Mail After failed RMA
-I sent a mail back to Eurocom when the computer went back from RMA almost the same day it did, as the first things I did in order was:
Checking for physical damages or loose screws, testing battery, letting it charge, power on, copy over cinebench, start test, crash.
On the same day I tried both windows 7 and 8.1 (as I had met someone with pretty much the same config, but purchased with 8 when I stuck to 7), and both AMD, Eurocom and Clevo drivers, EACH TIME ON CLEAN INSTALL.
I sent them a mail back at 2am... needless to say I spent like 12 or 14hours on it non-stop in a day-frame.
It wasn't answered until I basically paraphrased the situation in response of a "Trade in promo" mail (that, I receive regulary) in october 2015... The RMA part was back in MAY !!
And... what an answer:


Funny fact: for some reason, somehow, surprisingly, between october 2015 and january 2016, I opened 4 or 5 tickets, all exactly the same.
Up until the one in January, I wasn't even receiving the "ticket openned" mail thing.
Tho, for what difference it makes... the ticket never has been answered anyway.

(yes, my english gets worse depending of my degree of desperation)


Did it worked in the mean time?

-As I stated somewhere in this thread, I kinda go it to partially work. The cross fire is still a NO-GO, and to be able to update the drivers at all, I had to not just unplug the crossfire bridge, AND get one of the 2 cards out of the computer, stored it in ESD in a box.
The one left inside glitchilly performs, as in enough to play 1 hour straight, or work in 3D modelling environment, but anything like GPU render and encoding is a no-go, never completed one.
Also, I encounter some screen tearing, some openGL based apps and games have weird issues, and even saw once what I would call the strangest behavior in WoW.
The game was still running and stuff, but tore-appart-deformed-3D-objects stretching as far as engine can display were everywhere, like if someone decided to hard-grief a GMod server. I sadly lost this screenshot between desperate windows clean installs.
In total, game time and troubleshoot time, my secondary data drive (which is the sole drive which has been purchased with the computer and seated in the computer from day one, as boot drive have be swapped 2 or 3 time) has about shouldn't have more than two months worth of power-on hour count. So... almost unused for a 4 year old computer...

Third party, and using more means to actively getting fixed

-I know the original post is quite a long piece, but the 3 following pages are worth of about the same amount of informations. Due to the situation I was hoping to get out of when I get the job offer, and the one I was after failing at having what I paid for on first attempt, I was totally broke. Like, not even an expression or a way of saying it.

Where I used to live when this whole story began, it was Reunion Island. Lost in Indian Ocean (from june2011 to may2017). It's a French territory with some special conditions.
On top of the called "TVA" (VAT equivalent) of 20%, due to the island status, to give perks to local economy, all imports are submited to something called "Octroi de mer"
Basically, an added tax, ranging from 5 to 30% depending of the product.
When I got my computer back from RMA, as it contained a brand new card, I had to pay 90€ of tax on a 0€ bill. Just shipping it back to Eurocom already cost me 330€. At this price, I could have done it myself online, buying a new card, & having a friend ship it to me under the hood in a non-descriptive package (so it don't get taxed).

I could have sent it earlier to RMA, like, upon original delievery, right away opening a RMA request, not waiting for the answer and just sending it, like in may 2014. But I was so short after the initial purchase and without a job, I basically had to wait up until early 2015 to actually have any money to spend on it without endangering my survival in the freaking week to come.

Now I'm back to France, so it's a tad easier, but I'm still broke as firewire.

I've known streets in 2011, and during the last 4 past years, the priciest thing I purchased is a sofa-bed convertible at 300€, as where I moved, I had the mattress on the floor. The priciest piece of computer equipement I purchased for myself (and not a client) was a Z600 at 220$ as I needed a reliable storage and virtualization/hosting box. My phone is still a Blackberry Bold from 9700, and in average, on the last 4 years, I basically lived off of 650-700€/month, and having to skip days worth of food.

IF RMA spamming or third party had been an option, I probably wouldn't be here as my last resort, man...

Getting AMD stuff fixed or what?

-I went AMD back then cause of the software I was going to mainly use for render and stuff, based on OpenCL. But no, clearly, it made sense in 2014 for me to go AMD, it doesn't anymore in 2018. + I don't think repairing the crossfire would enhance the stability over single crappy-glitchy-GPU.. right?

As we are discussing actually, I've been recently back in touch with someone at Eurocom... FINALLY. And supposedly, due to my motherboard revision (a freaking early revision as I bought it in its last quarter of production time, seriously, firewired deep up until the end with this computer), nothing above a 680m would work in it, despite having an eDP 120hrz panel.
SOOooo, instead of realising how they somewhat completly firewired up from the start, they actually are offering me to buy a GPU AND a motherboard, dismantle the whole computer and rebuild it myself. What a good deal, right?

In the mean time, I also noticed that some people actually have 880m and 980m working on a rev 2.1a motherboard... and that @SFVogt who said exactly that, later did tests with a 1060 and 1070... meaning despite Eurocom claiming you absolutely need a rev2.2 MB, there could be hope for me there.
Buying a GPU, that I can afford if I plan 4 or 5 months ahead (yes, I'm at that point, despite having a job). Buying a GPU AND a motherboard for that computer, that I probably can't up until minimum 1 year and half... and it means in the mean time I buy like nothing but my food and pay bills. The last clothes I bought was 2 pairs of socks in 2016 and a clean looking shirt @ 30€ in 2017 when I had to go create my mono-self-employee company , you get the idea.

The help, and Prema?

-Well, actually I don't want people to go all out for me, or you (and your buisness brand) to literally plunge both hands in the ****pile this story is.

What I came for in the first place, is information, knowledge and datas I can't trust Eurocom to provide in a reliable manner.

As for the fact when I said I wanted to go 980m or 10xx, but wasn't sure a rev2.1 woud support Pascal GPUs, they quickly tried out with a system similar to mine in term of revs, and... strangely enough, on top of not supporting Pascal GPUs, according to their tests, rev2.1 doesn't support 9xx 8xx or 7xx, and I have to buy a new motherboard... what a coincidence right?

Even more when people actually don't have this issue here, using prema mod bios!

As when I bought this paperweight in the first place, it's like an all-in.
If I end up with a graphics card that doesn't fit in right AND answers some needs in term of 3D rendering and video encoding capabilities, I pretty much stuck, having invested more money with any pay-off.
(like finally going back to video production.. not that I dislike being a repair-shop, but where I am, it's not the best job to have, pays very little, and I would prefere to have that back as a hobby, and professionally produce video content again).

And if it fails, before the next attempt, I may have to wait half a year or more... It starts to age, this computer, but it aging doesn't mean it cost me less. It's about time to make a good move.

That's what I here, gather data and advice, if you have a friend at eurocom who may have some good in-and-out, why not, but I surely don't want to risk anyone else's income/stability in the process... if think you get what I mean. I know the opposite of stability too well to be willing to have someone risking it for me.

 

well thats a heck of a long explanation but very in detail, I see the ticket your showing, and it was closed, you replied to it to re-open it or such almost 2 years later, off by 1 month basically. Its hard for anyone to see the whole picture there, just saying, not defending anyone, just being neutral, hope I ma not rubbing you the wrong way.
Anyone and everyone can relate and justify that your feelings are valid, but if this laptop was so damn expensive, and it was costing your job or all kinds of personal issues, you know, you should have gotten something cheaper, and maybe gotten a refund. I know it doesn't solve any of your issues specifically, but it would have provided something better, like taking care of yourself.

Anyways - Prema's bioses seem to fix many things when no alternative at times exist or is available elsewhere, and I know for a fact a 1070 and 1060 also work in your laptop.
So in a way your laptop is still relevant and very powerful, even by todays standards. Course it would cost you some coin to flip the bill on some new hardware, but it is what it is. Hope things work out for you.
As for anyones friend in or out of EUROCOM, I guess that's me some times. I do business with them heavily, we're partners, but I do not speak for them, or have anything to do with thier customer service.

What I have found is when you have issues with a company and are not getting what you paid for, sometimes you have to be the guys who's issue is yelling the loudest. Its not a coincidence that when 1 person is having an issue, that they are tied up and not able to respond, usually it's a few people all having the same or similar issue and sometimes support can get lost along the way, I've had it happen to me, totally forgetting a client here and there or being late to reply, by almost 1-2 days a few times, things can get confusing or names can be similar, or notes not taken. It takes time and experience and hard effort to keep track of everything. Took me a good year to learn how to manage it without stressing out.
So it's possible some of the help you should have gotten fell to the side as you stopped being as diligent as maybe some other customers were, who might have been vying for more attention more dramatically - who knows. Things happen.

As for the extra taxes, that totally sucks, half my clients come to me because I find ways to get around the extra fee's if possible, you know.
At the least you did manage to use the laptop for a few years, so it's not like your money was thrown away, you had it working.
If you save up, and also manage to sell the cards you have in there now, that could subsidize your next investment. However - it also doesn't make the history and such of this laptop go away.

Its a hard choice to make, upgrade or buy new. If you really love it, and such, like many of us Alienware owners with an M17X-R4 / AW17 etc... you might wanna keep it.
But ultimately it's probably a better investment to use a desktop or buy a newer laptop.

 

well after seeing this post, I will never use EUROCOM LOL

 

Concerning the time span and the "closed" status
-actually I have seen an other ticket's status go from open to close several times... so I'm not sure if it means that the ticket is closed, or the service at the HQ taking care of the ticket, depending of the hour of the day.
Tho I have sleep cycle too firewired up to really answer that guess.
And yes, I sent mails, referring to this ticket, but when you spend years without answers, and have no means to freaking sue their face off, well...

Concerning the risk and price
I had as a requirement of having a computer of said-compute power to answer this job offer, and where I was living at the time, I had no place to put a desktop, nor even the reliability to power one!
Reunion island is like one of the worst place in all french territories when it comes to wall power, surges and losses. It's a place with typhoons, several a year, tropical rain and stuff...reason why I bought a total of 4 power bricks.
(and was right, cause just by merely using it, one of the four had enough time on dirty reunion island wall power to burn.)
say hi Berguitta!
Yes, I'm happy I escaped this one

Given that:
-I was planning on leaving this hell as soon as possible but wasn't confident about affording to mail what I couldn't carry to a plane myself,
-Had to have some kind of backup battery and surge protection
-Had little room, and was also in need of a screen good enough for video production, aka 1080p minimum with good colors and contrast(IPS and calibrated)

I had to go for a laptop. If I didn't encoutered all those issues, I would have paid a fair price for checking all thoses boxes at once!

If I hadn't, actually it's been a year I'm back in France, I didn't had enough expendable money in 1 year to afford it if I had to ship a desktop back to my new place.
I carried that thing during 14hours of flight.
(12hours for Reunion>Paris, 3hours wait in the airport, then 2hours Paris>where I live... an island again, but a good one! aaaaand I had the Eurocom Panther 5, and 2 other 17" latops of mine... et 2 more 15" in the lugages... I have more computer stuff than anything else.)


I also know for a fact 1060 and 1070 work in a panther 5

with a motherboard rev2.2a and above! I still don't have a clear answer for the rev2.1, which, according to Eurocom, can't even do a 780m, and according to @SFVogt go 980m SLI on it no problem! He also tried Pascal GPU, but without information about if he use the same motherboard or not.

That's the piece of information I'm most in need of, before considering any next step, or planing to buy anything.

Concerning Eurocom support

What drove me mad, it's not delays...
2 things:
-1, when I said at first (receiving a computer which has blue screen issues, bloated crossfire and a defective keyboard) that I wanted to send it back, have it refunded or replaced, as I saw that unit as freaking haunted, I was answered "no".
They would take their sweet time to change defective parts and send it back, but I would still have to pay shipment. Remember. 350€. (+ taxes lol, and when you see what the RMA gave out as result after all... call it worth it...)

-2 Someone, I don't know who, at their office is an big wide gaping printer port in all its glory.
Back in 2016, post January ticket, I called them and then was supposed to send to the "new guy in charge" the whole history of mail packed in zip folder, and got no answers afterward, I started calling them again. (I paid good price for those international calls afterward, btw)
The first time, I wait, it hangs up.
After that, I was unable to have them back on phone from that number.
Someone at their office blacklisted/blocked my home phone at that time.

Back in 2015, post failed RMA, while using the same thunderbird portable install, the same mail and stuff, I know for a fact some mails were received but never opened, or not received, for some unknown and unlikely reasons.
On some, I used the double tag "notify if received" and "notify if opened".
I had notifications of mail saying they got it, but never got the "opened" notification. Also that correspond to mails they never answered.
After the RMA and its aftermath of their failing and my despair, I stopped receiving notifications from sent mails.
It came back only in october when I received a trade-in promo of 25%... JUST FIREWIRE ME AND GET DONE WITH IT!!!!



1hour later, I was told to create a ticket. And we're hooking back to the part I was saying it took several attempts and months to actually receive a mail confirming the ticket was open, and provided a link to follow it. Hence the ticket from january 2016.

In resume, I don't say Eurocom people are bad.

I say their bios and drivers stinks, and that there is one or two support guys who I would prefere to be condom disguised cactus, because even that would make them less of a pain in the printerport.

Actually I almost feel compassion for the techies at the office who have to deal with them. Almost.


Tech support is hard, dramatic begging might have pushed others up in the queue.

As for the "dramatic card" some may have played with their support, I guess loosing my job, unable to pay teeth repairs or even the food to use them, living on the edge of losing my home, stopping treatments and letting my health deteriorate to pay bills and bits of food, doing computer repair while I can't afford a ****ing internet bill, using coffee shops wifi to download software and OS isos, I guess all of that wasn't dramatic enough.
I freaking shared tuna cans with my cat, cause it was the most affordable way we could eat both a bit of good stuff.

I mostly think they saw me as a poor guy from the otherside of the globe who ain't got the means to sue them. Good call, printerports.

Taxes

I told you the place I was is a living hell!
That's why I left when I had the opportunity! (also opened back to me the opportunity to import hardware.)

Upgrade or Throw

So much sweat, tears, rage and salt went into this computer, I want to keep it as much as I hate it.
As said before, I want to upgrade, and I'm just waiting for clear words from rev2.1 motherboards tinkerers, and yes, I'll sale those old cards.

Probably one just before buying (as it will help flattening the month expenses/earnings balance), and one after I confirmed the new card works flawlessly.

And I still keep in good shape and use and mod some 10 to 15years old hardware, so yes, I do expect to keep it for a while!

If gpu issue is solved, then what?

Well, finally get back to work in a domain which pays better, video production and stuff, and having computer tinkering back as a hobby and not a job.

Also, I'll probably mod slightly the Panther 5 afterward...

I want that Eurocom shiny logo in my trashcan, not on a working computer.

They don't deserve it.



_____________________________

Aaaand you might live longer, healthier and happier.

 

This is my main gripe with Clevo products. Due to clevo not being complete notebooks but parts that reseller can build into a notebook the support is piss poor. Honestly just sell it, lucky for you it has quite some worth, and buy something you can appreciate more. There are notebooks out there with way smaller form factor, better screen, better performance and much better support. There is no reason for you to cling onto an extremely chunky notebook that will only cause more and more headaches. If it breaks getting parts to repair it is also pricey and hard to find as well.

Don't invest anymore in half broken crap and get something working. Be smart, don't bother.

 

The thing is, if I just have to buy a GPU and resell the two old (which individually work!), it would be a small investment.
A 1060-1070, or even a 980m would make this computer still more than relevant.

If I try to sell a PC that has issues, that you qualify as half broken crap, How much will I be able to sell it?
I'm not really sure I can gain its performance back.

What I aim for is being able to do 3D rendering and video encoding again.
I don't think I would have a gpu with 6 to 8GB of GDDR5 and 32GB of ram, with an IPS panel 120hz, qualibrated and matte for the price I would have to sell it as an "half broken crap".
Sadly

 

You'd be wrong. There are notebooks which are only 15 inch and small form factor which can easily take on your half broken crap.

GS 65, 8750H, 144hz IPS, GTX 1070 8GB GDDR 5, 32GB RAM ~2.2k USD.
It also has NVME SSD, which you dont even have. There is absolutely no reason for you to stay with that huge chunk.

 

That's right, USD. In Europe, we don't exactly have the same prices... And I'm not sure I can have even 2k2... well maybe? Someone here want a P5 motherboard rev2.1, which don't work?
The thing is shipping it is already an issue, and second-hand computers only sell well where I am when we're speaking of servers.

Unless someones is actually willing to buy it, or trade it, I'll be waiting for the rev2.1 motherboard gods on this forum to tell me if it worked with this rev, and if yes, how?

 

There are some here who are willing to buy it anyways, I mean it is technically working, it does boot, just as expected it's not optimal, far from it. There are some who would like to fiddle with it and pay a premium just for the privilege of having a "rare" notebook.

In the end its up to you, for all I care you can spend even more money and pray that it will work and that it never breaks because getting new parts is pricey and hard as it is.

I'm amazed that after all the years you still consider trying to fix it, despite that thing being so unreliable and garbage that it even cost a job.

 

Yeah, what you want him to buy is 100% small form factor broken crap with MSI’s well known useless battery boost, near 100C degrees overheating mess and below Intel’s promised Base clock frequency. What a great advice to @LaPlume
He should stay far away from this, Thin and flimsy MSI mess!!

 

@LaPlume - I'm sorry to see that you've had both problems with the laptops and in your personal life over the last few years. Crossfire models have been notoriously dodgy in terms of especially driver support and they (including most AMD chassis models) either work incredibly well, or just give up the ghost. I know that I have seen my fair share of customers who have had ongoing problems with AMD GPUs and drivers, often there's really no 100% fix and I can tell you for a fact that almost all the major Clevo resellers/System Integrators had similarly huge support issues with the AMD models.

That aside, I'm not replying here to argue one side against another and I certainly don't want to comment on the support you received - would be unfair of anyone really to do so as we weren't in either your or Eurocom's shoes.

Let's not start defending entities that aren't defending themselves on here by implementing speculation. It's also not on (in my opinion) to suggest that a customer hasn't been diligent enough in their communication or forceful enough in their quest for a response or solution.

You need to be really careful here - what you've suggested is that Eurocom's Quality Assurance is not adequate (or doesn't exist, which is why you act as the QA) to ensure that a customer would receive a working product - that's an extremely slippery slope. "Optimised" - perhaps yes, but "working"??...also let's remember that there's a difference between a heatsink which can be manipulated to optimisation vs AMD Crossfire drivers which were severely lacking, plus BIOS/EC thrown in the mix - that's a completely different ball game. Also, maybe consider change your profile text to "Official Eurocom Reseller" - that describes much better what service you offer - there's no such thing as an "Official Clevo Reseller" ;-)


Getting pretty serious for a minute though, I think I'm completely justified in calling this out:

You've just told the internet that half of your company's business comes about via tax fraud.....................I'm not even going to go into how that could come back to bite you, or your customers, or how it's massively unfair on the law abiding companies who operate legitimately (including the ones represented on nbr) that you're taking customers away from.

 

In CPU bound situations the 6 core running consistently over 4GHz is going to come out on top for sure.

It was a brick, but even now it holds its own in that regard.

 

Well I know I've been ranting quite a bit, but really what I'm looking for is not to expose eurocom, for all I care about their well being, but to have, myself, an affordable solution in hands.
For there is, I'm sure, GPUs that would perform well even if I have to flash the bios, or even route&solder cables from point a b and c to point d e and f.

As in the defense of woodzstack, there is legal tricks to avoid some taxes, even if he's doing it, as long as it is legal and doesn't hurt someone but politician's pockets, he's a white hat! (Tho I don't know if he is, anyway, it's not something to ask.)

And as for the MSI laptop and such, yeah, unless I freaking void warranty day 1 to liquidmetal cool it, it's not really what I need...
Even aside of cooling issues!
Boot times! For what I care... I would like it to run 24/7!
Drive speed? Tell me how I cram 2 9mm 2TB SSHDs in that for ingest files, renders and stuff, I then I would consider it...
4 usb? It would be PC gangbang all day with no free hole!
No express card slot? I don't expressly need it, but I do have a decent express capture card... 1 more thing I would loose
(or I would have to do capures on a secondary computer... and the only ones with express card slots are a x200 and a x201.)
And even without all of that... content creation on 15".. thanks!

No seriously, I need rev2.1 gods to answer!

 

Why is this thread even still going on?

Just get a 980M or even two (better non-g-sync) or a single 1060/1070 in MXM-b format and be done with it.

 

In the simplest world I would, but I lack datas to narrow down the odds.

The thing is we hear few calls of people being fine with rev 2.1, calls of people having issues with rev 2.1, and people being fine with rev don't mentioned.

I know I shouldn't go g-sync already as my screen doesn't support it as-is (cause originally shipped with amd cards), tho I heard there is a lot of different models of 1060-1070 MXM 3.0b out there... some advertised by eurocom, who call for rev2.2a+ MBs, and their GPUs are far from the cheapest at that...

I only have 1 try.

 

okay no need to slander me here.

I can charge whatever I want for my services, and I do not encourage or do anything illegal, that is not what I am saying. You having a bad day or something, I feel your slandering me here in all honesty.

EUROCOM like any company has thier own quality control, as everyone knows, but acting as a third party, I add my own level to it as well. Thats the obviousness of what I am suggesting and out right saying.

As for declaring of taxes and stuff, many customers do not know that if you send something in for work and have it sent back to you, you should not be paying taxes on, because you've exported it and imported it back, so clearly, running a business and in the mindset to help people, I make sure they know how to do the paperwork to get that done, if you are not sure how that's done, perhaps I can help you and your company, when people buy from me and also say, within Canada but not in Quebec for instance, they do not need to pay HST so much as only GST, because I am located in Quebec, some companies try and charge you all the taxes etc...

I do my taxes and provide all legal documentation for everyday. When I sell outside of Canada, I do not charge taxes unless I need to, in order to avoid customs own service charges and such, most of the time, I handle it myself, same on importation, I try and broker it myself save my customers a penny here and there etc...

If I am selling something, and my services were many hours going into it, I do not add the value of my time to the invoice of the declared value of the products, because that is not actually how it works, even if a customer paid me 50$ to service his laptop, the value does not go up by 50$

So maybe there is a misunderstanding. I do not make my customers pay the importation on the value of my services, that does not add to the declared value, as I have been instructed it is legal, theres no tricks. Not sure what you were getting at, but I do everything in my power to help my customers, I genuinely try to care.
I am not here advocating anything illegal, and EUROCOM and I are partners, in that I do business with them officially very heavily, for all the things said about them and those who do business with them, it's easy to only see or hear negativity, however, theres still a reason we do business with them thats very positive, but no company is perfect, and offering myself as a method to overcome the downsides of a larger company by working 1 on 1 with my customers is what I do. Like why be a number and forgotten next week, right ? There's value there. There is also value in getting a second look at almost everything of value that you have personally made or configured for you, by a third party. In the world, people make whole careers out of that for so many things, ranging from quotes for housing and cars to travelling tickets back to computers etc... you get me right ?

I am also registered as a reseller for other companies as well, not just EUROCOM, I just favor them because we're like a close knit family.

 

no idea... for my part I was tagged, my bad.

 

I honestly don't understand how people don't search these forums first when using a Clevo vendor. I and many others have had epic problems with Eurocom and I honestly have no idea how this company still exists given the horrible things they have done on numerous occasions to numerous customers. A little searching around the forum should tell any potential Eurocom customer all they need to know to stay far away from this company.

My condolences to the OP for having to deal with them.

 

Well somehow when I was looking through forums, Eurocom was one of those with the least amount of crap dumped of them, and anyway one of the only companies shipping to Reunion Island, and in the pack, the sole one to sell Desktop CPU powered Laptops.

It's not like I would have had the choice anyway.

 

Your country doesn't have a Clevo reseller?

 

Google Reunion Island and you will see

 

They are considered to be part of the Eurozone, and they use Euro as currency, shipping might be artificially difficult, but there are re-shipping companies in EU to overcome companies stuck in the 80's that wont ship to X place.

If its in the Eurozone, re-shipping from France, or Germany shouldn't incur in any extra customs charges and might tip-toe around half the problems you had initially.

 

Well on reunion island (where I was from early 2011 to 2017), some stores have their local pole, but with 1-2years old stuff on shelves and brand-new-next-gen prices or higher. This area may be part of France, it has a whole lot of differences, like what I would call a "technological latency" in term of hardware offers (not even speaking about crappy internet), and also its own whole pack of taxes that add themselves to France's metropolitan ones.

If you look at it closely, also a lot of resellers don't ship to reunion island... back then trying to buy anything from a UK, German or even French guy on Ebay or Amazon, a lot of them, like 70% of french ones for example, don't ship to Reunion Island.
Asus Store for example again, don't ship to Reunion Island. Most online stores like Fnac don't ship to Reunion, but they have store there... with 2 years old stuff on their shelves, at release-price or higher. Materiel.net used to not ship there at all, and don't have stores localy.

Reunion Island have quite an history of old colonial remote place, 30years ago people there were living pretty much like EU 60years ago, and it's 20 or 25% of people between 16 and 65years old there that don't even know how to read!
This place's a mess, and like the worse french territory to live in for a techie.

I pretty much scrubbed the web multiple weeks before placing the order at Eurocom's evil lazy lair. It was not my only option, but the best price/perf ratio I found that would accept to ship to that well of a place without being able to find many people talking ill of them.

 

I looked after a good handful of sales to customers in the Islands 5-6 years ago...whilst indont have a comprehensive list of companies that do ship there I can confirm that it's no problem for us.

I think lots of companies based in Europe just don't have the knowledge to do it, if you don't have a commercial DHL, UPS etc shipping account then pricing and insurance can be tricky.

 

Back from the dead everyone, and close to finally have the finances to afford a GPU for that hot mess without putting my everyday charges and needs in danger. On top of that, RTX series might get Pascal GPU's prices down, so it would be great.

From what I gathered from the whole thread, everyone is at least sure about something: dump the crappy Eurocom BIOS, and go for Premamod's one.
I can't agree more as lately, XTU isn't even able to ajust cpu's frequency, locking it down at base 3.60ghz, when it's supposed to go up to 4.2 on all cores and 4.5 on one (according to my previous stress tests and overclock) Aka, freaking XTU can't even communicate properly with the BIOS/Motherboard. What The Flux?

Though, number of people are still having a debate about the GPU issue.
-Some tell me I can't go for a 1060-1070 with a 2.1a rev motherboard (among them, eurocom themselves).
-Some tell me I can go for a 980m, and others (like eurocom), say I can't go higher than a 680m.

I have litterally >one shot< at it. If I buy a GPU, I have to make it worth it quickly (by directly making it profitable through doing 3D modeling and renders).
If I buy a GPU, then witness just failure to the sole reason there was no way for it to work in my MB rev, I will just be stuck with a still crippled computer, a GPU that I may have issues to sell in my area, and no spare money.

I'm just willing to know if somebody could certify that they got the same motherboard part number and rev and got XXX gpu to work in it with XXX bios version.

 

High end RTX cards will not get MXM implemented for the same reason why there is no GTX 1080 TI MXM card, so pascal prices won't drop.

Maxwell should work, even Eurocom sells the "Panther 5", that being said, you never know if you got the same issue as the HM series, if u got the MXM port wired like the HM series you are locked to 680M. I'm still suprised you didn't sell that thing and purchase something decent like an AW 18x, M17X or MSI GT series, hell even the P3xx series or P17x series would be a major upgrade at this point.

Reason for my sugestion:
You clearly don't have the money to salvage it since parts costs a fortune (CPU, GPU etc.), finding parts for your notebook is an absolute nightmare, support for notebook is garbage and it's extremely bulky even tho it's not needed.

You'd be much better off with a proper and good notebook like mentioned above. I think you might become a huge fan of an M18X. People like @Raidriar love those quality notebooks.

 

I would work with a seller who is willing to let you test and return.