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

hello plume, thank u for the picture of the island. I'm from Reunion island too but i'm not quite sure i live on the same island as u. I buy my clevo last year from a french reseller and i can tell u, buy a product from reunion island is more interesting because the tax is less from France.
Like a lot say before, you have to be caution went you buy Something on internet, you have to make some research to see if you can trust the company.
you can search for "pc anywhere clevo" if you want to buy a clevo on french soil. for many year i bought my clevo at "pc anywhere" and until today i'm still a client of that company and my P775DM3-(G) run like a charm.
I'm hope, you find an outcome for your computer.

 

@Danishblunt
Pascal prices might drop as even if RTX won't have their place in the MXM world, soldered-to-the-board RTX equiped laptops might make MXM slot equiped laptops and their spare parts drop in price. Makes sense somehow?

You're speaking about the HM series, but as the P5 is my sole and only Clevo computer, and as wiring issues was never talked about in the threads I searched through, I'm not too sure about what you mean. Mine's a P570WM.

For the whole buying a gaming laptop thing, we talked about it earlier.
I'm not really in for gaming, but 3D render. Thermals and storage are more important to me than portability, battery, or RGB lightshow, and I'm not willing to trade any of the first two for even the 3 lasts together.

A 4960X 6cores 12threads @4.4 with no thermal throttling, that's not an easy score to beat.
32GB of ram, I surelly didn't aimed that quantity just to run a video game, and fill the rest with chrome tabs. After Effect, Adobe Media Encoder, Cinema 4D, they love their ram.
1SSD + 2SSHD, that's not an easy storage solution to beat, and I need that for ingest and source files.

And I still haven't sold it because I didn't yet found any alternative with the same potential at the price I would be able to dump this bricked brick.
Tell me, how much would you be willing to pay for a working Panther 5 i7 4960X, 32GB of ram with one ATI 8970M?

@Meaker@Sager which is not easy to find, as well at there is not many people selling those cards, so need to have double luck.

@deo974 You bought it last year, I bought mine 4 years ago. I didn't knew them at the time, and I was in a rush for a job when I ordered my computer.

I needed particular components at the time, aka the best OpenCL render capabilities. Resellers at that time didn't offered much in high end red-side. AMD was only present on budget solutions, so resellers weren't an option for an highend mobile crossfire workstation.

For taxes, sure, sometimes you get refunded cause it's less expensive in Reunion than France. I imported it tax free from canada to Reunion, paid Reunion taxes. All Good.
My issue is when custom house is making me pay taxes on a free remplacement of a component. That's the scam. Surelly we lived on the same island, but you never had an issue with your computer. I had many, with everything. Consider yourself lucky.

Also, outside of their own website, today the 2nd to 9th results on my google search of "pc anywhere clevo" are forum posts about how they failed to provide accurate compatibility spreadsheets, and how some peeps are stuck with faulty laptops that they have issues getting refunded for.
I was in a rush, and as Reunion always lags a bit behind, I don't know how it is today that I'm not there anymore, but at the time, I had very few options. And sadly, Eurocom seemed to be the less sketchy at the time.

 

I said wired like the HM, not that you have an HM version. If it's wired like the HM notebooks are, 680M is ur max.
In terms of 3d rendering, your notebook would get smacked by the Asus GL702ZC ryzen 1700, P750TM 8700/8700k/8086k, P870TM 8700/8700k/8086k, Acer Predator with Ryzen 2700 and would have very similair performance to even the I7 8750H's out there.

Literally every laptop I have except for my macbook beats your stoage. P157SM-> 5SSD's, P375SM 4SSd's (could have added another for bluray), GT 72 2SSDs, 2HDDs. Not only that but due to M2. my GT 72 has much faster SSD's than you could possibly get into your notebook.

There are certain people who would pay decent money for your system. I wouldn't be one of them, since it's to much of a heavy brick and given the problems it caused and the fact that we are now at a point where thin and lights have similair performance, i'd rather not want it.

EDIT:
I7 8750H @ 3.99ghz
Your CPU @ 4.5ghz

So yeah, the thin and lights are actually faster than your brick. As I said, you'd be better of getting rid of it. Only redeeming quality was the fact that it has SLI and could technically be upgraded, which apparently isn't even happening on your revision, so in a nutshell, a small 15 inch thin and light gaming notebook will beat your maxed out system In gaming, rendering, batterylife, i/o etc.

I hope you finally start to realize, that it's just a waste of your time and money to still try to make it work.

If you can get a little money together this one would probably be the perfect notebook for you:
http://www.hidevolution.com/msi-wt75-8sk-008.html

Desktop coffee lake for your rendering, 6 storage slots (with DVD replaced 7), extremely high color accurate panel, up to 128GB RAM, Quadro card for rendering that supports the openGL drivers, overall quality notebook.

 

Well, ok, the issue being I still can't find anyone willing to buy that brick at a price that would allow me to switch to an other computer that wouldn't be a downgrade. And I hate to give up, given that this brick being a brick literally f*cked during 4 years of my life.

 

While you might be hard pressed to find something new that is a downgrade in cpu performance with a current gen GPU that yo can afford. I'd say in many other ways it would be an upgrade, as you'd end up with a device that works, and comes complete with a warranty for the entire system.

While upgrading the Panther might be cheaper, and say you get it to work with a Pascal GPU, what happens if for whatever reason the system stops working? As you would then have no warranty on a system that you seem to very much depend on.

Exactly how much you can get for the panther I don't know, maybe there is somebody that has a practical use for it, and the will and finances to take a risk on it. Otherwise like danishblunt has stated, there are definately some that are willing to pay more than it should be worth just due to it being a relic of a bygone era of laptops.

 

It could be a case of throwing good money after bad.

 

My condolences go out to you @ LaPlume for having a bad experience with the Panther 5 from Eurocom.

As you can see in my signature I purchased my Panther 5 from Eurocom but I have not had major issues with my notebook to this day. I had mine equipped by Eurocom with Dual 980Ms because AMD GPUs have always had issues with drivers and such in these notebooks. Initially I had to use modified Nvidia drivers but with the newer 300 series drivers I no longer had to modify the drivers. Its been awhile since i have looked at my motherboard in this notebook but believe i have 2.1 or 2.2a motherboard revision as my Dual 980Ms work inside this notebook. I have an affinity for this notebook that is why I hold on to it similar to you. With the cost of 1060s I would not bother to try to upgrade the Panther 5 to a 1060 from a 980M because its not worth the time and money. Upon reading your situation it may best for you to sell it on EBay or Amazon and try to recoup some of the money back so you can purchase a laptop that maybe better equipped for your needs. You wont be able to get all or even half of your money back but you still could get enough to purchase a notebook with a 6 core CPU and a 1070.

 

Amen.

Even tho I would argue that the 1060 runs way more efficient. Tempwise a 1060 would be worth over 980M's, the 1060 is almost half the 980M's TDP. Performancewise u're right, they're extremely similair.

@LaPlume
just shove it on ebay with a high pricetag while having "best offer" on and see if anyone makes a decent offer. I mean why let that thing even mess with you even further? As stated you'd be making a huge upgrade by even getting a thin and light.

 

You can't SLI 1060's, so no.

 

https://www.3dmark.com/fs/14989128

 

Cool, show me a game (not Ashes of the Benchmark) utilizing 1060 SLI. I'll wait.

 

Why would I? You said it can't SLI, I prove you wrong. Doesn't mean it does a good job @ SLI or can run all games (in this case any other than ashes of the benchmark).
Not to mention that OP doesn't want SLI cards, since he doesn't do gaming. He just needs a decent card for cuda rendering as it seems.

Since you dislike reading let me quote OP:

Which means:
GTX 1060 >>>>>>>>>> GTX 980M.

 

That example of "SLI" doesn't use an SLI bridge, it communicates over PCIe. So technically it's mGPU, not SLI.

 

Really they need a proper system to present both GPUs as one with the high bandwidth even if it means going back to an abstraction layer, just a universally supported one.

 

Update:
My Ebay auction for it expired the 27th of december.
Reminder of the specs: i7 4960x, 32GB of ram, x1 HD8970M, not a single scratch, w/out drives, with 2 chargers and carrying travel case.
Bidding starting @ 500€.
Basically starting the auction @ processor and ram's refurb market price, and not a single bid on it.

Depending of the auction's end price, I would maybe have canceled it, but I wasn't excepting 0 bidding on it.

At that point I'm about to do what I did to an other laptop of mine (compaq n610c): max it out just because why not, and suck as much usefullness of it as I can, for lulz, no care if it's worth it as long as I'm having FINALLY at least a bit of fun with it.
(in the n610c 's case: usb2.0 through 1 pcmcia, pcmcia video capture internally wired, 2gigs of ram; double officially supported amount, msata SSD > msata-to-ide adapter, processor upgrade and custom cooling, dualbandwifi instead of bluetooth in the screen lid, 1990-2005 "retro" gaming)

I'm wondering if there is a pin-out difference between 2.1 and 2.2a revs of the motherboard or something, haven't found an answer to that for now.
I remember DanisBlunt talking about "HM" series pin out locking them to 680m at best.

Yes, I'm at that point I don't really care anymore, I have a soldering iron, steady enough hands, and free time! (car got stomped, and basically don't have a job again rn)

 

Why don't you try the marketplace here on NBR?

 

That's a great suggestion for anyone wanting to sell a notebook, but there is one problem with it in this case.
** Marketplace Rules and Regulations ** (MUST READ BEFORE POSTING!)

 

Kinda forgot about that, feelsbadman.

 

Only another 73 reasonable posts and he would qualify.

 

I... didn't thought ranting, venting and straight financial suicide was qualifying as "quality posts", but I'm fine with that

Also, on top of the MB rev, and even with 32gig and a extreme cpu in it, it got a non-english keyboard layout. (yeay, azerty~) One other strong point that doesn't help selling it outside of france. Even Belgium are slightly different, and Swiss is using qwerty.

 

Just out of curiosity, did you try calling or sending an email to [email protected] to see if they are willing to rectify the issues? The P570WM/Panther was an awesome product and I really enjoyed mine.

Do you have a link to your eBay auction? There are some customers out there that have a fleet of these beasts and they are still in demand. Perhaps Eurocom would be willing to buy or facilitate a sale to help you out.

 

Well as said in the original post, I had been in contact with eurocom support for a lot of stuff.
This computer already did a full back and forth through RMA (that I paid shipping for) as from day 1, both the crossfire AND the keyboard were defective, and it took them almost a full year for it to happen, as at first the guy I talked with was even unable to answer mails, looked like pretending I wasn't able to use the numLock key... (the last 2 right columns of keys were not working at all, numlock enabled or not).
Back from RMA with a new keyboard, and a new card for 0$ on the bill, had to pay taxes cause new stuff coming through local frontier, yeay, and the crossfire wasn't working, and I was out of the 1year warranty.

I don't think I would call that "willing to rectify the issues".

As for selling it back to Eurocom, they proposed a 25% off of their new stuff for trading in the panther 5.
And sending a 5k2$ computer (that cost me 6k with shipping and RMA shipping and RMA taxes), given I would have to pay at least 150-200 bucks again for shipping it again, and that I'm not that willing on going that whole rodeo twice to end up making a venting out post on here in 4 years cause I would have been stuck with a brick again... let's say I would be better off selling just the ram and cpu, tossing to trash the rest, gpu included, and buying something @ >any ever< other clevo reseller.



Also, having learnt that Prema has stopped distributing his biosmods due to some poopy-behavior from an user who leaked one of his bios-mod, I guess I'm out of luck to use one for my 6k Brick.
I actually managed to find back some of his bios still up somehow (won't tell how, as it's against his will), but not the p570wm one.
Any idea of any bios that could be at least a tiny bit better than Eurocom's one, which apparently isn't even able to communicate correctly with XTU, and is full of "To be filled by OEM" stuff when ever I fire up HWinfo or any other similar software?
To give you an idea, this bios doesn't even allow me to modify anything else than the boot options and PXE thingy. Not even the cpu clock multiplier!

 

Why dont you just flash the latest Clevo BIOS?

All you gonna lose is the logo that shows up at boot...

https://repo.palkeo.com/clevo-mirror/P570WM/

There is BIOS and EC in there, those are from Clevo, and its BIOS 1.03.06 and EC 1.03.03.

Or get it from Eurocom, they also have BIOS on their site..

http://www.eurocom.com/ec/faqs(282)CLEVO_P570WM_SAGER_NP9570

They call their BIOS version 0307 and their EC 0303.

I dont get this whole rant about BIOS, Clevos are mediocre/crap machines without custom firmware to fix all their limitations, and half the value of a Clevo is in having a good modded BIOS, since there are no more "free" Prema BIOS and you have to buy from X store to get it, forget Clevos and their 2000 designs.

 

Well the "rant" wasn't much of a rant. If that's a big "venting out time" you want to read, that's the #1 that would feel your needs.

And I was just wondering if someone had any other potential options than Clevo's bios, and I would pick them over Eurocom's without any doubts.

And it's hard to forget about when you are 6k in.

 

What do you mean with fix all their limitations?

You do realize Premafied BIOS still doesn't fix lots of problems right? P37x cant OC ram even with Premabios without bug.

@LaPlume seriously, just get over it. You're punishing yourself more by holding to the junk instead of purchasing a thin and light.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BB7XN8C/ref=psdc_13896615011_t4_B07BWT2H56
1600USD notebook kills your worthless crap in any application be it CPU only or GPU.

 

Maybe should have used some, didn't know that even with Prema bios there are still bugs/limitations left after, their firmware must be something else then...

 

Well, maybe this is a bit off topic. But I just want to say I was on the verge of buying a Eurocom X7C very soon since my Alienware 17r5 flopped. However after reading your story and whole journey, I now thank you that you helped stop me front buying a loaded machine that would have set me back $3500 CAD without thinking it over twice. Without adequate customer service, good hardware won't be very good if a problem arises. Ontop of the ongoing Clevo issue with disabled turbo boost during operation, this story about Eurocom really enlightened me (Eurocom is the only reseller here in Canada that is known well and locally available).

 

Look at my signature... I think I do have a problem with holding to old junk :/


Also yeah, would be nice just getting over it, but thing is for now I'm not sitting on enough money to allow myself to treat myself to a nice thin and light... even more given the thermal issues I fear about with thin and lights, I would like to put a little more to invest into a Zephirus-class well-breathing laptop I would be comfortable to tinker with, liquid-metal TIM it, and be confident I can let it run 24/7 and sometimes render for dozen of hours straight without crashing (thing I'm doing right now with my Z600, I crammed a cheap ebay rx470 in it, passed it through to a VM and using it for rendering).