1070GTX (Clevo P650RS) constant crashing driving me nuts

Hi all,

So this is my third Sager in 11 years; the previous units were stellar, and had only minor issues. But so far my P650RS is a massive pain. It performed OK the first few weeks I had it, but then I moved to New Zealand, and since I had no internet for two months (getting internet hooked up here is a nightmare), I barely used it.

When I finally got connected and set up late in April, the problems started. First the crashes happened occasionally while playing Warhammer; the screen would lock up, flash black with some artifacts before CTD. I thought it was heat-related at first, but I checked my temps and they're fine. The problem has gotten steadily worse; I now can barely game at all, which was the whole point of purchasing a laptop this powerful. There are inexplicable bursts of performance, but most games (Skyrim, BF1 being the main ones) crash very quickly.

It's worth noting that this doesn't really happen when I'm using the battery. I thought it was voltage-related, but it seems to happen even at relatively low GPU voltages as well (mainly above 1v, but anything above the battery cap of .775 will do it). It's not generating dump files, and the only errors I ever see are from BF1 (mainly, error_device_removed). It charges just fine through an NZ plug adapter, though it does spark when plugged in.

Other assorted problems:
Frequent black screen at Win10 login
Some flickering/gray lines on HDMI output (intermittent)
Sound issues - have to change playback device constantly, sometimes no sound when there should be, HDMI crackles
Weird noises - clicking sounds when starting/powering down the PC, clicking sounds when disconnecting the headphones

I've tried everything I can think of to fix this, and while I get brief windows of hope the problems always persist. I've messed with the power settings every which way, updated, rolled back, reinstalled the drivers about 10 times, tried to disable, uninstall, reinstall the integrated GPU, enable/disable MSHybrid, underclock the card, increase page file, but nothing works. I'm about out of patience and don't know what to do. XoticPC support wants me to reinstall Windows 10, but this isn't something I'm keen to do because bandwidth in NZ costs a fortune, I'd have to re-download well over 50GB of stuff, and this may not fix the problem.

If it's the power supply, then I can replace it, but if it's the GPU then I don't have any good options to fix it since I'm overseas. It's kind of pointing in that direction, but the fact that everything seems to work on battery does give me some hope. Still, the fact that nothing seems to be resolving the problem is frustrating as hell. Is there some really obvious explanation that I'm missing here?

Thanks in advance.

 

What you described sounds an awful lot like a failing 1070.

Are you only running into these issues when you stress the video chip? What if you enable MSHYBRID and default programs to running on the Intel Grahpics exclusively through the NVidia Control Panel?

 

Sounds like some of the memory on your video card is defective. Try to underclock the video card memory by a good margin and see if that helps matters. If it does, you'll know what's the cause for sure.

 

The issues mainly happen when the card is under stress, but I do get black screens/crashing at login and startup sometimes. MSHybrid won't activate despite being enabled in BIOS and HotKey. The card seems to totally ignore the underclock settings in HotKey and use however much memory and power it wants as long as I'm not on battery. I did briefly have Hybrid working, and there were no crashes, but it stuttered constantly and a driver update screwed everything up.

If I could successfully underclock it and get it to least run stably, that'd be better than nothing, but I'm doubtful this will work. Having to ship it back to America for repair will be very expensive and just generally a pain in the ass (import/customs regulations, no PC for weeks). So I'm in a bad spot. I guess I took this risk moving abroad, but I've never had a problem like this with a Sager machine in over a decade.

 

I have the exact same problem! Di d you find any fixes?

I received my SAGER NP8153 (Clevo P650RS) in December and it was all fine and dandy. However starting at some point (I think it was after my summer break started so around May or July), My computer began to do the exact same thing that you described. Black screen with multiple restart loops at login screen and crashes after a while whenever I play games or work on Unity, or even sometimes when I watch video.
Edit: It just seems that my graphics card died..

Also I never seen it crash when it runs off of Battery.
I wonder if there were any design flaw in this laptop which causes this?

Edit: It just seems that my graphics card died..

 

We have not had a particular influx based on that issue, just some hardware does not quite make it. I would contact our support team.

 

Hi,
I bought a P650RS almost a year ago and my computer began to do the exact same thing that you described. Black screen with multiple restart loops before login screen and at login screen when I press a button on the keyboard. The only way to make it works is to press the power button until it shutdown and then start again the portable.
When I am playing or watching videos, I have no more issues... I can play 6 hours without any crash. I completly reinstall windows 10 and I am always on discret mode. I install the new Nvidia drivers.
Does anyone having the same issue found a solution ?
The portable is still under guarantee but I installed another EC/Bios, I bought the portable from PC Specialist (from XMG, which is, in my opinion, the best EC/Bios profil). I am not sure if the guarantee is still active.
Thanks a lot in advance,
Cedric

 

You can check on their website for warranty status but you could request their latest firmware before sending it in.

 

For all who have this issue:
I had the same issue on my GTX 970M, I superclocked the card and it would crash my notebook and do the same symptons you guys have. When I took my cooling unit off I noticed that I was being dumb.There are 3 things that needs cooling the most, those are:
- The GPU
- The mosfets
- The vRam

I forgot to put thermal pads on 2 mosfets (I'm so dumb I know), which caused these crashes, shutdowns, errors etc. It's very likely you guys need to replace the thermal pads on your mosfets and Vram, even tho vRam can get hot without any problems, it's better to let the heat spread on a heatsink before the vRam chips warm the entire card and hence the mosfets as well. Seeing that multiple people here have the same issue leads me to believe that Clevo still havent fixed their garbage cooling. Still better than the Dell XPS :'D