Np9377 Failure/ Fire

Hey guys (and gals),

I was doing homeowrk last night and started smelling something between electrical and burning. I turned off the system and didn't see anything out of the ordinary. When I went to turn it back on it started to boot, then shut off. I could see a flame behind the right speaker grill. I havent tried to turn it back on. Given the age ( and out of pocket cost I'm guessing) is it worth sending in?

 

A flame?! Your machine may be actual toast. Wow.

If it's not under warranty I'd try and troubleshoot it yourself.

There are teardown pics here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/sager-np9377-clevo-p377sm-a-review-by-htwingnut.749943/

 

Yes, scared me half to death. I was afraid of that.... thank you for the photos. I also reached out to Sager and I'll see if I can get a ballpark before disassembly.

 

Wow! Glad to hear it didn't spread and cause damage to anything else.

The system may still be serviceable, whether it's worth it or not is up to you & your seller (depending on what they quote for repairs). Good luck with it, and be safe!

 

omg, thats not something u read about every day *lol* glad everyone is safe!

 

I had an Alienware M18xR2 motherboard catch on fire. It turned out the damage was minimal and confined only to the shorted component, with a bit of discoloring of the PCB around it that did not affect functionality. It was repaired and put back into service. The amplifier for the external audio jacks is what caught fire. Another M18xR2 motherboard that belonged to a friend of mine also caught fire, but in his case the damage was extensive. MOSFETS for the CPU are what caught on fire. So, definitely take it apart and see how much damage there is. Any electronic part can fail randomly and this is not necessarily an indication of a serious flaw in the overall product. Most of the surface mounted components are very inexpensive.

 

If it was on fire, I'm thinking repairs will cost enough to make replacing the computer look like an attractive alternative.

 

As Mr.Fox said it can depend on where, but never good.

 

@yeoldegamer1979 if you get a chance to post pictures of the damage, it'd be interesting to see. Good luck!

 

The first two photos are of the machine that I owned. That is the motherboard that was repaired. The other photos are the other system I mentioned with the MOSFETs that caught fire. Oddly enough, there were visible flames and smoke from the audio amplifier chip, whereas the MOSFETs that blew only produced a very strong burn odor, with no visible flames or smoke.

Honestly, I think with a little extra effort the other one would have also been repairable. The solder pads were torched pretty badly on the MOSFET closest to the heat pipes, so it was replaced. The parts would have probably been less than $10 (with 75% of the total cost being shipping).






Here are photos of my ASUS Rampage VI Apex motherboard that caught fire. ASUS replaced it under warranty. The damage was severe and the PCB was badly burned. This was a IC chip for the CPU fan controller that caught fire.

 

Once the magic smoke escapes it's very difficult to put back in. Likely turned it at the wrong angle so all the electrons fell out

 

Wow, those are fantastic pics! Thanks for posting those man!

I toasted an AT power supply and mobo way back once by accidentally swapping the connectors. Took down the entire office's power AND I saw the magical smoke dragon. It was a great day to be a teenager.

 

I got the magic smoke by putting the floppy connector in one pin over. The entire floppy power cable vaporized.

 

Well after finding out this would be a charged repair I decided to try an fix this myself. Once my wife found out what happened she conviced me to move on after waiting for support to respond. I just wanted to thank all of you for answering my questions and offering your help. I'll be headed back to the land of Desktops.

In my line of work I run into situations like this with products and we collect the items to perform evaluations. I do have to admit the response from support that I was out of warranty was not what I expected. At company I work for I would have been let go if I responded to a customer in this fashion.

 

If it was Sager support feel free to send me a copy and i can review if you feel you were treated unfairly.

 

Take it from me, bro... that's a much better place to be. Way less nonense to put up with. Still a little, but nothing in comparison.

Same here. There is a zero tolerance for poor service and rudeness with the people whose money is what keeps the lights on. Funny, I have said that about more than one company. Tech companies are often among the worst offenders as well.

 

What company is this? So I could avoid them and tell friends to avoid them in the future.

 

I'm not sure I understand this response? The reason I would be fired is because I'm not doing my job.

Due to the agreement I signed I can't tell you the company I work for only that it is a Fortune 500 company. What I can tell you is that if a customer comes to me and explains that their ( insert product ) caught on fire, exploded, etc., the first directive is to make sure everyone is safe and second to collect the item to figure out what went wrong.

The age and warranty status of the item is not as relevant as the possible consequences and harm that it could cause to others. It might sound kind of cheesy but I care about the people I come in contact with that have to deal with these sort of things.

 

I think @Mobius 1 was asking about the company that sold you the laptop (the Clevo reseller) and not where you work. He (and others) might want to avoid that particular Clevo reseller for their shoddy service blowing you off and treating you like a nuisance because you were out of warranty as they did. That kind of short-sighted approach to customer service is deserving of avoidance. They should be willing to help you sort your problem regardless of your warranty. The only difference in service should be who is picking up the tab for the repair, not how you are treated as the customer. I would not want to be a repeat customer with any vendor that only cared about me, and my satisfaction level, during the factory warranty period.

 

If this happened to be on our end, please feel free to PM me any relevant info/exchanges between you and our support. Out of warranty or not, I can look into things and try to make them right.

 

And I apologize if I misunderstood. When I made my purchase originally it was directly through Sager's website.

The response I received was neutral and respectful, and I appreciate (and have seen many times) that you make a genuine effort. I would politely suggest some sort of policy suggestion is put in place for something like this instead of "Sorry, your laptop warranty expired on ........"

 

Yea, I was asking what company you bought the Clevo/Sager unit from.

Meaker should be able to sort you out, hopefully.

 

I see so it was more the tone and bluntness with the lack of advice as to your options? Was a paid repair service offered?

 

For example, Asus policy is to auto extend any warranty 90 days, because having a device fail just after expiration is a PR nightmare. BestBuy, otoh, is draconian.

 

Fire is likely usually down to the main VRM input suffering a failure. This can be due to surges, cooling or failure of the VRM chip.

 

I don't see any details in these posts when the laptop was purchased? when did the warranty expire? I understand your frustration at the response but I don't know enough details to be angry for you or not. If the warranty expired a month or two before the problem then I can see why you would be upset. However, if the laptop has been out of warranty for half a year or more before problem started I cant be too angry with the company because it's not fair to hold them responsible for ALL future problems. I agree they should have given you options and tried to help as best as they could but you have to understand that sometimes things fail.