P150EM Motherboard/Laptop Longevity Opinions

Hi there, so I have this model of sager. I bought it back in 2014 on ebay [used] for my job which puts me in remote locations for 14-21 days at a time. The original make of it was in February or March 2012 It's been great, I had to upgrade the GPU last year though because the old one was dying. It currently has a 970m with the Eurocom BIOS [I bought it from Eurocom]

I am just wondering what the average lifespan of this motherboard would be and the laptop in general. Part of me is worried [or maybe its just anxiety] that it could die while I am out in the middle of nowhere since its getting up there in age lol

Or should I stop worrying and things will be fine? What are some extra precautions I could do to keep it going the longest? There hasn't been any red flags I can think of off the top of my head

 

You should probably stop worrying, most motherboards are quite robust. The most likely board to fail is one with a BGA CPU/GPU as they are exposed to more heat than one with socketed components like yours. The board in this M17X R2 has been in for 8 years and is still working fine (apart from the power button). Red flags for motherboard failure are things like failure to boot/POST and random bluescreens.

 

I have a Clevo P150EM myself and I have used it almost everyday for 6 years now, I bought mine brand new in 2012 and it has a motherboard manufactured in late 2011 I do not remember the month.
Its still alive, I do not really have any faults, there no signs of ageing that I have seen on other laptops like my Dell XPS M1210 is really starting to get on with the ages because its been used so much.
But I would expect the Clevo to really last well beyond 2020, mind you mine has seen some proper use, but if you take care of it like I have, I see no reasons to worry, electronics do degrade but if taken care of such as cleaning the dust out, keeping it in a dry enough environment not too cold nor too hot it should be fine for a very long time.

 

I would like to add on to what Arrrbol said in regards to BGA, components that usually fail in laptops are soldered CPU's or GPU's because they are put under intense heat at times which degrades the solder over time, sure the soldering job is much better today than it was even 4 years ago but still you wont really see highly used BGA laptops last for a long time, and you may say that I have no proof.

Well, my only proof would be my own experience because I have owned a lot of BGA laptops, and the worst ones were the Acer with soldered CPU and GPU, the Phenom in those were awfully cooled and because of that the solder job on them was so poor to begin with it would break the laptop in months if you used it for gaming.
BGA laptops are also expensive, while laptops with sockets for GPU and/or CPU are upgradeable which means their lifespan is way past BGA.

So while you spend 3 times the money for a BGA laptop, your laptop with sockets would outlive all those 3 because you can still upgrade the GPU.
How is this relevant you may ask, well the simple reason is if you see a laptop dying a premature death, check if it has soldered CPU or not, if it has soldered most likely the solder on it has gone baloney or some other components were damaged because of the heat that CPU generates stuck on the board, there not a lot of distance between the CPU and the motherboard itself on those things.

 

Thanks for the replies

I did have one random blue screen, guess I forgot about that but it was only once [had a bunch when my old graphics card was dying, maybe I should have mentioned that lol might be irrelevant though considering what Arrrbol & SMGJohn said about the soldering but anwyays]. I just opened up bluescreenview to view it just in case. So it was as follows

Caused by driver Ntfs.sys
Caused by address Ntfs.sys+fd15

The pink section of it says

Filename address in stack
Ntfs.sys ntfs.sys+fd15
ntoskrnl.exe ntoskrnl.exe+959c8

 

I wouldn't worry about a singular bluescreen - we all get them now and again. Its repeating ones you want to worry about. I believe that BSOD is caused by a faulty driver or programme, but someone else might be able to help you more.

 

Indeed, were you running any program at the time? If you were running in particular try a re-install if you like but as a one off then it's not a huge concern.

 

Cool, thanks everyone.

I honestly don't remember what program I was running lol when arrrrbol posted about BSOD's I wanted to just check when the last one was and it was at the end of January so yeah haha

Guess I will just ask some general maintenance questions then lol

How often would you recommend repasting the GPU ? How do you remove the old paste? Is it the same paste you would use for the CPU as well? I pasted the new one I put in a year ago but haven't opened it up since then.

I have the paste that came with the the 970m I bought a year ago from Eurocom I think it's called Diamond something?

How often would you recommend dusting? Just an air cannister the best option? Or do you guys recommend more intrusive dust cleaning?

[I know I could google some of this stuff, but I figured i'd get more specific answers to the kind of laptop I am using]

 

I am also still running my P150EM as a daily workhorse and gaming platform.
I bought mine back in August 2012. I regularly clean the heatsinks from dust, and do a repaste yearly.
I use the medical alcohol swabs when cleaning off the old paste, works a treat for me.

The issues i have had over the lifetime:
Faulty Wifi module. Killer 1202, would never keep a stable wifi connection, switched to intel 6235 and worked perfectly ever since.
2 x Batteries replaced. The cells start to die on me within 7-10 months... they are absolutely rubbish.
Power pack needed replacing, after i had some issues with melting plastic around my power socket from heat.
680M failed late last year, have since had it replaced with 980M from the reseller without a hiccup.
I did need to replace the screen, but that was my fault after not securing the laptop sufficiently while travelling. I bent the screen around the ribbon connection.

The laptop is showing wear and tear, but it keeps on going, and i am in no rush to replace it yet.
I find the fact that i can replace components easily even after 6 years of use, has made this laptop more reliable and cost effective than my past two VAIO Z laptops.

 

That's awesome. I had to replace my power pack as well, the cord got kinda wacky and it broke and had a bunch of copper wires coming out so I had to say "that's not safe" lol so I threw it out and got some Asus charger for it now.

I want to replace the killer wireless on mine as well. I think this one would work yeah? https://www.memoryexpress.com/Products/MX54420

thanks for the alcohol swabs tip. How often do you clean the dust out you say? once a month? Or More?

 

I dont know if that is compatible, let us know what processor you are running (Chipset might need to be compatible with this modern Wifi Module), and i am sure someone will know soon enough.

As for how often i clean out the dust... If i start hearing the fans winding up more than usual, thats when i do a clean. Otherwise its when i repaste. I will remove the whole heatsink and do a thorough wipe of the fins before applying the paste.

 

Processor is an intel core i7 2670qm cpu 2.2 ghz

Thanks for sharing that Hopefully someone will know here if that one is compatible haha otherwise I need to figure out what model I need to buy

 

Any mini-pci-e card will work.

 

Thanks!

 

That 7260 AC is likely your best choice.