P151SM1 Wont turn on, please help diagnose problem.

I have had this laptop since late August 2013 and it has been running great. I turned off the laptop last night,unplugged it from the socket with no battery as I do every night in then switched it on this morning but all it does is flicker the blue power led on for about 0.1 secs and the same with the amber to green power lights then it turns off. The green power lights go back to amber. It won't start up to BIOS.That is with the PSU plugged in. With only the battery in, there are no signs of life, no LED's light up or anything, completely dead.
I have the Premamod bios latest version installed but have only undervolted by -50mv and upped the turbo multipliers to max (x36,x35,x34,x34) running UEFI Windows 8.1. The specs are 770M, 4700MQ, 16GB 1600mhz Kingston ram, 256gb Plextor mSata,1TB HDD.
I tried running on just battery power to see if it was the PSU, I have reset the CMOS, I have taken out the drives and memory but still the problem persists. I assume it could be either a problem with the BIOS as its modded or a component on the mainboard has failed. Maybe there was a power surge as I plugged in the PSU although it is plugged into an 10A max extension lead with the router which was already turned on.
I still have warranty until August but obviously the modded BIOS could be a problem.
Has anyone got any ideas that may save me returning the laptop ? I'm in Beijing so M/B repair should be easy and reasonable price if it comes down to that. Thanks.

 

- remove the memory so-dimms alternatively from their slots, then try to power on with only one (each one, alternatively) of the memory sticks (just in case one of them is the problem)

- if you are not sure the battery has some charge left in it (I understand you use it without the battery), put the battery in and plug the adapter, let it charge for 1h, then try to start everything on battery

- remove the battery and adapter, keep the power button pressed for 30 seconds, remove the cmos battery, wait a few hours (some recommend as many as 8-10h) for the bios to reset itself to standard settings

- remove the videocard to see if it starts with the iGPU (even if it does not work that way - it starts and then shuts down)

 

I have already tried the 1st 3 steps, not for a few hours though on CMOS but I will try over night. I don't want to take out the GPU or CPU as it means disturbing the warranty stickers. I have flashed an over clock bios but only with 0.950mv due to heat.
I don't know if undervolting has caused this problem.

 

who was your supplier?
check their terms and conditions about warranty as there are quite a lot of resellers who will void the warranty if a third party bios is updated and then causes problems.
i would also send Prema a pm message on here (think its minimum 5 or 10 posts before you can send) or contact him on his website for advice to see if he has any better ideas.

 

At this point I would think that a repair to the M/B is the most likely solution. Obviously I would not like to pay for it but that isn't going to be my decision to make. I would like to find the cause of the problem so that I can avoid it in the future if it was my actions that caused it in the 1st place. I don't hold the Premas BIOS or the Clevo hardware responsible. If it is a hardware failure purely from a weak component then of course I would like my re-seller to arrange a free repair but it could as easily be caused by a power spike which isn't Clevo's fault. Although I would consider just turning should be designed to be safe from causing the laptop damage even if it is for only the warranty period.
My reason for the post is to try to see if anyone has had a similar experience and can offer info/advice so that I can understand what has happened to my laptop and therefore take appropriate action and future care of it .

 

Just a quick update as it appears there are few ideas to my problem at the moment. I have disconnected the CMOS battery overnight but no change. I have taken the CMOS battery voltage at 3.1v so it is still good. The laptop main battery is fully charged according to the laptop LED's so it appears that the PSU ,which is giving a correct voltage of 19.5v, is working and charging the battery. I have checked the memory in each of the sockets but no change. Due to not wanting to invalidate the warranty I haven't unplugged the CPU/dGPU or disassembled the laptop to check the power supply circuit around the PSU jack area.
The main clues to the problem would be the fact that the PSU charges the battery and lights both the DC and battery charging LED's but when only the battery is used, there are no signs of like whatsoever. When the power ON switch is pressed with the PSU connected, the amber power light goes green for about half second before going back to amber and then repeats 1 more time. Is this some sort of failure code , blinking green twice ? Sometimes the blue HDD light flickers once when I try to power on.
I was hoping that maybe someone else had experienced a similar problem so that I would have more info to take to the re-seller.

EDIT Just did some more testing and it appears that it isn't quite dead on battery only. If I keep the power button on for 5 seconds, it also blinks green twice on the LED at the bottom of the laptop but doesn't show amber. The blue HDD activity LED also flickers along with the main blue power LED.

 

as i asked earlier, who was your supplier?

this can make a lot of difference as clevo's are user upgradable and cpu/gpu can be removed if you ever needed to replace the thermal paste so if they do have warranty stickers on them it would be good for all members to know about as ive had 2 clevo's and never seen warranty stickers on them.

 

It's a Terrans Force branded laptop which was supplied by an official dealer in Beijing called ICMonkey. I found them on TaoBao and went to their office/workshop personally to order and collect.
I will email them 1st as I will probably have to arrange to take in the laptop when they have the owner, who is the only staff who speaks English, present as I speak very little Chinese.
The small silver stickers are on the screw heads of the hold down points on the GPU/CPU. I was present when they installed the components and I stress tested the system before I left the premises, which was lucky as the 1st memory sticks had a bad module.
I'm sure the warranty will be void if the BIOS has been altered but it needs to be fixed so they might as well do it for me, I may get lucky in that they fix it and decide that the modded BIOS wasn't a factor in the failure and then do it under warranty.

 

Where are you from dear user?

CEG - Clevo Extreme Gaming

 

As MrDJ alluded to, you should get in touch with your supplier first to inquire on warranty status. If undervolting or 3rd party BIOS mods go against warranty policy, then it won't hurt to try some of the troubleshooting you shied away from out of fear of voiding your coverage. If they say it's fine, however, then definitely send it in and let them take care of it.

 

A quick update, I took the laptop back to the supplier today who proceeded to check out to see if it was a simple component failure. It was the CPU, but they were strict on the warranty thing so I will be buying a new 4710 CPU from them tomorrow.
I don't know if running the CPU at max clocks (x35 multiplier for long periods of online gaming whilst -50mv undervolt) resulted in the CPU dying, or the connection of an external monitor by a USB powered adaptor (BizLink) or the Premamod BIOS has affected it, or it was just a bad CPU. I have had mostly Intel CPU's over 15 years and thrashed the hell out of them by overclocking and found them very hard to kill. This would be the 1st CPU to die on me from what I would call normal use.

 

From my point of view, it was a bad cpu, however you have had bad luck using the premas biod mod.
In fact, I used to use the premas´s biod mod, but as I was under warranty I decided to leave of using it as to avoid to run this kind of risk, despite the fact that I believe prema´s mod bios is better than the xmg´s biod, however until my warranty finishes, I´ll continue using default bios.
Good luck with the new cpu.
Regrets.

 

My 1st guess would be bad CPU as it was bound to happen sometime. Usually I have bad motherboards,usualy dimm slots/memory controllers go, but other components have lasted years with hard use. My desktop was built in 2009 with a Q9550 and has been overclocked to 4ghz since the start and is still going strong as day 1. Only the 3rd and 4th dimms slots no longer work, everything else works come rain or shine, and when I say rain, even a watercooling leak still hasn't killed it.

 

With CPUS if a transistor goes bad without volt mods it was always going to happen in warranty.