P750DM-G: Some Issues, Proposed Upgrades, BIOS update ?, etc (Long)

Hi all …

I’ve had my P750DM-G since Dec 2015. So far I’ve liked it for the most part, but there’s some issues I’ve been having that I’d like to try to resolve, as well as some possible upgrades I might like to do.

Config:

• CPU: i7-6700K (bought Nov 2016, originally had i3-6100)
• GPU: GTX 970M 6GB
• Display: 1080p 60Hz IPS G-Sync
• RAM: 40GB total (2x 16GB bought Oct 2016 + 1x 8GB original), all G.Skill Ripjaws DDR4-2133 CL15
• Storage: 1x 250GB MX200 M.2, + 2x 1050GB MX300 2.5” Crucial SSDs. (Originally had 2TB Seagate/Samsung Spinpoint M9T 2.5” HDD)



I had been working on a post a while ago, but the browser crashed. I did manage to save some of it locally, but then I ended up shelving the post for several months and haven’t gotten back to it until now. There’s quite a lot though, so I’ve broken it up into sections in the original post. Also I *KNOW* I’m forgetting something, just can’t remember what. If I remember after I post this, I’ll add a post to the thread with the info.



BIOS ...

I haven’t done any BIOS updates yet, from @Prema or Clevo themselves (haven’t even *seen* any from them). Steve Gibson’s InSpectre utility says my laptop’s vulnerable to Spectre, and I’d like to fix that WITHOUT getting a new laptop. (Wasn’t planning to replace the laptop until DDR6 or DDR7 is out, or if critical hardware that’s not user-replaceable dies.)

Also the stock bios has VERY limited configuration, just like 2 or 3 options or something like that, it seems. Is it possible that a new Prema bios might add a lot more options (like everything I can do in Intel XTU and then some), and maybe even add support for 8th or 9th gen CPUs if I ever decide to upgrade? (Getting like an i9-9900 non-K, or i7-9700 or i7-8700 might be nice in the future, maybe. Also upgrading to a newer GPU, like a 1060 or 1070 or even a possible future 2060 would be nice if possible, in a year or 2.)

If putting a Prema bios on isn't free (I'm guessing it wouldn't from what I discern from having read some posts several months or a year or more ago on issues he was having), what's a reasonable cost?



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POWER



Battery….

When I try to run on battery under very light loads (simple browsing, office apps, using power saver profile) ...once the battery gets down around 45% charge, the laptop abruptly shuts off without warning, no hibernation, nothing like that.

If I’m running an intense workload (like a graphics benchmark) while it’s plugged in, then unplug it while it’s under load, it will die in like 30 seconds if not less. Re-plugging and restarting, it’ll still have like 85-90% battery life remaining.

HWInfo64 says my battery wear level is 34.8%. I’m thinking it’s maybe time to get a new battery, but where would I get the right one for this laptop? I’m also considering upgrading to the 330-watt AC adapter (currently using the 230-watt one).



XTU Tweaking/testing …

I’ve done a few tests / experiments with Intel XTU, and I’ll note a few things.

On resuming from hibernation, the laptop power limit throttles hard. XTU says Turbo Boost Power Max is at 29.75 watts, with short boost disabled. Once I apply the correct / desired settings (either the default 91 or 95 watts that the CPU’s TDP is, or a bit higher to allow for overclocking), it works, but not until after it tries to set it to 53.125 watts (the TDP of the i3-6100 that was originally in the laptop).

• Undervolting at stock 4 GHz: Got to -0.200 V Core Voltage Offset in P95 26.6 Small FFT. CPU was 63W and temps around 71°C. At -0.225V, laptop would BSOD. Ambient temp was around 28°C or so. (This was more toward summer when I was doing this. Ambient temps can reach as high as 38-40C in doors but that’s rare in our house, even though we don’t have A/C. 30C is pretty common though.)
• Single-Core OC: Cinebench R15 score = 207, with 1 core = 49x multiplier, offset = +0.075V, Turbo Max = 116 W, Turbo Time = 28 sec.
• All-Core OC: Cinebench R15 = 1010, 4 Cores = 47x, Offset = 0.010 V, Turbo Max = 114 W, Turbo Time = 40 sec. I think it started to thermal throttle at the end of the test.



Custom Power Profiles …

Would it be possible to set up some custom power profiles? For example, I’d like

• Performance mode: OC about as much as is stable and within thermal limits (for example 46-47x all-core, 48-49x single-core)
• Balanced mode: Stock clocks, but undervolted as far as is stable (like -0.175 to -0.200 V)
• Power Saver mode: Undervolt & underclock aggressively, like run at 0.5 or 0.7 V, either dual core with HT or quad core without HT.

I’d also want to adjust the GPU’s performance as well - for example Performance would OC the gpu as much as reasonably possible, Balanced would run it at stock, and Power Saver would underclock it significantly to about GT 1030 / MX150 level performance.

Also, on battery, I’d like to have it progressively underclock, undervolt as the battery weakens to certain levels.

In Power Saver, for example (and I’m skipping a couple steps in describing)…
• At like 70% battery, it’d be running at maybe 1.6 GHz, 4 threads, with GPU performance about like Intel HD Graphics.
• 30% battery: CPU 1 GHz, 2 threads, GPU performing like Intel GMA graphics from ~2007.

For balanced on battery, minor underclocking would start around 70% or so, then around 25% or so it’d throttle more aggressively, being about like an underclocked Q6600 on CPU performance and Intel Skylake HD on GPU.

For performance on battery, it’d turn the OC off at about 50% battery, then around 30% do a moderate underclock (like 3 GHz, 8 threads on CPU, with GPU being about like a GTX 750 or GT 1030), then around 15% it’d drop way down, like around 250 in Cinebench multi-threaded and 1000 in FireStrike.


Also I’d like the option, for when I”m not doing anything intense (or just doing simple office tasks or similar) but would like really long battery life, to underclock/undervolt severely even on full battery. For example if I could get CPU and GPU power consumption down to like 2 to 5 watts each (or 0.8 GHz, 2 threads on CPU and GPU doing about 1000 in FireStrike), and considering RAM and SSDs aren’t major power hogs (I’d also have to dim the display a fair bit) … then considering an 82 Wh battery, I wonder how long a charge might last.

 

-------------------
ISSUES




BSODs …

This laptop has a tendency to BSOD more often than I’d like in Windows. Sometimes it’ll do it as soon as a few days, sometimes I might get a month before it will do it. Frequently the stop error is DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL, with HKKbdFltr.sys or SynTP.sys, and sometimes iaStorA.sys.

Sometimes recently it’ll only show the BSOD for a few seconds, then just power off before even completing the memory dump. (Also with the OC tests earlier, when it would crash, sometimes it’d do so without a BSOD.) Then, when I look at event viewer, there’s no log of the crash, other than an entry that says the system didn’t shut down cleanly.



Chrome 64-bit acting like 32-bit …

When processes in Chrome (my current main browser) get upwards of around 1.8 to 2.5 GB or so, the browser often gets a bit unresponsive. Sometimes it might take a minute until tab content is drawn on screen when I switch to it, and sometimes it even crashes that tab plus several others that happen to be piggybacking on the same process. This is in spite of running Chrome 70.0.3538.102 (64-bit), and still having like 10 or 15 GB RAM available. (Although, Chrome did recently update itself, that’s the version it’s running now … BUT … the issue has persisted almost since I’ve had this laptop.)

How can I resolve this, so processes can use whatever memory they need without being unresponsive as long as I haven’t run out of physical RAM, and without crashing (using swapfile if necessary when I run out of RAM)? I do also have FireFox, but I’m not sure that some of my Chrome plugins have FF equivalents, and I haven’t seen a task manger for FireFox like Chrome has that will let me kill individual tabs, AND know which tab I’m killing. (Windows Task manager doesn’t work for this, it just shows a bunch of Chrome.exe processes without saying what page/extention it actually is.)



Slow-writing SSDs …

In my laptop, my SATA SSDs (2x 1050GB Crucial MX300 2.5” and 1x 250GB Crucial MX200 M.2) have much slower sequential read & write speeds than I would expect. For example, in CrystalDiskMark,

• 250 GB MX200: 558 MB/s read, 133 MB/s write
• 1050 GB MX300 #1: 525 MB/s read, 156 MB/s write
• 1050 GB MX300 #2: 534 MB/s read, 154 MB/s write
• 256GB M550: 561 MB/s read, 476 MB/s write (this is normally in my desktop, see below)

But, in my desktop PC (with an ASRock Z97 Extreme6 mobo & i7-4790K, also has a 256GB Crucial M550 2.5” as a boot drive) …
• 250 GB MX200: 562 MB/s read, 510 MB/s write
• 1050 GB MX300 #1: 530 MB/s read, 474 MB/s write
• 1050 GB MX300 #2: 535 MB/s read, 424 MB/s write
• 256 GB M550: 557 MB/s read, 495 MB/s write

Also the random writes are much slower in the laptop compared to the desktop, except for the M550. In the desktop most of them are getting around 300-350 MB/s at Q8T8, 160-170 MB/s at Q32T1, and mid 90s MB/s at Q1T1.

With the exception of the M550 (which does 305, 278 and 125 MB/s respectively), the SSDs are all getting around 3 to 6 MB/s write speeds.

For comparison, in my desktop, an 8 TB 7200rpm HDD in the desktop gets about 160-200 MB/s sequential write and around 1.6-2.3 MB/s random write. (I thought I had a screenshot of performance numbers from a 10 TB 7200rpm HDD, but I’m not finding it; also I don’t feel like putting the desktop back together and powering it up right now.)

Also, a few months ago I had done a test copy of a bunch of 4 GB and larger files from one of my 1TB SSDs to the other. Pretty early on, the transfer rate dropped to around 20 to 35 MB/s, sometimes dropping to 10 MB/s. I also noticed that in task manager, it showed the destination drive as being pinned at 100% utilization.

I recently did a partial test of the same thing (but aborted after a short time). Often the transfer speed would drop to 0 bytes/sec for a few seconds, then pop up an error that it couldn't read the file. However, CrystalDiskMark doesn't seem to showing any major errors, other than 60% life remaining on the 250GB boot SSD, and 112 uncorrectable errors on the drive I was using as the source for the test copy.

I hope that when I upgrade to an NVMe SSD, the write speeds won’t be tanked like some SATA SSDs are.



Video playback performance in VMs vs native ...

When I play a 1080p youtube video in a Windows 10 VM (on a Windows 10 host, using Virtualbox), the video stutters some, even with setting the host CPU clock to 4 GHz, the VM to 4 threads and 100% CPU execution cap. Underclocking the host doesn’t make much of a difference until around 1 to 1.2 GHz, at which point the video feed might become a slide show, although the audio is still almost smooth. At 0.8 GHz (the lowest I can clock the CPU), the video might show 1 or 2 frames, then *just* play audio.

I haven’t recently tested in a Linux VM, or by throttling the execution cap on the CPU. However, several months ago, I did test in a Linux VM with execution cap / thread throttling. Basically it was pretty choppy when using 50% or 75% execution cap with 2 threads, but would be fine with 100% execution cap with 1 thread, in FireFox and Chromium.


On the Windows host, I could underclock all the way to 0.8 GHz, and youtube videos would play just fine. I even played a local 4K (H.264, 100mbps) file in VLC, and that played fine, even with VLC limited to 1 thread, IIRC.

I”m not sure why the performance in VMs tanks so much. Maybe I need different VM software than virtualbox.

Also I have trouble running 3D benchmarks in VB - (I think it scores several times lower than what integrated graphics would get, in spite of having a GTX 970M.) Small correction: even with 3D acceleration enabled in the host and System Info disabled in 3DMark Advanced, it won’t even run Ice Storm at all (even though it recommends Fire Strike.)

When trying to install Unigine Heaven (downloaded from their site), upon trying to run the installer I get ShellExecuteEx failed; code 3221225477 in the VM.

I know Unraid can pass through a hardware GPU to a VM, but it costs $, and it can’t split a GPU’s cores to different VMs, you have to dedicate an entire GPU to the VM, PLUS the GPU for the host OS. I would be willing to pay the money that Unraid costs for a different use case, but not this one.



Other issues … (Keyboard backlight, long POST, disconnecting WiFi, flaky mouse/keyboard) ...

Also, my keyboard backlight seems to have quit working a month or 2 ago. It flickered on and off periodically, then one day it just flickered off and hasn’t come back on. The small light bar on the front of the laptop is still working, though.


For a while, the laptop was taking like a good minute or two to even POST on bootup. (Power it on, then a minute or two later the logo + CPU info comes up on screen.) It seems to be a bit better now, taking about 5 seconds to post, but I wonder what could have caused the extra long POST times….


The Wi-Fi loves to disconnect itself pretty frequently. (I have an Intel 7265 ac card installed) I’ll be watching a video stream, or loading a site, and it’ll pause, or not load. Click the WiFi icon in Windows 10 taskbar, and it only shows 1 connection. Keep it open, and the other several connections that are visible show up again.

This has recently been happening probably several times a day, or sometimes as often as every 5 or 10 minutes repeated a few times. Maybe it’s time to get a new WiFi card? Or is there a way to determine if it’s thermal throttling or not getting sufficient power?


Sometimes my mouse (Logitech G602) gets to where the mousewheel click doesn’t work. If I mash the left+right+mouse, then it will usually work for a while. Not sure if that’s just the mouse, or something to do with the software/driver in the laptop. (I do have the Logitech gaming software installed.)


Also my laptop’s keyboard will sometimes have some keys be a bit sluggish responding, or not responding at all, for example O, sometimes ? or >, and a couple others kinda toward that side of the keyboard. Sometimes the key doesn’t respond almost at all, sometimes it repeats like 3 or 5 times when I tap it once. Now and then, mashing the keyboard in that area will bring it into submission, for a while … but it’d be nice to be able to fix it, preferably without having to buy a new keyboard.

 

---------------------------------

UPGRADES



Upgrades - Now …


Black Friday is coming up this week, so I’m considering making a few upgrades.

• For RAM: Add 2x16GB, take out the 8GB stick, so I’d have 64GB. Hoping the G.Skill RAM I like to buy goes on sale. (I paid $126.99 in Oct 2016 for 32GB, hoping it comes down to around $150-175 or so. I do have a $50 Amazon Gift card.)

• SSD: Replace the Crucial MX200 250GB SATA M.2 SSD with a 1TB NVMe SSD. I’m considering the Corsair MP510, Samsung 970 Evo, WD Black NVMe, or maybe MyDigitalSSD BPX Pro. The Corsair is the preferred one for now. If the 2TB MP510 or Samsung 970 Evo goes on sale for around $300-350, I might get that instead.

Also, I’d like the SSD to have good endurance and good IOPS (hence why I”m considering the Corsair cause of its specs), as I’ll also be using it for swapfile. With 40GB of RAM, I’ve sometimes completely run out. And I predict that even with 64GB, I’ll still run out. I wish I could have like half a TB or more of RAM. The previous PC I was using (my dad’s laptop) had 2 GB RAM, and it turns out that 40GB isn’t remotely close to enough. (I do also run a few virtual machines, as well as having a lot of stuff running simultaneously in my main OS. I think a few times I hit 39.5 to 40 GB RAM usage may have been when I had the VMs turned *OFF*!)

When I replace the SSD, I’d be doing a clean reinstall of Windows 10 Pro.



• Btw, I currently have it set up as a local account. If I tie it to an online / MS account, would I be able to use the same login / license on another computer (provided it’s logged out of this one, or I’m replacing it)? And, can I tie multiple licenses to the same account and keep their settings / etc separate? (I also have a desktop (4790K, GTX 1060 3GB, 32GB DDR3 RAM, 256GB SATA SSD, a crap ton of spinning HDDs totaling several tens of TB) with Windows 10 Pro that was upgraded from Windows 7 Professional.)


• One thing I’d really want to do, if possible, is run a hypervisor OS that’s very light on resource usage (for example 50 MHz CPU, 512 kB RAM, 5 MB disk space when it’s the only thing running) so it doesn’t cause hardly *any* overhead, then install Windows, the multiple Linux VMs, etc. on top of that, and be able to split and assign hardware resources.


• I mentioned the battery and AC adapter earlier, wanting to upgrade those. But, I’m having trouble finding them online now…. RJTech, where I bought the laptop and who used to have it, doesn’t seem to list it on their site anymore, and googling for replacement batteries, I”m not sure which ones are the legit OEM equipment and which might be cheap 3rd-party knockoffs that could fail prematurely or even be a fire hazard.



Upgrades - Maybe now? (or postpone) …

Also I’m looking at getting a USB video capture device - for example one that can record 4K 30fps HDMI, as well as 1080p 60fps, and lower resolutions. I’ll also want to be able to capture from VHS or other analog sources.

But in that case would it be better to get 2 separate devices rather than 1 that does it all? I likely wouldn’t be doing VHS *AND* 4K camera capture simultaneously, although there’s a chance I might capture from 2 cameras simultaneously.

The 4K camera I’m using now is the Panasonic FZ1000. Two things I want to do with it are stream (like to Twitch), as well as record videos at events and use the laptop’s screen as a large viewfinder.

I’m not sure what my budget for that would be, but I do know the AV.IO (or whatever it is that’s $500) is way above my range. The ElGago 4K 60 Pro, besides being a PCIe Device, is a bit on the high side as well. (I’m hoping around $300 or so. Had considered a $200 card from Black Magic, but that also requires PCIe, and I hear it has issues either with my model of camera, or with OBS Studio software which I would be using.)

On the other hand though, I don’t want to really stress about what to get. So If I’m not able to figure out something in a timely manner, I will probably postpone this upgrade.



Future Upgrade Ideas ...

Hopefully in 2 years, I could also maybe upgrade to an 8-core 16-thread 10 nm CPU that has lower power consumption (and price) than the 9900K (if Intel does one on LGA1151 that can be adapted to work in a Z170 chipset system), as well as maybe a Turing or Post-Turing x60 or x70 class sub-100W GPU. (The idea of also upgrading to a 4K screen popped into my mind as well, but…. Maybe with what would be involved with replacing the screen, it’d probably be better to wait until like 2025 or 2028 (or whenever DDR6 or DDR7 comes out) when I plan get a new laptop.)


Also I might want to upgrade the two SATA 2.5” SSDs to 4 or 8TB SSDs in a year or two as well, when prices have come down significantly, like around $200-280 each or so. I don’t mind if they’re a bit slower, for example 400-500MB/s read, 350-450MB/s write, 10-20k IOPS, but I *DO* want them to have high endurance, for example 1 PB or more per TB of capacity.


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Yes, I know this post series has gotten a bit long I've had several things keep being added to what I wanted to ask, things I want to do with the laptop, etc, and just hadn't gotten around to making a post earlier. Hopefully by breaking it up into sections, it made it easier to find things & read the post. ☺

 

So … as I came to my laptop this morning, I could see the screen backlight was on, but nothing was displayed on screen. (The screen saver is set to be the animating numerical clock.) Tapped a few keys, it didn't bring the system back up. Tapped numlock, that didn't respond. Hit the power button and it went off almost immediately.
Powered the laptop back on, and it came up as a fresh new session.

This has happened several times before, and is added to the list of things I'd like to get resolved.

Also it'd be nice if I could get some kind of cat detector software / firmware, so that when our cat decides to take a nap on the keyboard, the computer will detect her (regardless of which OS I'm running, in case I do a dual boot again like I had done when I first had the laptop) and prevent keys she steps or sits on from doing anything.

 

The Prema BIOS is a good upgrade regardless. AFAIK Most Spectre/Meltdown fixes can't be completely solved without hardware changes. However, most important mitigation have already been done in software (ie Spectre Javascript attack mitigation are built into Firefox and Chrome). I wouldn't worry about it too much.

AFAIK upgrading CPU to newer gens is a bit of a pain. You'd be better off with a new laptop to be honest.

Your battery is toast. It's fairly common. For a new one, contact your local reseller (or whoever you bought the P750DM from) and they can probably organise a replacement. Chances are it's an identical unit to the P750TM.

In my experience Hibernation is horribly broken in many ways. I'd just avoid it altogether and disable it. S5 sleep uses so little power and cold boot with a fast NVME/SATA SSD is so quick that hibernation is pointless nowadays.

Use ThrottleStop instead of XTU. It has multiple profile support as well as auto-switching of profiles when on Battery. It'll do exactly what you need and it's a good deal lighter than XTU as well.

Try raising your undervolt to solve the IRQL issue. Keep in mind the undervolt is an offset to voltage at all voltage/frequency points. So what you test under load may not necessarily work at lower clockspeeds.
The keyboard one should be solved by upgrading the Clevo control center (I just don't install it tbh), and the SynTP issue is a well know Synaptics driver bug. You should be able to find the Synaptics driver floating around here that solves that one.

Chrome gets pretty nasty after a while with tonnes of tabs. I suggest installing "The Great Suspender" extension. It'll automatically suspend tabs and their processes after a while. Or switch to FF. Personally I'm slowly changing back to FF due to Googles consistent downhill trends and behaviour toward users in regards to privacy.

Are you absolutely sure nothing else is accessing the drive while you're benchmarking? The 100MB/s mark is common under mixed workloads.

Have you enabled the 3D acceleration tickbox on the Virtualbox settings AND installed the guest additions? If not it's rendering purely on CPU.

The Virtualbox 3D acceleration is only rudimentary at best. It in NO way allows full access to the 970M level of power. It's just cannot be done.

Hardware passthrough for VMs can easily be done for free. BUT, as you know, it cannot split resources between VM and host. The GPU has to be assigned completely to the guest VM. In the case of the P750, there's only 1 GPU so your host would go blank....Since you only have 1 GPU (Intel iGPU is hard disabled) passthrough is not an option.
If it were an Optimus laptop with dedicated video outputs, you can actually do hardware passthrough while retaining the Intel iGPU for the host.

Is the keyboard lit on cold boot or during BIOS? If so, it'll be a software/CC problem. If not, then it sounds like the cable has been disconnected somehow or the controller has failed. It's fairly easy to open up and inspect the keyboard connectors. It's possible you may have knocked the lighting cable while installing drives etc.

Samsung is the only good player in town with NVME. Cheaper NVME drives are workable, but most use a tiered caching system which cannot keep up with sustained writes. Given the plummeting costs of flash storage, cost shouldn't be a problem.

That just sounds wrong. What are you doing that uses that much ram? If it's lots of the same tasks consider using Linux as a primary OS if possible with KSM to save memory. Not to mention far more sane swap usage.

AFAIK, Win7->10 upgrades are only authorised for the existing system and will not tie to a Microsoft account. You may need to just get a new license.

How would you expect to access the VMs? If the host has to run a window manager to access the VMs (like virtualbox renders VMs into a window) then it's not possible. If you run headless (ie on display, remote only like a server) then you can run plain KVM on Linux, VmWare or Proxmox. Access would need to be done over network for those (rendering your GPU almost useless).

Unlikely in that chassis. Intel recently have shown no intention of sticking to any 1 platform and are instead playing catchup with AMD. You may be better off just building a desktop PC on a Ryzen platform if you want upgrade-ability and access it remotely which is a FAR superior method if you're running many VMs.

 

Ok then Where would I get Prema's mod? I'd thought I found a site a few weeks / months ago, but all it had was his name plus a box to put in an email address to subscribe to a newsletter. I'd seen a site a couple years ago with dropdown menus for other things (like service manuals, etc) but hadn't been able to find it recently. Also I'd heard he might not be giving his BIOS updates away for free anymore due to some bad experiences, so I'd be willing to consider paying a reasonable fee.

Hmm, I wasn't planning to get a new laptop until about when DDR6 or DDR7 (around 2025-2030) is out. I can live with the 6700K for now if I have to.

Yeah, I figured as much. Interestingly, my dad was able to use the battery in his old Dell D830 laptop (bought in summer 2008) for about 8 years or so before replacing the battery (he replaced the laptop this spring too), even though he and I both run our laptops plugged in all the time.
I bought my P750DM-G from RJTech, I guess I should contact them though. (I just didn't see the battery or AC adapter listed on their site earlier this week, but several months ago I think I remember seeing it.) Also I'd anticipate needing to replace the battery at least once or twice more before I replace the laptop. I prefer not to buy 2 or 3 batteries now and leave them on the shelf until I use them, I'd prefer to buy them as I need them.

Ahh. I also usually have a lot of things running at once, I like to preserve undo/redo, back/forward, etc. history, etc as much as possible. It's often an ordeal to restart, then get back to where I left off working, and even then I can't ever get things perfectly back to the way I had them even after spending a couple days working on things. :/ (Therefore I absolutely hate when Windows forces restarts, makes me glad I have Windows 10 Pro so I can use GPEdit to make it not auto download & install updates. I wish I could have Enterprise though, or be able to have uptime (without reboots) equal to this system.

Ahh. I downloaded TS, guess I'll have to learn how to use it. I was unable to push the multiplier above 42X though, and even then, the CPU capped at 40X in TS. In XTU,however, I could push the CPU to 4.5 or 4.6 GHz, or if I finessed things a fair bit, 4.7 GHz just long enough to complete a Cinebench run.

By auto-switching of profiles, does that mean switching when you plug in vs unplug? Or, does it also include what I want, like auto switching to lower power states when the battery depletes below certain levels?

Also in addition to throttling the CPU at lower power states (for example, from 4.6 GHz, 4 cores, 8 threads, 1.3V or whatever at max performance mode, to 1.2 GHz, 2 cores, 2 threads, 0.5-0.6V or whatever in an ultra low power mode, I'd want to be able to significantly throttle and undervolt the GPU - for example, bringing my 3DMark Ice Storm Extreme score from 106777 (Gfx: 164786) down to 3028 (Gfx: 2502). At the lowest power states, power consumption might only be a few watts or similar to a fanless low-power laptop/tablet/etc, if I could get it down that far. (I also might be thinking of getting a pocketable device with a full desktop OS (like the GPD Pocket/2) for some other uses, but I should probably make another thread on that sometime; also I'm in no hurry to get one until around September 2019 or so.)

Yeah, except my undervolting was only for testing; when I was done experimenting with it (which usually only took a few minutes per attempt), I reverted everything to bone-stock. I will sometime maybe want to do a better undervolt for all situations, but due to other things going on I'll have to put that project in the back of the shelf.

I wonder where I might get the updated Control Center and Synaptics driver. On Clevo's site the newest touchpad driver is dated 2015-10-01 (I bought the laptop 2015-12-08), and Control Center is 2016-05-31 (5.0001.0.50). I don't see a help/about option, but I'd guess I may already have that version. (Also by "the keyboard one" are you referring to the issue of keys sometimes not responding properly?)

Yeah, it does seem to be having issues. Thing is, though, it's acting like it's a 32-bit app or something, not letting individual processes even APPROACH (let alone exceed when necessary) 3 or 4 GB memory usage. So even if I still have plenty of overall RAM available, if processes reach 3 or 3.5 GB or so, they crash (and even before that things get really sluggish when working with the affected tabs). Also sometimes some tabs are grouped under the same process, so when it crashes, ALL those tabs crash.

I actually have quite a few Chrome extensions (including Great Suspender), list below.

• Adobe Acrobat (15.1.0.6)
• Alternate Player for Twitch.tv (2018.10.28) -- This has generally helped curb memory usage significantly, blocks Twitch ads, lets me do instant replay (pause a live stream then be able to play back the last few minutes of stream or something), among other things. However, I've recently noticed it's been sometimes pinning my CPU at like 100% or close to it. (Also there's a lot of other Twitch features that aren't supported, for which you have to go on the actual Twitch site. And, when the extension crashes, ALL its tabs crash; which can be rather annoying when I have like 75 or 100 or more streams open.)
• Better History (3.9.20) *disabled*
• BetterTTV (7.2.1) -- Has a lot of features for Twitch, a site I've been on extensively, including extra emotes, settings, etc.
• Blank New Tab Page (1.0.5) -- Because the default new tab page takes up resources (whereas I'd like it to only take either 0 bytes, or 2 or 3 or whatever is needed to remember where the new tabs are, etc.)
• Chrome Better History (3.8)
• Close Tabs (1.2) *disabled*
• Emoji for Google Chrome (3.4.23) -- I probably don't need this anymore now that Win+period basically does the same thing and is easier to get to.
• Enable right click (0.0.10) -- Some sites try to prevent or replace the right click menu. This helps get around that.
• Enhanced History (3.9.11.4) *disabled* --
• Ghostery - Privacy Ad Blocker (8.2.4) *disabled* -- I was using this, but was having issues with some pages not working properly that were resolved when I turned it off.
• Google Docs Offline (1.7)
• History Trends Unlimited (1.5.2)
• MultiLogin (0.1620) *disabled*
• MultiLogin (2.1.3) *disabled*
• New Tab Redirect (3.1.4) *disabled*
• Office Online (1.5.8) *disabled*
• OpenMultiLogin (1.3) *disabled*
• openMultiLogin (0.1625) -- This is quite useful for logging into the same site with multiple accounts / session simultaneously. I *especially* use this on PCPartpicker, for example at any one time I might have several dozen different builds "in progress" simultaneously. However, it does have a couple pretty significant issues - hotmail is broken when trying to log in as other users (it doens't give me the sign in page, just constantly refreshes the loading mail screen), and if the extension / browser / PC crashes, upon reloading, the sessions are lost. (Also the other versions have various issues, including malware like injecting ads into Google search, etc. This one was removed from the play store due to licensing issues, but is available on github. Basically this one had some of the malware taken out and the code cleaned up, but someone didn't like that, from what I can discern.)
• Session Buddy (3.6.3) -- This has saved me countless times when session restore didn't restore properly after a whole-browser or whole-PC crash. (I can just pull up any previous auto-saved session and restore that.) Also when I get to where I have a few too many tabs open (like the 2000+ a couple weeks ago), I can manually save a session, then close most of everything that I'm not actively working on (but hope to get back to later, although that can end up being measured in years, not weeks).
• SessionBox - Free multi login to any website (1.2.10) *disabled*
• Shortkeys (Custom Keyboard Shortcuts) (2.2.7)
• Tab Suspender (1.2.8) *disabled*
• The Great Suspender (6.30) -- I've been using this a TON of course. However, I'm thinking I want to find another one. This one, when the extension is disabled or otherwise crashes (although not the kind of crash when I kill its process in Chrome task manager), Chrome actually CLOSES all the tabs, rather than putting up the typical "Aw, Snap!" page on the tabs. (And actually, TGS doesn't completely unload the memory/CPU as much as I'd like, as Aw, Snap! does; for example right now TGS is using 146 MB RAM right now which is I think several times ligher than normal on my system.)
• TooManyTabs for Chrome (2.2)
• Twitch 5 (2017.11.08) *disabled*
• uBlock Origin (1.17.0) -- Of course I'd have this one.
• User-Agent Switcher for Chrome (1.0.43) -- I use this to render some sites as if on various platforms, like mobile, etc. (I need to find a newer one though, for example it only supports Android KitKat and iPhone 3 or 5 or something like that.
• WhatFont (2.1.0)
• Docs (0.10)
• Sheets (1.2)
• Slides (0.10)

(Some of the extensions with no comment - I either HAVE no comment right now, or am considering not using them anymore or getting rid of them entirely for various reasons, either I don't use it, or have another one that takes its place, etc. On the ones I delete, I'd prefer to keep an installer around just in case, including ones that are no longer available from the Play store.)


I'm thinking of maybe switching back to FF, but would like to be able to "take my extensions with me" so to speak. (Yes I realize I can't just straight-up copy the extensions themselves, but I'd like to find FF equivalents, and port my data over.) Also I have yet to see a task manager in Firefox like Chrome has, and I will DEFINITELY want that.

Well, I think when I did the benchmarks, it was after a fresh reboot. (You can see screenshots here.) Also, I benched them again just now in the laptop while other stuff was running, and didn't notice much difference from last time. A 500GB Samsung T5 external SSD I just got (delivered today) has much better write speeds than the internal SSDs in the laptop (although not quite as good as when I briefly had them in my desktop).

(In the screenshot with the 4 SSDs benched including the T5: C: = 250GB Crucial MX200 M.2 SATA SSD, E: & D: = 1050GB Crucial MX300 2.5" SATA SSD, F: = 500GB Samsung T5 USB3 SSD.)
Also I found a screenshot I'd done with a 10TB HDD benchmarked in CDM.

Well, I do have the 3D box ticked, but it's not letting me install the guest additions for some reason.

Ahh, maybe I'll need to find another VM environment for some of the things I'll want to do, then.

Ahh :/ I was hoping it could split GPU cores / processing units, like a CPU can. (Is that a hardware limit that you'd have to have an enterprise level card like a Quadro or Tesla to get past, or just software and I haven't found the right VM software?)

Well I just checked (hibernated & resumed), and I never saw the keyboard light up, not even during POST. It was a good 15 seconds after powering on before I saw the initial screen with the American Megatrends logo, CPU and SSD info, etc. show on screen, too. (I will need to shut down my programs, etc. to install a couple things before too long, just not ready to do it just yet. The installing will of course include opening the laptop.)

I just got a 1TB 970 Evo, ended up with that one since it was on sale and Samsung has an excellent reputation. Almost wanted to buy a 2TB SSD for data storage, would prefer a 4TB but am not about to spend upwards of $800 on something that I think should be below $80 by now, or whatever price per TB a mechanical HDD was a year or 2 ago on Black Friday. (I bought two 5TB HGST Deskstar NAS HDDs for $100 each 2 years ago.) I was considering ordering the 2TB Intel 660p ($250) as well (in addition to, NOT in place of, the 970 Evo) and using it as data storage, but ended up holding off on it for now.

I'm planning to do a fresh clean install of Windows 10 Pro on the 970 Evo. I do have some questions about it (like, how best to import some data, settings, apps, etc. from my existing install, should I go with 1809 or stick with 1803, dual booting with Linux (I think "install Windows first, leaving unallocated space for Linux, THEN install Linux"; OR, install the ultralight OS + hypervisor concept I mentioned THEN the main OS's in VMs), among other things), but would probably be better asking that in another thread (or on LTT forums).

Well, I do a TON of multitasking. And some of the programs I use at least for now require Windows, or I haven't yet found satisfactory Linux replacements. (I would like to sometime use Linux as my primary OS, just not quite there yet. If I could, I'd maybe use Linux as the main, then run Windows in a VM for games, but as you mentioned about the GPU issues in Virtualbox.... :/ )

Hmm. :/ I was thinking of tying BOTH to the same account, so I could just have one license for each computer I'll be concurrently running (my laptop and desktop), then when I replace one computer I just log in with the new PC (for example, replace desktop motherboard in 2022, replace laptop in 2030 and again in 2040 and 2050 (replacing the CPU twice each along the way), new desktop mobo in 2058 (after upgrading CPU every 5 years, replacing a thrice-dead SeaSonic Prime PSU, etc), new laptop in 2065, my grandkids replace the desktop in 2081 (I would be 100, don't think I'll live that long) and transfer my Windows license over -- so I could just buy ONE copy of Windows for each computer that would be running, and use it in perpetuity.
(Okay, I might replace things a bit more often, but I DO like to get a lot of life out of things I buy. And, maybe Linux will get to where it can completely replace Windows someday....)

That's a good question. Basically I was hoping the hypervisor / bare OS would have the bare minimum necessary to be a hypervisor (while staying super light on resources - for example being able to run on the original IBM PC 5150 if it wasn't for that platform not supporting virtualization), whereas the guest OS's would do all the fancy stuff with their own tricks. Of course my hardware would need to meet the guest OS requirements, I just want the host OS / hypervisor to take the minimum possible resources on its own.
For example, if I had a PC that was as low on resources as these two virtual machines, there would be no more than 0.001% difference in performance running Windows natively, vs in a VM.

Ahh. I was hoping that some 3rd party might have found a way to get the newer LGA1151 CPUs to run on the older platform, kind of like there seemed to have been some things partially working on the desktop side (and even Intel and their partners were originally testing 8th gen CPUs on 6th gen mobos before they decided to lock it down). Also, the last few mainstream sockets, Intel had at least done a die shrink (45 nm -> 32 nm on LGA 1156, 32 nm -> 22 nm on LGA 1155, 22 nm -> 14 nm on LGA 1150) BEFORE changing the socket / breaking compatibility. I was hoping I could put a 10nm CPU in my laptop, keeping up the same trend (with more generations in between cause Intel keeps releasing 14nm CPUs). Also I think there's another megathread here that talks about running Coffee Lake CPUs in some older Clevo LGA1151 laptops. Haven't looked at it much, since I don't want to get another CPU until I KNOW it's NOT possible to install a new generation CPU due to a major socket change (like LGA 1366 to 2011), even with hacks/tricks (like the LGA 771 / 775 mod), then I'd install the fastest last-gen CPU (or maybe a 65W instead of 95W version) that would have worked.
If only Intel would come up with an LGA1151 10nm CPU that ditches the iGPU for some extra cores and CPU clocks... :/

 

Check out some updates from Prema here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/important-security-updates.811312/

 

Contact Prema via DM or email. Also a good idea to donate as his work is of immense benefit to the Clevo community.

Use Linux

Are you using the Multiplier tickbox or FIVR? You should be setting it via FIVR and you'll need to adjust your voltage as necessary to hold up the higher clocks.

You'll note that TS has 4 Radio buttons along the top left. These are your profiles. Set one up for max performance, one for battery etc. Then in the Options page, you can tick boxes in the top-right to determine which profile is used on AC power and on Battery power.

Couple of things stick out there. Some of your tests show a Temp warning on the write test. The other thing is your CPU usage vastly differs. The 6700K has very little cpu usage on 1 core on the write test but your 4790K is working it's butt off. I suspect something is going wrong there, not with the drive.

Can't see your screenshot. But basically all you need to do is (in the open VM window) click on Devices -> Insert Guest Additions CD. Then run the 64bit installer from inside the VM As Administrator (important you do that), then reboot. You'll know if it works if the Virtual Machine automatically resizes it's resolution based on the window size.

Indeed, only Quadro/Tesla cards have that capability and it has to be built into the HyperVisor as well (which Nvidia calls GRID). There is also Intel GVT-d which does the same thing but for Intel GPUs. Problem is Intel don't make a GPU even remotely worth splitting...so....

Clean install is a good idea and depending on your apps, much of their configuration tends to be contained in Appdata somewhere. e.g. Chrome and Firefox are a simply case of copying said AppData folders onto the new install and it'll boot up just like before.
As far as Windows version go with 1809. I've been running it since day 0 (even with the file deletion bugs which didn't affect me since I don't use OneDrive).

For Dual-booting, I wouldn't bother. It's a pain in the butt to configure sharing storage in a reasonable way and you'll very likely end up just booting one of the other. Depending on your usage, I'd suggest just virtualising one on top of the other. The Host being whichever OS you'll need a proper GPU in. Alternatively, if you're a serious power user, consider Remote Desktop options combined with a Desktop/Server. That way you can have a LOT more processing power available and just work remotely. You can even do a reasonable job of streaming GPU usage these days as well.

There is already VERY little overhead with VMs if you use a lighter hypervisor such as KVM. If you REALLY want a fast VM with windowed/console access, I suggest running Linux and using KVM + something like Virt-Manager to make config easier.

As I said, it can be done, but it's highly impractical unless you're really attached to this machine.


All up, to be honest I think you need to shift your entire work process/paradigm.
I think you would benefit immensely by building a home-server (use a AMD Threadripper platform, plenty of longevity and upgrade headroom on that) and remote-access if for the majority of your grunt-work. Your storage options grow massively and you can get way more ram and CPU in. The cost is also way more appealing.

 

Ahh. I just wasn't sure if he was still around on here, cause last I recall, his most recent post was mid/late September this year. And of course I'd be willing to donate, I just don't know how much would be reasonable and I'm kind-of afraid to say the approximate amount that I'm thinking of. (For example maybe I'm way off by a factor of moving the decimal point a few places.)

Hehe I wish Windows 10 Home allowed uptime like that, though. I'm using Pro. Some apps I use require 10, and I wanted more control over certain things so I got Pro instead of Home.

Ahh, I was using multiplier, hadn't even seen the FIVR option until I dug a little deeper. Even so, I'm still not 100% convinced that it would let me do what I want to do - basically while on battery, automatically change performance / power characteristics based on remaining battery power. Some approximate ideas are in the image.



Basically, Performance would start with OC, Balanced would be stock to start, and Saver would be a moderate underclock. Low Power (-Y) would be like an extremely low power mode with CPU and GPU power consumption under about 5-10 watts combined, and performance similar to 2006-era Intel integrated graphics and low/midrange CPUs.

Yeah, the M.2 SATA SSD seems to run a bit warm. When I install the 1TB 970 Evo, any ideas on how to prevent it running too hot under load, prolong its life, etc?

Also looking at the screenshots again .... I noticed that on the MX300 and MX200 SSDs, the CPU usage was pretty low on the 6700K, but 1 core was quite loaded on the 4790K. The 256GB M550 had the 1 core loaded on both, and the 80GB IDE drive had usage distributed on the 4790K's cores. (I obviously couldn't test it in the laptop.)
But... yeah, not sure what's up with that. (I find it interesting that write performance on the 4790K platform is vastly higher than the write performance on the 6700K platform, with the latter sometimes being so bad that a spinning HDD could beat it in some situations and not fall too far behind in others.)

Hmm... does this work for you? (I think I'd apparently forgotten to "share" the pic in the earlier post.)



And the VM is already resizing its resolution as I resize the window.

Ahh, I figured as much. :/ Was hoping to be able to get the same performance in multiple VMs, provided that in total I didn't exceed what the GPU is capable of. (For example, if in a Windows host with nothing else running the GPU would get about 6400 in Fire Strike, then with 7 VMs plus host, each VM would score about 800 in Fire Strike, or actually a bit less due to not-so-perfect scaling / etc.)

And while Intel is rumored to be coming out with a not-potato GPU around 2020 or so, I'm not holding my breath that it would be an MXM card with G-Sync support.

Ahh okay, that's good to know. I'll also need to figure out what apps I want to install, among other things - maybe there's some I have now that I'm not using as much, or others that I use pretty often but need to be updated, etc. (Should I bother with updating any existing apps before doing the clean install and copying the appdata folders over?)

I have a copy of 1809 on a 32GB USB drive, I'll be using that to install.

Ah. Well since most of my games run in Windows, I think that would be my host OS. I was hoping to be able to use an extremely lightweight host - for example about 50 MHz CPU or less and about 4 MB RAM or less when nothing is running except what's needed for the hypervisor (and no VMs started).

Also I wanted to be able to start OS's in any order I wanted. For example, most of the time I would probably have Windows running all the time THEN start Linux VMs as needed, but sometimes I might want to boot straight into Linux, THEN run that same Windows install concurrently. Or, maybe I'd even consider the option of booting into and/or virtualizing other OS's, like Mac, Android, etc. (Although I don't think I'll do those anytime soon.)

Interesting. I think I've heard of KVM, but don't know much about it. (I'm mostly familiar with Virtual Box.) Don't think I've seen Virt-Manager yet.

Also when I'm talking about wanting very little overhead, I'm including the host OS with that. Even if the VM only takes the equivalent of 100 MHz of 1 CPU core and 64 MB RAM when idle, if the host OS needs a dual core 2 GHz CPU and 2 GB of RAM, for example, that counts toward the overhead of the hypervisor.

My ideal hypervisor would be light enough to run just as well on the original IBM PC 5150 (or even an Apple II or Xerox Parc) by itself, as CP/M or DOS 1.0 (if it supported multithreading) would theoretically run (natively, not virtualized) on a quad-socket Xeon Platinum system if it supported it. Of course I'd need more modern / faster hardware to support the VMs I want to run, and at least for now and I think the next few years, the 6700K should be sufficient (although a 10700K upgrade or whatever might be nice...)

Yeah. I do like this machine, and wasn't planning to upgrade until around DDR6 or DDR7. I like giant performance upgrades when I replace major components (like the motherboard in a desktop PC), or skipping generations of buses (like DDR4 -> 6/7 or PCIe 3.0 -> 5.0/6.0, etc), among other things. I don't generally like to replace the whole thing very often, even twice a decade is a bit fast paced. (Individual component upgrades, on the other hand, I'd do those more frequently / as needed.)

I've actually thought some about building a home server. My original thought, though, was to have it be JUST a backup server that wouldn't be online 24/7. After doing the initial full image backup to it, I'd only power it on long enough to dump the contents of an external HDD (that I would maybe have connected to my main system for incremental backups) when it gets full, or something like that. (For example maybe only run it for a few hours once every few months.)

Although ... I might also consider other uses for it - for example I and my family have a pretty significant archive of old VHS and 8mm video tapes, cassettes, reel-to-reel tapes, vinyl records, etc. The vast majority were produced by family & friends, not commercial, so it's not like we could go on Google Play and download new copies of the content. One thing I might want to do in the future is have a few capture cards / sound cards in there, with several playback devices so I could digitize those analog recordings, working on several simultaneously. (Of course I'd save the digital files to different physical media than what the backup is, even if they're all connected to the same motherboard.)

Some motherboards I've maybe thought about building said NAS around include the Supermicro X7DWE, X8DTH-6F, X9DRH-7F/7TF, X9QRI+-F, X7QCE, H8QGi-F, H8QI6-F, etc. My shortlist would be the dual-socket Xeons, but I'd maybe consider the quads, or possibly (but not likely) Opterons. The X7DWE is an option cause RAM for it is dirt cheap (like 70¢/GB I think), and it still has a few PCIe slots that would accept LSI 9211-8i or 9200-16e cards. The X8DTH-6F and X9DRH-7F have 7 PCIe x8 slots (so I could put 7 of those cards in), and they also have 8 SAS 6Gb/s ports built in (or 2 ports that can breakout to 8 SATA). The 7TF of the latter also adds 10Gb/s networking.

For the NAS idea, basically I was hoping to either build the entire NAS for no more than the cost of a ~6 or 8TB HDD (the LGA 771 Xeon might give me a chance at that), or maybe spending closer to $600-800 on the hardware but getting the storage (for the backup targets) at a fraction of the cost compared to HDDs. (I was looking up some old ads, and back in the early / mid 1990s or so, tape drives were close in price to hard drives, and media was about 1/10th or less the cost per GB.)

Threadripper does sound interesting, although a bit over my budget. (I had even maybe considered Epyc (one of the Supermicro boards might have almost been in my projected price range), however there's no CPU the cost of an Athlon 200GE that'll fit in an Epyc board.

Sure, backing up to the cloud would be nice, if it wasn't for...



(A couple days after that, Windows showed I'd used almost 1.4 TB of data. A couple years ago before we had a 1TB/month cap, I used just under 2TB one month.)

Also ... a few times recently when trying to resume from hibernation, the laptop does this and I never get back to the Windows desktop.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/BNnYWzbgbEmD1Maf6

I have to force-restart (holding power button, etc) to get back up & running, and obviously I lose whatever I'd been working on. (Maybe I try to do too much, sometimes it feels like it takes a day or a week before I'm back up to speed with working on things after a reboot, and even then I might not resume *exactly* where I left off like I would if I'd just hibernated the system.)

 

Do you use HIBERNATE, SLEEP or NOTHING?

 

Can't see the image (it's blocked from public viewing I'm guessing). But you can have a normal "battery" profile and a "low battery" (ie <15% remaining) profile. You can't practically make it scale on a per percentage value or any of that, it's just pointless.

Stop over-complicating the situation. With Speedshift and good profiles, your power usage will be as good as it possible can be as the CPU down-clocks automatically when idling and such.

Literally not possible in this chassis. The minimum power usage is around 12W. If you need lower, that's what ULV platforms are for.

The Samsung drives already come with a copper strip, but you can purchase dedicated M.2 Heatsinks which will basically extend how long you can stress the drive for. The only solution after that is active fan cooling which is impractical.

Still can't see images. Try uploading them to Imgur instead.

No point. Protip, use Ninite.com to install apps on clean installs. It's a great 1-click installer for most popular free apps. I use it all the time deploying client systems.

This is a pointless target. The amount of processing power to run any reasonable hypervisor is incredibly low. Desktop based ones like VmWare Workstation and Virtualbox are very convenient, but not very efficient. Plus RAM is cheap as heck. Even if you use 1GB or so for host activities, that's still very little.

KVM is an incredibly popular Linux virtualization system. It underpins a massive amount of the worlds virtual machine infrastructure. Virt-Manager, is just a nice GUI application which you can use to manage KVM virtual machines from the desktop. The other 2 major ones are Xen and Microsoft's Hyper-V.

As I said, this is a conceptually wrong way to think about how a hypervisor operates. Most proper hypervisors have been running at a <1% system overhead for many years.

Keeping it powered 24/7 is better. Power is cheap plus spin-up/spin-down cycles and temperature variations are what kill HDDs over time. A well built machine should idle fairly low (depending on your hardware selection).

Most of that hardware is significantly old and would be silly to use from a power perspective.
For a home NAS or Home Server, AMD Ryzen and Threadripper are no-brainers. Compared to old Intel server hardware, A typical Ryzen system would consume anywhere from 3-10x LESS power for performance and make a whole lot less noise doing it.

Personally my own home server is a Threadripper 1900x (8core/16thread), 32GB DDR4@3000mhz, ,512GB NVME boot drive, 4x8TB and 4x4TB drives. It runs Proxmox (which in turn uses KVM for virtualization). I even have a GPU passed through to one of the VMs to run my HTPC (GTX1050 atm, but got a GTX1060 to go into it soon). It tends to consume around 100W on average.
I'll probably throw in a Zen2 16c/32t CPU in there next year when they release. If only for the performance uplift AND power consumption decrease.

 

You see it often in old servers, spin them down and the drives dont want to come back.