P870DM2/P870DM3 BIOS Reset Procedure / RAM Upgrade

Recently purchased the new Clevo P870DM2 and after a RAM upgrade (playing with manual RAM timings in BIOS,) I found myself in need of a way to manually reset the system BIOS, as the machine was powering up to a blank screen and no combination of keys I could find would remedy the situation. I was able to fix by doing the following:

1. Power down and unplug the machine.
2. Turn upside-down and remove nine screws from the back cover.
3. Lift the back cover - grab at the front edge (the thinner of the two long sides) and pull apart. I was able to do this with just my fingernails, but it was pretty tight the first time I opened it up.
4. There are four screws holding the system battery in place. Remove them and lift the battery out of the machine.
5. There's one screw that needs removed to allow removal of the keyboard. It's right next to the subwoofer and it's marked "K/B." Remove that screw.
6. With the laptop opened up so there's room for the keyboard to be ejected, insert a small screwdriver or other blunt metal tool that will fit down the hole for the keyboard screw just removed and press firmly. The keyboard is held in by strong magnets, so you'll have to press hard, but this will pop the keyboard loose.
7. Underneath the keyboard, on the left side, you'll find the CMOS battery. It's a CR2032 watch battery. You'll need to pry it out gently with a small screwdriver or pry tool.
8. Now I'm not sure if this step is actually necessary, but at this point I held down the power button for about 30 seconds to be sure to clear any remaining capacitor voltage that might remain in the system.
9. I powered the machine back up, with the battery still removed in my case, and received a warning that the CMOS battery had failed and defaults had been loaded. At that point I replaced the CMOS battery and POSTed successfully into BIOS, where I could re-enter my settings as desired.
10. Shut down and put everything back together!

... and in case anyone is curious about the RAM upgrade part, I was installing a 2x8GB Corsair Vengeance DDR4-3000 kit from NewEgg. As the existing reviews over there indicated, it would not run stable in dual-channel mode at 3000MHz, but I was able to do 2800MHz with really nice timings by configuring manually. I am using following manual RAM timings in BIOS (these are the best timings that are 100% stable
RAM RefClk=100MHz, RAM Multi=14x, Timings=15-17-17 (the 17 only gets entered once for both values here) with RAS=37 and RFC=467. WR was automatically set to 4 and the final bottom two settings, for which I've just forgotten the names in Clevo's BIOS, were 10 and 20 respectively, as copied from the RAM's 1333MHz (DDR-2667) timings spec. It runs like a champ!!

 

Or hold down Fn + D during start up (it can take a couple of reboots if something really got messed up).

It's in the manual

 

For the record, the FN + D did not work for me either, tried anything from a few seconds to 1+ min and it never worked for me.

I used a procedure @Phoenix posted (credit to @Mr. Fox), I'll try to find it and edit this post. Might be a good spot to list several methods. His method did not require taking the main system battery out which was nice.

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you need to ensure they are all hold simultaneously.......first FN + D then press power and hold all 3 of them together.....that works on the stock BIOS

you need to keep holding until you see the NVRAM reset message

last resort, perform a manual NVRAM reset:

• Disconnect AC adapter (leave system battery installed)
• Take out the keyboard and leave it face down on palm rest, ribbon cables still connected
• Disconnect CMOS battery and leave it out about 30 seconds
• Reinsert CMOS battery (if you have a USB keyboard, use that for now instead of the laptop keyboard)
• Connect AC adapter and power on again
• Wait up to 3 minutes. If nothing happens on your screen, power off using the power button and power on again, then wait up to a few minutes
• If the machine begins powering off and on again in a loop, power off and on again manually
• (UEFI has to identify the RAM, find and set the timings, etc. so be patient)
• Once the UEFI Reset warnings appear (smaller blue boxes) on your screen hit Enter 3x and start spamming F2 immediately
• Enter Setup and adjust everything the way you want it to be
• Put the keyboard and bottom cover back on again once everything is working the way you want it to

Credit: Mr. Fox

 

FN + D should not need the power pressed at the same time, it can be finicky like I said if something is set really wrong.

 

please return your Corsair Vengeance RAM, they are not so good according to many people I've talked to

 

2800Mhz at the tighter timings should perform identically to be fair.

 

Yeap. Plus for 99.9% general use.. there is barely any difference between 3000 and 2800.

 

Even in those sensitive situations the improved latency over stock will negate any small difference there was.