So what's the deal on the second mSata? Sager vs. Clevo listing?

It's also possible those with older rev board may have some less issues after bios upgrade as .07 seems to include changes to the mode/type on sata controller in regards to ssd.

 

I just emailed the resller I want to buy from (Hawkforce.de) asking him the motherboard number his P150SMs are coming with. Will update.

 

My laptop's been delivered now (yay)... how do I find out what hardware revision it is?

 

I have a P157SM. I removed the cover over the cpu and gpu then removed the two memory modules. There was a white sticker under the memory with the version on it. Unfortunately mine was 3.1A.

 

I suspect I didn't make many friends on the reseller sides in regrades to spilling the beans on the rev that fixed the issue lol.

Crummy part it's not the resellers fault it's really Clevo's...

Anyway, not everyone should assume just because you have an older rev you WILL have problems.
Please be sure you are on latest bios .07 and latest EC and try it out. The issue didn't impact EVERYONE and many had no issues at all so just remember don't go jumping the gun and making assumptions you will have issues.
Odds are most of you got a warranty, be it 1 year or more. If the system works fine use it, if down the road an issue, well use your warranty. If it doesn't work as advertised now, warranty.

Again please don't blame any resellers or fault them. And also don't assume because you get an old rev you have a crummy reseller. Clevo is very sneaky sometimes. They have stock and want to offload it. They are sending customers like Sager the new stuff right away due to how much they play a role in the future with them, but also sending others new ones and randomly some old batches. This same issue will play over again when Intel releases C2 of the haswell to fix the USB3 bug...

 

Sorry, but I disagree. To say this is none of the resellers fault is just not true. They knew there was an issue, after it was brought to their attention then they asked Sager. They sold and profited off the sale of a known gimped mSATA slot. They said there would be a fix, Clevo is working on it. They were asked, but didn't answer, if the then current buyers would be covered on this issue. They could have asked Sager. They could have said if this is hardware, no, you are SOL. But they didn't, why? To continue sales, of course! Yes, a reseller isn't as much to blame a Clevo and Sager. But they represent Sager and are your Customer Service. The price is the same for one gimped or two working. Have the owner's lounges been changed yet?

 

Where do you get those Bios/EC's? I have a P151SM1 and I haven't seen those for download on Sager's website?

Thanks for all your help btw. And I don't blame the resellers either.

 

Sager doesn't allow direct downloading of BIOS/EC. Also Sager doesn't yet have .07 bios as Sager does not build bios Clevo does and Clevo modifies to brand it as Sager so as such Sager gets a little slow. Vanilla Clevo resellers can probably get .07 directly on the clevo reseller portal.

If your laptop is branded Sager just wait, you don't want to flash the Clevo branded ones.

Why do you keep mentioning Sager though? Not all Clevo builders source from Sager and I have confirmation from Sager that up until a few weeks ago they didn't know the fate neither. They also stated it was being worked on and would be fixed but made no promises, just like anyone else, that a simple patch would fix it. No one knew because Clevo couldn't tell anyone as they didn't have a full understanding of the issue yet neither.
Does someone have something from a reseller that says a simple bios fix would correct it?
Sager was selling the same systems as every other reseller. They can't control if it is flawed or not, they don't manufacture them. They have a choice, either sell no product or sell what they have which will probably ONLY impact a very small % of people. They picked the option to sell them.

Every Intel haswell chipset has a hardware flaw too, but guess what, every place is selling those too.

Don't get me wrong, I agree it sucks and I wish companies like Clevo and Intel would NOT sell faulty products or halt shipping and recall when they find out but fact of the matter is EVERY company does sell faulty things to some extent, nothing in life is perfect. Almost anything electronic you buy today in 4 months will gone through various revisions probably due to some minor flaw found. Most people just are not impacted by these flaws or don't know.

I like that Intel did the SB recall when it was flawed but no recall is expected for this haswell issue, just as Clevo is not for this mSATA one.

End of the day this shouldn't matter still. Did you reseller advertise with 2 mSATA? If only 1, the fault is on the buyer for not reading (though it's still on Clevo if you ask me). If 2, well use both. If you have issues contact the reseller, they can always offer to swap the MB under warranty if it's not working as advertised. When people made purchase they hopefully did so keeping in mind reseller reputation.

My point is simply people shouldn't be mad of defensive right away towards some of these resellers. They are trying to survive just like me and you in the world. I assure you none of them WANT to sell faulty products, it's simply they have no control or knowledge. Heck, odds are no one would even know what rev fixed this had I not posted it was 3.5A lol, and this is why I initially didn't share it as I worried it would make too many people worry. I could have said 3.4 and even less people would be worried/angry and prob have no issues still lol

All I ask is IF someone has an issue they first work with the reseller, if you don't have an issue why worry? 3.5A also won't be the last rev, another will be due out in the next month or so. Each rev improves or fixes something but you can always play this game on technology. In 6 months new CPU and GPU will be out too. It's always the game, wait longer get better, but that better only last until the next better is out.

Now out of all this the reason I think Clevo decided against a recall was simple, not everyone uses that 2nd slot, so they don't want to waste resources and money replacing all of them. Yeah it would impact they money if they did and you might thing that's why not, but end of the day me and you too because most business won't take a loss, they will make up for it by price increase, worse support/quality or something else..

Oh well, enough of my book writing. Again, I don't 100% disagree with you but you have to view things from all sides properly. In this case the customer and resellers get screwed. And anyone who just made a purchase, hey you can always return it if a refund policy is offered. Though shipping charges suck :/

Anyway hope everything works out for everyone ultimately.

 

When you write reseller, I think Sager reseller. The reseller sells what Sager itself sells. I'm not sure if this is still true, Sager also imports Clevos to sell to builders as one of only three importers (Sager, Pro-Star & Eurocom.)

Like you knew, and I knew, Clevo listed two mSATA slots. I looked at Mythlogic's site two mSATA slots. I looked at the owner's lounge for the 170/177 8290 only, at that time. The spec sheet listed one mSATA slot. I thought it was just a typo. (It still lists one.) I questioned this back on page 2 in that thread. The Sager resellers, at least Xotic, didn't know there was an issue when they first listed the 15" and 17' models. Sager knew. Xotic found out after being questioned here about the number of mSATA slots. Xotic and other Sager resellers get their specs from Sager. They informed us there was an issue at Clevo's end and it was "being worked on and fixable in a future update."

I believe Sager could have made the decision public that if the fix was hardware related that the buyer of the gimped Sagers were SOL I believe that decision was made. It just wasn't made public. That would have hurt sales. Of course, Sager didn't know what the problem was, as you found out. Certainly, they have contingency plans, at least they better have them.
I believe, if you have a Clevo from a different builder that sold you two mSATA slots you have a claim if there is an issue, as long as the warranty is still good.

Clevos, be it Sagers or other builders in the US and the rest of the world, are touted as being user upgradeable. If the consumer doesn't have a need for two mSATA slots today, he may tomorrow. The option is there. So, the small percentage may not have a need now. They won't have the option either.

I don't have a Sager reseller or Clevo builder. I decided to wait to buy, largely because of this issue. I wanted two working mSATA slots even if I didn't immediately buy the drives or ever buy the drives, my option. I knew it had two, I wanted two.

If this was one of the two 2.5" hard drive bays would there be a different reaction from more consumers or Clevo? Hey, three of the four drive bays are working, why complain? ;p

 

Well Sager is offering free motherboard replacements... You will have to pay for shipping though.

 

I'm not sure about the usefullness of havin two m-sata in the first place. Seems superfluous to me except maybe if u raid them.

But in the end, u have two m-sata ssds plus one HDD sucking power while u can just pay for one big sata samsung evo 840 and get better battery life and same subjective perfs in everyday use.

 

Well for me, I have a 512GB Samsung 840 Pro, a 1TB HGST 7200RPM HDD, a 256GB Plextor MSata SSD, and a spare, lying around and doing nothing useful at all, 256GB Crucial M4 MSata SSD.

I really wanted a usable 2nd MSata slot to put that Crucial M4 to good use.

SSDs don't consume that much power, so it's not really an issue.

 

Does power really matter on these machines? Sagers have awful battery life so I'm pretty sure most of us stay plugged in. I was hoping to stick two 256GB Plextor mSATAs for the system stuff and then 2 1TB drives for storage.

 

Yes, because the battery life should not be that bad for this class of machine.

 

Do you email the reseller or Sager directly for that?

 

Sager. You will have to get an RMA number via your reseller though. Mention the motherboard swap to your reseller though.

Also, you're going to have to pay for shipping to and from. I guess if you sweet talk them enough, you could get them to drop the shipping charges...

 

Do you know how long the process would take? Like how long from when I submit a request do they want the machine shipped? And how long do they typically hold onto it? I've had a couple of other problems (random freezing, wifi problems, fluctuating idle temps). And I was thinking of just getting all of this stuff fixed in one shot.

 

They said after the motherboard swap, they will test it for a day and then ship it back out.

If you have other problems, they may do more tests.

So maybe a max of 5 days for the fix (If you have other problems with the laptop) (No shipping applied).

For shipping, it depends. If you live in Southern California, shipping via UPS ground should take 1 business day.

Northern California, 2 business days.

Central USA, 3-4 days.

East USA, 4-5 days.

And that's shipping TO Sager only. Once Sager ships the laptop back to you, expect another few days.

So I guess, a total of 15 Days MAX depending on circumstances.


If you're swapping out the motherboard ONLY, the a max of 7-9 days.


Of course, this excluded weekends.

But yeah, YMMV.

For me, I live close enough to them so I just dropped my laptop at their offices.

I didn't do the motherboard swap though. I requested a refund to XoticPC. XoticPC will then place a new order on my behalf.

 

Wow, that's impressive considering how expensive motherboards are. Cudos to sager for that, I wonder if they can recondition the motherboards by changing a component for re-use.

 

Oh, I've had it for a little over a month now so I don't think I can request a refund. I just emailed GentechPC about the motherboard swap and the other problems I'm having. I've been hesitant to RMA because I use this for work and I need it until the 22nd, but I don't know if some of these problems could permanently damage parts so I may as well do it now. I bought an mSATA SSD hoping it would fix some problems that I thought were pretty serious (the freezing issue), but it's still there every now and then. I've never used warranty on anything before so I don't know how this is gonna go. I'm on the East Coast too...so far

 

What RAM sticks do you have in the machine. I had some serious issues with my machine (freezing, programs crashing) that turned out to be incompatible RAM. I had CL9 1600. A Memtest showed lots of errors. Kingston CL11 1600 RAM and all my issues were solved.

 

They're Samsungs I believe CL11 1600 as far as I can tell. It's the memory that came with the machine.

 

You must use 1.35V ram to ensure stability.

CL9 1600 1.35V kingston ram is fine, the 1.5V stuff might not be.

 

Haswell supports the lower voltage but does also support 1.5v. They list the lower one as part of a push to get people to use the lower voltage memory.
I have confirmed with an Intel eng. that the systems actually support 1.55v on memory (though really 1.57 but not recommended).
They will always recommend the lower voltage parts though as it generally runs cooler and more efficient and puts less load on things.

FWIW all Sager shipments are with 1.5v, Clevo recommends 1.5v (and also printed it on the MB). Part in due to compatibility. While the 1.35v runs fine too for starts it really runs @ 1.28v and due to this much lower voltage from 1.5v tolerances are tighter on the memory so often the chance of having memory issues or bad memory increase because of the lower tolerance BUT memory manufactures are getting better at getting decent quality stuff out.

That said CL9 1.5v should work fine. You probably just had a bad batch of memory which does happen regardless of speed and voltages.
Sager generally ships CL11 only because it's cheaper and what they get in bulk on the 8GB dimms.

I myself swapped my 16GB CL11 1.5v 1600 for some 1.35v (1.28v) 1866 CL11. Had CL9 or 10 been an option @ 1866 would have gotten that and I am sure no problems would have happened. I sprung for the DDR3L only because it was same price as regular DDR3 due to sale so figured why not.

 

Anyone know which of the mSATA ports was the questionable one? For those with the single mSATA option, is the card up by the GPU or is it under the 2.5" port 0 bay?

 

It's whatever one has a door blocking it. (I think only one does) and on the Sager ones they put a warranty sticker on it. Non-sager it may have no sticker but that's the port with suspected issues.

 

That's the one I'm having issues with. I can see the remnants of a sticker that had covered the screw that holds the little door down. What did the sticker say?

 

Basically that warranty was void if removed. But it's not really, just was placed to stop anyone from using due to known issue.

 

Interesting. My machine came with 2 functioning 128GB Samsung PM841s, no raid, and they worked fine. They had been sold as 840 PRO equivalent, but it quickly became apparent that they were 840 equivalents (138Mb/sec max write) and my vendor apologized and yelled at their rep and I decided to return them for a single 256GB Plextor M5M, which I installed yesterday. In the port up by the GPU, it works as expected. In the port under the door, however, it does strange things. Alone, it seems to work fine, benching where it should. If I install another 2.5" (sata 2) drive and start to use it, the Plextor soon shifts from sata3 to sata 2 speeds, and RST shown its tranfer speed as 3GB/sec. It doesn't happen immediately, but if I bench one of the 2.5 drives, then do the plextor, it will sometimes shift right in the middle of the bench. No matter what I do, I can't get it to revert back to sata 3 speeds unless I uninstall the 2.5" drives. If I put the samsung OS drive back in, it won't do this. It remains at sata 3 speeds.

I'm wondering if it's a possible power issue. The Plextor uses more energy than the samsung. Is it possible that the port is throttling itself down to sata 2 speeds for lack of power when other drives are present? I'm at a loss. I've reinstalled RST, and again, the plextor works flawlessly in the other port.

 

It was certainly not a complete failure state with the port, it was just a hard to predict issue dependant on the hardware which is why sager clamped down on it.

 

So it's possible the Plextor is just the wrong fit, while the samsung is the right fit.

 

I don't think that's the problem. The Plextor drive is fine.

It's just the MSata port that is faulty.

 

Yes the Plextor is functioning properly and works without issue in Port 5. My statement was with regard to why the Samsung PM841 worked in port 4 (the troublesome one) while the Plextor did not, and I should have included the previous quote to give my post context.

 

The fit should be identical as they are the same form factor and connector.

 

This is the quote I was replying to, Meaker. You indicate that the issue with port 4 is hardware dependent and unpredictable. I had the OS drive PM841 installed in Port 4 without issue. It was only when I installed the plextor in that port that issues arose, so I was proposing that the port may in fact be fully functional with certain drives (PM841) but not with others. I didn't mean the actual fit.

As it stands, though, I've decided to keep my machine, even with the port 4 issue. The introduction of the Samsung EVO drives with their large capacity and Rapid tech has changed my overall plan, and 3 fully functional sata3 ports is more than enough. I'll use the Plextor as my Lightroom catalog and cache drive. I'd considered a raid 0 array, but I question whether an array would add anything to this type of usage. I like the machine a lot, and I'm reluctant to part with it at this point.

 

That's exactly what I think as well, so I ordered a EVO drive, and will run in it in Rapid mode, that will be more than enough for me. Don't need the raid0 mSata.

 

No one really needs raid 0 really, only for capacity's sake.

 

I'm experiencing this same problem. I'm using the exact same mSATA drives. And it does shift to SATA II in Port 4. I RMA'd and requested a swap to the boards with the mSATA fix, but apparently it still hasn't been fixed completely.

Anyone else with the P1XXSM drives test their mSATA slots? As popular as these models have been, I'd figure there'd be more than 2 complaints.

 

So you had a new board installed and it's still doing this? Is it the same machine with a new board, or a new machine altogether? Any way to tell if they just sent you another machine from the early, unfixed batch?

 

It's a shame you can't test with other drives as it may be an issue specific to that drive.

The thing is even at SATA II speeds they will feel very quick so people may not notice.

 

Yeah I'm 99% certain my port 4 was working at sata 3 with a PM841 under the same conditions that the M5M experiences problems, but I no longer have the drive so can't retest.

 

I didn't get a new machine. I requested a swap to the motherboard revision that's supposed to have a fixed 2nd mSATA port. But there's no way for me to verify whether or not the board was actually swapped or if they tried to apply a fix themselves. But outside of a sticker between the CPU and RAM slots that says it's a 3.5A board, I have no idea how to check if the board is really what the sticker says it is.

 

It will be what the stickers state. Those are applied by Clevo not Sager and we are not talking about some random guy on eBay trying to rip you off. Sager isn't going to just swap a sticker on your MB and say it's fixed.

The mSATA bug had to deal with device drop out, not speed changes. Since your device is not actually dropping out you're not having the issue. This issue could simply be either those mSATA devices are faulty and have a defect when used in certain machines with raid or an incompatibility with the laptop or bios itself. Not much else you can do at this point. It's either one manufacture or the other that has to fix and it could be a hardware or software fix. Start reaching out to them.

 

It sounds like you've done all the trouble shooting that you can. I know it can be inconvenient but sending it in for repair may be your only way to fix it.

 

The odd thing is that only happens in port 4. The M5M works perfectly in port 5. I've had one installed there for weeks and no issues whatsoever. Wouldn't that eliminate BIOS or incompatibility issues stemming from the M5M? Also the fact that the drive works at sata3 in port 4 when no other drive is installed supports the notion that it's an issue with the port itself... Maybe.

 

I'm not insinuating that at all. What I mean is there's no way for me to physically confirm or deny it.

I contacted Sager about a BIOS update last week. They said they'll get back to me.

If that doesn't work, I'm out of luck I guess. I'd prefer not to send it back again.

I'm not that familiar with the hardware, but I believe this somewhat as well. Does anyone know if the SATA ports all share power? I have a 7200RPM HDD in Port 0 so maybe there's just not enough power to go around?

 

Everything power related has a common point at some point so can't really say if it's all shared or not. End of the day it technically is.

Sager was just delivered bios ending in 09. It includes ROM updates for vBios, Raid Rom (Sata controller) and MEI. It's possible these help. It's also still possible the drive just might not be perfectly compatible. Some devices are more picky. Could be like RAM. You can have a stick that works perfect alone but in a pair one cause a problem.

Hopefully it gets sorted out for you though.

 

I got the BIOS/EC update and it still reverts to Sata II as I expected. I even bought a new 480GB M500 SSD to replace the mechanical drive hoping maybe it'd make a difference power-wise. But nope. That Port 4 is definitely still not completely fixed. I have a hard time believing nobody else is experiencing this problem. Maybe not many people are using it at all.

I may do a complete reinstall for the 16th time just to make sure at some point.

On the 1.00.09RNS1 BIOS and 1.00.06 EC.

 

It's possible just for whatever reason the SSD may have some odd compatibility issue in some situations for that specific port.
I agree that majority of the users probably are not using the port OR may not even notice it as in real world usage you probably wouldn't notice as SSD is already fast hah.
It is also possible others are just using different mSATA brand/models that are not having the issue.

At this point I would say if it's really an issue that you want fixed or a final word (if not fixable via FW/SW) you have to go back to the reseller and ask for help. They can do some testing themselves on machines and if need be reach out to Clevo for investigation. Probably won't be fast but who knows. Maybe they duplicate it, reach out to Clevo and a month later it's fixed in a firmware. Heck it could even require a firmware update from the drive manufacture (yes some drives can work 100% in all kinds of machines and have issues in one or two and be fixed with various modification).

Of course the bad side is we also know it's possible we learn this IS hardware problem and may or may not be fixed in another MB rev.

Boy that was a lot of possibilities lol

Anyway just keep us posted. Hopefully something is learned one way or another for others.

 

I did all kinds of things and didn't really keep track and it's been running on Sata III for the longest it's ever run it. I can't tell if this is permanent because most of the things I did, I had done before and it still reverted to Sata II. If it still stays like this tomorrow, I'll sit down and try to remember what I did.