Weird issue with P775DM3

I recently got this laptop, about 2 weeks ago. It's been working fine till a few days ago. Well it still works mostly fine.

The problem is, I can't enter the BIOS anymore, no matter how much I spam F2 or hold it down from the second I press the power button it goes straight into windows. Also if I choose "restart windows" instead of "shut down" the PC "forgets" the changes I made using XTU (downvolting and setting all cores to 42x).

Without downvolting it can reach like 95c when running the XTU benchmark and can also reach it in games, with downvolting it reaches max 85c and usually stays under 80c. I have the voltage set to -190mV it seems to be "mostly" stable, might have to adjust it a bit still.

There is ONE way to enter bios, start windows and select "restart windows". If I press F2 when windows is restarting it does go into BIOS, but all settings seems reset. Like overclock settings seem to be set to 28 27 26 25 for the cores and 0 for cache (seems kinda odd values) and voltage set to 0 offset. I donno what's wrong with this thing.

System specs are: 6700K, 16GB RAM, GTX 1070 a 512GB SSD and a 1 TB SSD, WINDOWS 10 HOME. Also it has the standard BIOS that has almost no options in it.

 

The system could be hibernating rather than shutting down. That makes it difficult to get into the BIOS. When you restart it is actually shutting down similar to a cold boot, so that gives you the opportunity to enter the BIOS. Change your power profile to shut down completely rather than hibernate. Set the power button function to shut down in your Windows power profile advanced settings.

Clevo Control Center may be applying the wrong values to the BIOS. If memory serves me correctly, the CPU overclocking tool is all screwed up in that regard and does not have the correct multiplier default values and the Power Limits are also wrong. They should be 95W and they are like 50-something.

Intel Watchdog Timer may have reset everything. If the BIOS defaults are less than 42 for Core #1 and 40 for Cores #2, 3 and 4 the default BIOS multiplier values are totally wrong for 6700K. If you set the multipliers to zero the 6700K should run 42/40/40/40 automatically by default. The power and voltage settings being on zero is the correct default. Zero actually means Automatic/Default, so that is normal. It is not actually zero volts, watts or amps.

 

Don't use the Control centre overclocking utility it is broken. Either uninstall it or use an older version ending in .50 (you can download it from the Clevo website under the P771DM section) This older one removes the XTU in the control centre, then just use Throttlestop to do any tweaks instead

 

That's because you have "Fast Startup" enabled in Windows. "Restart" clears the information from the hibernation file, "Shutdown" does not.

All settings in the BIOS setup? That's not normal unless your CMOS battery is dying (or not connected). Or did you mean settings you have in applications in Windows, like XTU?

 

Well mainly that I suppose, I mean all overclock and voltage settings set in XTU get changed to the strange 28 27 26 25 multipliers etc. (it still ran at 4Ghz)

In fact I've never gotten it to run slower than 4Ghz, tried making a profile with only 30x multiplier for web browsing etc to keep the laptop completely silent but no luck with that. Don't like fans speeding up when watching 4k videos. Not tested if ThrottleStop can make it run slower than default speeds yet.

Well I've uninstalled XTU and installed ThrottleStop instead. Also tried to turn off Hibernate (powercfg.exe /hibernate off), not sure if it worked. Glad I was made aware of that, would have caused unnecessary wear on the SSD, got one of those 2500Mb/s read speed drives anyway (or something like that)

 

1) Uninstall Clevo Control Center that you have then reboot

2) Install the older version ( Control Center AP v5.0001.0.50 ) which doesn't have XTU built in then reboot

3) Disable Fast Startup in the Power Management / Advanced

4) open a command prompt as administrator and type powercfg -h -off to disable the hibernation file completely (then reboot). With SSDs, the fast startup and hibernation are not needed anymore as it only causes headaches due to incomplete shutdowns as it's a hybrid shutdown mixed with a hibernation file that has the system state saved. SSDs are super fast to boot anyway

5) Your undervolt is wayy too much. Stick to -140mV to -150mV for stock clocks or -120 to -110mV for a 42x4 OC or -80mV for a 44x4 overclock. Just a few examples

6) Use ThrottleStop to control your overclocking or undervolting values. I cannot guide you on that as I am no pro in Throttle Stop. Only the others like @Papusan and @Mr. Fox and @bloodhawk to name a few, can help you with that

 

Totally agree, you will be better with Throttlestop, and it´s fun to make different Modes for different types of usage!

 

Just a question.

Is there a danger in having too much undervolt? I just figured the more undervolt the lower temperatures. Or is there a point at which it has minimal effect on temperatures?

Of course if it causes instability it isn't worth it. I just figured I'd keep adjusting it till it's 100% stable. (btw -190mV was indeed too much, just crashed) I had it set to -180mV earlier and had no crashes for a couple of days, so I figured I'd see how long it lasts without crashing at -190mV.

 

there is no set limit, each CPU is different but going so high with an undervolt will cause crashes.

Try loading 50+ tabs simultaneously in your browser from your bookmarks list just as a test. I find that amateur test crashes most overclocks and/or undervolts if they are not correct. Even though that undervolt or overclock passed a few bench stress tests. This is real world usage.

-180mV for 4.2 GHz even is too much / not enough juice for the CPU to operate properly

 

That's one way to do it. You can keep the hibernate option available and disable Fast Startup, alternatively (in "Power Options", select "Choose what the power buttons do", then click on "Change settings that are currently unavailable." Fast Startup can then be unchecked near the bottom of the window.)

 

Just installed the game, running perfectly fine on my system with the 1080. Other than the warning that im on 372.54
Rand a benchmark :

 

Ok this happened again, the computer just refused to load any programs. I had to restart the PC nearly 10 times before it finally started up windows properly, it worked fine in safe mode.

The only program that showed up in the notification area was geforce experience (or it said something like nvidia-settings or something but it was the geforce experience icon), I wonder if it's Geforce experience that somehow fails to load and hangs the entire system. Well I uninstalled geforce experience so will see if it happens again. It's only happened once before today since my last post. However today it was real bad, nearly gave up getting it to work.