attention 9262 / d900c owners, regarding heat problems!

i caught more beeping on tape during my short gaming session. these beeps all occured within 5 minutes so it can get quite annoying.

i have almost lost hope in the d900c and i only have about a week before my return policy expires so i need to make a quick decision.

a few others mentioned they experienced the beeps as well and i wonder why in the world did they not freak out and say anything? i mean, your $3k-$5k laptop is beeping at you while it is being run in a proper workspace.....

almost every d900c owner that posts here claims to run max fans. running max fans is way too loud. it's much louder than an sli gaming desktop rig with max fans.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_iQImZ0F4ug

edit; this is my replacement laptop here, btw.

 

Aaah, wrong answer, wanna try again?

No, it is what it is, but it does make it more unlikely that the problem is with the battery or the power system - unless the entire city of Chicago has weak power.

Still, I think it's unlikely to be overheating because you seem to have tested that hypothesis nine ways to Sunday and don't seem to be recording too-high temperatures.

I think the clues are precisely the ones you've listed, particularly the fact that it has to be in full-screen mode, with WUXGA resolution. These suggest that it's a problem with the display h/w. The fact that the keyboard lights will sometimes flash is a very interesting clue because that definitely suggests a keyboard-related problem, either h/w or f/w. The beeping would be consistent with a keyboard-related problem because (as far as I know) a system will beep on a key-stroke if the keyboard buffer is full.

Now, at first I thought that the fact that it didn't beep when the fans were on full was a red-herring; however, once I took a look at the block-diagram for the D900C/D901C from the service manual, I immediately became convinced that it is, in fact, another very good clue.

If you look at the block-diagram on page B-2, specifically this part:
View attachment D901C-BlockDiag1.bmp

you'll see that the keyboard and the fan controls are logically adjacent, and communicate with the KBC controller on the same bus.

Now, when you're running full-screen at 1920x1200 resolution, you're maxing the workload on the GPUs, which means that the need for the fans is maximized. Now, and this is where my ability to speculate is beginning to run out, to me this means that the GPUs are generating the maximum number of requests for the fans. Since fan control runs through the H8-KBC-2111 chip, the same chip that handles the keyboard, that suggests to me the possibility that interrupts from the keyboard are getting snarled by interrupts from the GPUs for the fans.

Since the fan signals run through the H8 chip, that means that the chip has to stop whatever else it's doing and deal with the request for fans - which probably also includes evaluating whether or not the temps of the system warrant turning the fans on or not. On top of that, if the logic determines that the fans need to be turned on or turned off, then the H8 - to my guess - has to drop what it's doing and spend clock-cycles switching the fans.

Further, it sounds like when the GPUs are going full-blast the system temp fluctuates around a switch-point temp, which means that the possibility exists that the H8 is getting thrashed with constant state-switching for the fans - if true, this would certainly eat up a lot of the H8's time, leaving a lot less time to service the keyboard, possibly so little that the system may be generating keyboard errors, which could lead to beeping and flashing of the keyboard lights (inability to unload the keyboard). Now, I know that you said it can beep even if you're not touching the keyboard - which makes it hard to figure out how the buffer's getting loaded - but, and here I'm really going to go out on a limb, this could be due to bugs in the KBC driver causing signals from other components to get dropped into the keyboard buffer.

And there, unfortunately, my imagination runs out - perhaps someone with a better understanding of the h/w controls can criticize/expand on my speculations.

Based on all of that, it seems to me that the root source of the problem could be buggy firmware for the H8-KBC controller.

Unfortunately, given that you're getting to the end of your return window, unless someone better than I can come up with a definite cause, and a reasonable chance of fixing it, I think that you should probably exercise your refund rights and send it back.

EDIT: Forgot to finish my line of speculation! I think that what solidifies my suspicion that at root it's a problem with the KBC-driver is that when you turn the fans on full, it doesn't beep. My guess is that, when you set the fans on full, you're basically short-circuiting all of the logic that goes into controlling the fans - the H8 controller no longer has to do anything to deal with the fans, it doesn't have to "think" about what to do with the fans any more, and doesn't have to spend any clock-cycles answering signals from the GPUs (or, I suppose, polling them to see what their temps are) or switching the fan power on and off, leaving the controller with enough time to deal with everything else, such as the keyboard.

My speculations lead me to think that the temp threshholds for turning the fans on and off are too close, so that the GPU temps are constantly criss-crossing the too-small gap between the two threshholds, thereby in effect "thrashing" the H8/KBC controller.

It's a little like a car with a worn-out automatic transmission where the shift-points on the gears have gotten too close - if the engine speed is maintained right around the shift points, then the natural minute variations in the engine's speed, coupled with the pressure fluctuations in the hydraulic fluid caused by the worn condition of the transmission, can cause the transmission to thrash around repeatedly shifting up and down out of a particular gear. With a car, it's pretty easy to tell when this is happening, because the whole car will lurch around - for a computer, though, the only thing it can do is warn of a keyboard failure; so my guess is that the beeping and intermittent light-flashing are the computer's equivalent of the transmission-thrash of a car with a worn-out automatic transmission.

 

i got another KBC firmware update from sager. the first one on my original system did not solve the beeping. the replacement system came with that firmwar already installed. now it's time for the new firmware. time for more testing. i hope the fans are not louder with this.

this looks promising as these firmware updates come straight from clevo.

 

I'll keep my fingers crossed.

 

so far no beeps and the gpu's are idle'ing at 47 and 55 so this is the lowest idle i have seen from them.

load temps are normal, though. but as long as it does not beep i don't care.

i cannot tell if the system is louder at idle than before the update. maybe i am paying too much attention to see if the fans are louder so i may be just thinking they are when they are not?

so far so good.

quick edit, some minor you tube surfing and video chat and gpu temps are at 60 and 68 so it seems fine to me.

 

Argh, did you load the firmware yourself? Is this different from the bios? I am guessing it is or else you would have say bios instead of firmware. How do you find out what version you have? Just curious, I have never heard any beeps from mine, even on the rare occasion I forget to turn on max fans (I never hear them cause I'm always wearing headphones).

 

yes it is an iso file emailed by tech support. you need to use nero to burn the image file as a bootable cd disk and when you set up bios to boot from cd before the hard drive it will apply the patch by itself.

it is not a bios update it is a keyboard update i believe. the keyboard is directly tied into the fan control function of the laptop.

to check what version you have you need to enter bios and disable the sager logo upon boot so it can display more information. when you reboot you need to quickly press Ctrl + pause/break button to pause the boot screen. then look at the 5th line down to check the kbc/ec version firmware.

the pic below is the older firmware the replacement laptop came with. i updated that with the firmware ending in 09NS2

 

Sweet, thanks alot Argh. Gonna hafta check mine out just to make sure she is up to date. Hopefully this will help others if they experience the same thing, that is of course if it really solved your problem.

Rep to ya!

 

Fingers and toes, now!

 

i applied some AS-5 on the cpu and it dropped my temps by about 4-5c and runs even quiter than before as the main culprit for fan noise is the cpu fan itself.

i checked out the gpu's and they have a special silver foil application on the heat sink. i never seen this before and i am wondering if any resellers or anyone has applied AS-5 on the gpu(s). it looks specail, but at the same time tells me that AS-5 would be much better. i wonder why nvidia did this?

 

I'll defer to anyone else who knows better (i.e., almost anyone else ), but were I you I would remove the silver foil and replace it with bona fide AS-5. My guess is that the "foil" is essentially a second-best thermal solution that acts like AS-5, tho' not as well, and can be applied by machine without having to worry about spillage and the like.

 

the foil makes contact with the gpu die directly so when you remove the heat sink there is no mess, just the imprint of the die onto the foil. there is the thermal pad or paste right behind the foil as well.

yeah i will be looking forward to applying AS-5 on the gpu's i just want to see others have done it first. i am more curious if the resellers do it, like xotic ps or powernotebooks.

 

@ARGH: How's the new firmware doing? Any more beeping?

 

no beeping.

i still need to do some more testing, though. gotta just let crysis run afk or for 2-3 hours.

from my limited testing it has not beeped and i am betting that the issue is solved. my gut tells me, hehe.

now, the only other problem is the resume from standby issue which sager said it is a known issue and clevo is working on it. both laptops experienced the exact resume form standby issue where the garbled was at the exact same location.

 

Good to hear it - the problem seems to have been the KBC firmware, then?

 

yes as the last two firmware updates were for the KBC/EC

 

this is the foil i am talking about on the gpu heat sink. the more i look at it the more "stupid" comes to mind. i am twitching to put some AS-5 on there..

 

Very apt choice of words - I'd get AS-5 on there ASAP.

 

yep, just did that.

AS-5 applied!

with normal fans, temps with factory thermal paste were 58 and 66 doing light internet surfing after a couple of hours. i am curious to see what the new temps with AS-5 will be.

 

AS-5 on the gpu's did not appear to do much. maybe 1c lower on one of the gpu's. maybe it needs some time to settle.

 

200 hours, from what I've been told elsewhere. As the Arctic Silver 5 Intel Quad-core Instructions state (it's a pdf, so I can't pinpoint link):

 

i figured it may need time to settle. that or the stock foil and paste are really that good.

the main noise comes from the cpu fan so applying AS-5 on that is where the payoff is.

from my monitoring the cpu fan increases it's speeds (and noise level) for every 1c in temp increase starting from 53c or 54c. my system's cpu is idle'ing at 56c now and the system is very quiet.

with wprime benchmark cpu temps will hit 68c and you can really hear the fan then.

again all this is with normal fans.

 

regarding the resume from standby issue, it appears to be a driver related problem. this problem does not happen with sli disabled, only in sli mode. i am using sager's drivers.

 

Sorry to pop up like this, but I am not able to go through 8 pages of posts.

Did you figure out what is the reason for having the beeps? Is it keyboard controller, video card overheating, processor overheating?

PL

 

thankfully it was simply a faulty KBC/EC firmware so a new firmware was issued and it solved the beeps.

 

Hi where can I get the latest? XP and Vista both


PL

 

you need to contact your reseller for any firmwaer updates.

 

Ok. Thanks!

 

It aint that hard, just Max fans that sucker, let your beast roar, and never worry about overheating again

besides you NEVER notice it during gaming, trust me

 

Did you actually read the thread, or even the last page thereof, before posting?

 

[D091C with 8800 SLI] I only pulled one of the two video cards, but that one did not have anything at all added to the gpu surface, just a surround of some kind of foil. I can't think of any reason not to use some thermal compound, especially with all the concerns about heat build up in Laptops... There is a cable on that side of the board, maybe they are concerned about tramp material ending up on the cable and causing shorts...

 

The foil with pad behind it are standard for the 8800. They are usually ok, but as5 is better

 

Hey all, I made a thread a while ago regarding beeping/overheating, I was just told that everything was fine and nobody has this problem... I figured I'd give the forums some time for others with problems to show up, and lo and behold, after reading 9 pages, here the problems are!

Something that I have not heard anybody mention regarding thermal paste, is the little syringe that the laptop came with... what's up with that? This is a company laptop that I told them I needed for the work I do (very heavy system intensive 3d modeling), so unfortunately I don't have admin rights, and they might get a bit upset if I opened the beast up... (possibly not though, they do trust me). So why would they give me a little paste if it should come with it on it already?

 

the paste is just that, thermal paste. you do not need to worry about it unless you decide to remove the cpu or gpu's, generally speaking. they give you some thermal paste as a bonus.

 

So you can reapply it on a regular basis. The stuff is, generally, engineered to last quite a long time; however, anything that contains volatiles will eventually harden over time as the volatiles evaporate, and as the stuff gets harder, the contact with the CPU and/or heatsink is gradually reduced.

 

Sweet, thanks!
By the way when I'm reaching those high temps it's only when I'm rendering something intense that pushes all 4 CPU's up to 100% for 10 minutes straight at least... which is most likely a bit more intense than a video game, no? So I guess my temps aren't that bad... 72 without max fans, 66 with them on.

 

yes those temps are fine. you do not even need max fans on, actually, since the computer will ramp up the speeds and reach max fans if the temps are high enough. for example, i bleive max fans for the cpu will be reached once cpu temps hit 69c. i tested this with video encoding using sony vegas software, which utilizes all 4 cores. i user core temp to monitor cpu temps and rivatuner and gpu-z to monitor gpu temps.

 

i have a sager 9260 and my temps on the riva tuner are around77-80C

Dunno if these are within normal range, but i do have a laptop cooler and max fan enabled during gaming.

any thoughts guys?

 

quick update...i was getting ticked off with the temp reading so i did something different to my sager 9260. I blew the vents behind the machine with my breath. A load of dust appeard at the 1st fan and a bit on the 4th one. After a session of 15 minutes i ran the machine... ran tf2 and now it doesnt go over 58-59C on riva tuner.

Long story short.. laptop hot, i ble the back vents ....dust came out bottom vents...laptop cooler now! hope it helps you guys if you have similar situation.

 

yes these systems clog up quite easily and fast. you should open the service panel and clean it out real well. it's quite easy doing so.