clevo p1501em porblem, screen shut off

Hello again,
I have been having a slightly annoying issue with my clevo p151em laptop. The issue is that when I am playing games (bf3, skyrim, metro 2033, planetside, etc) the screen may randomly shut off (turn black) during the game. Everything is still running as it should, I can still hear the game playing and play it. So I know it’s not the computer shutting off. I will then either need to shut the computer down or close the lid (putting it to sleep) for the screen to function again.
Im wondering if anyone else has had a problem like this and may know a fix or why it is happening. I want to try and resolve the issue before I contact the store I bought it from.
Specs:
Bought in November of 2012
Intel core [email protected]
16Gig ram
Nvidia 670mx gpu
Seagate 750gig HDD

any help would be great

 

not heard of that one before especially during a game. it sounds like its going to screen saver after a certain amount of time but this shouldnt happen as you are using the mouse and keys.
you are plugged into mains power arent you.
only thing i can think of is to check your power plans. left click the battery on task bar > more power options > change plan settings. you should be on high performance.
on mains mine is set to top two 5 minutes and bottom one never.

 

Yeah the battery is plugged in, and yeah the power plan options was a thought too, I looked at it and there is nothing out of the ordinary. It just starts to become annoying. I guess ill give the site I bought it from a call. See what they say. thank you for the reply

 

Does this happen only during games, ie when you are pushing your GPU? It could be thermal issues. Use a HW monitor like MSI Afterburner and log your temp when this happens. I don't know anything about the 670M specifically but anything above 95C is bad.

 

i have been monitering the cpu and GPU.
cpu never gets hotter then 50-60c
and the GPU never gets hotter then 70 on BF3
ill run more thermal tests later..but if it was the GPU or CPU the game would stop or shut down as well, and i wouldnt be able to sill play it

 

those temperatures are fine especially in B3 so its not that.

 

Have you already tried playing with the drivers? Try uninstalling the drivers both for the GPU, as well as for the monitor. Windows will automatically re-install the default driver for the monitor, but you'll need to install/update the graphics driver. It's odd that the video signal is just suddenly being cut off.

Does this happen exclusively with games? Or does it occur whenever putting heavy load on the GPU (or any load)?

 

it only happens with games, i will be reinstalling the drives today if i get around to it, i really dont do anything else besides games that demand the GPU to much, well at lest not net. only thing i can think of is there may be something bad that causes it to shut off after a long period of use. when i get my SSD ill reinstall windows and see if that fixes anything, again thank you, to all of you that have replied

 

Use a GPU stress test like Furmark; see if your screen always shuts off at around the same time/temp.

If this were a hardware issue, it's still possible temperature is a factor. Things could be failing at temps lower than the mid-90C which are considered unsafe.

 

If the monitor is shutting off randomly, its mostly driver issues. (given that the game itself continues, even with black screen)

 

I'm having the exact problem with P370EM with 2x GTX 680M SLI
After playing for some time screen goes black and nothing could be done.

I'm using the latest Nvidia drivers.
Which software would log the temperatures of GPUs so i could see the peak temps when screen went black?

 

HWINFO64 has logging options. Its free, download it, tick the option "log temperatures" and it starts logging to a text file.

After that, you can review the file to check temps.
Its a little hard to read, because there are so many temps one under another, BUT I use ctrl+f to find peak temps.
For example, my temps read 58...57...59...56...57...
I start searching for 70. If I dont find that, I search for 68. And thats how I find my max temps more easily!

Hope I helped!

 

If it's OK that i'm posting my info in this thread while i'm having the same problem with different laptop model, i was logging the temps today and here are the numbers:
In FarCry3 the screen went black when max temps of the GTX cards were 84-85 Celsius
In BF3 the temps were even higher: 89-90 Celsius

Crysis 2 and Assassin's Creed 3 do not suffer from this problem even when i'm using the max video/graphics quality settings (as on the above mentioned games as well)

So, is that bad optimized games, bad drivers or something else that make temps on some games go high?

 

i dont mind post what ever you need to get your system fixed, for the moment mine seems to have stopped when i DL;ed the latest drivers,

 

What version of the Intel HD4000 driver did you install? I remember seeing something related to blackscreen issue being fixed in the release note for 9.17.10.2932.

 

hummm goood question i just installed the Nvidia one. i havent updated the HD4000,
although come to think of it. the problem would also happen when i alt tab out of a game, so it could be the attempting switching of the graphics card

 

Might be a good idea to update your HD4000 driver: http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Detail_Desc.aspx?agr=Y&DwnldID=22375&keyword=hd4000&lang=eng

 

To be completely honest....I dont know.
I have never tried BF3 or AC3 or Crysis (not a fan of fps games).
You mention the cards running cooler in Crysis than in the other two.
Well....it might be bad optimization or bad drivers. In both cases, it should be bad optimization.

Not sure if it fixes anything, but maybe (just maybe) a laptop cooler might be in order.
OR a professional repaste of the heatsinks. A really well-made repaste.

I was under the impression last year that 370EM had a very good cooling. But maybe its not so great after all.
All the more reason to stay away from dual graphics cards until they start producing laptop water coolers.
Alienware had some prototype water cooling systems that supposedly worked wonders.....I hope we get something like that in Clevo in the coming times.

 

Is there a way to control GPU fan speeds? I have read somewhere that people talk about such things:
"Make sure that your graphics card fan is at 100% when 60 degrees is reached. I use evga precision and set up a fan curve so that it goes from 40% speed at 35 degrees to 100% speed at 60"

Others talk about following things:
1. Dropped Power Target to 90%
2. Underclocked GPU -75 Mhz
3. Increased voltage to 1100 mV (From stock 988 mV)
3. Capped FPS to 65 in game.
4. Turned MSAA off

 

Yes, you can control the fan speeds. Many [gaming] laptops come with a specific hotkey to control fan speed (usually Fn + a number key), and you can also use third party software to control and monitor your fan(s), such as GPUZ.

 

The fan cannot be controlled in 370EM (sadly).
No turbo mode either (the HM series had turbo with fn+1)
MSAA, AF and all these things can produce more stress, so turning them off might lower the temps a bit. You need to check that.
Undervolting helps keep temps down (especially if you dont plan on overclocking).
Underclocking *could* help in that regard too.
FPS capping is always good in keeping cooler temps.

I think you knew all that, but its too late - Ive already written it, might as well go ahead and post that

 

Today i seem to find a cure, at least i could play as long as i wanted
What i did was installed the FC3 and BF3 updates, but i don't think it was a big deal.
The major help i think that i gave more air to coolers. I took my Crane stand to up the laptop around 25 cm from table, took an external keyboard so it's easy to control. And today the screen didn't went black.