**OFFICIAL SAGER 8850-Clevo W880CU Owners Lounge**

okay, for all those who have the sound noise like something rubbing on the fan...found the problem....

but not sure how to fix it yet.

The screw on the back plate that tightens down jut near the number 4 screw of the CPU. It appears that the circuit board there has a connection to the speaker. An when fully tightened down, pinches that connections and creates (what we call in the car audio business) engine or alternator noise going through the speakers.

So it's creating a ground loop problem of some sort.

How do I know this? Well, trial and error. This particular screw, when all rest tightened down, all you have to do is barely loosen it and the speaker goes from , thump thump thump thump (in rythem with CPU fan) to static then quiet. Tighten it down, it goes thump thump thump again.

So, the only thing i can think of to solve this is somehow put one of those little nylon washers between the mothermoard and the screw stud...under the other side of motherboard. Not sure how to access that yet.

I'm guessing take out harddrives, fans, and then unscrew all the back and should just pop off?

Well, anyway, seems like leaving the screw completely off solved the problem for now. When I get more time, I'll have to figure out how to fix that short.

Not at all what I expected for a new EXPENSIVE laptop.

 

service manual in my sig if you need help disassembling the machine

 

Who did you buy it from ?

 

i think that's irrelevant. I think that when you buy it from a reseller, it still ships out of Sager in California. Resellers are just 3rd party.

 

Found the problem.

I was partially correct. The positve for the speaker wire on the back side of the mother board (under keyboard) was being pinched by a metal triangular bracket mounted on the motherboard. I have moved the wire, applied a piece of electrical tape to keep it in place temporarily while i screw it all back together. Nice work Sager! There went about 7 hours of my time trying to troubleshoot and fix the problem.

I'll try and post some pics soon, if I can figure out how to host them on my comcast account. Sorry, no video, too hard to hold the camera while i rip it apart.

 

Can you click a Photo of your laptop
wondering even if you have the laptop with you
cos you creating & solving problems yourself

 

Glad to hear you fixed it, sounds like a 1 off problem though - hopefully won't affect any other machines.

 

ibraveheart....never created any problems.

The short was there to begin with. It was grounding out the speaker connection and making noise in tune with CPU Fan Speed.

All fixed now, what a pain in the butt to dissasemble enough to get to it.

theriko, yes, probably just a one-off problem, but the design of it tells me that this same thing could happen to another. I simple bit of tape to hold it back away from that triangular metal bracket and the screw stud when tightening would solve it while assembling it.

Also, the link for the service manual for the 8850 is down, but i tried best i could with the 8760

I am working on getting pics up now. I'm not going to post the whole dissasembly of it, just the problem areas and the applying thermal paste. see if someone can tell me i did it wrong. I probably did. LOL

 

^^^^^ Glad things are going well now. We look forward to some pics...

 

okay, not impressed at all.

Ran prime95 stress test and second i loaded up Furmark, PC just shut off, instantly, no BSOD or anything.

Started back up, ran Furmark. 1920x1080 got 7fps

Running 3dMark Vantage now and getting 3fps at 1280x1024

 

hmm,was runing on battery power, not pluged in.

pluged in, ran again. getting about 27fps in 3dmark vantage. is that good?

Just using the factorysetting in vantage. trial version, an't change anything. think its 1280x1024

 

hmm,
final scoring says Generic GPU.

CPU Score 35693
GPU Score 7999

What Am I doing wrong? GPU shows in DXDiag.

But appears the testing programs don't see it.

 

The score is exactly as it should be.

 

and the CPU temp geting above 90c and GPU 80c is okay?

 

The CPU temp is high, - examine your cooling. If no stickers or other obstructions are present, no dust and the fans are fine - you might need to re-apply the paste.

 

That CPU score looks inflated by Physicx.

 

Which was ur Next option
if u had a choice what Laptop would u get

cos u dont like this

 

Okay, here are some pics.

Here I am attempting to disassemble the whole Laptop to get to the shorted out speaker wire that was causing the annoying thumping sound, which I originally thought was something rubbing on the CPU Fan.




Here are the Speaker Wires, notice the little pin hole pinch on the white wire? That's where the metal bracket was pinching it when the screw from the back cover plate was tightened down. You can even see the dent in the plastic screw stud where the metal bracket was hitting it. That was creating a short, and the annoying noise.




Unfortunately, in order to fix that problem, I had to practically take the whole thing apart just to get to it, move it, and cover it with some tape to hold it into place while I reassembled everything, praying ti didn't move and get pinched again. Amazingly, I have no extra screws left, unlike the first car I rebuilt the engine in. All working again.

Here are some pictures of the clean CPU and GPU surface. The second picture shows how much IC Diamond Thermal Paste I used before installing the heatsinks back on.




I may need to redo the CPU. My thermal Temps have gotten upwards of 92c.

 

ibraveheart,

my next choice was just to keep the one i have.

I wanted the 9285, but having the express card slot right above the dvd drive was a no seller for me. I need to have that express card installed at all times so I can access my new raid tower. It needs Port Multiplying through an eSATA port, and these laptops ust don't support that without additional hardware.

If not for that, I woulda went with it.

Now that the problems seem to be fixed (except for high CPU temp) it's actually kinda nice. The screen is beautiful, however, have not had a chance to play a dvd movie on it yet.

 

hey guys,

Looking at CPUiz, it's showig that the Ram is operating at PC3-10700 (667MHz)

I thought hese were supoe to operate at 1333MHz ?

Both #1 and #2 slot read the same value.

That's the readings on the SPD tab, on the Memory tab, the value is reading DRAM Frequency 666.7 MHz

Is something wrong here? If so, how do i fix it, though BIOS?

 

Mmm, serial numbers.

 

one 84191172
other 8419116c

 

Ahh, the standard RAM question...

You have DDR RAM (Double Data Rate) therefore:

clock rate = 667, data rate = 1333

All is good with the world...

And Soviet was suggesting you blank out your serial numbers in your pics (as they can be used nefariously), not asking for the ones on the RAM.

 

oh, okay, i see, thanks, will do

 

You are right. Take a look, both the CPU anf GPU had paste missing.



I reapplied, however, temps still seem too hot, but less then they were.

I put quite abit on this time. I'm pretty sure I covered it well. I pressed down on the heatsink, twisted and turned alittle to make sure to get out all the air bubbles, and held it down with a finger until i got all the screws tightened. I'm pretty sure i did it right this time.

 

Just ordered mine.

i7-740QM
4GB RAM 1337 mhz
nVidia GeForce GTX 480M
500GB 7200 RPM
Win 7
IC Diamond Thermal Compound - CPU + GPU
Intel Ultimate-N 6300 Wireless LAN

 

congrats! looks like a beast.

 

Hey can you all run Everest or something and let us know what display is now shipping with your 8850 or W880CU? We thank you!..

Download Everest Home Edition 2.20 Free - Everest Home Edition - a freeware system information, system diagnostics and benchmarking solution - Softpedia

 

Okay, had a chance to finally play a DVD.

The whole picture looks grainy in a sense. Anyway of fixing this? I've played it on Media Player Classic and Windows Media Player. Tried messing with settings, nothing changes. Anyway to fix this?

If not, I'll be selling this thing then and going back with the Asus. It had a better picture for DVD playback.

 

I would send it back, why would you buy a 3k laptop and then have to repair at your house. I have had so many sager notebooks all fell apart. I was only impressed with them when i was young like most people under 30 it did not take a whole hell of alot to impress me. Get rid of it and get a machine that is built properly with a nice screen. HP elite with a dreamcolor screen mine plays all the latest games on high. Co workers have alienware and sager, alienware is so far ahead in build quality and the rgb screen blows sager out the water. Sager is cheap import junk.

 

What DVD decoder are you using? You may need to just update the version.

This is a matter of opinion. You should realize all of those venders you listed are imported.

It's the internet, you're only going to see the complaints. Very few people are going to take the time to post that "everything is working as it should". I'm on my second Clevo, with a HP in between, and I haven't had to touch any of them until I chose to upgrade something. Any model can have glitches.

 

Well, tried using Media Player Home Cinema, VLC, and downloaded and Used the K-Lite Codec Pack for windows Media Player 7. It's better now with that and ffdshow, but I guess still got some tweaking to do. It's still not as great as it should be. I'll have to buy a blue-ray player and try one of those.

Maybe these DVD's just don't have good enough resolution. I was hoping this video card would upscale the picture to great quality.

 

DVD resolution doesn't look as good as it used to now that we have HD resolutions. There's only so much you can do with 720x480 video. Watching DVD's on my 56" at home is not awesome at all compared to Bluray. You might want to look into a paid solution like Power DVD, it has a really nice GPU acceleration codec.

I understand being excited when something new and shiny shows up at your house, I get the same way too. If you take your time, I think you'll find 99% of the issues your having are easily solvable. It's impossible to know everything about a piece of hardware you've never owned before. I've had mine for 2 months, and I'm still asking questions left and right.

 

use S Player its the best

 

Has someone of you guys try to overclock the GTX 480M? It would be very interesting to know, because it's a heavily downclocked GTX 465, but identical specifications otherwise. So there is much potential in this card. I mean the stock performance isn't that impressive, around 10-15% above HD 5870M so give it a try.

As I have understand, the temperatures are fine one this laptop so that wouldn't be a problem when overclocking. The 180W power supply should have some margin.

 

The thing is, the GTX 480M is heavily undervolted - I think it runs at 0,85V. So you would first have to overvolt it, since you can only overclock it by 10% or so before it gets unstable at those low voltage levels. Overvolting however is only possible through one tool right now and you have to donate some money to get tha version. But if you get a GTX 480M you should have enough money to donate like 5$. As long as you up the voltage, there should be no problems with overclocking if you keep an eye on the temps. 90°C would be pretty acceptable for this card as the desktop GTX 465 runs very hot as well. You would probably be able to overclock it to 550/1100 with those temps. I'd leave the vram untouched cause vram cooling is generally insufficient in laptops and memory bandwith is enough anyway.

 

How would this laptop compare to the
New Asus G73 JW with 460m cards

which is better to get for Gaming

Thanks

 

Of those two, the W880CU is clearly better for gaming. It has superior cooling and can take a 100W TDP. I wouldn't recommend the GTX 480M though. The GTX 470M would be a better choice and stronger than that GTX 460M which performs not that great (below MR HD 5870 but more expensive). With the GTX 470M you could also look at different barebones like the W860CU. The advantage of the W880CU is support for 100W TDP GPUs, so MR HD 6870 if it comes and still is MXM 3.0b (which should be the case) will fit nicely into the W880CU.

 

Guess its better to wait for the 6870
hoping it will be out in next 2 moths
& then make my choice

Thanks

 

Acutally there is no indication when that card will come out. Its just that the desktop HD 6000 series mid-level cards will come out next month or by the end of this month and it is likely that the MR HD 6870 or whatever it will be named, will be based on those desktop cards. But nothing is certain. In response Nvidia could also release a GTX 485M. However, one thing is certain: You can basically wait forever since there will always be a better card waiting around the corner. However, the GTX 470M seems to be a great choice in terms of price/performance ratio if it comes out anytime soon. If I was to buy a new laptop I'd probably go for the X8100 or X7200 with GTX 470M SLI and non-extreme quad core.

 

Wow if its going to be in SLI
I sure would like that

Guess Alienware will have it
What other laptop would have the 470m Sli ?

 

Like I said, the X8100 and X7200 will have it and Alienware's m17x will get it eventually. W880CU is not a dual GPU system.

 

The x7200 blows my mind lol

you said, non-extreme quad core.

if im chooseing x7200 Laptop
I would like the - Intel ® Core ™ i7-980X(6 cores wow )
or wht would u suggest



Thanks

 

Well, some with D900F on this forum has got there GTX 480M to 500-540 core. Not 10% rather 20% and this was Vantage stable, so GTX 480M should hit that speed without overvolting. The temperatures for the GPU seems to be equal for both W880CU and D900F stock.

Speaking about temperatures I have seen a screenshot in this thread. As we already know the temps are just fine for the GPU but seems to be pretty high for CPU. The screenshot shows us 80C. But he uses CPUID HW and that program shows Tjunction. It is the internal, onboard sensor inside the CPU that is measuring the actual temperature of the silicon. So the temps we are used to see is tcase which is around 15C below. So it's about 65C but even this is way to hot, at least for a desktop CPU which will shutdown in this area. But mobile CPUs seems to have a bit higher tolerance, 100C tjunction vs. around 80C for desktop CPUs, so maybe it's okay. W870 seems to have better CPU temp, 70-75C TJ which is definitely more healthy. So I guess my question is what's the tcase temp, try Core Temp. And does many of you owners has these high temps?

 

True, but somebody even claimed to be able to oc to 607/1215, so stock GTX 465 clocks... somehow I doubt that this can be stable in games... stock voltage of GTX 465 seems to be 1.0V. 80°C for the CPU is high but acceptable. Keep in mind that the CPU fan and radiator is also used to cool the GPU, thats why CPU temps are higher compared to the W870CU.

I said non-extreme quad beacause the extreme six core CPU is damn expensive and there is not a single 6 core optimized game... however, lately I was thinking if it would be possible to get the 980X, disable 2 cores, disable HT and oc it to something like 4,5GHz+ which should be possible under those circumstances, then you would have a hell of a CPU. But then again, a 930 is all you need for gaming.

 

Thankyou Thankyou
you have been very very helpful
God Bless You

 

Hey guys I have a weird issue with my brand new W880CU. When I start up my computer and log in Windows, my display brightness always lowers itself down to maybe 30% even though I force 100% brightness on all display settings (normal brighntess, dim brightness), I also set the dim timer to 24 hours but every single time I boot, the problem remains and my power profile is overriden (the brightness slider moves to the left).

EDIT: I found the culprit!

Basically after installing the hotkey thing to have all the special function keys working, it also installs something call "Energy Star Power Conservation Modes" which you can access by right clicking that grayish weird looking "3.0009" icon in the system notification area. The default setting is Energy Star which apparently has the ability to override Windows settings. Anyhow, switched it to normal and voila, no more unwanted dimming. I personally hate having multiple applications controlling power profiles, the W7 built in one is sufficient, no need for conflicting apps.
Coming from an older Clevo M860ETU, the hotkey app didn't offer any kind of power settings so it took me very long to even go look there.

 

Stock score for sig rig is 16,345 3DMark06 with latest nVidia drivers running on the 7200RPM 500GB HDD, no SSD benching yet

This laptop offers some massive firepower, I can foresee breaking 20k with some good overclocking! I'm happy to say that this stock laptop now beats the high end desktop I had 2 years ago.

Slight overclocking with System Tools (nTune), 3DMark06 stable (core/shaders/memory x2):
455/910/1200 16,492 3DMarks
470/940/1200 16,662 3DMarks
485/970/1200 16,853 3DMarks (computer has been restarted prior to running this test)
500/1000/1200 16,910 3DMarks (computer has been restarted prior to running this test)
515/1030/1200 17,026 3DMarks
530/1060/1200 lost points
545/1090/1200 17,023 3DMarks (computer was restarted prior to running)
No point of overclocking core/shaders further for now. Perhaps a volt mod with future nibitor support will yield a higher score.

 

Can you also do a vantage run ?

 

I will later today.