*** Official Clevo P37xSM-A/Sager NP9377 owner's lounge ***

I believe Prema said SM and SM-A machines fix the problem older machines had and have full MXM support. My BIOS didn't even recognize the card, they didn't flash a new system BIOS when they installed the new cards. It just says unknown with the BIOS version. Same story with Prema's BIOS although he said he was planning on making an updated mod soon. I believe he is just waiting for the unreleased cards to be released (96XM presumably).

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There is a chipset revision in there, that's the main difference which fixes some issues stopping the 2nd msata port being reliable.

 

I thought that chipset revision was fixed going from the EM series to the SM series, and not from SM to SM-A?

 

The em series only had one msata physically which operated fine. It was the earlier sm models.

 

Huh. Interesting. Well I never had any issues with my mSATA slot; neither on this board nor on the 1st board, so either I'm lucky or the P370SM3 was fine.

 

I'm sure everyone here probably knows this so this is for newbies buying a sagar/clevo for the first time.
When I first ordered my np9377 I got it with sagar 2 year warranty. I bought it from exoticpc who I highly recomend. I called to see if I could extend my warranty to 3 years. They told me it could be upgraded to the 3 year for only $100. That's the price you pay when ordering the machine to begin with. How cool is that. I think he said you can upgrade your warranty within the first 60 days at the same price as it would be when first ordering the machine.
Alienware charges a rediculouse amount to upgrade your warranty after you have bought the machine from them even in the first 30 days of ownership. +1 for xoticpc . So if you order from xoticpc and think Damn I should of got the 3 year instead of the 2 year warranty after owning the machine for 2 monthes or less your still able to upgrade for the price you would pay for warranty when initially buying a new system.

Just thought I would share that. It made my day when I tried to upgrade my warranty.

 

Yeah, that's good to hear. I knew about the limit, but I thought it was 30 days and not 60. Glad to see they updated it.

The flip side is, unlike with Alienware, you can ONLY extend within that time period. You cannot extend that warranty 1 year down the line.

 

I didn't even think of it like that. So I guess they both have there pros and cons when it comes to warranty extensions.

 

Hello all....I just installed dual identical msatas....shutdown....trying to access bios so i can set up raid 0.....

F2 isnt working....tried f10..f8....

Is there a trick to accessing bios on an np9377

Im running win 8.1.....

 

I'm assuming you have fast boot on. Start tapping "F2" the minute you hit the power button. Before the screen even lights up, hit it repeatedly.

 

Im all about sharing 411...apparently its F1 to get into Bios....and....apparently if you're going to configure raid 0....and your going from win 8 to win 7....you have to go into bios...enable raid....which means disabling the ahci....and also you have to disable the uefi...otherwise the win 7 install hangs

Fyi

 

Only reason that the install hangs is because Clevo has the BIOS set to Windows 8 if you have UEFI on with no support for other OSes. Prema's modded bios fixes that but F1 is weird. It definitely should be F2.

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

 

Another easy option when running Windows 8.1 is to hold shift while clicking restart on the start screen. You'll move to a menu with several options. Choose "Troubleshoot", then "Advanced Options", then "UEFI Firmware Settings". Your notebook will then restart directly into BIOS.

 

How is os x running? Any worry of flashing prema's bios? I was going to hire someone to do it and have him follow prema's os x tutorial... I need thunderbolt fuctioning for my audio interface.

 

OS X is a real pain with this machine, just preparing you. Besides the BIOS flag, you have to contend with all sorts of incompatible parts. Video acceleration is not likely to work so you will have serious lag on redraws, the audio didn't work, I don't have any thunderbolt parts to test so I can't comment on that, and I never got the system booting without the installation thumb drive, Clover EFI didn't want to work.

Also if you install with EFI, if you want to make sure that Windows doesn't get corrupted you need to either disconnect the drive with Windows on it or the preferable way would be to install OS X first and then Windows on a separate drive.

Overall as one of the original people who worked to get the developer image of Tiger booting and installing natively on Intel x86 chips, I can tell you that Apple has done a great job making it an exercise in serious frustration starting with Mavericks. I haven't even bothered with Yosemite. These laptops just are too far from a real Mac. Even my desktop has issues with Mavericks (the fan controller doesn't work with it so my fans hit max and stay there).

One thing that may make a difference in your success with this machine is I have a 120hz display which uses the eDP port which no Apple machine uses so even with nVidia drivers picking up the Kepler 880M I used to have, I had a black screen when the kernel went to launch desktop and the HDMI doesn't work either which is what ultimately made me give up. Beware that Apple's nVidia drivers have to be removed in single user mode in order to hit the desktop after install or you'll get a kernel panic. The Intel graphics are completely disabled in this machine so without getting the nVidia drivers working, OS X will never perform properly. If you're lucky, nVidias alternate drivers will do the trick for the internal display but the HDMI doesn't work.

Here's the link to the alternative drivers http://www.tonymacx86.com/graphics/...ate-graphics-drivers-10-10-2-343-02-02-a.html

Best of luck if you decide to try it yourself. Those drivers are for Yosemite, there is no support past Kepler for Mavericks. Those drivers should pick up Maxwell.

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Is this machine capable of both driving the new Acer xb270hu monitor at 1440p and at least 120hz while also utilizing gsync?

Discuss.

Thanks.

 

I think Displayport 1.1a can do it, which is what the thunderbolt port is, but I don't know anyone who has specifically tried. Feel free to try and let us know.

 

Yup as soon as it goes on sale here I'm planning to pick one up. Wish they had a launch date or something other than just shipping in March.

 

Do you guys even use windows defender because it seams like it's always doing something in the background.? .would it be a problem to turn it completely off. I don't have any Antivirus software in my computer and never ever had a problem before.
Thanks.

 

I've used it for a couple of years. On my last machine it gave me a lot of 'hard' disk errors when checking the machine for TDR issues (latencymon), but I was told that was common and to disable the realtime to get rid of them. It does but then of course you have no realtime protection and have to manually check things.

For testing then just disable the realtime but it will have a warning flag in the taskbar.

 

Do you know something I don't know about a sale? because here in a couple weeks I plan on buying this but would love to get the best deal/extras as possible...its not a cheap beast

 

Nope I got nothing here other than sometime in March supposedly. I think it's already out internationally in some places.

 

It's not cheap. Butt it's bad ass compared to every other laptop I've owned.

Bad ass = awesome.

 

Okay, new to the forum, had my NP9377 for several months and LOVE IT!! Just got some extra money, and am wanting to add a 2nd mSATA, which is apparently possible, but for the life of me I can't find 'slot 3' to put it in. Took off bottom cover, saw my slot 1/2 mSATA and Wireless chip, where in the heck is slot 3??????

 

Sorry wrong thread.

 

It's under your keyboard.
Turn off the laptop and remove the PSU and the battery.
Use screwdriver to kind of push up the thin black bar DIRECTLY above the keyboard. If you look closely at your chassis, you will notice that it is a thin strip and not actually part of the larger chassis. It should come out easily.
You should see five screws. Unscrew them, then lift the keyboard out from the top-center slowly. It will resist a bit, but then pop right out. Be careful you do not pull out the cables. There are two cables; one is for the keyboard and one is for the backlighting.
After the keyboard is removed, you should partially see your motherboard. There, you should see another mSATA slot, a little to the left side.

 

I only have one 256gb msata ssd boot in my system also and am interested in adding another.
Question one is if I add another one will it just show up as another drive in my system or do I have to change things in bios to get it to work.
Question two is can someone suggest the right one for my np9377 preferably 512gb or 1 terabyte if they make one that big and any suggestions on where to buy it for best deal.
Thanks.

 

It will just show up like adding any drive in the bios, you will need to format it first to get it to show in windows though through disk manager.

The 840 evo mSATA is a pretty good drive.

 

Where to get the drives? I've seen them on Amazon, Newegg, etc. My recommendation is to get Crucial M550s if you can, M500s are great as well, that's what I have.

I opened up my system and they're not stacked like I thought they were but the service manual doesn't show a slot under the keyboard and I don't remember seeing one either. Could have sworn they were stacked... Hmm. I'm losing it.

 

It's under the main 2.5" bay and the main hatch

 

Thanks for that Meaker, the service manual doesn't mention mSATA at all.

 

Sorry I have to apologise, I was getting confused with the P1xx series, there is only 1x mSATA under the main hatch, with the two 2.5" bays in to the side.

 

So are you saying this machine can do 3x mSATA then? Now I'm all confused.

 

The machine has 1x MSATA, 2x 2.5" and 1x Optical. You can use a 2.5" to MSATA converter if you have a spare drive and one of the 2.5" bays free.

 

How come when I orderd from exotic pc it gave me the option for ssd1 and ssd2 and hard rive 1 and hard drive 2. And the option to Raid both ssds and both hdds.

I opened mine up and removed both hdds and there is nothing under there. If I take the bottom cpu cover off there is the crucial m550 and that's it . So either the other one is under the keyboard or it don't have 2.

 

It has 2x mSATA, 2x 2.5" and 1x optical. I'm certain of that because I have all 5 bays in use, I just don't know the location of the second mSATA port.

 

It has to be under keyboard like d2 Ultima pointed out earlier.

 

There it is, I just had a silly moment

 

I found it in the service manual, it is indeed under the keyboard, the reason I never saw it was because I didn't disconnect the ribbon cable, just lifted the keyboard out enough to get access to the CMOS battery. Keyboard covers it (as it does in the service manual image, I looked at the board layout to find out and its there next to the RAM slots)

 

I ordered my np9377 with 16 gigs of ram and when I pull the bottom of my laptop the ram slots are empty so mine must be under the keyboard. But according to this picture the ram slots under the keyboard are slot 3 and 4. Evidently it don't matter what slits you put the ram in if you only have 2 sticks

 

I told ya it was there! Big discussion for a picture fix XD

 

That's correct, you can mix and match however you like these days. You can even use dual channel using slot 1 and slot 4 or slot 2 and slot 3 if you wanted to, but best to fill up one or the other

 

Lol you were just sitting there waiting for this to get sorted before the "I told you so" moment came weren't you?

 

Good thing someone posted a picture because I already had my screwdriver out and preparing to remove the keyboard just to find out .lol



Edit : Ok I just ordered a crucial m550 msata 512gb solid state drive off Amazon for 199. Wich I will be installing where? O yeah under the keyboard.

 

I think you'll be quite happy with that drive, I have a pair of the 2.5" ones in my desktop (the 256GB model) and have zero complaints.

 

If I could change 1 thing about my original np9377 order it would be getting 2 x 128gb msata ssd and putting them in Raid instead of one 256gb msata ssd. I'm not sure if that would of made much of a difference but it sounds better anyway.

 

On paper RAID is much faster but in regular usage scenarios, the performance difference seems to be negligible other than a few seconds less start up and shut down time. You also of course have a higher failure risk with a RAID setup instead of a single drive setup but larger SSDs can be more expensive than putting two smaller ones in RAID (although prices are coming down, that may not be true anymore depending on the size of the drive) and SSDs are generally much more reliable than mechanical hard drives.

 

On another note. Wich vbios mod do you guys think is the best one to use on the np9377 and 980m sli. Prema or svl7/jonksss .? And Wich one you using and maybe why you chose that one.

I'm guessing premas from what I've read but just wanted to get your guys input since you own the same machine as me.

 

I'm using Prema's because I had too many soft brick issues with my 880Ms and svl7/johnksss' vbios. I haven't even tried theirs because I would not be able to use my M17xR1 to flash the cards from what I hear.

 

Nah I just happened to see like 8 messages after mine about people trying to find it and then Meaker put the picture and I was like.

LEL.