*** Official Clevo P65xSA/SE/SG / Sager NP8650/51/52 Owner´s Lounge ***

If you are having problem detecting SSD or setting it up when trying to install windows, remove all other hard disks from the system and keep only the SSD. once you install windows you can connect the other hard disks and use them as usual. That's what I learned after trying to install windows on Samsung Evo 850. beside this 500gb ssd, i also have 1 tb and 2tb disk.

 

Will be possible to receive the link for your Prema vBIOS?

 

He should only share if he has prema permission to do so.

 

^^^ I have deleted my comment so hopefully no more of these requests in future. Apologies!

Ever since I've had my P650SE, the storage space has always been a major problem because I cheaped-out on it and settled for a 250GB Samsung 840 EVO and Hitachi 500GB HGST hard drive. Three years later, I finally decided enough is enough and I ordered a new 2TB hard drive as a replacement.

From my research I found that there only seem to be three 2TB 7mm drives that exist at the moment. Two are Seagate models, ST2000LM015 and ST2000LX001. The other is a Western Digital WD20SPZX. All of which are 5,400RPM. I checked benchmarks for each drive on UserBenchmark and the WD drive came out on top.

So I have ordered that one from Amazon. Should be arriving on Thursday. It was a bit expensive but I shopped around and couldn't find it cheaper anywhere else. I had a load of useless Amazon gift cards for Christmas last year so this was the best opportunity to spend them. Hopefully they'll have the sense to package it well. I intend on upgrading to a new laptop within the next several months (maybe GL502VM cause G-Sync) so I will swap the 2TB drive over when the time comes.

 

I like the firecuda which has the small amount of ssd cache.

 

Yes, I did consider both but went with the WD in the end simply because I had more of a preference towards the brand. I don't suppose there was much in it, really. The benchmarks seemed to suggest that the WD was faster in both sequential and random 4K tests, but I don't know how reliable those results would be especially if the Seagate is a SSHD.

Either way, I just intend on using the drive for storing photos and videos so it shouldn't make much difference. And both drives were considerably faster than the Hitachi HGST I have at the moment.

https://hdd.userbenchmark.com/SpeedTest/420084/WDC-WD20SPZX-11CRAT0

https://hdd.userbenchmark.com/SpeedTest/192181/ST2000LX001-1RG174

 

I ended up returning that drive because it was a fair bit noisier than the Hitachi 7,200rpm HDD that I'd been using for the past 3 years. My new plan is to try and pick up a 970 EVO on Black Friday. Then I can use it as another secondary drive and keep my 840 EVO as the primary drive. When I sell the P650SE I can swap the 970 EVO into the new laptop and use it as a primary like it was intended.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...-owner´s-lounge.763159/page-979#post-10777582

^^^ But at the moment I'm still trying to get my LCD back fixed. PC Specialist quoted £41 to send out a replacement. But it has been OOS for months and they don't know when it will return. In the meantime I contacted Clevo directly but they wanted £72 which is ridiculous. I did think about asking Schenker in Germany but their replacement would probably have the XMG logo and power-coated finish, not brushed-aluminium.

Thankfully my temporary solution of using Gorilla Glue is still working OK for the moment.

 

If clevo has it in then 0C specialist should be able to order it in.

 

That's what I thought. To be honest they haven't been very helpful at all. Last month they assured me it had come in stock but when I received the parcel it turned out to be the wrong item, they sent me the base instead of the LCD back. This was despite me warning them in advance that the part on the invoice was incorrect. They've been messing me around for months which is disappointing because otherwise I have really enjoyed this laptop.

 

I'm sorry to hear that

 

I have good news in that I finally managed to source a replacement LCD back. It's actually from one of the later P650H models but seems to be identical. In the end it cost £36 which wasn't too bad.

Unfortunately it's proving extremely difficult to correctly thread the cables through the clips on the LCD back. There are two cables each side for the LTE and WLAN receiver modules; and then there's another cable on the left side for the webcam. I cannot for the life of me seem to get all of the cables to sit comfortably, whilst getting the plastic bezel to clip in place over the top of everything. It sounds easy but it is damn frustrating!

I noticed in HTWingNut's LCD replacement video on YouTube for P650SE, he only has one LTE/WLAN module on either side whereas I have two. So that's partly the reason I am finding this is difficult, because there are three cables to thread down the left side instead of two. I wish I'd have taken a picture when the old LCD back was still on the laptop, then I'd be able to refer back to it and find out exactly how the cables were supposed to go!

 

He likely does not have a LTE module.

 

Yes... (That's why I put the slash because I wasn't sure which one would be on HT's laptop in the video!) Although come to think about it, the LTE module is a lot wider than the WLAN, so that would've been one way of telling.

On mine there are little white stickers attached to each module. The ones on the right side say LTE Main and WLAN Main whereas the others on the left read LTE AUX and WLAN AUX.

Hopefully I will be able to figure out tomorrow how to route the cables around the LCD so that they allow the bezel to clip securely into place. I didn't expect this to be so difficult. It's certainly a lot trickier than it seems!

 

Not much room is left to give it as thin a profile as possible, just try and tuck it all in.

 

Hi,

Any kind soul could provide the bios for Clevo P650SE to make the NVMe drive bootable? No luck in crawling on the Internet to find such bios (including Prema modified bios).

 

There is no such BIOS. Even Premas won't make it happen. Sorry to disappoint.

Sent from my ZTE A2017U using Tapatalk

 

Thanks - guess have to use the NVMe drive as a secondary storage then...

 

@Prema - apologies for disturbing - I was scouring through the forum and it appears that you had done a mod for this model before http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ith-gtx-970m-htwingnuts-review.765376/page-92 (post #913)

do you think you can PM your modified BIOS so that I can fiddle around with the settings and see whether I can get my laptop to boot from the NVMe drive? I was able to install the Windows 10 on the NVMe drive (and the drive can be detected on Windows 7 installed on my other SATA drive) but I just wasn't able to get it to boot (no such option at the stock BIOS). Appreciate any assistance that you can render on this.

 

Have you considered raiding a pair of sata drives instead, you would be hard pressed to tell the difference and it will be cheaper and easier.

 

Hi there- thanks for the suggestion. Will probably take this route till I get a new set of laptop!

 

I have it in my backup machine, a pair of 850EVO 512GB drives and they feel just as fast as my 1TB SM961.

 

Are you using the BIOS to stripe those drives or Windows?

 

BIOS, it's a boot drive.

 

Good point.

 

Apologies for another NVMe related post. I just benchmarked my brand new 970 EVO in this laptop and I noticed it seems to be underperforming in comparison to a lot of the 970 EVO benchmarks online. For example, the test on Guru3D shows sequential read of 3,500MB/s and a write of 2,450MB/s with the 500GB model.

I assume this is due to the P650SE motherboard not having full support for NVMe speeds?

I checked temperatures with HWiNFO and the drive is typically operating at around 45°C.

 

The 80 series chipsets use DMI 2.0 for the chipset and that's the maximum speed.

 

I see, thanks for the explanation. Just wanted to ensure there was nothing wrong with the drive before my return period ended. When I eventually get a new laptop I'll hopefully be able to achieve the maximum speeds capable with NVMe.

But in the meantime this is still ridiculously fast. I managed to get the 970 EVO with over £30 ($38) off from Amazon so it was too good to resist in comparison to a standard SSD.

 

You wont notice the speed difference unless you do big file transfers all the time anyway.

 

My led back cover is also broken in lower left part, and I probably need to change both the front bezel and the back cover, but I can't find anyone selling it or having it in stock in Europe :V
Do you guys happen to know where could I find a led back cover + front cover (the bezels) and the hinges, since a hinge is also broken?

My reseller doesn't have them in stock anymore or the possibility to order one, so that option is out.

 

I sourced my replacement LCD back cover and hinges through PC Specialist in the UK. Unfortunately, they were a massive pain in the ass and it took 4-5 months to get them after they delivered the wrong parts and screwed up the delivery address multiple times.

For me it came to £30 & £6 P&P which was a good price at least. They sent the replacement hinges for free. But I'm not sure they would cater for customers who have bought their laptop from elsewhere.

As much as I like the P650SE, I think the hinges could have been designed a lot better. There seems to be a lot of pressure at the mounts on the LCD back when opening and closing the lid. Regrettably I see this problem as a massive deterrent from upgrading to another laptop from the P65x lineup. I prefer laptops with the one hinge that spans across the width of the laptop like my mother's Acer Chromebook 14.

 

You could try other local resellers to see if they could source it for you, could be a potential test for any future purchases.

 

^^^ Yes. I tried Scan Computers in the UK but they wouldn't do anything since I didn't purchase the laptop from their store. So don't waste time contacting them about it, LoneWolfs. And I think Schenker only do the P650SE (XMG P505) with a power-coated finish so that probably wouldn't help either. But it would definitely be worth contacting the other remaining resellers, like Meaker said.

 

They may be able to source something for you still, worth an ask.

 

Hey, in case you guys were still looking, I made my Samsung 970 EVO bootable on my P650SE by modding the 3.09 bios with this (the 5.01 bios looks super complicated so I didn't touch it, but I would really appreciate it if someone could help explain how to install it). I can run Windows 10 on the GPT format NVMe Solid state drive through UEFI (BIOS doesn't work, though CSM does). I have no idea if it's using full NVMe capabilities, as I'm new to all this.

Another downside is that I normally run Windows 7 on a hard drive, which I can't boot into anymore even if switch back from UEFI to BIOS, change the boot order back, and disable the other drives in boot order. I just get a blinking white cursor on the top right of the screen after the bios splash. The only way I'm able to boot Windows 7 from my HDD is if I unplug the M2 SSD before turning my computer on. I'd preferably like to dual boot Windows 10 and Windows 7 from my 970 EVO, or at least just Windows 7, but the whole GPT, MBR, and UEFI thing is pretty confusing to configure.

Edit: I used the MMTool method with version 4.50.0023. I have no idea if that matters, but it worked for me.

 

Forgot to mention you too in my above post.

 

I ****ing did it. Goodbye Windows 10, hello Windows 7.

It's pretty easy to find guides for installing Windows 7 fresh to a NVMe, so I won't go over how to do that, but this reddit post and this youtube video helps with having the SSD disk show up in the installation process. Since the Intel USB 3.0 Creator download isn't available, you can probably use step 6 from the reddit post to scalp your intel 3.0 drivers. I don't know which ones you need, extensible or host, but you can copy both into your installation usb and load them during/before setup. I also had to run it in UEFI+CSM mode.

As I mentioned above, I get a blinking white cursor with the modded BIOS and my SSD plugged in, so I did everything on my original BIOS, and then flashed my modded BIOS as the last step. Before I even cloned my hard drive to my SSD, I had the Samsung NVMe driver for my SSD already installed on my hard drive. I do all the following modifications on the clone SSD (NOT THE ORIGINAL HDD).
I personally followed this VERY FLAWED guide until the last few steps. By very flawed, I mean it will ****ing temporarily brick your computer if you follow it to the letter (thankfully I didn't) so read my entire post before you even do anything the guide tells you. To clarify some things, since I have a bootable HDD, I did everything DISKPART related in the comfort of my desktop with my soothing wallpaper.
The first mistake the guide makes is it tells you to create partitions that are larger than the Primary partition offset AFTER YOU RENDER YOUR PC UNBOOTABLE (or at least it would be if I wasn't booting off my HDD). My theory is that SSD partition offsets aren't as fluid as HDD offsets. I used Minitool Partition Wizard (MAKE SURE YOU UNCHECK ANY ADWARE/MALWARE AT EVERY STEP OF THE INSTALLATION) to move the partition so there's 228 MB before it (which shows up as 229 MB offset for some reason, but that's correct). Then I made the other two partitions. Keep in mind that the "assign letter=S" step won't stick, so you'll have to do that over again every time you reboot by selecting that partition through DISKPART, including the USB boot steps. The Minitool partition wizard changes your primary partition number from 2 to 1; it probably doesn't matter, but it bothered me, so I loaded a windows 7 installation media onto a usb using rufus's GPT/UEFI partition scheme, and hit startup repair (after doing the NVMe "Double Driver" step in the reddit post above to detect the SSD) and that made the partition numbers in order and my heart at ease (don't blame me if it borks things for you).
The second mistake this guide makes is that the Windows 7 version of bcdboot doesn't have a /f argument or command thing. Windows 10's bcdboot does, which I found out thanks to this video. Actually, you should probably just follow this video instead of the very flawed guide. I made a windows 10 boot disk which I ran in pure UEFI mode to run the final command with the BCDBOOT and the /f UEFI. Shift+f10 pulls up cmd prompt in windows 10 repair.

And now I can run Windows 7 in UEFI+CSM booting off a NVMe in GPT. I probably missed a whole bunch of stuff, and I won't check this forum too often, so just add me at Moegana#3890 on discord to contact me about anything urgent.

Edit: This website bleeps your profanity. I find that pretty lame, though I can see it helping if someone's being a dick.

 

If Prema accepts, can you share P650SE bios with me ?

@CivicJDM

 

It's more if a problem solving space and a family friendly one hence the censorship.

 

Is there any way to keep the 3.5mm headphone jack functional without having that awful 'Clevo Control Center' bloatware installed?

Unfortunately whenever I uninstall CCC it leaves me with no sound from the headphone jack after a reboot. I tried using the secondary S-PDIF audio jack instead but the audio sounds a lot 'flatter' in comparison.

 

Is any one on the forum interested in a P650SG (NVidia 980M)(Mythlogic Dia1614) with the 4K screen, 500 GB Samsung 850 Pro, 16 GB RAM, 1 TB WD Black HDD?

Prema BIOS installed too.

 

I don't have this problem. I currently don't have the CCC installed and I'm using the headphone and mic jacks just fine

 

I heard quite a few people say the same thing, but whenever I've tried to uninstall CCC it has always killed the headphone audio. Although I've just had another attempt and so far the headphone jack seems to be working without CCC installed. I'm not sure what changed since the last time I tried this.

 

The version of ccc you were installing?

 

Well, probably for me it works because I never installed it in the first place

 

I am a happy owner again. I had a Clevo P651SE from 2015 (bought from CEG-Hardcorecustom), with i7-5700HQ and GTX 970M. Lately, it was almost burning. I changed the CPU and GPU heat paste with Kryonaut, installed Ubuntu 18.04 and managed to install tuxedo-fan-control after a bit of fiddling with the source code. I never had such a silent Clevo before. Props to Kryonaut and Tuxedo!

 

I was installing the latest version from the Clevo website, 5.0000.0.11. But I've been using my laptop for the past week without CCC installed and the headphone jack seems to be working perfectly. Great!

Unfortunately I have another problem that has been occurring over the past couple of months. I notice that sometimes the blue power-button light goes very dim after the laptop has been handled. Applying a bit of pressure with my fingertip to the casing on the left side on the button seems to make it return back to its usual brightness. A few weeks ago I couldn't even turn the laptop on because the power button was not working at all. So it seems like there is a bad connection between the motherboard and the button. I was hoping to sell this laptop within the next 3 months, but first it seems I will have to disassemble it to find out what is causing the problem.

 

Haven't opened one of these but older versions had a post on the bottom of the button that basically just pushed another button on the mobo. Not common but I've heard of them breaking off or bending that post and not making good contact.

 

Though the dim LED could just mean the board cable need re-seating.

 

Thanks for that. I will have a look into it although I'll probably put it off for another month or so, then it would be worth cleaning out the fans at the same time. Unfortunately I have to assume this will require removing the motherboard since the power button connector is most likely on the other side. (Damn!)

 

I just want to ask is it worth changing the screen to Sharp LQ156D1JX01B. I code a lot and better screen would be more enjoyable for me and probably less eye strain. Current screen is just great with just a tiny backlight bleeding on the top right corner and its not noticeable until you really look for it.

I found the sharp screen for almost 80$ online but I lost the link and for that price I just want to know if the difference is worth.

I understand i need to find a new cable to connect the 4k screen but i cannot find the part number

[EDIT]
I managed to find the cable SKU but i am a bit confused
In this post http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...r-np8650-51-52-owner´s-lounge.763159/page-588
Cable numbers are

• EDP Screen Cable - 3K (031-1C) - P650Sx 6-43-P6501-031-1C
• EDP Screen Cable - 4K (051-1C) - P650Sx 6-43-P6501-051-1C

but on this website https://www.fortunetechnology.com/fortune-spares/4769/

• EDP Screen Cable - 3K (051-1C) - P650Sx 6-43-P6501-051-1C
  EDP Screen Cable - 4K (031-1C) - P650Sx 6-43-P6501-031-1C

They are the other way. So just before i decide to get a 4k screen I just want to make sure that I get all the parts i need.