*** Official Clevo P960EP6/ P960ED/ P960EF/ P960EN Owner's Lounge ***

So the screen went off but the fans kept going? I'd be interested what you find @IamTechknow

 

Yeah, screen turned off and my wireless mouse and bluetooth headphones were disconnected, but fans and the LED light next to the power button kept going. The fans didn't change to full speed, it was still temperature controlled and eventually slowed down but still audible. For me it started happening after I upgraded from Windows 10 1909 to 2004. I thought it might have been due to my BIOS and EC versions being old, but my laptop has been shutting down properly for the past few days so I like to think it was because of the Intel RST SATA driver (version 17.8.01065) or CCC (version 2.32 from Clevo's X170SM-G drivers page) I was using. Another interesting thing is the "Unexpected Power Loss Count" SMART value for my drives did not increase when I forced shut down, so I guess everything but the motherboard was able to shutdown.

 

It would have to be one of the final drivers to unload and shut down so storage is suspicious.

 

So after using my laptop for a week and a half I haven't seen my computer remain on after shutting down, standing by, or restarting. I have reinstalled Control Center, so it was definitely caused by the old Intel RST driver.

 

Nice find

 

Does anyone else have a problem with the CPU temps being the limiting factor? Got a 960EN and I sometimes go down to about 20 FPS in Cyberpunk 2077 or similar in other games, then check the fan utility and CPU is at 99C.

Guess I could get it cleaned and repasted, no local Clevo reseller. I bought it from PCSpecialist in the UK to Denmark, but sending the damn thing back and forth seems like a hassle, especially given the border crazies going on. How difficult would doing this myself be?

 

With some thermal paste should just need a screwdriver.

 

A screwdriver, some 93% alcohol rub, some q-tips/kitchen paper and latex gloves (static electricity is your enemy/don't touch weird chemicals kids).

... And a willingness to go above and beyond any voice i our head telling you not to push a nail into the keyboard from behind.

... And so many tiny screws, some of them stuck.

... And a frame that's rather unhappy with your attempts to open it up.

But yeah the thermal paste was not very well done. I should've taken a picture. Some areas seemed uncovered. It had the consistency of clay - but maybe that's just how that paste is.

In any case, temps only went down to 88-97 during play instead of 95-99, but Cyberpunk 2077 gained like 10 fps so I guess "moderate success".

.. I sometimes miss my old p150SM. Unscrew-->Slide.

 

Yeah the stock paste feels like that when taken off. Did you clean the fins?

 

That, too.



Done job, other than a bit of extra cleaning of the heat sink and around the GPU/CPU. (I have no point of reference for how acceptable this pasting is, but it looks like roughly the amount internet guides advice?)

 

That's a LOT of paste and should either be spread flat or use the line method and allow the heatsink to spread it out.

Having it like you have there invites air pockets.

 

Yeah, I once applied too much pressure trying to push up the keyboard on my P960ED and besides popping the keyboard out without removing the ribbon cable it caused some cracks on the plastic film. Since then I found it is much faster and safer for me to use a guitar pick/iFixit Opener/thin card to create an opening from the edge of the keyboard at the top and the lifting it out of the tab connections one by one. With this method I never had to lift up the keyboard from the bottom slightly either.

 

Plus the plastic won't leave any marks on the chassis.

 

Oh hey, I didn't see the last few posts recently but I also repaste my notebook! It originally had IC Diamond and I repasted with the same thing.

The first time I pasted it I used too little paste and it seemed as if temperatures were slightly worse than before. Then I saw a video of someone repasting with IC Diamond on a Clevo:



I repasted it and there was a small improvement of like 2-5 C° varying from idle to running at load. Makes sense considering IC Diamond lasts a long time and the old paste was 2.5 years old. My notebook still temp throttles (for whatever reason the temp limit dropped from 82°C to 77°C, I blame the most recent GeForce drivers but probably going have to live with that when using Windows 11 in the future) but the clock speeds are higher so I say its a success!







Here are photos from the first paste job, what it looked like before cleaning it up for the 2nd paste job (dies not completely covered), and the 2nd paste job.

 

Is that paste on the thermal pads?

 

Yes, I believe so, I'm not sure why it was there in the original paste job. Also kind of weird is the wire on top of the R22 inductors (for the display?), I found the wire was firmly in place and didn't remove it. Compare that with Yenzen's photo where the same wire isn't stuck to anything.

 

Is it a 2nd hand machine?

 

No, I bought it myself from XoticPC brand new, still running strong over 2.5 years later

 

Had you taken off the heatsinks yourself?