*** Official Clevo PB5xExx(-G) Owner's Lounge ***

Alright so two things:

1. Looks like the GPU clock issue was due to the GPU OC tool that comes with CCC. Unfortunately, uninstalling it doesn't stop it so I'm forced to use that now. No more undervolting for me ;-; At least it's fine at +150Mhz core, +400 Memory
2. I brought the RAM speed down to 3000Mhz CL15. Same latency but I can set the system agent back down to 0

 

Does anybody know where I can download the drivers for this laptop? Specifically I've had 2 BSODs recently due to IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL errors with kbdclass.sys failing, so I'd like to try a keyboard driver refresh....

 

Usually resellers offer downloads, you could check our download pages.

 

I'm back again posting on this apparently dead thread. This laptop has started having more problems it seems. In addition to never solving the previous keyboard driver issue I experienced (which has not happened since then thankfully, but for unknown reasons) the wifi card is now having problems. In particular the Intel Wireless AC 9560 160Mhz quits randomly preventing detection of all wifi networks and displays 'Code 10' in device manager.

It seems the Code 10 issue is a known problem with this particular card though and I found discussions going back 2 years all over the place and for various different laptops and PCs all with this card. The ONLY thing I've gotten to work temporarily is uninstall the card and drivers, reinstall the driver automatically and then shut down and boot up the laptop. BUT THEN THE CARD RANDOMLY STOPS WORKING AGAIN
I'm at my wits end with this. There's no consistency to when and why this happens and the fixes don't *really* fix the issue.

Has anybody had experienced this?

 

I would just replace it with the newer Intel WiFi 6 AX201 card. Better future proofing, should eliminate any issues with your current card, and I think they're only like $30.

 

AFAIK my PB70 has the same network card and I have not experienced any issues since purchase. I might be on borrowed time though

 

Mine hasn't either. I'm guessing his just has a defective card, or driver issues, not seated property, or something along those line.

Regardless I'd just swap it out for the newer one. Upgrade to ax, and fix his technical issues all at once (assuming his router supports ax). I've been meaning to do it for like a year but just haven't gotten around to it yet.

 

I have seen it happen with a variety of wireless cards. Not too expensive to replace at least.

 

Is there an unlocked BIOS for this laptop anywhere that gives extra features and such? Just curious if this sorta thing exists like a PREMA BIOS

 

Not that I am aware of.

 

Well, here I am necroposting on this thread but I ran into a weird issue today and I'm really not sure wtf is going on. I have a Powerspec 1520... About a week ago I had the secondary M2 SSD crap out in here but I had not removed it yet. I have started getting an error on rebooting from RivaTuner so I went ahead and downloaded the updated version of MSI Afterburner and installed it for the updates with RivaTuner. I rebooted, and... Nada. It gets to a black screen that says PowerSpec on it. When I restart, I can hold F2 all day long and it doesn't even think about going into the BIOS. And 3 unsuccessful boots don't take me into any sort of windows recovery or anything. I'm flailing a bit here. Not sure if there is a way to maybe reset the bios or what. The LCD keyboard comes on, fans are blowing, so it makes it seem like it has gotten to some point... And even hitting FN+1 will kick it into max fan mode. Is it in some sort of eternal sleep mode or something that I can't wake it from? I tried attaching a second monitor to the HDMI to see if that was an issue but nothing. I'm stumped quite honestly. Any help would be appreciated.

Edit: hitting ctrl-alt-delete makes the 'PowerSpec" that is sitting on the screen go away for a few seconds and then come back. I have tried Fn-F7 and FN-F2 and neither of them seems to do a thing either. The C-A-D really makes me wonder though. That seems suspicious.

 

Have booted it with no boot drive attached. Same behavior. Can't get into bios, control alt delete makes the words disappear temporarily. I'm stumped and I am fearful because I see no signs of a CMOS reset button or a battery on this side of the motherboard and I'm not thrilled about the concept of removing everything to flip the motherboard just to reset the damn CMOS. Which seems like a flaw in planning TBH.

 

Try holding "Fn + D" while turning on the machine. That's the soft-reset key combo for the CMOS.

If you need to get to the battery, I vaguely remember it being accessible under the keyboard (which has to come out when disassembling the PB50 anyway). It's been a while since I pulled mine apart. Just make sure you're careful with the keyboard ribbon cables when you poke it out of the chassis.

 

It is available under the keyboard. Easy peasy.

 

I didn't have to take out the keyboard when I took the case off... I don't know how I would remove it. The case is currently unscrewed. How do I take it out? Also, I've tried the Fn+D and Fn+B and it just goes back to that screen where it sits with the brand name and won't advance. Someone else had a problem that sounded similar but I could not find a post where they said how it got resolved. I'm gonna see if I can find someone posting how to take out the keyboard without taking out the motherboard. That would be very helpful, lol.

 

Took off the keyboard after finding a video in which it was removed. Discharged the CMOS and booted up, got the message about it being a first boot etc, but then went right back to the same screen. FN+D still takes me back to that screen. F2 on reboot does not take me into the bios. Could there be a bios problem? I saw a mention of Fn+B doing something during boot but all it does is keep it from going to the brand name screen and then it ramps the fans up in some strange way, and I just have to power cycle. I can't imagine it being a BIOS issue and the FN+1 key combo working. The LED keyboard is even lighting up with my saved color pattern, which makes me wonder where that is saved? I am truly truly stumped as to what is happening here.

 

Ok, now I have also tried booting from an external DVD drive. It doesn't even get to spin up before the screen with the manufacturer comes up. Oh and I should mention maybe that the discrete graphics rather than hybrid had been enabled in the bios so the indicator light is on for that, the solid green light all the way on the right hand side. The only other light is the power light, solid green on the far left as I have the battery pulled because the back is unscrewed and just popped on.

 

Ok, as a last ditch effort I tried something I should have done before admittedly and I'm embarrassed to admit it. I took out all the components I added to it (1tb NVme drive that had not worked for over a week, 1tb hybrid SATA drive, and 16gb of RAM). And it booted. So I readded piece by piece, and it booted with the RAM. Added the SATA drive, and it wouldn't boot. Removed the SATA drive, and out of curiosity added the NVme drive back in, and it booted up just fine. So for a week and a half the NVme drive was missing while the SATA drive still worked, now the SATA drive is dead and the NVme works. I tested the SATA drive external and it would not even install so it clearly is bad. The weird thing is it keeping the machine from booting, and it making the NVme drive disappear for a week. Thanks for all of your help.

 

Both are controlled by the chipset so could have been messing with that. Not the first time I have seen/heard of a data drive preventing booting.

 

It's entirely possible for a drive to halt booting. It often happens if the controller on it fails, which causes it to not respond, or throw garbage data when probed on initial boot-up.

 

There was an IBM I series that had a drive failed and waiting to be replaced. Before we could get to it it began to spit out garbage to the array controller and killed the array. That was annoying.

 

Is this the same design as the PB5xDF? Search is failing me and not returning any results for DF. I tried to get a service manual from Prema's site but only EF is available there. Can anyone clue me in on the main differences?

 

The DF model is just the Intel 10th gen refresh version. It gets the 10th gen CPU, Nvidia Super GPU options and some other minor changes.
From a physical service perspective, it should be identical to the EF service manual.

 

Correct, layout should be the same.

 

What's the battery wear level on your laptops? I've had mine for almost 2 years and I'm at 31% wear level :|
I've reordered a new battery.

 

What's your battery life like compared to stock?

 

Before I could last about 2 and a half hours going for max battery life (was enough for the uni life)
Now Im barely getting an hour.

 

Yeah definitely needs a new battery, how much did you use it?

 

It's almost 2 years old now and I pretty much used it everyday for 4 hours minimum.

 

Pretty standard for lithium ion then good to hear you got good use out of it.

 

Where can we get new batteries? I need a new one as well. Mine dies at about 94% when not plugged in for some reason.

 

Your reseller or a different local one.

 

Say we don't have any local resellers and the one I bought from is unresponsive?

I suppose Microcenter counts, they might be able to get one since they still carry the 17" in store I think.

 

I do mean local as in the same continent.

 

So I couldn't wait any longer and pulled the trigger on a PB51DF1-G. The laptop hasn't arrived yet, but I have a few questions while I wait for it!

Getting a G-sync panel was absolutely mandatory, and there's **still** no 15" clevos with RTX30 series that support it in Q2 of 2021.... Also, this appears to be the last model to offer 2.5" bay for my Samsung SSD. With newer models going all m.2 for the 15" chassis? I rather not carry around external enclosures or migrate all my data to a QLC m.2.

After reading all 124 pages, I gathered the following issues may be relevant to me:

- There's an MUX switch, but I can set it to dGPU only in the BIOS. Does this mean I don't have to install the Intel UHD Graphics Driver at all? I rather not have 2 GPU control panels in my right-click menu, bloating up my background processes. Another person some pages ago mentioned being permanently stuck in dGPU mode and unable to boot, but I didn't find a solution to that in the end. This worries me a little...

- Max RAM speed for this machine seems to be stuck around 3200MT/s. I don't know what timing the samsung sticks it comes with will have, as it was not listed on the configurator when I purchased it. I'm assuming they'll be a terrible CL22. Comments in this thread suggest Corsair Vengeance CL16 will not run on this laptop, because it requires XMP? What's the best 3200 CL speed that will work then? Hyper X Impact CL20? Maybe not worth the extra cost for just 2 steps faster. Would like to drop it to at least CL18 while maintaining the MT/s.

I have some other thoughts but I guess I'll save those for when it arrives.

 

If you don't want to use a QLC use a TLC or MLC m.2. there are plenty of options. In dedicated mode the Intel drivers will not load but your idle power penalty for keeping the GDDR alive is far worse than having the panel active.

 

This is exactly what I do. I've left my machine in dGPU mode and never installed the Intel drivers. In my case it's simply because I'm not away from a power point for long periods.

From what I've found, the differences in RAM speed are hardly worth worrying about. Ram overclocking seems much too twitchy compared to your usual desktop ram overclocking.

 

Edit: Seems currently Sabrent Rocket is the only TLC m.2 drive that will fit my entire 4TB 2.5" 860 Pro. I thought they made the 4TB only for the QLC variant. My bad.
In terms of penalty for going dGPU only, do you mean electric bill penalty? That's not really a concern if so. Or do you mean wear on the nand chips, leading to significantly lower lifespan?

I guess what worries me is CL22 is 0.7ns, when I'm used to 0.51ns on my old ram. Not sure if an extra 1k MT/s will make up for the snappiness in applications like heavy 3D scene orbiting and 4k video scrubbing in Premiere.

 

Just fyi, the Sabrants are great drives. I got one in my BP51, and recommend them every chance I get. I'm definitely getting the gold PCIe 4 one in my next machine, I think they're one of the fastest m.2s on the market atm.

 

I'm about to blow your mind, chief.

Click HERE to download a piece of software from INSYDE (you may recognize them) called H2OUVE UEFI Variable Editor. After you extract all the files, you want to run H2OUVE-W-GUIx64.EXE

After the program opens, click on FILE at the top left, and then select LOAD RUNTIME. This will load the BIOS you are currently running on your laptop.

Within the left hand panel, you want to click on the YELLOW button titled SETUP. This opens the BIOS to the main menu within the INSYDE H2O SETUP EDITOR. You may now change settings in your BIOS from here just like you normally would when accessing the BIOS on system boot...but now you can access a special door that will open up into a magical world. Follow me a inside! I promise, I won't bite.

Select ADVANCED from the list of categories on the left, and then go into ADVANCED CHIPSET CONTROL.

You will now see an option you've never had access to before. It's titled, SETUP MENU INSYDE FULL SHOW. Right now it's set to HIDE.

Change it to SHOW.

Almost there...

Select EXIT on the left side.

And finally, click on SAVE CHANGE WITHOUT EXIT.

UN

LOCKED

BIOS

BOOM

CELEBRATE YOUR FREEDOM

LOOK AT ALL THOSE SETTINGS...drool...

 

More the noise for the fans keeping the dgpu on.

 

Oh... It's so beautiful... I'll try it out

 

So finally got the laptop. Fresh LTSC install, I tried installing the clevo driver package which seems fairly outdated. Now I'm missing some PCI driver apparently. Any idea what this stuff is and how to fix it?

https://imgur.com/GVIvdFg
https://imgur.com/qOop7ZX

"PCI Device" with a yellow triangle for those who can't see the screenshots

Could it be the samsung ssd driver? I never bother with that one, but haven't seen this problem on my Win 8.1 machine before. Possibly because I never used an NVME drive on it?

 

Have you tried installing the latest intel chipset drivers?

 

Yeah, wasn't the chipset. After some googling, it turns out it was a missing USB-C driver that installs with nvidia's graphics driver. Presumably for display output through the rear USB-C port.

I tend to use the driver repack by @alanfox2000, since it's debloated from telemetry. But it would not recognize my GPU ID - 1F54. I added the ID to the .inf and then the driver installed, but it was missing the USB-C component. So, I went the NVCleanstall route, manually debloated the driver and used the HW ID template which was closest to my GPU, so 1F50-65D4. I'm guessing this is from the previous model of this laptop.

So far so good. Onto undervolting! I used Throttlestop for a -51 mV and I'm rather confused as all guides claim that you have to schedule a task for TS to run after every system boot. Yet, HWInfo says the undervolt is applied after reboot, without ever touching TS??

 

It will apply until your system resets fully.

 

Not sure what you mean by fully reset. It's neither shutdown, nor regular reboot, which resets it. Today, it randomly reset after a reboot though, when other times it wouldn't. Can't figure out why. It did not crash, just a normal reboot. Maybe sleep mode affects it. I did put the laptop in sleep mode a couple of times.

Another question: I followed the suggestion in this thread to only install Fn Hotkeys and LED Settings from the MS Store. Rather than use the whole Clevo Control Center. It seems the fn OSD will not display over other windows. Only on the desktop level. So Fn+1 to set fans will not show anything if I'm not on the desktop level. But it will still take effect. Is this normal? Wasn't like this when I was using the full CCC on my old machine.

 

Partly it relies on the watchdog and obviously an ECU reset or CMOS flush will do it.

 

Worth noting that XMG warns that CMOS will *not* flush undervolts that are too high. Requiring an RMA and SPI chip reflash instead.

 

Yeah non power reliant flash stores that.