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

I would try re-seating it.

 

I did it, it works fine for a while but then it stops being recognized and I have to restart it several times until it is recognized again

 

There are no updates for P1 and if you'll look at Amazon you'll find several reviews where people have issues with it. You should've purchased Samsung drive instead, or a slower model of Crucial drives.

 

I would always undervolt. No reason not to.

 

It does sound like an issue with the drive firmware.

 

Buying a new laptop today from Micro Center. Should I go for the Powerspec1520? I’m nervous I’m going to get a lemon.

 

15 day full refund return policy at Microcenter https://www.microcenter.com/site/customer-support/return-policy.aspx

 

In Europe it is arranged by law for online purchases.
I already did, bought something, tested it and shippes back. In retail shops it doesn’t work like that.

 

Yeah I’m not worried about returning it if their are issues, just wondering if I’m more than likely going to have issues or not lol.

 

Judging by this thread it seems like the main things to be aware of with the PowerSpec are the single channel RAM, plastic trackpad/no fingerprint, no Thunderbolt, and fan intake/thermal issues under load when not propped.

 

That's a fair summary. I'm happy with mine and have no more issues now that Speed Shift is set correctly. Repasting was pretty easy. The hardest part was getting the keyboard ribbon cables re-seated. Very even core temperatures with Kryonaut and high temps in the very low 80s and low 70s for the CPU and GPU respectively during realistic gaming scenarios. It idles at around 39 with a 70 Fahrenheit ambient temperature. This is with the back propped up. So I'm satisfied with the thermal performance. Propping up the back is easy and something I do on all gaming notebooks anyway. FWIW the factory paste job looked fine to me but I'm sure Kryonaut helped some anyway. I have no discernible backlight bleed -- very pleased with that. No BSODs or even the slightest stuttering. The WD Black NVMe is plenty fast. Really the only thing you need to do is install dual channel RAM and repaste if necessary.

 

I have one more question. Has anyone tried mirroring the display with an external monitor? If not, does someone mind checking something? I'm only able to select 60hz on the external (it's a 144hz monitor) and 144hz on the built in display when mirroring. When I have the external display on only, I can get the full 144hz. I have Discrete selected in the BIOS. Is this normal or a peculiarity to this laptop? I would like to have both the built in display and external monitor running at 144hz when mirrored, if possible. Can anyone help with this?

 

I ended up going with the 2018 Helios 300 1060 for 999. Too good of a price to pass up.

 

It is a bit of a step down in build and performance though.

 

For an extra $500 I definitely would have at least went with Microcenter's PB50. Would keep you relevant much longer than a 1060. That was my biggest driving factor.

 

In the nVidia control panel, you can select "Change Resolution" menu. Once there you can change the refresh rate. You can have both running 144hz (duplicate) or either one running 144hz (show only 1 or 2). Make sure you connect via display port.

 

The resolution options are greyed out for the external display. It shows 1980x1020 144hz in grey, but it's actually running at 60hz. I see no clear way to change it. I'm using the mini display port. Any idea what's up? It's pretty important to me to be able to run the built in display and an external at 144hz. When I try to change it through display settings in Windows I get an error message.

 

Wasn't having any luck with the Kryonaut, so I tried using the CoolerMaster MasterGel Nano, which from the comparisons I've seen is pretty close. Results were alot better. Max temps during the first run in Firestrike were 78 and 65 for the CPU and GPU (which coincidentally is exactly what @jtm48 got with Kryonaut), with a score of 17,053. Seems to be generally 82/70 in subsequent runs after. Considering my max temps before, with the Kryonaut, were something like 90 and 85, I think this is alot closer to where I should be.

Here are my temps for a few different games, with the stock paste/voltage, after -150 UV, and then with UV/repaste, and with the Balanced/High Perf power plans selected. These are the averages over 5-10 minutes after the temps seemed to 'get up to temp' and stabilize. This is all with the fans on auto, the Control Center profile set to "Performance" (not to be confused with the High Performance power plan below), and the laptop laying flat on the table.



I also attached the Excel sheet incase anybody wants to use it for similar comparisons of their own systems.

 

Never encounter this before. Maybe try running only on external monitor first? See if it can run at 144hz. Try testing on other laptop as well if you have.

 

That is actually quite good consider it is laying flat. Mine even with UV, LM pasted, propped, got around 78C for CPU and 83 for GPU (it thermal throttles at 83C). So far from results posted, my GPU is running hotter than others I suspect the seller did not apply LM on GPU or did not apply properly. I haven't disassembled it to check though.

 

This is great data to have as a prospective buyer. Thanks much!

 

Does anyone know what are the differences between these models?


I see that some have orange accents, different sound and metal designs. But still, there are like 12 different models.

Also, the metal design means just the type of finish treatment?

 

The PB50xx is gunmetal grey and has the orange accent, PB51xx is all black with a silver accent. The RF,RD,RC specifies which GPU it has, and the 1 specifies a different speaker system.

EDIT: Looks like they got rid of the gunmetal grey for the 9th gen refresh. On the Clevo site they look black with the orange accent now.

 

Only on external works fine at 144hz. It's only when I mirror the displays that I can't run the external at 144hz.

 

How is your external monitor connected? DP/HDMI/TB3?

When you display mirror, the entire DWM must sync and copy between them. Have you checked for anything which may be slowing the DWM down? Apparently the Xbox DVR can cause this.

 

Xbox DVR is disabled. The external monitor is connected through the mini display port.

 

Okay, I fixed it. I'm mirroring displays with both at 144hz now. I switched from Discrete to Hybrid. This allowed me to set external to 144hz. Rebooted and re-enabled discrete. 144hz stuck. All good now!

 

That's interesting. I wonder if it's something EDID related when the MUX switch is changed.

 

Or it was the colour settings.

 

Hi guys. I got my laptop last week(PB51ED). My set up include rtx2060, i7-8750H, 16GB RAM(I put additional 8GB from my previous laptop), 240gb ssd on m2(additional samsung evo 860 500gb sata) and 144HZ IPS screen. Generally i'm happy but have 2 issues. Firstly i have bleeding on right down corner of screen. It is only noticable on black background but still i'm not 100% happy with that. Also have some problem with clevo centre. Most of option have "null" instead of name. That weird. Also Keyboard... i dont know if i have light per key but in clevo centre i can only pick one color for all and sometimes when i sleep my laptop and then open it, it lost keyboard light(I need to open keyboard centre and it backs). Mostly that case with Clevo Centre annoys me. Anyone knows how to fix it? I will reinstall it today.
But temps are really good. I got -0.125v on cpu, and in games mostly its under 80C for CPU and less than 70C(i didnt really look at gpu temp because it looks okey for me at beginning). Only in peak cpu hits 82/83C. For me its awesome results. Also build quality are good. Only that screen...

 

Try re-installing the clevo software. You could try adjusting the bezel if you have plastic tools to take it off.

 

@LastSicarius Some backlight bleeding is unavoidable, unfortunately, even with the frame removed. Reinstalling the Control Center app might fix the lighting issue. Nice temps, BTW!

 

Yes, I think that's it. I'm going to change it for another one, maybe a WD Blue m2 2280, that's compatible? (the other system ssd is a wd black nvme, is not there a problem that one is nvme and the other 2280 working at the same time?)

 

Yeah I’m regretting my decision getting the Helios 300 instead of the 1520. I’m having issues with thermals. If I’m going to have to keep tinkering with XTU, I feel like I might as well return it and get the 1520.

Is the chassis hard to get into to add a 2.5 ssd and an extra stick of ram? I’m really considering exchanging tonight after work.

 

It's tricky at first if you don't know what do, but after you figure it out the bottom comes off pretty easy. Also depends on whether it comes with the top keyboard screws in place or in separate plastic bag. I covered this some pages ago, basically just unscrew everything from the bottom, stick a toothpick in through the bottom grill to pop the keyboard, remove the the 2 screws there (if in place). Then the front of the cover comes up pretty easy, and the back 45 degree slants by the exhaust are good prying locations with a guitar pick or something. I can have the bottom off pretty quick now.

 

Is it honestly worth the trouble right away or are performance gains from dual channel minimal. I can always use a T5 ssd for game storage. It just sounds like a big job to expand.

 

The gains from dual channel are pretty big from what I hear, but I'm more than happy with just the single channel performance for now. I'll upgrade eventually, but not in any hurry. The SSD will generally only help with load times when gaming. It's really not that much work to get into the laptop, to do either of these.

Literally the first thing I did after I got mine was open it up so I could put my SSD in.

 

Yeah if I opened it up to install my ssd, I would install the ram too. Micro Center has a 16gb stick of crucial 2666 ram for 100 bucks. I’ll probably get that. From what I read, it seems like the keyboard is not fastened on the 1520. Now I just have to reset the Helios and bring it back ughhh.

 

The keyboard is only fastened by 2 screws on the bottom of the laptop with the other screws. The screws underneath the laptop are for the bottom cover, and must be taken out (if they're in) to remove the bottom. If they are not in place you'll get them in a bag labeled "top screws" so you'll know if you need to bother with removing the keyboard right away.

You can probably get away with leaving them out, but I'm OCD and always put them back in.

 

I've received my PB51 today. The metal plate under keyboard was not fastened to lower cover so I did not have to remove any screws underneath the keyboard. I did check for that, removing keyboard is very easy - you remove all screws from bottom cover then you can use your nails to remove keyboard starting from the top area ;-) No need to stick anything through bottom holes.

Anyway, adding RAM and all SSD drives was extremely easy once the bottom cover is removed. The build quality is pretty good, much better than plastic junk from MSI (I had owned MSI laptop, never again). The CPU does need repasting (stock thermal paste will make it go above 90C in all games) but this is not hard to do. GPU runs cool even with stock thermal paste.
Only drawback I noticed with my system is a backlight bleed on lower edge, but this is only visible in dark room on black background and I am not sure if it's worth sending it in for repair.

 

I have the same light bleed you describe, but it's very minimal. I wouldn't worry about it. Even if you sent it back, you'd just get another one with it, as it's pretty much inevitable to have some.

Update us on temps after you do a repaste.

 

Micro Center installed the ram for free if I purchased the ram along with the laptop. Pretty sweet deal. Hopefully I don’t have any issues.

 

Yea I'm not very concerned about light bleed. I am just trying various games and watch the performance. Seems like 8750h is still too weak for FFXIV - I can only get around 70 fps in Limsa Lominsa (the main city where most people gather) regardless of graphics settings. It's not an issue with thermal throttling or power limit, just an issue of CPU trying to process lots of players in same area. Guess I'd get better performance if I would have waited for 9750 ;-)

On the other hand, performance in Division 2 benchmark is pretty good, I get around 89 fps with Ultra settings and DX12 without any undervolting or overclocking:

 

That is quite a good score. On-par with desktop RTX 2060
https://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/the_division_2_pc_graphics_performance_benchmark_review,4.html

 

There's a more direct comparison for Division 2 - here is a test of MSI laptop with same CPU and 2080 Max-q. On Ultra they got 77 fps.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/MSI-G...0H-RTX-2080-Max-Q-Laptop-Review.415202.0.html

They used older driver version but it's not very old.

I also ran Metro Exodus benchmark using same settings as in this review, Utlra, I got 53 fps average which is similar to what this MSI got.

Oh, and out of curiosity I ran Cinebench R20, I got 2494 cb result for CPU test (there are no GPU tests anymore). I have no thermal throttling when running it but there is power throttling where CPU settles at 55w after few seconds.

 

Agree. In my case I need to take off keyboard but this was pretty easy but i got lost with keyboard connector because i thought i spoil it but in the end it just cable and connector separately. After i figured it out everything goes easy.
During the weekend i will try to test more some games(eg. Apex, BF1, Mirrors Edge 2, Witcher 3) and put my results here

 

What is average GPU clock speed during divsion2/metro? Could you try overclock it? So far I managed to oc about 125 mhz using MSI Afterburner Scanner

 

Hi All, I recently got the Powerspec 1520 at microcenter, have not even had time to play with it, but I was in a hurry and did not buy the extra 16GB module to make it work in dual channel.

Which brand should I buy? Looking at microcenter, they only have a crucial module in 16GB DDR4 2666, so I assume this is the one they would have given me. Is it correct/appropriate?

If so I will buy the same one at Amazon, since they have it for a little less (91.50) and I also have $15 credit in GC.

Thanks for the help!

 

Get the crucial 2666 stick. I just bought the 1520 last night and they installed it for me at the store. Works great so far!

 

Thanks! will be buying that now... Also, since I see so much talk about temps, thinking of also getting the paste and being prepared... Would this be the one to get?

https://www.amazon.com/Thermal-Grizzly-Kryonaut-Grease-Paste/dp/B011F7W3LU?ref=dp_atch_dss_sdp_ce_2