*** Official Clevo X170SM-G/Sager NP9670M Owner's Lounge ***

Yeah that's true, probably not enough demand from our tiny Island!

 

I'm afraid you're probably right.

I'll have to re-try doing the Mr Fox mods later. I gave it a go a couple of weeks ago and the machine stopped booting. Pretty sure it was just over-tightened screws but it scared me to death so I got it working with the originals and haven't touched it again.

 

That means he likes you. It took him a hot minute to remember me when I called and ordered mine from him.

 

You can use M3 and M4 washers with the stock spring loaded screws for both CPU and GPU to significantly increase the mounting pressure without making it too excessive as I have shown in my older post here. I have great thermals (CPU at 38 Degrees Celcius at idle, GPU at 36 Degrees Celcius at idle). Buy this box from AliExpress or get a simillar product from your local hardware store. I am running 2xM3 washers per screw for GPU spring loaded screws and 1xM4 washer per screw for CPU spring loaded screws.



Here's a good product that you want to have in your drawer at all times. Comes in handy ever so often.
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/328...earchweb0_0,searchweb201602_,searchweb201603_

 

I want to ask, what is this electric or battery operated screw driver that is being used for assembly and dis assembly of the laptops, I love my manual drivers but electric with proper torque would be nice.

 

Those are generally pieces of junk. Never use them. They have the tendency to warp the screw heads and on little devices like a laptop, you ALWAYS want to avoid overtightening of screws for obvious reasons. They are only good for making video content imo. The only battery operated torquing devices that I use are my Makita impact wrenches.

 

I am still asking about accessing the ram slots under the keyboard on the X170....... and this is a first for me, so the X170, the battery does disconnect when powered off? I assume it is still good practice to remove the laptop battery anyway when working on ram or hard drives, nvme's etc, etc.

CMOS battery can stay installed? or should it be disconnected also?

and a link to the proper thermal pads for nvme drives would be appreciated. Thank you.

 

I've got the washers upstairs from my old Xbox repair days. I'd get consoles with the X-Clamp "fix", remove the fix, reflow the console and then VERY CAREFULLY put it back (you had to not overtighten them and bend the board).

So i've got tons of washers left.

 

What do you want to ask about the ram slots? The keyboard pops out with finger nails once you undo the 2 fasteners under the back panel that are for the keyboard (marked with the keyboard symbol next to them) and you can replace the ram modules as well as the wifi module easily from there. Although for one ram module, you have to undo the belt connector daughter board for the keyboard and trackpad as it is in the way but that is a super simple task. Regarding battery, you should ALWAYS pull it out when doing any work inside the machine. This is just good practice. You can leave the cmos battery alone as it doesn't matter in this scenario. The only time you want to unplug it is when you want to reset the BIOS which isn't needed in this case. Thermal pads for nvme drives are included with the laptop packaging and all you have to do is to peel them off and place them where they should go. Regarding

 

Ok thank you, I was watching some videos and it did not look like there were screws for the keyboard, but you have confirmed that there are 2 or 2 fasteners (this is what I needed to know). As for the thermal pads, yes I did get 1 set with the laptop, but was curious about where to order an additional set in case I need them.

Thank you.

 

You can buy any size and any thickness thermal pads on digikey. Just make sure they are not graphite based rather silicon based because graphite based pads can sometimes conduct electricity and one of the nvme thermal pad (the middle one out of the 3) rests on top of a circuit component on the motherboard so you don't want to short it out.

 

Hi guys

What are these washers for?

 

Read my previous comments carefully. It is clearly mentioned.

 

Ok, time for a dumb question.

Has anyone elses 3.5mm audio jack just... stopped working? Mine worked last week, I rebooted into Linux today to test something, worked fine there, rebooted back into windows and now it doesn't work anymore. Doesn't even detect headphones are plugged in and contunues to use the on-board speakers.

I'm gonna hop back over to linux in a minute and see if it's all good there still.

EDIT: Never mind, fixed it.

For some reason, just rebooting the laptop didn't fix anything. Completely shutting it down, leaving it for a few minutes and powering back on solved the problem.

 

You have to select audio output device by left clicking on sound icon in system tray for it to work or to change output channel from onboard speakers to headphone jack. There is no problem with audio jacks these days. It's been quite sometime that at least this tech has been matured even on Windows. By the way, make sure that you have the proper drivers installed. Default windows audio drivers are funky. Download the original Realtek ones from here:
X170SM-G Drivers: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1yikTAZR7cuiSCC2aWNmeuTSs7aZaMJdT

These are my own uploaded drivers for this machine and include LAN drivers for linux as well along with all the CCC mods. All drivers are latest and tested.

 

I cannot comment on Clevo laptops, but the HP Elitebooks our office uses like to need the on board audio turned off in the bios, reboot, and then turned back on every once in a while because updating the the drivers from HP will sometimes break it or fix it, or the drivers will need to be rolled back to an older version.. No clue why, but it happens. So it is possible that something jacked up the audio jack.

 

Other companies have struggled in the past.

 

I had drivers backed up on my external. Reinstalling them didn't work. Rebooted the laptop several times too.

Turned it off for 5 mins, turned it back on. Problem solved on both windows AND linux.

 

Hi guys,
I am planning to do a fresh clean Win 10 installation at the weekend.
There are 2 drivers listed as "optional".
(1) Do I need Intel IRST driver when I have Samsung 970 Pro 1TB + Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2TB? From what I read this is a driver needed mainly for HDD and RAID configuration. But some websites report that there is a slight benefit for single SSDs? Would you recommend to install it in my case?
(2) Do I need to install Intel SGX driver? From what I understand it is something security-related. But it is listed as optional on the Clevo website.

Thank you in advance!

 

I have a new nvme coming today if the postal service is on time and doing a clean install of Windows, all the drivers for the laptop came on a USB stick. I did make an updated windows install with the media creation tool.

A clean Windows 10 Pro install on this laptop should take less than 20 seconds right?

 

Skip both of them. You don't need the Intel one without RAID which is a gimmick with nvme super fast drives anyway, and you certainly, absolutely, positively, don't need SGX drivers. In fact, disable that garbage in bios too (Intel Software Guard).

 

I guess I don't see how raid is a gimmick if I want 2-4 physical drives to show as 1 logical drive with a huge amount of space.

My cameras use 256gb memory cards so I would rather have 4 nvmes in raid 0 for a single 32TB drive than D,E,F, and G that are 8Tb each, that would be a pain in the rear.

 

Ok, that stinks, 100 years ago I worked in manufacturing at IBM and we had all air driven drivers with torque limits for putting together laptops so I figured someone actually made professional or commercial grade air or electric micro driver screw drivers that weren't crappy,

 

Video card manufacturers have people tighten the GPU screws because it's hard to get a machine to do it reliably. This kind of stuff is hard with the tolerances of modern devices.

 

That feature was primarily useful in the olden days when we had mechanical drives slower than a 100 year old turtle. Nowadays it isn't the case. From a practical perspective, RAID is not worth it. Unless you want to show off your benchmark results.

 

@Mr. Fox Does @Prema firmware allow you to change (increase) RAM voltages? I have noticed that some XMP enabled ram modules can be unstable on this machine if run on all 4 slots. A voltage change capability in BIOS would be sweet.

 

Yes. I ran G.SKILL 3200 CL22 modules at CL15 using 1.400V. It was 100% stable, so I created a custom XMP profile for it.

 

Has anyone tried to run windows 7 on the clevo x170sm? If so, where did you get the drivers and how did it work out? Thanks for any response!

 

Yes, I run Windows 7 on it, but I run it in a VDI, not as my base os. Why would you want Windows 7 as your base os? (I run VM's with MS DOS, Windows 3.11, OS/2, Windows XP,7,8, Server 2008 R2, 2012 and 2019, Open Step and a number of Linux distributions)

 

Are there any preferences as far as DDR-4 3200 ram modules or most anything main stream is fine? (Looking at 32gb x 4)

 

I was not able to get it to install due to lack of CSM support. Even installing an SSD from another Z490 system running Windows 7 it would not boot properly.

Probably because it was the last respectable version of Windows and everything Micro$lop has released since then has been a bloated and inferior piece of crap.

Try to avoid Hynix IC. Stick with Micron or Samsung IC. You will most likely have issues booting 4 sticks of 32GB at 3200 if it is 1.200V, especially if the modules are built with S.K. Hynix ICs.

 

Thanks for the reply. You are exactly right. I thought if windows 7 would work, I could avoid the windows 10 crap.

 

So Crucial / Micron should be fine? Their system scanner did not know what to think about the X-170...lol

 

Blue Tooth audio question..... under the Windows 10 Clean Install instructions on this forum, I followed everything to do a clean install and it looks like I knocked something out that allows audio to my UE Boom blue tooth speaker. The speaker pairs fine, makes its noise and then no audio in youtube, or media player (mp3's flac, etc). I am having trouble figuring out what I knocked out when spending an hour disabling everything reporting to Microsoft that I could.

Internal speakers and mic work fine, so it is something specific to blue tooth audio. I have a newer model of the UE megaboom I will try later. It is hard to work without music....

 

I already know this is a big laptop (x-170) but I bought it instead of building another desktop because I want portability (as portable as a laptop this size is). Anyway...... what is the best way to transport it..?

I saw the " EVERKI Business 120 Travel Friendly Laptop Backpack, up to 18.4-Inch (EKP120)" https://www.amazon.com/Everki-Checkpoint-Friendly-18-4-Inch-EKP120/dp/B005LMWP78

Does anyone know if this monster will fit in that, I have always liked Swiss Gear backpacks, but don't think they have one big enough. Maybe Pelican makes a water proof floating case that this will fit in?

Open to any reasonable options that will work (Backpack is preferred)

 

EVERKI Business 120 Travel fit fine
i like

 

The Evereki beacon or Titan if you want a beast will do well too.

 

i got a kit 4000mhz cl19 waiting on a blessing from @Prema that can be clocked to cl18 timing or better. my vdd cant change from 1200 it will stay there no matter what. I need to up voltage to 1350 min for it to work but ill try for cl18 at 1400v with a mem oc!

 

I got the Evereki 18.4" sleeve for mine. I just ordered a 18.4 backpack as well. Walmart.com had the sleeve for $36 a couple weeks ago. They were the only site I found it on in the US. Hopefully this thing will fit in the sleeve then in the backpack.

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Everki-C...-For-18-4-Notebook-Black-Polyester-ekf808s18/

Sent from my OnePlus 7 Pro using Tapatalk

 

Also... I have 2 17 inch laptop backpacks as well. It DOES fit in them... But BARELY. I want a little more protection than just sliding my "laptop" into a backpack, that is why I put it in a sleeve and then into the backpack. I just hope the 18.4" backpack I got will work with the sleeve.

Sent from my OnePlus 7 Pro using Tapatalk

 

I like the Pelican 1490 protector hard case. They are big and expensive, and not a backpack though. I am pretty sure it will fit the x170. Seems like a good option to protect an expensive laptop. The Pelican 1495 might also be a possibility but it is tighter front to back so I don't know if it will fit.

https://www.pelican.com/us/en/product/cases/laptop-case/protector/1490?sku=1490-000-110

 

Thanks for your response. Do you guys use Samsung NVMe driver instead of Intel IRST?

 

Yes. Samsung driver is a tad bit faster too.

 

Thanks! Do you recommend the Samsung NVMe driver only, or also install Samsung Magician Software?

 

I am running Samsung Magician, but apparently there is no magic "Rapid" mode for nvme drives only SATA SSD's so I only use it for monitoring temp/ read / writes and health of the drives. As powerful as these laptops are it does not bother me running it.

 

I only install that every once in a while to check on my firmware version (see if there are any critical updates available) and then get rid of that thing. Not needed in day to day use.

 

They are already pretty rapid I would just run magician for occasional checks.

 

Do you know if these laptops will support PCIE 4.x? I really want to put EVO 980's in for double the read /write speed when the 11th gen processors come out?

 

Oh sorry misread your question, I have not seen it advertised.

 

I bought this for my old laptop (ASUS G751JY) but it fits the X170 with no issues.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B0799FBC5J/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1