*** Official Clevo x7200 and Sager NP7280 owners lounge ***

Hey guys. My X7200 is still working even though I rarely use it these days as I have a new desktop.

One thing though - we still agree that the newest/most powerfull GPU that will work in the X7200 is the 680M right? Or one of the quadro GPUs of the same age. So no newer GPUs right?

 

^Good question, I'm interested as well.


Another note I repaste my GPUs and CPU, put in new thermal pads as well. Unfortunately when I tightened the CPU heatsink, I must have over tightened a cmscrew because it pulled the screw sleeve on the mobo out. Temps are still good, idle around 33°C, and fans run full bore all the time. So it may not have quite enough pressure. On the plus side, I let the computer sit on for 16-18 hours idle,and it didn't shut down, which solved one issue and created another.

Would I be okay to superglue it back down to the mobo? Should I use some other adhesive? Then it would create a tad more pressure, evenly, and possibly solve my fan issue. Damn these old computers. Purchasing a new mobo would probably be more expensive than it's worth.

 

The 10 series and up require an eDP internal monitor so that would rule them out.

 

Who has the latest bios? share please).

 

Mine is still running more or less fine. It's really showing its age though.

Cleaning out the fans is a semiannual thing for me. I also have to add oil to the fans about once a year. One of them (was) totally sealed so that took a bit of doing; I had to drill a tiny bit into the casing so could add oil. While searching online for details on the fan at the time I noticed it was squarely in the ballpark of when the manufacturer predicted it to fail which was around 40k running hours. That was about four years ago.

The original graphics card fried that December and I replaced it with a slightly newer card, which took a bit of doing to get to work. Since the card isn't officially supported I've had to modify new drivers to get them to install. That took me a few tries to get working well but it's enough of a chore that I don't do it very often.

Right now I'm dealing with a failing hard drive, a 1TB SSD data drive. Surprisingly the original OS drive is still just fine despite being far older. With Windows 7 going out of support in January, I'm planning to build something new to finally replace this so my fix for this likely won't be very clean either.

 

Yup, mine is still running just as well too. I don't get a chance to game often so I havn't had a need to upgrade. However I've wanted to upgrade since 2014 just because I want a desktop. Just hasn't been a necessity so it's been cut from the budget. Once the kids get older and I can game, if I can't do so on the X7200, I'll probably upgrade then. This thing is a tank.

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

 

What model is the SSD?

 

Samsung 840 EVO. I got a nice deal on it at the time though I don't remember when exactly.

 

It's a three year warranty on those.

 

Oh huh. I got it from a friend but yeah, I should look into that. Thanks for the tip!

 

No problem, the pro drives are 5 years so those can actually be replaced a way down the line.

 

Hey guys, I'm still running my X7200. But lately, the 485m GPUs are beginning to show artifacts when running a benching program. Havn't had much time to test. I think it's both GPUs.

On top of that, I took the system with me over Thanksgiving and had some serious issues just getting the system to boot. Tonight I needed it to boot as it was bill paying night.

I fought with it and finally removed the i7 980x and replaced it with a i7 920 quad core. It began booting. So I ran a test after removing one GPU. Still had artifacts. But at least I can get some work done.


Any ideas on if it's worth replacing the CPU or GPUs? I'm considering just getting a desktop. I've had this system since 2012. I don't get to game often (ever, 3 kids...)

I may try and bake the GPUs with a heat gun. Not sure if it's worth the $100 to get a new (used) 980x CPU.

I'd love an equivalent new laptop (dual GPU, 4 HDDs, desktop CPU, ect) but it probably isn't in the budget. Any recommendations on a way forward?

Anyone else ever have similar issues or symptoms?

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

 

The current thin and light machines with a single gpu (and even last gen like the 1060 machines) do blow it out the water.

 

I replaced my GPU awhile back with a 680m and it was not fun. Any card newer than a 500-series and you'll have to modify the drivers to get them to install. Not recommended and not exactly safe either. It did run pretty well after I got the hang of editing the drivers but it still takes an hour or so every time I need to update those drivers and has been more prone to crashes.

Funny timing, I'm actually mostly done with building my new desktop. My X7200 won't be fully retired, assuming I can get windows 10 on it, but it is essentially replaced at this point.

 

Very true, and I certainly wouldn't mind a GPU boost seeing as even last gen cards would most likely out compete a 485M SLI setup. My hesitation is the hard drive space. I've gotten used to 4 drives. One as the OS/Programs Drive (160GB SSD), One as my media (Pictures/Videos/Music) drive (2TB), and one as a gaming drive (1TB msata) and one drive (2TB) as a backup on the go.

The backup drive gets weekly full backups of the OS, nightly differential backups of the OS, and monthly backups of the gaming and media drive. I also (monthly) backed up this drive to an external (4TB) HDD. Media also gets backed up via Copy/Paste to a third drive (just in case, kids pics, family videos ect.). For me this redundancy has saved me (my OS). I keep a small recovery thumb drive (Acronis True Image) in my notebook bag. This has helped when on deployments, or traveling and the system gave me issues, I could just reinstall the OS from a previous image housed on another drive within the system. I haven't had a catastrophic crash yet due to the redundancy. Honestly though, I want to setup a home server that I can backup the images to, and then access from externally to my house, like when I travel. But it's been great being able to be fully independent and have everything with me when I deploy for a year at a time.

I wouldn't mind spending the hour or so to mod the drivers each time. I think the 485M hasn't had a driver update in a while, and probably end of service at this point. The crashes on the other hand would drive me crazy as up until now, I had the system fully stable, till the GPUs started artifacting. Hopefully a bake may buy me some time, but I doubt that will work. I won't do it till I'm fully ready to replace since I may just kill the GPUs. Well I may do one GPU after testing both individually. Weakest link will get hit with some flux and a heat gun.

Do you have any plans for the X7200 going forward? Hands down its been the best system I've ever owned, and the biggest pain in the ass to travel with lol. Did you use all four HDD bays? What CPU did you use? Did you have 680s in SLI? And what did you upgrade from?



EDIT: Damn, it just hit me and I had an epiphany. When I traveled for Thanksgiving, my system time was off somehow. This means two things. One, my CMOS battery died. Makes sense since it's old. When I replaced the motherboard in 2013, I likely swapped over the CMOS battery rather than put a new one in. Two, once the CMOS battery died, it likely reset all BIOS settings. This would have dropped the 980x CPU voltage down to default. In going through my post history, I had issues with getting the new motherboard to boot. Even when I did, it was with hyper-threading turned off. It wasn't until I realized two years later I never updated the bios. Once I did, and increased the CPU voltage, it worked just fine. The lack of voltage explains why my i7 920 worked, and not the 980x. Damn I need to not try to problem solve late at night. I know my x7200 battery is dead, just never even considered that I had the system long enough the CMOS battery died. Never held onto a system so long. but at least my system should work, theoretically. Will have to replace the CMOS battery tonight (CR2032) when I get home from work and get the kids to bed and see how that goes.
Guess now my only issue is the GPUs...I wonder if flashing with a slightly higher voltage and remaining at stock clocks would mitigate the artifacting of the GPUs...

 

I'll be using it as a server, more or less, going forward. Would be nice if I can get it to 10 years.

i7 970 cpu, one 485m GPU originally, replaced with one 680m. I used three of the drive bays.

Have you checked your fans? I mentioned in some earlier posts in this thread, I had to start oiling the fans twice a year about four or five years ago.

 

Nice! Yea that may be my plan with it once I get it replaced with a desktop. Not sure if you saw my edit above, but thinking it through a bit at work, think I realized what my CPU issues were.

As for the fans, I did take a look at them while I had them out last night (swapping GPUs around and CPU). One of the GPU fans spins freely, the other has a bit of resistance. I also managed to find a spare GPU fan while I was doing some cleaning a few weeks back. But I think I may follow your lead and oil them. I may use graphite lube so I don't have dust sticking to a liquid oil. How difficult were they to open up? I haven't yet looked at them from the lens of opening them up.

 

Two of them were not difficult at all; the fan itself popped off and a drop of oil on the shaft there was plenty. Just don't overdo it and don't let it drip off the shaft before you get it back on the motor. I used sewing machine oil which worked fine but I'm not familiar with graphite lube.
One of them is sealed and a different story. Hopefully that's the one that still spins fine for you. After looking up the model number of the fan, I came across a PDF from the manufacturer that showed how its constructed. I think replacing it would be the right way to go but I can go into more detail if you want to go the super ghetto route I did.

 

Awesome, thanks! I'll take a look tonight and see if I can figure it out. If not I'll definitely reach out.

 

Nice catch on the battery issue

 

Got the CMOS battery swapped. New one was testing at 3.3v and the old one was <2.4v, should be a min 3v as it's a 3v battery. Glad that confirms why I was having 980x issues booting due to a bios dump. I'll swap the 980x back in tomorrow and test a bit more.

Then later on try and test the GPUs and see if a slight voltage bump helps. If not I may add Flux and try a reflow on whichever GPU is worse off.

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

 

On the storage front these days you can get something with a pair of m.2 slots and a PCI-e based SD card slot for still a lot of storage potential.

 

Hello everybody.
GTX680M is installed on the X7200.
The OS is Windows 10.
I can't install the nvidia driver.
How to install the driver?
Pease tell me.

 

Have you done an advanced restart and disabled driver signing?

 

It's not a pleasant experience. Very hard, at least the first time, but it can be done. The INFs for Nvidia's drivers don't have hardware IDs for that motherboard/gpu combination so you have to go in and manually add lines to the driver install files. If you're determined, I can see if I still have the last one I modified so you can see what I did. It's been so long that I couldn't tell you with confidence exactly how I did it, though.

 

Or just grab them from laptopvideo2go.com

 

omg

I wish I knew about that like four years ago.

 

Hello Sager.
I was able to install it.
Thank you very much.

 

Been around for ages but yes, always helps if you know.

Excellent.

 

After many months, of sheer anger and frustration and thinking my X7200 was dying, I started messing with it yesterday in an effort to get it somewhat stable enough to play Fortnite with my son. Over the months I've done many hestsink cleaning, GPU and CPU repastes. Tested each PSU, and nothing worked. If my room was slightly warm, the system shut off. No dump file, nothing to diagnose. All I knew was the system fans would run full bore, all the time. After yesterday's repaste and CPU swap, I realized the small little onboard GPU chip near the processor wasn't making contact with the heatsink. The heatsink must have somehow got bent out of shape. This in turn caused the system to always be running hot and eventually shut off. Possibly the most frustrating issue I've ever had.

I added a thermal pad over the chip, bent the heatsink down a tiny bit and it seems to have resolved my issue.

The fans are now quieter, the system hasn't shut down in the last 24hrs, and I was even able to do a full 3D Mark11 run (P5777 stock clocks all around). 485m SLI / i7 980x.

Although there were some display artifacts during the run, at least it didn't shut down.

This means I can kick the can down the road (again) for my desktop replacement (going on 5 years). No more shutting down during my Zoom conference calls either. Just wanted to get this out here and possibly reference it later should I have more similar issues or someone else face a similar issue.

I may also try and see if removing the thermal pad helps a bit more, although I suspect it'll be tough to get the heatsink bent to just the right angle. May just let this sleeping dog lie.

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

 

You mean one of the VRMs was left bare? Yeah that wont have been helping

 

I wish I got a pic of it, it's the shiny/mirror chip that is surrounded by screws 5,6 and 7 of the CPU heatsink. It seems like a processor chip rather than VRM.

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

 

I looked at pics and not quite sure what you mean but I'm glad it's working now.

 

I was able to find some pics and circled it. I'm glad is working too!

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

 

Oh it was the chipset you were talking about. Yeah that does need cooling for the x79.

 

Has anyone been able to upgrade from the 8gb memory sticks to 16gb sticks to upgrade from 24gb to 48gb?

 

Certainly not officially supported due to the intel memory controller.

 

What are my options for GPU drivers? Never nodded an INF before. My X7200 has 485m SLI, and the last drivers officially supported are from March 2018. Been having lots of GPU crashes, and I more so think it's hardware related, but I'd like to try different drivers. I got some older ones from the Nvidia site, but the system says they're not supported. Stupid question, how do I uninstall the current drivers?

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

 

laptopvideo2go.com do modified driver packs or mrfox put up a guide.

 

I have a Clevo x7200 with an i7-970/460m. The system is a 1 owner system never had issues before. I switched in a gtx 675m and now the computer will no longer power on. I have reinstalled the gtx 460m and still now no power. The indicator lights on the front show when it is plugged in but both lights stay orange. Even if I unplug the 330w psu brick the indicator lights still both stay orange. I have tried resetting the CMOS by removing the battery and holding power button, I've tried leaving it plugged in for 12 hours, I have taken both heatsinks off and repasted both the GPU and CPU as well as replace all of the thermal pads. I also have dusted very lightly with compressed air to insure all connections are clean. Also tried removing the ram, both HDD/SSD's and nothing. I don't get it I've done work on plenty of different laptops and even a few clevos and never had a no power after installing an MXM card. There was no popping sounds, no burnt smells, nothing at all. I have ordered a new CPU i7-990x and also have a gtx 580m on the way in hopes of maybe the cpu has given up. I've tried powering the system on also with both the GPU and or the CPU removed and still makes zero difference at all. Can anyone help here lol cause I could use it and I cannot seem to find motherboards for sale so I will have to buy another entire laptop to fix this one.

 

Could have been static that got it, have you checked your ram as well?

 

Yea i've checked everything. At this point believing the 675m caused it. The 675m came out of an alienware m18xr2 with a dead mobo so i suppose it was the cause of that dead mobo as well. If anyone on here is selling a v3.0 clevo x7200 mobo I will buy asap or even an entire x7200/7280

 

That sucks

 

Does anyone have a GPU for this system laying around?

One of my GPUs died, has a short that is preventing boot up. Don't have the time or tools (voltage injector/thermal cam) to find the bad component. The other GPU won't see the laptop monitor, but if I use an external it's good. Monitor on the laptop is good because it'll work sometimes. I'm saving for a new desktop, but this has been my daily driver for about a decade. Eek. Plus GPUs are soo freaking expensive right now. I may be shelling out $800 for a 3060.

If you got any GPU for the X7200, let me know! My 2 485ms are 80% in the grave and I still like this laptop.

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

 

Hey there you could always switch over to 580ms with no problems or 680ms with a few mods and .inf mods.

 

I've thought about it, but the old GPUs are still pretty expensive, so I think the money is better spent on a desktop. I just want to keep this up and running as a Plex server. Probably put a bunch of old HDDs in it and run it in RAID. And if I ever need access to it I'll just remote in from the desktop via TeamViewer. I suppose if I do that, I wouldn't need another GPU. I guess I'm just looking to by time till I pull the trigger on building a desktop. In the mean time I may hit the local Goodwill and grab super cheap old monitor.

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

 

I mean I have a Clevo D900F and a X7200. Both are running i7-990x cpus and the D900F has a single 680m 4GB and my X7200 has SLI 680m's. It really wasn't hard and I didn't go and buy a 500 series heatsink as they are impossible to track down I opted for just modifying the stock 460 heatsink to work with the 680s. I use both those laptops quite often to game with still.

 

For some older games like GTA V the SLI 680setup would still do decently.

 

Do you know if the 2GB version or 4GB versions are both supported? And I'm assuming they need to be the Clevo versions and not the Alienware version? Looks like I can get two for about $370-$400 +s/h. I'd have to think about it as I'd rather save that for the desktop. My fans are getting old and worn too. The system is usually on 24/7.

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

 

for the 680m I have only used 4gb in my experience. As far as brand I have used primarily clevo and msi 680's with great success rates. I have used an alienware 680m but I had a bit more difficulty with the drivers and I believe the alienware cards have issues with optimus. I hope I am saying the last part right for the alienware card but I am 100% positive on the clevo and msi working. The fans for these laptops are scarce but you can find them. The heatsinks and sli cable however are extremely hard to come by if you don't already have them.