*** Official Sager NP8170/Clevo P170HM Owners Lounge ***

Can you show us some pics of the interior?

 

Here is how a virgin NP8170 looks inside - see below. It would be interesting to see where he placed the little heat spreaders.

Scott

 

hi there, im very much curious on how you paste those passive heatsink too hope you will post some pics after applying them on .

 

So if Ivy Bridge is really delayed until July, what are the chances that Clevo refreshes the current P170HM with the new graphics options while we wait?

I mean, since the 600M and 7900Ms are ready to go in April, I can't imagine AMD and Nvidia will want to wait 4 months to start making sales.

 

Only dual core Ivy Bridge is delayed. Quads are still good to go for this spring.

 

The ones I bought came with a very thin sticky black adhesive so it was as easy as putting on stickers with a more pressure. I put 4 on the CPU pipes and 4 on the base, and 8 on the base sink of the GPU. (Sorry, no camera)

 

I had done the same thing on my M570TU with the little heatsinks. I didn't notice any temp drops though. I did notice a slightly heavier laptop

I had taken off the sticky black stuff on most heatsinks, lapped them smooth, then put a better adhesive double sided adhesive. It felt like a waste of time tbh.

 

clevos will push out newer graphics card or processors, its been the case always, just look at the history. So hopefully we will see some new tech in less than 2 months!

 

Odd, they're really helping for me especially on the CPU. These heatsinks were really heavy and I was thinking about getting better adhesives but the stock ones are working well, those little spreaders are HOT. Can't complain.

 

I'm really interested in your results and it would be very useful if you could manage to take a picture of your installation and show it to us. Thanks !

 

Spoiler

 

I am using 12 of them on my CPU and 12 on GPU.
I can confirm:

- that the temps rise much slower
- that with lower ambient temp this is more effictive
- a Notebookcooler helps in getting fresh air to the coolers that otherwise will heat up the Notebook itself over time.

The heatsinks that llynx linked to are an unbranded but identical version of Cooltek CT RCC (VGA-RAM COOLER COPPER)

@llynx: If one block covers both heat pipes it didn`t have a negative effect by the little air cought inside or heat distribution...but maybe having one for each side improves it...Prema runs and orders more...

BTW, do you guys have a thermal pad that covers the bigger transistors directly below the CPU where the blue 163 is printed on llynx picture. Mine only has a tiny stripe that covers the black resistors next to them but not the big blocks like on the GPU.

 

Yeah, the plan is to line both pipes with their own set of sinks. I'm often in places with very low ambient temps and when I'm not its on a NZXT cooler.

These definitely help quite a bit though it makes the laptop slightly heavier and these sinks have the potential (though unlikely) to fall off.

@Prema - These heatsinks would be great for oc'ing the cpu but we can't modify blk's and turbo time limits yet

Mythlogic said they were working on their own bios for the p170 but I haven't heard anything about that since september.

 

Interesting. I used those same ones on my laptop. Definitely needs air flowing over it somehow otherwise it helps at first but then just peaks at the same temps, just takes longer to reach those temps. I also removed the black adhesive with goof off and replaced with thin double sided thermal tape found on eBay and I can guarantee unless you jar that sucker pretty hard, those things are not coming off, especially if the surfaces were cleaned thoroughly with alcohol and applied with a decent amount of pressure and wiggled a bit.

Also, if you were so inclined to experiment, cutting a slot in the fan shroud to help blow air over those heatsinks might help. It helped in an M11x mod "some guy" did, and it helped when I did it on my DV6z, but while the CPU and GPU temps dropped, the internal temperature went up and could feel it in the palmrest.

 

I plan to do some modifications on the bottom plate and fans...
...regarding turbo time limits and TDP BIOS mod...you can drop me a PM...though I wouldn't touch the BCLK on my machine...

 

I went ahead and ordered myself a couple sets of those heatsinks. They look cheap and effective, so why not?

 

I have an i7-2860QM system. I use nVidia power saver to force my GTX 580 in 2D desktop mode with dual monitors. Power profiles are set to Performance mode with CPU min/max 100%/100% (cores running at either 8x, 33x and sometimes striking 35x/36x).

The CPU fan was whining away constantly and was unbearable for quiet office work. So I've implemented a number of cooling mods to work around the dumb EC/fan management profile of this system that I find is way too aggressive at low CPU temperature/workloads. I added heatsinks and grills on the CPU, GPU and heat pipes (aluminum for the moment but copper is on order) increased grill aperture size of CPU air intake. I rigged an external air cooling system. Static pressure is key here so the intake and exhaust conduits are sealed/coupled to forced air into the system and evacuate hot exhaust away from cool fresh air intake. Forced airflow is sufficient to render internal fans redundant.

Using HWiNFO64 v3.90-1430 to monitor temperatures, clocks and power:
Ambient office temperature: 21°C (constant)
CPU (package) idles @ 38°C±1°C
GPU idles @ 36°C (constant)
Memory Ambient: 30°C
Seagate Momentus XT in HDD bay #2: 34°C

The GPU fan never turns on. The CPU fan will occasionally turn-on in correlation with reasonable CPU load. However the CPU fan also randomly kicks-in for ~1-12 second durations when the CPU is idle, there is no sign of CPU activity and no signs of power/temperature ramp-up or spike. Furthermore, the CPU fan has absolutely no impact on any temperatures sensors whether it spins or not. I'm trying to understand what factors can cause the CPU fan to kick-in other than temperature/load indicators. It seems to be extremely fidgety about some indicator that I can't pinpoint. Does anyone have any insight into this?

I tried balanced and performance power profiles with various CPU min/max settings the random CPU fan activity persists.

I thought perhaps the CPU heatsink is not properly set, causing core temperatures to ramp up too fast during activity spikes (poor thermal capacity and conductivity), and I'm assuming there is perhaps a safeguard to trigger the CPU fan when the rising rate of temperature is too steep. Some CPU package temperature spikes are very steep: 37°C..50°C..38°C in 3 sample points (~5 seconds). So perhaps there are activity/temperature spikes that fall between the sampling period of HWiNFO64 and I don't see them?

I was considering lapping/repasting the CPU & heatsink. But first I'm wondering if gaining an extra 1-2°C has a chance of providing sufficient margin to prevent the CPU fan from randomly kicking-in for what I'm assuming are swift load spikes with no impact on CPU thermal budget (to the extent where the CPU fan has no chance to contribute anyway).

I tried to see what is the minimum CPU temperature I can possibly strike. I set the power profiles to power saver (CPU stuck at 8x), I turned internal fans to max (Fn+1).
The lowest temperatures I strike with ambient room temperature @ 21°C:
CPU: 34°C (mininum temperature excursions with CPU idling about 35°C)
GPU: 31°C (constant)

Can anyone report on the lowest CPU temperatures they can strike in correlation with ambient room temperature?

 

... and for those who implemented cooling mods: How does your CPU fan behave? ON or OFF most of the time? Any short/random spin-ups around certain temperatures?

 

Hmm, I don't want to believe in your results of temperature (28 C at idle), except that you forgot to put the bottom cover.
In my opinion, will not do anything sticking heatsinks for the internal cooling components. Apart from the possibility of radiators detachment and a short circuit on the motherboard, the temperature of the GPU and CPU must be absorbed and drained to the outside and not inside. This method of passive cooling reduces heatpipe productivity and increases the temperature in the enclosure. To such an operation is successful, you would have to redesign the bottom cover and solder to GPU and CPU heatsink contact plate additional thermally conductive elements (heat pipe or vapor chamber) going to the outside or even touching the bottom cover, which would have to be made ​​in the heat plate form (aluminum alloy with embedded heat pipe in entire surface). which, unfortunately, will affect the weight of the laptop. One more thing, P150/170HM gets in idle around 50-60W, while the stress over 200W. If you want complete silence at work, you need to buy a laptop with integrated graphics, which takes 15W in idle and 50W under stress.

 

Browsing nbr temps.

[Edit: Room is 75F]

 

Hey guys, I need help finding the latest BIOS that allows Intel XTU tuning. Thanks!

 

Yea, and I have 14C.

 

Non 3D screen, then you can just:

Flash this EC:

170HM_EC_09.zip

And this BIOS:


P17HM_BIOS110.zip

@the temp guys above...LOL!
I have already 35c room temp...maybe I should do a bench in the freezer...

 

Just Fn+1 and an open window.
What about the BIOS mod? Because I had only managed to destabilize the power system.

 

LOL...outside it was almost 40c today...I would need FN+999...

Oh BIOS mod...just PM me...I guess llynx is going all wild with beta testing...

 

@ Bonnie.Clyde BTW HWiNFO Glitches temp readings, my min temps are 10C/35C/1C/1C according to the latest version

How did you get your Package Power Wattage to go so low? Mine is always ~25W

My 2920xm is also an engineering sample with an excessively hot core. Core 2 is about 7-10C higher than any other core on any bench.

I'm not FN+1'ing though it is sitting on a NZXT cooler with medium (near inaudible fan speed).

___________

Yeah, prema let me flash some higher TDP bios and I've gotten much better scores on wPrime 1024m (~90 second improvement)

 

Thanks. But does this carry a risk of having to always flash only Clevo BIOS in the future?

 

Yes, if you flash with the Clevo Bios you are stuck with them forevermore. Flashing back to a Sager bios has the distinct possibility of bricking the machine. If you want the Sager bios, you need to contact your reseller or Sager directly.

 

Thanks! I recall reading something about it recently and a red flag went up when I noticed the BIOS links were for Clevo's.

 

Anyone having temperature issues with the nvidia 485m? I hit 85c when playing call of duty 4 for five minutes without hitting fn + 1 with a room temp of around 72F.

I have re-pasted once with IC diamond, then had a friend who works in IT paste it again with IC diamond. No difference either time.

Still, it hits 84 in the first 5 minutes and will hit 86 not long after that if I don't use the fan overdrive. Also I had some artifacts the other day when playing BF3 and my fps dropped from normal to around 12-15 fps. When I restarted the machine it was back to normal. Before I restarted I looked at hw monitor (which I always have open during gaming) and my temps had peaked in the high 80s and I had the fans on overdrive. However the idle temps seem to be fine, around 42-43c. I am NOT currently running an overclock and have only overclocked to 624/1248/1550 in the past to see what score I would get in 3dmark11.

Should I contact sager for a replacement gpu? And if I contact sager should I tell them that I repasted?

I am very uncomfortable with my temps being anywhere above 85c and would like to see them under 78. I overclocked my NVIDIA 9500m gs in my other laptop close to 50% and still it only hits 83c when running benchmarks for hours with room temp around 27c and plays bfbc2 on a normal day without going over 77c. I am aware that this is a MUCH higher end gpu, but it worries me!

 

If you had artifacts, definitely ask for a replacement, before it fails completely. Although the policy may be different for different resellers, unless you overvolted or flashed a custom vBIOS, a card can't be damaged simply due to software overclocking.

 

Thanks, ill be contacting sager first thing tomorrow morning. I haven't messed with the vbios or any of the voltages. I also have pictures that I can send to sager because they always want a 'picture' of the problem.


I still would like to know some other people's running temps with their cards. I saw one person said that he never goes over 78c and doesn't even have to use fn + 1, but maybe he doesn't play as demanding games as I do.

 

85C is not an unusual temp for the 485m. The danger zone would be temps aof 95C and up (though they're rated for close to 110C before thermal shutdown). Load temps of 80-90C are not uncommon and definitely nothing to be worried about (especially with your higher ambient temperatures). My 485m idles at 38C and under full load can easily hit 85-90C depending on the game.

 

This is simply a myth that was spread and is apparently not true for P170HMx/NP8170.
The people who bricked their machines flashed non matching ECs...same can happen when just going Sager <> Sager or Clevo <> Clevo.

I have flashed Clevo <> Sager back and forth without a problem.
Just flash EC & BIOS without a reboot (delete reboot command from ECs update.bat) whenever you go from an EC version that doesn't match the new BIOS...Flash EC then flash BIOS then only reboot.
You can run an MD5 check >>> Sager and Clevo ECs of the same revision are identical for the P170HMx/NP8170.
I haven`t found any EC for this model where the Clevo version was not identical with Sagers...if in future you should face one that was altered, then just do the same "Flash all in one step" above and you are good to go.

I don't want to encourage people to do so! Just share my own experience.
Best is you get all BIOS from your resellers. You will keep their logos, tweaks and warranty support.

 

So was i, then i took out the fans and saw the copper fins caked with dust, now its back to about 40C idling with same room temp.

 

Yeah, I was hitting upper-90s regularly and the card was working fine still (though was definitely hotter than I was comfortable with). Cleaned out all the dust from my heatsinks and now WoW tops out at about 70C and the most demanding gaming is about 85C.

 

When the GTX580M was released, HWInfo crashing the whole system.
I do not know why the Power Package is such low, but it seems to me that since I replaced the ES (from clevo.fr) with OEM everything works normally. Earlier with ES, I also had alone trouble.

 

temperature still high even after proper repaste?? time to clean up those heatsink fans

 

yeah, I have always cleaned my fins and grills every month for all my laptops... so that isn't the issue.

 

Hello guys,

I just join the site today and I figure I would log on and say hi to you all. I have been reading this forum for some time now and all the information on here is very informative regarding the Sager/Clevo laptops. I just recently order a Sager np8170 with the following options.

- Operating System: ~Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit Installed
- Wireless Network: Sager Intel® Advanced-N 6230 - 802.11A/B/G/N Wireless LAN Module + Bluetooth -
- 6x Blu-Ray Read/8X DVDRW Super Multi Combo Drive -
- Second Hard Drive: 500GB (w/ 4GB SSD Memory) Seagate XT 7200RPM NCQ Hybrid
- Primary Hard Drive: 120GB Intel 520 Series Solid State Drive
- Ram: 8GB - DDR3 1333MHz Dual Channel Memory
- Graphics Video Card: ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 6990M 2048MB PCI-Express GDDR5 DX11
- Thermal Compound: - IC Diamond Thermal Compound - CPU + GPU
- Processor: 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-2670QM, 2.2-3.1GHz,
- Display: 17.3" FHD 16:9 "Glare Type" Super Clear Ultra Bright LED Glossy Screen (1920x1080)

I am looking forward to join the Sager/Clevo family, and continue to get support from you guys if needed. Thanks

 

Welcome to the forums and congrats on your laptop purchase! You certainly came to the right place!

 

Congrats on the order!
May i suggest changing the second hard drive if you dont plan on dual booting or installing an OS on that drive
- Second Hard Drive: 500GB (w/ 4GB SSD Memory) Seagate XT 7200RPM NCQ Hybrid
The hybrid drives work well as a boot drive but if you just plan on using it for storage the SSD portion wont give any speed increase. Save a few bucks and go with a standard HDD.

 

Thanks Hutsady, yeah when I order it, I didn't pay attention. But its too late now because my order is ready for shipping. I will sell it when I get it and just put in a standard HDD.

 

Hey everyone, hope anyone can help. Happy NP-8170 user for months now until yesterday. Windows minimize and minimize very slowly (like in slow motion) and a really slow startup time where sager startup window comes in in pieces. This started when travelling to Switzerland and plugged into an outlet with no ground. Fingerprint reader not working all of a sudden. Ive changed themes to basic in windows 7 and have stopped all (most) CPU, GPU and Disk activity. Temperatures are all fine. Ran full scan for viruses norton 360 also with defender, cant find anything at all. I'm suspecting something to do with the power. Maybe im wrong, but havnt changed any hardware or software settings that im aware of. In HWinfo I have an oscilation of in the CPU Package Power from min 44.4 W to 219w. Is this normal? And in IA Cores Power min 5.5 to 177w. Can I somehow test the hardware or can anyone give me their normal values so I can compare?

Has anyone had this kind of thing happen before ? How can I check that my power supplies (i have two) are working correctly?

BTW: Videos on web are fine In itunes not start properly with sound no pictures. Re installed itunes, same problems. Games OK. Startup to COD is a bit slow but then once in game max settings all ok.

Thanks for anyones help.

 

If it all started after plugging into the ungrounded outlet, then that might be the source of the problem. It's possibly you caused a static buildup or had a power surge that damaged something.

I'd recommend a new OS install, but it doesn't seem like it would help in this case. A distorted or altered bios splash indicates that you have a deeper hardware related issue. Odds are it was a power surge that damaged... something. It's hard to be specific because it could be the CPU, GPU, mainboard, RAM, or power supply, but it's difficult to tell without testing. You can run Memtest to check your RAM, but the other parts really need to be swapped to be tested.

I'd check with your retailer for help or an RMA.

I'd highly recommend using a surge protector 24/7 as well, because it will help protect from this type of damage. The lack of a ground may or may not have been an issue.

 

Just a note...

Sager has said that the 120Hz 3D screen has been discontinued for NP8170..

Also the NVIDIA GeForce 560M GTX has been discontinued for NP8170..

-

 

Please note that some sellers still have stock, so there are still plenty to be had (Both 560m's and 120Hz screens).

 

Why, does that mean we won`t see 3D on P170EM either...

 

No it does not mean the new model will not have the 3D screen option.

Things are just ramping up for the EM...

_

 

I think your right about the static electricity build up or a similar scenario. After hours of measuring, benchmarking etc to find out without touching any major settings. Shutting it down moving offices did the trick from one minute to the other. Everything seems fine and it fortunately doesnt seem i fried anything. Thanks for the help.