2013 Ativ Book 9 Plus owner's lounge (NP940X3G)

Thanks John - I was thinking I might carefully take it apart and "jiggle things" a bit. This is really helpful info - appreciate it.

 

Hi,

Long time member and owner of AB9+ (and many more since - sig way out of date!) but I need to call on the awesome expertise I notice this forum continues to have moderating.

So, I haven't used this computer very much for the past year or so as it became a location-based machine in a client's office (for my sole use). Performance had been great from day one. John R may recall that around p. 150 of this thread I was obsessed with battery capacity when new showing 94% and then jumping around. That resolved itself after a couple of bios calibrations and regular use and for 4 years the battery has reported that it is at over a little over 100% of design capacity and battery life was great - 6-8 hrs, like clockwork. Until 9/1/17, that is! I've attached my Windows Battery Report and the items of note are that as of 6/14/17 the capacity showed as 55,460 mwh, basically 100% of design. I left it plugged in but my client office locked for the summer and picked it up on 9/1/17 and the capacity was down to 46,735. A little surprising because it maintained full design capacity for 3.5 yrs and after 2.5 months of non-use, plugged in (as had occurred many times over the previous 3.5 yrs) it dropped by around 20%, but it didn't bother much since 80% after nearly 4 yrs is pretty good longevity by any measure. Then I charged the battery the next day and at full charge it showed some 27,000 mwh capacity, or nearly 50% drop in a day. If you peak at my battery report (attached) you'll see that it has stayed in the 27k mwh range for the past 3 days, when I've been using it, charging it, calibrating, etc.

The computer has led a charmed life, rarely traveled except by car in a case in a briefcase, never exposed to heat extremes, etc. Everything else is working fine although my stock Toshiba 256GB SSD has dropped to 4k read speed of 16 mb/s and write of around 50. Sequential read is still 500+ and Sequential write is about 135, but this was always a pretty slow SSD. I don't recall what the write speeds used to be, but they were in line with reviews on NBC, etc.

Anyway, the battery is the thing that's got me puzzled. I'd like to return this to service as my #2 daily driver but it now only gets 3-4 hrs, not because it's draining fast, just because the capacity is shot.

Normal for an old battery to just have the bottom drop out like this? I checked into replacement and there are mostly Chinese knockoffs, but some with at least decent reps for not fouling up machines. I read some caveats a few pages back.

Thanks for any thoughts. i wouldn't have made this so long, but I figured others have or will have similar problems and this is too good a notebook to trash just because of the battery, especially since W 10 makes the UHD screen such a joy.

Best, Jeff

 

That loss of capacity while left plugged in is unusual. Might there have been some very high temperatures (not good for these batteries)?

I would re-run the calibration and see if that improves the situation. If not, then over 3 years is not a bad life for one of these batteries (11 years ago I had a Samsung notebook for which the battery lost most of its capacity just after the end of the one year warranty and the replacement was horribly expensive). There seem to be better and worse 3rd party batteries but if you can find a supplier with good feedback then it's likely to be OK.

John

 

Thanks John. No, this was not exposed to heat - was in an ofc bldg w/24/7 ac. Dont know if you had a moment to scroll to bottom of the windows powercfg battery report, but it's the sudden and sustained capacity drop from 100% for 3.5 yrs (of light use) to 83% in one day to 50% on the next day and no change from the 50% level for 4 straight days, through two bios-based battery recalibrations. Even went from W10 Anniversary to Creators Update on day 3 after the "plummet" and it had virtually no effect on capacity - ie, stayed at 50%. Most of this computer's life it ran plugged-in but I intentionally ran it on battery 1-2x/wk in service of its health. Note: this battery has only had 141 power cycles.

Question: is there a right way/wrong way to do the Samsung calibration? Eg, best to start w/full chg, 50 % chg? Best power setting to have on during the calibration drain routine, during the chrge-up routine?

My gut says this is not purely a battery issue. Besides the abrupt, 2-stage capacity drop, the rate of drain/power draw is exactly as it always was, just starts w/50% less capacity. Whenever I've had an old L-ion laptop battery die off, once it getz into the 80-75% cap level its rate of drainage becomes greatly accelerated.





Sent from my LG-H820 using Tapatalk

 

My recommended method for the battery calibration is (i) disable any battery saver option (check Samsung Settings); (ii) charge the battery until it stops charging; (iii) fully discharge the battery including final discharge at the BIOS screen because windows will hibernate / shut down before the battery is empty; (iv) fully charge the battery. Having the computer running for this step might reduce the charge rate, which is better for the battery. I think it's the last step starting with the empty battery which is used to re-write the battery calibration info.

John

 

John,

Thanks as ever for your thoughtful and detailed support and responses. As it happened, the replacement battery I'd ordered from
arrived today, before I had gotten to re-running calibrate and recharge as you recommended, but I'm delighted to say that the knock-off replacement made in China has 0.03% wear (or 99.70%, depending on what methodology is used to report capacity) and it cost all of $60, shipped, to get it in less than a week. I highly recommend considering http://www.battery-shop.org/ based on my singular, only 24 hours of result experience! As you recommended, I chose this source of OEM replacement batteries because it had very positive overall reviews as a supplier and the efficient, business-like and prompt manner in which they have performed so far appears to bear the ratings history out.

Now I have this wonderful ultrabook back in full service and, though I miss the adaptive display, for $60 I have what feels like a current-day ultrabook (comparable to the hp x360 13) with a very nice 3k screen with decent color gamut (post patches to fix "mustard" yellows years ago), pretty decent battery life (back to 5-9 hrs with full capacity and several very effective power-sipping technologies courtesy of Windows 10, this machine's latest BIOS and some Windows power plan tweaks I have learned over the years. Final user rehab/refurb step: replace OEM 256GB SSD with decent current day m.2 512 (alas, no lanes for PCIE available. Have any recommendations for the replacement SSD?

Hope all is well with you, John. I can honestly say that your continued moderation of Samsung threads was a major consideration in rehab-ing this one rather than replacing it and spending $800 - $1,200 more than the $300 max after replacing the SSD. Thank you!

 

Hi, the original batteries tend over time to get failed cells. While to most it looks like a 1p/8s battery usually they are many parallel cells of smaller capacity. The advantage of the newer cells is exactly that, they are not just old new stock.

 

Good to hear that you've now got a properly performing battery.

I wouldn't lose sleep about not being able to have a PCIe SSD. My Dell Precision 5510 came with a 256GB PCIe SSD which I quickly swapped for a 1TB SATA SSD as I needed the capacity and have never noticed the performance difference although there must be situations where the extra speed gives benefits. There is the cost that more speed means more heat so the PCIe SSDs are quick to throttle to nearer SATA speeds unless given good cooling (many newer notebooks have tried to keep the SSDs cool by giving them heatsinks and locating them away from the hot ports of the computer).

I don't have specific recommendations. The Sandisk X400 I've been using for nearly 18 months is running nicely. Samsung EVO (don't pay extra for Pro) is proven technology, Crucial/ Micron is a proven brand and I have seen WD SSDs at attractive pricing.

The cell configuration can be deduced from the voltage: around 7.4V is 2 cells in series, around 11.1V indicates 3 cells in series. Capacities of 50 to 70Whr usually indicate 6 cells (the number of cells is often given in the battery description) and 6 cells can be configured as two parallel sets of 3 cells in series or three parallel sets of 2 cells in series. Notebooks can sometimes support different battery configurations. My NP900X3B was shipped with an 11.4V battery which was replaced under warranty (it seems there had been a bad batch of batteries) with a 7,5V battery. However, the 11.4V was only 40Whr. I don't know if it used 3 big cells or 6 small ones.

John

 

I actually refer to internally, they are more than one cell in parallel. As an example I have a nexus 10 that dies specifically at 33%, the cells fold up. Just the nature of the game is all.

 

Hi to everybody, just got in my hands an ATIV book 9 plus np940x3g with win 10 and i cant install yellow color patch due to security reasons.

 

John just to follow up on this; opening it up I found a distressed ribbon cable connecting to the keyboard which under very gentle probing broke. I tried to sand it down and solder it together but that was a fail; thanks to your advice I turned up the correct model on Samsung parts, which arrived and was easily installed, so I have a working laptop again. Thanks again for your help and advice.

 

Same issue here. I have had this model (NP940X3G - K05US (i7-4500, 8GB DDR3, 256GB m.2 SSD) since new in 2013. Not sure if current Samsung Software Update Utility has the patch folded in. Yellow looks much like it did in my pre-clean re-install of W10 - to that great calibration tool, the naked eye!

On the subject of Software Update, I am confused. I had to download the utility and it did so and looks just as I recall it looking when I last looked at it about a year ago, but I'm perplexed that it isn't doing anything! It just sits there when I launch it and asks me if I want to save it (I do) and then, well, nothing. Features are implemented somewhat differently - eg, the Elan Touchpad settings launches from Windows Control Panel (I used to have to launch it as a separate program I downloaded and put on the taskbar), some features are not working: 1) keyboard backlighting, neither automatically, as it used to, nor by pressing FnF9/F10 on keyboard 2) display brightness not responding to presses of FnF2/F3, need to launch Windows display settings, which work fine, and there are various others that either don't work at all or don't work in ways I recall them working, even in W10 upgrade pre-Creators. To restate, like @major65 the yellow patch won't run and displays bright red security warning. Makes me suspicious overall as to how updated my drivers are (can see the ones that show up in Programs and Features Windows Control Panel, of which there are precious few showing and they are dated the date of my W10 re-install, not the date of the driver - haven't checked device manager to see original dates of installed drivers.)

So clearly there are tweaks I need to do to get things like Fn keys doing what they are supposed to do: restoring that oh-so-minimalist aurora borealis green glow Samsung called "keyboard backlighting" for this model, others that don't come right to mind. Also, I'm inclined to believe that I am running some 2013-2015 drivers, replacements for which are likely lying in wait on the SSD of this machine. But here's the rub: the computer is running as fast, responsive and smoothly as it ever did - I'm inclined to say even better than I remember it ever did in many respects - so I'm faced with the "ain't broke/don't fix position that time has well taught me to respect and let lie.

Thoughts, suggestions? Perhaps I should run some benchmarks to verify that things are as sound and smooth as they appear to be - which ones? Security seems to be on auto pilot with W10 and I loathe to wreck performance by tinkering with Windows Defender settings, though the primary reason I wiped this machine and re-installed Windows and apps is that it was clearly infected with some ugly malware and I don't want to see the likes of that again. Thus, I refer back to the opening sentences of this paragraph and welcome suggestions for what, if anything, I should do, beyond getting certain features working. Thanks. Oh, and by the way, this machine is as fast, smooth and, well, just "tight" as it ever was, making it to this day the best ultrabook I have ever owned or used, and that encompasses many models, including today's most highly regarded, admittedly mostly high-end consumer, models. Neither the dated cpu/gpu, RAM nor SSD make this feel any slower than Kaby Lake, DDR4 RAM, PCie/Nvme SSD on, say, even the Thinkpad Yoga 370 my wife uses for work. Pretty impressive, Sammy! And to think, they announced their exit from the computer mfg market shortly after releasing this series.

 

I'm sorry for my habitual [sigh] over-communication in a post, but I would be most grateful if one of the moderators of this forum might skim it and give me some pointers. To summarize, I had lightly hand-refurbished my NP940X3G - K05US (i7-4500, 8GB DDR3, 256GB m.2 SSD) about a month ago, putting in a new battery, cleaning fans, etc, and ran into some major malware infestation that required me to wipe most of the SSD clean, do a factory restore and update to W10 Creators Update and performance is great, malware gone, but I'm unable to restore certain basic functions - see previous post for specifics. When time permits, I'd appreciate any pointers. Thanks, Jeff

 

Well, all's well that ends well. I could edit the previous posts away now, but I'll leave them for posterity; if someone encounters similar issues, I'll pass along the small tidbit of knowledge I gained in case it may be of use. When using Samsung Software Update you need to choose "Windows 10 RS1 as your operating system. Turns out that enables the Samsungy drivers to download and install. Now everything works as it did when new, and I've updated all of the non-Samsung drivers to 2017 versions. This is a great ultrabook!

Edit: BTW, still won't allow me to install the yellow correction patch but yellows look ok, probably as good as with the patch, but though I could observe the defect 4 years ago I didn't consider it a big deal then and wouldn't be surprised if it isn't in the updated display drivers and I'll have defective yellows on this computer whenever using it on battery at full brightness. (I don't like shopping at Best Buy these days anyway!)

 

Noticed my seldom used but always plugged in and powered down 9+ no longers holds a battery charge.

Reports "0% plugged in, not charging" in the tray icon, and powers off within a minute of being disconnected.

Any troubleshooting advice?

 

Try going to BIOS (F2) and run Battery Calibration -- with the power cable unplugged. But if your battery is unable to hold a charge at all, this may not work. In that case you probably need a new battery.

You could try to unplug and leave it for a couple days, then recharge it. I've seen that revive a dead laptop battery a bit, but not to the point of holding a full charge.

BTW, this is exactly what Samsung's Battery Life Extender is for (before Samsung retired that feature): To prevent damage to batteries from being always plugged in and fully charged.

 

Darn, that's disappointing. Thank you the tips.
I'll play with a little today and see if I can get some more life out of the thing.

If I do need a new one how easy is it to replace?

 

Sorry for the late reply.

Replacing the battery is doable, although you will need to take off the bottom cover, which is always risky business on Samsung laptops.

I don't recall any guides for this model off the top of my head, but try googling site:notebookreview.com np940x3g battery replacement or site:notebookreview.com np940x3g disassembly.

 

My Samsung has been throttling to .77-.79 GHz, I wondered if I needed a Samsung driver update of some sort but I've installed all latest drivers and nothing worked> I went through all the power options, registry hacks, etc. The only thing that finally worked for me was a program called Throttle Stop. Unfortunately when I unlock the 18 multipliers it jumps to 2.8ghz and I worry I'll overheat and destroy the computer. At 17 multipliers the boost mode doesn't get activated and it's stuck at 1.7ghz but I'll take that over .77.

 

Hey @milicz, welcome to NBR.

It sounds like your laptop got stuck in Silent Mode. This is a power saving feature which (among other measures) throttles the CPU to its lowest speed. It is a classic trapdoor with Samsung laptops for owners to accidentally enable it and wonder why the computer is suddenly much slower.

Open Samsung Settings (Fn-F1) and make sure Silent Mode is set to OFF (not AUTO). It can also be toggled with Fn-F11, but using Settings is the best way to ensure Silent Mode is set to OFF.

Of course disable or remove ThrottleStop to see the difference

 

That did the trick! Wow, thanks! I have had this PC for 4 years and it never occurred to me that the Silent Mode being set to Auto would cripple the computer. Well now whatever registry hacks, power plan adjustments I did have me blazing at 2.8ghz, gotta get those back to normal. Thanks!

 

Great, I am glad it worked!

 

For a (very) long time, Samsung update automatically kept updating the drivers and software on this computer. However, recently it simply shows all the available drivers with an option to save them - in other words, a utility that automatically kept the laptop up-to-date is now doing nothing more but downloading all of the software. Is this normal?

Also, given that I run the latest fall creators update, which windows version should I install? For my model exactly (NP940x3g-k05US) there are options for Win 10 and Win 10 RS1. Curiously, the -k05CA version (or any other -k05XX version other than -k05US) has Win 10, Win 10 RS1, and Win 10RS3. To add to confusion, the drivers under Win 10 RS3 are all older than the drivers under Win 10 RS1. What would you guys suggest I do? I'm leaning towards saving Win 10 RS1...

I also recently encountered the dead battery after leaving the computer on charger for around 2 months without using it. I'm assuming battery replacement is the only solution? (It's hard to use this machine when my work gave me XPS 15 with i7-6820HQ, 4K display, 16GB ram, 1TB SSD, and 960m GPU..)

 

Hey everyone! I'm trying to replace the keyboard on this, does anyone have a guide showing how it's done? looks like it's going to be complicated.

 

Hi,
I read a lot of pages in this thread, but i still have some questions.

Its about best practice when you fomat and reinstall windows 10!

I read that windows automatically update many drivers all the time that may not be recomended by manufacturer/for the computer.

What is the best thing to do after fresh windows 10 install??

Is it to install ""samsung driver update"" and let it update everithing for you...

Or install intel driver utillity...to get latest intel drivers from intel?

And stop windows from updating some drivers?

I guess many peaple here have reinstalled windows 10 and know whats the best way to update and what drivers that is imoprtant.

I just got a np940x3g with 8gb ram and i7 Hasswell.

Whats good to know.....Do and Donts


Thx

 

Just install windows 10 and let it sit there for 30 mins or so with an internet connection. It should get almost all if not all the drivers.

 

Hi,
Thx, but that i know that, pretty used to update computers...

But i read that some people complaind about that windows automatically update thair driver to a newer version thats not samsung approovet.


I mostly whant to know some good tips n trix about my new samsung 900x3g

Tnx <3

 

I read thats samsung is not always giving you the latest updates sw update....and that you can search for a new version of np940x3 to get newer updates.

Is that true??

 

Not sure of this has been mentioned in this thread before but I figured it might be worth mentioning that although I haven't found a BIOS update with updated microcode to fix the Spectre vulnerability for this laptop, it is compatible with Microsoft's KB4100347 update that applies updated microcode at boot. That doesn't seem to be installed automatically though but can be found at the links below.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us...or-windows-10-version-1803-and-windows-server

http://www.catalog.update.microsoft.com/search.aspx?q=4100347

For Debian-based Linux distributions, new microcode updates should be available via the intel-microcode package.

 

I have been a privileged and proud owner of the Samsung NP940x3g-k05us (purchased new in the US but I live in UK) which has been serving me extremely well for the past four years.

It recently started crashing frequently under moderate loads and the battery was lasting just a few hours at best with just internet activity. So I looked at upgrading to a new device but couldn’t find one as well made so took to solving the two aforementioned issues.

The crashing was caused by the CPU overheating so I replaced the CPU heat sink thermal paste which worked perfectly.

Feeling smug I thought the battery replacement would be a doddle. New battery ordered and was simple enough to fit. However, as described above, the keyboard backlight stopped working for 3/4 of the keyboard. The left hand side stopped working until the keys around 8. I attributed this to the new battery or fitting so refitted the original battery but the problem remained. After a few days it fixed itself so I left the original battery in place.

The two hour battery life grew tiresome again so I had another attempt at replacing the original battery but every time I fitted the new battery (although now over six months old) the same issue persisted. I’ve checked all the ribbon cables and they seem fine and seated correctly and it’s odd when I fit the original battery the keyboard back lights take a few days to start working properly again.

Any advice greatly appreciated as I use my laptop in the dark a lot (don’t ask!) and its a real problem with over half the keyboard not lit.

Thanks,

Andy

 

Take a close look at the new battery. Is the side being placed against the computer exactly the same shape as the original? I wonder if the replacement battery is slightly thicker (possibly only in part of it) which is applying pressure on something which affects the backlight. With the original battery back in place the squeezed component gradually relaxes and then the backlight starts work. I recall that the original Series 9 keyboard backlight technology but something else, which could be sensitive to pressure. Possibly some spacers (pieces of thin cardboard) placed at strategic points between the new battery and the computer could fix the problem.

My NP900X3B was replaced by a Dell Latitude 7370 which has similar overall CPU speed (in spite of the Core M CPU), a lot more RAM, a nicer keyboard, thin display bezels and no fan noise (there isn't one!) but perhaps the nearest to a successor to the Samsung is the LG Gram.

John

 

Thanks for the suggestion John, I will experiment this weekend and see how i get on.

I really like the Dell products and came very close to the XPS13 however for my current laptop needs I simply can't justify the c.£1.5k cost upgrading when the Samsung still performs perfectly and still looks amazing. The new MacBook Pro is also a thing of beauty - shame about the O/S (I'm a Window user)!

Thanks again for the advice.

Andy

 

Thanks for your earlier advice John, I have now found the culprit...snapped ribbon cable! :-(

I hadn't spotted this before as I was checking the large keyboard ribbon cable. It must have been very brittle as it first went when I changed the battery (i.e. before I took the main board out to replace the thermal paste). I’m going to have to try and solder some wire onto the ribbon to repair as its right on the bend!

 

Thanks for the update. At least you've identified the cause of the problem if not the solution. Fixing damaged ribbon cables isn't easy, particularly if there's a layer of insulation over the conductors. You could try using some tape on the back side to join the two ends and then some of the conductive paint which is sold for repairing tracks on PCBs. You'd probably need to form the cable into the bend before applying the paint. Otherwise, as you propose, it's soldering using fine wires.

John

 

There was just enough length left in the attached section of the ribbon cable to allow me to avoid having to attempt to reconnect the snapped off section. I simply used a scalpel blade to scratch off the protective layer of the ribbon cable casing to expose the metal within and voila, one fully working back-lit keyboard again!

 

Well done.

John

 

My splendid np940x3g has been running Windows 10 64-bit Version 1803, but Microsoft won't try upgrading to Version 1809. Samsung support says they know about this problem but won't promise a fix. I suspect there's a problem with a specific driver, and the upgrade to Version 1809 might work if I disabled the driver, but I can't tell which specific driver is causing the problem. Any ideas ?-- I don't like having an orphaned laptop! Otherwise it's a great machine.
Regards.

 

I did not see Windows 1809 showing up when I use windows update. I was impatient and decided just to use Windows update assistant to update to 1809. So far, everything works for me except the touchscreen (for the life of me I just cannot find a driver to get it to work). I recall that I did have issue where the bluetooth was not working after the update but after I manually install the driver from samsung update, it works fine.

 

Hello,
I am looking into buying a used Samsung Ativ Book 9 np940x3g from 2013 (i7 4500U).

According to the seller the laptop shuts down when being moved. I am very inexperienced with these kinds of issues and was wondering if this is a common problem with this laptop. Actually, I found another post of somebody with the same problem, but the thread has since been shut down. Has anyone heard of more cases like this one? My suspicion is that the connection of the battery itsself is defective (but it's just a guess) and in case I'll buy it, my plan would be to take it apart, check all connectors and reapply thermal paste.

In case anybody has experience with issues like this, I would really appreciate hearing about it.

 

I had this issue. It was resolved by Samsung under warranty a few years ago. There was something either lose or I suspect a dry joint on one of the boards. If I picked up the laptop from a corner I could make this happen. The fix did resolve it but the laptop was never quite the same as they did something to the trackpad...…

I still have the Samsung which I love. 4gb RAM became a bit restrictive and I've just bought a Huawei Matebook X Pro i7 with 16gb RAM. Fantastic touch screen with a good 3:2 ratio and overall feels like a nice upgrade from the Samsung.

 

hi all,

Bought a Samsung 970 EVO Plus nvme drive, having matched up m.2 and the drive physically looked like my crucial mx200 I'd installed a few years back. Do I have to patch by BIOS or something to run the nvme drive on this 940x?

 

NP940X3G
I tried to swap in a new wifi card but it wasn't recognized. Putting the original wifi card back in, it's not seen in Device Manager either.
Suggestions?