2013 Series 7 chronos / Ativ Book 8 15" owner's lounge (NP770Z5E / NP780Z5E / NP870Z5E / NP880Z5E)

This user found that that Kingston KVR16S11/8 worked OK.

John

 

Hey,

Just wondering if you are still having issues with increased power consumption since the windows 10 install? My power consumption has more than doubled since I upgraded and I am struggling to find wither a definitive cause or solution to the problem. Battery life has gone down from around 8 hours to less than 4. Any suggestions would be appreciated I've tried reinstalling graphics drivers for both intel and amd (and messing with the global graphics switching settings in CCC) because I think it might be a problem with the switchable graphics but no results yet.

Thanks,

 

The sensors tab in HWiNFO can provide useful information about what is happening: system power drain (when on battery), CPU speed and power consumption and (probably - if not try GPU-z) which GPU is in use and what spped it is running at. This information should help identify whatever is leaking power.

John

 

Hi everyone. Long time NP880Z5E owner here, and I've recently started to have problems with heat. Running League of Legends even on low settings, I hit 75 celsius and up, and I can feel a lot of heat coming from the keyboard surface around the first F keys. I'm going to be upgrading to an SSD very soon, and I figure while I'm at I'll replace the thermal paste on the GPU. I plan to use Arctic Silver 5 - is this a fine replacement? And are there any guides out there that I can use to do this or will I be going in blind?

 

There are several threads about thermal paste in the hardware forum. Based on one of the discussions I repasted my Dell E7440 with Noctua NT-H1 and it made a modest improvement compared to the factory paste. Remember that the purpose of the paste is to fill the gaps between what are two relatively smooth purposes so you don't need to apply very much after thoroughly cleaning the surfaces of the previous paste. The screws holding the heat sink in place usually do a reasonable job in spreading the paste although I push down on the heatsink and slightly move it around, before fitting the screws, in order to help the spreading process.

John

 

Bluetooth doesn't work and power consumption on W10 is very high. Battery will last less than 4h comparing to over 8h on W8.1

 

I purchased a used NP880Z5E with a busted hinge. Anyone know where I can get the hinge parts for this device?

 

Has anyone had any luck with win10 yet? Have the same power usage problem. Hwinfo64 shows no load on the AMD gpu though but almost none on the CPU either (and it clocks down properly as well)... surely there must be something consuming these 8 extra watts compared to Windows 8.1

 

There may be no significant load but is the CPU / GPU speed dropping to the minimum? And is the AMD GPU running when it should be switching to the Intel graphics?

John

 

Battery problem exactly the same for me too (W10). One example is that before, leaving my laptop idle for an hour would take up 5% battery, today i left it for 20 minutes and 10% was already gone

 

Ordered this and just attempted to install. Still not working. This is the third kind I've tried! I'm not sure what else to do

 

That's bad news. Maybe Kingston changed the chips on the module. Samsung included something in a BIOS update in late 2013 which made both these models and some others (including my NP900X4C) unnecessarily fussy about the RAM modules.

John

 

How do you guys who upgraded to Windows 10 deal with windows update? Whenever it searches for updates and installs them it includes drivers for AMD gpu, and whenever it tries to install that the PC freezes or ends in black screen. I can't seem to find a way to ignore/hide updates in Win 10. Because of this none of the other updates gets installed...

 

Are there any known USB driver issues with 8.1 for the np880z5e?

Apparently I don't use my usb much, trying to upgrade to an SSD and wanted to clone it with a usb external enclosure. Turns out it doesn't recognize that in Device Manager, and tried a couple USB sticks and they don't work either.

The external drive shows up in Device Manager under Other devices->USB to ATA/ATAPI Bridge. Properties show "The drivers for this device are not installed"

USB stick shows up Other devices->USB Flash Memory with the same message in properties.

I've used a usb mouse recently so I know the USB stuff DOES work. The external drive works on an different Win7 laptop no problem so its not the device.

SW Update has nothing available, can I grab some other drivers or something?

 

1. Have you tried all your USB ports, are the flash drives you tried from more than one manufacturer and have you tried both ISB 2.0 and USB 3.0?

2. Check in Device Manager for the manufacturer / model of the USB 3.0 host controller then search the www for firmware updates.

John

 

Yes, I've swapped between both 2.0 and 3.0 ports, no luck. Also used three different flash drive from two manufacturers and a hard drive in an external usb enclosure.

Its definitely related to Windows and drivers because I just used the Windows 8.1 recovery image that I put onto a flash drive and was able to boot into it (had to rebuild the MBR in my new SSD, which is awesome after all this pain in the butt)

 

Maybe Windows needed the registry cleaning of the USB drive entries. I've had a few problems of this type over the years. It's almost as if one incident of poor recognition of a drive then makes it difficult for it to be recognised properly due to something inappropriate in the registry.

Anyway, you've fixed the problem even if you took a long way round.

John

 

Sorry if I wasn't clear there, I didn't get it fixed. My first problem was going from hdd to ssd, and I found I was able to use the usb drive loaded with the Windows repair stuff and that worked as a boot device.

But once I'm in Windows, if I plug in any usb stick or external, Windows doesn't seem to know what drivers to use to use the devices. I'm not really sure what to install, esp since everything is through the Samsung updater stuff.

 

OK. This is frustrating. Possible fixes are (i) removing all USB-related devices in Device Manager, reboot and let Windows redetect the hardware; and (ii) the registry cleaning that I linked to.

If you can't fix Windows then the last resort is to back up your files and restore the factory image (tap the F4 key a few times immediately after starting the computer in order to get into Samsung Recovery Solution).

John

 

ha, yes agreed! Really appreciate all your suggestions. Well at any rate, I found a "fix"...update to Windows 10 lol. I kinda thought that would since there would be new drivers all set up.

And FYI if anyone seems to be sitting hanging with the Windows 10 update sitting in their tray, go check you Windows Update history. I had like a dozen failed Windows 10 Update tasks in there. Found out theres a problem where the download could have failed and apparently isn't smart enough to fix itself. Cleared the download directory per this link, and it downloaded and installed immediately! http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...0/9d69a99b-1851-4464-b10b-e69946993e78?auth=1

USB good to go, real start menu back, laptop runs ridiculous fast now...good stuff.

If theres any doubt on why to upgrade to SSD, check out these numbers from old drive to new:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.3 Shizuku Edition x64 (C) 2007-2013 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 84.775 MB/s
Sequential Write : 67.178 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 21.552 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 23.716 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 0.256 MB/s [ 62.5 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.517 MB/s [ 126.3 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 0.474 MB/s [ 115.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 0.516 MB/s [ 126.0 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [C: 23.0% (214.0/929.6 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2015/08/11 21:43:52
OS : Windows 8.1 [6.3 Build 9600] (x64)



-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.3 Shizuku Edition x64 (C) 2007-2013 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 477.711 MB/s
Sequential Write : 474.899 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 410.624 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 362.902 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 36.694 MB/s [ 8958.5 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 57.736 MB/s [ 14095.7 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 233.435 MB/s [ 56991.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 83.526 MB/s [ 20392.0 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [C: 42.3% (196.4/463.8 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2015/08/16 16:41:57
OS : Windows 8.1 [6.3 Build 9600] (x64)

 

Fortunately, W10 didn't carry over the corrupted settings. However, are you graphics working OK including power consumption and brightness control?

Actually, one of the key benefits of SSDs is the near zero access times, which isn't part of the CDM test (but may be built into the non-sequential tests).

John

 

Evenin' all. Matt here.

I'm the (surprisingly happy) owner of an Ativ Book 8, with a question that I haven't seen answered anywhere that has a decent search. First off, a bit of background:

Bought my Samsung a few years ago as my college daily driver. I'm an architecture student that came back to school after working in the industry for a while, so I knew what I wanted: Good battery life, decent discreet GPU for AutoCAD (and some downtime gaming) and, if I was stuck with Windows 8, a touchscreen. Fortunately, the Ativ hit all of those, with battery life being standout. About a year ago, I threw an 850 Evo 500GB in as a new drive to make up for the one seriously lackluster area of the machine, and about three weeks ago I added an additional 8GB of Kingston HyperX.

Now on to my question:
I see a lot of people complaining about the keyboard washing out with the backlight on, and I tend to agree. As such, I picked up a new, black keyboard off ebay, and want to swap it in. Has anyone done a full teardown of this machine here? I'm looking everywhere for some pointers, but have no luck. I've already put a crack into the bottom case (by the front USB 3.0 port) when I swapped in the SSD, so I'm just looking to avoid anything like that. Thoughts? Pointers?


Thanks!

 

I'm typing this from my Ativ, and I'll let you know I've had no issues with this ram from Kingston:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KQCOTCM?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o02_s00
Now, granted, I've only been using it for a couple weeks - but I popped it in and everything's working swimmingly:

http://imgur.com/j89atEL

 

Hey guys,

I am getting an error that I assume a lot of us have seen re: W10, but I wasn't able to find it in search. W10 has downloaded but it indicates MS is still validating my PC, and that critical hardware components made by intel don't have drivers yet.

I have the NP780Z5E

Thanks!

jfletcha

 

For me upgrade went smoth, well not upgrade, I did clean install as soon as upgrade was done. Bump was that clean install din't activate, but after changing key to my old win8 key it all went well.
Only thing what I have to complain is work time on batery, but because I use my laptop 95% on deks and plugend in, it don't really bother me, hope they fix it eventual.
All drivers and patch is working. At first install it didn'd realy work, but second time it worked - maybe for those with this problem, solution is another try for clean install.

May be there is another glitch - lcd color profile, but I am not sure, and don't now hot to find out if it is in action or not. But colors seems little diferent, little not much.

 

Check out my post here... http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...870z5e-np880z5e.713184/page-562#post-10068861

You may need to just clear out the download directory and have it run again. Look at your update history and see if there are failures. Mine sat for a week or two until I finally looked at that link and it installed right away.

 

Hi,

it seems the power management is still broken, but this time the other way round as in Windows 8.1. Didn't fiddle around too much, for I use the notebook as a desktop replacement most of the time, and everything works fine otherwise (including Switchable Graphics, brightness, games, bluetooth and camera). The typical power consumption is about 8-12 W when plugged in. Oddly enough, when running on batteries, this nearly DOUBLES as soon as I pull the plug (to about 18-20 W). It doesn't make much difference which energy plan I use (mostly Samsung Optimized, but the effects are quite the same when switching to the energy saving default one that comes with Windows.

Furthermore, Samsung Setting reports energy consumption going UP even when just setting ECO Mode to on (which is off by default). Don't know if the Settings app calculates the actual power consumption wrong here, but this all seems pretty weird to me. When fully charged, Windows states a battery life of about 5.5 hours in more or less idle state. All drivers are updated to their latest versions (Windows Update installed a new AMD driver today) and all the Cumulative Updates for Windows 10 are installed.

HTH,
-- Chris.

 

Hi,
I am buying a new hdd or an ssd for my laptop. I have an ativ book 8 np870z5e and they said this laptop has a dual bay drive but is it true(I don't think so...)? I might buy a seagate sshd 1tb sata3 hdd, but my laptop supports sata2 and does sata3 fit on a sata2 drive bay? And is wd black2 supported with my aitv book 8? Please help!

P.S. I called the support and they said sshd is not yet tested on the ativ book 8.

UPDATE: The support said my laptop has a msata drive, but im not sure!

 

I think the internals of the NP870Z5E are the same as the NP880Z5E reviewed here and shows a single 2.5" drive. I see no mention of mSATA.

I'm fairly sure that the interface for the HDD bay supports SATA 3 but if it is only SATA 2 there won't be a significant performance impact unless you put in an SSD. The various versions of SATA interfaces are compatible. The computer and the storage device will negotiate the fastest speed supported by both and any 2.5" storage drive with an SATA interface should work. The only uncertainty is the physical thickness of the drive. I'm sure that any 7mm thick drive will fit but less sure about 9.5mm thick devices (although that notebookcheck review I linked to above says they will). The comment here shares my reservation.

John

 

Do you mean that 9.5mm drives will fit? Im buying a seagate sshd 1tb sata3 drive.

 

No, I'm expressing uncertainty as to whether a 9.5mm drive will fit (I think the drive provided with the computer is only 7mm). You will have to read through this thread to see if anyone has been successful in installing the thicker drive.

John

 

Will the sshd be compatible? they said it is not checked yet...

 

I would be very suprised if there is a compatibility issue: The computer will see it as a storage device like an HDD (supplied) or an SSD (which many people have installed as an upgrade). The only thing to worry about is the thickness.

John

 

I have the same issue. Looks like I am not the only one with this problem. This might be a problem with the AMD driver package as described in thread:

https://community.amd.com/thread/185762

Maybe you have any ideas how to solve it ?

Thanks

 

The things Windows 10 does with drivers is a sin and a crime. NVIDIA owners are also being violated by the same Windows 10 cancer. They need to keep their hands off, especially where display drivers are concerned. Using Automatic Windows Update for display driver updates has always an accident looking for a place to happen.

This tool may help you, @rakfish and others that are running into difficulties. http://www.forbes.com/sites/antonyl...soft-backtracks-on-windows-10-forced-updates/

 

Thanks for your hint. I tride it when installed Win10 because it prevented me from black screen after driver installation with auto updates.

I believe the problem is that at the moment we do not have any valid driver for AMD 8870M GPU for Win 10. You can not use Radeon at all with Win10 and Ativ Book 8.

I tried drivers for 8.1 even changing INF files to enable installation on Win10 but failed.

Is there any driver for Ativ Book 8 for AMD which works under Win10?



Thanks

 

Did you try the driver offered by Samsung SW Update? I see a 757MB graphics driver package version 10.18.10.4242 offered by the NP770Z5E Windows 10. That might work if the driver(s) installed by Microsoft can be kept out of the way. If it doesn't work then Samsung should be encouraged (hassled?) to produce a working driver since they think that they have produced Windows 10 drivers / software for this notebook family.

John

 

I've seen some people saying that with Win10 the brightness detection was broken? It seems like mine wasn't working, I just went into the Samsung Settings app, and there are two checkboxes under Display for Plugged In and On Battery. I unchecked and rechecked both and my screen immediately changed.

Not sure if people have tried that, if it doesn't stick...but so far seems to be working as expected.

 

I tried this driver release. It freezes my Win 10 even if I install AMD driver from this package manually...

Do you know any way how to force AMD or Samsung to generate a valid release for my laptop...?

Thanks

 

I had a Seagate 1TB SSHD installed in my 780Z5e, it fitted fine, performance was significantly better than the drive it came with, most of the time. However, I swapped it for a proper SSD at the time of the Win 10 upgrade, and it was like night and day. It feels like the laptop was significantly held back by the mechanical drive. If you can afford to compromise on space at all (and bear in mind, you can get a USB3 caddy really cheaply for your existing drive), I'd advise you to do so.

 

Anyone else with the 780 getting a 'We're validating your PC' message from Windows 10 Upgrade? The Additional Information Screen used to mention waiting on Intel drivers, but now it just says 'working with our partners'. I'm up to date with all drivers, including through Samsung Settings, the Intel Driver utility and windows update (8.1 of course).

If this is common, my apologies, I have been trying to poke around the thread for similar feedback.

jfletcha

 

Yes, mine has been saying that almost since the beginning. For what it's worth, I still haven't gotten the BlueTooth driver to update properly under Windows 8.1.

 

I am using AMDs catalyst 15.4beta on win10 without any problems. Even Premiere Pro CC seems to work.

The only problem I am having are automatic driver updates throught windows updates. Those automatically installed updates dont work very well.

 

Until Microsoft provides users with control over which updates install the procedure here may help.

John

 

Has anyone found a solution/cause of the battery problem in W10? Mine is getting worse, for this entire week I couldn't reach 3 hours of light use (0-15% brightness, MS Word or plain text webpages in chrome running one at a time) at all.
Also, my Fn buttons (with the exception of Volume) are not working, both using Fn Lock and holding down the Fn key? (please forgive me if this has been solved before)
Thanks

 

Has anyone replaced their keyboard? Mine broke due to a slight whisky spill.

 

See this thread: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...ide-keyboard-replacement-lots-of-pics.780629/ . Outright replacement isn't possible without doing one of two things:

1. Buying the entire upper case assembly, which contains: The upper metal part palmrests and keyboard bezel, a plastic part under it, the keyboard it's self, and a bracket that contains the keyboard.

or

2. Cutting plastic welds/rivets that run from the upper case, through the keyboard, through the keyboard bracket and then terminate there. You will then have to figure out a way to *tightly* and *securely* attach the new keyboard. Is it possible? Yes. It will prove difficult if you're an experienced computer builder and modder, and near impossible if you aren't comfortable around exposed PCB and with a Dremel in your hand. The most difficult part will be attaching the new keyboard with enough support that it wont flex or move under pressure.

 

Thanks Matt, sounds like to much work.
I'll try to clean it first, if not i'll have to find a new laptop.

 

Has anyone had a painless upgrade of Win 10 using the upgrader app? It just told me that my computer (NP780Z5E) was eligible. I don't have any new or updated graphics drivers installed, but the high battery usage some have reported worries me. Those without problems are probably less likely to visit this forum, but just wanted to check.

 

I should have looked here first. I waited for the update to be ready for auto install and just started it. I didn't know about any battery issues. Mine is plugged in most of the time but when it is not battery life is very important to me...

Sent from my SM-N910V using Tapatalk