Samsung Series 7 Lovers - Here's The NP700Z5C Ivy Bridge!

I managed to sort out my issues. Installed all the latest drivers that the win8 SW Update app suggested and pretty sure that it was still stuck on turbo. Gave the bottom a whack in frustration and it locked up. rebooted and now working perfectly

I have got CPU power saving enabled in BIOS but WEI scores are fine - 7.8 CPU

 

Good to hear I tried to replicate your issues with no availe last night, I'm trying to work out no back light issues myself but found a post on the 9 series thread and going to give it a try during my lunch break

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk 2

 

I tried to pm you but don't seem to have the ability on this forum. Thanks for all your help, can you elaborate on the GPT mode you mention. How do i do that? Just trying to swap the hdd for an ssd and have it run as per factory specs. Not sure why thats so tough on a samsung vs all the other laptops ive had!

Thanks!
D

 

Here is some explanation of MBR and GPT disks.

I am not sure what was the initial mode for my Samsung 830 SSD, during my experiments I initialised MBR on it. The factory HDD is in GPT mode, and when I tried to restore the system image on the SSD, it failed, saying that it only can restore to GPT disks. So I had to use EaseUS Partition Manager to convert the SSD back to GPT (you need to delete all partitions from the SSD to have that function available).

 

BIOS TURBO SAGA continues... again CLEAN install win 7 sp1 x64, drivers from intel, nvidia... WEI CPU speed 6.5 cpu power saver on or off, no difference .. any idea when the new bios will be out? or can i somehow downgrade the BIOS? it is anoying.. will sell the laptop!!!

 

Sounds like you have a bad one, agree best for you to sell it and be rid of this problem, how much will you take for it?

 

it must be just the BIOS issue, or i dont know how to install this laptop... really dont know ho much, it is just the laptop and charger and warranty on my name .. i like the laptop, just this issue is anoyining ..

 

LOL

Don't know if you were serious or just calling a bluff. Funny either way!

 

long story short I refreshed my windows 8, and it deleted most of the programs including most of the drivers probided by samsung.
I can't use software manager like win7 (tried to run it in win7 comp. mode won't run) Does anybody have a link to SW update program for win8?

Edit. Nvm found it !

 

I'm on the latest P03AG (sp?) bios on Windows 8 and my turbo works. I download to 1.20 ghz when necessary, boost way beyond 2.30 GHz to 3.1 GHz when necessary. Sometimes I feel like it doesn't "turbo" correctly though, sometimes I think my mouse cursor stutters! Hopefully it's a side affect of the cursor changing because it hovered over a hyperlink.

So I'm not buying (yet) that the bios has a problem... Probably reset your Power Options profiles, check to make sure they're not locked at unusual values (should be min 5% max 100%?)

edit: and also the BIOS setting for "CPU Power Saver"

 

Can someone please advise, will a reg 9.5mm Crucial m4 ssd be a direct replacement for the 1tb hdd in the new NP700Z5C-S02UB, or do i need the 7mm drive?

 

I install new bios (version P03AAG) on my Z5C with Win7....and something is wrong, CPU still works at 15-16%

 

The new bios must be wrong.... it sets the bios in to default settings, CPU Saver is Enabled, but when you disable the CPU Saver it doesnt help too much...

 

It is better if you get the 7mm due to fit issues with the S7.

 

I would note that the Samsung SSDs are 7mm while 7mm Crucial is relatively hard to find.

John

 

Thanks to all for the help. I contacted samsung support who say the 9.5mm should fit, and also suggested the same reload method that gtemkin offered to me. I think i'll give it a try and report back if it works!! I would much rather try to do this myself than risk leaving it with the geek squad at BB.

Does anyone elses cd drive spin up where theres no disc in the drive. Whenever i click on itunes, switch to itunes from another window or open an mp3 in wmp my cd drive spins up. So strange!

 

well i am not using iTunes, but it can be the iTunes designed to check music everywhere, even in cd drive... i think that can be just settings of iTunes...

can anybody tell me please, the drivers installation order? i got no recovery partition, no dvd's so if i am doing clean installation of win 7, what is the order of drivers ?

 

I apologize if someone has already asked this -

but today I ran Easy Software Manager (I have Win 7), and it forced an update ... but the update works horrible - it doesn't auto-detect, it requires you to choose the model. Then it asks what operating system you have, and the only choices are Windows 8 versions .. and then, if you click on one of the Win 8 versions, it just gives you a list of drivers to download (no auto-detecting what you have or what version you have). It appears like a Windows 8 update was forced onto those running Windows 7 as well, and it just doesn't work.

Does anyone else have this problem? Contacted Samsung, and they are so clueless I can't even get them to understand the problem.

 

Got doom 3 running on windows 8 today had to do some manual instaling of drivers but it is awesome,
Also confirm dragons age and civilization 5 . Bioshock 2 from a disk will not open after install if any one has a work around please post it.


Sent from my GT-P3113 using Tapatalk 2

The samsung 830 is way cheap right now and keeps up its performance over long term duration (magician software)

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Any one know if our 7's can run raid 0 with 2 SSD's :screwy:

Sent from my GT-P3113 using Tapatalk 2

 

How much slower is the GT 640 in this compared to a GT 650 DDR5?
I'm quite tempted but the GT640 does put me off somewhat and also the lack of separate physical track pad mouse buttons, but it does seem a pretty solid laptop otherwise.

 

What laptop are you looking at with the GDDR5 650?

 

OK, i am FED UP!!!! Going to send the laptop back to Samsung, hopefully i will get a new MOBO with previous version of BIOS. Also i got dead pixel on screen, so they can give me brand new laptop

 

I also have this issue with my laptop of the idle cpu usage being at 30% with the latest BIOS. I need to remove my second hard drive before I send it off to samsung but that is proving difficult at the moment.

 

I've got a 9.5mm M4 and it fit with no problems at all.

 

Use Task Manager to show which process is using the CPU. 30% could indicate one thread running continuously at full load with 5% for everything else.

John

 

I've installed the SSD but I can't seem to install windows 7 via USB, it installs but when it reboots it just goes back to the install screen. I think it's something to do with the express cache. How would I install from the recovery partition onto the SSD?

 

The problem is Hardware interrupt. I wish I could revert to an old bios to check it isn't a bios fault

 

So how do I fix it? I've tried installing from a DVD but it just sits on expanding windows files?

 

@newcastle: First of all, make sure you remove the USB from which you installed Windows, when it is about to restart the first time (after copying files). If it still won't boot your new installation then yes, it's probably because Windows Setup sees the iSSD (ExpressCache) as the boot drive and places it's 100MB SYSTEM partition on it.

Here's the easiest fix if that happens:

1) Let it boot into Windows Setup again (ie leave that USB in). Once you get past the welcome screen, hit Shift-F10 to get a command prompt.

2) Use XCOPY /E /H /R <source> <destination> to copy everything (including hidden files) from that SYSTEM partition (on the iSSD) to the partition where you installed Windows.

Before copying, use DIR /A <driveletter:> commands to determine what the drive letters are for those partitions: DIR /A C: and DIR /A D: and DIR /A E: etc. The SYSTEM partition (on the iSSD) should contain a BOOT folder and a bootmgr file. The partition where you installed Windows should contain, you guessed it, a Windows folder

So if your SYSTEM partition (with the boot files) is drive C, and your Windows partition is drive E (for example) use the following XCOPY command: XCOPY /E /H /R C:\ E:\ Make sure you get the forward and backward slashes right, they're important.

3) Now that the Windows partition contains the necessary boot files, we have to make sure it's flagged Active (bootable). Enter the command DISKPART.

4) At the DISKPART> prompt, use LIST DISK to determine the disk number of your HDD (or SDD). Obviously, it's the big one (xxx GB) while the small one is the iSSD (xxx MB). Now use SELECT DISK <number> to select the big disk, say SELECT DISK 1.

5) Still at the DISKPART> prompt, use LIST PARTITION to determine the partition number of your Windows partition. If you installed Windows on a blank disk, it's probably the first partition. Now use SELECT PARTITION <number> to select the Windows partition, say SELECT PARTITION 1

6) Still at the DISKPART> prompt, use DETAIL PARTITION to verify you got the right partition.

7) Still at the DISKPART> prompt, use ACTIVE to flag your (now selected) Windows partition Active and bootable.

8) Use Exit to leave DISKPART. Exit again to leave the command prompt. Close down Windows setup. Remove the USB. Reboot.

(Sorry for the detail, I didn't know if you're familiar with DOS/Windows command syntax. And even if you are, it may help others).

I've done this several times, works like a charm and only takes a few mins extra. You won't have a separate SYSTEM partition -- which I prefer not to have anyway. But if you use BitLocker (Win7 Ultimate) I think it needs that.

Let me know how it goes.

Update: I see comments from yourself and others indicating this might be a hardware or IRQ problem. I apologize if I missed an earlier context and your problem is a different one.

It is a very common problem when installing Windows from USB onto Series 5 and Series 7 that Windows Setup mistakenly assumes the iSSD (ExpressCache) to be the boot drive, which causes it to fail booting. The above steps are (in my opinion) the simplest solution to this -- although there are others.

 

Wow Dannemand, that's really comprehensive. We should find a way to make that more visible to people. Thanks! +repped

 

Thanks a lot, yjgfikl. It was one of those subjects which I had meant to post for some time, just never got around to. When newcastle asked, I just had to write it up this time.

I guess I could clean it up a bit and post it as a separate thread if it can help others. On the other hand, this thread is quite busy and often on the first page of live threads...

(John, if you see this, let me know what you think.)

Thanks again

 

I agree that was a very useful post. You've been doing some very useful research. Make a separate thread ("Dannemand's hint and tricks"?) and I will add it to the sticky list. (Which few people look at but it makes life easier for we who do use it).

John

 

I will also add to the Owners Lounge. Let us know when you have done it.

 

@john, @yknyong: Thank you guys. I'll try and get around to finally writing up some of these and posting them. Two questions, though:

1) Promoting my handle in a thread title serves no purpose whatsoever. Isn't it better to post these as separate threads having a descriptive title? For example "How to: Clean install Win7 from USB on Samsung Series 5 and 7". That'll make it easier to find in the list of threads as well as in Google.

2) Is it OK if I copy generously from previous posts? Normally I'd avoid duplicating posts, but I can think of responses I posted to questions, where I already wrote 80% of that procedure or tip. It just needs some cleanup and a few extras to make a standalone post. I'd include links to the original discussion for context.

Appreciate your advice. Then I just have to find the time

Thanks again.

 

1. Call it whatever you think is appropriate ("Samsung notebook troubleshooting tips") but you've made some useful posts on a wide range of subjects.
2. I see no problem with using what is posted in other threads where they can be difficult to find. In some cases it might be useful to give a link to the original post so people can read the related discussion.

John

 

I'd just like to thank dannemand, it was an excellent guide although I didn't use it. I knew there was a problem with the expresscache so after googling I sort of attempted to carry out what the guide set out so beautifully but I failed miserably. In the end I used a windows 7 DVD (which was a dell one I had) and it worked perfectly! installed windows 8, installed swupdate which downloaded all the drivers and now I have a perfectly, wonderfully fast machine! I love it!

 

@newcastle: Thanks for the feedback. Great to hear you got it working right.

And thanks to your question, I finally got around to write this thing down, which I'd meant to do for some time. Hopefully it'll be helpful to others.

I'll be curious if those who clean installed win8 from USB found that it does a better job of detecting the correct boot drive.

 

I just randomly decided to try overclocking through MSI Afterburner on Battlefield: Bad Company 2. I cranked up the GPU clock to +135 (maximum allowed) which puts it at 844mHz total. 645mHz is base, but it almost always turbos to 709, so it adds the 135 on top of the 709 giving 844. This is basically the same base speed as the GTX 660m which is pretty impressive. I also clocked the memory from 2000mHz just up to 2200mHz.

All in all, I was able to crank all settings up to all medium with high textures (1600x900 res), HBAO off, no/1x MSAA, 16x Anisotropic filtering, and still maintain my Vsync-ed 60fps. Usually these settings would cause the game to average around 45fps so I'm impressed. This was playing in a multiplayer server of 32. I noticed absolutely no artifacts or glitches while gaming, so I'm guessing it's pretty stable. I noticed a 2 degree C increase in temperature on the GPU as well, maxing out to 83 so temperature increase wasn't much of an issue. The processor temperature averages and max didn't change after the overclock either.

Just trying to write a helpful post for people concerned with the gaming performance of this laptop.

 

If anyone was wondering how to disable the ambient light sensor so that you can manually adjust the backlight, it can be done via start > location and other sensors > uncheck the box for the sensor beside "enabled" and click Apply.

 

It is the 15.6" model with the GT 640 you're talking about isn't it?
If so that's rather impressive. I wouldn't have expected it to be that fast.

Does there any throttling issues with this laptop? Judging by your temps I'm guessing it doesn't.

Could be quite tempted to get one of these laptops for my everyday use, if I can find one at a good price in the UK.

 

I just have a few questions, what optimising did you guys carry out on the SSD? I have made sure trim is enabled, prefetch and SuperFetch is turned off but I can't disable indexing as windows 8 uses it for certain things.

Can I install Samsungs recovery? It didn't seem to work?

Thanks

 

Did you delete the Recovery partition? SRS won't install unless it can find that partition.

John

 

It was a completely clean install, I still have the HDD can I copy the partition across to the SSD without losing any of the data?

 

Yeah I'm on the NP700Z5C-S01US model with the GT 640m. I didn't notice any throttling, but I can't know unless I hook up another display to monitor CPU clocks in real time. I don't know of a program that monitors CPU stuff how Afterburner monitors GPU stuff. I think the CPU throttles around 96 or so so you should be alright, I was hitting around 88-89 on the CPU while gaming.

 

You might give HWiNFO a try: HWiNFO, HWiNFO32 & HWiNFO64 - Hardware Information and Analysis Tools

-Matt

 

I need to create a recovery partition on my SSD so I can install the Samsung Recovery Program version 5. Can anyone point me to the easiest "how to" directions? ThanksQ

 

I actually have HwInfo64 as well, but I was hoping for something more like the graph/chart that Afterburner provides with details on clocks and temperatures in real time, with the ability to go through the historical information. Does it do something like that?

 

Guys,

I apologize if this is the wrong area to post this but I've got an extra NP700Z5C hanging around essentially new in box (Purchased two, opened box, decided slightly large for travel, now want a Series 9 as well).

Seen here: Amazon.com: Samsung Series 7 NP700Z5C-S01US 15.6-Inch Laptop (Silver): Computers & Accessories

If anyone is interested, I can beat the price advertised on Amazon and include shipping.

 

Whoa I sure wish I had your kind of money, but seriously you're better off posting this in the NBR marketplace.

 

I too also need this, I tried to shrink the partition of my SSD (I already have two partitions, System and Data) to make room for the Recovery Partition but it errored out and said "Cannot start service"