JQM

PROBLEM. SOLVED. After much arguing with Sager and them insisting an LCD was needed, I consulted ChatGPT (not always the best idea for a final decision) and a hobbyist friend of mine who makes handheld gaming consoles on what the "LCD" meant that it needed. It was likely some form of "EDID" data, data about what the screen is supposed to be. Hmm, from the PCB that the eDP cable plugs into? There's a chip there that holds data, generally. It could be looking for refresh rate or other things, but that'd be saved... on the PCB? YES. https://imgur.com/Mf7Lkai That's the bottom part of my broken LCD. The PCB. Cut the two flat wires that were going to it, since they weren't needed (using some tracing I was able to see they had to deal with the backlight, which wasn't working anyway). And... look at this: https://i.imgur.com/NyGCYqu.png IT'S ON DISCRETE, NOT MSHYBRID! I need to make a better way to keep this, since obviously the bare PCB exposed is not a good idea. I have some ideas how to do this and it's not an issue. And yes, there was a massive performance increase from doing this. Activities involving the GPU are performing at a breakneck pace compared to on MSHybrid.

Well unfortunately I don't think this issue will actually be "fixable". Sager's coy replies insinuate an LCD is needed. I doubt the actual screen itself, the whole 15.6" thing, is needed, but probably something on the PCB of it. The EDID data, maybe? I don't know. They refuse to say the specific thing because they want me to send it in and pay a thousand dollars (at least) in repairs. But there's another large issue and no trickery like the above can fix it. When I took my screen off last year I did a thorough deep clean of my laptop, repasted it, you know, the works. Performed good. It's the one year anniversary now. How are things? My CPU on average performs 8% worse than last year, using Cinebench and video encoding tests. For some reason, the percentage changes for the worse, and it's 13% if undervolted. I assume my CPU needs more power than it did last year, I don't know. But it gets worse... My GPU on average performs 60% worse than last year, using video encoding and upscaling tests. I noticed this happening a few months ago... Back in March, I was regularly playing high demand games in the emulator "RPCS3", for PS3 games. By May already I had noticed that I couldn't play it anymore. After like ten minutes, it'd go to a crawl. Temperatures weren't too unusual. 86C on the GPU as always, because it's set to never go higher, and 95C on CPU, similar deal, set to never go higher. It would literally always be at this, it wasn't throttling back in March. It's a gaming laptop, it performs at its highest temperature if it's being used to its limits. So this explains when it started to degrade, fast. I'm not surprised it is degraded so badly either. Remember that when the short happened to kill my Wi-Fi card and screen, I was on the "Discrete" setting. Meaning my NVIDIA GPU was connected directly to the shorted screen, and dead Wi-Fi card, which it also shared a PCIe connection with too. I'm reminded of a quote that fits here: “It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness; that is life.” - Jean Luc Picard I'm at a loss of words. I don't have any backup plan.

What is EC? EDIT: Oh, Embedded Controller? Like the Super I/O? 😞

I found three VBIOS with the same DeviceId, since you're supposed to look for this, apparently, I didn't know this previously, that at least loaded graphics under MSHybrid, but had various issues otherwise (they didn't allow proper HDR, and had other issues in the NVIDIA Control Panel). All had the same issues under Discrete. VBIOS won't solve this, or at least any VBIOS I can conceivably find. Wesley from Sager said he was going to contact the Chinese team (odd since Clevo is a Taiwanese company, Tongfang is the Chinese one) and inquire if there's anything that can be done last week, no response yet...

Well for science I tried a much less risky thing today. Ran DDU to completely remove my drivers, then restarted, so I was using the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter drivers. Obviously not good. Tried installing the "desktop" driver for my GPU from Nvidia's site. Same issues under Discrete, no OS. I think it's actually the same driver, judging from the downloaded file being the same size as the notebook one. Why are they even different options then? Weird... I truthfully do not know how these Chinese companies make their mini PCs from laptops at this point---am I cursed with one from a rare vendor that just doesn't allow the laptop to have full functionality without an LCD? Did the Chinese companies hack the BIOS or do something to the internal wiring? I don't know.

I found it here: https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/cant-override-pci-subsystem-id-with-6.262665/page-2 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fYE-t51O7fYNpRAcUZydpMaVXiFa3DrA/view for the download link specifically. Note that I don't recommend doing this specific thing. 😅 It was very risky to flash seemingly random VBIOS. Hopefully it helps fix your issue though/

I tried some other VBIOS (Tongfang, ASUS, and Gigabyte) for the hell of it. All of them resulted in a brick each time. Seems to be something about the PCI-E location being different on each laptop? Thankfully I was able to, with TeamViewer, just put my regular VBIOS back each time and it'd come back normally. I had to get a special version of nvflash that basically ignores all actual checks on what it's doing since the checksum and PCI-E location were different. 😓

If it's a VBIOS issue, I don't think I can do anything about that. Sager refuses to help and nVidia defers to the manufacturer (Sager).

I was told by Sager that this behavior, broken as it is, is "intended". Given the trend for mini PCs or mini ITX builds nowadays, wouldn't be surprised if it was intended as an anti-recycling measure since it would mean Sager makes less sales. Far as I can tell, literally no laptop with a MUX switch works in such a twisted way OTHER than Sager.

I absolutely would call it a fake MUX switch, because it doesn't work properly. For a normal laptop, HDMI/USB-C/mDP always output via dGPU, regardless of the MUX switch setting. Where the "fake" part happens is that their implementation of the MUX switch just... swaps. It now outputs the OS via the iGPU, which is no longer "hooked up", hence why when I have it set to "Discrete", I don't have an OS on the monitor. But the BIOS/splash screen, which previously only broadcast on the iGPU or eDP port (on "MSHybrid"), now output to HDMI/USB-C/mDP, because it was just a lazy swap. They literally spent more effort making the fake MUX switch than not. It's astounding.

More delicious developments from Wesley: Wesley: where is your original lcd for this laptop? --- Me: On a shelf. With no backlight. And it doesn't display about half of the screen. Remember that it's broken? So you've said you can't help me with it outputting anything to a monitor, because of the intended e-waste mechanic of how the MUX works... Will you send me a new LCD so I can just put it on myself? NOTE: I felt it important to ask for the LCD myself because he claims that ones online "can't be trusted". I also don't feel I should have to pay for any part of this given I only NEED a replacement LCD because of their bogus "MUX" switch. --- Wesley: sorry.... LCD replacement has to came in......sorry. --- Me: And will you pay for that? NOTE: Again, this has come up countless times. Wesley refuses to acknowledge that I'm not buying a service that is a minimum of 400$ and "can go higher... if more parts are broken...". --- Wesley: Nop, this a physical damage..... not something we can cover as under warranty, but I can provide you the free labor and all you have to do is pay for the parts + both way shipping. --- Me: So let me get this straight---your poor quality LCD broke on me, then it turns out you have an absurdly bad anti-consumer, pro e-waste BIOS set up that won't let external monitors be truly viable, and I'm still expected to pay for a replacement screen I didn't even WANT IN THE FIRST PLACE? YOU pay for it. NOTE: I literally did not WANT a replacement LCD. What I WANTED was the ability to use an external monitor PROPERLY and just use the laptop as a mini PC. --- Wesley: if you don't want it in the 1st. place, why don't you refund it within 30 days? --- Wesley, or Sager's sole tech support agent, has absolutely no ability to understand even BASIC English. He now seems to think I just bought a laptop and am unsatisfied with it. It's a shame. When I was younger, Sager looked like that cool, high-quality brand that I'd love to have, but they just cost too much for me then. Their laptops looked so cool and practical, they were so much stronger than other brands, etc. They say "never meet your heroes", it goes for buying what looked like mythical goods too. Sager's quality is hideously poor (do remember that not only did the screen break, the Wi-Fi/Bluetooth card did too because of their awful wiring, the wires had shorted onto the screen's cables, which fried the Wi-Fi/Bluetooth card entirely) and riddled with anti-consumer BS like the fake "MUX switch", combined with literally no support. I swear to god that I would have a better chance of getting support from a Chinese company than I would from this supposedly Californian-based "English" company. I would never recommend anyone buy from Sager. Their QA is atrocious and their support nonexistent.

After much more teeth-pulling from Sager's "support" team, they've said this: "Great, we're on the same page now, this MUX is not something we can change or modify in BIOS. it has to have the laptop LCD to be detected in order for the detection to work properly. That's why this laptop is called, Hybrid system, there is no solution for this." It's a method to create e-waste. They intentionally set the MUX up to be useless in the event of lacking a screen. How disgusting. This could've been a great mini-PC-style machine after its life as a laptop given it has a great cooling system, a still good i7 10875H, and a RTX 2070 Super. But its ability to be one is too limited given if the OS goes kaput, well, it's basically over. Oh, but Wesley made sure to beg me again to send it in. 🙄 For "400$... may be more depending on repairs, we would tell you during...". Which is just... blackmail, because he'd keep finding reasons it'd "need to go up...", gotta add the ellipsis because despite a typical American name and working for a US-branch of the company, his English and comprehension is absolutely piss poor, it took 25 messages for him to FINALLY understand how the MUX switch in the laptop works even though I outlined it in the first post here which he's seen... If I had money I'd buy a new computer instead of trying to get my computer to pretend it's Lazarus trying to come back to life.

What would be a method of doing this? I assume there's no "eDP dummy parts" I can buy here so what would need to be rigged up?

I rigged up the broken screen and flashlights again to switch to Discrete because I wanted to check on something (if Ctrl+Shift+Win+B, the hotkey to restart your graphics driver, would fix it), and saw that there was an option called "GPU Performance Scaling" that was set to Enabled in my BIOS. I had disabled it, and then... briefly, Windows actually boots and displays. It doesn't last long though. After about a minute, the GPU stops outputting anything and Device Manager reports the usual Code 43, seen via TeamViewer. I don't understand. If I had a spare screen (because BIOS access is... sometimes necessary, would hate to break it), one thing I'd like to do is see what the screen looks like disassembled, and if there's a PCB or something that it just "needs" for some reason. Weirdly, if I have it set to Discrete, and have the broken screen plugged in the eDP port, outputs fine to my monitor. BIOS, boot screen, Windows, all of it. No Code 43, just works.

So eDP cable from my laptop, into the adapter, then HDMI from the adapter, into a monitor/TV, would work?