Need help with saving my Clevo that suddenly stopped powering on and reacting to charger :-(((

[dude-137]

Just happened out of the blue.

Ironically enough, I just created the "Improving Cooling / Fans Upgrade In Clevo" thread, and 10 hours later my Clevo P751TM1-G suddenly dies.

 

What happened:

So I was watching YouTube, then the laptop suddenly turned off.

This was accompanied my some very quiet sound of, well I don't know how to describe it plus everything happened too  quickly, maybe a click, maybe something else, I don't know, but there was some quiet short strange sound I'm quite sure.

Then I tried to turn it on, I think the power LED blinked orange, maybe 1 time, maybe 2, I don't know.

And then, the entire system stopped reacting to anything in any way.

 

Pressing power button - nothing happens.

Power adapter is plugged - no LED light, no anything.

It pretty much seems just dead.

 

I've currently removed the heatsink, CPU and GPU.

I think, there was a burnt smell a bit to the left from the center, where the power port and CPU are, but the smell was weak, could feel it only when holding my nose a few cm away. Or maybe this is the standard smell of heated electronics? 

And, the only strange visual thing I've noticed is the strange gradient of that black thing surrounding the main GPU chip. You can see it on the attached images. Does this look bad, or is it normal?

In any case, I tried to plug the charger with these parts removed and see if the orange power LED is back, and it's not.

 

I guess in order to reach the power block i need to continue the disassembly, but for now I'll just wait for some replies.

 

I'm ready to disassemble further and take images of various parts upon request.

 

What could this be? Can it be repaired or replaced? What/where should I check?

 

I would be thankful for any tips or help.

 

I really hope the solution can be found.

If it's the end, it will be a huge loss, and a fullstop of doing all tasks, processes, duties, work, and pretty much everything, until a new barebone+motherboard is found-ordered-received.

[zex4]

That's a really bad situation. I've been using a 775dm3 myself since 2018... something like that happened to me quite often, but luckily it was always the GPU. Only one GPU had visibly defective MOSFETs, but I couldn't find any visible problems with the others. Completely disassemble the laptop and check if anything is visible on the motherboard. Check even the smallest components. Try starting the laptop without the GPU and CPU.

If there's a short circuit on the motherboard, it could also have destroyed the CPU or GPU.

It's also possible the charger might be damaged. From the old notebook review forums, I know that some Clevo 330W chargers had a green light but still didn't deliver any power.

[JadeRover]

Do you have a multimeter ? If so you can look up guides for "check laptop power rails" and try to find the short. 

 

If I had to guess you probably have a main power rail short = would explain the no reaction to power button.

 

What about booting the laptop without a GPU ? Do you have a spare cpu as well for testing ?

 

[dude-137]

@zex4, @JadeRover

 

I've removed absolutely all components except the motherboard and tested, no reaction on the plugged charger.

 

I have then completely disassembled the laptop, to investigate the MB in more detail. I noticed a couple of differently coloured spots.

Dunno, either it's normal, or it's unnormal, or it's simply caused by the white marshmallow-like cooling pads being stuck to those areas.

I've attached the pictures (1: the spot near the power plug, 2: what's on the other side, 3: the other spot, 4, what's on the other side [some unknown chip]).

 

The charger is out of the question, I have  both 330W and 230W, and also my friend has an older-gen Clevo. Chargers are alright.

 

I don't have a spare GPU, there's been no need, but anyway, as I removed all components leaving the MB alone, and it still doesn't react to power in any way, GPU is kinda out of the question i guess

 

I don't have a multimeter unfortunately, and nearly zero practical experience in diagnosing micro-electronics

[JadeRover]

2 hours ago, dude-137 said:

I have then completely disassembled the laptop, to investigate the MB in more detail. I noticed a couple of differently coloured spots.

Dunno, either it's normal, or it's unnormal, or it's simply caused by the white marshmallow-like cooling pads being stuck to those areas.

I've attached the pictures (1: the spot near the power plug, 2: what's on the other side, 3: the other spot, 4, what's on the other side [some unknown chip]).

 

 

Ok, unfortunately this will only get you so far, usually shorted capacitors/mosfets aren't visible with the naked eye. Darker areas on motherboards can be usual heatspots (around CPU VRM, battery charging circuit, etc). These can be false positives. Nothing stands out from the pictures you gave. Unknown chip is the CPU chipset btw.

 

2 hours ago, dude-137 said:

I don't have a multimeter unfortunately, and nearly zero practical experience in diagnosing micro-electronics

 

Ok, that's a bummer, a multimeter is a really usefull tool, even for everyday electronics (making sure wires are connected, etc). I would highy recommend getting one, even 10 dollar/euros multimeters are well worth the price in my opinion. Even with not that much knowledge, you can trace short circuits easily with one and know if your GPU is shorted, CPU vrm shorted, chipser shorted, etc...

 

The next step would be to get the laptop to a repair shop, a good shop should have a motherboard diagonistics fee. Make sure they actually diagnose the motherboard properly, most repair shops just plug it in, say it's dead and recommend a motherboard replacement. You can read reviews/check the websites of repair shops and make sure they actually do real motherboard testing. 

[dude-137]

On 5/1/2026 at 7:54 PM, JadeRover said:

The next step would be to get the laptop to a repair shop, a good shop should have a motherboard diagonistics fee. Make sure they actually diagnose the motherboard properly, most repair shops just plug it in, say it's dead and recommend a motherboard replacement. You can read reviews/check the websites of repair shops and make sure they actually do real motherboard testing. 

 

Done!

According to the repair shop diagnostics, the faulty component that needs to be replaced is the Platform Controller Hub (PCH) chip.

 

Any idea what this chip is?

What is it responsible for, how could it permanently fail?

 

 

On 5/1/2026 at 7:54 PM, JadeRover said:

Ok, that's a bummer, a multimeter is a really usefull tool, even for everyday electronics (making sure wires are connected, etc). I would highy recommend getting one, even 10 dollar/euros multimeters are well worth the price in my opinion. Even with not that much knowledge, you can trace short circuits easily with one and know if your GPU is shorted, CPU vrm shorted, chipser shorted, etc...

 

Yeah, should consider getting one in the future. 😊

 

[Eban]

On 5/27/2026 at 11:49 PM, dude-137 said:

 

Done!

According to the repair shop diagnostics, the faulty component that needs to be replaced is the Platform Controller Hub (PCH) chip.

 

Any idea what this chip is?

What is it, how should it look like, why could it permanently fail?

 

Yeah, should consider getting one in the future. 😊

 

Only thing 100% reliable about technology....it will eventually fail.

 

Replacing PCH is not a super easy job....but should be doable. I have replaced IC's with hotair at home.

 

 

[Scruffy]

hi, first im sorry for the dead laptop.

 let's see what u can tell about  the problem.

1) no light means  no ec communication, or short circuit in the main 19volt rail.

2) burn smell: that'0s bad..... a overheated card do not smell that bad... they smell bad when they reach amost the burning temperature point.

 

 with these in mind, do you have a multimeter in your house ?

 

does the psu light stay on when connecting them  or the psu light goes off ? test with only one charger without the dual adapter.

[dude-137]

@Eban,

 

There's no way I'm doing this myself 😆 

[dude-137]

A while has passed, more research and observation was made.

 

Out of the blue, I noticed something I've never been paying attention before.

The PCH temperature field in my HW monitoring program.

And I made a bad conclusion: the PCH continuously runs at 102-103°, sometimes reaching 106+°! All the time!

(see image 1).

This effectively renders it as the hottest-running component on the entire MB!

 

I also noticed that doing Fn+1 gradually lowers PCH temps to 90-95° and then they sit in this range. But then what, need to be in Fn+1 mode all the time? For the temps that are not extreme but are still very high?

 

Combined with the fact that the component that bricked my PC was PCH (see image 2 where two images are combined),

I made the following assumptions:

 

No proper thermal handling of PCH in all laptops, which might be one of the main reasons why laptops' MBs die.

- In all laptops, no proper cooling of PCH is bad but is taken by laptop manufacturers as normal-by-design. Sadly, Clevo is among the bad guys that haven't done anything in this direction.

- For proper thermal handling, the placement of PCH should have been on the other side of MB where airflow actually exists, not under the keyboard (see images 2, 3, 4).

- Or even better, it could have been moved to under-the-heatsink location, so that the heatsink was actively cooling it, and the owner could apply thermal paste not only to CPU and GPU but also to PCH.

- My PC got bricked because of 7 years of continuous use with this design flaw and with PCH always running as hot as 100-107°, which caused the chip to fail permanently one day.

 

Custom PCH thermal handling solution/mod is really needed, especially in powerhouses like P751/P775/P870, in order to make them live much longer.

 

Look at how the situation is out of the box, on images 2, 3, 4. Unfortunately I have no idea about how to measure the distance between the PCH's metallic cover layer and the barebone's metallic frame below the keyboard. And this is important to know to proceed.

 

Generally, I have several ideas that come into mind are:

 

1.

Putting a good silicon thermal pad of the right thickness right on the PCH's metallic cover layer, so that it aso touches the barebone's metallic frame, thus thermally connecting PCH to it and helping to keep it cooler by using the barebone as one big heatsink.

 

2. Finding some thin copper heat-dissipator-style heatsink that can be applied on PCH in CPU-style (with thermal paste like MX4) and  would fit between the PCH and the barebone's frame, and bending its copper "arm"/heatpipe in a way that it touches the metallic frame, thus again "leaking" the heat to the barebone's frame. Honestly, I don't think such thin solo CPU-style heatsinks exist.

 

3.

<..?..>

 

Are my assumptions correct?

 

Are there any other ideas for thermally connecting PCH to the metallic frame under the keyboard?

 

PS:

To roughly estimate the distance from PCH to the frame, i stuck 3 1mm pieces of double-sided tape together, put them on the PCH, and put the top laptop cover with KB-bay back, to finally get this stacked tape block stuck to the metallic frame, which means that the distance (and the needed thermal pad thickness for the idea №1 above) is 2.5mm < x <= 3mm.

See images 5, 6.

As I know, such a thick thermal pad of 3mm thickness won't make it any better, so the idea №1 above needs to be modified or discarded (am i right?).