Clevo N960Kx (N960KR) Thread - BIOS Unlock, cooling mods, etc.

[MiRaGe]

2 hours ago, razor0601 said:

I don’t think that it will pull more than 330w. I have also a P751tm1 with 9900k and RTX 2080 and the 330w Adapter is enough.

Do you think that 200W RTX 2080 would need more than 330W together with 9900K?

[razor0601]

Try it and see what it pulls out. Did you flash a 200w VBios?

[MiRaGe]

Yes, I did. It gave me about 800pts graphics in TimeSpy.

[MiRaGe]

How can I see how much W it pulls out?

[razor0601]

I did that with a wattmeter for the power socket.

Do you have that VBios for me?

[kaz26]

I think using a wattmeter at the wall outlet is the only way to know how many watts the system is actually pulling. There are also clamp style meters that can measure wattage being used. 

[MiRaGe]

4 hours ago, razor0601 said:

I did that with a wattmeter for the power socket.

Do you have that VBios for me?

Yes, here you are:

 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/10bU9egVEpbdLLAHE-DBZo0fdOnN8DQjN/view

[razor0601]

Thank you, and that’s 190w, 200w for GSync RTX 2080?

[MiRaGe]

Yes, for G-Sync👍🏻

[kaz26]

Well, the laptop is down. Not sure what the problem is exactly. with the way the power supply was behaving prior to this, it is possibly the problem, but that wouldn't explain why it won't run on the battery. 

Here's the link to the thread explaining the problem.

Basically it won't post, and restarts after about 30 seconds. The keyboard back light works, the fans work and I have keyboard control of the fans, but nothing comes on the screen at all and there is no output signal from the display port. The problem started while trying to run the Redline RAM again. 

[srs2236]

3 hours ago, kaz26 said:

Well, the laptop is down. Not sure what the problem is exactly. with the way the power supply was behaving prior to this, it is possibly the problem, but that wouldn't explain why it won't run on the battery. 

Here's the link to the thread explaining the problem.

Basically it won't post, and restarts after about 30 seconds. The keyboard back light works, the fans work and I have keyboard control of the fans, but nothing comes on the screen at all and there is no output signal from the display port. The problem started while trying to run the Redline RAM again. 

Hi!

 

I am no expert aswell and I am purely guessing. But if this was my computer I would believe that (altough very odd) the BIOS got corrupted or the NVRAM atleast got corrupted badly. First thing I would do is just reflash the same BIOS chip that is already on there with a backup of previously known good BIOS. I hope you have one. But as you have unlocked your BIOS I assume you must have atleast some sort of BIOS backup. I wouldn't like to think a simple RAM timing change or RAM change would have broken your laptop. God is my witness then my P775TM1-G would be long gone in heaven for the things I have put it through by just extreme trial and error experimenting xD And that includes on the fly RAM timing changes, RAM swaps so many I can't count etc.

 

My best guess is the BIOS. Do a reflash!

 

Also, once you start troubleshooting the BIOS - if you flash the BIOS do a checksum of what you flashed and write it down. Let the laptop boot with the fresh flash if it doesn't post - dump the contents of the BIOS chip and recheck checksum. If the checksum has changed it means the laptop is trying to post and is making changes in the BIOS NVRAM most likely. So not completely dead. A post code card could help perhaps but I am not sure.

 

Good luck and keep us updated! Would be a shame to see it die after all the mods and quality of life improvements 😕

[kaz26]

@srs2236Thank you, I do have backups of the BIOS. I ordered an 8-WSON adapter to program the chip externally and I have just been waiting. It looks like it should be here tomorrow. Your post helps me feel better about this situation. I plan to see it this through and will post updates. 

 

This is the fourth Clevo I have own, and never had an issue like this. They are usually tough machines. 
 

[srs2236]

5 hours ago, kaz26 said:

@srs2236Thank you, I do have backups of the BIOS. I ordered an 8-WSON adapter to program the chip externally and I have just been waiting. It looks like it should be here tomorrow. Your post helps me feel better about this situation. I plan to see it this through and will post updates. 

 

This is the fourth Clevo I have own, and never had an issue like this. They are usually tough machines. 
 

That's good. And try to use the same configuration that you had at the time of BIOS backup. Same CPU, same RAM etc. So that the BIOS doesn't have to configure itself for new hardware but should post from the get go.

[Mufuggaa]

Hi guys,

 

I have a question, hopefully I can get some answers here but I bought the N960KR about 2 months ago and anytime I run a benchmark using userbenchmarks software I get a very low and very below average scores. I am running an 11th gen i5-11600, 64gb 2666mhz ram, and a 2tb sn850x + 512gb sn750 nvme + 3.84tb Samsung sm863 SSD. Although the sn850x is pcie4 and the laptop is supposed to be able to run drives at those speeds (I believe) I still get low file transfer rates. The system also doesn't show which pci generation the drives are using. Does anyone know what the case could be? I've been following this thread for a while now and I've added those same heatsinks as you and also unlocked the bios but still don't get any improvements. Thank you in advanced and I'm sorry to hear about your laptop, I hope you are able to get it running again soon. 

[Mufuggaa]

And actually just bricked my bios after playing around with it 😞

[srs2236]

4 hours ago, Mufuggaa said:

And actually just bricked my bios after playing around with it 😞

What did you do? You can download HWInfo to see what PCI-E speeds you are running your SSDs at and many other things about your laptop.

 

[Mufuggaa]

15 hours ago, srs2236 said:

What did you do? You can download HWInfo to see what PCI-E speeds you are running your SSDs at and many other things about your laptop.

 

Not really sure what it was exactly but I changed a the pci root port settings from AUTO to GEN4 as well as other changes and now it won't boot no matter what I try. I get the same bootloop that kaz does, my keyboard lights up flashes each color for maybe 5 seconds each for a total of about 30 seconds sometimes more and then it turns off and turns itself back on and does the same thing over and over. I had checked HWinfo before though but it wouldn't display which generation the nvmes were running on. Same thing with WD Dashboard since both nvmes are WD i figured it would give me some info but all it said under pci generation was "not supported". Now I gotta figure out how to fix this thing hopefully without removing it from the board 

[MiRaGe]

41 minutes ago, Mufuggaa said:

Not really sure what it was exactly but I changed a the pci root port settings from AUTO to GEN4 as well as other changes and now it won't boot no matter what I try. I get the same bootloop that kaz does, my keyboard lights up flashes each color for maybe 5 seconds each for a total of about 30 seconds sometimes more and then it turns off and turns itself back on and does the same thing over and over. I had checked HWinfo before though but it wouldn't display which generation the nvmes were running on. Same thing with WD Dashboard since both nvmes are WD i figured it would give me some info but all it said under pci generation was "not supported". Now I gotta figure out how to fix this thing hopefully without removing it from the board 

Your case is easier - just pull the CMOS battery off for 30 secs. 
it should boot afterwards. 

[Mufuggaa]

16 hours ago, MiRaGe said:

Your case is easier - just pull the CMOS battery off for 30 secs. 
it should boot afterwards. 

I tried that a few times but it still does the same thing unfortunately. I've tried removing the ram, processor, etc and clearing the bios as well but haven't had any luck. I'm gonna continue to tinker with it but I'm just waiting to hear back from a local shop if they can flash the bios if that's what ends up being the issue 

[razor0601]

I think I will get back to the official Bios. It seems that the unlocked Bios has some issues, because of now 2 of you have these Bootloops. 

[kaz26]

I managed to resolve the problem by programming the chip externally using an adapter. I will post a pic of the adapter I made using pogo pins, pcb and epoxy. I created a mold with plumbers epoxy between the two pcbs and filled it with epoxy, then soldered ethernet wires to it and also to pins that I connected to another adapter that plugged into the TL866ii plus programmer. I also ordered an adapter, but I was tired of waiting for it to get here as it says the eta is March 17. 

 

Before programming the BIOS, I read it and saved the file. If anyone wants to view the saved file, I will share it in DM. I wouldn't want someone to flash that file by accident.

 

I would like to know what the others did just prior to the bootloop starting. I don't understand why simply unlocking the BIOS would cause this problem, maybe someone more knowledgeable can add their thoughts on this. Thankfully I was able to recover from it. With my situation, I believe it was a bad set of RAM that caused my situation, but again, maybe someone more knowledgeable has an idea of what went wrong. 

 

[razor0601]

So your Clevo works on stock Bios with the „bad“ RAM?

[kaz26]

The bad RAM was the Mushkin Redline 3200MHz, I am not using it. I am using a set of Kingston Fury 3200MHz now, but when I first started it after flashing the backup BIOS I was using a set of G.Skill 3200MHz. It was suggested to use the same RAM and such that I had in when I backed up the BIOS and that's what I did. The RAM may have had nothing to do with the BIOS getting messed up, however, a week prior when I ran the Resline it caused a BSOD and errors in the Windows 11 OS. 

 

The 330w power adapter arrived and I will run some new benchmarks with it soon 

[kaz26]

I did a Superposition benchmark run just now using with the new 330w brick and got a score of 6400.

 

It's entirely possible that the BIOS was messed up by the stock power supply that was shutting off during intense usage situations. It must have an internal fuse since it would work again after unplugging and replugging it back in. With the new power adapter the wattage got up to 277.6W and did not shut off. Considering that the stock adapter is rated at 230W, the 330W adapter is definitely necessary for the work I do on this machine, especially the larger projects. 

 

[razor0601]

6400 is a good result. Also I see your temperature is only 72 Degrees max?