**OFFICIAL SAGER 8850-Clevo W880CU Owners Lounge**

[Falcon69]

okay, for all those who have the sound noise like something rubbing on the fan...found the problem....

but not sure how to fix it yet.

The screw on the back plate that tightens down jut near the number 4 screw of the CPU. It appears that the circuit board there has a connection to the speaker. An when fully tightened down, pinches that connections and creates (what we call in the car audio business) engine or alternator noise going through the speakers.

So it's creating a ground loop problem of some sort.

How do I know this? Well, trial and error. This particular screw, when all rest tightened down, all you have to do is barely loosen it and the speaker goes from , thump thump thump thump (in rythem with CPU fan) to static then quiet. Tighten it down, it goes thump thump thump again.

So, the only thing i can think of to solve this is somehow put one of those little nylon washers between the mothermoard and the screw stud...under the other side of motherboard. Not sure how to access that yet.

I'm guessing take out harddrives, fans, and then unscrew all the back and should just pop off?

Well, anyway, seems like leaving the screw completely off solved the problem for now. When I get more time, I'll have to figure out how to fix that short.

Not at all what I expected for a new EXPENSIVE laptop.

[theriko]

service manual in my sig if you need help disassembling the machine

[ibraveheart]

Hmm, interesting.

I took off the bottom cover, and no more thumpig sound from cpu fan area.

Gonna try and fix it by installing some of that double sided padded sticky tape.

See if that dampens the noise.

Who did you buy it from ?

[Falcon69]

i think that's irrelevant. I think that when you buy it from a reseller, it still ships out of Sager in California. Resellers are just 3rd party.

[Falcon69]

Found the problem.

I was partially correct. The positve for the speaker wire on the back side of the mother board (under keyboard) was being pinched by a metal triangular bracket mounted on the motherboard. I have moved the wire, applied a piece of electrical tape to keep it in place temporarily while i screw it all back together. Nice work Sager! There went about 7 hours of my time trying to troubleshoot and fix the problem.

I'll try and post some pics soon, if I can figure out how to host them on my comcast account. Sorry, no video, too hard to hold the camera while i rip it apart. :P

[ibraveheart]

i think that's irrelevant. I think that when you buy it from a reseller, it still ships out of Sager in California. Resellers are just 3rd party.

Can you click a Photo of your laptop
wondering even if you have the laptop with you
cos you creating & solving problems yourself

[theriko]

Glad to hear you fixed it, sounds like a 1 off problem though - hopefully won't affect any other machines.

[Falcon69]

ibraveheart....never created any problems.

The short was there to begin with. It was grounding out the speaker connection and making noise in tune with CPU Fan Speed.

All fixed now, what a pain in the butt to dissasemble enough to get to it.

theriko, yes, probably just a one-off problem, but the design of it tells me that this same thing could happen to another. I simple bit of tape to hold it back away from that triangular metal bracket and the screw stud when tightening would solve it while assembling it.

Also, the link for the service manual for the 8850 is down, but i tried best i could with the 8760

I am working on getting pics up now. I'm not going to post the whole dissasembly of it, just the problem areas and the applying thermal paste. see if someone can tell me i did it wrong. I probably did. LOL

[Larry@LPC-Digital]

^^^^^ Glad things are going well now. We look forward to some pics...

[Falcon69]

okay, not impressed at all.

Ran prime95 stress test and second i loaded up Furmark, PC just shut off, instantly, no BSOD or anything.

Started back up, ran Furmark. 1920x1080 got 7fps

Running 3dMark Vantage now and getting 3fps at 1280x1024