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

[SacredDreams]

put my order in earlier. specs in sig!

Great Specs, will be waiting for your own Review
if you could upload some Youtube Videos On YOur NP8850 that will be great~

[H-Emmanuel]

who did you buy your laptop from ?

Barebone from RJTech, all components from different places.

[H-Emmanuel]

Ok I don't know what's up with that but there seems to be a power draw problem. While my battery was charging (so I guess some of the power to the laptop is sacrificed for charging the battery), laptop shut off straight while playing Bad Company 2.
As Falcon69 reported, the battery can't support heavy 3D things, it's a lame 11v battery or so when the laptop requires 19V lol!

This would make a lot of sense since for some reason the laptop switches to the battery that can't handle the load and just shuts off.
This reminds me of an obvious and expected issue when I ran my GTX280M in the M860ETU, in about a minute the laptop would shut off on battery while gaming. I had to edit drivers to prevent the GPU from ever reaching "Extra clocks" (highest 3D clocks) on battery. Maybe this laptop needs more than a 200W PSU to operate well.
The thing I'm also surprised with is that the PSU is 19V whereas my older 15.4" M860ETU was running on 20v.

[ibraveheart]

Ok I don't know what's up with that but there seems to be a power draw problem. While my battery was charging (so I guess some of the power to the laptop is sacrificed for charging the battery), laptop shut off straight while playing Bad Company 2.
As Falcon69 reported, the battery can't support heavy 3D things, it's a lame 11v battery or so when the laptop requires 19V lol!

This would make a lot of sense since for some reason the laptop switches to the battery that can't handle the load and just shuts off.
This reminds me of an obvious and expected issue when I ran my GTX280M in the M860ETU, in about a minute the laptop would shut off on battery while gaming. I had to edit drivers to prevent the GPU from ever reaching "Extra clocks" (highest 3D clocks) on battery. Maybe this laptop needs more than a 200W PSU to operate well.
The thing I'm also surprised with is that the PSU is 19V whereas my older 15.4" M860ETU was running on 20v.

You must be under warranty with RJTech
they should help you with it

[H-Emmanuel]

You must be under warranty with RJTech
they should help you with it

I emailed them to report the problem but I'm sure the laptop is fine, it's a power draw issue. But to my surprise this happens when all my components are officially compatible with the laptop. Even though the QX9300 and GTX280M weren't supported on my M860ETU, laptop never crashed when on AC.

What may be done is using a D900F power supply, it's 20V but it's safe. 220W would guarantee enough juice.

[Soviet Sunrise]

No component on a modern computer requires 19V. Input voltage is just bucked by stepdown converters to common voltages, (ie. 12V, 5V, 3V, 1V, etc.), since computer components are more current dependant than voltage dependant. Some of the efficiency is lost through the buck conversion (Lenz's Law) so the battery or PSU has to supply more power to meet the current requirements of the component. For example, most fanless PSU's have a VAC to VDC efficiency curve of ~70-75% at a 50% load at room temperature.

The battery is not limited by voltage, but rather by the amount of current it can supply. The W8x0CU's battery is three cells in series equating to a maximum of 4.2V, 3.8A per cell. Li-po isn't exactly a new technology, but it hasn't matured as quickly as the Li-Co 18650 since the 18650 size was the number one battery used in notebooks for years and the demand for more battery burntime is stronger in the consumer notebook industry than in any other field. Li-po cells are good for a max draw of 4C and for some really good/expensive cells as much as 10C. However, for Li-po cells, higher capacity cells have less max current draw than lower capacity cells. The RC/hobby enthusiasts have to deal with which cells to use depending on the motor they use in their hobby cars/helis. So our batteries in our W8x0CU's most likely have the same ballpark 2C draw as standard Li-Co cells. Part of this is due to increased internal resistance that has greater incluence on max draw from other factors such as heat and overall wear.

The reason why your computer is cutting out on you is because you are charging your battery while heavily taxing it at the same time. Even on a 180W PSU this would be unadvisable. It is the motherboard itself that cannot distribute the power to all of the system demands. The rails simply cannot handle it. Second, no engineer, including myself, with a right mind would think of pushing a performance notebook that is fully loaded and overclocked while charging the battery. The battery alone during CC charge is using around 30W or so. The cable supplying power to the system from the jack is also not made to handle that much power in an enclosed notebook casing. The greater ambient temperature inside the chassis as well as the heat given off by the wire itself from thermal resistance is just going to increase electrical resistance. The issue here isn't the notebook itself, rather it is the user. It is up to the user to get to know his hardware and it's limitations. This notebook was made to handle what it can handle. By it dropping power is the notebook crying.

There are several posts that I made before that I want to link to in this post, but I am in class and the internet is snail slow right now so I can't search for them within a reasonable timeframe. A few of those posts are tightly related to the user issue of people taxing their notebooks to the extreme while charging the battery. Peak hours sucks when everyone is downloading torrents and starting drama on Facebook.

[H-Emmanuel]

I was also suspecting that the motherboard might not be able to deliver all the power needed. However your explanation is no longer valid when the laptop shuts off while stress testing the video card and battery is fully charged. There is no overclocking at the moment. I also think that a 100W TDP GPU + 55W TDP CPU etc doesn't leave much room so I still think that a higher PSU could help.

I would be very happy if someone with the same CPU as me tried and see if they also get the same problem.

[Soviet Sunrise]

Oh, I guess I misinterpreted that part. Then it is simply the power lanes to the card that cannot supply the great amount of power needed to satisfy the power demand. Temperature also plays a factor here. There have been a few cases before where I was repairing notebooks for clients where the alignment of the heatsink and the aplication of thermal paste between the die and the sink also come into play. On one set of runs I would consistently get the same cutouts at a given temperature compared to a repaste where I would get a consistently higher or lower cutout point. User technique surprisingly helps out in applications where most do not think it would.

[H-Emmanuel]

Oh, I guess I misinterpreted that part. Then it is simply the power lanes to the card that cannot supply the great amount of power needed to satisfy the power demand. Temperature also plays a factor here. There have been a few cases before where I was repairing notebooks for clients where the alignment of the heatsink and the aplication of thermal paste between the die and the sink also come into play. On one set of runs I would consistently get the same cutouts at a given temperature compared to a repaste where I would get a consistently higher or lower cutout point. User technique surprisingly helps out in applications where most do not think it would.

Laptop shuts off anywhere between 79c and 87c and that's when I'm gaming or stress testing. I thought too that maybe there was a specific temperature where the laptop would shut off but that's not the case. I was playing BC2 and this time since my battery is fully charged, I saw the battery indicator go from green to orange and the lag started, got out of the game and there again battery was at 99% and GPU-z monitors showed that the GPU clocks had gone down in the meanwhile.

This is how I see things:
-GPU load + battery charging = shut off in BC2
-GPU load + battery charged = lag in BC2
-GPU load + battery charged + 40W extra = stable possibly?

Because right now, stress testing the GPU crashes the laptop whether it's charged or not, so there is a power problem that's for sure. I kinda doubt that Clevo would have made a laptop that wouldn't work well with an included component. They supposedly redesigned the W870CU for the GTX480M, I hope they did more than modifying heatsinks because that behavior would be the one of a W870CU running a GTX480M. I would really be surprised if Clevo let that happen.
And on a side note, my laptop has a W880CU BIOS version so it's not a W870CU with a shoehorned GTX480M

[Soviet Sunrise]

It sounds like you have a lemon mobo on your hands. Though there has been a case where I have taken in a W860CU for repair from some guy south of me. His 920XM was stock, but his GTX 280M was overclocked to something similar to my clocks, I forget what, but with a lower memory speed. When I asked him to recreate the scenario where his notebook would fall to battery while plugged in during a game, we were able to do so in a very short term and controlled attempt. But after plugging in one of my 160W PSU's, the power loss was resolved. However, his case was more severe than yours. His notebook would switch over to battery and remain on battery for several minutes at a time before the system cools off enough and the PSU would kick in again. But at that point the PSU was trying to power the notebook while charging the battery at the same time, resulting in line power going out again and the system sucking the life out of the battery. When his battery voltage fell below (from what I calculated) ~3.5V, the battery would no longer power the system on games and at some points fail to power up the system at all until the cells cooled down. As to how he was unable to notice that his game was lagging during online frag sessions is anybody's guess, but in the end his battery was pretty much destroyed to >30% wear from just a few months under his ownership, and the potential damage done to his components is frightening as I expected that the CPU and GPU temps were in dangerous territory.

This is more of a power issue since his W860CU was overclocked fairly aggresively. Quality of the components does come into play here, but in your case your W880CU is factory tuned and shouldn't be showing these symptoms with officially supported components during gameplay. It is eligible for an RMA. Since there are no purchasable PSU's larger than 180W on the market that have the 2.5/5.5mm barrel plug, your options at the user level are limited, unless you pick up the 220W or 300W PSU and resolder the DC cable from your original 180W unit onto them.