*** MSI 16L13 (Eurocom Tornado F5)/EVOC 16L-G-1080 15.6" Owner's Lounge ***

Thanks bud, unfortunately it's toast. I have it sitting in original shipment box from Eurocom. It made it about 3 years so it definitely served me well. Unfortunately it was still a beast and played games great and I wish it was working so I could at least sell it. Luckily I found a decent deal on a BGA book and I really do love it's portability and weight. Unfortunately I find myself gaming very little on the road and would actually get by fine with a cheap $500 laptop. I might even look at a cheap-o Zen 2 APU based book with just enough power for some light gaming.

 

I knew VRMs will get hot because no air movement due to bottom holes, I put tape to cover bottom holes mod up to 90% and leaving 10% gap space to let the GPUs breath, I turn my moded Asus fans up to max power, VRMs stay in high 70s under load, CPU around low 80s under load and GPU is 88 to 92c depending on game load.

Good luck to you amigo. Any suggestions for an EGPU box that will go well with the EVOC laptop?

Hey here is mine from today's one hour gaming session in Star Citizen.

See screenshot.

Running my Asus fans at max speed, 5500 RPM for GPU side, 4700~4500 RPM on CPU side.

 

I tried to turn them on to the maximum, it is very noisy. It's even a little scary that the fans won't last so long

 

Hello all!
I hope everyone is doing good and are safe during this crazy time in our world!

The short of this is, after not using my computer for awhile, I went to fire it up and no go.
Would love some help thinking through things that might be the issue, as I have tried a lot and I am kind of at the end of the rope. Below are a lot more details and the steps I have taken.

It's been a long time since I have posted in here and really kept up with it. Hope all has been great and y'all have been being awesome with your little beasts! I will say that, just scrolling through here, I have already seen some upgrades that have happened and some awesome stuff with these power houses.


So what happened...
History of use of the computer
Other than the heavy gaming I did on it right after I bought it, for a long time during the year or two prior to last March, this laptop pretty much sat at my desk at the office and I would take it home very occasionally to play some games or something. But it worked great and was way more powerful than was needed for that, but was nice to never have it bat an eye at anything! I did think about even posted in here a bit about selling it but just never did it. I ultimately like the macOS world and the niceties it provides, especially with things between my iPhone and iPad. So I was wanting to get a MBP after selling this one, but just could not get around the awesomeness of the power of this one and kept it.
But last March I changed jobs and this one was a LOT more mobile in the regards of in and out of meetings and taking my laptop home to work every night. It's not the most mobile of laptops. lol
Shortly after I started, someone left and they had a company computer, so I got that and put this one on the shelf in my closet. Hasn't been turned on or really even touched since probably sometime in April of last year.

Fast forward to this week and recently I have been missing the power of this computer and it handling everything I throw at it. The laptop I have been using just does not keep up with the web design stuff I am doing across two external monitors and it's screen open, just showing like my messages and Spotify, but still pushing pixels to it. So it's really been on the struggle bus, especially recently with all the zoom calls!
I was like, I have a super awesome computer just sitting in the closet and I can get around some interface differences and probably even not getting to have messages on my computer. lol


What was being experienced
So I dug it out and got it all plugged in, I did let it sit for a bit, as I knew it probably would need to get some juice in that battery. I went to turn it on and the power light was blinking, but nothing was happening and after a bit of time the light went off. Weird, but maybe still just needs some time.
Tried again after several hours of it being off and on the charger and same thing happened. Well crap...
I dove deep into research and did just some typical steps of being a nerd and knowing what needs to be done. Luckily his thread is a wealth of resources to look back on but everything I was finding was stuff I had tried or did not work.
Just as a detail, the extent of nothing is really nothing.
Like the fans don't come one, which I haven't replaced them since I bought the computer so they have pretty much failed. Right before I stopped using it I could still push full rev button is and blow a little air in the vent to give them a jump start. lol
But at this point that button won't even illuminate, screen doesn't come on, backlight or anything. Even shining a light at it, shows no picture, plugging in an external monitor to the Mini Displayport or HDMI port do nothing, can't get into BIOS or boot menu of any kind, no keys work or anything. Literally nothing.


Steps tried
I have done an immense amount of combos of troubleshooting and this is a list of them (provided I did not miss any).

• Upon every step I would disconnect the power from it while doing these things and would be the last thing I put back in when trying to turn it on.
• Took the battery out.
• Took the CMOS battery out. (I have the CMOS extension so that is a lifesaver, thank you to @Donald@HIDevolution for that suggestion)
• Took them both out
• Let the computer set for a couple of hours with no CMOS, battery or power connected.
• Have held down every button that was recommended to hold to for misc. activities. The power button, the del key, the rest button on the back.
• All of those holding down have also been with the power connected and with it not, with the batteries (main and CMOS) connected and with it not, with it "on" and with it not. lol Y'all get the idea.

I thought, well maybe something is bad that is causing this, so I started down that path.

• I had seen and know from past that even though it's really not supposed to do this that a dead CMOS battery could cause boot problems. I have a little Intel NUC that I accrued from somewhere for the past few years. So I took the CMOS out of it and put it in there and still nothing.
• The CMOS battery that I just took out of there, I put into the NUC and booted it. It booted up fine and there was something about the CMOS that flashed up, but I didn't catch it in time. When I tried to reboot it several times to see it, the message has not displayed again.
• I took the M.2 HD (only drive in the computer) and put it in the NUC and it booted right to my login screen just fine. So I put it back in the laptop.

What's happening now
At some point in the batteries out and reset buttons that the behavior did change.
In some instances for the better and for some the worse but still not a big deal.

At first the LEDs on the front edge of the computer worked, when I very first plugged it in, the battery light came on and the HD light would occasionally blink.
But now those don't do anything at all, this is the not big deal part of it. I can live without front notification LEDs.

The power light now stays on constantly after it's pressed as if the computer is actually on, but it's not.

The fan button and keyboard backlight options are working.
I push the fan button and give the fans a kick start and they spin up to full and stay there.
I push the keyboard backlight button and one section will come on and then the full keyboard will come one and then go back off.
Just plane white and pressing other buttons does not illuminate keys, like the num lock, etc.

Everything else is the same.
There is nothing happening on the screen, no backlighting on and when shining a light to it, there is is no image seen.
Connecting monitors does nothing, either Mini Displayport or HDMI.
Keyboard presses do not alter the behavior, if the keyboard is not lit up then num, caps or scroll lock does not light up when you press it and the LEDs on the front edge do not come on for them either.
You cannot hold or rapid press any special keys (F buttons, DEL or anything like that) to get into any menus or boot screens.
No audio is being played, although I could not remember if there would even be any audio in a regular boot like that.

It really is like it now turns on with the ability to control fan and keyboard lighting, but that is literally it and everything else is blank or doesn't do anything.

The only step I have not tried is removing or moving the RAM. I had them put it on the keyboard side during build so that I could just add modules on the back easily if I wanted to down the road. That seems to have been a bad choice if that if a step that needs to be taken, but I am up for trying. It seemed like doing that solved other issues so I didn't go to that extreme before at least getting some opinions.

Begging for help. haha
But really, any help or tips that anyone has would be beyond great!! I cannot imagine what happened to this thing while sitting in the closet, but I just want to throw up. It's the first and only computer for a VERY long time (unless sold and save money with it) that I will have of this caliber and cost. So to think that it's dead after a few years of very light to no use, just makes my stomach hurt!
So I'm down to try anything y'all can think of!

Let me know thoughts and hope y'all have an awesome Easter weekend and that you stay safe and healthy!

 

Remove one stick of RAM.

Then hold the power button down for 60 seconds. Release it, power off, then press it normally once and then wait about 3 minutes.

 

1. Are you using a modded BIOS?
2. Have you ran memtest?

 

Well, that’s the thing is I have not tried anything with ram since I had them install it on the keyboard facing side.
I was trying to think through the doing the upgrades the easiest way when I bought this. So I had them put the current ram on that side and a cmos battery extension in, in the hopes of note having to tear it apart unnecessarily.

But I can go through the process of doing that and while I have it apart I’ll probably move both sticks to the back just in case something like this happens again. I may do that late this evening.
Do you know of some “shortcuts to taking it apart entirely? Like are there some miscellaneous ways to keeps different parts attached to the motherboard and remove it all at once? Or is it truly a everything comes all apart?

1. I am using whatever BIOS came from HIDEvolution. I doubt it’s modded. I really never got into all the overclocking and stuff. I mainly got this for a more portable option for some awesome and upgradeable power. I wanted to at some point, but haven’t yet.
2. No I cannot do anything with it.

 

Hi Guys,
Been a while... I miss my lil' F5 so much, I am thinking about the buy another one I like it during summertime, as it is so easy to carry
Is there anybody who's willing to sell? I prefer 1070/1080 version all other parts are less important
cheers

 

Im looking to repaste my delided i7 7700k with LM on IHS, but still not sure how should i approach it since all laptop guides are focused on BGA chip.

I know about kapton tape - but what else you recommend to make it as safe as possible?

 

Well.. I went through the process of moving the ram to the accessible slots and have tried every combo of them in and out of the slots with and without cmos battery, holding power / reset buttons and everything in between.
Same result, I can "power it on" where I can control the fans and the keyboard backlight but nothing else happens. Any other thoughts?