Another dead 9880 at 1yr 3 mos

This seems to contradict your last post made


Care to let us know what went on to make this a bad experience?

Come on Luke, a bad experience is a bad experience. How can you quote an post that is 11 months old and say you WERE satisfied. Let's face it , a laptop should last longer than 1 year and 3 months.

As you can see i rarely post to these forums but having to send my laptop back 3 times to Sager and having terrible support, i am familiar with there support which Mesabo recieved it is exactly the same as i did. In my case i had to prove to Sager they recieved my laptop.

In addition to having 3 dells in my that get used every day in my house and never have been returned to dell. I am wondering how good Sager computers are, I will never buy another one again.

My Sager is the same age as Mesabo's and i am keeping my fingers crossed my computer makes it to 1 year and four months.

Typically you see a little more inbetween on the forums. Yes i realize the post was made 9 months ago, it's just more typical that there is more than 1 post about a bad experience. I wasn't knocking it, just was wondering why.

Mesabo -

Just curious, but did you get the 9880 with the TV option? If so, would you be interested in selling the card, if you do decide to part it out a bit?

Thanks!

Im going to revive this about the problems with 9860's and 9880's dieng after 1 year and 3 months because my sager 9860 just died after 1 year and 3 months also. Did sager already know about this?

I wanted to post here also with my experience. I had the same issue. I had a 9860 and to be honest at first I was a little upset I had 3 pixels always on that they wouldnt replace 2 red and one blue. After a little time passed it wasnt too big of a deal and I was happy with it. For about a year I enjoyed it running well with great games. Had an x800 and 9860 board. Then right after warranty was up about a year and a few months like you all stated the motherboard burned up in it.

So I paid 1k to have it fixed they put a board in it and a new geforce 7900 GTX. I got it back everything seemed fines but games stuttered and jerked alot. Did a fresh install of windows same issue. Then the screen started getting corrupted.. blocky. I took out the video card and applied some compound silver to video ram and redid the gpu heatsink.. no luck still corruption. Played around with removing certain thermal tape and get a tighter heatsink connection. Still no luck.

Emailed Sager. Let them know all the steps I took. They said to send it in they would refund my upgrade (at this point I just wanted my 1k back). They get my notebook then state they are surprised I modified the card. I had already stated I put compound on it in an email. So they said they would not repair or replace part.

This happend for a month or so finally they sent it back. I got it back turned it on to find the same corruption. I opened up the video it looked like they had replaced it but they DIDNT SCREW DOWN THE 4 HEATSINK SCREWS.. unbelievable for them to not do this. So I tightened those down and it boot up video looks fine. Im typing from it now actually.

So again I reinstalled windows and some games same stinkin issue with games Jerks around pauses not alot but often enough to be an annoyance and it pauses for a second or so.

I think its hardware I thought it was video but they supposedly fixed it and ran test. Sure my 3dmark 2006 runs fine also but games have issues so this isnt something they will deam fixable. Maybe Im too picky I just thought games on this notebook should run smoother. So anyway even tho any test I run goes fine, prime 95, 3dmark 2006 Im just not happy with how it really runs and frankly Im scared of the board burning up in it.

So I am also a customer that was happy for a year or so and now just lost faith in SAGER. I offered my notebook up for sale for $1500

3.6 P4
2x60 gig harddrives
all the options TV Tuner Bluetooth, wireless
2 gigs of ram
512MB geforce go 7900 GTX

I guess maybe a good deal for someone wanting to take a chance I lost faith in SAGER reputation... They didnt screw my video card in right.. I mean come on.

I am also not a beginner have built pc's for years. Now I havent with the notebook but Im also experienced at modifying cards and cpus for overclocking. So I have some experience under the belt.

Did they give you a new (larger) power supply when you bought the upgrade? Did you keep the old power supply? Did you send the power supply in with the laptop when you asked Sager to troubleshoot the video and stuttering problems? Were the stuttering and video problems intermitent/random or consitently repeatable? If you can, you might want to try swapping out the PSU's to see if that might be the cause of the stuttering.

They gave me the new power supply. I have the old power supply as well the 180watt one but I would think the 220 watt that came with new board would work better.

Its intermitent in the fact it doesnt always do it the same place in games all the time but its repeatable by I could play the game for a few minutes and see it happen. Far car sometimes its first time I shoot in a new area. WoW its so random may pause when looting an animal or when doing a new move just too random.

Im 1/2 afraid to try the 180 watt power supply to be honest may not be enough juice. Besides running lower resolution and turning down performance power could probably reduce it also I may try that.

So the stuttering and video corruption only happen when you're playing games? Do you have a program to measure temps for the GPU and CPU? I know of several that give CPU and HD temps, but the only one that measures GPU temps too (that I'm aware of) is GetThermal, which you can find on the net somewhere. Your GPU temps should not be getting higher than 85C.

I dont think the GPU is getting too hot because I can loop 3dmark 2006 over and over and over and it doesnt stutter at all. Has to be something else.

Personally have never used GetThermal, but I do believe that Charles from PCT recommended against using it as one could possibly damage one's computer (don't quote me on that, but I want to believe my memory's not too horribly bad).

Have you updated the graphics drivers? Perhaps try DriverCleaner and a clean reinstall of the latest drivers?

I did a fresh install of windows the other day with all the latest drivers from SAGER website. Maybe its a compatability issue only reason I say it is some games like star wars battlefront 2 run fine with no hitches. Just Far Cry, Half Life 2, World of Warcraft (which is what I play the most) have intermittent pauses. It could be something I can fix If I dont sell it tho I may not haggle with it to much and just use it for the next year and 1/2 standard time until the new motherboard breaks ha ha.

My laptop is a sager but I bought it from a different company. Same crappy support though. It refuses to turn on also. Hey, what do you know. almost exactly 1 year and 3 months after I bought it. Something is fishy here.

Well the video corruption may have been a heat issue, but I guess you fixed it well enough. Did you remove the thermal pads for the GPU RAM again? Remember you shouldn't remove the pads, plus you don't need to put thermal paste on them.

Stuttering could be a game software issue. Have you tried disabling cpu affinity? Lower the graphics settings? Do you play with your wireless adaptor on?

That's true. GetThermal alows you to override certain parameters set in the BIOS such as the temp at which fans turn on and off. So obviously, if you don't know what your doing, you can damage your hardware. Unfortunately GetThermal is the only program I know of that you can use to monitor GPU temp. None of the nVidia drivers I've used allow for the monitoring of GPU temp.

Hmm

Well I am SOL here. My 9880 took a dump yesterday. I bought it in June 05 so it's 1 year and 4 months for me. I can't get bios to recognize my hard drives. It goes through post and when it hits the hdd controller I get a "PCI- Motherboard Resource Conflict" error. I emailed sager and got a call from a tech who told me to remove my wireless card which I did and nothing happens. I'm afraid it's the raid controller issue again. So I'm screwed. I don't know if I should send it in for a $1000 repair job it surely is going to cost or abandon it and get another brand with a better proven track record. Anyone who has read my posts knows I have been having nothing but trouble from the beginning. I'd love to go out to cali and throw this piece of crap through SAGERS window. They deserve as much.

Michael I definitely feel you there. Mine ran ok for a year and now after they replaced things it doesnt. I just got it back a couple days ago SAGER had in note they replaced my video from previous issue and tested GPU and CPU Temps and they were normal. The video I have in it now has no compound and such I havent bothered to remove it to do anything with it. Yeah it could be a game issue but I think its more then that. Granted when one game does it and another doesnt you coudl say thats the issue, regardless Im not going to invest enough time in it to probably resolve it. Ive done the basics Prime 95 , 3dmark 2006 both with no problems, I have tried taking down hardware and software accelerations, I have bumped down resolution I tried disabling wireless, none of those things seem to effect what it does. I also have 4 ram chips I tried different combos of them as well. Just too hard to figure out.

If I was you Michael I would put the $1000 towards another PC I wish I would have done that I spent the 1k and my notebook hasnt run as good as before the first board burned up. I honestly wish I would have spent it on a $1500 Fujitsu at frys. Granted it only has an x1400 and nice screen with a dual core but its local and I can return it to a store with issues not pay to ship it off somewhere.