Qal51

So I'm looking for a gaming laptop/desktop replacement for college, and CyberPower has a rebrand of the QAL for a pretty good price. So I've been wondering- how's the build quality of Compal computers in comparison to say, Sager/Clevo, or brands like Lenovo. I ask because I'm also considering the N6165 and the Lenovo Y580, since they're all in the ballpark price wise. Thanks!

 

The Compal FL90 is a great notebook - however, it came with the Nvidia 8600M GT which had a major design flaw, which resulted in a broken grafic card. Many other manufacturers had the same problem, including IBM, Dell, etc.

Other than that, I am really happy with it, even after 5 years of using the very same laptop.

 

I'm not sure if you can even compare Sager/Clevo to Compal as they have both been known to rebrand Compals in the past. Perhaps that is a testament to the build quality though. Lenovo bought 51% of Compal so it wouldn't surprise me if that model you quoted has been built by Compal too.

I have a lot of experience with Thinkpads, they are a different class of laptop, but at a premium. I don't think you will be disappointed with a Compal, if you choose to go that route.

However driver support can be a challenge, hopefully that will be resolved in time.

 

Are drivers specific to Compals for all of them?

 

The components are for the most part name brand, Nvidia, Broadcom, Intel etc.. However I found when first installing Windows 7, the video defaulted to the i7 integrated graphics, and any attempt I made with generic Nvidia driver installs failed.

Once I installed the drivers included on the Compal install DVD it could see the Nvidia card. I have found if I extract the generic Nvidia drivers and update the video card in device manager (browsing to the extracted folder) it will update. But running an upgrade with the generic driver after the Compal default driver is installed will also fail.

The Compal support website isn't well maintained which doesn't help either.

 

I wonder if that holds true for the QAL51. Is that the notebook you're referring to, or the FL90 referred to previously?

 

I can only speak to the model I have (Compal PBL21), the Compal website will be a problem for any model it supports. Just make sure you get a driver DVD with the laptop.

Just had a quick glance at the QAL51, that's a beauty! Mind me asking the price?

 

Configured correctly, I got it down to $888 with an i7-3610QM and 8GBs of RAM. The only thing that I'm hesitant about is the glossy screen. I really prefer matte screens.

 

Likewise on the screen, when I use my laptop in my office I get a lot of glare from the window.

Which video card came with yours? Excellent price in my opinion btw!

 

Nvidia GT650m with 2GBs of VRAM. It should be able to handle most things at a decent resolution, I think. It comes with enough freebies that I think I'm gonna pull the trigger. I am a bit worried, since the model isn't even on that driver site, but I'll figure something out if I need to. They should theoretically include a driver CD with the notebook.

 

I see by your original post this is a CyberPower rebrand. You should be good, they do keep up their support site at least for later models. I had gone there hoping to find something for mine but they don't, too old which I find a bit depressing since I just bought it a few weeks ago!

My video card is the GT540M 2GB, and I have found it to be a great performer. I have been able to run everything at max resolution and high settings for most of my favorites (GTA4, TF2, Crysis2, Diablo3, Skyrim). Yours will put my card to shame no doubt.

 

Actually, I went through their support site, and the Compal driver page link is broken, which worries me a bit. Hopefully Windows can detect the drivers on its own when I install it. Are their specific support pages for each model that I'm missing?

 

I see what you mean, their support site just redirects you to vendor sites for each vendor/device.

I think you should be fine for the most part, the only anomaly in the install for me was the video driver. Perhaps they have fixed that with this gen laptop.

If they haven't, I will gladly share my Compal DVD with you, there are quite a few services on the web where I can dump it to if required.

 

Thanks! I'm gonna buy it tonight. Hopefully it makes its way to me in the near future.

 

Have you received this laptop yet? I'm looking at it as well and I'm deciding between it and the Sager NP3260/Clevo W25AES.

By the way, it looks as though XoticPC now offers this laptop on their site as the QAL15. Did CyberPower or XoticPC typo the name, or is there some pattern to the numbers that I'm not aware of?

FORCE QAL15 (1366x768 glossy)
FORCE QAL15-HD (1920x1080 glossy)

It's too bad the only screen options are glossy. I wonder if a matte replacement screen could be purchased and installed manually.

 

Yeah the deals on this laptop at CyberPowerPC are just a steal (only +$13 for a 240GB SSD), I'm planning to get this as well, definitely the best deal I'm gonna find on a decent laptop (a 650M or better) <1k before college starts. Let me know if you found/fixed a problem with the Drivers, because I'll bet I'd get the same issue.

 

Every so often I browse eBay and find some barebones of this QAL51 with the GT 640M for around $400. I currently have a Lenovo IdeaPad Z570 with a Sandy Bridge i5 2520M in it and no discrete graphics. Is the QAL51 compatible with Sandy Bridge chips? Kind of expensive for a GPU upgrade, I know, but I'm thinking I could sell my Lenovo as "barebones" to get some of the money back, and transfer the RAM, HDD, and CPU to the new barebone. Anybody know if this will work with a Sandy Bridge CPU? A 640M is fast enough that I'd strongly consider dumping my desktop and later down the road get an Ivy Bridge quad to go in it.

edit: I might have just answered my own question - AVA Direct sells the QAL51 with an i5 2430M option.

 

Just to follow up, I just built one of these with the parts from my Lenovo. It's great, really. I got the cheap version - GT 640M and 1366x768. I did not anticipate needing to use my DVD-RW and wifi card, though I don't know what I expected. Derp. You really need to use everything. WEI in Windows 7 says gaming graphics and Windows desktop graphics both rate 6.9, and it runs Max Payne 3 on default DX11.1 settings at the native resolution really well. Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 require significantly less GPU than Max Payne, and they run really excellently as well on high settings. In fact, other than installing the nVidia drivers and re-activating Windows 7 (which I used the COA sticker from the lenovo...got to find a way to transfer that over) I didn't even have to install anything manually or do anything other than wait for it to tell me to reboot.

Build Quality: The keyboard doesn't flex, the trackpad is decent, and unlike what I read on Anandtech about the PBL21, this has a matte finish everywhere other than the bezel around the display. That's really dumb, actually, why not do a matte finish all over? The black and silver looks like any number of Dell computers from the last decade. On max brightness, the colors look kind of washed out, but on max brightness it's almost too bright anyway. Viewing angles aren't great because it's a cheap panel. Wifi reception seems fine with my Atheros card. It gets a bit warm when gaming (the vent blows very warm air) using the i5 2520M CPU and the GeForce 640M graphics. HWMonitor shows the CPU hits 70C and the GPU hits around 65-66C under load. So cooling wise it's sufficient. I would not put a quad in there, though I guess a 35W Ivy Bridge quad would be OK. A 45W quad may put out too much extra heat.

Next up for me is to put the DVD-RW in an enclosure and buy one of those optical bay caddies and get an SSD. If you like working with your hands, this is very easy to build in. For $400 I feel it was a worthwhile investment.

 

Great review!

If I'm not mistaken the i5-2430m is a sandy bridge cpu, will any sandy bridge work in the QAL51?

Any memory limits on this model? As in the PBL21 there is a limit of 8gb but never understood why since the memory controller is on die.

 

The manual on disk also says 8GB. I didn't plan to go beyond 8GB anyhow, but that does seem kind of obnoxious. Maybe 8GB SO-DIMMs would work, but I imagine by the time I need that much RAM I'll have upgraded. (EDIT: Service Manual says QAL51 supports 16GB and it also says the QAL50 with integrated graphics and the QAL51 with NVidia graphics supports Sandy Bridge, too)

One quirk I hadn't noticed before until now: in Windows 8 it doesn't sleep when you close the lid. Windows is set to do that so apparently it doesn't notify the OS of the lid closing. Tapping the power button sleeps it though. My Lenovo would sleep on lid closing. Not sure about Windows 7. I never noticed, and I upgraded to 8 almost immediately after verifying 7 was working.

I managed to find official Windows 8 drivers and a BIOS update here: ftp://65.106.72.164/Notebook/Compal/QAL30_50_51/

Bios update didn't fix the odd lid behavior. It did add UEFI boot, though I'd already installed Windows on an older BIOS so I don't know what (if anything) that does for me. I put it back to regular booting.

Both the user manual and the service manual are there as well.

And yeah, apparently Sandy Bridge is supported, though it only mentions Ivy Bridge in the manual. (edit: as I said above, the service manual mentions Sandy by name)

 

I also use my laptop for work and run a VM most of the time so the memory limit is a consideration of mine. More is generally better for my situation.

I installed Win8 on my old Lenovo and I think it lasted for all of one day before I went back to Win7. I would equate Win8 as the Windows Vista or Windows ME of this iteration of Windows. We could probably devote an entire thread to this topic but would ask why put it on the QAL51 particularly without a touchscreen display?

With my recent video issues on the PBL21 this model has got everything I would want and at the right price, you definitely got me considering this as my next move.