Clevocenter vs Obsidian

Hi!
I would like some inputs about these two. I’m thinking about buying a laptop (p775 or even p870) and cut the list of resellers to these two ( I’m from Europe and they are really close to me). Any comments are appreciated!
Thanks

 

Clevocenter are a Prema partner so you can opt for a proper BIOS when you buy. I believe they will also delid your CPU, so its well worth it for those 2 options.

 

What’s a Prema bios and what advantages you get from the updates that Obsidian launch?
Sorry about my lack of knowledge (two weeks ago I even didn’t know Clevo and thought Alienware and MSI was the best...)

 

Don't worry, we were all new to this stuff once. The main thing is you've got the interest to learn about it.

The Prema BIOS gives you much more control over your machine. You will have access to all of your CPU multipliers, all of the power settings such as voltage, current and power limits, BCLK and FCLK, RAM timings, port settings and much more. The main benefit is removing the throttling that comes with the stock BIOS.

Undervolting will help you keep your CPU temperatures down, (though they should be alright as long as you get the CPU delidded) so i'd recommend it even if you don't care for overclocking.

Apart from offering that both Clevocenter and Obsidian will sell you the same machine essentially, but i'd recommend Clevocenter simply for the Prema BIOS

 

@Januvga

I would take Obsidian over Clevocenter for the following reasons:

- Obsidian have a rep on this forum who is very active @John@OBSIDIAN-PC
- Obsidian have their own fully unlocked BIOS which covers all the points that @Arrrrbol mentioned
- Obsidian has good feedback on this forum and are a trusted part of this community as a reseller
- Several reasons (some which I can't discuss publically) why I personally would recommend Obsidian over Clevocenter, including that Clevocenter has no direct relationship to Clevo itself; they use the Clevo name without permission and this causes some confusion http://www.clevo.com.tw/clevo_newsdetail.asp?id=194&lang=en

 

Let me just add something...
It's all fine to be able to push more from your hardware... But depending on your usage you might want to use all the setting to tune it down, actually reducing performance might not be a bad idea on 8th gen.

Less clock, more undervolt, longer sustained turbo without thermal throttle.

We do 4 profiles for you, gaming, overclock, silent and battery.

And you might want to follow our software thread, we are doing some really useful tools for this laptops.
Better stability, fan control, lighter, secure!

Both companies are legit though.

Sent from my MI Note 2 using Tapatalk

 

Thanks for your input, I like it very much. As I see you are other company that works with Clevo, but your website is in german, so it’s kinda difficult to go through.
Anyway it’s seems you are doing things pretty well too. Congrats

 

Everybody talks about PREMA bios, which for a newbie like me, it’s a bit complicated. As I see, you update bios and drivers from time to time...
Like your grey logo btw...

 

I'll leave it to @John@OBSIDIAN-PC to list their BIOS features. But in regards to a Prema BIOS @Phoenix posted a list just the other day - http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/desktop-replacement-options.821787/#post-10775614

 

Great!
Thanks for your help!!

 

You're welcome, happy to help! Btw our website is in German, French and English ( mysn .de), it changes the language by geolocation automaticlaly or you can click on the relavent flag in the top right of any page and it will change the language ;-)

P.S. Regarding the linked post above to Prema Benefits - I'm not saying that you shouldn't get a laptop with an unlocked BIOS, just that the list of options that are unlocked is large and attractive - but if you don't know what half of them do (and you can control some of those in the list without a custom BIOS) then you're unliely to ever need them.

 

Common sense.
So the thing now, as you have made me to think (thanks for that), it’s to find out if I really need a PREMA bios or regular one.
Where can I get that kind of info, I dunno...

 

Hello @John@OBSIDIAN-PC

I'm also doing my research between Pc-Specialist, Clevo Center, Obsidian PC and Schenker/XMG. By now I think Schenker seems very trustful but is the most expensive. Pc-Specialist is way cheaper than the rest but I haven't read enough good things about them.

So I'm narrowing my decision between Clevo Center and Obsidian PC, the thing about Obsidian is that in their configurator every RAM option seems to have 2400mhz speeds only. Is this true?

Also, though the Intel 9nth gen CPUs are soldered, and can't be delidded, can you apply LM instead of thermal paste on top of them?

Thank you!

 

If you really really really want more than 2400mhz then buying without RAM is an option, it´s so easy to install ram.
And btw, trust me you dont want LM instead of good thermal paste. You think you do, but you do not. You heard someone say it can be safe, but it´s not, not in a easy way at least.

LM is conductive, LM is liquid, your motherboard fries when LM drips to it and shorts it.
You could make some sort of barrier around to make it so that it wont slip, but i was never capable of doing something 100% safe.
Then there´s the thing that some clients do their own maintenance every year. Trust me you dont want to have to deal with cleaning and re-applying LM.

90% of clients that tried it fried the motherboards, those who did not just dont move the laptops around very often or are extremely lucky.

 

I would mostly agree. But a safe LM is definitely possible, it's just a huge time & effort wormhole.
With proper foam pads the liquid won't spill anywhere. But you need to get foam, varying thickness for varying chassis, you need to check each installation for proper foam compression so you're not losing contact pressure or messing up the core diferentials. Probably not the most attractive service, as it stands, to offer as a laptop builder.

But HP has a new laptop coming out, the Omen X 2S. A 15" dual-screen marketing monstrosity that supposedly comes with Grizzly Conductonaut installed. I would be very curious to open one up and see what they did to ensure proper LM installation and keep leaks at bay.

As OEMs realize there's a demand for this sort of solution I trust we'll see some innovations regarding heatsink and heatsink retention design to allow for LM installation.
I would imagine any thin & light gaming notebook manufacturer to be all over this.

 

I don't know about Clevocenter, but if you purchase in Obsidian won't regret it. Specially for the post-purchase support.