My HIDevolution Experience - EVOC P870DM-G

I had initially purchased an Alienware 17 R3 from Dell, which went bad two days after arriving (as you can read here). Even upon receiving the repaired unit, I felt dissatisfied with what I had purchased (i.e., buyer's remorse). It simply wasn't the MDU (mobile desktop unit) I was hoping for, even with the external graphics amp. Having tried Sony, ASUS and a variety of other manufacturers, I decided it was finally time to give Clevo a try.

On the 24th of June I called up HIDevolution and spoke with Donald@HIDevolution. I asked about price matching XOTICPC's deal on their UHD screens and RAM, which were selling for around $175 and $74 respectively. The price on HIDEvolution was $600 for the panel, but after talking for a bit the screens went down to $300 on the site. Now, what's important to note is that these panels have G-SYNC, which was unspecified on the XOTIC models. In fact, not long after I made the call, XOTIC took their UHD screen option down altogether. They never got back with me about what happened with that. As for the RAM, I hadn't noticed it was 4x8, and I of course, wanted 2x16GB. Ironically, XOTIC put up a sale for some higher clocking RAM at 2x16GB awhile back, but I don't recall the specifics. Not a big deal at all.

(I was also offered a pair of headphones, but declined due to already having an expensive pair. Kinda wish I would have accepted them, seeing that the Bose I have are finally going out on me, and need to be repaired).

So I put the order in for these specs:
17.3" 3840x2160 IPS UHD (16:9) LED Antiglare Matte Type Display w/ NVIDIA G-Sync Technology
Unlocked and Overclockable 6th Generation Intel Core i7-6700K Quad Core Processor, 4.0 GHz (Max Turbo Frequency 4.2GHz), 8MB Smart Cache
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M 8GB GDDR5 - NVIDIA G-Sync Enabled w/ Unlocked Prema vBIOS
32GB (2 x 16GB) Dual Channel DDR4/2133MHz
HIDevolution Specified 256GB M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSD + 1TB HDDD
Intel® Wireless-AC 8260 802.11 ac/a/b/g/n 2x2 NGFF w/ Bluetooth 4.2

Within an hour or two, I received a call from Donald, informing that they were out of the HIDevolution specified SSD. Fortunately, he asked his boss and got permission to throw a Samsung SM951 OEM (non-retail) 256GB SSD in its place. Real nice thing to do, I appreciate it a lot.

Now, at this point in time, I had only paid half on my credit card, since I was gonna write a check for the (2% I think) cash discount. This was on a Friday and I didn't have any on me, in fact I don't think I've written a check in my life, and I couldn't make it to the bank. It's a good thing I didn't, as some last minute bills ended up surfacing in the mail. I figured the discount wasn't really a big deal, and decided to hold off on it. The following Monday I called Donald back up and paid the rest with my card, also mentioning that I had registered here, ultimately receiving a discount more or less equal to what I would've gotten by sending in the check.

Subsequent events:

June 30th
Notebook enters "Pre-Production" stage.

July 8th
I called up Donald and asked when the notebook might enter production, wherein he stated he would get back with me via email. And a few hours later, he did, informing me they had order the UHD panels.

July 9th
Status updates to "Parts On Order", with an ETA for the screen of 7/15/2016-7/18/2016.

July 12th
I became severely annoyed with the UHD panel on an Alienware 17 R3 Dell had sent me. I'm not exactly sure what they want me to do with this thing. They've been refunding my credit line and taking money from it sporadically, so I'm really confused. I had cancelled the exchange on the 24th, but they decided to go ahead and send it anyway. After I finish this post I'm gonna give them a call and see what's going on.

I digress. The 17.3" UHD panel had a ton of scaling issues that I hadn't noticed earlier, perhaps in part due to the fact I only had time to do some minor photo editing and a little streaming. I didn't anticipate applications such as Steam to have so many issues, or Windows Explorer itself to freak out as often as it did. Hesitant, I emailed Donald with a few questions about their FHD screens, as well as their desktop class 980 GPU.

Approximately a half hour later, the Phoenix entered the "Production" stage, somewhat to my dismay.

July 13th
Continuing our email conversation from the day prior, I asked if it was okay to swap out the UHD panel for a 980, seeing that the upgrade cost was $300 from a 980m, the same price to go from a FHD to UHD screen. Thankfully, the request was no issue.

July 19th
The order enters the "Processing" stage, which is listed on their website as the stage after payment has been reviewed. Confused, I emailed Donald about the status, who informed me that it had actually shipped and that I would receive an invoice with the tracking number shortly.

And that I did, the order entered stage "Complete".

July 21st
The notebook arrives and I begin configuring everything.
---
Fast forward to today and I finally have everything configured as it should be, minus about 400GB I have to organize on the HDD. Now, I purchased the machine without an operating system, so installing Windows 10 clean and tweaking everything was real easy. (None of that nasty spyware on my machine).

So yeah, this thing is a real monster, I mean, I knew I'd prefer it to the Alienware, but I had no idea what I was missing. The BIOS options, the convenience of the Clevo Control Center, the power of a desktop in a laptop, it's a completely different experience from what I'm used to. Even the keyboard, albeit not using the entire chassis, feels better. The speakers are also the best I've ever heard from inside a laptop.

Currently, I've successfully overclocked all four cores to run at 4.4 GHz. The idle temp of the machine right now is 43 ºC, and when it gets a little too warm for my liking, I crank up the fan in the Control Center and cool it off. Fun fact: My old ASUS machines would run so hot I'd end up with heat rashes on my thighs, so I really enjoy having a cool notebook. In fact, I'd prefer running the fan at maximum speed, but I'm not sure if doing so indefinitely wouldn't cause any issues.

Now, I'm not sure if I'm making a mistake, if this was an accident or a gift, but the RAM seems to be running at 2666Mhz instead of 2133MHz. At first I assumed it was overclocked, because they were nice enough to configure most of Phoenix's settings in the BIOS for me, but the profiles are defaulted.

Anyway, I attached an SSD benchmark for the Clevo and one for the Alienware's PM951. Quite a difference, especially considering what Dell charged me for it. I also included a benchmark from Firestrike with a minor GPU overclock. A higher overclock pushed the system into airplane mode for some reason.

Overall I'm happy with the service I received, especially thanks to Donald's quick replies throughout the past month. The P870DM-G is phenomenal, the best laptop I've ever owned. Witness its majesty as it sat yesterday, being pumped full of data:

I'll definitely refer anyone looking for a laptop over to Donald and HIDevolution in the future.

 

Congrats on the new system. But that's the P870DM-G aka Phoenix.
Beast of a machine!
Just PM one of the mods to fix the title for you.
Come find us here if you ever need help with the system or to push it to the limits :

Overclockers Lounge

P870DM-G Owners Lounge

 

Oh whoops, didn't notice. Thanks.

Anyone in particular I should message?

 

I think if you just report the first post and put in the request there, they should be able to fix it.
Other wise page @Ethrem , I'm not sure if he's the mod for this section, but maybe he can point you in the right direction.

 

Hello. Yes, this is the fastest way you can reach us.

 

It is a beasty laptop, you will enjoy it for the years to come.

 

Thanks for your thoughtful review. HIDevolution team @Donald@HIDevolution @Ted@HIDevolution @Zoltan@HIDevolution continues to aim to please.

 

The plight of writing in the AM. It's fixed.

 

Appreciate the review! Going to be going with these guys for my laptop as well!