Mythlogic Phobos 8715S - 2 weeks & still nothing

So I was originally trying to go through HIDEvolution, as per Phoenix's recommendation, but ran into a bit of a snag. HID could not secure traditional financing, because from what I was told by their rep, they are not a brick and mortar store. A shame, since HID has received many praise from those on these forums and also offers the full Prema BIOS & vBIOS experience, as well as a very important 30-Day 0 Dead Pixel Guarantee (Mythlogic does not). HID was also still going to give me the cash discount on the remaining balance, after you subtract the amount that would have been financed. Mythlogic is not willing to do the same. If you finance any of it, you won't get a cash discount.

I found that living in the USA & needing traditional financing, in order to finance $1,000~, Mythlogic seems to be my only choice. I had been told by their reps that they offer a collaborative (watered-down) version of the Prema Bios. Sadly needing financing I had little choice.

I placed my order on March 1st, for a somewhat barebones system. I left out the HDDs/SSDs, OS & Memory, finding it cheaper and within budget to buy and install those myself, allowing for better parts for my money as well.

My Phobos will have 1080p G-Sync display, 6700K CPU, 980m SLI and Killer Doubleshot Pro X3 (Don't need to hear about the Intel. That's not the focus of the thread.) I will be installing 2x Samsung 950 Pro 512GB SSDs in Raid-0, 2 Samsung Spinpoint M9T 5400RPM 2TB 2.5" HDDs, Windows 10 Pro 64-bit & 16GB (2x8GB) Kingston HyperX Impact DDR4-2400 memory.

As I said, I placed the order on March 1st. After about a week, my status finally moved up from "Processing", to "Payment Complete". Uhhh... I made payment and filled out all financing paperwork on the first day, March 1st....!!! Now it has been 2 weeks, as it is now the 15th and it still says "Payment Verified". My emails have been ignored and my phone calls always result in the same repeated bits of information. Keep hearing about the turn around time, manual updates of orders being done in batches, etc. The phone reps are polite.... just not offering any detailed answers for my specific order.

So in 2 weeks.... as far as I can tell with no communication in relation to my order status... they may not have done a single thing. I mean for $3,000+ you'd expect to see a higher level of communication. I had also made a special request to have no branding on the back of the lid/display, incase I ever get creative and wanna use skins. Can't have that metal branding bulging out. If/when I receive it, we'll see if my order instructions were followed. I WAS told I could have it without the branding. I also noted that their "Collaboratory" BIOS needed to have the most recent revisions Prema made, particularly including the Raid fix that fixes poor CPU performance when using Raid.

During these 2 weeks, I've obtained many purchases both from stores like Newegg, as well as eBay purchases with slow ground shipping. I've received 6 part shipments, ordered on different days, with varying shipping times and carriers. As some may know, online retailers often only give 30 days to test the parts and request a refund, or exchange during that time.

Got everything I need, but the unit itself....

Who knows?... Maybe the reps just aren't informed enough. Maybe my order is already being worked on. One can only hope. Time will tell.

Will reply if and when any status change occurs.

 

Hi Fred,

You are actually scheduled to get build on Friday (at least with some testing parts) and we'll run you through QA just the same as any other machine we build. We updated a bunch of status's this evening as we are working late.

Also if you want to send us your parts we'll be more than happy to install them and build up your system as a complete unit if you want so you can have a ready to go system.

 

Well I definitely appreciate the update. It seemed to be a little bit of a common issue for a few of your customers. As far as the parts that I received, I'm okay installing them myself. Shipping them out would just cause further delay & cost and I'm very anxious to get it at this point. As long as all the connections for the memory and hard drives are operating properly, I'll be fine. I plan to use all 4 hard drive bays/slots. Could you possibly tell me though, if my approved request for no branding on the lid & getting the latest Prema BIOS revisions (with the RAID fix) will be honored during the build process? Also will I receive a driver disk with monitor calibration?

 

Hey

Those other requests are added to the order, and I don't see any particular issue with those. We're using the latest BIOS we got from Prema for those models. Yes you'll get a copy of your monitor calibration.

 

The previous issue with the Prema BIOS was not a degraded CPU performance while on RAID 0 but rather, a boot issue. Once you have a RAID setup, with the previous BIOS, the Windows Boot Manager in the BIOS disappears so you cannot boot or install it. It has been fixed recently as I tested over 30 diff. BIOS revisions until he got it fixed.

With that said, I just had a RAID 0 corruption that rendered my OS bootless last night and spent the whole day today formatting to set Windows in a single drive setup / AHCI.

When I did that, I noticed my system much snappier BTW. It feels like I got a new computer. I did upgrade my RAM from 64GB 2133 MHz Samsung RAM to 2800 MHz G.SKill 64GB RAM but I doubt that's the only thing that's making me feel this increased snappiness. RAID 0 on a laptop is not worth it since they don't have a dedicated RAID controller obviously and thus, the CPU is going to handle all the RAID operations. It's not worth it, but it's your system.

 

Update: Did infact make it through the build stage today & currently in the Q&A stage.

 

We try not to be made of all the lies

 

We'll I've got 2 Samsung 950 Pro 512GB, so I'm going to try out the raid. If I have corruption issues, I'll just split em up after.

 

at stock speeds, there would be no corruption. The corruption started once I pushed the system to the limit iwth a high overclock that failed, but upon reboot, baam, Windows Boot Loader corrupted and bootrec.exe couldn't fix it or even see any Windows installation.

Additionally, I feel the system is snappier without RAID, even though the benchmarks on the sequential numbers are much higher, the 4K Random Read / Writes are a bit lower and there is increased latency obviously with RAID which is one of the most important performance of an SSD.

PS: Had my RAID 0 setup as a 16KB data stripe for the SSDs as recommended by Intel for SSDs since the OS consists of many small files and so do games. I also setup the two 2TB Samsung HDDs in RAID 0 with a 128K data stripe since those contain video files, so the larger data stripe is better suited for that workflow.

 

Stock is fine by me. I just want to avoid high temps & throttling. Might go with that 4.2GHz oc.

 

Then this video is for you, check the Prema BIOS walkthrough:

Clevo P870DM n00bie's guide

 

Mine is coming from Mythlogic. It's not going to have full Prema.

 

Your RAID-0 Corruption was not because of the overclocks, that happened because of the BSOD/Lockdown. The biggest side effect of RAID-0 is data corruption because of improper shutdowns and/or power loss. RAID-O or Stripping alternately write data to each drive. Example - Bit 1 goes to Drive 1 , Bit 2 Goes to Drive 2, Bit 3 goes to Drive 1 , Bit 4 goes to Drive 2 and so on. If by chance a part of the data stream gets interrupted , its ends up being corrupted. How corrupted and what gets corrupted depends on when the interrupt happened, as well as what was being written.
This is a very dumbed down version of RAID-0 works. That is why when there is a need for fast data speeds, some people use what is called - RAID-0+1 (RAID-0 combined with RAID-1 type mirroring). This method uses and needs a lot of disk space and isnt really feasible for home/consumer use.

So if anyone plans on use a RAID-0 setup and overclocking, make sure you do the testing/benching etc, on a separate windows install and then once you are good to go, setup your RAID.
Just google about RAID-0 and that will give you way more info.

Also @fred91682 as Phoenix mentioned earlier, RAID isnt really worth the hassle since the P870DM doesn't come with a Hardware RAID controller , which causes unnecessary CPU usage. The Samsung 950 Pro is more than enough for some of the most demanding laptop loads. Heck i use it for dealing per frame cache sizes of 2GB+.
Just my 2 cents.

 

It's the full thing. Just had a couple options changed to keep you from totally foot + shoot yourself. All the tweaking options are the same. So yes it's the full thing. Ask prema if you want

 

And VBIOS?

 

Nope it's stock......

Prema stock.....



(So yes)

 

Is it possible to get your company logo to slap onto my P870DM ?
Believe it or not, you guys were my first choice, just couldn't work with my timeline.

 

Sorry it only comes free with purchase of system

 

\(^.^)/ (^.^)b

 

UPDATE: Order went into build stage on Friday & later that day into the QA test stage. Still presently in QA, but hoping it will reach shipping status later this evening, so it can ship out today, or tomorrow & maybe I'll have it Friday, in time for the weekend

 

UPDATE: On my last break @ work & just noticed it's been moved to step#7, which means it's being packaged. The excitement is real.

 

And its gone, you should have your tracker in your email.

 

Confirmed!!! Ty sir.

 

Y U DO DIS Mythlogic. Y u no tell me you make system fast.

 

Heh, we just can't guarantee deadlines thats all. We do try our best (We honestly do)

 

UPDATE: So I received it yesterday evening. After panicking & calling, I found out that the "Y" Adapter for the 2 power bricks I ordered is backordered, so I'm just running at 4.2GHz for now. It would have been nice to have received some communication about it beforehand. I was told they didn't want to delay my order, so they sent it without it, which is fine. I just wish communication wasn't always something that happens after the fact. So I'm on a waiting list now to receive the adapter, when they get it back in stock.

As for the laptop itself.... It came exceptionally well packaged & protected. To anyone that orders from Mythlogic though I'd advise to search for the packaging for the USB wrist bracelet & install all the drivers, etc off that & ignore the CD. I tried the CD first via an external USB DVD burner and ended up having to go back and install the newer software & drivers from the USB bracelet. As for the Prema BIOS I had requested, it seems all good. LOL there are even little messages in the boot up and bios screens that say cute little Prema messages. So far I am amazed with the product & very happy with the purchase.

Definitely worth the wait, but the review still goes on, as I of coarse will be waiting for the adapter. I had asked to be informed when the adapter is obtained & being shipped out to me, so that I can expect a package, rather then it sitting in the leasing office without my knowledge. Time will tell. For now though.... I've got games & other apps to install, so I can test the gaming performance with the 980m SLI & G-Sync.

 

Just received an email today. They finally got the Clevo power adapter back in stock & are shipping it to me.

 

Just received the Clevo "Y" adapter for my 2 power bricks yesterday. All plugged in & functioning. As far as product goes, I'm definitely happy. The only issue was obviously the wait. So with the shipping time of the final component considered, it took about 45 days from the day of order to receive the entire order. I can understand a specialty part becoming back ordered & it's not something that was necessary for the laptop to be able to function, so not really upset about that. So...

Quality: Fantastic!
Speed: A bit long.
Communication: Initially very poor. After a substantial amount of time had passed, communication finally picked up.

I guess as of now this post may sit dormant for a while, or permanently, depending on if something goes wrong with the laptop. If nothing new gets posted, then this would be my final evaluation.

If you're patient & want to save some $$$, or if you just need traditional financing to be able to purchase the laptop you want that may be just a tad out of reach, then I see no reason not to order from Mythlogic. At the time of my order on March 1st, 2016, Mythlogic was the cheapest, plus I required financing for 1/3 of the total cost. So far quite pleased.

 

glad you're happy. I personally would never wait more than 7 days for a system, let alone 45 days. That's how my 2 last laptop orders took but that's besides the point. I'm happy your enjoying your beast