Ordered a P870TM1 from HIDEvolution...

- a.k.a. I have the best wife in the world. But wait, there's more!

Ok, so my Alienware 17 just came off warranty (4 yrs) and after asking around I decided to be a bit selfish this year and order that monster of a laptop, the P870TM1 with all the gizmos I wanted. Originally, I had told her somewhere around 5k and when all was said and done it was 5.5 and I got a bit of side-eye from her but she said nothing and let me get what I wanted.

Now for the "and more". I had planned on picking up something (nice) for her for Valentine's day on the way home from work yesterday to make it up to her for spending so much but she calls me and says she will meet me at the Dodge dealer because they called her to try and buy back our second car. I asked why and she says because it has low mileage and is spotless and they need good used cars badly for tax season.

Ok, I bite and when I get there she says to me, ok, which Challenger do you want? WHAT?!! We had been there a few weeks ago to help her parents buy a new truck and I had my eye on a nice red one but there was no way I was going to get it until we paid our 2nd car down but she had other ideas. So, last night I drove this home.

Spoiler

She said it was a combination Valentine's day/Anniversary gift. (Feb 11th - 23 years) Best wife ever or what?

Anyway, enough gushing. On to the laptop order/build!

Dealing with @Donald@HIDevolution was a breeze and it was refreshing to have someone ensure you are getting the correct config even if it may be less expensive. That speaks volumes about the integrity of a sales team and by extension a company, who understands that happy customers generally lead to larger bottom lines more than getting the max out of each sale.

Anyway, he and I hashed out the details and came up with what I think will handle my needs for several years. The build is somewhere in progress so for now here are the specs. I'll try to update once I have it in hand and can run some benchmarks, etc.

EVOC High Performance Systems P870TM1 17.3" Custom Built VR Ready Gaming Laptop w/ 1x or 2x GTX 1080
LCD Panel
17.3" 3K QHD (2560x1440) AUO 120Hz - 5ms - LED Matte Type Display (B173QTN01.4) -
Display Warranty
30 Days Zero Defective Pixel Warranty (perfect panel guarantee) -
Video Card
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 8GB GDDR5 X 200W + Vapor Chamber Dual GPU Heat Sink - NVIDIA G-Sync Enabled -
Prema Custom BIOS
Prema Custom BIOS - Latest Updated Version
Processor
HIDevolution Delidded - Unlocked, Under Volted and Overclocked 8th Generation Intel Core i7-8700K 6 Core-12 Thread Processor, 4.7 GHz (HIDevolution Overclocked to 4.8GHz) - GUARANTEED Performance (Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut included)
Thermal Interface Materials
Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut + Gelid GC Extreme on CPU, Gelid GC Extreme on GPU, and Fujipoly Extreme Thermal Pads on heat sensitive surfaces – BEST PERFORMANCE
Memory
32GB (2 x 16GB) G.SKILL Ripjaws Series Dual Channel DDR4/2666MHz
RAID Options
RAID 0 (striping)
M.2 SATA or PCIe SSD (for RAID configurations)
2TB (2 x 1TB) Samsung 960 EVO M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSD
1st 2.5" HDD/SSD Bay
2TB Seagate FireCuda Gaming 7mm SSHD (ST2000LX001) - installed by HIDevolution
2nd 2.5" HDD/SSD Bay
2TB Seagate FireCuda Gaming 7mm SSHD (ST2000LX001) - installed by HIDevolution
Wireless Cards
Killer™ Wireless-AC N1535 802.11 ac/a/g/n 2x2 NGFF w/ Bluetooth 4.1
Operating System
Genuine Windows® 10 Pro, 64bit, English
Operating System Reinstallation Media
OS Reinstallation + Drivers USB Flash Drive
Office Software
None
Extra Power Adapter
330W AC Power Adapter (supports 100-240V)
Audio
Foster Audio Speakers x 2
Back-lit Gaming Keyboard
Anti-Ghosting, Custom Macro Back-lit Gaming Keyboard
Keyboard Language
U.S. English
Branding
No Logo on LCD Cover and Bezel
Warranty and Service
3 Year HIDevolution Limited U.S. Warranty + LIFETIME HIDevolution Technical
HIDevolution Limited Global Warranty
NONE

 

Youre going to game on it right? Well then,
1. 16gb ram is just more then enoght for gaming.
2. If you have a lined budget, if i were you, i would definitely go for a 1080sli and opt out of those ssds, ask HID if they can do it now(you know you can add those ssd later if you want.
3. Tag phoenix for his tweaks!!

 

Congratulations man and that is one good wife. God bless her. Now you get a car and a beast of a laptop! What more could one want

Is that a V6 or V8 Challenger?

I have a BMW M4 Competition Pack

Anyway, back to your build

1) Great choice on the B173QTN01.4 screen, that way you won't have horizontal screen banding!

2) Regarding the GPU, IMO G-SYNC is overrated and only good to show high benchmarks, but in games, support for SLI is getting worse so it's a waste as games may or may not scale very well so. That, and SLI has micro-stuttering and if you have sharp eyes, you will see it. So good choice going with a single GPU. that's how I do it from now on, take a singly GPU, but the best one available.

3) Once you get it, feel free to tag me if you need help tweaking it; here are the Phoenix tweaks:

1- Uninstallation of all the Windows Store Garbage Apps like 3D Paint, Print 3D, Alarms & Clock, Feedback Hub, Maps, Groove Music, News, Weather, etc.
2- Removing all Windows 10 Privacy Invasion stuff like Telemetry, sending your keystrokes to Microsoft, automatically installing suggested apps in the background, allowing Microsoft to conduct experiments on your laptop, disabling automatic driver updates through Windows updates, disabling Windows 10 ads, disabling Cortana, Cloud Search etc.
3- Removal of nVIDIA and Intel Telemetry
4- Adjusting a lot of options in PC Settings like disabling Windows Tablet Mode (you have a laptop not a tablet), disabling suggestions appearing in the start menu, disabling automatically connecting to Paid WiFi Hotspots, disabling Game DVR which reduced performance in games, and a lot more.
5- Replacing Cortana with a much better search tool that finds results instantly called Everything which finds any file you want as soon as you start typing even a few letters of its name and it doesn't even rely on the Windows Indexing Service to do this!
6- Restoring the classic Windows Photo Viewer
7- Restoring the Classic Windows 7 Start Menu
8- Removal of the new and useless 3D Objects Folder that appears when you open "Computer"
9- Completely disabling Windows Defender from its roots (including all scheduled tasks and startup files) for those who want to install their own AV. ESET NOD32 Antivirus is highly recommended if you want the utmost security with the least system performance impact.
10- Updating all drivers to the latest versions in case they weren't up to date.
11- Disabling the performance hit that is caused by the Meltdown and Spectre patches recently released by Microsoft (optional, only if you don't mind having this security vulnerability and would rather have your CPU's full performance back)
12- Overprovisioning your SSD anywhere between 10-20% depending on how much space you can spare to ensure optimal and consistent performance at all times.
13- Blocking the Google Chrome Software Reporter Tool (which causes a high system load when it is scanning files)

 

Oh yeah, she's one in a million. We couldn't quite spring for the V8 so it's got the 6 but it's the same engine as our Rallye Durango and paired with an 8-speed transmission it really gets up and moves.

I think I went through about 40 different config choices before landing on that set of specs and that default monitor was making me nervous with all the talk about banding. Even though the SSD layout might seem weird it offers the best balance for work and play for my situation. I'm with you on the SLI and maybe I'll get lucky and the 2080 will fit when it comes time to upgrade.

I'll definitely hit you up if I get stuck while tuning it. Thanks for the offer

 

Woohoo! It's on the way! A good thing too since I just sold my Alienware today, lol. Should be a fun weekend.

 

I finally had a chance to get this heavy monstrosity all situated and run a few baseline benchmarks straight out of the box. I have no idea if these are good numbers or not but here they are. If I ever find some free time I'll start exploring overclocking.

Also, A huge thanks to the folks at HIDEvolution.com for putting together a helluva machine and especially @Donald@HIDevolution for making the entire sales/payment process as painless as possible.


CrystalDiskMark (2x 960 EVO - RAID 0)

Spoiler

Fire Strike

Spoiler

 

Nice muscle car... i wish we could get cars like this in France... ATM it's more like hybrid frenzy here due to the diesel taxes skyrocketting...
Agree with Phoenix about SLI for gaming. SLI/Xfire compatibility is going lower and lower... And for the games that still support them, you often encounter stuttering or tearing.
Enjoy you 5.5k laptop mate ! !

 

Thanks I am starting to see more hybrids on our roads as well but this car isn't exactly a gas hog so I don't feel too bad driving it.

I always saw SLI as a gimmick or a crutch to be used if your card wasn't powerful enough by itself. If I ever get a free minute I'll actually play some games on this thing and see what it can do. School and work seem to take all my time right now. Such is life.

 

With your QHD @120hz screen and the SLI, if the game is compatible, it should be fun!

 

Just dropping back in to share an update. After kicking myself for not choosing one of the lottery chips and having to deal with slightly elevated temps, both on idle and max (~44-98c), I decided to play around with the undervolt setting to see if I could make any headway and drop the temps.

The default HID undervolt (for my unit, anyway) in the PREMA OC menu, the "core/ring" voltage offset was -50 millivolts. I went to -100 and ran a stress test and it passed without issue so I tried -200 and almost immediately got a “ WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR” message, so dropped to -150 and ran the tests again with no issue. I could probably tune a bit further but the idle temps are now 35-38c without the laptop cooler and 29-32c with it so to say I'm happy is an understatement.

HID has put together a hell of a machine and it runs amazingly fast and I have absolutely no regrets about dropping a healthy chunk of change to get it. While I still may upgrade to a lottery CPU at some point, I do feel a lot better about running this thing hard once I get into the core courses for my major (Game programming/Unreal/Unity) in the fall and have to start compiling/rendering.

 

this reminds me of an old post I made 2 years back when I was disappointed with one 6700K after another, and I was done with trying different CPUs, repasting yada yada....I finally ordered a silicon lottery 6700K that ran @ 4.6 GHz 24/7 with max temps of 80C to 85C! compared to the 2 other 6700Ks I had in 2 different machines that were reaching 92C on the default 4.2 GHz

The old post....

 

Exactly. I never really considered it from a temperature angle since most everyone is focused on the performance and clock speed. I'll know better next time.