Sager NP8265-S buying experience (PNB = Awesome)

So, due to desiring a new laptop for grad school (and feeling that a 3.75 GPA after the first year merits one), I went searching for a new Sager. I saw the 8250 and 8255-S, and even though they had RAID, they had a tribal styling that I detested to the point that just knowing it was there ruined my love for 2x2.5 SSDs in RAID 0. I had been in talks with PowerNotebooks regarding a new laptop, and when the 8265-S Landed, I began to debate how to get it set up. My concerns were I wanted a 256GB SSD, the "non-standard" CPU, and a 780m for gaming at high / ultra while maintaining portability. Thus, after battling with my OCD, and probably sending Donald @ PNB up the wall with questions about the 15" Sagers, his ability to tolerate my constant questions, wondrances, etc., regarding heat, energy use, etc., while my trying to balance gaming performance with a sub-$2500 pricetag and a laptop that would be very usable for 2 years. With Donald as my guide and my awesome Customer Service Rep, my THIRD Sager from his business was configured as follows:

15.6” Full HD 16:9 Wide screen (1920x1080) LED-Backlit Display with 95% NTSC Color Gamut Matte Screen
30 Day "No Dead Pixel" Guarantee
nVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M 256bit w/4.0GB GDDR5
Intel Core i7-4800MQ (2.7~3.7GHz) w/6M L3 Cache - 4 Cores - 8 Threads
IC Diamond Thermal Compound - CPU + GPU
16GB (2x8GB) DDR3/1600 Dual Channel Memory
256GB Samsung 840 PRO Series SATA III Solid State Drive
RAID Disabled
6x Blu-Ray Reader/8x Super Multi Combo Drive
7-in-1 Memory Card Reader (All versions of MS + SD/MMC)
Intel Wireless-AC 7260 802.11 ac/a/b/g/n + Bluetooth 4.0 (Dual Band)
8 Cell Smart Lithium-Ion Battery 76.96Wh
Full Range 180W Auto Switching AC Adapter
Sager Logo
2-Year Parts and Shipping plus Lifetime Labor and 24/7 DOMESTIC Toll Free Support (Labor & Support paid by PNB)
NO Laser Tattoos - Personalize your Laptop
NO mSATA Solid State Drives
NO External USB Optical Drive
NO Operating System
NO Microsoft Office Software
NO 12V Auto Adapter

After this order (which was $2200, well under my limit... I could have gone for the 4900mq, but I couldn't justify 100MHz and 2MB L3 cache for another $185... I'm not a benchmarker, but a gamer), I received near-immediate email support from Donald and Nita regarding OS choice (expected, since I didn't choose one), however I'm going to put Windows 8.1 on the rig (as is on the 8130 I have) since it works fine. After, I received more top-flight service from PNB regarding whether I wanted a personalized ID tag on the laptop. I was amazed that Donald and Co. had remembered that this computer would be used in an academic environment, and it would be a small charge for the laptop to have identification to its owner. For a student, this is INTEGRAL. It's one small deterrent, even if only psychological, and i felt it was a good idea. When I wanted my middle initial added in, Donald told me it would be done, and based on the quality of my previous two sagers, I have no reason to question him, or his company's, motives. PNB has been top-notch in the past, and I'm eagerly anticipating laptop #3 from them.

I wholeheartedly recommend, based on this laptop, and my NP8662 (2009) and NP8130 (2011)'s respective performance, PowerNotebooks.

Jason

Status Report:

Far Too Long: Drove Donald up the Wall with questions about the NP8250 / NP8255 / NP8265-S
August 5, 2013: Ordered laptop with aforementioned specs
August 8, 2013: Shipped from Sager to PowerNotebooks for the final upgrades (I gather CPU / SSD / High Gamut Screen)
August 12, 2013: Arrived at PowerNotebooks.com for the upgrade goodies!
August 14, 2013: Shipped from PowerNotebooks via FedEx.

 

Awesome to hear that you had such a positive experience with Pnb. I ordered an 8265-S from Xotic with an 8970m, 16 gigs, and a 120gb intel ssd. I've never had a gaming laptop before so I'm pretty excited to see what it will be able to do. I'm still waiting on mine to arrive and it feels like it's taking forever. I originally ordered an np 8230, but a few days later the 8265 came out and I had to send back the original machine.

 

A gaming laptop is like a small, portable, all in one, desktop that happens to find like a laptop, but has near desktop horsepower. You should be able to play almost everything on high to ultra. Enjoy.

 

Thanks for posting your experience with Powernotebooks. I've been rifling through the various online sellers and they are on my top three list. It's posts like this which are making Powernotebooks float to the top.

As for laptop, presently I am leaning towards the Powerpro R 6:8-780 laptop, with customizing choices very similar to what you chose: nVIDIA GeForce GTX 780M, Intel Core i7-4800 or 4900 (I will probably end up shellingl out the extra $), IC Diamond Compund, 512GB Samsung 840 PRO (instead of the raid set-up) and Intel Wireless-AC 7260 802.11.

As a triple Saga owner, you are obviously very happy with their product. I was initially considering Sagar, but the price point on the PowerPro looks so sweet for what you get. How did you initially choose Sagar and what qualities make you keep coming back to them?

 

Nice, I'm getting the same model from xotic but with a 8970m instead. Not sure if the 780m is worth another $250 though. I plan to build a desktop after college when the next series of cards come out.

 

To answer WHY I initially chose Sager.

Back in 2009, after having TWO bad dells (a 600m and an XPS GEN I) have battery issues, I was trying to get the 7950 GTX replaced in my XPS m1710. I had asked, because of the Jewish Holiday of Rosh Hashanah, that I not be contacted during them so that I can observe them. The representative on the line called me a word which is pejorative towards Jews. THAT made me vow never to give another penny of my money to Dell again. However, I was in the market for a high-end gaming laptop that was 15" in size. I ventured into the Sager forum on a link from the Dell forum, and found LOTS and LOTS of people who liked their NP8662's. Combine that with the GTX 260m (a high-end laptop GPU at the time), and I was sold. I still have that laptop 4 years later, an it still works (albeit rather slowly).

Why though, do I stay with Sager? Because the dealers who are on this forum (ie: Donald of PNB) offer nothing short of top-flight, professional, service to their customers Additionally, at the "component design" level, I feel that high-performance components should have their own individual fans / heatsinks, rather than sharing them (as the MSI / PowerPro models do). To me, it just looks like one overworked fan (even though that ONE fan is larger), combined with upwards of 180w of heat, can result in the potential for throttling (which is what happened when Anandtech reviewed the GT70, see here. I don't want to ahve "cross-heating", so even if the 2 fan system is a bit noisier, it comes across as safer due to segregating the heat sources from one another.

Jason

 

No wonder you stay away from Dell. Sorry to hear about your bad experiences with them.

I read the MSI GT70 review you linked to, along with all the very lively discussions in the comment section. There was another recent review done by Toms Hardware that was quite a bit more positive MSI GT70 Dragon Edition 2 By Xotic PC: Haswell Goes Mobile - MSI GT70 Dragon Edition 2: A Gaming Notebook For The One Percent if you are interested.

Sagar is definitely still a contender with me, based upon both your experience and other reviews I have read. I want to get the best laptop I can possibly afford, as I only replace my system every 4-5 years or so. Funny thing is, I am currently running the GTX 260m in my 4 year old ASUS laptop right now. It hasn't given me the slightest bit of grief, and I can still run the less graphically demanding games no problem. If Asus allowed for a little more customization in the laptops, I might have gone with them again, even though they are a little pricier than Powerpro and Sagar.

There's no doubt that I am overdue for an upgrade though, as I will be doing work in graphical programs like Adobe Photoshop, Zbrush and Mesh-up, in addition to the increasing demands of the newer games.

 

The rig has left Nevada! Eagerly awaiting its arrival. I managed to get the day off of work and clear out my schedule so the FedEx truck can give me the rig personally :-D. Donald sent the info at 850am my time (550 his time... more amazing service by an amazing company) and even emailed an invoice as well. Three laptops in (NP8662, NP8130, NP8265-S), and this level of customer service never gets old.

THANK YOU PNB

Jason

 

Exciting! That's really fast and personalized service. That clinches PNB as my reseller of choice now.

Let us know your experience with it. How it feels, looks and runs compared to your old one. I'll bet that gaming is going to be awesome compared to your previous model!

 

The laptop arrives today, I'll have a review up ASAP

 

So are you happy with it? What are your impressions? Thanks to your comments and after some more research I am now returning full circle back to where I started, which is heavily favoring Sagar/Clevo. I am looking at 9380 because I need the larger screen for my graphic work, but I would be really interested to hear your experience now that you've had a week or so to settle into your new laptop.

 

So I got the laptop, same build and its pretty disappointing. It overheat like you wouldn't believe, played Final fantasy 14 which is not even an demanding game ,and the fan was so loud you could hear it all the way across the hall. Main thing I was concerned about was overheating when I talked to Xotic pc and they told me that this laptop will be fine. I can only imagine when I run games that actually ARE demanding, probally wont last me even a years time. What added to the fustration is it took Xotic PC nearly 2 weeks to deliver after I put down pratically 200 dollars to get it delivered faster. Was definately disappointed in both xotic pc and sager, won't buy from either ever again .

 

Hey there, sorry to hear the machine isn't working quite to what you expected. Feel free to shoot me a PM or email with your order information and I'll see what I can do to help you out in seeing what happened with those production times. It's pretty rare for a rush order to take 2 weeks to be delivered, even less likely that it cost $200 as that's quite a bit more than our rush production service costs. so if there is something that caused trouble with that I'd like to help you out.

Also for a little more clarification, what temps are you seeing when running what games, what FPS are you getting as well? FF XXIV is actually a pretty demanding game on max settings and I have no doubt it might make the system a little hotter than some people may like. I ran it on my machine, albeit a Zenbook with a 650m, and it made the thing hotter than I've ever felt before while still only getting a mediocre score on the benchmark.

 

@crimsiden: Still looking to try and help you out. I see that you only have one post, being the one above, so I can't send you a PM or determine which order is yours as of yet. If you could shoot me that requested information I'd love to see what I can do to help.

 

I'm interested to hear what your thoughts are for this build - especially in terms of heat & noise. Any chance you could give a quick summary?

 

Hey, guys

I'm about to purchase a new laptop and my expected setup was pretty much similar to the one ganzonomy posted, except I'm going for a 4700MQ. I wanted to know if anyone has an idea if a GTX 780M GPU would heat too much on a 15"6 laptop, and, also if special cooling, lilke the IC Diamond thermal Compound is needed.

Also, I'm from Brazil, and I'll buy the laptop from an online store, and ask them to deliver to my hotel or to a Fedex store when I go to the US in March. I'm kinda concerned cause if anything goes wrong, like a malfunctioning or mail problems, it would be hell to try to get ir right, cause then I would spend a fortune with mail to Brazil, that if I just don't lose all the money.

Would you have any advice? Powernotebooks.com really seem awesome, but do you think it would be best to just buy one from Best Buy, even if its more expensive and not quite the setup I was wanting?

Thanks

 

An odd place of the forum to ask but the 17" and 15" share the same cooling so you are all good.