Xotic pc

6/23 - If any of you are wondering who you should go with for your next build, don't think about it, just go to XOTIC! A+! It really doesn't get any better than this company. I requested an RMA because of an issue that I was having (which I ended up resolving myself) and it would have involved a complete reconfiguration since I was going to a system with a desktop chassis - they sent me the notice saying that they were just waiting for the RMA number and it would be done! Absolutely stellar service, it would have been an absolute fight with any other company.

Since I fixed the issue, I decided to cancel the RMA but just knowing that they would have gone above and beyond for me like that - they have a customer for life!

I left my original post below but I have upgraded them to the only A+ I've ever given.

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I know its a bit late but I wanted to see what the post-sale experience was like as well.

Overall, I'm satisfied with XOTIC. I placed the order online and the whole order process was smooth and I received my machine quicker than their estimate and quicker than my own original expectation.

The copper cooling upgrade is definitely a joke. I got some heatsinks added to the back of the GPU heatsinks - 6 on each. Nothing on the pipes or anything, definitely do this yourself.

The white glove packaging service made sure that my machine arrived in perfect condition.

The size of my t-shirt was supposed to be large per my order, they sent me extra large. No big deal, I ran it through on hot and it shrank and fits perfectly now.

I'm not as happy about post-sale support. When you send an email, it can take two or three days to get a response and I'm still baffled over my email asking for replacement screws for the GPU heatsink assembly being answered with "can you take pictures of the screws so we know which ones to tell Sager to send?" - it doesn't get more specific than GPU heatsink... I ended up getting the screws quicker from Eurocom on eBay - I had to pay for them but I have them and have no need to play email tag with them now.

Basically, its the typical retail model. Pre-sale and immediately post-sale, service is great. Once you have the machine, your priority to them appears to go down. Its disappointing but its better than most companies still so I am still satisfied. Now should I ever actually need service... well, we'll see how that goes.

At the end of the day, I would still recommend them. The issues that I had were minor on the grand scale of things. If I was unhappy, the machine would have already been back for a refund (I received it on the 21st so I'm technically still in my 30 day return period even now) and I would have gone with another reseller but there really is nothing major to complain about.

I'd give them a B+ and to put that grade into perspective, Comcast gets a D, Dell gets a D-, T-Mobile gets a C, and my bank gets the only A I'd give out (they have the best customer service of any company I've ever dealt with).

EDIT: I actually changed my review to an A- after learning that the picture of the screw thing that delayed my request for screws was a Sager policy, not an XOTIC one. Highly recommended reseller!

 

Hi Ethrem,
Our emails are all supposed to be replied to within 24hrs. Sometimes over the weekend it can take longer, never should it take 2-3 business days to get a reply. If it was after the sale and you needed parts as mentioned, we do work as the middle man between you and Sager. Sometimes waiting for their reply can make a reply take longer but this should only happen once you have a email chain going and we need to wait for their reply.

I do agree asking for pics for replacement screws does seem silly. However Sager requires it. It just saves everyone time incase the wrong screws are sent out. This has become their policy since wrong screws have been sent before.

Your priority with us never goes down regardless of how long you've had the computer. As mentioned above there are factors that can make certain replies take longer. We and pretty much every company knows the importance of after sales support. We want you to be happy with your computer and continue to come to us for your new ones years down the road and to suggest us. Word of mouth is very important, especially for a boutique company. Good to hear you're moslty happy with us though. Just let us know any concerns you have down the road and hopefully we can change the B+ to an A.

 

Thanks for the reply Hutsady.

I do believe that there was something going on when I started the email because you guys had a notice on your site that said tech support was only open from 8-5 for a few days or something of the sort so I may well have fallen into that donut which is why it took so long.

I'll change it to an A- in light of the screw thing being a Sager policy, I can't dock points from you guys for something that Sager requires. My impatience with the matter was why I chose to go on eBay and find them myself. Luckily it wasn't expensive and honestly, searching out that part shed a little more light on just how easy it is to get parts for a Clevo machine which means that I'll likely stay with Sager machines and yes, I will likely buy from XOTIC again in the future.

Now hopefully I don't have problems with the machine any time soon lol. I managed to get my temperatures down with a full repaste so I'm happy.

The mistake with the shirt actually worked out in my favor. Sometimes I don't like to admit that once a shirt has been washed and shrunk, a large is too small now

 

I know what you mean by ordering something because of impatience. I think shipping companies make most of their profits from expedited shipping options.

Our tech support is 24hrs but M-F, we are working on getting 24hr tech support on the weekends as well.

Thanks for the A- upgrade :thumbsup:, if we're right up there with your bank, we'll take it. But always looking to get better so any constructive feedback is appreciated.

 

You guys just got upgraded to an A+

I had some overheating issues and wanted to swap my machine to a 9570, figured it was going to be a fight. Nope, got the email this morning saying that the request was sent to Sager and I'll have my number in 48-72 hours.

Simply outstanding service!

I ended up fixing my issue so I decided to cancel the RMA but I'm sending anyone I know who needs a machine to you guys. That is absolutely, positively, the most outstanding customer service that I've ever seen! Switching from a 9377 to a 9570 would have involved changing pretty much the entire configuration of the machine and it blew my mind when I got that email. A+!

 

Awesome, thank you for the upgrade!!

Was there anything you did to fix the problem beside the full repaste you mentioned?

 

I've got the system elevated in the back and I dropped back to the stock vbios.

It throttles in benchmarks but it doesn't throttle in games.

I have no problem admitting that it was my own fault and that is part of the reason I canceled the RMA - I'm not going to inconvenience you guys for something that I did.

My temps are better now than they were stock (stock was running mid 80s under load, now I'm averaging 80C on the secondary card and 76C on the primary - still hot compared to previous models with 780Ms, even when they're overclocked beyond 880M speeds, but better than 90C+!) so its nice to know that my repasting skills are better than the temps were making me think that they were.

If you guys have people complaining about high 880M temps, I'd inquire about their vbios. It wasn't high when the initial flash happened, it creeped up over time, which is why I couldn't trace it back to the vbios at first.

My trackpad is still iffy on the left button but if that goes out, I'll just use a mouse.

It sucks that these 880Ms will never have the performance that the last generation did, especially when paying 5 grand for a machine, and please don't void my warranty for this as the cards are fine, but it really sucks that nVidia crippled them... Most people are going to get this machine and flash a modded vbios because it does throttle out of the box in benchmarks - pretty severely in fact, down to the 700s on the secondary card - but in games, it seems fine for the most part looking at GPU-Z logs. Once they flash that vbios, their temps will be out of control running at the same clocks as the card would be running normally and its not easy to pinpoint the problem.

 

Oh yeah, the other thing is that I changed the pattern of tightening on the screws on the secondary GPU. There is one corner that doesn't get as much contact pressure as the rest so I changed the pattern in the service manual to screw that one in first on top of putting an extra dot of IC Diamond in that area and it dropped temps by 3-4C under load.

I found out quickly that thinner pastes like MX-4 won't do in this machine, you have to stick with IC Diamond. My temps were outrageous with stock vbios and MX-4 paste (90C load average).

So in the end, I guess it was a combination of things that came together but flashing back to the stock vbios was the last thing I did and its been fine since.

My other issues I'm not going to worry about right now. Lid flex is there but I'm careful with my machine, left button I've just learned where to click it, and the 4940MX being a little fireball is disappointing when you see the numbers the Ivy Bridge and Sandy Bridge extreme chips pull but that's just Haswell. Wouldn't do me any good short of going to the 9570 with a 4930K (another reason that I was willing to go through the hassle of switching to that machine) but I built a desktop as well, which I didn't plan on doing originally when I got this machine, so if I need the processing power I just run that.

 

Thanks for letting us know what you did, it probably will help a couple people out down the road to diagnose what's going on.

We like to stick with IC Diamond as well, its just been so consistent over the years. Maybe there will be some better drivers that come out down the road that will make it perform better while keeping the stock vBIOS. Just check em out as Nvidia releases them.

Crazy you built a desktop as well for needing more CPU power then the 4940MX, you must using some pretty intensive software

 

Normally I wouldn't be so forthcoming about modding the system but you guys haven't given me any reason not to trust you and that's the exact reason that I told you is so that you can help others who will inevitably find themselves with the same issue and not know why. Saves you guys some RMA headaches too.

The newer drivers actually broke a lot of cards. I think I'm the only one that lucked out with 340.43 and has a card that is functioning properly who was using the modded vbios at the time. Others have been throttled beyond an Intel HD 4600 and can't seem to repair it or they had to go back to the stock vbios because the modded vbios began acting like the stock vbios (same functional limitations) but with added heat. Clevo could fix the problem though. They really ought to loosen up the voltage limit (its at 1v while the card hits 1.018v boosting stock so it throttles due to power limits) and it would solve a lot of issues.

I honestly had never repasted before in my life - I've been building computers since I was 10 years old and I'll be 30 this year but I always stuck to stock pastes. Get a Sager machine and that's out the window lol!

The 4940MX is kind of disappointing... I see people with the 4810 and 4910 chips getting better overclocks than I do at lower temps. If there was one decision that I wish I could take back on this machine I'd drop the 4940MX and instead go for larger SSDs. Its just a little ball of fire. I know that 90C is spec for the chip but when you've got video cards pumping hot air around too, things really get toasty all the way around. I've got an 80mV undervolt on it and it runs 3.79GHz on all four cores with around 87C if its running 8+ threads. My desktop is a 4770K @ 4.4GHz (1.32v - I got a pretty bad chip) but the Corsair H100i keeps the temps under 70C unless I use OCCT which fails.

As for my software... its really just my need for speed to be perfectly honest. A perfect example is that Watch Dogs is the most demanding game that I play which with 4xTXAA and Ultra only puts the GPUs @ 85% average utilization - but I still want more haha.

I have been known to get bored and have VMWare building code for a Gentoo build or something though, can't wait to see how this machine handles that since it has all of the new virtualization extensions and my K chip in my desktop does not.

To give you an idea of the machine I am coming from... Inspiron 17R with an i5-2450M, Intel HD 3000, 8GB of RAM. This machine is crazy overkill compared to what I had.

Previous to the 17R I had an M17xR1 Q9000, 4GB, 260M SLI which is actually still kicking but beaten up pretty badly between 2009 and now.

 

Just received my 18 today, it's in perfect condition, will do some testing tonight but very impressed so far with Xotic. Thank you guys

 

Do you mean Alienware 18

 

You're very welcome Splintah. Let us know your thoughts!

 

Is something up with support? I called them at 1PM and didn't hear anything back, how busy are they?

Sent from my HTC One_M8 using Tapatalk

 

xotic is actually what brought me to these forums. I'd keep calling them.

 

I left a message. I suppose its possible that something happened when I recorded the message since my phone likes to act up here and there but the call quality was flawless on my end so I doubt it.

 

Ethrem,

We usually reply to VM within 24 hours Also you can send an email to [email protected] for any questions as well. Let me know if you do not get a call today.

 

They called me this morning but I missed the call. I ended up receiving an email regarding the RMA I had requested previously and I'll just use that for correspondence. Trying to see if you guys can get me the converter box since I already paid more for a second power adapter (165) than I would have paid for a second adapter plus the converter box on a 9570 (125) since this machine absolutely needs it if you're going to overclock the 4940MX in an 880M SLI config as I've overloaded both adapters tweaking XTU as soon as I fire up a demanding game :|

Mythlogic has added the option to purchase a second adapter plus the converter box for the price of a second adapter (165) recognizing the need for this machine to have dual adapters if there is any tweaking of the CPUs or GPU, especially the MX which will eat up all the power you feed it until it exceeds its 95C maximum temperature and starts to throttle.

 

Well I ended up having to RMA my machine after the slave card that had been problematic since I got the machine decided to act dead and come back to life. Xotic had me an RMA number within an hour of sending the request and Sager replaced both video cards and shipped the machine back to me after just 8 business days. Got it yesterday and the new video cards do indeed work better although they are still hotter than I'd like and if pushed the stock behavior is excessive throttling still but hey, they haven't crashed yet so that's a plus.

Anyway, another 5 star experience from XOTIC, first 5 star for Sager and a 3 star from nVidia... They may run hot but they're fast... Its too bad they can't maintain their stock clocks though. -_-

Sent from my HTC One_M8 on Tapatalk