[Review] HTWingNut Review of Sager NP8268 / Clevo P150SM-A

Funny thing you asked. I just reverted back to win 8.1 . Now here is the odd thing.. When i upgraded the win8.1 colour profile didnt get carried over, and now when i downgraded the windows 10 colour profile gets carried over, not reverted to pre-upgrade! Weird indeed! tomorrow i will try installing the supposed colour profile (since they gave a file in .icc format, in a cd too) ill see how it goes. Else i will need to hunt for a generic .icc file . Thanks for the reminder!

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I have a question, a pretty stupid one probably.


I know that the p150sm-a series has been discontinued. That means no more motherboard upgrades for us (i hope not)

But let's assume that this 'mythical' device does exist:

http://gizmodo.com/heres-the-box-th...u2e_Ig.0&utm_referrer=https://www.reddit.com/


(its basically a hub that connects to USB type C)

then do you think Clevo would release a new motherboard for p150 users, that we can have USB type C?

 

I've never seen them release new motherboards for older models before. When they do release a new board its for a new chassis or an update to a current one.

 

It would require a motherboard redesign and certification so there is zero chance.

 

Oh, and here i thought they will release an update to the current one with usb type c. Dayum.

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It requires a lot of work since pre-skylake you need to add another chip to the motherboard. Then there are the chassis changes.

 

Can i ask a noob question..Are all 150sm-xx mxm gpu? I can't seem to find it on the first post though.... Thanks

 

Thanks. There goes the dream of having uab c or thunderbolt 3 on the p150sm-a

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Yes they should all be MXM.

 

I am torn between clevo P150-sm and the rebel one.. who is more future proof?

 

Whats the rebel one? Do you have a link for it.

 

Indeed I looked through your past posts with no mention of it. Anything with MXM and the potential for an unlocked CPU stands a good chance of lasting a long time though.

 

Has anyone have overheating issues with the np8268? I have been playing games in energy star mode because when I go performance mode my sager just shutdowns after an hour or earlier..

P.S. I even set the fan to maximum but it only adds like 15 mns before shutdown.

My CPU temps goes upto 95c before shutdown.. my gpu temps are fine.

 

I would look into repasting the CPU.

 

Lift the rear of the machine to allow better air flow. Blow out the vents too.

I just got an Alienware M15x off ebay. The owner said it would not boot or when it did it would shortly shutdown. I have disassembled the machine and found the GPU heatsink completely blocked by what appears to be a solid wall of lint.

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But I just bought mine like 6 months ago..

I'll try to see, I think even tho I have a cooling pad, the surface of the pad heats up.. Do you think i should buy a new cooling pad?

 

I really can't say. I have never used a cooling pad.


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Have you talked to your reseller?

 

Have you opened it up to clean out the vents and fans. While the computer is just 6 months old, dust and debris can build up pretty quickly depending on your environment. 6 months is a good time frame to make a habit of checking.

 

Ok I have cleaned it up already.. Ill try testing it again.. in my gaming when i get home.. do you think the problem can also be the 180w powersupply? can that cause shutdowns when it goes off the limits?

 

If the power supply is having issues, then yes it can do that.

 

I just put the power usage to energy saver then slightly overclocked my gpu.. i get same performance in performance mode.. is this fine?

 

Power supplies will only get weaker over time and they pose the greatest potential risk to property and life if they are not working properly.

 

Question to You guys out there with nvidia GPU's. How long your notebook's run on battery ?

 

I think most were like 2 to 3 hours if I remember correct, for normal usage (not gaming).

 

Has anyone of you guys experienced that when you change the numpad side of the keyboard's LED, it wont change and the omly color was blue. And if u set it to to other color, it wont light up.

 

That sounds like there may be an issue with the other colour LEDs on that side.

 

is this a hardware problem? are there anyways to fix it? I have tried updating drivers and it seem to not work, although at first the driver that came from the cd only set the keyboard to blue, I had to download a newer driver from the net to set the others to multicolor

 

What is the difference between p150sm and p150sm-a ??
P150sm can be equipped with 880m ?

 

Chipset revision and 2nd mSATA port official support mostly. Yes it can, though these days Prema's system bios and a 970M/980M is a better option.

Sounds like a hardware issue needing a keyboard replacement to me. You could check to see if the LED power cable on the keyboard is in properly.

 

I dont have knowledge in opening a laptop, (although I have opened it before to replace hdd and add ram but thats all)
thanks anyways

 

does the SM version can be upgraded as well? if yes do you think g-sync would be enabled (980m). and also do you guys think there would be a support for the next gen gpu's (1000 series if thats what they call it)

 

No. You need a G-Sync compatible motherboard/BIOS.

 

I'm late, but I had the same issue when I received the laptop. It is a broken trace on the ribbon cable connecting keyboard to motherboard. I opened it up and a crack going thru two first traces was clearly visible. No signal for R and G and only B was working on the numpad area. XoticPC talked to Sager and they cross shipped a new keyboard to me.

They do fold this ribbon aggressively and if it is not perfectly matched creates pressure point that leads to cracks. When I got the replacement I made sure to be very gentle with it and not to fold it like a letter in an envelope. Just a slight bend to still give it some flex when mounted.

 

No idea on next gen, you can put a regular 980m but not the g-sync, that requires an eDP disay and compatible display with firmware keys.

 

Hi, its me again! I was wondering if anyone has ever done a laptop chassis DIY or transferring the insides of the sager np8268 to another laptop chassis (a much lighter or thinner)?

 

You can't really do that due to the custom nature of the layout etc.

 

Hi, I wanna ask. This is follow up to the USB port issue;


1) I have 2 USB ports and 1 Combo port on the left side of the P150SM-A

The first one (next to the LAN jack) has some sort of power issues. Even plugging in to a handphone creates two results:
a) the phone actually loses charge (despite saying charging)
b) it has a very nasty behaviour of "connecting" and "disconnecting". But sometimes, it works just fine.

Port 2, and Port 3 can be used, but also displays "negative charging" (as in it says its charging, but the power goes lower and lower)

What kind of USB power issue is this?



Secondly: I'm itching to ask this:
- About Windows 10. A year ago when Win10 came out, the drivers from Microsoft was wonky, and a lot of things went bad (including the colour configuration I had from my Clevo reseller). How viable are the drivers today for the P150SM-A, since I'm actually itching to try to upgrade again (if the free upgrade is still available, I think?). The one time I went back was of course the telemetry stuffs (which can be mostly mitigated) and the drivers problems, but I suppose if the drivers don't have problems anymore, I will seriously consider upgrading once again.)

Thanks.

 

Have you tried using a different USB cable at all? Not sure if maybe there is any damage to it, that might cause it to not charge properly. What kind of phone are you using? If you are using an android, you should get a notification on the phone asking you what to do with it when it is plugged in. I would check to make sure it is not trying to tether or only run as a USB storage device possibly. Also, if you have developer options on, maybe try turning USB debugging off if it is on.

Drivers seem to be mostly good at this point if you upgrade to 10. Plus, you always have the option to roll back within 30 days after doing the upgrade if you want (just don't delete the "old windows" file from your comptuer or in clean up).

 

So.. I recently purchased 4k TV(along with HDMI 2.0) cable, which supports 4k@60p hz.

I realized that even with the HDMI 2.0 cable, NP8268-s(or P150SM-A) cannot render 4k@60hz,
because both the Display Port and HDMI are connected to the Intel HD4600(iGPU), not to eGPU(for me, 870m).

I tried to search for a way to turn off the iGPU, but I've found out that NP8268 is "muxless" laptop, so it doesn't support
the option to disable optimus(in other words, turning of iGPU).

I personally do not think turning off the iGPU will necessarily solve this problem.

is there anyway I can use my 4k TV @60hz, with NP8268-s??
(I want chroma subsampling(4:4:4) to work also ).

 

If you have a TV with HDMI 2.0, but the computer has HDMI 1.4, it will only go as fast as what 1.4 can handle and won't reach 4k 60hz. Display port will generally be better for 4k.

 

You could use the club3d displayport to HDMI 2.0 adapter.

 

Hi, sorry for the late reply. I kind of did as you asked (bought a set of cables) and I seemed to be able to finally narrow the issue to 2 things:

1) changing cables work only if i'm on a single device: let's say i'm using a mouse on my right USB port (the only lone USB port) and i'm charging the phone on the left USB port (without anything else plugged into), and it works, although not as fine as the day I bought the laptop back in January 2015 (where I remember the phone charges quite fast on the top most USB port on the left side)

2) the moment i plug in things like USB External HDD, sometimes it works, sometimes complete loss of power. (the much dreaded rapid connect and disconnect sound from windows OS). However, again, plugging in only the HDD, i don't get much issues. A friend determined that my USB physical port may have deteoriated due to wear and tear (not sure how) but my USB port doesn't wiggle though. He says I need to plug it in carefully and slowly (not sure how much slower) until I get it "right".

3) I suspect that my laptop may have a gimped USB power output (but in another thread I've asked, there was a forumer who insisted that Clevo based laptops do only have low power output)

4) My reseller in Malaysia asked me to swap OS (i have no idea how to do this since my OS is actually in the SSD[its my first SSD purchase], and I'm not too keen on changing the OS just to check for a possible USB / motherboard power chip failure, since the laptop i'm using is 'mission critical' / very indispensable to my work and personal life)

Meanwhile, the temporary solution that I have is to purchase two USB 3 powered HUBs (one to be placed at work place, another at home) and see if it alleviates the issue at hand, although its not exactly a long term viable solution when I need to work on mobile.


Just to point out:
I connect (at the same time)
a) a mouse / mouse and keyboard (an old logitech gaming keyboard with 2 usb2.0 ports, which i'll daisy chain a mouse at it, or together with an older thumbdrive / pendrive (newer thumbdrives connected will provoke the windows on the P150SM-A to declare "not enough power", rendering the keyboard, mouse and thumbdrive unusable. I connect this to the right side USB port)
b) a tablet (not Wacom, but its rated at 5v 500mAH and does not have its own external power supply)
c) a cooling pad (some chinese made unknown branded cooling pad which connects to the USB but again, no individual power supply)
d) a USB 3.0 external HDD from Lenovo / Western Digital, with no external power supply.
e) a handphone for USB tethering (if i don't use the external HDD, then i use the handphone)


I'm thinking that there's a possibility that IF, and I mean IF there was actually no problem with the laptop whatsoever; probably
a) the BIOS had locked the power to USB to a low one (but I understand that other P150SM-A users can easily power up all the four devices i've stated above with absolutely no issues). I'm on a stock bios my reseller gave (I think, since its very basic, and doesn't have any power utilities to tweak power to CPU, GPU, or USB, or anything like that)

or

b) whatever peripherals that i've connected somehow have higher demand than what the laptop could originally supply, (despite one "high power USB on the P150SM-A), and therefore some of the devices have the constant disconnect / reconect sound)


I would appreciate any advices given.

 

All the ports should deliver their rated power at the same time really.

You can easily try a different OS by taking an image backup of your current install, putting over a fresh one and then restoring the image if you want to after.

 

Heya, just did a fresh install. Everything was working fine, and after rebooting to install Win10 Version update (where the computer reboots and has to install everything in an upgrade-like manner) my realtek audio doesn't work anymore when plugged into the headphone jack. Speakers work, but just no audio no matter what I try with the headphone jack. I've tried uninstalling the drivers, blocking Windows from installing said drivers, I've tried Sager drivers, Realtek OEM drivers, I just can't get the headphone jack to work anymore, and I have no idea what could be causing the issue. I've tried reinstalling the control panel and drivers in a host of ways and just can't get it figured out. Any suggestions are welcome.

http://www.howtogeek.com/223864/how-to-uninstall-and-block-updates-and-drivers-on-windows-10/

 

Does the audio panel detect you have plugged in a device at all?

 

uh oh.

Hi folks. Just found out that my P150SM-A's thumb reader not working (windows asks for input, i swiped it, but nothing happens). Anything that i can do to fix this? I've reinstalled the drivers but doesn't seem to work?

 

It does, yes. Speakers switch off to go to headphone input, and yet zilch coming out of my headphones which work just fine.

 

Have you shined a light into the jack and had a look to see if anything is stuck in there or looks out of place?

 

Yes -- nothing appears to be in the way, looks like every other port. Very strange...