[Review] Sager NP7850 (Clevo N850HP6)

Seller (XoticPC) experience to come later!

My configuration ($985) :
7700HQ, GTX 1060, 8GB RAM, No HDD, Intel 8265

Chassi:
Given this is my first 15 inch gaming laptop, I can’t comment much. It feels like plastic, nothing striking to WOW anyone, but it’s satisfactory. I've done a quick video showcasing the chassi as I found very few videos for this model:


Ports:
In terms of USB, I have a weird issue which I’m not sure if it’s on my side of things, Windows 10, Nvidia, or the laptop itself. The problem is whenever the dGPU is sleeping and only the iGPU is used (optimus doing it’s thing), specific actions causes the system to lock up momentarily.

As an example, if I start an installer which requires UAC, a window for UAC with the button Yes/No appears right? During that moment, there’s a 0.2 second lockup where mouse lags out.

By running a second external monitor which forces the dGPU to switch on, the issue disappears. However I have noticed when I try to force run the installer with integrated graphics, it gives the error “You don’t have the privilege to select the graphics processor in this menu”. Do note I’ve installed all drivers directly from Sager’s website. I will have to investigate further.

Communication:
I opted for the intel 8265. Unfortunately I'm experiencing jittering lag spike with this chip. Picture below:

Upon uninstalling the driver + software, and installing only the driver from Phoenix, running WLAN optimizer from here, and reinserting the WiFi module, it seems to have helped. I’m still getting occasional spikes, but it is much better. The several hundred millisecond spikes can cause online multiplayer game to pause momentarily, meaning this is a huge issue for fast response competitive games (e.g. Overwatch). I may try to buy another intel 8265, or "downgrade" to other popular chips and see if that fixes the issue.

Maintenance:
Upgrading the RAM, storage, WiFi module, or repasting is fairly easy. 16 screws on the back to take off the back cover. Then you’ll have access to most of the things you want. I have made a video, I hope this helps!


Software:
Flexikey is a software provided to control the keyboard’s 3 rgb section, backlight, macros, and profiles. It seems functional.

CPU Memory OC is another software provided to track CPU temperature, utilization, voltage, and frequency. It also tracks memory usage and speed. It doesn’t seem to offer any overclocking ability.

Control Center provides fan speed control, laptop keyboard windows key enable/disable, keyboard sleep button function (hibernate or sleep) and some other functions which windows already has.

The fan speed control is pretty limited. From what I understand, Clevo still chooses to control fan speed by voltage, rather than PWM, so fine tuning fan speed isn’t a thing. The options in CPU custom fan speed are start temp, stop temp, and full fan speed.

The start temp is when the fan kicks in, the stop temp is when the fan stops, and full fan speed which limits the fan speed. To give an example, if start temp was set at 70, stop temp set at 60, the laptop allows temperature to hit 70c before fan kicks in, until temperature lowers to 60, where the fan stops. There’s no fine tweaking of the fan curve. I will talk more about the fans at the noise section.

Full fan speed is capped at 80%. To engage 100% fan speed, the keyboard shortcut fn + 1 is needed. I've found after using full speed, then doing fn + 1 again to return to normal speeds. It switches to "Auto" fan speed instead of "Custom". So you'll have to reselect your custom fan speed profile every time you utilize full speed.

Keyboard:
Again, this is my first 15 inch gaming laptop. I personally use a cherry mx blue keyboard. Overall I find the keyboard satisfactory. I’d say it’s soft, mushy, but requires a good amount of force to actuate so as to not click them accidentally by resting your fingers on it. I do have a video demonstrating the keyboard flex:


Touchpad:
Functional, not as slippery as I’d like (although I have very oily/sweaty fingers), does support multitouch actions (e.g. two finger scrolling, zooming) which is nice.

Display:
Full 1080p, IPS, very satisfactory. It’s not high quality, but it doesn’t scream budget either. You can check the chassis overview video to see how it performs at odd angles.

Cooling/Noise:
The cooling and noise on this laptop is borderline acceptable. As said, the fan is controlled by voltage so there’s no smooth curve. What I dislike is the fan can’t run at a low enough rpm where it’s cooling the laptop while being very quiet. The lowest speed the fan runs is loud enough to be very noticeable.

There is a major design flaw with the laptop, it seems to be suffocating when placed flat on a surface. I found by lifting the laptop roughly 1.5cm above the surface (adding some cardboard to the standoffs), the temperature is greatly improved.

With CPU undervolted and setting fan start temp to 70 and fan stop temp to 60 (default’s 60/50), the fan remains mostly off at idle/light workload. It'll still kick in occasionally. It depends on the ambient temperature of the room, if my AC is up, the fan kicks in less, if not, it kicks in enough to be annoying. Another downside is the keyboard and trackpad gets warm to the touch since there’s no active cooling. If you’re like me who uses an external keyboard and mouse, this won’t be much of a problem.

The GPU exhaust is to the right, so if you’re right handed mouse user, watch out. I suppose you could take a piece of cardboard, fold it one way, and put it near the exhaust as a makeshift vent to push the air upwards. Be sure to leave enough space for the laptop to not suffocate.

CPU:
I’ve successfully undervolted by 0.1V using intel XTU. I may switch to throttlestop to see if I can undervolt the iGPU and cache as well. But using XTU is all I’ve done so far.

I’ve repasted both the CPU and GPU with Gelid Solutions GC-Extreme.

So with repaste, undervolt, and elevated bottom, on sustained load, the CPU reaches and stays at 85-86c. With all core sustained at 3.39ghz. (same numbers with GPU fully loaded)

Here’s a cinebench score:
(EDIT: Ran this again after a few month. I guess Windows 10 was updating in the background which used up CPU. The rerun got 742cb, much higher than what's shown here)


GPU:
The cooling of the dGPU may be the worse part of this laptop. After repaste, and elevated bottom, on sustained load, the dGPU reaches and stays at 89-90c. With clocks around 1530mhz. Without elevating the bottom, the temperature goes to 93-94c. (same numbers with CPU fully loaded)

Here's a heaven score:


Speakers:
The speakers are not suitable for music. Perhaps good enough for watching youtube videos, but the bass is muffled and the sound in general seems off.

Conclusion:
For $985, this is a pretty good budget 1060 laptop if you can overlook the cons of this laptop. But if you got the cash to spare, I'd look for a laptop that doesn't have the noise and cooling issues this laptop suffers from.

 

There is an extensive video on Youtube, mostly verbal speaking about fan profiles and such, but he did mention that the Gelid repaste he did was worse than stock as far as temps were concerned. Might be worth a watch if you haven't seen it yet.

Search: "Clevo Chassis 7700hq GTX 1060 Thermal Results"

 

Are you referring to the youtube channel Bob of all trades? Looks like he's using the Sager NP8156, which is a vastly more expensive model.

 

Didn't notice the affiliate link, this is my fault. However I still stand on his response that the Gelid repaste was worse than factory. I ordered a NP7850 and hope it comes in soon, had them apply IC Diamond as a freebie, once I play with it, undervolt, etc I can post my results. Might be worth a $10 repaste to see if your temps go down, even a couple C is better than none

 

Cool! Hope you enjoy your laptop! I technically did get a 1-2c drop in temperature over stock. Curios to see what kind of numbers you'll get.