[Review] Sager NP8651 / Clevo P650SE with GTX 970m HTWingNut's REVIEW

If you have task manager open during that it will tell you which background process is getting CPU hungry.

 

You can turn off a lot of the data collection stuff in the preferences. I would never go back to Windows 7 or 8, much prefer the cleaner UI of Windows 10

 

Certainly over 8, compared to 7 I like it a little better for some things and not so much for others.

 

Anyone have issues with The Division and keyboard lagging or getting "stuck"? My character will continue to move when i release my W key. The length of the continued movement seems to correlate with how long the key was held down (the longer the key was held, the longer the character runs after releasing the key). I'm currently using an external keyboard but that is extremely inconvenient and uncomfortable.

 

Does it happen on both the laptop keyboard and external, or just one? I don't think that is a commonly complained about issue with the division. Does it happen in other games as well?

 

It happens on the laptop keyboard only. I've only had trouble with The Division. There was nothing spilt on the keyboard and i'm fairly certain that it's an issue with the game itself. It isn't a common problem with this game but i have found a handful of others with similar issues (see below).
http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/1406745-quot-Stuck-quot-keys
http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/1392070-Movement-with-Keyboard-stuck
http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/1343232-Sticky-Key-Controller-Problem-Forums
http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/1411328-quot-Stuck-lag-quot-keyboard-Forums
http://forums.ubi.com/showthread.php/1379423-input-lag-and-stuck-moving-Forums

There is a known issue when using the Logitech G933 headset and logitech issued a patch for it. I use a G930 headset and I tried the beta software and i've also tried with all USB/Logitech devices disconnected and logitech software uninstalled and the issue remained.

I submitted a bug report to Ubi but i'm not getting my hopes up as this doesn't seem to be a common issue.

 

If it's only happening in the one game you can be certain the game is as fault, interesting, must be causing a conflict in the I/O (read very poorly programmed).

 

Hi all,

I bought my NP8651 about 6 months ago, and noticed the temperatures I got were very high (for both the CPU and GPU). I downclocked the CPU and lowered its voltage slightly, which led to temperatures that were comparable to the ones HTWingNut posted in the OP, so quite reasonable, even on high loads.
but one of the issues I encountered is that the fan speed doesn't change automatically, even though it's selected in the control center. changing these settings does nothing whatsoever. the only way I know the fan speed can be increased is because I tried the maximum setting, which makes the laptop hover and decreases controllability. anyone know how this can be fixed? flash the BIOS, perhaps?

(I recently ordered some Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut paste, so I will see what that will do to the coolness of my baby (in a hypocoristic sense, not on my real babies, I would never do that, and haven't got one to try it on anyway.))

 

Updating to the latest BIOS would be the first thing i would try. When i first got my NP8671 the fans would constantly "pulse", speed up and slow down within a very short time frame. A BIOS update fixed it.

 

thanks for your reaction. I've emailed Sager for the newest version.

 

Did the BIOS update help?

 

well, I wasn't able to get one, since apparently the second hand machine I bought is not a genuine Sager, even though it is the exact same build. or maybe the sticker with the necessary number has been taken off for reasons unknown. anyway, the Sager help desk wasn't able to help me. any other place I could get the update?
temperatures are a lot better since I applied new thermal paste, however. I'll post a small comparison here if anyone's interested.

 

You could try Prema Mod. It's what i've been running for almost a year with no issues. It's the 2nd to latest stock BIOS with a bunch of features unlocked. You don't have to use the advanced features and if you don't it would operate identical to stock.

 

If you don't havewarranty concerns the Prema files are a fun option.

 

thank you, I'll try that.

 

Hey peeps long time no see!

I also agree, prema mod all the way! I've since used it and its extremely worth it.

I still have this laptop and it's working great! So I have a question!

At this time there's some new storage options available on the market. I was wondering if anyone used these? Or better yet, if they are compatible with the NP8651?

Samsung 950 PRO Series - 512GB PCIe NVMe - M.2 Internal SSD (MZ-V5P512BW)

https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-950-PRO-Internal-MZ-V5P512BW/dp/B01639694M/ref=cm_cd_al_qh_dp_t


I believe they are pci-e but I don't know if they will be able to fit in the m.2 slots? I plan on upgrading from these sticks I currently have (they work great but I'm a upgrade freak! If there's something better out there I love getting the new stuff lol)

Transcend 256GB SATA III 6Gb/s MTS800 80 mm M.2 Solid State Drive

https://www.amazon.com/Transcend-1
28GB-MTS800-Solid-TS128GMTS800/dp/B00KLTPURI/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1469172947&sr=8-2&keywords=transcend+m.2

 

NVMe drives won't work in that model, it didn't have support for it. It is the right size, as 22x80mm is the standard size for M.2's and used across a lot of manufacturers.

 

Darn. Well thanks for letting me know anyway! What would you reccomend I get to replace my transcends? I'd like to buy the fastest SSDs it can support for M.2 or PCI-e while also maxing out the slots but have no clue where to start, I saw some made by samsung but I guess I might as well ask the expert!

Here's the samsung card in question btw:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01G844PC0/ref=twister_B00U82O92U?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

 

If you get a PCIe M.2 it would need ot be an AHCI, not NVMe. In that model, you can either use one PCIe M.2, or you could have two (or one) Sata M.2. Performance is about the same if you have the 2x Sata M.2 drives in raid 0. I believe a drive like a SM951 (AHCI version) would work and should be good speeds, otherwise you could maybe find two Sata ones, maybe compare prices to each other.

 

Awesome! I was looking that exact card up actually lol. SM951 it is then! I was thinking on trading the speed and getting another transcend RAID 0 configuration, but at this point it doesn't seem all that worth it since prices have gone down a bit (not to mention I just bought a external drive a few weeks ago haha). Thanks again for all the help with this!

 

The biggest advantage of a raid set up would just be storage size. Since you can get 2x 512gb in a raid configuration (maybe even 2x 1TB drives), you could have more space there, but the SM951 should be a little bit faster though, and less chance of failure compared to raid.

 

Yup the SM951 AHCI version is your best bet sadly, the NVMe versions are not supported in the 8651

 

Oh well at least it was worth a shot lol. I went ahead and bought the item, I'll be sure to post diskmark benchmarks as soon as it gets installed! Pat is right, I may only use RAID 0 for performance when considering extra storage space from now on, and since it's one card which is exactly the same size as what I have now with my RAIDs I suppose it's worth the trade off for the extra speed.

 

Exactly, it is always a personal preference for what you are using the computer for.

 

You should still get to what the chipset is capable of for the most part.

 

Indeed! Also for reference here's a recent benchmark of my RAID 0 config.




This is compared to my last benchmark. (Note that the benchmarks were different then so I don't know how much has actually been improved.)


Also for comparisons sake the AHCI seems to do pretty well against it's NVME counterpart (atleast so far). Apparently on SSD userbenchmark it's doing pretty well too

http://ssd.userbenchmark.com/Compar...msung-SM951-AHCI-PCIe-M2-256GB/m30950vsm24782

Obviously these results don't compare to 100% real-world usage, still something interesting to mention!




EDIT: Got the new card installed and holy cow! Such an improvement of speed!



Needless to say, I'll be sticking with PCIe now haha. The only thing though that seems iffy is that my 4K results seem pretty low. That normal?

 

That is a nice improvement, definitely! Thanks for sharing the results of all of that.

Yes, 4K results are always drastically lower than the other tests. Seen that on pretty much every model I can think of that I've reviewed and tested.

 

It's nice to really break that 1GB/sec barrier Same speed as 3 high end SATA based drives there.

 

Hi guys I have a question about the USB port on the left side.
I know that both on the right provide 500mAh for external devices but the left one has the "fast charging" logo, does that mean it provides more power when needed?
Im asking this because I'm pluging in some peripherals with USB hub and they are not getting enought power, then im trying to do the right mix of peripheral/hubs/ports so everithing has enought power to work.
Thank you!

 

It's for charging things while the machine is not powered but is not rated to provide more power. I would stick with a powered hub if you can.

 

Lots of people told me about the powered hub but the ones that sell here in Brazil are too expensive or will fry your computer. Do you know of any way to check how much power each peripheral draws?

 

Look at the input rating on the sticker of each device. There are some decent hubs out there. I use an anker one with my own power brick to provide loads of extra power.

 

a quick question concerning a BIOS flash (which I still haven't performed): the Clevo readme says to disable UEFI (I checked and have an EFI system partition on the boot disk). can I simply disable this in the BIOS before I flash it?
I have Windows 7 installed.

 

Yes since you are not flashing from the boot drive.

 

thank you.

 

Just be totally sure the file is correct and take down your bios settings if you are not sure what you have set.

 

a very fair point, and i messed up because of it.

installation of PremaMod went smoothly.

but now, on boot, it will, depending on the BIOS settings, 1) go to an endless Windows 7 loading screen, 2) black out after loading files twice when I select the repair Windows option, or 3) loop with a message concerning Intel UNDI PXE-2.1.
I only once managed to start it in Safe Mode, but it got stuck after loading classpnp.sys.

(I remember when installing Windows 7 (since I don't like Windows 10's personal approach; it's an OS, not a girlfriend) I had to play around with the Legacy/UEFI settings. it's probably something to do with that.)

 

Check your raid/ahci setting too.

 

so, after lots of tweaking and trying different combinations of the UEFI/CSM/SATA settings in the BIOS, I finally got Windows to boot by simply using the 'Windows Boot Manager' option on the last tab of the BIOS, which restarts the system and somehow finds the right way to boot.

(sidenote: I think when I removed Windows 10 and installed 7, I either started using or got rid of the GPT partition, the latter option being more logical, and I guess that has had some repercussions. any thoughts on this?)

but now, with Premamod installed, the fans still behave exactly the same: in the control center I can put them on 'maximum', which works fine, but on the other settings ('automatic' and 'custom') there does not seem to be a way for them to automatically change with the temperature beyond about 40%.

 

Are you loading intel xtu?

 

only for checking the temperatures. why?

 

alright, another update. I'm guessing this isn't entirely the right place, but might be helpful anyway.

after the Premamod installation, I was only able to boot into Windows using the Windows Boot Manager on the last tab of the BIOS. the only thing I was a little concerned about at that point were the small graphical artefacts along the topmost horizontal line, but everything else ran as before.

this morning, however, in Windows, the screen suddenly froze.
so I restarted, but it wasn't able to get into Windows. I checked the BIOS, and the SSD, on which Windows is installed, didn't show up anymore. I tried some different settings, nothing helped, so I took out the CMOS battery for thirty second, hoping the default settings would at least be able to recognize the disk, but to no avail.
then I inserted a USB stick, just to see if that would pop up, and it did. the next restart, the SSD had 'magically' reappeared, and I was able to get into Windows. the first thing I did there was planning Windows Error Checks for both disks on startup.
but this time on boot the machine seemingly got stuck on that same black screen with the artefacts, although this time more and more lines were showing up, and some of the pixels were blinking, and I'm lead to believe this is where the disk error check is being performed, albeit in that indecipherable way.

so, first of all, any guesses as to what might cause these problems (apart from me being a noob and having experimented with all this in the first place)?

furthermore, can it be harmful to let what I think is the error check continue this way?

 

@ Meaker@Sager or @HTWingNut Is the colored keyboard from the new NP8153 compatible with NP8651? Considering they they seem to all use same chassis for most P650**......

I kinda thinking I want a new color keyboard instead of the boring white backlit on this NB. No plans yet to upgrade though the new one is really tempting.

 

I wondered if anyone here has had issues with the Nvidia 970m card. Specifically, does what I say below sound like mine is dead and if so, how screwed am I?

Just recently I noticed the screen going black for a second randomly (didn't pay it much mind) and then suddenly today performance dropped across the board. So I checked device manager (this is in windows 7). I see the little yellow warning sign on the nvidia gpu device under display adapters, and it tells me it cannot connect with error "code: 43"

Now, I've already run through about every possible combination of updating, uninstalling (via DDU, cleaning registry), reinstalling old and new drivers for the card to no avail. The code 43 error persists. As far as I can tell, since no attempt at updating the drivers seems to work, this means my card has died. Does that sound right, and has that happened to anyone else here?

I've seen that the 970m is soldered in for the Sager np8651. To me that mean there's no easy way to replace the card, and so I basically need to buy a whole new system to get a working card? I'm thinking, yes (I need a card for my work and games), which is a shame since the np8651 has served well for ~1.5 years of heavy use (sans overclocking).

Hopefully someone here can suggest something I may have missed, but otherwise good luck my fellow owners, and long live your 970ms.

 

Same exact thing happened to mine. Likely it's caused by thermal expansion/contraction weakening the solder joints of the 970's BGA (Ball Grid Array - the type of soldering used to connect/attach the video card to the motherboard). If you google around you will find information on BGA rework/reflow services. I've contacted them all, they won't touch it. Enjoy your $1500 web-browsing machine. I'll never buy another BGA video laptop.

 

It can actually be the bumps between the GPU and the package rather than the package and the motherboard which can make repair (without a replacement chip) futile. Contact your reseller regarding diagnosis and repair.

 

From my experience it doesn't matter if it's between the package/GPU or GPU/motherboard. None of the repair services I talked to are willing to attempt to reflow/resolder it. The only "repair" that will be offered from any reseller is a replacement motherboard at $900 + labor.

 

Most of the places round here are at least willing to do a best endeavours no guarantee of fixing try.

 

I bought from powernotebooks, which is now defunct. I've accepted that it's time to buy now rather than wait and shop around for repairs ... my experience working without the GPU this past day has made me realize that I will need a replacement much sooner than I first thought.

 

Then it's a sager machine and support would be through us. You can always contact our support team to enquire about options.