Clevo NH5xHP(Q) Owner's Lounge

Hi guys. I recently received the Clevo NH55HPQ. Not much in terms of reviews online, so here are few notes on it, in case someone is interested. The chassis however is the same as in the previous generations NH5x, and Jarrod's Tech has a review on Youtube of the NH58RD.

I got it from PC Specialist in the UK (they call it 15.6" Elimina). The main specs are:
- Intel Core i7 11800H
- 16 (2x8) GB RAM 2933 MHz (the i7 11800H should support 3200 MHz, but it wasn't offered by PC Specialist)
- Nvidia GeForce RTX 3060 TGP 90 W (max 105 W)
- 144 Hz display LP156WFG-SPB5 (LGD066A)
- SSD Samsung 970 EVO Plus (the i7 11800H should support PCIe 4 SSDs, but none were offered by PC Specialist)
- Intel WIFI AX210 (however, no WIFI 6E routers are available in my country so unable to try the 6 GHz band yet)

Weight is 2.1 kg (without the power adapter).

Here are my impressions.

The laptop's performance is quite good. In Cinebench R23, it scored 1514 in single core and 11362 in multicore. In PCMark 10, it scored 7035 (10380 in Essentials, 9168 in Productivity, 9929 in Digital Content Creation). In 3DMark Time Spy it scored 7819. Cyberpunk 2077 on Ray Tracing Medium setting plays without any issues.

Pros:
- The Tiger Lake CPU is quite fast and seems to run fairly cool (it didn't go above 75 degrees C on the Cinebench tests)
- Great touchpad (kudos to Clevo for sticking to touchpads with dedicated buttons)
- Great keyboard layout (while this of course is a matter of personal preference, I really like that Clevo continues to provide a keyboard with full-size cursor keys, numeric keypad and dedicated HOME/END/PGUP/PGDN keys)

Cons:
- Poor cooling for the RTX 3060, not allowing it to reach full potential. In stress tests and demanding games, the temperature limit of about 87 degrees C is reached very quickly (within a minute), reducing the power draw to between 75 W and 85 W. So unless you have a cooling pad that can keep the GPU temperature down, you won't gain any additional GPU performance in Performance mode (where the GPU in theory should be allowed to use up to 105 W).
- Port selection is subpar. There is no Thunderbolt (Clevo seems to reserve it for the P range), the miniDP port was for some reason downgraded to version 1.2 (it was 1.3 or 1.4 on the previous NH generations), and of the three Type-A USB ports only one is 3.2 Gen 2 (the second is Gen 1, and the third is 2.0).

Summary:
A decent mid-range gaming laptop that is also great for work, thanks to the touchpad and keyboard.

 

Have you tried elevating the back of the machine with something the size of a soft drinks bottle cap?

 

Thanks for the tip. I will give it a try.

I did email PC Specialist. They consider hitting the GPU temperature limit to be expected for this design, and recommend a cooling pad.

 

Most modern GPUs do either play to a power or temperature limit depending on the design.