Droidmahn's Clevo P775DM3/Sager NP9172 Review

I'll keep this as short as I possibly can. If you have any questions I'm more than willing to answer just ask them below!

First things first. Why, out of all the current models of Clevo laptops did I choose this one? Mainly because I only wanted 1 gpu. As boring as that sounds it's literally the only reason I didn't go with a P870DM3.

I'll start with a TL;dr then go in to more details further down.

TL;dr: I love it.

My gripes would be temperatures that REQUIRE undervolting (more research to come) to attain boost clock on gpu, keyboard travel distance is too little for how thick a laptop this is and the key spacing is generally cramped despite the fact that this unit is large enough to accommodate a full sized keyboard + macro row, and sweet mother of god you could bludgeon someone to death with the 330w power brick. Oh and for some reason the headphone ports are on the right side which irritates me greatly.

What I love most would be the absolutely gorgeous IPS display that sustains 100hz without frame skipping, sheer power in this form factor, and the imo "correctly" placed fingerprint reader.

Here comes the nitty gritty.

Here's how I ordered it from Xotic

Spoiler

I purchased a 32gb 2400mhz ram kit and a Samsung 950 Pro 512gb NVME to add in myself. I found them cheaper than having Xotic do it. Plus it gave me a reason to open it up and take pictures!

We'll start with the screen. I ordered the 1080p IPS 75hz G-Sync display in hopes of getting it to at least 100hz if not 120hz. After a lot of testing I got it sitting pretty at 100hz without frame skipping

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As configured the laptop weighs 9lbs 5.9oz and 12lbs 7oz with the power brick.

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The interior cooling looks really cool *ba dum tiss* and seems like it SHOULD do an adequate job of keeping temps down, but without undervolt it doesnt. In Overwatch my CPU got to 89 and my GPU to 90 and started clocking down. Not a thermal throttle mind you, just not getting the full boost clock.

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Here's some more glory shots of the internals

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I'll run a suite of benchmarks later today, but if you want to see something specific let me know in the comments and I'll do my best to answer each and every question. I've ordered some IC diamond and may try and delid the CPU to lower temps without undervolt. Maybe even a little overclocking.
Edit: BENCHMARKSSSS
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/14749906?
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/14749834?
Unigine Heaven and Valley coming soon!

Edit 2: TimeSpy! http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/14750077?

 

Looking forward to the delid results

 

Great write-up and photos!

Thanks for sharing them with us!

 

why try and lower temps "without undervolt"? UV is THE best method to shave a lot of C off the hardware, especially CPUs and no worries, its been like this ever since the 4790K, basically all desktop K cpus in clevo machines need a lil "luv" to run properly and cool stock voltage is just ALWAYS way too high!

 

Though it makes one wonder... Why do they run a higher voltage in the first place? I mean why for real.... There must be a reason...

also, if a single bit of information, like a single 0 or a single 1 is misinterpreted, does the entire system crash and goes BSOD, or it can work with corrupt data? I mean, working with really sensitive data, and knowing this risk of under volting, I have to ask this question

 

I need to delid mine at some point but need to source a good razor blade.

 

Depends what the 0 or 1 is. If it's part of a character, maybe you'll store a Y instead of a Z into memory. Or if it's a calculation, it could turn a 7 into a 71 and render your sprite halfway across the screen. Or if it's an opcode, it could be JMP instead of ADD and then suddenly the program counter is pointing at some arbitrary place in memory.

 

Oh.... I need to seriously consider undervolting then and run a few benchmark tests to see how stable it is!

 

Look up 'Rockit cool' and get a delidder for $30. No vice needed... and full proof

 

Added some benchmarks

 

The default fan setting does not provide enough high fan rpm to control the tempture. The fan rpm ramian in same level after the temp reaching 70C but I think it can run faster.

 

While some chips require less voltage, some require more, so Intel tries to pick a middle ground option that works for the most people, and they try to err more on the side of caution.

 

its all about stability. intel goes way out there to make 150% sure their chips hold up in all kinds of scenarios. we just dial it back to 100% stability and save 10-20C while doing it

also, naturally, undervolting always requires stability testing. same goes for overclocking, underclocking, overvolting, etc.... these things arent just set and forget, they need testing!

 

Please point me to a "how to test if it's stable" when you can.

I need to make sure that there is not a single error, since I work with sensitive data

 

The idea of tweaking a "live" system (working on critical data) makes me cringe.

 

I don't need to tweak it per say.

But I need it to not shut down due to overheating while using 6700K and 100% CPU + GPU usage either.

Will it shut down and create data loss due to overheating? Will it throttle? I am dead serious when asking this..

 

If it's critical data then anything without ECC error correction would be a no for me.

 

Do we have that on laptops?

I understand what you mean pretty well, but there are constraints applied to everything, better make save points for data and backups, but I wanted an answer to my other question...

The problem is that I make backups every at a fixed interval, don't want to lose work over using a certain hardware.

I'm using 4710hq at 99C+16gb of normal ddr3 ram and so far no data loss or anything, but I get hold ups at times and it's pretty scary. (since rendering and working with very large textures can push all hardware in a corner).

 

You would need to put in a socketed Xeon and ECC sodimms. This is not something we support (I am not sure if it would work or not to be honest). There are also now soldered Xeons in some machines out there.

 

Okay then..

would it crash with my data from overheating at 99C in strong render?

supposing I can get it stable somehow, or leave 6700k as it comes out of the factory.

 

It should not crash but if you are going to be smashing both the CPU and GPU at the same time it certainly wont maintain maximum clocks.

The Xeons I just remembered require a different chipset this generation which is why you wont find one in a Z170.

 

You could underclock it at stock voltages. That would reduce the temps a ton and would still be perfectly stable. With that said, if you're working with data that is that sensitive, you should be doing real-time and incremental backups so a potential crash shouldn't impact you (even under completely stock settings) and preferably even use ECC RAM.

 

Some things I've discovered about the cooling:
The thermal pads on the GPU are too thick. The cooler doesn't have the ideal amount of contact on the GPU die which I figured out after noticing that there was an excessive amount of thermal paste applied. I used some EK pads I had lying around and repasted with a smaller amount of AS5. Combined with a -110v undervolt of the CPU my temps went from 90 to 86 with full boost clocks on the GPU and from 88 to 76 on the cpu. I'm buying a de-lidder for the 6700k next friday and will post those results. I'd like to find a good middle ground and some headroom so I can actually overclock the GPU at the least. I removed the thermal tape covering the ICs on the GPU and covered them with clear nail polish. No idea if it helped temps at all just drunk me doesnt like warranties apparently.

 

You removed the thermal pads on the vrms and insulated them? BAD plan.

 

Which thickness pad did you use, 1.5mm?

 

God no. I'm not that brain dead, even drunk.
I'm talking about these things EDIT: I believe they are capacitors, but I'm not an electrical engineer so that's just a pissing in the wind guess. I just remember that they can short if you use a conductive paste (at least on a 4790k) so I used clear nail polish to coat them

 

I honestly dont know the thickness I had them lying around from an old EK waterblock. I'll measure them when I get back to my tools on tuesday

 

Phew, you had me worried! Caps and resistors in those positions. Insulating them is fine lol.

 

Now it got me thinking.

P775 was designed with a thermal pad on GPU in mind instead of using paste, since the distance between GPU and heatsink is not that small.

I wonder if there are very high grade thermal pads out there in the wild!

 

Where are you hearing this? Last I checked it's paste between the die and heatsink like every other high performance laptop in existence.

Thermal pads top out at 17W/mK. Fujipoly makes them.

 

Paste for the GPU die, pads will never match paste for this type of job. Tweaking the pads paid dividends on my NP9873 and any shared/large area heatsink usually does better when tweaked.

 

I've heard that the clevo bios was applying to much voltage on the CPU like +100mV...can someone confirm ?

 

Yes Intel is doing this for all Skylake CPUs... Always undervolt lol..

 

Intel certainly go towards a large margin, it makes their yields better.

 

It seems to be done to a greater extent in Skylake.. So many people I know off have undervolted quite a bit to drop temps..

Sent from my LG-H850 using Tapatalk

 

Glad to see the machine seems to hold up to expectations. I'm gonna grab one as soon as I have the necessary funds. Been using that old Sony VAIO laptop for a good six years now, and while it was a trusty work machine for smaller tasks, it's time to retire this obsolete piece of tech and invest into something more future-proof (plus, getting back into tinkering is gonna be fun; haven't had the pleasure since my high school days, when LAN parties were still a common thing, and the only military shooter of relevance was CS 1.6).

 

Anyone know of a way to make speedfan work for fan controls? Clevo's software leaves much to be desired.. no custom fan curve that I've found

 

That's quite a while and a rather large boost in performance.

 

Heh, for sure. The VPC was a solidly powerful machine back in the day for a consumer-grade laptop, low-tier GPU aside, but it has really done its time.

 

Thanks for putting up this thread. I'm glad that I've looked, because I'm working on an extensive review of the P775DM3 and didn't want to double up on making another review thread.

I've just finished delidding and repasting my 6700K last night and the results are amazing.

Grizzly Conductonaut + Under Volt (-225mv Core & -225mv Cache)



See the area where it was starting to burn? I pushed this thing pretty hard when obtaining stock data...No wonder my out of the box temps were rubbish. (High 90's and hitting 99C)


Buying the delidding tool is highly recommended. Literally 3 seconds and done. I used to be a razer blade by and even vice grips, but I'm telling ya this kit is worthy to be on the list of the best things next to sliced bread.

As a recommendation, if able try to use liquid metal (Grizzly Conductonaut or CLLU) between the CPU die->IHS and if you're feeling brave, liquid metal the whole thing.

I can confirm that liquid metal works great on the 775, given that the heat sink is making good contact with the chips. It's good that you're doing the nail polish trick, but to be extra safe, it would also be a good idea to use electrical tape to tape around the die as well in case any liquid metal spills over the edges as LM will stain the pcb like no tomorrow.

I've been benching and recording data all day. Everything with the delid and liquid metal seems to be smooth sailing...

Here's a screen shot showing my CPU Temps after the operation....



I've just ran Unigine Heaven and the Max GPU Temp is 69C.

Looking forward to hearing back after your repaste and delid!

 

I'm buying the delid tool and everything else I need this weekend. Will do the deed next weekend

 

What delid tool did you use out of curiosity? not really too savvy in that domain, is there like a recommended one?

 

Hi Droindahn,

I ordered a similar setup to yours from HIDevolution.. can wait!!

EVOC P775DM3-G 17.3" Custom Built Gaming Laptop w/ nVIDIA GTX 1080

LCD Panel

17.3" Full HD (1920x1080) LG IPS LED Antiglare Matte Type Display - with nVIDIA® G-SYNC™ Technology

Display Warranty

30 Days Zero Defective Pixel Warranty (perfect panel guarantee) - $35.00

Video Card

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 w/ 8GB GDDR5 X - NVIDIA G-Sync Enabled w/ Unlocked Prema vBIOS - Latest Updated Version once available - Contact us for details - $655.00

Prema Custom BIOS

Prema Custom BIOS - Latest Updated Version once available - Contact us for details

Processor

HIDevolution Delidded - Unlocked and Overclockable 6th Generation Intel Core i7-6700K Quad Core Processor, 4.0 GHz (Max Turbo Frequency 4.2GHz), 8MB Smart Cache (Coollaboratory Liquid Ultra REQUIRED) - $182.00

Thermal Paste for Silicon Lottery Delidded CPU

Coollaboratory Liquid Ultra 100% Metal Thermal Interface on CPU, IC Diamond on GPU - $30.00

Memory

16GB (2 x 8GB) Dual Channel DDR4/2400MHz - $50.00

RAID Options

no RAID (1st drive as primary boot drive, 2nd drive as storage drive)

M.2 SSD Slot 1 (supports M.2 PCIe and SATA)

Samsung 950 Pro 512GB M.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe 3D-VNAND SSD - Up to 2,500 MB/s Read-1500 MB/s Write - $365.00

M.2 PCIe NVMe or SATA SSD Slot 2

None

1st 2.5" HDD/SSD Bay

1TB 7200 RPM SATA 6Gb/s Hard Drive

2nd 2.5" HDD/SSD Bay

Empty HDD bay (with caddy/adapter)

External Optical Drive

External DVDRW drive - $30.00

Wireless Cards

Killer™ Wireless-AC N1535 ac/a/g/n 2x2 NGFF w/ Bluetooth 4.1

Operating System

Genuine Windows® 10 Home, 64bit, English - $80.00

Operating System Reinstallation Media

OS Reinstallation + Drivers USB Flash Drive - $25.00

Office Software

Microsoft Office 2016 Home and Business - includes Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook - $200.00

Power Adapter

330W AC Power Adapter (supports 100-240V)

Battery Options

1 x 8 cell battery - 82Wh

Audio

Onkyo Speakers x 2

Back-lit Gaming Keyboard

Customizable Gaming Macro Back-lit Keyboard

Keyboard Language

U.S. English

Branding

EVOC Logo on LCD Cover and Bezel

Warranty and Service

2 Year HIDevolution Limited U.S. Warranty + LIFETIME HIDevolution Technical Support - $100.00

Just want to thank Donald S from HIDevolution for helping me spec this badboy out..

 

Rocit 88.

::iunlock::

 

That or a steady hand and a razor:



Either way don't forget you are throwing the warranty out on it

 

Gone with the wind...

::iunlock::

 

Are both m.2 slots reachable from below next to the sata ports?

 

1 m2 is next to the sata ports, the othr one is next to the VGA. You can reach both easily.

 

I delidded the CPU (after an hour diagnosing a no boot issue) I must have had a horrible batch because My temps decreased by 23c on just the CPU and a good 10c on the GPU. I now roll with full boost 24/7! Frikin love the Rockit 88 delid tool. Made it so easy

 

Nice, what did the paste job look like?