My MALIBAL Satori P170EM Review

MALIBAL Satori P170EM Review - UPDATED

I have built performance desktops in the past, and have done my fair share of tinkering, modding and overclocking in the past, but I would not consider myself advanced by any means. I am quite comfortable working with internal components on computers in general, and I occasionally have need to do so at work, but until now, I have never owned a performance laptop (indeed, this is only the second laptop I have used, not counting work computers). I must say, I am quite pleased with the MALIBAL Satori. My full review follows, but I do not include any pictures. I can do so if anyone requests them.

7/14/2012 Update: By request, I have added some photos and some benchmarks. New text is in purple.
7/16/2012 Update: Another photo and a few additional benchmark updates are added. New text is still in purple.

My P170EM Configuration
Processor: Intel i7-3920XM
Memory: Samsung 16GB (4 DIMMS) DDR3-1600MHz
GPU: AMD Radeon HD 7970M 2GB GDDR5
Display: AUO 17.3” 1920x1080 FHD LED (60Hz)
SSD: Twin 256GB Crucial M4 drives in RAID 0
Optical Drive: Blu-ray player
Wireless: Killer 1103 Wireless-N
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate w/SP1 (64-bit)
Thermal Paste: IC7 (CPU and GPU)

Ordering (9/10)
MALIBAL has a sleek, clean website, and ordering the laptop was simple. The choices were all very clear, and in the case of the 7970M GPU, it was clearly marked that is was pre-order, available beginning in mid-May. (That turned out to be far too optimistic, but the issues that arose from that were not MALIBAL’s fault, nor did they have any control over it; I do not dock them any points for that, as they did the best they could in keeping everyone updated on that situation.) All applicable discounts were applied, and email instructions for authenticating the credit card payment were simple to follow. My only suggestion with this phase would be to clearly describe the components, and give the performance numbers (for example, the memory choices should include the timings and voltage, the HDD/SSD info should contain the read/write speeds, the wireless options should include the maximum throughput speeds, etc.). Because some time has passed between my order being placed and this review being written, they have started to do this on some choices, so kudos to MALIBAL.

Shipping & Packaging (9/10)
The packaging was standard, although it was double-boxed, and the primary box was corrugated for additional strength. I chose 2nd Day Air via UPS, and it arrived on schedule; MALIBAL at the time did not offer any free shipping incentives. I took the day off to await the delivery of this laptop, and when it did arrive I was surprised that the deliveryman was simply going to leave it without requesting a signature. For such an expensive laptop, I would almost expect that MALIBAL require a signature at the delivery destination, and I would also expect that they provide some kind of shipping insurance as well (that would add additional cost to the shipping in most cases, however). I also realize that many people have asked about shipping via the USPS, but the lithium-ion batteries are problematic. Again, not MALIBAL’s fault, it is just the nature of the business. The screen was protected by multiple sheets of plastic to keep it from scratching, as was the plastic bezel on the screen. The lid and aluminum deck were also protected by adhesive plastic which peeled off nicely, leaving no residue. The battery was wrapped in bubble-wrap, and the documentation/disks/power brick were in a cardboard box that was inside the included carrying case. All in all, it was very securely packaged.

Appearance (10/10)
I am biased here; I think the Satori is absolutely gorgeous, and the pictures on the website do not do it full justice. In fact, my impression of the website pictures is that the Satori has a dark, greyish tint to it, and that caught my eye because it looked perfect. Well, upon receiving my Satori, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it is black, and not grey at all. If I had looked closer at the photos, I would have seen it, but this is even better than what I was expecting. It has a very sleek look to it, and the MALIBAL branding is like a frozen laser etched something out of liquid mercury on the lid. Very nice! There is no MALIBAL branding on the interior beneath the display, as shown on the website, but that does not factor. The first thing my wife said when she saw it was, ‘Oh, that’s gorgeous.” The only issue I might point out is the THX and HDMI stickers that ship on all the Clevos; I don’t mind them as much as I thought I might, and they are usually mostly covered by my hand anyway, but I may do the old hairdryer trick and get them off at some point to really complete the sleek look of this laptop. The Onkyo speaker logo is screen-printed to the chassis, and it would be nice it if was a sticker that could be removed, but that’s just minor nitpicking.


The laptop is fairly thin for what it does; it is no ultrabook, though!


The tape is hard to read, but it is just over 16" wide.

Setup (10/10)
The laptop was very simple to setup. Unpack the battery, pop it into place, plug it in, and I was ready to go. I chose to have Windows 7 Ultimate preinstalled, and it booted up with no problem. After a few simple information screens, I was in business. The Bigfoot Networks card, the webcam, and the THX sound all had installation icons on the desktop; one click and they installed. The package also contained my Windows 7 Ultimate disk (OEM), a driver’s disk, and a Clevo manual, as well as a nice cloth for wiping down the laptop and removing smudges from the aluminum chassis. Everything worked right out of the box, and I don’t think there is any room for improvement here (at least in my case). There were a lot of updates to run through Widows Update, and that did require about an hour and a few reboots, but I had no problems whatsoever with that. As far as power-supply size, it is 7¾” long, 3½” wide, 1¾” thick, and it weighs 2.8 lbs. according to my kitchen scale.


As you can see, the power brick is aptly named.

As it was missing in the original review, here is a quick rundown of the available ports on the Satori:

Front
none

Left
1 x DSD/MMC/MS card reader
1 x combo e-SATA/USB 3.0 (powered)
2 x USB 3.0
1 x 10/100/1000 RJ-45 LAN
1 x mini IEEE-1394a

Right
1 x headphone jack
1 x microphone jack
1 x S/PDIF-out jack
1 x line-in jack
1 x USB 2.0
1 x optical drive bay

Rear
1 x security lock slot
1 x Display Port
1 x HDMI
1 x DVI
1 x DC-In (main power)

I had stated in the comments that this laptop had a total of three USB ports, but I was mistaken, as I didn't realize the e-SATA port was a powered USB 3.0 combo port as well.

Display (10/10)
This thing is gorgeous. I originally went with the Chimei 72% matte screen, but when they offered the AUO 72% option, I let Fenrir talk me into it. I am glad he did, as this thing is beautiful. I am sitting with my back to a few windows as I type this, and I have no glare/reflection issues at all. The screen is vibrant and easy to read; I have tried it in direct sunlight, and the screen is still very easy to read unless you directly reflect the sun into your eyes, but I have no plans to use this laptop outdoors so that likely is not an issue. Colors are well-defined and look very crisp, and I have no stuck/dead pixels to report at this time. I don’t do any photo/video editing or digital art/Photoshop, so I do not need any color calibration, but a disk was included with my order even though I didn’t order it. I am not sure it is for this machine, as the label indicates it is for a glossy screen. And in case you are wondering, the $30 matte upgrade option was not available at the time I ordered, and if it was, I might have gone with that instead as I was primarily just looking for a display that was not glossy. Even so, I do not regret the extra dollars for this display, as it is far and away the best display screen I have used on any of my computers. The webcam is housed in the top of the display bezel, but I have not used it yet. If I do, I will update the review to comment on it. The hinges are very sturdy, and I have no issues with the screen moving from the spot I position it in.

Keyboard & Touchpad (9/10)
The keyboard is the standard backlit option, and it is a raised Chiclet-style design as far as I can tell (I am not a keyboard aficionado). The keys are well-defined, and they make a quiet click when you press them. The backlighting is awesome, and this is the first keyboard I have used that includes that feature; it is awesome for night gaming or web browsing, and even in daylight it makes the keys “pop” that much more visually. It is a nice treat, and none of the keys seem to require any more/less pressure than others to register. My few issues are cosmetic, as this is a keyboard designed with gaming in mind, so the layout is different than what I am used to. It is still a standard English, full-size QWERTY keyboard, but there are a few subtle changes that are taking me some time to get used to. For one, the Windows key is on the right, which pushes the space bar one key-width to the left; as a result, and mostly due to my poor typing habits, I sometimes find myself hitting the \ key instead of the space bar, which makes for interesting typing. For another, the right Shift key is only slightly larger than a normal key, to allow space for the Up Arrow key, and sometime when I try to capitalize something I find myself moving up one row of text. I would also like to the Delete key positioned differently, but it isn’t a huge deal.

I have noticed, now that I have used this laptop for about a month, that I sometimes have problems with the L key. I'm not sure if I am not pressing it firmly enough, or if my typing habits need to be refined, but sometimes it doesn't register for some reason. Spellchecking almost always catches it, but if you see a few words in this updated review missing a letter or two, you will know why.


Here is a picture of the keyboard with the default blue backlighting on. It is a cloudy day outside and I have the lights turned off in the room, but you can still clearly see the lighting effect.


Here is a closeup of the keys; I am not sure if this is chiclet style or not, but the point was made in the comments that the style of keyboard is different than what is shown on the MALIBAL website. I included this new picture so you can see better keyboard details.

The touchpad has slight horizontal texture to it, meaning that it feels smoother moving your finger left-right than it does up-down, and there is multiple functionality built into it. It is not a haptic device, so you don’t get any additional tactile feedback, but it can zoom/shrink screens like you would on a phone, and it can also scroll. I have not used it that much as I prefer a trackball, but it has functioned perfectly when I need to use it. In between the two touchpad buttons is the fingerprint reader, and this is something that I do not plan to use so I can’t really comment on it other than it seems to be positioned nicely.

Below is a picture of the touchpad, so you can see the texture that it has. The picture quality isn't the greatest coming from my phone, but you should be able to see the horizontal grain.


CPU (10/10)
I went with the i7-3920XM only because of the unlocked multipliers for overclocking. At the time I placed my order, it was not known that the i7-3720QM and the i7-3820QM had the potential for unlocking an extra 400MHz; if I had known that then, I probably would have opted for the i7-3820QM instead. Even so, the processor has been perfect thus far, and I can’t really find any fault with it. It scores a 7.7 in the Windows Experience Index (WEI) before any overclocking (and I have gotten it to 7.8 with some OC’ing), which is much better than anything I have used in the last four years (since my last desktop build, in fact). On my initial overclocking attempt, I used Intel XTU to attain 4GHz stable, and I may tinker with it some more. From what I am seeing around the web, it shouldn’t be unreasonable to expect 4.1GHz or so from this chip, and I might decide to try for that. All in all, I am very happy to have that kind of performance in a laptop, although it is very expensive.

GPU (10/10)
Ah yes, the AMD Radeon HD 7970M. So much has been written about this card on a variety of topics. I went with it because I have had good luck with ATI cards in the past, and because the NVIDIA offerings at the time were subpar. This is not to imply that the GTX675M is a slouch, but it was looking dated at the time, and then the benches for the 7970M came out and promptly blew everything else out of the water. So in that regard, it was a no-brainer, and some sites were initially even selling the 7970M for less than the GTX675M. Yes, there were delays and bad batches, but now that we are past that, I am so glad that I have this card. I am aware of the Enduro issues, but ironically, what is more frustrating to me is that it is only partially recognized within the system, even though it is obviously performing well. What I mean by this is, the BIOS, Device Manager, Afterburner, and 3DMark11 recognize it as a 7970M, but CPU-Z, GPU-Z and AMD’s own website only see the Intel HD4000 integrated graphics. I have tried a lot of different things (without resorting to modded BIOS flashing), and have had no luck getting everything to recognize this card. It’s working (obviously), but the perfectionist in me wants to see that reflected everywhere. What I finally settled on was installing the Clevo drivers and then the 12.6 Catalyst over the top of that. It still doesn’t fully recognize the card, but with that setup, I have been able to overclock the card to 1016MHz core/1516MHz memory at stock voltage, and I think I can coax a bit more out of it with a very slight voltage bump. It’s awesome, to say the least, and the extra points gained from the huge overclocking room more than make up for the driver and Enduro issues at this time in my estimation.

As of yet, I have had no luck finding a good way to bump voltages up/down, so nothing really new to report here. I really think it would benefit from a slight bump in voltage, as it is very unstable over roughly 1008MHz core/1510MHz memory when using stock voltage settings (which is what I am limited to at the moment).

SSD (10/10)
These things are amazing. This is the first experience that I have had with solid-state drives, and the speed is just incredible. I now go from stone-cold powered off to Google’s homepage in 42 seconds, and that includes the Windows login screen. On my old Aspire, it was over two minutes, so that is practically orders of magnitude faster for me, and I love it. I have a pair of 256GB Crucial M4’s in RAID 0, and the array was set up by MALIBAL. I went with the RAID array because it was cheaper to buy two individual 256GB drives than one 512GB drive, and with identical drives, I naturally thought of putting them in an array just for grins. I am quite pleased with the results. I know the Samsung drives tend to receive the highest marks, and the Intel drives are faster on the write speeds, but for me, the price was right on the Crucial drives. I did not option this laptop with an mSATA drive, so I have no commentary there.

As mentioned in the comments (and something that I forgot to originally add in this review), by going with a RAID array for my SSD drives, I lose the TRIM functionality. Drive performance will degrade over time because of this, but barring any general drive failures, this should not occur until well into the future, and by then I will have either replaced this laptop, or I will have scuttled the array and gone with two normal drives so as to enable TRIM.

Optical Drive (8/10)
The 6x Blu-ray reader works as intended, but since it is the only mechanical device in the entire laptop (besides the cooling fans), it seems slow and clunky in comparison. It functions as a DVD±RW drive as well, but I have not tried to burn any CD’s yet (and I doubt that I will). I optioned this drive so I could watch movies on my laptop, and it does that. The CyberLink Media Suite 8 disk included PowerDVD 10, and it is always a little strange trying to work the controls on a keyboard rather than a remote, but it works. I would have liked to have seen a newer player version included in the bundled software, but it does what it is supposed to do. One annoying thing it did was install a “Power2Go” widget on my desktop for quickly burning or copying disks; a nice idea in theory, but if I don’t burn/copy disks, I might not want the widget on my desktop (which I don’t), but I can’t figure out how to delete it. Not a big deal I suppose, but stuff that like just bugs me. Maybe it reminds me of the bloatware that is so prevalent on mainstream laptops from a big-box store. I don’t know, but in the end, I was the one that installed it, so I will not complain about it (too much).

Memory (9/10)
This is the first system I have had with more than 4GB of memory, so upping the ante to 16GB seemed like overkill to me, but the cost of going to the 16GB from the standard 8GB was only $40, so I went with it. MALIBAL was offering DDR3-1866MHz DIMMs for a while, and a few of my early test builds in their configurator used that memory. If they had continued to offer it, I would have gone with it instead of the DDR3-1600MHz flavor I have now, just for the extra headroom for overclocking. The memory I have is Samsung, and has 11-11-11-28 timings, and I believe it is rated at 1.35v but some of my diagnostic tools indicate it is pulling 1.50v. It is something that I will have to look into in more depth later, and see if there is a problem there or if the DIMMs actually are 1.5v instead.

Wireless (10/10)
What can I say about this, other than it is very fast. On my previous laptop, I had connection with my router at 65Mbps, and I now connect at 450Mbps. Websites load that much faster, and downloads are a breeze. This is a three-antenna setup (and since the Clevo shell comes with all three antenna hookups preinstalled, you could order and install this card aftermarket if you so choose), and the Killer Networks software also can prioritize gaming info over the network, but I have not had a chance to test how useful that ability is. I do not use Bluetooth, so I did not opt for that, but the Killer 1202 card is available now on MALIBAL's site if that is something you would need to consider. Range is very good on this card, but the router is centrally located in my house, so I am never more than 40 feet away from it at any time. There are a few walls it has to go through, but I have not noticed any wireless performance issues thus far.

Speakers (8/10)
The Onkyo speakers sound normal to me, and the subwoofer on the bottom also works fine. It is not spectacular sound like I have had on my desktops, but it does not sound tinny or canned like I have heard on other laptops. I am not a huge audiophile, so the quality is not something I can accurately judge. I have read that these speakers are a good upgrade over the previous Clevo models’ speakers, but as this is my first Clevo laptop, I don’t know what those models may have sounded like. Most of my sound is carried through earbuds anyway, which I am happy with.

Battery (8/10)
This is a somewhat meaningless topic for me, as I always run my laptops off of AC power. However, there are times when a plug isn’t available, so it helps to know how much juice you can count on to get things done. This being a desktop-replacement laptop, the answer turns out to be: not much. I have been running on the battery for about 75 minutes, and in that time I have done word-processing, light web browsing, I downloaded some updates, and I watched the first 10 minutes of a Blu-ray movie. The battery just reached 50%, starting from fully charged. Now, I do have the settings set ridiculously high, as I still have the 17.3” screen at full brightness, and I am running an overclocked CPU and GPU while doing this, so I would expect that you could shave some drain if you went to a normal power saving profile, but for what I am doing now, I can expect about 2.5 hours, tops. If I change the settings, I might be able to hit 3 hours of battery life, but not much more. I knew going into this that battery life was going to be minimal, and I was looking for around 3 hours, but in this era of ultrabooks and tablets with long-lasting batteries, 3 hours isn’t as much as it sounds. If I can adjust the settings to get closer to 4 hours on battery, then I will bump the score to a 9 here.

BIOS (6/10)
This is by far my biggest complaint with the entire laptop, and it is disappointing. The v1.00.05 BIOS is just paper thin, and that’s being kind. It’s the American Megatrends flavor, so you press F2 to access it at the boot screen. Once inside, you can change the date/time, look at your installed SATA devices, change boot device order, enable system beeps and legacy USB support, and enable Bluetooth (if you have it, which I don’t). That’s basically it, with nothing more. Which means: no BIOS voltage controls for the CPU, GPU, and/or memory; no ability to change the multipliers on my unlocked i7-3920XM; no ability to change bus speeds; no fan control or temp monitoring options; nothing. Maybe things have radically changed since my last build, but it used American Megatrends as well, and it had great functionality (this was on a desktop). Clevo is evidently about the only major laptop manufacturer that requires you to contact them directly for BIOS updates, as there is nothing listed on their website or on MALIBAL’s support page at the time of this writing, and I’m not keen on flashing a modded BIOS because that is a great way to brick your laptop. I only hope that with the EM-series laptops being the new direction Clevo is heading, that we see some improved options here. Again, this isn’t MALIBAL’s fault, but I was really hoping to see something much better here. I have heard that some other builders offer customized versions of their BIOS, and that would have really made the difference here; for the record, I did contact MALIBAL regarding this, but they said that they do not have any plans at this time to offer custom BIOS. As it stands now, it runs the system and does what it is supposed to do, but the lack of any additional features really hurts this part of the review. I do realize that this is my own fault for not doing better research, and it is factored into the score.

Below, you can see the five menus offered within my BIOS: Main, Advanced, Security, Boot, and Exit. Sorry for the poor photo quality, it was the best I could do with my BlackBerry. It shoud still serve to relate the minimal choices presented within.


The Main menu. Normal enough, but I have seen better.


This is the Advanced menu, where all of the overclocking magic usually happens. Not this time, unfortunately. We could really benefit from some fan speed adjustment options here, and I would personally love to see the FSB and CPU multipliers available, along with voltage controls. The Advanced Chipset Control submenu takes you to another screen, where the only option is the ability to change the Bluetooth power settings (which I don't have or use).


Yes, this is the entire screen. I'm not sure why Clevo/AMI felt the need to include an entire Security menu if this is the only item listed. It could easily have been tucked under the Advanced menu, for all of the options that screen gives.


The Boot menu. Somewhat standard stuff, but it is nice to see that it was not left out.


And finally, the Exit menu.

Customer Service & Support (9/10)
MALIBAL has had their share of knocks on this forum and on others for incidents tied to this category. I have read some of those threads and I have read some of the reviews posted by unhappy individuals. I also contacted them directly with questions pre-order, and they were always prompt and courteous with me. When I placed my order, their instructions were easy to follow, and when I called them to change my order a week later, they took care of it in less than a minute. When my order arrived and I had emailed them asking about any updated Clevo drivers for the 7970M, they responded back to my email in just over an hour (at night, and on the 4th of July no less) with different drivers to try. In my estimation, they have been great to deal with, and the only thing stopping me from giving them a full 10/10 here is the fact that they took down their forums with no explanation, and they don’t seem to be in any rush to bring them back. The forums were a great source of community involvement and a good place to go for troubleshooting or having a questions answered. Additionally, some of the support drivers on their website are dated, and could stand to be refreshed. Once those things are addressed, I can easily bump this to a 10/10.

NOTE: The scoring part of the review ends here; all following sections are simple commentary.

Benchmarks
I’m not sure how much I can relate here, as some of this is subjective. My highest valid 3DMark11 score so far is P7060, though I am shooting for P7100 with some more tweaks. I did score a P8210 once, but that was invalid because I had 7.5k framerate in Test 4, so something went haywire with that one (but not enough to crash out of the stress test). The highest temp Afterburner recorded during that run was 88ᵒC, in an ambient temp of 74ᵒF. I have ordered a U3 laptop cooler but it has not arrived yet, and that should drop the temps a bit more. I do have the IC7 paste applied as well, but it seems a little warm to me. As far as noise goes, the ambient readings in the room were 45dB (with the laptop running), with a max of 68dB during the 3DMark11 test; a 5-minute CPU stress in Intel XTU yielded 69dB. These are unofficial tests, as I used the sound meter on my phone, which was placed 18 inches from the back of the laptop. PCMark7 came in at 5252 for combined system performance, but I don’t have anything to compare that to; I include it in case anyone else out there is familiar with it. Fan noise did not measurably increase during the PCMark7 tests. As a generic indicator, the system also scores a 7.7 in the Windows Experience Index (interestingly enough, the graphics are the low point; the processor scored a 7.8, and the hard disks scored a 7.9). I may revisit this review at a later date to include some specific gaming benchmarks, but for some reason I am not having any luck getting Fraps to work, so I can’t capture screenshots or framerates to share.

AMD Radeon HD 7970M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3920XM Processor Extreme Edition,CLEVO P170EM score: P7026 3DMarks

NEW! AMD Radeon HD 7970M video card benchmark result - Intel Core i7-3920XM Processor Extreme Edition,CLEVO P170EM score: P7060 3DMarks

I am able to run FurMark v1.10.1 now, and I have included a few screenshots below. The first two shots are a before/after comparison of the CoolerMaster U3 cooler; the 7970M was set at 950MHz core/1400MHz memory for those pics, at 1920x1080 resolution. Ambient temp in the room during these runs was 74-degrees F.

Before the U3...

The pic is hard to read, but it gives me 26fps at 91-degrees C after five minutes, with max GPU utilization of 93%. Max temp recorded was 94-degrees C.

After the U3...

No difference from the first test, but temps only reached 93-degrees C.

And here is a pic of the FurMark temps with 1000MHz core and 1500MHz memory, using the U3...

Here there is a slight difference, as I increased fps by 1, and max temp recorded was 93-degrees C again, but with the higher clocks.

This is a screengrab of the custom bench I did in FurMark, after a 15 minute run. All settings were set to max, and I enabled 8xAA as well as Post-FX, so make of it what you will...


Here is a pic showing two benches that I ran in Kombustor. For these runs, the core was 1505MHz and memory was 1505MHz; the CPU was also overclocked using XTU. I am not used to Kombustor ratings, so these may be underwhelming, I'm not sure. Enduro is clouding the results, as GPU utilization never got higher than 83% on either run.


The interesting thing about these results, to me, is that I am unable to get the GPU utilization to max, even having MSI Kombustor open in the background, so Enduro is a likely factor. The highest I have ever seen it is 97%, under the Xtreme Burn-in on FurMark. Temps seem a touch high in any event (highs around 93/94-degrees C), and I am considering a repaste with some high-end paste. The IC7 Diamond that MALIBAL installed is normally pretty good, but I think the paste job might be bad in this instance, which is affecting the temps. I may also try the GPU spring-tension tweak to see if that helps any, but I don't have an ETA for trying this yet. I did notice that the temps reported between FurMark, Kombustor, and Afterburner were all consistent, so in my case there is no "better" temp reporting in one over the other, but I am a little suprised to see that the U3 basically had no effect on my temps. It is working and all fans are blowing, and the little rheostat is set to maximum, so I don't know what the issue is with it. The typing angle is really nice, though.

Problems
There are no problems to report at this time. The AMD driver situation (and the Enduro issue) may or may not be known issues that Clevo owners will just have to deal with, or they may be real problems that AMD/Clevo will need to address; at this point, I can’t really say, but they are affecting a lot more people than just myself, so I will wait to pass judgment. I have no stuck/dead pixels, I have no faulty ports/jacks that I know of, and all components are working in good order.

Conclusion
If I did my tally correctly, the scores come to a total of 145/160, which is 90.6% (or an A- if giving it a letter grade). What really holds this laptop back from truly great potential, in my opinion, is the lack of any tangible controls within the BIOS. Even if it had given me the ability to see the fan speeds or temps, that would have been something, but as it is, it seems very weak for a performace/enthusiast laptop of this caliber. If it wasn’t for Intel’s XTU, I wouldn’t really have any options. To be fair, if I had known this would be the case, and that the i7-3820QM would have a bit of headroom to work with in the XTU tool, I very likely would have gone that route, and the whole issue with the BIOS would be rendered moot. Still, an A- is nothing to complain about, so I am quite happy indeed.

In conclusion, I would recommend MALIBAL and their Satori P170EM laptops to anyone looking for a premium gaming laptop, or even for a desktop-replacement notebook in general. They were great to deal with, and I would be happy to do business with them again.

I have been asked why I would recommend MALIBAL as a premium gaming laptop if the BIOS is so restrictive for overclocking. My only answer is that in my mind, I make a distinction between gaming-class laptops and enthusiast-class laptops (which to me means extreme overclocking). This Satori P170EM falls in between the two, hence my decision to call it a "premium gaming laptop" in my original review. I still stand by that conclusion, and I would still recommend MALIBAL laptops, but I also still wish that the BIOS had more to offer.

Thanks for reading this review! I hope it was helpful and informative.

 

Nice review morey! i concur with everything you have said! even more odd... your 7970m has the exact same max clocks as mine although i rounded down to 1015/1515 to make it look pretty...

 

nice review, but shouldnt this be in the review section?

 

Awesome review. I pretty much agree to everything. Not because we bought from Malibal around the same time frame, but because it's simply the truth. This is my second custom gaming laptop but this is the first time I've felt that it's truly a custom gaming laptop. I love it.

 

I thought about it, but in the end decided that might have been for professional or media reviews. I have seen others post their own reviews in this area, but if the mods need to move it, feel free.

 

Nice results, sir! I'm still messing with it, trying to get those clocks higher. Not having a lot of success, either droppping core to boost memory or vice-versa. I'd really like to find a reliable way to overvolt/undervolt the card as well, but I've only just started digging around in that area. Seems the Dell folks have some nice options available to them in that area, but the few results I saw indicated some of them were getting lower results with that ability enabled than I have seen Clevo people getting without it. All these different flavors of 7970M are starting to make my head swim.

 

+1
Very good reading, thanks, in depth too! Liked it a lot

 

Oh btw do rmb that TRIM is not supported when you raid0 ssd

 

Nice review.

 

everybody goes AMD

 

That is what I have heard, yes. Thanks for pointing that out, as I had meant to drop that into the review but ended up forgetting about it. After a while, without TRIM the drives will see degraded performance, but it seems to me that will be some time down the road. And if it does end up giving me fits or crashing the array, I will redo it as two standalone volumes on the next go.

 

Bumped for updated review info.

 

Very informative review, I have a similar machine on the way and I'm glad to hear all the positive comments

 

I have a question for you about the keyboard.

On Malibal's site, they show an island-chiclet-style keyboard in their image section for both the P170EM and the P150EM-SE.

Satori P170EM Photo Gallery - MALIBAL

According to the images you posted, the model you got does NOT have this same keyboard.

Did you request this or do they just provide something different from the pics on their web site??

I asked them about this but haven't gotten a reply back yet.

-J

 

It very well could be different, but I'm not a keyboard enthusiast so I don't really know the styles, I didn't look that closely originally, but now that you mention it, it does look slightly different. I did not request anything different from what was offered on their website, so this must be the standard offering.

To be fair, the Satori pictures on MALIBAL's site are slighty different from the actual product that I received. This was mentioned on their forums while they were still active, and they had mentioned that they were going to be getting updated pictures posted. If you look at them, you can see that there are slight differences in the port layout, as there is no CATV jack (it is replaced by an IEEE 1394 port on mine) and the e-SATA port on the rear is replaced by a Display Port. Obviously they have not updated the pictures, but it is still a pretty accurate representation of the final product.

 

Some slight variations are one thing, but different/missing/misplaced ports and a different keyboard are not acceptable.

If I am going to drop thousands of dollars on a product, I should expect the pictures on the vendor's site to be current and match what I am buying. I want a chiclet keyboard and if I had bought a laptop based on the pics on their site I would have been quite disappointed if the keyboard didn't match the pics.

I am still waiting to hear back from them regarding this. I sent them an email yesterday asking about this and will hopefully hear back tomorrow.

 

Agreed. However, let me clarify: the CATV jack shown on their website is likely only available if you have an integrated TV tuner, which is not an option they offer at this time (so far as I know). The e-SATA port that is shown on the back of the Satori on their website is actually moved to the left side, replacing one of the USB ports. I have a total of 3 USB ports on this laptop.

As far as hearing back from MALIBAL, they are usually pretty fast about responding. Hopefully you hear something soon.

 

MALAIBAL pictures appear to feature the p1x0hm series as opposed to the new em. They need to update the pictures.

Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2

 

Thanks for pointing that out! I have not seen the HM line, so I did not know that. And yes, they do need to update the photos (as well as bring back their forums).

 

Crap. I was on the fence of whether or not I liked it or not and finally decided that it looked pretty sweet and was going to get the branding. Hopefully it can still be done if I ask for it.

 

The MALIBAL branding on the lid looks nice, and I was a little bummed that the branding on the bottom of the screen bezel was not there, but it was no biggie. Perhaps if you contact MALIBAL they can brand it there for you, or at least let you know why they aren't doing that anymore if such is the case.

 

90+ C is very bad for the health of your computer.

You might want to repaste the thermal paste!

Best regards

 

When I bought my laptop last year from MALIBAL I asked about the branding under the screen bezel three different times (email and nbr thread), and in each occurance they chose to ignore my question. It has been at least one year since theyve branded the bottom of the screen.

Not sure what's going on with them these days.

Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2

 

nice... but u should repaste ur GPU, its very hot...

 

the reason they don't brand the bezel is because they dont get the plates for that anymore and the reason your lid didnt get branded is because they probably didnt have any plates left

 

Hey, Morey, I remember you from the Malibal forums. Great review. Good to see you're still very happy with your new toy, considering how much you decked it out and despite the Enduro issues.