My experience and some questions with my new XoticPC NP8678 (P670-RG)

Hey - sorry for the new thread but I posted this first in the closest thread I could find to my model ( ** Official Sager NP8671 / Clevo P670SE - Sager NP8672 / Clevo P670SG Owner's Lounge **) and didn't get any responses, so hopefully this is of some interest to you who also own this machine or are considering purchasing one of these new Sager laptops. They are totally badass.

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So I've had my NP8678 (P670-RG) for a couple of weeks now and I'm pretty impressed. I sprung for a bunch of options that no one needs, which has been an adventure. I'm used to knowing exactly how everything in my computer works, and I wasn't ready for UEFI and NVMe. Getting win10 installed was a breeze and booted insanely fast, but I really don't like 10 for privacy and machine-control issues (I want to pick the drivers and updates I install). Getting 7 on it took a week of creating new ISOs, slipstreaming in USB3 and NVMe drivers, changing settings in UEFI/BIOS, etc. Still not sure I have all the BIOS settings set up optimally but at least I got the damn OS installed.

Samsung Magician says that my Samsung 950 NVMe is a little below where it's supposed to be (it has target lines on its benchmarking screen and my drive doesn't hit them) but it's still damn fast. Not sure why I sprung for the 6820HK processor since I've never been into OCing, but it is fun to play around with XTU I guess.

The 980m runs incredibly cool and quiet, all the time. Handles everything I've thrown at it (not much since I've just been screwing with the OS mostly).

There are still some things that don't work right and/or confuse me. First, I can't control the fans. Messing with the Control Center manual settings doesn't change anything. FN+1 turns them on full blast but I want to be able to set a map of fan speed to processor temp. I have always been able to do that with the GPU vendor app, but I don't know what vendor this GPU is. I also saw some warning thread on these forums about bricking computers using those apps. If anyone can help me with this I'd really appreciate it. Also, I'd really like to know if I have UEFI/BIOS set up correctly. It was just dumb luck that I got one of my bootable win7 ISOs to actually go through the install. It was a MBR NTFS win7 ultimate image with Intel eXtensible USB3.0 drivers slipstreamed in with NTLite. I had Samsung NVMe drivers on my secondary drive; I loaded those drivers from within the Windows installation.

Can anyone explain what the hell settings I should be using in UEFI? Currently I have it enabled, with CSM on and Security Boot off, and I don't even remember the other settings. I miss BIOS - so simple and just worked. Booting Win7 takes a while - probably 10 seconds longer than 10 in UEFI - and I'd like to cut that down if possible. I imaged this win7 install so if I have to reformat and clone it I'm down to do that if it'll net me some performance gains.

I have not been thrilled with XoticPC support. Haven't ever gotten a person when calling their "24hr support" phone number, only what seems to be some poor guy's voicemail. Emails also take at least 24 hours for a response, often longer. And, they haven't really been any help with the windows 7 installation issues. They just linked me google results for "install windows 7 UEFI" and similar, all of which of course I'd already found myself. I absolutely love the computer, and would recommend Xotic, but that's my honest opinion.

e - Was just reminded of one more issue. The laptop occasionally produces a really high-pitched whine/buzzing sound. One of my gaming desktops did this when it was plugged in but not turned on, which I attributed to some trickle of power going through the power supply or something. It's usually barely audible, but it really is a piercing awful sound and when there's not ambient noise in the room it's very uncomfortable. It typically starts when I open a new program, or switch to a new window, or take some other kind of action (i.e. it doesn't just start randomly). It lasts from 10 seconds up to a few minutes, and then some other action that I perform will cause it to turn off. I'm really hoping this isn't going to be a warranty issue because I don't want to give up this computer after finally getting it all set up perfectly

e2 - here's a screenshot of my Samsung Magician benchmarking of the Samsung 950 Pro PCIe NVMe SSD - http://imgur.com/koXiT3O

 

Funny you mention those random noises, this is what I've been having randomly too and I can't for the life of me figure out what it is:

Random small beeps

Also, if you see my Windows 7 installation guide on the NVMe drives, while it works, the slow boot killed it for me. Especially when you are installing those drivers and want to reboot, man it takes like 40-50 seconds for a full reboot so I bit the bullet and stuck to Windows 10 Pro.

See:
How to install Windows 7 on Samsung 950 PRO

And for windows 7, you did it right, which is to disabled UEFI boot and enable CSM. that is the whole cause of the slowdown in the boot time BTW and there is no way that I know of to installed Windows 7 in full UEFI mode without enabling CSM (AKA Legacy Boot ROM)

Also, by running Windows 7, you are seriously crippling the performance of your NVMe SSD. Other users on OC Forum have also complained about bad performance in Windows 7, because Windows 7 juts wasnt meant to run these newer drives. There is a Micro$h4ft FIX IT tool for the NVMe drives but it didn't help the boot time in my situation. Didn't even reach the stage of where I would actually test the performance of the NVMe SSDs that I have since I was so frustrated by the slow boot time.

See: Samsung 950 PRO 512GB poor performance win7

regarding XOTIC PC's support, I have seen enough threads about how bad they are that I would never consider to buy anything from them anymore. Sorry XOTIC PC, the great reputation I used to always hear about from other users here has gone way down hill now.

I know some of their staff are here always helping users with their issues and that's great, but why they need to be doing this in the first place just comes to show me that without extra care directer by the Xotic PC employees here, one is left with very bad customer service or support

 

Awesome, thanks. Maybe I will just have to go back to 10, but ugh... And even when I used Samsung Magician in 10 one of the optimization screens was unavailable and I wasn't hitting the benchmark bars in the app. Anyway, it's still fast.

I think we're having different noises - mine is a really high-pitched barely audible buzzing/whining that lasts usually a couple of minutes. Since I made the original post about it's only happened once (usually it's a couple of times a day) so this is going to be very hard to diagnose since I can't replicate it at all.

The 950 + Win7 thread you linked made it sound like their issue was that it was running on PCIe 2.0 instead of the max 4.0. I'm assuming these new laptops have a 4.0 lane? If not they really shouldn't be selling these HDs and promising the 4.0 speeds!

I didn't want to badmouth Xotic - I'm happy with my computer and think it was a good value. To any of them who are reading, I just recommend that you NOT promise a 24-hr phone help line, as that's clearly not the case. Poor Barry can't keep up.

Any ideas on the fan speed control?

edit - ONE more nitpick: G-SYNC doesn't show up in NVidia control center when the computer is in hybrid mode. It only shows up in dedicated GPU mode. I can only assume that means that it also doesn't work in hybrid mode, which is a bummer. I was asking Xotic tech support about this and they just responded that the setting should be there. I sent them a screenshot of the control center missing the icon and got no response!

 

Speaking of that beeping noise, ever since I upgraded my BIOS I haven't heard it. You might wanna check this thread to see if there is a BIOS upgrade for yours, if you need help on how to upgrade, I can help you step by step on how to do this safely.

Latest BIOS is 1.05.07 for your laptop, check your BIOS screen to see what version you have now. Also, double check with other users if this BIOS will work with your laptop since it says for the P6xxRG = http://repo.palkeo.com/clevo-mirror/P6xxRx/

Mind you, this is a stock CLEVO BIOS so you will lose the SAGER UEFI boot logo but everything should work fine.

With regards to GSYNC, I cannot comment on that since my laptop doesn't have the Intel Graphics (thank God)

 

I think all Intel processors have integrated graphics now. You can select in your BIOS between MSHYBRID (which uses both GPUs) and DISCRETE (which uses just your geforce). When I load games in MSHYBRID mode it always uses the 980m, but I'm saving power, temperature, volume and life of the card by not using the nvidia card all the time. I think...

I made some progress on the whine - it actually IS coming from the speakers. I reinstalled the sound blaster software and it didn't make any difference. Watching videos in bed last night this was really irritating...

 

Thank you for the feedback and sorry to hear about all the issues you've ran into installing windows 7 with the NVMe drive in there. As you've seen it's complicated and there's no one way to ensure it works, we've had to get creative with some of the windows 7 installs we have done as they don't all fit into one mold and why it is difficult for tech to help out with it as much as they would like to. Please let me know if there's anything that i can help with.

 

I have Windows 7 installed on my P650RE in UEFI with launch CSM on a NVMe SSD. I startup in less than 30 seconds from first pressing the power button to the desktop from a cold boot. This is plenty fast for me.

The method I used to install Windows 7 was to use my x99 desktop (specs in sig) to perform the first part of the installation pf Windows 7 onto the Samsung 950 PRO SSD. I used retail Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 x64 media with no drivers integrated. I loaded the Samsung NVMe driver off a USB stick during the installer section, and allowed the installer to complete up to the first reboot. I did not allow my desktop to completely reboot, and I pulled the SSD from my desktop.

I installed the 950 PRO into my P650RE and setup the BIOS as follows:
Security
Secure Boot - Disabled
-> TPM Configuration
Security Device Support: Disable
Boot
-> UEFI Setting:
UEFI Boot - Enabled
Launch CSM - Enabled
Boot option filter - UEFI and Legacy
Storage - UEFI

I set "Windows Boot Manager" to first place in the UEFI settings, saved, and rebooted.
Windows 7 setup finished the installation with no errors. I installed a SATA HDD that I pre-loaded all the drivers to and installed them all to my laptop. I used the following versions:
Driver, version (where I downloaded it from)
Clevo Control Center, v5.0000.0.28 (Sager)
Intel® Chipset Device Software (INF Update Utility), v10.1.1.11 (Sager)
Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 8260, Drivers v18.21.0 Bluetooth v18.1.1533.1836 (Intel)
Intel® HD Graphics 530 for 6th Generation Intel® Core™ Processors, v15.40.10.64.4300 (Intel)
Intel® Rapid Storage Technology (Intel® RST) RAID Driver, v14.8.0.1042 (Intel)
Intel® USB 3.0 eXtensible Host Controller, v4.0.1.40 (Sager)
NVIDIA GeForce, 359.06 (NVIDIA)
Realtek HD Audio, v6.0.1.7695 (Realtek FTP filename "7695_PG436_Win10_Win8.1_Win8_Win7_WHQL.zip")
Realtek RTL8411B LAN, v7.097.1123.2015 (Realtek Website)
Realtek RTS5227 & RTL8411B Card Reader, v10.0.10143.21278 (Sager)
Synaptics Touchpad v19.0.24.1 (Sager)
Bison Webcam, ??? (Sager)

This configuration is working perfect for me. G-SYNC will only work when in the DISCRETE mode, not MSHYBRID. Good luck!

 

magnus0443, did you ever get rid of the whining noise? I am interested in this model but not if it makes annoying noises.

 

Hey guys, I am looking at this model, and was wondering if you got the noise resolved, and the most important question, what your gpu/cpu Temps are under load.

Would anyone be kind enough to test and report back