**Official Clevo P151SM1 / Sager NP8230 Owner's Lounge**

It sounds like he's the only one with that problem though and the post right after it says that the temps went down after a few days.
My main problem deciding is that I'll be basically saving $350 that I can spend on a good SSD down the road instead and it seems like everything else is pretty similar in these two machines:

by default on both configurations:
ivy bridge vs haswell - minor improvement
770m vs 750m sli - minor difference (depending on the game), but both seem to have crappy drivers right now. but slightly better in sager
5500RPM 1TB hard drive VS 7500 750GB hard drive - minor difference, but sager wins a bit
8gb RAM vs 16gb RAM - slight advantage of Y500 when I do editing
win8 is included - Y500 wins a bit
weight is comparable
power brick is smaller for Y500

so yeah, as you can see, after going through pro/con list for a long time, I'm back to square one. at the moment in Canada, Y500 SLI with 16gb ram is $1110 (after tax) until wednesday and np8230 is $1406 (due to extra fees from UPS). Sager obviously has more reliability and customer service would be better, but Lenovo is also a bigger brand.... ughhhh... so confused

 

Lenovo is a big brand, yes, but their quality machines are their business class notebooks, not the consumer models.

You've made a pros/cons list, but you should decide which categories (keyboard, screen, battery life, audio, etc) have a heavier weighting. If your budget is your primary concern, the Y500 is probably a better choice for you. Performance-wise, the 8230 is the overall superior machine.

 

ProStar did a good job confirming and shipping (although they used USPS and I'd rather go with UPS or FedEx), and the laptop is great. Optimus alternates between the integrated and dedicated GPUs nicely, and the battery life seems good (don't have any real numbers, but I'd say at least 4 hours off Optimus).

Regarding the case plastic, I think it's very good quality that reminds me of the Dell Vostro line before it went cheap. I like the touch of the keyboard. I only wish it was backlit, but I have a wireless logitech for that and HTPC use.

My only bittersweet thought is that this will be the last laptop I buy with a dedicated GPU...

 

Still nodoby can give a good report on the cooling-heating of this laptop while doing intense gaming for multiple hours on end?

 

I have been following this thread for a while, just now ordered this laptop from lpc-digital.

 

Ive allready reported. Some games I see 90+, Some games Im seeing mid 60's

 

A quick question before I decide to buy this: How bad exactly is the sound coming out of the speakers? It's not going to sound like smartphone speakers...right?

 

I just got this today. Opened it up and repasted. I think I screwed it up cause I let go of the heatsink for a minute as I'm about to screw it into place and it popped back up. I just screwed it back on. If the temps suffer, I'll do it again I guess. Loving this machine, but it's so much heavier than I'm used to. But I'm surprised by the exterior. I was waiting on the P150SM cause of the rubberized finish. But the P151SM1 is just fine I think on the exterior.

Edit: Yup, it's idling at 54 degrees. I definitely screwed this up. Drops down to 48 degrees with LapAir though. I guess that's acceptable for now.

Edit: And now down to 43 degrees. Maybe these temperatures are wrong :O or maybe fans work

 

What are your temps under load? If it had to be placed down twice most likely there were air pockets created which are very bad for thermal paste.

 

I haven't tried any gpu intesive games. I've just played League of Legends. But it hit 65 degrees I think max. Not sure how bad that is.

 

Try a benchmark program like 3D mark, something like that will give you the best comparison to demanding games. If it stays 65C thats awesome

 

I have repasted now 2 times, with very very little difference in temps between the stock paste, and my reattempts. Ive gotten my idle temp down below 40 (on a laptop fan and only plugged into an external moniter) but IN Coh2 last night I hit 99c and saw some moderate thermal throttling (clock speeds droped ~10%)

Running Kombustor for > 5min also results in the same high temps.

 

I ran 3dmark11 benchmark at 1280x720 (free version) and my gpu hit 66 degrees max. But when I was running the Windows Experience Index my CPU hit 80 degrees

 

You're probably seeing that because 3D mark is a GPU intensive benchmark designed to test your video card gaming performance. There are parts of it that will test the CPU but mostly its GPU. 66C is awesome if thats as much as it hit.
Windows Experience will test it all but also for the video card part may not be utilizing Optimus and switching to the Nvidia card and just testing the Intel HD 4600.

 

I literally just got mine and I finished installing windows 7 prof. Thing is, mine came with two drivers and utilities discs. One blue and one plain white. The white one specifically said it was for windows 7 64 bit while the blue one did not say. I'm using the white one to install my drivers currently but I think it might be the same drivers that was posted earlier in this thread on the sager website. If it is then thanks for making this a lot easier for me

 

So far everything is working perfectly. I think the included windows 7 drivers disc may have everything I already need.

 

Alright so far I can conclude this is the best laptop I have ever owned. I've had 2 HPs and 1 Lenovo and so far I haven't found any glaring problems with this one unlike the other three. Honestly everything runs very well and I personally love the laptop's physical design. So far it has stayed pretty cool to the touch on the outside even when running moderate games. The only thing I have to say anywhere remotely against it is that the speakers are adequate for a laptop. They're not good nor bad from my experience. Also I love how XoticPC allowed me to upgrade to Intel Ultimate 6300 for free. I'm getting consistent 4-5 bars in a spot I usually get 0-1 and rarely 2 bars at.

 

My experience thus far:

Ordered the laptop on the 26th:
billed the next day
Sent into production on the 27th.
Completed production on the 29th.
Shipped to Xoticpc on the 29th.
Arrived at xoticpc on the 2nd.
Shipped to me on the 2nd.
Estimated arrival date: July 9th just in time for my buddy who is coming down from Georgia .

I didn't pay for rushed production and it was completed in 2 days. Wow.
I didn't pay for rush shipping and its about 4 days there and 4 days back.

I'll report back when i get the laptop i'm super excited!

 

To everyone who has this laptop already I would love to hear about any temp. experiences while gaming and know which games your are playing. I`m considering purchasing this laptop, however life span is very important to me and temperatures are probably the most influential in regards to that.

90 plus....wow that`s pretty hot. Do you mind listing which games? mid 60`s is a perfect temp. You don`t happen to have any Total War games you could test out with larg battles do you? That`d be a perfect test.

 

Only game That I have for sure seen that temps is on CoH2. Sins, LoL, CS:GO are all sub 70. MIght just be a windows problem. Off to reinstall!

 

I think I maybe screwed up the paste on the CPU. It's hitting 74 degrees playing League of Legends. GPU only goes up to 59 degrees on highest settings. Is the CPU supposed to be much higher than the GPU?

 

League of Legends is not a good benchmark for heat production.

Try Prime95 for your CPU.

Furmark or Kombustor for your GPU.

What i recommend is benching these tests for 15-20 minutes each-- write down the temps and then repaste. After you've repasted test it again and see if the temps vary.

That is a surefire way to tell if the paste job was indeed bad etc.

 

I'm debating between np8230 and a 7352. in terms of cooling and overall performance. how is this Sager model for games like Guild Wars 2, Secret World and Skyrim? Is it possible to play on Ultra and also does it get ultra hot as a result?

 

Is there really nobody that plays the Total War series? I would be very interested to see how this laptop handles (smooth, and heat wise) with say Shogun 2 in a battle with many men. That´s a great test for any PC.

 

I recently purchased the Sager NP8230. When I receive it I plan on doing a bunch of benchmarks and stuff. I'll make sure to test the Total War Shogun 2 and tell you guys how it does.

 

Why hasn't anyone posted a video review on this notebook yet? Well, aside from Prostar who literally just took a camera and did a 360 degree spin around the laptop while heaven was playing.... that was just awful.

Edit: here's the link to the terrible spin around if you were curious: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLNn42CjTHI

 

I just got the package, after setting everything up, I'll be testing some games, and report back on fan noise, temps, performance, and looks.

@Blankenship7 You can wait for Xotic's review, they have in-depth reviews that are about 20-30 minutes long, and really informative.

 

I´d appreciate that very , very much old boy. And if you could, try running Shogun 2 for long periods of time and let me know how the temps are. Many thanks ahead of time.

I look forward to reading such tests. (temps and FPS being the most important for me)

I´ve been asking the same question.....

 

Shogun 2 ran fine, but had the fan running on high after about 15 minutes.
After running Mirror's Edge for half an hour, there was a steep drop in frames, from 60 to 7 or 8, I'm not sure what cause that.
Crysis 3 ran on Very High with 25 FPS, fluctuating between 20 to 30.

I can't say much about the temps because I have no way of accurately measuring them, but you can barely feel the heat from the keyboard after a few hours of gaming.
I'm going to try running some benchmarks, and I'll report back soon.

 

And the fan running on high, is that very loud? Any reason to look at that as a negative, I suppose?

 

So mine just got in, all good so far. The biggest problem I'm having is getting all the Windows updates installed. I'm having to go through 4 or 5 at a time, otherwise they fail and revert back. Getting all the drivers working for Windows 7 was a bit of a pain as well, but it seems to be all good now.

Does anyone know how to adjust the sensitivity of the track pad? I can't find any drivers for that.

On a superficial level, has anyone tried to get rid of the Horize/Sager logo?

 

Most Clevo machines tend to be around 45-50+ db on max fans, which is loud but on par with most of its competitors. If you prefer silent gaming, you may find the sound distracting if you're not wearing earphones.

 

Just ordered My Sager NP8230 from xoticpc, it will be replacing my 4 year old XPS m1530:

1 x Sager NP8230 (Clevo P151SM1) () =
Display 15.6" FHD 16:9 "Matte Type" Super Clear Ultra Bright LED Anti-Glare Sager Screen w/ 95% NTSC Color Gamut (1920x1080) (SKU - S1R303)
Processor Sager - 4th Generation Intel® Haswell Core™ i7-4700MQ (2.4GHz - 3.4GHz, 6MB Intel® Smart Cache) (SKU – SPU201)
Thermal Compound - IC Diamond Thermal Compound - CPU + GPU
Graphics Video Card NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 770M 3,072MB PCI-Express GDDR5 DX11 w/ Optimus™ Technology (SKU – SGC313)
Copper Cooling Upgrade COPPER COOLING UPGRADE - Extra Cooling Copper Heatsinks Applied to the Heatsink/Heatpipes (XPC Service - requires shipment to XOTIC PC: will add to build time)
Ram 8GB - DDR3 1600MHz Dual Channel Memory (2 SODIMMS) (SKU - S4S423P)
mSATA SSD Drive ( Slot 1 ) 128GB Crucial M4 mSATA SSD - Preconfigured as an OS Drive ( Operating System – Drive C: )
Primary Hard Drive 750GB 7200RPM [Serial-ATA II 300 - 16MB Cache] - Default (SKU - S5T306)
Optical Drive Bay Combo Dual Layer SuperMulti DVDRW/CDRW Drive w/ Software (When selecting a Hard Drive in the Optical Bay, No Optical Drive is Included) (SKU - S7R455)
Wireless Network Sager - Bigfoot Networks Killer™ Wireless-N 1202 + Bluetooth 4.0 (Dual Band) (SKU – S8R008)
Case SLAPPA - Ballistix PTAC Matrix Laptop Sleeve (for 15.6" & larger laptops)
Operating System ~Windows 8 - 64-Bit (64-Bit CD Included) + MS Office 2013 Trial


I used to own a Sager 3790, but it bit the dust while I was deployed in Iraq in 2009 (it was about 5 years old). Hopefully this one has a bit better cooling system than the 3790 did. I also Hope this one has better speakers than the 3790 did, the 3790 speakers were crap and the laptop would have been better simply without them.

One other issue I haven't been able to find info on is whether or not the left palm rest gets hot, my XPS M1530 and my 3790 both got hot in that area.

How are the drivers for this system, if I remember correctly sager stopped updating the drivers for the 3790 after less than a year... I have been using the drivers off of the NVIDIA website for my XPS Geforce 8600m GT but I keep getting BSODs.

 

Just got mine in the mail.

First impressions:

Really like the build quality a lot. Sturdy plastic ( albeit not rubberized, but reminds me of older IBM laptop plastic-- very nice imo. )

Feels very rigid and the screen hinges are very sturdy as well.

Screen bezel looks beautiful and the keyboard seems to have very little flex.

All around from an aesthetic view i'd give it a 9.5/10. It's almost perfect for what my expectations were.

 

Update:

Just swapped out the internal 750 GB hdd for one of my Intel 330 Series 240 GB drives and threw in a Plextor 128 GB mSATA SSD. Installation was painless-- the layout of the internals is very easy to get to. The only thing i could ever see being a pain would be replacing the RAM that is below the keyboard... although i don't plan on doing so.

 

Good to hear it went easy, once you do decide to upgrade the RAM under the keyboard you'll find thats really easy too. The total time it will take is about the same as the hard drive install you just did.

 

Update 2:

Got windows installed, installed the drivers from the included disk. So far so good-- The speakers are what you would expect from a laptop-- not bad but not exceptional.

The screen is crystal clear, bright and has decent viewing angles. ( the stock screen )

I'm really loving this keyboard the more i type on it. Really a treat.

Palmrest and keyboard are cool so far ( i havent gamed yet )

By the way on a sidenote-- totally recommend the Plextor m5m mSATA ssd this thing screams! 540 read with 79k iops.

I'll update as more things come up.

 

Update 3:

Played some chivalry Medieval warfare Temps spiked at around 70 celsius for the CPU.

My system seems to be idling pretty hot ( mid 50s to low 60s )

With the system fans kicked up its hardly noticeable while wearing headphones and they push a LOT of air man. It's like a freaking leaf blower lol.

 

Update:

My GPU and CPU fan were both pinned at 100% ( which surprisingly isn't too bad noise wise ( i've had worse cough cough alienware m14x ) i couldnt figure out why the system was going nuts while idling until i realized that pressing Fn+1 activates the fans to 100% and pressing again seems to put the system into a variable mode. I couldn't find this in the users manual so i thought i'd pass the info along. Kind of cool that you have the option to kick up the fans if you would like to.


Edit: I hope i didn't scare anyone with my temp readings-- that is probably normal for where i am situated... If anything its probably pretty good because ambient temps in my room are around 85-90 right now ( i have a desktop, a monitor and a laptop all whirring away in an unairconditioned room in southern california during summer. yay.... anyways just updated geforce drivers temps are idling around 45 now so not sure why they were so much higher earlier, maybe the thermal paste was still breaking in or something i have no idea.

 

Blankenship many thanks for the info, I appreciate it very much. You wouldn`t happen to play any of the Total War games by chance? I`m interested in the FPS and temps this laptop gets while playing say Shogun 2 for various hours.

Really any game for multiple hours I``m interested in seeing how the laptop handles, especially heat wise.

EDIT:

Checking out that Chivalry game right now, that looks like a good game as well. Perhaps when I finally get a PC I`ll check it out. At first I thought you were refering to the mod Chivalry for Medieval Total War II. It`s geared towards multiplayer, but how`s the single player in that game? Also at what settings are you running it, and what kind of FPS are you getting?

 

It's a really sick game-- one of my favorites lately. I run it on ultra and temps are mid 60s in my experience so far. I don't play any of the Total War games but i do play starcraft II and various other steam games. The most demanding game i have is probably Bioshock Infinite and Far Cry 3. So i'll give those a try and report back when i can.

Edit: i haven't measured the FPS on chivalry at Ultra but i imagine its really high-- it runs flawlessly and smoothe at ultra. Which is to be expected it's not a very demanding game.

 

Update:

My god you HAVE to get this Intel N6300 won onifi card it is the best wifi card i have ever owned ( desktop cards included. ) My room-mates and i have very good internet ( 50 Meg down ) and this thing SCREAMS i was getting 6.2 MB/s during my starcraft 2 install over wifi 5Ghz. Wow.

Just so you know-- with starcraft II on Extreme preset at 1920x1080 i was getting very good temps-- low 60s on CPU and GPU respectively on arguably the most intense map imaginable ( Unit Preloader ). The unit preloader essentially spawns and casts every spell in the entire game library all within 30-40 seconds to open up your game Cache. I ran it about 10 times with the above temps.

I'm very impressed with the cooling on the games i've played so far which include Chivalry, Starcraft II, GTA IV and Amnesia.

Sidenote: the power brick was much smaller than i was expecting-- very portable for a laptop of this performance level.

I'm installing 20 or so more games tonight including Far Cry 3, Bioshock Infinite, Metro 2033, Civ 5, Dishonored etc. So more info to come. I freaking LOVE this thing so far and my friends with Asus laptops are all very jealous-- one of them was already talking about selling his to order one of these ASAP after seeing it tonight.

Edit: I start my vacation this Saturday night so i will most likely post a relatively in depth video review of this thing on youtube ( which i will link here-- ) i can't allow this to not have a video review for much longer-- this will included gameplay and just an overall aesthetic pro and con list in real time with probably some of the worst camera handling ever lol.Stay tuned!

 

VIDEO! yes, finally. Been waiting for a good video review of this computer. Can't wait!

 

Many thanks Blankenship. At this point I´m fairly certain I´ll bew purchasing this laptop, however I´m still not 100%. How´s the actual build quality? Do you see this laptop lasting a solid 6 years or more?

Also I don´t see that intel N6300 upgrade option on Xotic or LPC digital....I only see the Intel N7260. Around a week ago or so they included it for free, hopefully when I place an order I can convince them to include it for free and perhaps lower the price a bit.

Oh yeah, I forgot to ask are you using any kind of laptop pad for extra cooling? And what are you ambient temps like where you are when you are gaming?

Any more game temps-performance you can share is much appreciated.

By the way what OS are you using? And how is the driver support from sager?

 

Sager has "removed" the 6300 as an option so you wont find it from any Sager resellers. Not sure at this time if "removed" means its gone for good or if it will be back some day.

 

Bummer! I really like mine. I would imagine the new Intel one is probably not that far behind ( if not better lol-- they may have been giving the free upgrade to just get rid of old inventory not sure ).

Build quality is good-- i've owned Asus ROG and other Aluminum ultrabooks, build quality is a big deal to me. The machine feels very solid in your hands-- even if you grab the machine on only one end it doesn't feel as though it's flexing from the pressure. The lid also has little to no flex in it. The keyboard has very little flex and the palmrest feels nice-- it's sort of a grainy plastic kind of like older 90s laptops which i like-- rubberized kind of annoys me ( asus ROG ) because grease prints are a huge pain to clean off-- this plastic is easier to keep clean by far.

The temps now are idling in the mid 40s ( celsius ) my room ambient temp is about 85-90 farenheight at the moment and i do not use a laptop cooler.

So far the highest i've seen while gaming temp wise is about 70 degrees albeit a more demanding game might produce higher temps.

Overall i'm very satisfied with my buying decision.

My buddies and i are doing another LAN party tonight so i'll update how the machine does tomorrow morning.

Edit: just thought i'd comment for relative purposes how my desktop PC has been idling in my room--

Intel I5 2500k with Corsair H100 water cooler is hovering high 30s at idle and low 50s at load. I don't overclock though. My room is definitely hot and the PC shows that in its performance temp wise. I'd say in an air conditioned environment the laptop should be absolutely fine-- hell it's fine in my situation anyways...

Just to reiterate even when the laptop gets hot ( 70+ ) during gaming the keyboard and palmrest are COMPLETELY comfortable. Not like some other laptops i've had where my hand starts to sweat lol.

 

Saw some of your questions i didn't answer:

1.) i don't expect this to last me 6 years ( performance wise ) build quality wise i don't see why not if you take care of it. I usually replace laptops every 2-3 years that way i'm not lagging too hard-- also i just figure that in when i buy the machine. ( How much will i spend knowing that this is going to last me 3 years max? Answer for me is about 400/year. ) I would never buy a top of the line gaming laptop because the price premium doesn't warrant much extra life for the machine-- i.e GTX 780m or 8970m xfire etc.

2.) i'm running windows 7 ultimate-- driver support was great-- i installed almost every driver included on the disc with the laptop save a few of the optional drivers and the Geforce driver which i got online. So far everything is working as intended it seems.

Edit: you get an included Windows 7 driver disc, a windows 8 driver disc and a utility disc. I thought i was supposed to get a Grid 2 coupon but i didn't get one. Oh well

Edit 2: I saw what they changed for the Wifi card options-- if it were me i'd go for the new Intel one with wireless AC-- it's the new standard and will give you faster transfer speeds if you buy an AC router. I still don't regret my 6300N card but if i had the choice today i'd probably go for the AC one if it were the same price.

Edit 3: just thought i'd make a point to some people on here-- I always see people asking "do you think this will last 5 years?" and my response is "Would you even want to be using the machine for 5 years?" People get tired of their electronics after a while-- for me i consistently get a new gaming laptop every 3 years or so-- and a new gaming desktop every 5-6 years or so. My 2500k system might even last me longer considering what tech has been coming out lately ( dissapointing ) i did upgrade my video card in my desktop from a 5870 to a GTX 770 recently though.

So don't have too high of expectations-- laptops get beat around more than desktops ( they move... ) and the parts usually wear out faster as a result. This is true of ANY brand. And if you aren't moving them around... then build a desktop! If you aren't building a desktop because of space limitations then you should really consider a mITX solution such as the Fractal Design Node 304 or the Cooler Master Elite 120 / Bitfenix Prodigy which would still last way longer than any laptop. All three of those cases can fit a full sized GTX 780 in them even though they are very small. Not to mention performance wise desktops are 1.5-2x faster for the amount you spend in the end. Don't be one of those users that needs an all in one solution "I want to max all games but also want a ton of battery life and portability!" it isn't going to happen. Buy a cheap 300 dollar laptop for class and a 900-1200 dollar desktop for gaming. That way you have two machines that both fulfill a specific need. You may have buyers remorse if you buy something that is truly multipurpose because they tend to be relatively expensive for the specs ( i.e. The Razer Blade. ) Then you'll feel terrible when your 2,700 dollar laptop is lagging in 2 years.

Edit 4: The trackpad is fairly nice-- no major flaws to be seen so far. Two finger gesture scrolling is included in the drivers which is very convenient. Obviously this only effects web browsing... i game with a corsair M65 mouse.

 

Update: Gameplay for Bioshock Infinite:

Just got done playing about an hour and a half of Bioshock Infinite on the Ultra preset. The fans did not kick up to 100% and the CPU was hitting low 60s consistently. The GPU was anywhere from high 60s to mid 70s with a high point of 77 degrees celsius. The fan noise was completely tolerable ( i wasn't wearing headphones just light volume from the speakers. )

The screen really makes these games shine-- i actually prefer it quality wise over my 1080p 27" LED Asus monitor i bought last year. Colors are accurate, bright and sharp. Keep in mind i did not buy the 95% gamut display.

The laptop remained cool to the touch throughout the entire gameplay session.

Next up i'm going to play about an hour of The Witcher 2.

 

I didn't play the witcher 2 for an hour ( about 30 minutes ) but it didn't break a sweat on high settings. Ultra settings were barely playable-- it was kind of jittery imo framerate wise. I turned it down to High settings and it ran flawlessly then. Temps were in the mid 60s for the GPU and mid 50s for the CPU. Idle temps are Mid 40s at the moment for both cpu and gpu with fan noise at maybe 10% if i had to guess my desktop is much louder ( which is still fairly quiet )

I'm going to download Valley benchmark and run that on loop for an hour and report back the temps.

 

Well after reading your posts I'm glad i went with this over the msi-gt60-2oc024us, it was more than i wanted to spend (with upgrades) and this seems like a solid laptop, especially since i don't play super intensive games (WoW, KotOR and some FPS).