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

You'll get a plastic chassis on the P151SM1 vs a rubberized coating on the P150SM so the build quality is different there. Other then that its really just the backlit keyboard and GPU options. On the P157SM it also has a 2nd hard drive bay which can fit smaller 7mm drives.

 

The 151sm1 also comes with a smaller 120W psu.

 

I don't want to spark anything controversial here, but part of me is convinced that the motherboards on the 150sm and 151sm1 are almost identical bar a few differences for backlit keyboard. I think it would be relatively low risk to use the 180W on the 151sm1 and could even sport a 780m if cooling proves to be affective. I wouldn't go trying it with my laptop from PCS (when it decides to arrive) or with XoticPC or any other retailers who say don't because of warranty breaching, and I wouldnt recommend anyone go try it, but as an engineer it feels pretty low risk to me. Clevo make both and it makes sense in my mind that they would be identical bar the minor differences used to distinguish which is which: plastic chassis and backlit keyboard port.

 

It hath arrived. Just installing windows/drivers/etc right now. Certainly seems responsive enough. The front chassis ends a little abruptly, but that could just be the way my arms rest on it. Keyboard ain't bad...

 

The layout will be the same, but it comes down to what components are used in the power circuitry and their ratings.

 

Of course, my thought was that these would be very similar as why would they make two wildly different notebooks with wildly different components when you can create one standard for the upper model and stick a tag on the other to say "this will be officially rated lower for a lower price and less powerful components". In terms of cost effectiveness all the motherboards have the same building process, all the parts are the same and therefore cheaper to source, that is how I would do it but ultimately I am not Clevo so only they know, and anyone who looks into it as deep as I have.

There is a massive advantage in a linearised process. I believe it is similarly done by other companies too (linearisation I mean), Windows 7 boot disks have every feature available to windows including ultimate but your CD key would determine how much is "unlocked". Intel makes one standardised chipset for their CPU's but due to manufacturing inefficiencies some CPU's are built better than expected and others worse, and they are later rated by their thermal efficiency and power consumption to be ranked on a scale of low end to high end per CPU family.

 

Hi All,

I have ordered a Sager NP 8235 without much modifications except for the wireless card. I am a regular player of Urban Terror ( Urban Terror) and would like to get 90+ fps on my new machine. I used to have a sony vaio i3-2.5 GHz + Radeon 5650 mobility and I used to get very low fps (~50) which was not a pleasant experience. Even though people say that this game is a very basic one and should be playable even on a low end graphics card, I have not observed this particularly. Will the i7 4700 mq+ GTX 770M enough to run this game at a decent fps 80+? Becaue if not, I think I will change my order and will get a GTX 780M instead.

 

I'm thinking about returning mine.

Several things are more annoying on it than I expected. Especially the number pad layout. The numpad, actually all the keys, just feel cramped, but the numpad is just plain odd. Why is right arrow below 1?

edit: decided not to return it afterall. Part of it was the machine was rather noisy. I had a GPU monitor widget that kept the nvid GPU active, thus head thus noise. Got much quieter after that. I kind've got used to the number pad layout, though it still bugs me some.

 

The right arrow being under the number pad 1 is pretty normal for laptop setups in my experience, particularly 15-inch notebooks with a full keyboard. But I have to say the number pad layout itself is strange (3 columns of keys instead of 4) which affects the keys above and near it. I really would have preferred a more normal layout like the P150SM's or most other notebooks', but that's my only gripe.

 

I think it's partly due to slightly different dimensions on the keyboard but it is an older layout which I think they have been using for some time.

 

I have created a review on the forum of the site I used to purchase my laptop. It is here: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/foru...tex-IV-LE-15-6-quot-Review-after-1-day-of-use

I have also got a games list up there and will be using that thread for testing and so on. If anyone has any test requests let me know on this thread too, I don't expect you to join that forum if you haven't already. My laptop has the 765m.

 

Nice! Enjoy.. :thumbsup:

 

Hi guys,

I will be getting my Sager NP8235 tomorrow. I have readied a Windows 7 Professional -SP1 Installation downloaded from my university website and I have also downloaded all the relevant drivers from the sager website. Is there anything else that I am missing, and also any tips/precautions while handling the laptop?

 

I prepped windows 8 for mine but I got mine last monday from a company called PCSpecialist in the UK, however it seems that the actual box and packaging for the laptop is identical globally, in mine I got a user manual and 2 drivers disks for windows 7 and 8 with retailer specific extras.

It took me about half an hour to get everything done on mine but it was really simple! I used and would recommend a USB boot driver it uses about 3.4gb and generally great if you need to restore the system in the future but don't have your recovery disk handy or you dont have an optical drive because you switched it for a 2nd HDD. The OS installed in 10 minutes including the lengthy windows 8 initial setup and then I just popped the CD in and went through the drivers one by one and installed, rebooted after 2 installed drivers to diagnose for potential errors. I left out the intel rapid start and storage as I have an SSD main driver but depending on your setup you may want that. I would say if you are installing on SSD, expect about 45 minutes for installs and prep, don't know how much longer HDD installs will take but probably double the time for OS install. Also I can confirm that the 327.23 driver for nvidia is working great with my 765m.

If I recall correctly these are the drivers included:
Intel chipset
Intel VGA (for integrated graphics)
Nvidia driver (the release version I think 311 but I forget the full version number)
AMD driver (I think the disk was universal for all P15XSM laptops so this is included)
LAN driver
Realtek Audio driver
Pointing device driver
Hotkey driver
Fingerprint driver and software
Wifi/Bluetooth drivers
Intel XTU (Extreme tuning utility for the cpu and igpu) I tested this and it works really well and a very good tool for the CPU, It is great that intel provide this utility for tuning.
Intel Rapid Start and storage
Soundblaster XFI mb3 (I had to install this and Realtek together, it didnt seem to work without Realtek)
There are 16 or 17 drivers in total I think, but the main ones you want are there for sure.

 

Thanks much for your reply.I am seeing a lot of negative comments around for the 327.23 drivers on GTX series. Did you also experience an fps drop a compared to the previous drivers. Actually I got this
laptop for playing urban terror ( http://www.fileplanet.com/60914/download/Urban-Terror-4.1.1-[Full-Installer]) which seems to have fairly low requirements in terms of graphics, but I am not sure how much fps I would be getting. Is it possible for you to test this game even though it is a low end one?

Thanks

 

I experienced performance drops as well. But Optimus seems to be working better for me now. Previously, GPU temps would go up on idle for no apparent reason. But I upgraded the BIOS/EC as well so I'm not sure which is responsible for the improvement.

 

My apologies I didn't see this. I have seen negative comments but I just went with the update because if something went wrong I would just have uninstalled the driver and reverted back to the drivers on the disk. However I noticed about 5% improvements in some games and nothing in others. I have not experienced any loss in performance, and my benchmarks are slightly higher too. I would test the game for you now but I guess you got the laptop already so you probably don't need me to.

 

Those who have a popping noise before a sound is played:

> go to Realtek HD Audio Manager by double clicking the tray icon
> go to Power Management (battery icon on the bottom right)
> click on the blue orb to disable 'Power Management Enabled'

Before disabling, the speaker system shuts itself down after 10 seconds, and turns back on whenever the next sound plays. Interesting power management feature, but I couldn't stand the pop noise, and the power savings is probably minimal.

 

I got the laptop and tested this game on Intel HD 4600 and it works just fine barring some glitches. I checked the Intel 4600 frequency and load using gpu-z during the game is played and I found that the load remains 20-30% and the operating frequency never goes beyond 600 MHz. I downloaded the extreme tuning utility but I do not know how to use it to make full use of the 4600 to boost my fps. I really don't want to use gtx 770m for this old game. Do you know how to use the XTU?

 

Hey, guys. From past experiences, I've become more wary about battery wear. Although the model in general has been relatively new, has anybody had any issues with battery life diminishing? With this laptop, I have been regularly removing the battery when using it for prolonged sessions with the power cord plugged in in order to prevent damage from heating and perhaps use altogether.

Was just curious, because battery care is always mysterious to me when it comes to laptops. It's things like how the manual, and many others, suggest monthly complete discharges while others say that it is harmful, how damaging fast discharging is, "ideal" charge/discharge percentages, and if removing the battery when plugged in is even helpful.

 

I know the basics of using XTU but I would strongly advise you spend a while really looking around for as much information as possible before you start to overclock if you aren't too familiar with the process, as it can shorten the lifespan of your components. For the CPU it is really quite straight forward as there is a base clock frequency (100mhz) and then you use the multiplier to set the maximum for 1 2 3 and 4 cores. I have left mine at default because the work fine and if you want more then I would only go up maybe 1x on all 4, I would not go higher than that as then you will probably have to change voltages too because there probably isn't enough power to the CPU for you to see a difference. This would be overvolting and with that comes the risk of reducing the life of your chipset. People generally undervolt if they find the performance to be more than enough for them as this can increase the life of the chipset, but I am pretty convinced that the CPU at stock clock and voltages will last at least 4 to 5 years anyway because I have never overclocked the CPU in a laptop in the past and got plenty of life from it, I would hope intel still has a high quality chipset.

I have no experience with the iGPU overclocking but I guess it would work on the same principal as you have the stock clock as default and then any increase on the stock is a multiplier starting with 0.5x and goes up to about 28 I think. If you do decide to overclock this chip I think you are likely going to have to overvolt after maybe 1x or 2x because the power draw from the chipset will be quite tight, You will be asking it to do more but not giving it the means to do it. I would really watch temperatures if you overclock too as I have no idea how the iGPU will behave and anything over 80 generally is what I try to avoid because temperature is again another life limiter. 80+ is safe up to 90-95 but stay out of that if you can, the CPU will be more reliable and less likely to throttle or overheat leading to shutdown.

Incidentally I ran prime95 on here for about half an hour, max fans came on and the CPU temperatures of my i7 4700mq peaked at 75 with max fans, for half the test they were at 70. See more on my benchmarks here: https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/foru...tex-IV-LE-15-6-quot-Review-after-1-day-of-use

 

Hello, I can empathise with the battery wear experience but I believe these things have advanced quite well in the past few years. My last laptop was made in 2009 and the 6 cell battery gave me 2 hours which gradually went down to about 1h 20 after 3 years. There may be various battery experts on here but I am going to level with you having had a HP laptop made in 06 whose battery went from 1hr40 to 45mins then a Toshiba from 2hrs to1hr20 and now this laptop for which I get about 3hrs30 just surfing, there doesnt seem to be a secret formula I think it is just what works for you. There are far too many factors in my opinion, having a dedicated GPU means you will probably be plugged in 80% of the time and do they expect you to remove the battery for that period of time?! I would assume not. The power supply is at the back but the battery is near the front of the laptop so the power will go through the motherboard anyway, I think they will likely charge the battery and then supply power directly to the main board from the PSU when battery is full. I would say monthly draining the battery is good for the battery but probably more beneficial for the system to keep tabs on the battery because sometimes the system needs the battery to charge and discharge a few times to see the actual running capacity to give you an expected time on battery power. I don't think it is possible to completely discharge to 0% unless you do it on purpose with an override because the system will sleep at anywhere between 5 and 12% to prevent data loss.

As the topic is so widely contradicted my advice would be do the monthly charge/discharge but then keep tabs on the battery wear every few weeks so you can use a series of weeks and checks to determine what is best for your battery, meaning if you use it for 2 months always plugged in on battery with a monthly or fortnightly run down on battery power to about 15% and it gives you 1% wear, but then have it charge and discharge every use for the following 2 months and find the wear goes to 4%, it means what you did for the first 2 months was obviously better. To monitor it I would use CPUID HWMonitor, screenshot below:

 

Thank you, that was extremely helpful, especially the quoted portion.

I'll definitely spend some time checking on the battery to see what works best for me. And yes, sorry, I did refer to a complete discharge as to the point where the PC automatically safely hibernates or shuts down.

 

Attached is the screenshot of the xtu for the graphics core. As you can see, there are three parameters. The ratio limit goes all the way up to 28.5.
What value I should modify it so that I can set the graphics clock rate to 800 MHz instead of 400 MHz while gaming. Also, what changes will I have to make
to the graphics voltage and offset parameters?

Thanks

 

It would be the graphics ratio but if I remember correctly the extreme series is the only one with unlocked graphics multipliers.

 

What should I set the ratio to? Since the maximum graphics frequency is 1150 MHz, so the reference frequency should be 1150/28.5=40.5 MHz.
If that is correct then I should set the multiplier to 20 to get the 800 MHz frequency. Is that correct?

Thanks

 

I have been trying this but as Meaker said, looks like our CPU doesnt have an unlocked iGPU clock. I changed the ratios but on GPU-z the values remained at 600mhz

 

Thanks for your reply. I am also facing one more weird problem. As soon my laptop goes on battery, the 4600 clock rate reduces by half even though I have set the card on maximum performance even when on battery. I am using 4600 for playing Dota2 and I am getting a decent 70+ fps(plugged in) so I don't really want to stress the 770m. Do you know how can I resolve this issue?

Thanks

 

Seems like it's an intel battery saving measure, there is not much you can really do.

 

The i7 4700mq always goes to half settings when on battery power, it is probably the reason why the battery lasts around 3.5hrs. The 4600 will also be half performance too I guess for the same reason. I tested this in a benchmarking application to find the bench results were exactly half for CPU when on battery power than when plugged in (4200 vs 8500). Also using Intel's cpu monitor it stays in power saving mode, there is no sign of the CPU turbo boost being activated and overclocking the CPU.

 

On that note: does anyone know how the ASUS G750 (with the same CPU and GPU) achieves a similar battery life? The batteries are somewhat comparable 8-cell (though the G750's holds a bit more, I don't think that quite accounts for it.) This is in regards to the fact that the G750 doesn't use Nvidia's Optimus. So is there something different with how the notebooks are built or is there some firmware, GPU underclocking, or some software solution? I'm assuming the i7 4700MQ is going to halve in performance on battery power in any notebook.

Also, I have some old IC Diamond 7 left lying around, so I was also wondering if it would be recommended to repaste? Me, and seemingly many others, are quite content with the stock paste, so I definitely don't want to mess up a good thing. The cooling is really impressive to me, so I'm curious if anyone has found any notable improvements by repasting.

 

Had the same question...probably their battery has higher charge density. What baffles me is that they don have optimus and still achieve it! Kinda make this GPU switching stuff lame.

 

The asus has no optimus which hurts the battery.

 

Well, that's what we'd assume, right?

But by all accounts (including various reviews on the G750's battery life), it can pull out 3.5-4 hours of light intensity work on battery, about on par with the Optimus-enabled Sagers. So beyond sating my curiosity, like tlprtr19 said it does kind of bring to question what Optimus is doing if there are effective alternatives...and personally: if there are alternatives, if we could stack Optimus and whatever else together for an even longer battery life (assuming, like I suggested, it's not some equivalent like GPU underclocking/undervolting).

 

The battery on the asus is 88Wh, the clevo units use 77Wh batteries.

If you run the clevo with the dGPU forced on you can see the difference it makes.

 

Question: Is the NP8230 mSATA connection SATA III? According to the specifications of the QM87/HM86 chipsets, 4th Gen Intel® Core™ Processor, Intel® QM87/HM86 Chipset: Diagram, those chipsets can have 2 to 4 SATA III ports out of the available 6 SATA ports.

 

Both mSATA ports are Sata III.

 

Everyone is maxing out on the SATA III this gen by the looks of things.

 

Alright, it's been a long time of ignoring, but I really want to get my microphone working. I am using Windows 8 x64.

The microphone's input is exceptionally quiet--spikes will only be significant when tapping near the built-in microphone. However, this problem extends to external headsets, which are slightly more audible but suffer from very similar problems. In addition to the quiet input, there seems to be feedback of static significantly louder than the voice heard which quickly becomes loud and obstructive (so raising gain will simply make the audio sound like the most aggressive noise possible).

Any ideas? I've spent a good chunk of time looking online and vicariously taking in suggestions, so I feel as if I will punch someone if somebody suggests boosting the gain. Things I have tried that others have suggested:
- uninstalling the Realtek driver completely
- installing the latest Realtek driver
- uninstalling and installing the stock driver
- disabling audio enhancements (from Windows or Sound Blaster)
- disabling Windows call ducking
- disabling Intel Virtualization Technology (Hyper-V is also disabled)
- waiting to see if it will somehow go away (my previous Asus notebook had a similar issue which I recall I never definitively understood how it was fixed, even after the second occurrence following a Windows clean installation)

Any help? Again, this does affect more than the built-in microphone, so any microphone being used will sound terrible. I've tried 2 headset and a microphone that are also quiet with heavy static noise, but sound perfectly fine on my Windows 7 desktop. It seems like the last resort is reinstallation and the penultimate choice would be to update the BIOS.

 

I just pulled the trigger on this laptop. It was a tough decision. I debated on getting the 7330 for its portability but opted for the larger screen, better GPU, and better port selection (IMO). I also preferred the look of the 8230 to that of the 7330. I'm really excited to get this laptop! It will be a late birthday/early Christmas present.

I ordered stock except I upgraded the screen to the 95% gamut matte screen and the wifi card to the Intel 7260 AC. I have a Plextor 128 GB mSATA that I'm going to add to the laptop when I get it.

Has anyone else upgraded the screen? I debated whether or not it would be worth it but decided to try it out.

Also, is it possible to squeeze 4 hours out of this just surfing the web? Has anyone tried to see how long it lasts playing a movie? I looked for reviews but didn't really many on this laptop.

 

I plugged my 256gb msata into the msata port under the main hard drive bay and both would only go at sata ii speeds. Whe nI plugged it in to the msata port near the gpu, both drives went to full sata iii speeds, anyone know why this happens ?
I have been playing around with xtu to get my lowest battery usage settings on the cpu by underclocking/undervolting. I have set the multiplier on my 4700mq to x8. The voltages have been set while running powersave mode so that i can run the igpu at lower voltage.
I tested using p95 to stress with MSI Kompuster running so as to stress the igpu.
the attached screenshot of my xtu profiles will explain more.

 

If you have a NP8230 that is an issue that the second mSATA drive has. The NP8235 is the revised model which has support for both mSATA drives. People have reported the second mSATA drive working as it should depending on the drive. What is the mSATA drive you're using?
Sager listed the NP8230 as only having one mSATA drive because of this, is that what you have or was it another Clevo Builder.

 

I would have thought it was the revised version, its actually a Terran Force P151SM which I bought 3 weeks ago in Beijing. They built it in front of me from barebones to my spec which I then stress tested while there. Lucky I did as the 1st Kingston memory sticks were bad.
The msata drive is Plextor PX-256M5Mwhich I bought elsewhere. The other drive is a sata 3 hdd 1gb 7200rpm Drive Model: HGST HTS721010A9E630. I'm running the 1.09 and 1.04 bioses.

 

Hey, I upgraded the monitor because I use the notebook for graphics design and software development and calibrated it myself with a hardware calibration system. But I've seen the stock screen on a friend's notebook: it's a very gorgeous screen already that displays colors vividly and quite accurately out-of-the-box but can also be calibrated. The 95% gamut screen does express certain ranges of contrast and colors better, but if you are not performing work with graphics or video, the stock matte screen would have most definitely already been fantastic for regular use, media, and gaming. But no need to regret the upgrade if you still want the accuracy for other needs; otherwise you can probably modify your order as it is being processed by whatever reseller you are going through. I'm really impressed by these displays--some of the best TN displays I've used, although I'm sure most high quality top-end notebooks should have similar quality displays as well.

As for battery life, I think 3.5 hours is a more realistic estimate for me when performing light work (with wi-fi on). But I suppose I do end up wrapping up or plugging in when it hits 15%, so by that token, you should be able to squeeze out 4 hours by bringing it to the edge. As for movies: I'm sorry I can't comment on how long it lasts when using the notebook's display, but plugged into an external monitor/TV it looks to get about 3 to 3.5 hours of battery life. You'll probably only be able to play/stream a full-length movie before you'd consider charging it, which isn't a big deal for me and hopefully not for you either.

I'm really enjoying this notebook! A few small annoyances I have had is with the touchpad software (multi-touch is very limited and clunky and had to upgrade to the latest Synaptics drivers to disable many pointless features/gestures), audio jack placement near the back instead of the front, and the strange keyboard arrangement (at least compared to external/laptop keyboards I'm used to). Otherwise, I absolutely love how many matte surfaces make up this thing--the coarse texture of the palmrest areas in particular have really grown on me and now rubberized/metal/smooth plastic feels strange!

 

So possible problem. When I plug in my headset (Logitech G35) it works fine, but after a while it will disconnect from USB. I'm not moving anything in the wiring. It reconnects, then disconnects again, then reconnects in the space of 4-5 seconds. Then it's fine for another 20 minutes or so. It does not do this any other computers. Thoughts?

 

Does this happen when connecting the headset to the USB 2 (right side) and USB 3 (left side) ports?

 

happens when I plug into the left side.
I'll try the right side and get back to you.

edit: hasnt done it since. Must be a USB3 compatibility thing. Guess I'll just have to move my mouse nub to the other side then. Thanks for the advice.

 

I have a p151sm1b and i noticed the laptop has a tedency to overheat when turbo boosting, fan is probably dusty. Does anyone know the proper procedure to clean it?

I also noticed that when the turbo fan activates, it will not turn off (not even with fn + 1) unless i close the game that caused the turbo fan to activate in the first place. Is this normal? It gets really annoying when the turbo fan is still going on even though the CPU temp has dropped to 50 degrees.

 

That's pretty cool to have it done in front of you. Now iirc another person had issues with the plextor drive in their revised version...

 

Try disabling LPM in IRST (assuming you have this installed). And then power off your system for ~10 seconds. Then boot up. This should keep the speeds of the Sata III ports at Sata III. Though, under certain conditions (haven't figured out why and haven't been able to replicate it), it has dropped down to Sata II rarely. I still think there's a power issue with the system but can't confirm it. Just a hunch.

I just open the bottom panel, unscrew the fan and then use an air blower (while holding the fan blade just to be safe).