*** Official Clevo P177SM-P170SM / Sager NP8290-8270 Owner's Lounge ***

Metabox?

 

Yeah, how'd you know? Getting it from Affordable Laptops.

 

The free blu-ray and Intel Advanced-N 6235.

I just bought my machine from them too

 

Hey guys after a few weeks of reading / researching re-sellers and brands on the forums, i decided to order the P170SM from Mythlogic (FYI: Josh at Mythlogic is a great guy that made the entire experience easy and simple).

P170SM
Display: 17.3" (1920 x1080) Glossy 90% NTSC Color Gamut
CPU: Intel Core i7-4900MQ 2.8GHz
Ram: 8 GB (2 x 4 GB) PC3-12800 1600MHz Low Voltage
GPU: Nvidia 780M
Optical Drive: 8x DVD +RW/CDRW Combo Drive
mSATA1: Samsung PM841 (840 PRO) 256 GB
Hard Drive1: 750 GB 7200RPM
Keyboard: Backlit Chiclet Keyboard
Wireless Card: Killer WirelessN 1103
OS: Windows 8

My only concern left is that the 4900MQ might be too much. For a laptop i want to last 3 years down the road, is it still overkill? If it is do i want to maybe take that savings and add another SSD. I am not too worried about another SSD as i already plan to add one down the road.

I think i still have time to change it up as its not in the build phase yet so any feedback would be welcome. Thanks.

 

I'm of the opinion that the 4700qm is more than enough. Not to mention it'll run cooler.

Also, just checking that you're set on the gloss screen? I can't stand glossy screens after living with one on my old G73sw.

 

Gloss vs matte really is personal preference. I actually don't mind either one but lately have been finding myself favoring the matte. Talk to customers every day though that just have to have glossy no matter what. To each their own!

 

Ya my current alienware m17x r2 has a glossy 1280x720 and i enjoy it and i rarely get any glare at all, and even then its not much of a bother, so im super exited for the 1920x1080p screen.

The CPU though has my head in circles.

 

Yeah glossy can be great, especially when gaming in the dark.

 

If it helps narrow down specifics, i plan to use this laptop for 3 or so years for MMO based gaming....WoW, Guild Ward 2, Wild Star, Elder Scrolls Online etc.

 

Sorry if this was already asked, but how are the noise levels with the 177SM/170SM at idle and load? The notebookcheck review of it reported really audible noise levels at load, but I wanted to get opinions from actual owners.

 

From what we've heard it's pretty equal to the P170HM models at full load but everything short of full it's cooler and quieter. I believe Wingnut has db readings in his review.

It's for the 8250 model but the noise should be pretty comparable.

HTWingNut's Sager NP8250 / Clevo P157SM Review

 

It's going to matter more the environments you're playing in. If you'll be in darker areas primarily with not a whole lot of lighting, glossy screens are great for gaming. Nice and vivid, makes the details pop a bit more. If you're going to be using it in well lit rooms or outside though, and the glare really bugs you, you'll likely want to opt for a matte screen.

 

I was talking about the processor . And i heard that mmo's use the cpu a bit more than other games. Im gona stick w the build i have, as possibly its for the next 3 years. Its always easier to install new ssds anyways. Now comes the waiting lol, cant wait to get the laptop.

 

You'll only really notice the CPU difference when you have large battles going on from what I hear, I'm not much of an MMO guy anymore so don't have any recent experience on this. From accounts I've had from customers though they did notice a difference going from the 3630 to the 3740 in larger skirmishes due to the amount of characters on screen at once and being a network game. Haven't heard any comparisons of the new chips but it's pretty likely that the 4700 will be sufficient for a large percentage of what you're doing.

 

If you're going to install an SSD on your own, why not install an HDD on your own too? There is a 1TB 7200 RPM for $90 at Newegg. Or the mSATA in your build won't be your OS/Boot drive but it will be the 750GB HDD?

For the CPU I will personally choose the 4800MQ 2.7GHz 6M L3 Cache vs 4900MQ 2,8GHz 8M L3 Cache and save $200.

 

The 4900MQ can add an extra 600mhz to its max turbo though which is pretty nice.

 

Yeah, it's....fast.

 

Which drive are you talking about? Could u give me a link, i see more than 1 but im probably just not aware of the proper dimensions that fit my laptop. Thanks.

 

Uploaded with ImageShack.com

the bios does not allow the current raid 0 on the hard disk msata

 

Huh, doesn't allow mSATA RAID0? I'm sorry I guess, as we support that with our BIOS

 

Wow, that's fast.

 

Did you already run 120hz with this laptop and how did it go?

 

This one:
Newegg.com - Hitachi GST Travelstar 0S03563 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 2.5" Internal Notebook Hard Drive

The same a little cheaper:
Amazon.com: HGST Travelstar 2.5-Inch 1TB 7200RPM SATA II 32MB Cache Internal Hard Drive: Computers & Accessories

It is 2.5", 9.5mm, so it will fit in either drive bay of your P170SM

*EDIT: Mythlogic added a 1TB 7200 RPM drive to their configurator :thumbsup:

 

Ok guys so i just got my p177SM 77om 4700k and its absoloutley amazing. Runs everything i throw at it on ultra and its extremeley fast doing everyday tasks, even though i didnt even get a SSD.

Only problem im having is that the sound sensitive light bar isn't on or somethig. When i first listened to some songs when i was setting everything up it worked, but now today it isnt lit. I have no idea how to toggle it. Anyone can help me?

 

Hi
today out new bios to solve (?) raid 0 msata problem ..
i'm try today .(only clevo 170sm machine)
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/70754427/M68_B1.03+EC1.04.zip

 

Hello everyone
Looking for Sager NP8270-S review and can't seem to find one. Can you please point me to the right direction? And most important thing - would you recommend this model? I was looking at Asus G750-JX, but there is too many wrong little things with Asus's QA lately, so I decided to skip this generation. Thanks

 

Its a nice machine, good psu for a bit of overlocking, imporoved audio and cooling. Should be solid

 

Thanks for the reply mate. What about fan noise levels, comparing to G series?

 

It will be a bit louder but remember the cpu is soldered in the g750 and gpu is non standard so if yoj want to be able to do anything its more likely in the sager.

 

Yeah, I know about that, but I'm somewhat scared, as i never saw or handled Sager laptop before. How is the build quality, sound, and drivers? Where do I get drivers for that thing? Are they located on one site and regularly updated? Too many questions, right?

 

Oh, and I'm planning to add GTX780M in that thing. Good idea? In terms of heat/noise levels. Is there enough room for it inside?

 

Build quality is good and the audio is now acceptable. Everyone uses the same graphics drivers while on the p177sm you now have lighting control on the touchpad so all good imo.

Always go to the source for video drivers (amd or nvidia) same with intel.

 

Two quick questions for you guys:
1) Does the manufacturer (eg. Sager or Mythologic) pre-install Windows 8 on the primary hard drive? Would I need to uninstall and reinstall the OS onto a new drive if I were to manually replace the HDD with an SSD?
2) Are the P170SM and P177SM the same thickness when closed?
Cheers in advance, and I apologise if these questions have already previously been answered. <3

 

For us at least, we'll install windows on whatever drive you want to so if you get a SSD + HDD then we can install it normally on the SSD, but you tell us =P
The P177SM is thicker then the 170 when its closed due to the different lid design

thanks!

 

I really wish this PC had more of a default Win8 install. There's a ton of user account issues (like my account is Christian rather than Chris, which I find really annoying because no one ever calls me Christian), some folders are owned by different accounts so even after disabling UAC I'm unable to copy files into C:\, I have an Mythlogic icon for my user icon that isn't sized properly and I can't figure out how to change, etc.

 

If you want to email us, we can get those issues taken care of, as we haven't had any specific issues with accounts in Windows 8

 

Yeah, some of it is definitely just my frustrations with Windows 8 (wow it's really as bad as they've said and worse). I'll see if I can sort it out and worst-case I'll be in touch.

 

So, I've had my P170SM a few days now, might as well write up my thoughts.

Specs
Mythlogic Nyx 1713-Black
i7-4900MQ
16GB RAM
780M
2 512GB Samsung 840 in RAID 0
Matte screen
64-bit Windows 8

Overall
I'm super happy with it. I was upgrading from a 2.5-year-old P170HM, so I pretty much knew what I was getting but it's a significant improvement in almost all ways. Don't regret the purchase in the least.

Ordering/Reseller
Generally happy with Mythlogic. Josh was really responsive and friendly throughout. I do think they oversold the availability of the system a bit -- I ordered within 90 minutes of the model going up on their website after they posted here that it was "ready to roll", back on June 3, but it didn't actually ship until June 28. Not a terrible delay especially for a new model, but it was longer than I expected based on the initial description. The other quibble I have is that there was more installation they'd done on Windows 8 than I would have liked -- there was already a user created (with a username I wouldn't have chosen), the color calibration seemed really off, and I'm still trying to figure out some permission issues (I can't copy any files into the root of my C drive). Still, their configuration options were good, communication was good, and the machine itself is really well put together. Would order from them again.

Buld quality
Solid overall. I guess there's a little flex if you really torque it, but it really feels solid. Nothing's creaky, there aren't any poorly finished edges or seams. It's definitely not a solid metal unibody or anything, but there's really nothing to complain about here. I was a little worried about the stock keyboard but it's great -- good crisp key travel, nice subtle backlight, feels just how I like it.

Performance
Holy crap it's fast. And much cooler/quieter than my P170HM too! The 780M just doesn't break a sweat very often, whereas my previous 485M would be working full-tilt all the time. I've had HWMonitor running all day (including a number of games) and it's showing my peak GPU temperature as 58C. But yeah, very noticeably faster than my old computer in all respects. RAID 0 SSDs are just stupid fast.





Screen
I'm never going back to glossy again. Yeah, I guess blacks are a little bit deeper and there's a bit of texture to the screen, but it's uniformly beautiful no matter where I'm using it. Just a fantastic screen, couldn't be happier.

Audio
WAY better than my P170HM. Significantly less noise on the headphone jack (basically none that I can hear), and the audio quality is great. Once you turn off the Sound Blaster crap anyways, it was EQing my music into awful-town. But yeah stock output is surprisingly good -- I wasn't expecting any improvement on this front and was pleasantly surprised.

Windows 8
It's a turd. It's a million times worse than Vista ever was. I've done a bunch of work to get it working more like Windows 7 (Aero theme, start menu, etc), but it's still annoying in all sorts of ways. It's constantly trying to prevent me from doing things that I'm fully willing to do -- I'm admin, I know what I'm doing, get out of my damn way. I can't copy files into Program Files, I can't copy files into the root of my C drive, and apparently I don't run apps as administrator by default even though I'm logged in on an administrator account. It's truly awful. If they ship Win 7 drivers for this hardware I'm really tempted to do a fresh install just to avoid the pain.



I can post some photos if you want but it seems like there are ton out there already. Happy to bench any and all games/software that are on Steam, just ask. Like I've said, I'm super happy with it.

 

Please share.

 

Share what? If you want a bench let me know the game. If you want the games you're out of luck.

 

Pictures .

 

Hi, can anyone current owners of this laptop who have the 90% gamut glossy screen perform the following test? I think my monitor may be defective as when viewing certain screens in the metro menu and switching back, the screen brightness seems to go from dim to light. Thanks. I purchased my laptop from XoticPc.

Here are the steps to perform:
1. Press the windows key to bring up metro
2. Type a search for "mouse"
3. Stay there for a second or two at the results page
4. Press windows key + d to go back to desktop. Do you notice if the brightness has changed from dim to light after switching back?
The brightness is restored within 3-4 seconds.

Thanks.

 

Hey All ;D,

As you can see, I'm recently new to the forums! I'm also quite new to gaming laptops, but doing some research through here (big thank you btw ;D) and other forums has lead me to order 2 gaming laptops via AL: Metabox (aussie reseller). I have recently ordered 2 x P170SMs' with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770M 3GB GDDR5 graphics and i7-4700MQ Quad Core CPU 2.4GHz up to 3.4GHz and I'm just wondering about the temps in the laptop. I've noticed other threads regarding high temps and im wondering will that be the same in the P170SM?
A Big TIA

Liliny ;D

 

Anyone know how to default the touchpad to off? I'm constantly brushing against it when I type and clicking/scrolling and it's pretty annoying. I can Fn+F1 to disable it, but it turns back on every time I reboot or resume from suspend.

 

Hey guys,

I've been following this thread for a while, planning to get an 170SM soon. And I've got a question for those who already own them: can you disable the on-board graphics card from BIOS? Or, to put it another way, is the video output from the Nvidia board routed through the on-board buffers, or is it wired in parallel? I know that most implementations are the 'routed through' way, but there are some manufacturers that go the separate way.

Thanks

 

All the outputs go through the intel chip, you can't disable the integrated graphics.

 

Thanks Meaker.

 

Any one else here using a msata in port 5 and an ssd in port 0 not in raid, os on the msata this is a p170sm my ssd in port 0 keeps locking up freezeing etc randomly.

 

If you have a mouse plugged in there should be a setting to turn off the trackpad when there are external things plugged in, its a checkbox in the actual mouse driver properties (not the windows mouse settings)