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

No rubberized finish on mine. I think that's the 370SM.

 

I've been looking into buying a new laptop lately and I think I've settled on the P170SM, though the W370ST is also a consideration.

I've currently got an x7200 with dual 460m graphics cards, performance wise it's perfectly fine but having had it for almost 3 years now it's size and weight are getting a bit much to deal with and I'm getting fed up with the having barely 30 minutes battery life, loud fans even when idle and it does get fairly hot.

The P170SM seems like an ideal replacement as I won't be sacrificing power for a more manageable size & weight, though the W370ST seems subsantially smaller and lighter it's 765m will be a bit of a drop in power from the SLI 460m's I currently use, based on notebookcheck's performance chart. I'd just like to confirm a few things before making my decision though.

1) How does the P170SM's weight compare to the x7200 exactly? Am I right in thinking it's under two thirds of the weight?

2) What's the noise level like? Is it a lot quieter than the x7200? Is the P150SM much louder than the P170SM?

3) Is the 8970m a better choice than the 770m? I've seen benchmarks place the radeon above the geforce but is it a noticeable difference in the real world? I ask because the place I was looking to order from doesn't offer the 8970m but is cheaper than other places I've looked at. If the 8970 was worth paying the higher price for I would naturally buy it from a different place. I guess other factors would be which of the two handle the GPU switching better and what are the drivers for the radeon like these days? Do they have any issues?

4) The specs suggest a 5 hour battery life, but what's it like in reality? How long can you get out of the battery when a) playing games, b) browsing the web or c) watching video?

5) I read that the HDMI and DisplayPort outputs only work off the Intel GPU, not the geforce or radeon, is this correct? Also can both the HDMI and DisplayPort be used for external monitors while still using the laptop's screen, so to have the desktop spread across three displays in total?

6) Has anyone had any experience using it to dualboot as a hackintosh? If so, is it easy to set up?

I think that's all the questions I have for now, thanks in advance for any answers!

 

Oh wait sorry, yes they changed to the brushed aluminium instead.

 

Quick question guys, where is second msata slot located in P170sm? I have already put one msata ssd in a slot near battery compartment. I am planning to add 2nd msata now.

Is there a video of dis-assembly of P170sm somewhere?
Thanks

 

Open the main back panel (4 screws) where the cpu and gpu are. The 2nd msata slot is to the right of the RAM dimms, below the GPU.

 

Both are technically next to the battery lol.

 

is it posible to disable the sound activated readout over the keyboard in p177sm like u can disable the touchpad lid ?

 

Yeah, pretty sure that's included in the new BIOS that Sager is shipping with that allows the full control of those lights.

Fn+ - : Volume bar On/Off.
Fn+ pad 7 : keyboard Left Section On/Off.
Fn+ pad 8 : keyboard Middle Section On/Off.
Fn+ pad 9 : keyboard Right Section On/Off.
Fn+ pad 5 : Touchpad On/Off.

 

Thanks, I will take a look.

 

Great news.
the pad and audio lighting was the thing against 177 for me
Btw is the diffrence between 177 and 170 cooling really significant?
I mean temps and noise lvl.

 

Lol, I was annoyed for you just reading your post. I can only imagine how annoying that was for you

 

There should be no cooling difference between the two.

 

No noisier than an alianware, its all down to how hard you run it.

 

To the Linux users here:
Do the brightness shortcuts (FN+F8/9) work for you ?

I'm using ArchLinux with GNOME3 and the shortcuts don't do anything, the screen just stays at max brightness.

 

Try passing acpi_backlight=vendor on the kernel command line (if using GRUB and you use grub-mkconfig to generate your configuration file, add this to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX variable in /etc/default/grub and re-run grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg; otherwise, you should be able to figure out where to add this to your bootloader's configuration).

 

That worked, thanks!

 

Hey there, thanks for the answer!!

I will receive my P170SM from Xotic tomorrow! Can't wait!

Special THANKS to Josh from Xoticpc.com!

 

Hope it's all good for you, what are you moving from?

 

He isn't on the forums too much here but I'll let him know. Congrats on the computer!

 

Take a look at this, it might be useful:

XNOTE P170SM - rozkr

 

Thanks for the video. I can see how to access only one msata in that video. Next to battery and notebook edge. Where is other ?

 

I put mine under the hard drive (there's a small tab you can open up)... although I'm not sure if that's the one you're referring to

 

Hey guys, just a heads up on anyone who runs into a problem with the HotKeys error and .NetFramework. I recently received my first Sager (NP8270) (in Afghanistan which took like a month total to get in my hands haha) and i had replaced the original HDD with a SSD I had on hand. Well after doing the swap and making that HDD my secondary, I installed Windows 8 and I was getting a dumb .NetFramework error and my keyboard lights weren't working. The HotKey program wouldn't even open. After much tinkering around I found the solution.
Install Windows from scratch, start installing drivers from the disk but STOP before you get to the HotKeys program, download or use the most recent updated one off Sagers website and install it. After install SHUTDOWN (don't restart) When you power up there will be an error message saying that you need to restart to finish installing drivers. Restart. The HotKeys and lights should be working just fine.

 

It may be that the initial version has to be totally removed and may interfere with later ones.

 

after uninstalling hotkey and it asks to restart, do not... go in to the (c and then to program files... look for hotkey folder their will be one lil file it didn't delete and that is whats screwing it all up... so delete it.. restart.. and install new one..

 

Hello

Welcom ....

 

Good catch on that, it's usually a file left somewhere that causes these issues.

 

I am an owner of the NP8295 with an AMD 8970M. I love everything about this laptop, it runs very cool and handles graphic intensive games very well.

However, I have a problem with the fan noise, and I have been trying to find some way to control the fan speed with no luck. The problem is that the fans run too fast, even when the temperature is normal (in the 50 degree range for both CPU and GPU). It seems like the fan profiles adjust dynamically based on the % usage of the CPU/GPU instead of the actual temperature. The fan profiles need tweaking and I'm not sure how to achieve this without some form of bios control.

I'm looking for any information about fan control for NP8295 / P177SM

 

Hi, do you have any issue with endoro on P177sm and 8970m or any other issues!?


Sent from my SGH-M919V using Tapatalk 2

 

Havent heard of any common issues with the 8970M

 

Hello all, I purchased a Eurocom X5 (Clevo P177SM) a few weeks ago and I've had little to no problems with it so far.

The only issue is that Hotkey doesn't seem to fully work on Windows 8. The keyboard lights up initially when I boot up the PC, and as soon as Hotkey starts up, the keyboard light shuts off and I can't turn it back on whether through the Fn keys or through the Hotkey utility. I'm wondering if someone stumbled across some kind of solution to this already?

 

Have you tried updating the hotkey utility?

 

yeah I have the latest one from Clevo's website

 

I am thinking of buying a P170SM and have couple questions.

Is TRIM through RAID already a standard feature in the chipset/RST/driver so two mSatas in RAID 0 will perform as expected?

What of the sata ports are 3Gb/s, the esata and ODD and all other are 6Gb/s?

How good is the Ram compatibility in four (same) stick configuration, I read someone had problems with cl9 1600Mhz memory?

 

2 msata raid 0 may be an issue withe the 170SM. There was an issue with early production MB with data drops on port 4 (mSATA). That has supposedly been fixed, but others attempting to create a raid 0 msata array have had difficulty. If you do it, I'd go with something other than a Plextor M5M, as this drive in port 4 has issues. I'd try a samsung PM841.

I believe there ar only 4 6GB/sec ports, the 2 msata and 2 main 2.5" bays. The ODD and esata are 3GB/sec.

I was the user who had issues with CL9 1600Mhz ram, but now I believe I just had some bad dimms. They showed lots of errors in Memtast. I'm currently running 4 sticks of CL 11 1866Mhz with no issues. Some builders are selling them with CL9 1600, so it probably works fine.

On another note, do you really need a raid 0 array. It looks good for benchmarks, but most real world testing shows little to no improvement. Some thinga are actually slower. I'm running a single 256GB Plextor M5M in port 5 and the machine is very fast and snappy.

 

Also, the voltage and size of the sticks in combination may play a roll. As an example, Mythlogic equip their systems with 4x4GB 1.35V but 2x8GB 1.5V sticks as they noticed some issues/errors with 8GB 1.35V sticks.

 

Hi all. Little thing: for about the last week, my 170SM (with 765M) has always had the GPU turned on. It's obviously not under load - it's running completely cool and quiet - but it is running.
Up until about a week ago it was off unless I was using graphical software. I don't remember changing any software or settings... any ideas?

Thanks.

 

Hi there. any owner with the 8970m that would like to share their gaming temps?
ive had my p170sm now for a week and overall it has surpassed my expectations on every plain so far.

but looking a notebookchecks test with the 8970m they reported it hiting 72C after 30 min of btf3.
so i was a bit shocked when hitting 78-80C playing Bioshock infinity using a U3 cooler on max.
other games like WOTR and FC3 also put me around 78C.
while L4D2 runs cool around 67-72C.

obviously this is not dangerously hot.
but considering their 780m test was hitting 86C which is similar to what users are getting here the 8+C im getting over their test with extra cooling is a bit annoying.

on another note. no significant enduro issue has been encounters so far.
one game have launched "wrong" but has switched once i get to up the res.
and alt tab have switched the cards once in FC3s menus

 

Turn on the indictor (NV control panel, desktop, show indicator) it should tell you what is using it.

 

I received my laptop less than a week ago and today decided to repaste my GPU and CPU with Arctic Silver 5.

Prior to repasting I would play WoW and CoD and my CPU would get close to 80c while GPU would be in the mid 80s. After repasting and a 2 hour gaming session with same ambient temps my CPU does not go past 68c and GPU stays under 75c. I also noticed that when I removed the GPU heatsink that there was this thick sheet of thermal paste and not the self applied thermal paste and that it was not evenly distributed. I scraped off the nasty pad off the heatsink and die, slightly bent the metal arms back a tad (so that when screwed back it would apply a bit more pressure) and applied AS5 and it made a huge difference. The attached screenshot shows the idle temps for my CPU (32c) and GPU (36c) as well as the max temps after playing CoD for 45 minutes.

 

sounds like it would be a good ide to repaste it then.
i did tighten the gpu screws a bit, and even though they didnt seem to move at all it did push my temps down from 78-80C to 74-77, but still with the u3 cooler so could probably be better and a paste job isnt that expensive.

 

A good paste costs a few quid, a pad is not going to help all that much, you can just raise the back a little (bottlecaps under the rear legs for example) and it would give you the benefit of one.

 

Hi there,

I'm seriously considering a new laptop as my current one, W870CU with Nvidia GTX-260M does not work with DirectX11 thus limiting my gaming possibilities (no Crysis 3 for me... ). And my wife needs a new computer. So She will get my current one and I'll have brand new Clevo.

Anyway, what are the differences between P170SM and P177SM apart from the look? IMHO P170SM looks better and I'm in favor of it.

Also I have Windows 7 and I'm happy with it. Windows 8 has nothing extra that I need. Question: how's the compatibility of P170SM and P177SM (drivers?) with Windows 7 ?

 

With the P170SM and P177SM are pretty much identical apart from styling.

7 and 8 are both offered on each system.

 

Windows 8 will soon upgrade to Windows 8.1, which offers Directx 11.2. (I hope you clean the old laptop, put nice software on it for her, and put it in a box. You know, so she can get that new computer feeling).

 

True and the classic shell can give you a more traditional experience.

 

How find if I have latest bios and ec firmware in my NP8275/P170sm ? If not, from where to download it ?
I dont see it on sager or clevo site.

 

You can check in your bios and you can check the bios thread on the main sager section for updates.

 

How do you guys clean the laptop's exterior? I'm guessing damp cloth would be the safest way? In the past my laptop, especially in the palm rest area have had discoloration so want to try and make this one looks mint as long as possible. I still have the protective plastic over the monitor and laptop cover... is that a good idea? I'm sure dust still find their way in, and I'm not sure if it's better to remove the plastic and do regular cleaning or leave it be. How about the keyboard? In the past I used air duster, but I noticed sometimes the air is wet, I'm not sure if that's safe

 

LCD screen cleaning spray it works wonders on getting rid of those fingerprints on the rubberised surface on my p177sm and it evaporates nicely ( I spray on a lint free microfibres cloth then wipe pc) , also get one with anti dust/static properties and it will get better overtime