*** Official Clevo P640RE/Sager NP8640 Owner's Lounge ***

go right ahead meaker, id love to see you running around with such a machine

 

At the moment out and about I actually use an even smaller machine But it does not take the graphics horsepower with it which this does.

 

thaaat doesnt count, thats still meaker-territory

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

So would this machine if I had to move around more than I do and take the power with me. Let's not cast out people from the "club" just because they have different requirements.

 

There's one at the end of this list:















While you're at it - we have a small survey to ask you guys about CPU and display choice. Please - if you have a minute, click here:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/G967BYW

Thank you!

 

Yes that's one packed PCB.

 

That's one sexy laptop.

 

@XMG, you mentioned a 6820 in the survey as a possibility. Do you have any info on temps (with any processor) that you can share with this model? I'm curious to find out more.

Thanks for the pics!

 

Good god that is a busy looking PCB! Guessing they took a page out of the Gigabyte book for the cooling system. The GPU VRM/Memory placement being a bit more haphazard though.

Weirdly, the P34W doesn't look anywhere near as densely packed. I'm guessing GB managed to cram more stuff on the "top" of the board whereas it looks like Clevo has jammed everything onto 1 side of the board here.

Looks great though. If the chassis is solid (no bendy bits, keyboard flex etc) it could really hurt the P34 which was really let down in the build quality department.

 

lots of copper and shared heatsink, should be good for temps

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

These two pics - it's clear that Clevo has improved much on the W230SS. That side and back profile all say it's an evolution, a re-thinking of the W230SS. So reminiscent, yet so different.

That's a cramped PCB, indeed. I like the shared heat-pipes and the dual fans, though - certainly going to keep things cool, as well as allowing some decent OC headroom. I like it. Once again, it shows that Clevo has improved on the W230SS design - back-facing instead of side-facing heatsinks and exhaust vents, as well as chips that are near the fans, and not halfway across the board.

A pity that the battery is so small, borderline anaemic. I only notice one M.2 SSD slot (below the fan on the left) and one SATA plug - is there a second M.2 slot on the other side? Also, looks like this machine has been in production for a while, looking at the dates - they go as far back as July and August, when this thread hadn't opened yet.

I completed the survey, even though I'm probably not buying this from XMG.

I'd also rather this come with 4 GB (or 6 GB even) of VRAM, and a Pascal GPU. 3 GB certainly won't cut it for my flight simulation. Hopefully Clevo re-does this model for next year, with a 1065M/1070M (if they're even called that).

 

You're going to be holding your breath for a looooong time if you're waiting on mobile Pascal.

 

Thank you everyone for your encouraging comments and for taking part in our survey. We already gathered some valuable insights. It looks like over 40% of you would take the i7-6820HK into consideration - that's more than what we expected.

Clevo is still fine-tuning the thermal solution in regard to i7-6820HK. One of our press reviews will be supplied with i7-6820HK so you can expect some real-world results soon!

No, it's one m.2 and one 2.5" slot for storage.

 

I don't mind, really. I'd rather wait for the newest. I expect it'll come out exactly a year from now. My 860M will last me at least another year, if not two. My sister's laptop from 2011 with a i7-2630QM and a GT 525M is still going strong. It just needs an SSD, and boom, magical speed boost.

That's really unfortunate. I don't know how others see it, but... worse battery life, only one M.2 slot (while the W230SS has two mSATA slots), no full dGPU mode and hence no G-Sync, as well as fully BGA and soldered chips?

This laptop is two-thirds a downgrade from the W230SS. The only 'upgrades' are the screen size and the GTX 970M, and perhaps metal chassis.

Even Clevo is going the Razer Blade route.

 

What about a bigger battery ? It's a shame that a 14's only gets a 45Wh battery compared to what is already offered on the market

 

Yeah the small battery is really a big put off. What the point of making a smaller laptop (more mobile) with less battery (less mobile)

Guess I will stick with my P650SG for another 1-2 years.

 

Specs list one M.2 for storage and second M.2 for WiFi/Bluetooth card... but also inner slots - 3xM.2 (storage, wifi, 4G/LTE) so it's a bit of inconsistent. It has to have at least two of them.


I use and liked W110ER a lot. It had a very rigid keyboard, was very silent for it components and had nice rubbery plastic. Two disadvantages where to small keys (they just need to be bit bigger like on some modern 11.6" designs) and one storage option (I would really like SSD for daily Linux and HDD for storage and Windows for example )

W110ER also had an external battery, which was quite big for such laptop - and allowed a very long battery life if GTX was not used, and CPU wasn't stressed.

 

There will be some options from clevo, but one full m.2 for storage yes.

As always it's a trade off, get rid of the 2.5" bay for a larger battery and a 2nd m.2, now you can only offer SSD storage and the machine gets more expensive.

Over the W230S series you get a drive that's faster than a raid set of Msata drives, far higher performance, plus there are no mobile sockets anymore.

With the 6820hk a socket is pretty much pointless anyway.

 

Fair enough, but I'd rather not compromise on anything relevant to storage and battery life. It's more or less why I chose the W230SS over the Blade (notwithstanding the 50% price reduction). I wouldn't mind downgrading the CPU and GPU in place for slightly worse cooling to match the weaker specs, and in return get to run two OSes on different SSDs, and run them for six hours instead of four on one charge of battery.

With all due respect: I find that putting in a K-series chip in such a small machine in itself is pointless, whatever the power users say. 6700HQ is more than enough, and even if this is Skylake, I've seen how badly the 4710MQ heats up. Granted, this has better thermal design and all, but putting an unlocked CPU chip in a small laptop is borderline heresy. Once again, I'm a hard-core mid-ranger, and I do not like seeing excessive specs on small devices without the engineering to keep components cool. (read: Razer Blade).

Laptops are small? Use mid-range stuff! Nothing more than a 965M or a 6700HQ.

 

The 970M is a no brainer really, it's more performance per watt than the 965m and is a big deal to keep up with the 1080p display over the next few years.

The 6700HQ should be an option too.

As a mid ranger the option of a single super fast PCI-E SSD plus 2TB HDD should excite you.

 

get rid of the 2.5 inch port and the dedicated gpu, keep the two fans, switch to socket desktop cpu, double battery size and keep the 14 inch form factor: perfect business machine

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

PREACH

 

Depends what kind of business you mean, that would give you limited storage capacity and far more CPU power than most business applications need.

 

Well, it could have external PCIe connector for an external GPU/docking station Or USB 3.1 + Thunderbolt port for Apple ecosystem solutions for eGPU

 

That's what I'd like to see. Dual mSATA (not M.2) slots, nix the 2.5" bay and offer a much larger battery, then I'm sold. I want a solid MINIMUM 5 hours.

 

You'll never see msata again from clevo, it would be a bit regressive.

 

Or maybe, it would be nice to see companies offer something along the lines like the Asus G751 2.5 inch drive. If you remove the 2.5 inch, then there is the m.2 PCIe slot on the inside of that (just need a bracket). Gives the option to go with either, kind of a nice option in my opinion.

 

Edit: double post. sorry.

 

That is a nice option but in this case would leave you with the same space left over for battery etc.

 

Meh, not really. M.2 are hot, more expensive, and lacking in capacity, and are much bigger physically than mSATA drives. Sure M.2 uses PCIe bus, but 2.5" SATA drives still use the SATA bus, so why not opt for mSATA until M.2 can catch up on price and capacity?

 

The 850 evo drive is cooler and more resiliant (due to NAND cell size) while not being expensive.

 

M.2 is not just for PCIE, it's a multi-purpose connector. It's also worth noting, that you can get M.2 SATA SSDs which match the size of old mSATA drives. I assume the full length is used for simplicity of manufacturing when larger drives come out.

As far as price/capacity, pretty sure most M.2 SATA SSDs are similarly priced to their 2.5" and mSATA counterparts.

 

Right now, at least on 850 Evo drives, mSata, m.2, and 2.5" are within $2 of each other on newegg. But there is always variance by brand.

 

Apparently this resseller already has the P640ER in stock branded as the Aftershock S14, wonder when they will arrive in the UK ...

https://www.aftershockpc.com/welcome/Productinner/s14

 

Crap, it's cheaper than what my own W230SS cost a year and a half ago, and about 50% more powerful (I paid S$2183 for the configuration in my signature).

 

i guess its time to upgrade brother @SRSR333

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Nah, not yet. I want to wait for Pascal and the 3rd gen of the P6 series (maybe P640QE? One letter before 'R'...). For now, though - 860M is a solid mid-range card that runs all the new stuff at 1080p between 30-60 FPS. That's enough for me. @jaybee83

 

wise decision my man. i prefer and also follow such a route in terms of upgrades, rather than swapping out machines on a yearly basis just cuz.... power button looks different! new gen cpus! (with identical performance!) gsync! (which most people cant discern anyways!) thunderbolt! (and NO egpu enclosures in sight!) pcie 3.0 m.2 ports! (and NO drives to saturate them fully!)

just a few examples...

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

I know this but even m.2 sata run hot. And biggest m.2 drive capacity is 512gb.

And there are far fewer options with m.2 than msata.

Sent from my VS980 4G using Tapatalk

 

hm havent seen any reports on m.2 sata drives running hot/throttling tbh...

and true, the capacity limit is 512gb atm, but thats sure to change in 2016, samsung already announced 1tb m.2 drives

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

They don't throttle but do run warm like 50-60c

Sent from my VS980 4G using Tapatalk

 

should be expected. if i look at my 850 pro, it idles at 38C, regular loads in low to mid 40s and maxes out in the 50s. so same tech on a smaller form factor would easily bring that number up 10C.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

My mSATA Crucial M500 runs warm (60 degrees in summer) when you hammer it as well. There is no difference between a mSATA SSD and M.2 SATA SSD in that perspective. In fact, it's probably better due to increased surface area.

 

Whoa, I didn't know until now :O

 

Doesn't this machine have a 7mm height limit on the 2.5" bay? There is no 2TB HDD on the market that is 7mm or less is there?

 

Would probably be 9.5mm limit on the 2.5" bay. No, all 2tb drives are going to be 9.5mm thick, as far as I know. Not really any mechanical drives are that thin, just SSDs.

 

You are right, it's 7mm. 1TB is the limit with that, which is still not bad.

 

Hmm. I reread the thread while considering the S14 as part of my plan...

So if there is no dGPU-only option (which means no GSync, which is in my "good to have" list), will there be any performance hit? (i.e. will the 970M be throttled somehow?)

 

Anyone notice Metabox lists 60Wh for their P640re battery (prema has 45 listed) ? Yet they're both 3 cell. Is the battery different with different Clevo suppliers? 60Wh seems a much better option- I hope it's not a typo.

 

it most probably is though. things like that happen during preorder phase

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk