**Official Clevo W150ERQ / Sager NP6165 Owner's Lounge**

So, for anyone complaining about the speakers, I HIGHLY recommend checking out this as an add-on

http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-USB-Laptop-Speaker-Z305/dp/B003VAK1I2

It clips directly to the top of the laptop, stays out of the way, and sounds amazing for its size and power draw (completely USB powered, no batteries).

When I got my old sager, I was initially disappointed in the speakers, but later pleased that they didn't take up a lot of real estate for what are now useless speakers to me. I just have these plugged in all the time, and can still carry the laptop around without too much difficulty (a little top heavy, but not too bad). Haven't ever seen any built in speakers that come even close to this unit.

At only $40? It's a steal.

 

I have one of those too, and it's amazing. My current laptop has fairly lackluster speakers, and while I'm not particularly obsessed with audio quality the difference between it and the integrated speakers is utterly stunning. I would suggest not keeping it clipped to the top of the screen all the time, however, as that could potentially cause issues with the laptop's hinges (one of the hinges on my current laptop is failing, and I suspect that overuse of the speaker bar might have contributed slightly).

 

More good news!

I just got my NP6165 delivered today from Xotic PC, installed everything (bought and installed operating system myself), including every driver on the setup disk, and my Optimus seems to work perfectly.

It might be worth noting that I did NOT go to the nvidia site and update the latest videocard drivers. I simply ran the one off the disk, which puts me at 295.93.

If anyone is interested, my global settings are set to prefer High-performance NVIDIA processor, and I made sure Steam was set to use High-performance NVIDIA processor as well. Beyond that, I haven't had to do anything and my steam games I've tried so far worked just fine.

Interestingly, I ran "Check for updates..." in the NVIDIA Control Panel and it said no updates were available, and when I went to check out the nvidia website, it looked as though they didn't have any drivers available for the GT 650m for release on their page yet. Running the java tool to find the latest driver just tells me:

GeForce GT 650M
A driver cannot be found for this device

So, to anyone afraid of Optimus issues, I'd recommend not upgrading your nvidia drivers until they have something more official ready. As long as you stick with the defaults though, Optimus is actually working better for me on this laptop than my old one (I had VSync issues occasionally on my old one). Youtube also defaults to the Intel chip as it should, and everything is nice and fast

 

How is heat management and fan noise?

 

There's also drivers on the sager site, it's like a pack for both the HD intel and the nvidia card , 8.15.10.2653 / NV 8.17.12.9593 , if you want take a look at it, who knows maybe they're the ones on the disc

custom gaming laptops - Welcome to Sager Notebooks

 

So the fan looks like it's going to be mighty powerful here, and capable of putting out of a lot of noise under intense loads. I haven't had a chance to run it for a long period of time under load yet (I played a games for about half an hour and the fan stayed at a level at which I completely forgot it was running within a minute). But when the fan first turns on, it seems to do a boost to max fan speed immediately, then dials it down to a normal level (you hear a little woosh). A little odd but tolerable.

 

What are your temps at idle? How are you finding the keyboard?

 

Haven't had a chance to look at the temps yet, will investigate that later tonight.

I like the keyboard well enough, but I'm not the pickiest person. I know some people complained about the earlier Sagers having kind of a flex to the keyboard if you pushed down on it. I'm not sure if it's just my imagination but this laptop seems to feel a bit sturdier than the last one I had.

Only thing that is really bothering me is I keep accidentally brushing the touchpad with my wrist, since the center of the typing area is offset to the left a bit. So I keep finding myself accidentally scrolling the page up and down, might just disable the scrolling feature honestly.

As to the touchpad texture (someone commented on this earlier), yes it is a bit coarse but with my last laptop that wore down pretty quick, and I don't see it being an issue for too long.

 

Thanks for your input on this laptop so far! Do you think sometime in the near future you can report on the battery life of this laptop for light usage (internet, word processing)? I want to see how this stacks up with the W110ER.

 

Sorry I didn't get around to checking temperatures last night. It seems really good at managing heat from what I can tell from feel, the only downside is the fan does get a bit loud when playing Skyrim. I might have to experiment with SpeedFan, see if I can get it to run at a decent level while still staying cool.

My best approximation is that it sounds like a hand vacuum running at about 1/4th or 1/5th volume. So, not horrendously loud, and I could probably learn to ignore it, but I wish it was a bit less prominent. It works well, but you can definitely hear it working.

I'll see if I have time to test out battery life sometime. I'm a little busy though and I want to get some gaming in, so we'll see. I do have the latest Ivy Bridge cpu so this could help me out slightly vs the other laptop tested in this thread.

I've plugged it into a Kill-A-Watt power reader and it eats about 35W while watching Breaking Bad on Netflix, so make of that what you will. No power saving modes enabled. I think this is at least on par with my old laptop, though.

 

So, it appears that the Geforce 650m does indeed come with GDDR5 and not DDR3? Has everyone's been that way?

 

This one does come with GDDR5, yes. I'm not sure how to check, but that's what the spec says. And considering the game performance I've seen so far (extremely impressive) it would seem to confirm very high quality ram is in this machine.

For someone asking for temps, I ran a chart of me opening up the laptop, and then browsing the internet while plugged in (screen full brightness, no power saving settings on).

http://i.imgur.com/XqqSK.png

The fan is kicking on an off and it's a little annoying I have to say. I'm going to see whether I can get it to be a bit more stable.

 

Thanks for that chart Gnick and your impressions on fan noise. I prefer more when the fan is constantly on but very low instead of turning on and off when it needs to. If you are able to change that, let us know.

 

I assume it's to keep quiet during light use.

Does the W110ER and W150ER have the same fan or is the W150ER's bigger?

 

You can check with the GPU-Z utility.

Almost all of the websites that list this machine show GDDR5, except avadirect, which is where I want to buy it. They list DDR3 but I am hoping it is just a mistake.

(The Geforce 650m IS available with both kinds of ram.)

 

W150ERQ GT650M is only 1GB GDDR5. Thats according to Clevo homepage.

 

Ok, good, that's what I wanted to hear! Glad to see they didn't cheap out with DDR3

 

Thanks for the tip! Just confirmed, GDDR5 it is ( http://i.imgur.com/FErRq.png). Can I ask why you want to buy from AVA Direct? It seems to me that they're just selling an overpriced version of the same laptop.
AVA: Gaming Laptop Clevo W150ERQ Core™ i7 Gaming Notebook, 15.6" Full HD Glossy / Matte LED LCD, Intel® GMA HD / NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 650M 1GB Graphics by AVADirect
Xotic: Sager NP6165 / Clevo W150ER - XOTIC PC - Sager 15.6" Laptop

I've bought from Xotic twice now and great experiences both times. There are other resellers out there as well that offer comparable pricing, if you want to look elsewhere.

 

Ok quick update, this one is definitely not a master of longevity, but it does okay. I had my computer unplugged on balanced power settings at about 50% brightness while downloading games on steam. Also had about... 20 firefox tabs open, with some flash, facebook, and gmail running. Point is it was always a little busy, jumping between 3-10% of cpu usage frequently. Was also web browsing.

Anyway, this brought it from 100% to about 15% battery life over the course of (almost exactly) 2 hours, at which point I moved back into being plugged in, because I didn't want to get caught off guard and lose my open files.

Surprisingly the fan never turned on once during this entire time (or if I did I couldn't here it), and I never had the impression that the machine was getting hot, despite it sitting in my lap most of the time.

So, while a little short lived, it kept cool and quiet and was comfortable to use. And loving the matte screen, especially as I was sitting facing away from an open window

If anyone is interested I'm using the lowest end quad core Ivy Bridge chip (3610QM) paired with a Crucial m4 512gb ssd.

 

A few reasons, they offer the most customizability, and at the config I want they are the cheapest way to get it. Anyone else who sells the laptop doesnt offer the exact stuff I want, and thus I'd have to buy parts from newegg too, and I have added it all up at several places (including xotic) and ava will get it to me the cheapest.


Here is the config I want:

CLEVO W150ERQ Core™ i7 Notebook Barebone, Intel® HM76, 15.6" Full HD LED Matt 95% NTSC Color Gamut, Intel® GMA HD / NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 650M 1GB Graphics
INTEL Core™ i7-3820QM Quad-Core 2.7 - 3.7GHz TB, HD Graphics 4000, 8MB L3 Cache, 22nm, 45W, EM64T EIST HT VT-d VT-x XD, Retail
NVIDIA GeForce® GT 650M 1GB GDDR3 Mobile Graphics Card for W150ERQ
CORSAIR 16GB (2 x 8GB) Vengeance® PC3-12800 DDR3 1600MHz SDRAM SODIMM, CL10, 1.5V, Non-ECC
SAMSUNG 256GB 830 Series SSD, MLC Samsung S4LJ204X01, 520/400 MB/s, 2.5-Inch, 7mm w/ 9.5mm Spacer, SATA 6 Gb/s, Retail
SAMSUNG 1TB SpinPoint M8, 5400-RPM, 8MB cache, 2.5-Inch, SATA 3 Gb/s, OEM
CLEVO Dual Layer Super-Multi DVD±RW Optical Drive for Clevo W150ERQ
NETWORK Built-in 10/100/1000 Mbps Ethernet LAN Card
INTEL Centrino® Advanced-N 6235 Wireless and Bluetooh Module, IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n, 11/54/300 Mbps, Internal PCIe Half Mini Card
CLEVO Extra 120W AC Adapter for Clevo P151EM / W170ER / W150ERQ Series Notebook
NOTEBOOK ACCESSORY Built-in Fingerprint Reader (Included)
NONE No Operating System (Choose OS or subject to Limited Support)
WARRANTY Standard 1 Year Warranty for Clevo Notebooks

I may bump down to the 3720, as it's $200 less and almost the same, but if I can swing this as it, I will.

 

Can you overclock/undervolt the 650m at all on this model?

 

I don't see why you wouldn't be able to.

 

I don't know why we'd assume we can, I've never had a Clevo or performance type laptop for that matter, has anyone been successful doing this, I've searched and searched and it seems like no one has tried.

 

There are tons of aftermarket utilities to overclock nVidia cards, there should be no problem using them. Like, MSI After burner, and whatnot there are several.

 

And is undervolting an easy process or does it require BIOS modification, because based on review of the XMG A502(review was in German), it doesnt look like it has much headroom for an OC without a decent UV.. UV for the CPU would be great too, I'd really like to drive the noise and heat down.

 

I don't think any laptops have voltage options in BIOS so it's usually done through software. I remember undervolting my Core 2 Duo using RMclock but last time I checked they didn't support the new Core CPUs. I'm not sure if there is any software that supports undervolting the new CPUs.

 

Yeah, you would need a 3rd party ap to mod the voltage (you could change it via bios flash also but I wouldn't suggest that unless you really know what you are doing).

And you would undervolt to save power at low clockspeed, and OVERVolt, to raise your overclocking headroom (however I wouldn't really suggest much over-volting on a laptop as the cooling system will probably not be able to cope, and the VRM's are probably not over-built for over-volting/over-clocking purpose.)

Yeah the cpu's these days are not so easy to mess with, you are almost guaranteed to not be able to tweak the voltage unless the options are in the bios, and there wouldn't be much point (besides undervolting) as except for the extreme edition chip, they are all multi-locked.

 

I'm looking into buying a np6165 but am kind of scared at the lack of reviews/buyers compared to that of other types. I was hoping one of the online resellers or owners would make a review video similar to that which xoticpc is doing on their youtube video. Currently, the only thing im waiting on for my purchase is the i5 ivy bridges to come out. Hopefully, the i5's will have decreased power consumption.

 

Does it come with a secondary bracket/caddy?

 

Hey! Which battery you use?

3610qm is the only reasonable choice for this notebook IMO. Higher ones are not worth the money, because gain from it is so tiny

 

That's purely a matter of opinion. IMHO The 3720 is actually the best value. Its not much more expensive than the 3610, but offers 300Mhz. Yes it's 10w more tdp, but that really is only going to come into play if the cpu is pegged. In a lot of cases a 3720 may actually use LESS power as it can get the job done more quickly, and then go into a standby power state sooner.

In any case I am not looking to buy this machine specifically for gaming, it will mostly be for work/development/other crap. Thus the 16GB of ram, my current laptop has 8GB and it knocks me back all the time.

 

I was trying to cut down the cost to $1000, to justify buying another one less than 2 years later. $160 definitely does not justify the 3720qm, yes it has 300mhz higher turbo boost, but that's only a 10% difference and it reaches the thermal junction or throttles down faster, especially for a notebook with 1 fan.

 

And this +300mhz turbo is single core only...
I agree that 3720QM is reasonable choice, but 3820QM definately is not.

 

Think about it, what performance difference would there be from going from 3.3ghz to 3.6ghz? That's less than a <10% difference which will never be noticeable during normal usage. And that's assuming that the CPU is the bottleneck. For 99% of games the GPU will be the bottleneck so the difference will be far less than even that.

Unless you need vt-d, the 3720qm is definitely not worth $160. Save the money or use it to get a SSD instead.

 

Actually that 300Mhz is in every state. Its 300mhz more than the 3610 with 1 core, 2 cores, 3 cores, or 4.

It's actually almost exactly 10%, and the value for $160 is a matter of opinion (however on avadirect its only a $22 upgrade which is what I was initially basing the price difference on) I agree 100% for games a 3610 is fine, and yes you should definitely be getting an SSD. These days I don't even bother using computers that dont have them. Anyways I mostly came into this thread to make sure that the video does indeed come with GDDR5 over DDR3, and that seems to be confirmed. I didn't come here to try and change everyone's opinion about cpu's or anything, so that's cool. Note I did mention I am not looking into this laptop for gaming specifically, it just happens to be a very nice package all together.

 

It's $22 upgrade on Avadirect, but they're already over priced on the base model......... I paid $1053 on XoticPC(Sager made) for base model with changes: 3610qm, Matte 95%, 2 year warranty, no HDD, NBR discount, and Sagerfreeship....it was fast and easy and had no issues, though AVAdirect definitely has more customization options.

 

Oh, I was basing it on xoticpc's prices.

If the upgrade is only $22 then that changes the whole picture.

As for the 650m, it's gddr5 but I don't think it can be 1.5gb. It's a 128bit card so it should be either 1gb or 2gb.

 

650M Disables Turbo Boost in the XMG A502(W150ERQ)

Test Schenker XMG A502 (Clevo W150ER) Notebook - Notebookcheck.com Tests

Translated:
Since our laptop was struggling with a turbo problem, designed to speed the measurements more complicated than thought. When enabled Intel graphics card, the system behaved quite normally. Under load the CPU speed has been increased significantly: Instead of the normal reach of the 2.3 GHz Core i7-3610QM usually about 3.0 GHz (see pictures). As soon as the Nvidia GPU came into play, the Turbo Boost feature, however, was suddenly disabled. On demand we Schenker confirmed that this is not an isolated case, but the entire pre-production is affected.

The turbo was absent in any case mean that the results of all graphics benchmarks were negatively affected (albeit only slightly). Compared to the M73 One-2O, which also includes a GeForce GT 650M, expecting the XMG A502 close to 10% slower.

Update: We were now told that the Clevo CPU Turbo deliberately disabled to run the Nvidia graphics card with the highest possible clock. Given the benchmark results we believe this decision is not optimal. Schenker is a similar view, and still want to interact with Clevo.

 

62 wHr battery, I believe this is the highest capacity you can get right now

 

What does this even mean? With the translation I can't tell if this is a mistake, a feature, a thing that's going to be fixed or what.

 

It's part of the design and it's up to Clevo to fix it, that's what it means... but according to discussions in the the W110ER thread, Clevo is getting enough criticism about it, so it might change.

 

I got this laptop last week and I guess I'll post some info about it since I haven't been able to find much.. I bought it from reflexnotebook since I'm located in Canada.

I'm not a hardcore gamer, but I've been able to play all my games on max settings.. league of legends, dota 2, portal 2. portal 2 is consistently in the 60-100 fps range, although in some levels it goes down to 30-40. Temps are never over 68C but usually lower.

I've also been able to overclock the 650m using MSI afterburner.. I've been able to max out the GPU clock to 880 MHz and the memory clock to 1500 MHz with no problems at all. (stock clocks are 745 MHz and 1000 MHz) I stress-tested with furmark and the temps never went over 72C. Someone please let me know if I am doing this wrong or if it will damage my GPU.. since I am not an expert on OCing, but so far no problems.
EDIT: The above is incorrect, I was under the impression that the gpu was overclocked but in reality, something is preventing it from going over stock levels. I have only been able to overclock the memory, right now it is at 1200 MHz with minimal performance gain.

I didn't know this until I opened it up, but there IS a secondary HD port (2.5 in sata) located near the fan intake. You can see it in the picture of the open laptop that someone posted. I bought an optical bay HD caddy before I knew this.. so if I remove the DVD drive, I have the option of having 3 HDs.

I have also had a few problems with optimus and games not recognizing it (especially on steam). This was easily fixed by going to nvidia control panel > manage 3D settings > global settings > preferred graphics processor > choose the high-performance nvidia processor. or if you want, you can go to nvidia control panel > manage 3D settings > program settings to manually change it for whatever game or program it won't recognize.

I think someone also asked for the windows experience index.. I personally got the i7-3610 ivy bridge for $70. (although they upgraded it from the sandy bridge for free, since I ordered it before ivy bridge was released, but they shipped it after.) This was my only upgrade.

-processor 7.4
-memory (RAM) 7.8
-graphics 6.7
-gaming graphics 6.7
-primary hard disk 5.9 (limiting score)

One thing I ALSO just realized is that although the laptop was supposed to come with a 500 GB 7200 rpm HD, I actually got a 500 GB 5400 rpm HD.. this definitely affects my primary hard disk score and is currently the bottleneck of my laptop. I emailed reflexnotebook and they are handling the situation right now.. they have been great and very professional thus far. I doubt this was a mistake on their part since the laptop was shipped directly from Sager in the US. Make sure you check to see if you got what you paid for!

Anyways, that's a small summary of my experiences with this laptop so far.. hopefully this will encourage other people to post their own experiences since it's been a pain finding information about the np6165. This laptop is great, definitely the best computer I've ever had and the best performance for the price range.. I paid a bit more than $1100 but there's always a premium to get anything in Canada.

 

Holy crap, 1500mhz memory? Is that really stable? Ihat's an awesome OC.

 

yeah I was worried about this too.. I'm going to run furmark RIGHT now, just in case lol

 

That's insane.... lol but seeing as the 660m is technically the same core and the memory runs at at 2000mhz but of course not of the same process bin...

 

I'm having a problem with the gpu automatically throttling when i run furmark so im going to try unigine heaven.. will post results since my OC is probably inaccurate but i was too tired to notice last night when i was testing.

EDIT: Despite GPU-Z saying that my GPU clocks are above stock levels, when I stress-test and run MSI afterburner, the gpu never goes above 835 MHz (stock).. I can overclock the memory, but the gpu won't budge.. any help?

 

Can anyone who has received their's try this if you're not scared:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/660283-you-guys-know-you-can-overclock-lcd.html

 

If they put that limit there intentionally my guess is that they did so because it is likely that the user wants the GPU to run at max speed at the expense of limiting the CPU's turbo boost frequency. Since both chips share the same heatsink and cooling system, they have to be balanced in order to main proper temperatures so that the chips don't throttle themselves.

For example, perhaps they did testing and saw that when the CPU was at max turbo boost frequency, the temperatures got so hot that the GPU was throttling itself, giving lower graphical performance. Since gaming relies mostly on the GPU, it seems wise that you'd want it to always be running at it's maximum clock speed, even if you're limiting the CPU a bit.

 

That's plausible.

However, they even have a throttle on the Turbo Boost. 3.1GHz: If that's the case, I'd want some sort of partial refund for not receiving my extra 200MHz.

 

Unfortunately the max Turbo Boost speed is not a guarantee, especially on laptops. That is the max frequency it can run provided that there is enough thermal headroom. In laptops this is likely very difficult to do so it's normal to see a few hundred megahertz missing from the max Turbo Boost clockspeed. My previous laptop with a Sandy Bridge CPU couldn't hit the max Turbo Boost frequency either, it was usually 100-200mhz under.

EDIT: I read the (translated) article that someone had previously mentioned and the temperatures they measure seems to support my theory. At 2.1GHZ (no Turbo Boost) and full CPU/GPU load the temperatures are very, very high in the mid 90's C for CPU and almost 90 C for the GPU. Even if Turbo Boost wasn't disabled when the GPU is on, I doubt it could increase it's clockspeed at all due to the high temperatures. Unfortunately it just seems like Clevo's cooling system is (yet again) rather inadequate for the components used.