*** Official Clevo X170SM-G/Sager NP9670M Owner's Lounge ***

It is quite telling that non-****ty notebooks would be considered such a limited market that it may not be a good idea to have more than one model.

Certainly among hundreds of non-upgradable laptops there should be a market for more than one model that is upgradable for both CPU and GPU. There is no reason why somebody should not want a laptop that is still upgradable and in a smaller chassis, wanting a smaller form factor should not automatically make turdbooks the only choice. The space that is freed up by omitting 2.5" drives could be put to good use for MXM graphics and a socketed CPU.

 

Ignorance and worst of all will-full ignorance is what causes the issues.

Most people want a car that gets them from A to B reliably, economically and in a good form factor.

Take the Kia Rio for example, no frills but comfortable and very reasonably priced.

Now take the Kia Stinger GT, is it a nicer car with a higher standard of engineering? Sure but is it the right car for everyone? No.

I'm all for the high end machines continuing on but ignoring what consumers need and want is going to end up in a company dying. That includes having a niche and halo product though. But don't confuse your markets or right off those consumers.

 

We're not talking about Clevo flooding the market with a handful of models. Producing one more chassis that is upgradable wouldn't be that much of a gamble as it is not unreasonable to expect that not every customer wants the same form factor in such a laptop.
If they wanted to make it relatively simple they could work from an existing design, maybe even the one with the Ryzen, and make it a bit thicker to fit MXM form factor graphics.

 

Yes, I think that is all we are looking for. The problem is when there is only one brand, and only one model. Most brands offer nothing whatsoever. Having only one option to choose from sucks and when it's not one truly amazing option that merely exacerbates the problem.

If Clevo and one or two other OEMs were to offer just one option each that isn't compromised or riddled with mediocrity I think almost everyone that wants something superior would be pretty happy and they would have no trouble selling them. We don't need a wide selection. One spectacular option from two or three brands is a pretty reasonable expectation and enough to create a sense of competition and accountability. When there is only one option from one brand there is no competition or accountability. In fact, the outcome is such that the one option that does exist becomes undesirable due to lack of either of those things. Nice specs with crappy firmware and/or sloppy/cheap build quality is a waste of money. Alienware Area 51m has too many compromises to be taken seriously, so it doesn't count.

 

Indeed, Clevo pulling out all stops is not something we are likely to see when they have the only proper laptop among hundreds of turdbooks.
Heck, even in their own lineup they have more than 30 turdbooks and only on proper notebook left - not a good quota:
https://www.clevo.com.tw/clevo_prodetail.asp?id=1314&lang=en

It would be good to have something great as you say but manufacturers mess up their modular designs by various means so I have less and less trust that they can still pull it off.

HP hasn't done something truly modular since I believe the Zbook 17 G2 or G3 and MSI had their last shot with the WT75 and look how that turned out: Crappy bios and not enough space to hold the new RTX cards make it unusable for high performance tasks even though it could have been pretty good with a slight rearrangement of the board layout.

That is not to mention Acer and Asus who even soldered everything for their last ultra high end big screen laptops with no chance of ever upgrading anything on them. Impressive if ridiculously oversized external cooling design in the case of the Asus GX800 but no upgrade path whatsoever and a new replacement main board with the GTX-1080 chips probably costs $3000 or more compared to a fraction of that for a top of the line Clevo where you can just keep your CPU and GPU.

 

I would say your Halo only needs one or two models, a 15 inch if it can be done and a 17 inch.

Why dilute the resources into variations? What would you do for extra models?

 

At the moment I would see these choices:

Ryzen 15"
Intel 15"
Ryzen 17"

I would probably go with a 15" Ryzen as it will be even more futile to cool those hot running Intel chips in a smaller chassis.

And later when the mobile 30xx Geforce cards have been released a bigger 17" model with vapor chamber unless bigger screens become available. If bigger screens make a comeback a laptop with the size of the P870 would be good for up to a 19" 16:10 screen and if it was similar in size to previous 18.4" units it could handle at least a 20" screen in 16:10 or 16:9.

 

Bigger is so hard to justify with one card, unless it had a higher tier of performance, 20-30% we are talking.

 

After owning numerous 14, 15, 17 and 18 inch notebooks I can definitively state a strong preference for 17 inch or larger. I am speaking strictly about screen size here, not chassis weight or thickness. The user experience with the larger screen is vastly superior. A 15-inch screen is tolerable (just barely) but not very satisfying. If it is higher than 1080p it is insufferable. Given the choice between 2 otherwise identical systems at the same price I would never choose 15-inch over 17.

 

How about a 3080 TI Super and CPU's with 20+ cores - would that be enough justification?

 

Yes, but Nvidia would need to let the TI card be used in laptops, that's what I am basically talking about.

I would then have a 17 inch with that and maybe a 15 inch up to the non ti series.

17.3" is about the limit where you can easily source decent displays.

 

Same here, I had only ever used one 15" laptop and everything else was always bigger. Sadly in recent years I have been relegated to 17" 16:9 after having had 17" 16:10 18" 16:9 and 20" 16:10 screens before. Compared to its biggest my screen size has shrunken by 30%.

My most enlightening laptop screen experience was what I would call a simulation of a 2560 x 1600 resolution on an HP HDX 9000 Dragon with a 20" 16:10 screen as I had to display that resolution on a panel with a lower native resolution. Made all 17" screens look like tiny tits and had ample desktop real estate that I always found lacking with smaller resolutions.

Then I measured my Alienware 18 to notice that with slim bezels that size could fit in there - I wish Dell would have done the same and given us a much bigger Area 51m. We'd only need LG or AUO to produce one fitting screen model with a refresh rate that is acceptable for gamers (I figure at least 120 Hz these days) and a proper color space coverage of at least 100% sRGB.

Add at least 3 big fans for better airflow and less noise, support for multicore AMD / Intel and Geforce up to 3080 TI and its RTX equivalent and top it off with a nice vapor chamber design and it could do double duty as an ultra high end gamer and workstation.

And as for there not being a market for that kind of laptop there was once enough incentive to bring to market the Asus GX800, Acer Predator 21, MSI GT80/83 and Alienware 18 that were all sold in almost the same timeframe with the last three models being sold in not so low numbers so I do not buy the story that we could not have at least one super high end machine from a company that has the vision and passion to produce it (Clevo?). With LGA CPU and MXM GPU the entry model would not even have to be that cost prohibitive if GPU options would start out with something like an RTX 3060.

 

This exactly is the problem - we need bigger displays and Nvidia allowing for production of a mobile TI version of the next generation of cards to make this really exciting.

As I said before the UHD screen used in the Asus GX800 has certainly been produced in ridiculously low numbers that could be beaten by a fair margin with a more realistic high end model that is not just created to make a buzz at trade shows or in LTT videos.

What is missing is some enthusiasm on all sides. When Nvidia, screen and laptop manufacturers get excited about creating something special it would be no problem to create such a laptop in time for the launch of the next mobile generation.

 

You don't need 18.3" for a single card system even a Ti really, especially if you kick out old tech like 2.5" drives.

 

Hi, I want to know what screen
Clevo X170SM-G have I mean is it 6 bit color or 8 bit color or what?
I asked OBSIDIAN-PC(I want to buy from them) about it but they didn't answer me yet so I am asking here.

 

All it's needed is one big and one smaller LGA/MXM brother. And we need bigger depth chassis. The narrow bezels make all models one size smaller.

Dell made everything wrong with the Area-51m, but the engineers was able to understand that the chassis footprint had to be increased due the narrow bezels and thinner chassis.

Another option could be offer full 250w version as 2080 desktop cards.

RGB 8-bit

 

Any suggestions before buying it?

Thank you..

 

Best suggestions... Don't be the guinea pig. The model is still not released. But on the other side, you don't have many other choices outside a homebuild desktop.

 

ROG ranger can handle 19-20inch laptops too..... at least that’s what I heard

 

That's it I don't have many other choices and I need one as soon as possible

Thank you again..

 

Don't be so modest - we should at least go for the 2080 TI to make it worthwhile

 

But I want a big screen. A big screen is cool and much nicer to work on plus as a bonus a larger chassis will make cooling easier and if done right will also improve sound quality with everything else being equal. It should be a screen of 19" or more for an at least 20% bigger screen area compared to 17" and 17.3" screens.

 

Amen to those things. Bigger screen, bigger chassis and better cooling are all the right way. The industry has the wrong way down to a science and they are excellent at selling their failures to dumb dumbs.

 

That's what external monitors at home are for

 

One thing is that with the HUGE socket size you will not be getting the larger socket types in a notebook.

 

I don't think so. Being at home doesn't mean everyone wants to be tethered to a monitor, or have to put up with a Mickey Mouse little screen. I use two external monitors while I am working at a desk, and I'd be using a third if I had room for it. That doesn't do me any good when I am using a laptop like a laptop is meant to be used... meaning not at a desk... on my lap. Big screens are pleasant. Little screens, not so much. I also use my laptop screen with dual external displays while working. It would be more useful to me and more satisfying to use if it were larger.

 

If 17.3" is a mickey mouse size then 18.4" is not much better

 

Sorry I was not clear. I am referring to 15" and smaller. 17.3" is a nice size, although bigger would be better. What I would personally prefer to see is 18.4" with a thin bezel and no chassis shrink rather than 17.3" with a smaller width and depth. The thin bezel look is aesthetically superior over fat bezels, but I am not fond of the idea of that being used as a basis for shrinking the chassis. Just like we agree on M.2 being superior, but to me that only applies if that means they are going to wisely repurpose the space to cram in at least 2 additional M.2 SATA and/or NMVe SSD in the cavity that was previously occupied by a single 2.5" drive. I do not favor the idea of making the chassis smaller simply because M.2 takes up less space. But, I would love the idea of having like 5 or 6 new M.2 drive slots where there used to be only two 2.5" drives, in addition to the already-present dual M.2 NVMe slots... for a total of 7 or 8 M.2 drive bays. I'm fine if only two are NVMe and the rest are SATA M.2.

And, here again... I know the dinky lightweight crap is popular among consumers that really don't care what they get as long as it is cute and doesn't weigh much. I am speaking of an enthusiast product that would hold some level of interest for me and others with preferences like mine. I don't care what the consumers want. They have tons of garbage to choose from already.

 

NIce, it would be even cooler if your graph would also show 15, 16, 17 and 20.1" 16:10 screens and 15" 3:2.

Yes, 18.4" 16:9 is not that impressive which is why I am all for at least 19" and preferably more and I would like to see the aspect ratio going back to 16:10. In any case if we need a new larger screen anyway with no usable 18.4" model in production why not make it a size that is a worthwhile upgrade

 

I'm a realist. With the downward spiral for everything thats smells awesome... 250w version of xx80 is all you can hope for. You should be damn happy Nvidia still allow 200w

Yeah, the Apple trend closeed the door for that. Slim/narrow bezels with following smaller chassis have barely enough space for cooling for an stock mainstream chips. You'll need +18,4 screen to compansate the shrink in chassis size for 17,3 inch notebooks.

 

They use shrinking bezels to take away chassis size not to give us bigger screens, who would have thought they'd do that....

The issue with m.2 at the moment is that it increases prices while reducing capacity which is silly. We should be able to get the same capacity and performance in an m.2 SATA factor as before with 2.5" drives and not less. Add QLC to the mix and we are currently seeing the dumbing down of storage with regard to sustained speeds, capacity, number of drives and longevity. I think nobody would have an issue with 4 TB m.2 SATA with TLC but now we only get 2 TB when before we could get a single 8TB 2.5" TLC drive. When you add it up 4 x m2 SATA are not really an advantage over 1 2.5" SATA when that is what you need to match a single 8TB 2.5" drive. Go higher and you get crappy and still expensive 4TB QLC NVME. And what do they do now when they get rid of 2.5" anyway? They do NOT add SATA m.2 slots but keep m.2 form factor drives at 2 for many chassis, sometimes 3. This is how it works just like they do it with the bezels. As for total drive numbers there were several high end laptops with at least two 2.5" or a combination of 2.5" and an optical drive and on top of that 3 or 4 m.2 form factor drives - that is a total of between 5 and 6 drives of different kinds. Now with less space required we do not have a single m.2 only laptop that even has 5 m.2 form factor drives despite the lower space requirements.

THAT.
MSI, Asus and Acer went all out to produce a total of 4 laptops with 18.4 and bigger screens since ca. 2014 that were compromised to varying degrees, Asus even had a screen built that to my knowledge must have been produced only for the GX800 and these were about as rare as unicorns. These three, HP and Clevo also had very large 17" chassis that today could take a substantially bigger screen and with less than what was invested in these laptops they could build bigger and better machines. If two, three or even four of these manufacturers would demand from Nvidia to get the Geforce TI in a mobile form factor they would get it, preferably one that is compatible with MXM in case MXM can't be done. After all Asus got the equivalent Quadro card for its silly 15" laptop, apparently no big deal. The same goes for the screen, it would only have to be one or at most two screens at a bigger size that could be used for both laptops and smaller monitors (still popular in Asia) and they surely would sell in much higher numbers than that Asus screen.

This is what I care about not if some company thinks it can only have 50 turdbooks but not one proper laptop.

 

Even the X570 would have struggled with the new larger sockets, it gets a bit silly. Plus with a 3950x it gets REALLY hard to justify.

 

Where can you source large quantities of 1200p 120HZ high quality 15/17 inch displays?

 

I have the ranger rgb bp3703. It definitely won't fit in this thing.

 

You mean we will get Ryzen paired with xx80 in x170 But I doubt it

 

Much more fun to dream big than to start out too modest I think that for something significantly bigger to be existing it should have a completely different card as the top choice but then it will be modular so you would not have to choose the hideously expensive TI option

And seeing that this 15" chassis got the RTX6000 it is obvious that it can be done, even though that version is supposedly limited to 200W:
https://www.asus.com/Laptops/ProArt-StudioBook-One-W590G6T/

 

I thought this was a screen size comparison that is not limited to showing displays that actually have 120 HZ or more? If it isn't I am happy to learn that a 120 Hz 18.4" screen exists

As for a 17" screen in 16:10 with 1920 x 1200 Asus has that. LG was first with a 2560 x 1600 screen and last thing I heard Dell will have 1920 x 1200 and 3840 x 2400 in the XPS 17 that supposedly will also have vapor chamber cooling.

Not sure about refresh rates but possibly not much more than 90 Hz on a good day.

 

It looks like that large copper piece in the middle is a vapor chamber as told by xmg's version of the x170:

"Q: What's the layout of the cooling system? Does XMG ULTRA 17 use a vapor chamber?

A: We will upload a picture of the cooling system layout shortly. There are 10 heatpipes and a vaporchamber. No matter which CPU or GPU option you chose, you will always get the maxed-out version of the cooling system."

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/XMG_gg/comments/gog153/megathread_xmg_ultra_17_in_2020_lga1200_z490_mxm/

I'm worried that the 3000 series wont be supported on this laptop though:

"Q: Will this chassis allow upgrades to future Intel and NVIDIA generations, such as Intel Rocket Lake and NVIDIA Ampere and Hopper?

...
At NVIDIA, things look even less clear: MXM slot (pin assignment and power supply) and board layout (arrangement, height of the components to be cooled) are not fully standardized and NVIDIA may it again for future generations. Even if the technical conditions do not change much (e.g. 200W TGP, same MXM pinout and if differences in cooling groups can be compensated with thermal pads), full support on BIOS and VBIOS level is still needed to ensure energy saving measures, fan control and support of external display outputs.

Thus, no statement can be made yet as to whether future NVIDIA graphics chips can be retrofitted and officially installed in the 2020 edition of the XMG ULTRA 17. On the one hand, we do welcome subsequent (even unofficial) user upgrades and are keen to extend the longevity of our flagship products as much as possible. On the other hand, technical and logistical support for MXM upgrades has proven to be increasingly difficult in recent years, so we prefer not to make any generous promises in this regard."

Sad to see, I'm getting Alienware area 51 r2 flashbacks. It would really suck if they changed up the form factor. I might just sit tight and wait for the ampre version of this, though that realistically might be a year out. I feel like now is a bad time to get a laptop anyways, with intel 10nm and ampere on the way.

 

Got to have feature parity to sell, plus a little more resolution for a lot less refresh rate sucks.

 

If the AMD system is popular then yes I see more models in future.

 

Indeed the comeback of 16:10 so far hasn't given us the high refresh rates popular in gaming. Especially for bigger screens it would be nice to have screens that can do both 16:10 and high refresh rates as those would be well suited for DTR's / workstations so we would have more multipurpose screens that can do gaming and offer more vertical height for tasks other than gaming.

 

1920x1200 144Hz would be awesome.

 

At this point, due to the multiple times the MXM form factor has changed over the past 4 years, with each vendor currently using their own weird card (including the weird DGFF cards for the Alienware Area 51m), I think it would be better for manufacturers to just ditch MXM and use ITX sized (mini) desktop graphics cards instead.

Sure, mini sized desktop cards are bigger than Clevo MXM modules, but they would still fit in even the new slim bezel 15" and 17" chassis out there. Yes I know even these cards are different sizes depending on the vendor, but only slightly (within a few mm of each other in either length or width).

This approach would have the following advantages:
1. Significantly cheaper GPU upgrades than with MXM modules.
2. Wide availibility. For example, you can buy them from a physical store.
3. Decreased thermal density. I'm assuming these multiple form factor changes of MXM over the past 4 years have been related to thermal density issues affecting cooling.
4. Mini ITX sized cards are already a standard. Minimal investment required!

You can only go so small before you get limited by physics. I'm sure with the omission of 2.5" drives in new laptops, manufacturers can find the space for this. Please critique me if such a thing isn't feasible or if I'm wrong about any of my conjectures, but it seems perfectly feasible to me.

 

You make it sound like an mini-ITX standard exists Plus it does not support internal display outputs.

 

Ok I guess more of a pseudo-standard . It's definitely far from a perfect solution.

I was under the assumption that ITX sized desktop graphics cards had a standard. Guess not.

In any case, I think Clevo is doing a good job with the X170. I look forward to getting my hands on one eventually once the reviews come in. I'm just hoping their MXM card doesn't change form factor again for at least the next 2-3 GPU generations.

 

The omission of the ODD drives was also used to gain us nice things like, uhh, nothing, in most cases all it gained was that it allowed the chassis to be slimmer, the space wasn't used neither for bigger battery, for more 2.5" bays, or m.2 slots, or more cooling area, in lots of laptops the space is still there, empty..

The same with the 2.5" drives being removed and you get a smaller chassis with 1 or 2 m.2 slots and thats it.

Amazing that my old gt72 can fit a BL/DVD ODD, 4 m.2(SATA only), plus one 2.5inch slot, while offering a 87Wh battery and chassis of similar size give you two m.2 slots and some 50/60Wh battery, no ODD and maybe one 2.5" inch slot, with crappier cooling and its called progress..

MXM standard might not have enough space for all the VRAM chips, as well as all the VRMs, but it could be revised, but not, each OEM started doing its own flavour and now we are at the current state where there is Clevo "MXM", Dell DGFF and maybe still some HP MXM-ish cards, the rest is all soldered.

 

The GT72s is a bit newer and a jack of all trades when it comes to drives, it can hold up to 6 drives with a good selection of options:

up to 2 x NVME SSD
up to 2 x M.2 Sata
up to 3 x 2.5" (one addiional SSD/HDD with an ODD adapter and one HDD with a special adapter-cable)
up to 1 ODD

It also runs very cool and quiet - if it had a socketed CPU and a proper bios it certainly could take at least a 6 core CPU's today but sadly it only has a soldered CPU so that won't happen.

If you look at its successor the GT75 it has a larger chassis and it only holds up to 3 m.2 drives and one 2.5" drive - more volume, weighs about 1 kg more and less drives and drive options.

 

GT72 came with Haswell and Broadwell. And if it had LGA socket.... 6 cores would never happened anyway

 

Don’t know if anyone have posted this yet over here, or if I am the first, but here’s a look at the internals of X170SM-G

 

Thanks. +reps