Official Sager NP5165 / Clevo W150HR Owner's Lounge

Hmm, I can't load pic directly from my computer? well, bad for u guys.
First physcal impression is light and much smaller than I expected, trust me, this laptop looks so muh smaller than in picture. thick tho, although only weighs 2.6kg, and hte whoe body feels solid, I don't know how they managed to combine this two, good job on Mythlogic's part as well as Clevo in terms of build quality.

Things I like:
-Lightening fast, power house: cold boot in 24 seconds, edit 27 fotos in CS3 in the same time without any lag, runs Crysis2 ultra setting with 1376*798
-Quiet/Cool: I don't know why everyone here is concerned about heat, It's quite even under heavy load, and only a slight warm feeling on palm rest, altough it's winter time. this one does come with IC Diamond thermal.
-Superb Screen(when you read the word superb, plz add a french accent): coming from a HP pavilion low-life 1280*800 screen, I just hats down with this screen, but I am sure you'd be impressed by it even you are off a better screen. The colors are breath taking and it's so bright that I set the brighness to 20% normally, otherwise my eyes hurt.
-Fingerprint reader, a breeze to use, I kinda addicted to it already, my brain can't handle all those passwords
-the understated, simple look that perfectly camouflage its real power(also no logo, so it's custom paint ready).

Things I don't like
-Keyboard, so far so , I don't know if they might get better later, but right now is cranky, and I miss letters when I am typing coz' you kinda have press them with a bit power, but I am sure it's a thing one can get used to. and it's not backlit as I like.
-trackpad is pretty rugged, it works but doesn't have a elegant touch feeling to it, you probably could file your nails o this thing, though I have never tried.
-Speakers, definitely loud enough, but not accurate enough, but I am getting a Bose or B&O audio soon, so I don't care.

So all in all, a great working/gaming machine, system is clean with all latest drivers/BIOS, and the specs are unbeatable for a 15.6in. Myth also offers life time warranty, that's just extra peace of mind tho I doubt I would need it.

But unfortunately, after the handsome import tax I paid and realization that I just dont have time nor passion for games, and I care too much for things like look and touch feeling, this macchine is an overkill for me both in terms of price and performance. So I wll put this macchine back to its box and sell it. I will probably post it on NBR market place later(only for europeans tho)

Buona notte

 

Sell it? You just got it!

The touch pad takes a couple of hours to get the feeling right. I didn't like it at first either coming from an 8660 with its silky smooth pad. Personally though, I like the keyboard better than the 8660 and like the feeling of tapping the keys.

The on board speaker are too quiet/tinny for personal enjoyment or a quick sales meeting where you don't want to break out extra stuff. I use Shure SE420 phones for games though and they rock...

 

I still have yet to order my 5165, but I've been reading so much about the crappy speakers. I almost never use the built in speakers on my laptop. Even if I want to show several people something out in public, it usually isn't an appropriate setting to have sound coming out of the laptop. I could probably deal with NO external speakers on my laptop.

Just don't get why everyone obsesses over this point.

 

Well, yeah, I thought I better sell it before it acutally become "used" right now it's still pretty much qualify for a status of "never used"

dont get me wrong, I didn't decide to sell this machine because I can't stand any of its features, I dont like the keyboard and touch pad, but I am sure they are things to get used to. I just decided it was too expensive for me.

 

They are definitely crappy speakers. But honestly, if you have a good set of external speakers and/or headphones you have nothing to worry about. I went from the JBL speakers on an Ideapad (hands down the best speakers I've ever seen on a laptop) to these, but I don't care so much of the speakers anymore because of I always need headphones anyway.

Have you checked your temps on HWMonitor? I don't know about the i7 2670, but I know the 2630QM even with AS5 paste gets some major heat even though the computer itself doesn't actually feel hot.

 

In case they don't show, here is a link
Image003 | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

 

Because I was also interested in this USNA 120 Watt adapter, I contacted Coolermaster a few days ago to ask where I could buy it. It seems to be there where some troubles with the adapter technologie, it will not be distributed anymore. Coolermaster is aware of the fact that the demand on such high performance adapters is big enough to produce a new one soon.

 

Xoticpc rocks!

I just RMA'd my 5165 to make a couple of upgrades to the hardware. The main reason is that I was never able to get over 5.6 on my WEI desktop graphics score (compared to others with same build coming in at 7+) and the battery life was 3-3.5 hours.

So here is what I did:

• Kept matte 95% display - It is awesome!
  swap out i7-2670 to an i7-2760 (kept diamond paste)
  swap out 8gb 1333 mhz RAM to 8gb 1600 RAM
  swap out nvidia 555m to a 580m (just kidding...Caught you drooling though! 8130/50 too short on battery life for me)
  swap out 500gb hybrid to a 300gb intel SSD (not kidding)
  swap out optical drive to an HD caddy (to save the idle power draw and allow for a second SSD down the road)
  added usb optical drive to load existing software
  kept Intel 6230 wireless card (it works great)
  kept windows 7 Pro

My hope is that the WEI score will rise dramatically, the HD score and boot/program launch will increase dramatically and my battery life will remain unchanged or improve due to no Optical drive.

A note on the Hybrid drive - I was happy with it. The boot time with this drive from a shutdown state to fingerprint login and launch of a web browser was 45 seconds. I will repost this and the new boot times with the SSD once the new unit arrives.

I added a signature with my "old" Sager 8660 (m860tu) and my "new" Sager 5165 (w150hr). I have added the actual graphics performance score for windows aero desktop. Either my "old" system kicks "new" systems butt or there is another issue. And yes, I have upgraded drivers.

I can't wait for the Upgraded "newer" system to get here!

 

Just ordered my NP5165 from Xotic on Friday!

• Display 15.6" FHD 16:9 "Matte Type" Super Clear Ultra Bright LED Anti-Glare Screen w/ 95% NTSC Color Gamut (1920x1080)
• Processor 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-2670QM, 2.2-3.1GHz, (32nm, 6MB L3 cache)
• Graphics Video Card nVidia GT 555M 2048MB PCI-Express GDDR3 DX11 with Optimus™ Technology
• Wireless Network Intel® Advanced-N 6230 - 802.11A/B/G/N Wireless LAN Module + Bluetooth
• Ram 8GB - DDR3 1333MHz Dual Channel Memory

(adding the 8GB of ram myself when I get it)

VERY excited. Been a while since I purchased hardware!!

 

That's disappointing. Did they give you any estimate on what "soon" meant?

 

Thanks for your business! Be sure to let us know if you have any questions.

 

It honestly seems to be just a simple driver issue. Are you sure the graphic drivers for your GPU were installed? Also the windows experience index is probably not the best "software" to use to benchmark your hardware.

 

Is anyone getting stable OC's on their Clevo W150HRM gt555m over 660/1320/1000?

Been playing BF3 and as soon as I push it up to 670 the game becomes unstable and crashes.

 

I have no idea, I hope it won't take too long. Need a more mobile adaptor.

 

I was tempted at first to overclock, because it seems like this laptop can handle a lot more heat than it puts out stock (no idea how they did it, but mine cools the system down easily even with the graphics card at 100% for 20 hours). Then I thought about it, and I really have no reason to overclock a brand new computer.
Are you using hardware or software overclocking? I think a better BIOS would be nice is why I ask, mine has no options for hardware tweaks.


Also, one of my USB3.0 ports either stopped working after a week or never worked. It can transfer data no problem, but it can't charge any devices nor power a USB-powered hard drive.

And has anybody else had issues with both one- and two-finger scrolling not working after the computer has been on for a while? I can't tell if its the drivers conking out, or if Firefox stops recognizing it as a scroll-request after I have a regular mouse plugged in then removed.

P.S. I just thought I would add that the Intel WIFI card would have been a good investment. I'm tempted to order one soon for ~$25 or whatever they cost.

 

I appreciate your input and have given up trying to solve the issue.

As I noted in prior posts, I tested several drivers from Nvidia and Sager for the GPU as well as drivers from intel for the iGPU.

While WEI isn't "the best", it is still a benchmark. When my new computer with a faster Processor and GPU fail to beat my older unit it concerns me especially if others with the same setup are registering much higher WEI scores. These WEI scores are even documented as the expected scores by OEM benchmarks of the GPU and Processor and match NBR user WEI scores to the T.

After several emails back and forth with J.P. of Xoticpc and his discussions with his tech team attempting to solve this issue, I determined that there was a problem and I sent it back because it wasn't working right. For $1500 it better work right and pass all of the tests or it gets sent back!

 

My CPU can easily get over 95C when gaming on this laptop. Is there anything I can do besides keeping the fan on max? It sits on a coffee table without a cooler underneath. Real Temp TJ Max is at 100.

 

Did you attempt to run 3DMark or any other benchmarks on it before sending it back? It would have been interesting to see if your 3DMark scores were where they should be for the 555m, or if they were low as well. I've had machines in the past where WEI was really low, but the actual benchmark scores were as expected.

 

I can't overclock past 660/1320/1000 either or it crashes. But i'm getting 30-50 fps average with mostly all ultra settings. Could this be a driver problem. I've seen some people oc it to 700+ fine.
---
665 seem to be stable oc now. still testing.

 

Yes. It did great in 3Dmark06 @10,400. This is right where I would expect it to be based on the benchmarks I've seen for non OC'd 555m's. My WEI score for 3Dgraphics was 6.9 and was not my issue with the computer.

My complaint was the desktop graphics score of 5.6. They are different scores and test different things otherwise there wouldn't be a need for both desktop and 3D graphics scores.

Again, every other WEI score was +/- 0.2 of same spec units except the graphics for desktop aero which was 1.1 below expected results and below my old system by 0.3 even after the best driver was found. It is hard to believe that the WEI score was accurate for everything except for my issue, and I'm supposed to just ignore it trusting that it was a bad test... I wouldn't spend $1500 to downgrade on anything and by sending it back, didn't.

I am still waiting patiently for the new one to arrive............

 

Which version of the driver are you running?
With version 275.33 I suffered lockups during BF3. After downloading v 285.62 it seems to have solved the lockups/crashes.

edit: Check if the 'Power Conservation Mode' (icon shown as a little laptop in the icontray downunder) is set on Performance. It solved all the stuttering and crashes in games for me.

 

Is there any way to change memory and core voltages on 555m?

 

Just ordered my np5165 - w150 from malibal as well.
Can't wait!

 

According to this thread it is only changeable with a modified vBIOS. I don't suggest messing with a Sager vBIOS though as it could really mess some things up

 

The M14x 555M is 192-bit, has a different PCI ID, and has higher stable clocks than the one in the NP5165.

On that alone, I wouldn't flash.

 

Exactly. Definitely don't suggest it.

 

I am talking with an old friend at mvktech to see if he wants to mod the W150HRM's vbios.

Unmodded vbios: vbios.rom

 

How much battery life do you get with this laptop while WORKING in energy saving mode ? (which means excel, word, wi-fi on with light internet browsing).

Can you specify you processor and your battery please (6 or 8 cells) ?

Thanks !

 

new to NBR here.
I got my NP5165 in June.
Specs -
Intel Core i5 2.5Ghz w/ TB upto 3.2Ghz
GT555M 2GB DDR3
Seagate 750GB HDD
6GB RAM

After all the laptops i had, it feels great to be having one with quite some power.
But, i keep facing these stutters/frame-skips in every game i play in Full HD with all settings all high. I'm definitely sure it's not lag as in the benchmarks, the laptop easily scores around 30-45+ fps.
Is anybody else facing this problem? and is there any solution for it?

 

Battery is 6 cell, and I've had customers report that they've managed to squeeze about 4 hours out of the laptop with a quad-core processor and doing light work on it (also, dimming the screen REALLY helps battery life).

 

At the software level, update all your drivers to the latest ones. For nVidia, that's the 285.79 betas available on their site. Also, part of the problem lies in the 555m. The distance between the Sager / Clevo 555m and the 560m immediately above it is quite large. We're talking 40 to 50% in framerates (more bandwidth, cores, etc., in favor of the 560m.) Lastly, dual-cores, while mainstream are becoming eroding in favor of the quadcore, which allows for more threads of information as well as more bandwidth in general. Yes, in single-core your 2.5 @ 3.5ghz may be faster than my 3.1ghz single-core speed, but with an increasing amount of applications (games, office software, etc.,) becoming multi-threaded, more threads and cores have superseded sheer MHz as the key to performance supremacy.

Try updating your drivers first, if that fails, it may simply be the inherent nature of the beast.

Jason

 

Thanks for the info, Jason.
I'm currently on 285.79 Beta Drivers, and i believe all my drivers are up-to-date.
It's not that the games lag. The frame-rate remains constant in almost every game I've played (45+ on F1 2011 at FHD, medium settings) and 30+ in GTA IV( also FHD, high settings).
These above-mentioned games run fine for the first few minutes, and then a stutter kicks in. It's more like pre-rendered frames are being skipped, and this really ruins the experience.
I'm starting to believe that maybe my hard drive isn't fast enough for the GPU/CPU. Will replacing with an SSD help? or do you think its not a problem of the hard drive at all?

 

I can't imagine that it's related to the hard drive. Modern 7200rpm drives are slower than SSD's, sure, but they aren't going to kill your frame rates. Most games do an initial loading of the level/scene and then don't go back to the hard drive until they need to load the next area. Random lag spikes or frame rate drops in the middle of a level don't seem like they can be related to the hard drive at all.

You can always try an SSD, but I just don't think that's going to fix it either

 

any idea as to what they would be related to, though? really wanna play so many games, but holding back because of this.
Some other people had this problem too on other brand laptops. But usually, it was related to some software in the background or something like that. I'm pretty sure i'm not running anything like that in the background.

 

Are you running a virus scanner application/firewall/etc or anything else while you game? AV software tends to be the culprit quite often.

How are your temps looking? Are you breaking 90C at all? If you are, you may be thermally throttling down.

 

Hey Malibal, do you guys have the changelog for the new EC?

It seems like the fan tables were changed and Fn+1 was removed.

ftp://usftp.clevo.com.tw/ALLBIOS/W1x0HRx/EC_03.zip

 

Only applications running in the background are for my Razer mouse, Hotkey, and Nvidia GPU activity monitor. don't have any AV installed currently.

can you recommend a good temp monitoring software? i'll post details.

 

GPU-Meter, available here, is a very good way to dynamically check you temperatures without using a great deal fo computing resources. I use it on my NP8130 and it's nice that I can know when the GPU is overworked (fortunately mine peaks at about 68 deg C.)

Jason

 

Hey guys, is there any bois update for this laptop, mine seems to not spin at full speed even at close to 100c.

Also mine doesnt seem to have the fn+1 for full fan speed, fn+1 does nothing and fn+f1 just turns my touchpad of so if there is somehow to get this to work it would be great too.

 

Contact your reseller, who may ask for your computer type and the Serial #, or email sager themselves and ask. Sager WILL ask for your Serial #, and your name and other info to verify (they're hardbutts like that). Based on Serial # they will either tell you you have the latest bios, or send you the link to your nice new bios.

Jason

 

Do any of you know if the 5165 will be able to run (temporarily) on a smaller 90w power adapter? Say, if I made it run on the IGP only?

 

Should work, as long as the voltage is the same.

 

Works fine, we've tested it to death, works great.

 

You guys should sell this machine with a more aesthetically pleasing adapter.

USNA 120 - Cooler Master - Leading Provider of Computer Case | Cooler | Power Supply

 

I have a weird problem with my 5165's screen, it's the 95% gamut 1920x1080 option from xoticpc. I made a quick youtube video with my cell phone camera to illustrate it, as it's kind of hard to explain.

laptop screen.mp4 - YouTube

The screen will have a red shadow/ghosting effect during movement in certain areas of the screen. It's especially noticeable when the screen is black. In the video, I just alt tab between the volume mixer and a black screen, and then just expand and unexpand the black picture. It's really annoying especially at night and during games, where moving things will leave red trails and slowly fade.

I haven't heard of anyone else having this problem, so I figured I'd post about it.

 

Yea there are a lot of posts on red ghosting with those screens, my suggestion would be to get a calibration profile (there are samples floating around) to see if that helps, if not contact your reseller and see what they can do to get that screen replaced.

 

Just got my w150 from malibal and been playing with it the last two days... the laptop is great, much lighter and more compact than I expected, glad I went with this rather than the 8130.

The power supply really is a brick, I really like the look of the USNA 120 from cooler master that was posted a few posts ago, but can't seem to find it for sale anywhere online? Any tips on where to look for it or any other more compact power adapter?

I also have one little small issue with the laptop, the rubber legs seem to be uneven, so the bottom left corner stands up in the air about a mm and the laptop moves up and down whenever i type and put/take weight of of it.
Anyone else encountered that? Are the rubber legs in the corners just glued in?

 

Alchemist, when did you buy yours?

I've had 2 bad screens.

 

July 4 during xoticpc's free shipping deal. I contacted them once and they told me they sent a shipping label to my e-mail, but I never got it so I think they got my e-mail wrong. I haven't bothered since because I've been using the laptop a lot, and don't want to be without it (school). I'm probably going to send it in right before winter break after I'm done with finals.

Also have you tried the profile thing?

 

Yes, 3 different profiles from Sager.

It doesn't help at all.