*** Official Sager NP8150/Clevo P150HM Owners Lounge ***

Had to go pickup my package from a UPS depot in the middle of no-where since they screwed up royally on the delivery address ... but it was all worth it!

I gotta say, this machine is a thing of beauty!!

It took me a while to get my wireless card working, but it seems to be fine now. I installed the AMD Catalyst version 11.5, which I think contains the most updated driver (or am I wrong here?).

Now to start installing // downloading everything ... will probably do some benchmarks too

 

Thinking about buying an OCZ vertex 2 120gb ssd for my p150hm, i was wondering if anyone could help with a guide on how to put the ssd into my laptop, what that ssd is like, and if i could have some sort of setup with my current harddrive (a xt momentus) as well as the ssd (ssd as primary and ssd hybrid as secondary). Also what i would need to set it up aside from the ssd itself

Also i have noticed that my memory usage while playing starcraft 2 at almost maxed graphics, using a browser and itunes and a few other programs, can hit 93% and occasionally give a bsod with the error message of memory management, i'm about to update my chipset drivers from the default cd ones, but any other suggestions would be great. Thinking of buying an extra 4gb of ram as well

 

Some of you might already know it, but I finally got my laptop!

Damn it was really worth the wait, this machine is a thing of beauty. This thing flies! Especially with my ssd! Instead of the ocz vertex 3 i ordered over a month ago I order the ocz vertex 3 max iops that was released a month later. It reads over 550mbs and writes over 500mbs. Now thats quick! I was used to using an ocz vertex 2 in my previous laptop but this thing is even quicker (but not twice times quicker..).

The graphics are really insane as well, only metro is a bit low on fps, but every other game can be maxed out with ease.

The only disappointing thing is the integrated sound software. If its "pro studio" software, why doesn't it have an equaliser? I am really picky with audio quality, and even with other SRS software etc the sound quality is a bit disappointing when I am listening on my headphones (Sennheiser HD 25-1 II).

I really like the material of the laptop. All laptops tend to get smudgy really quick but this material is really dirt proof. The size is pretty OK as well, but i expected it to be thinner (it looks slim though). The rubburised touchpad is no problem for me, I really had worse.

Overall the laptop is very complete. The processor is insanely quick (5.20 in cinebench), I have 12gb of ram, 500gb 7200rpm hdd and the blazing fast Vertex 3. My only 2 wishes would be integrated bluetooth 3.0 HS and some Thunderbolt ports. Oh and a backlit keyboard!

By the way, does anyone know a good carry case (not too expensive) where the laptop fits into snuggly? I am always on my way and I need good protection...

 

Putting an SSD is very easy, much like putting your HDD. Just open the mid compartment, take out HDD and replace it. If you are running a clean Windows 7, it should automatically set up your SSD.

And yes you can have both the Vertex 2 and the Momentus XT together.

You also may want to read this if you want to maximize the performance of your SSD (it's a Corsair website but applies to most SSDs):
http://www.corsair.com/media/cms/manual/How_to_Optimize_Your_SSD_Boot_Drive.pdf

 

I'm joining up too. Got my Sager May 6th Friday. Same specs, slight differences.

Drat! I live in Singapore where it is so hot and humid now. Idle temps themselves are around 45 Celsius. Today morning playing crysis for an hour sent the temp upto 92 for the GPU and 86 for the 4 cores. I forgot totally about Fn+1. Just tried it now. I'm loving the feature!

 

Wow, lots of new Sager owners. You guys wont be disappointed with the machine. I game on this thing quite frequently and have yet to have a serious problem. Once you guys get your machine up and running, I made a group on Steam for Sager owners so we can game together. The link is in my sig.

 

Working this scenario out with Joseph L. Thanks.

From what you're saying XoticPC knew what it was installing. So, basically, the choice in customization should've been like this:

1. Stock +$0

2. Matte upgrade with 1-5 dead/stuck pixels +$210

3. Matte upgrade with 0 dead/stuck pixels +$310 ($250 now on special)

 

@4st3risk I understand your concern however we already list the details of the Standard Dead Pixel Policy is and the 0 Dead Pixel Guarantee. It is all listed when you configure the machine. We do not try to conceal in any fashion that any customer should assume there is guaranteed no Dead Pixel screen, unless the Guarantee is purchased. This is the same for stock Sager screens also.

Unfortunately there is a small % of people that get dead pixels without purchasing the guarantee. Unfortunately the same as Sager Stock displays also.

 

Off-topic:

@Justi, I have sent you a PM yesterday... maybe you could help me out.
thanks.

 

Bought mine without guarantee... no dead pixels.

 

finally got my p150 today. multicom has forgotten to put in the wireless card, and the builder of this thing seems like a angry hulk, cause he has screwed most of the screws too tight. one screw has broken trough the plastic at the hdd enclosure.

has upgraded to ocz vertex 3 also, but the temps seems totally retarded on the ssd. also this is idle temps. are they ok?

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seems like i cant intall any other catalyst versions than the one on the cd that came with the machine. and i cant run windows experience index with this driver. anyone else experienced anything like this?

 

Matte 95% Gamut?

 

It's off the chart because there is no HDD temperature sensor. It's an SSD.

 

What do i need to in order to be able to add an ssd to my p150hm? also i'm guessing that i would have to get rid of my dvd drive, how do i do this?

Also does anyone have an experience with the ocz vertex 2? and what do people think of it?

 

You don't want a Vertex 2 as it is a SATA II (3gb/s) drive. You don't want to put an SSD in your optical bay because the SATA port there is only SATA II. If you buy an SSD you should get a SATA III drive and must put it into the primary HDD bay as that has a SATA III port (6gb/s). If you do otherwise it is wasted performance. Your old mechanical drive can go into the optical bay with an HDD caddy you can get from your reseller or Sager.

 

I have a weird "problem" after I changed thermal paste on my CPU. When browsing, the temp increases to 60c so the CPU fan start to kick in. This didnt happen before. The weird thing is that my max CPU temp has never been lower. My browsing temp for the CPU is pretty much the same as when I game Starcraft 2.

 

I was thinking of putting my solidstate hybrid drive into my optical drive slot and the ssd into the primary slot, but i'm not sure of what type of caddy i'd need, also would anyone be able to recommend a good sata 3 ssd which is like 128gb or maybe like 80-90gb for less than $300 in Aus? don't really want to go for a ssd as low as 60gb, but i guess i could if i managed my space well and only had starcraft 2 and windows or something on the ssd, but don't really want to go over $300 because i want to try and get another 4gb stick of memory to bump my memory upto 8gb

 

I would consider saving my money for a larger SSD instead of more memory (unless you have a well identified need for more mem): a less advertized fact of SSD's is that the (write) speeds are smaller for smaller SSDs

 

It seems like the vertex 2 and most of the ocz ssds seem to be fairly similar reguardless of size, i have been noticing my ram go upto 70-80%, was getting upto 93% with firefox but i recently switched to chrome and it seems to have gone down by like 20%, this is while playing starcraft and browsing etc, and just thinking of giong upto 8gb of ram just incase, since it's about $50 for another stick of 4gb 1333mhz ddr3 ram.
I just found OCZ Agility 3 120GB SSD 2.5 [MMOCSSD23AGT120] - $299.00 : PC Case Gear recently and thought it might be a good ssd, any views on it anyone?

 

playing with the thx settings now. cant decide on the best settings. what do you guys use?

surround :
crystalizer :
speaker :
smart volume :
dalog plus :

 

I used the uninstall button

 

The best place for the SSD is the primary slot built in to the laptop as you'll get SATA 3 speeds there without any changes. Most optical drives are standardized sizes, so any optical drive HDD caddy should work*.

* (Note, some manufacturers DO use 7mm instead of 9.5mm on HDD bays so you can't easily just add a drive to the unit- but this is not a concern with any Sager I know of)

Intel SSD's are the most common because they were some of the first mass market models out there and have retained a following. Generally speaking, reliable memory/chipset manufacturers have also turned out to be reliable SSD manufacturers.

If size is a concern, installing windows on to the SSD and mirroring the larger folders (like Users) to a secondary drive will save space. This could easily make a 64GB drive feasible, and let you install the programs you want while putting the larger/less important files on to the secondary drive.

 

In case anyone is looking for a cheap caddy, this item on ebay worked like a charm after screwing off a plastic tab (took about 5 seconds).

You just have to take the front plate off the original ODD and stick it on the caddy and it's seamless.

The screw for the part that holds the caddy in place was a bit small so I took the screw that was holding the plastic tab in place and attached the bracket with it.

Works flawlessly now.

 

Damn, I should have bought that instead of the $50 one from Sager. I still don't know when that is arriving or if it will even have the plate. I might have to do the same thing and take the one from the ODD.

 

I finally got mine today, so far I’m loving it. It took about 6 weeks (not counting waiting through the recall to even order it), mainly due to the 485M’s going on backorder and then it had to ship to XoticPC in Nebraska for the LCD panel upgrade (totally worth it). I have to say XoticPC (Brett S.) was great about letting me know as soon as the video card went on BO, and very polite when responding to my several “Where is it now?” emails over the last month. Haven’t had a chance to do much other than install Windows and the drivers from Sager’s site, and the 485M driver from Nvidia. I have Steam downloading my games now that I’m done with work. The only quirk I had was that the USB 3.0 ports on the left wouldn’t let me install Windows 7. It would boot to the installer, but then throw an error about missing the drivers for it once I got to the installer GUI and actually tried to install. My mouse wouldn’t work in those ports either during the install. Once I installed Windows using the USB 2.0 port on the right then it worked great, and after installing the USB drivers in Windows all the ports work fine. More of a Windows issue than with the laptop, just thought I’d mention it in case anyone else came across the same thing. The 95% gamut screen is beautiful. No dead/stuck pixels (I got the warranty from Xotic, for the extra $40 it was worth the peace of mind for me), and the viewing angles are much better than what I’ve seen on regular laptop screens. It’s no IPS panel like I have on my desktop, but it’s the best looking laptop screen I’ve seen. The fingerprint reader is kind of neat, easy to set up too. As a network admin I’m used to typing in long passwords all day long, it’s nice to be able to just swipe and go on this laptop. The power brick is ridiculous, but I knew that going in and don’t really care. Also, as people have mentioned the rubberized coating looks great on the case, but it really sucks on the trackpad as your fingers don't slide on it very well. Hopefully it'll smooth down after some use, and I'll be using a real mouse most of the time anyway. I have an OCZ Vertex 3 240GB Max IOPS drive on preorder from Amazon; hopefully those will show up soon (anybody heard any ship date rumors?) and then it should really fly. So anyway, just thought I'd share some initial impressions for anyone who hasn't read through the first 288 pages here, but I’m off to go see how it handles some games and have fun now that it’s here and school’s done.

 

USB 3.0 drivers aren't included with the Windows 7 install image, so it won't recognize the ports until after you run the separate driver package. They'll show up in bios, but not be useable until after you get to the desktop. (Simply put, the controller the USB 3.0 ports use didn't exist when they bundled the drivers and shipped Windows 7)

 

For those with an AMD 6970m, what is the most up-to-date driver?

The one I currently have installed is: 8.850.0.0

 

Yeah, totally makes sense, just took me a minute to figure it out and switch over to the 2.0 port. For some reason I was thinking the 2 on the left were 2.0 and the one on the right was 3.0. As soon as I looked and saw the blue I was off and running. I have a SP1 install of Win7 so it would have been nice if they were in there already but not so much...

 

8.850 is 11.5 WHQL, so you have the latest.

 

so had my p150hmb for about 2 months now. loving it no doubt but having a problem of late. i play world of warcraft on mostly good/high settings. nothing at ultra which should be less than what the laptop can truly handle. i have the gtx 485m 2gb GPU. but whenever i alt-tab it warns me that i don't have enough physical memory to run the aero scheme as well. does anyone else have this issue?

i have 8gb of 1600mhz ram and the 2820 CPU with a momentus xt hybrid

 

It might have something to do with Windows using a lot of your RAM as virtual memory. Right click on Computer then click “Properties”. Now click on “Advanced System Settings” and click on the “Advanced” tab and under “Performance” click “Settings”. Now go to the “Advanced” tab and under virtual memory click “Change” and then adjust the settings.

 

Does anybody know if you can setup a RAID 0 with two hard drives. I am thinking about getting this laptop and not having a CD drive instead using the HDD bay. Does the BIOS allow you to RAID two drives together

 

Nope, the laptop doesn't have a hardware RAID controller.

 

i think im gonna upgrade to 1600mhz ram, as a friend want to buy my 1333 ram.

but i wanna make sure not to get the wrong kind.

theese would run @ 1600mhz on the p150, right?

http://www.dustinhome.no/pd_5010589742.aspx

 

You will only need 1 set of those, because the 8150 only supports up to 8gb (2x4gb) for 1600mhz.

 

Nope, as was stated by nllptr, they don't support hardware RAID. You'll have to make due with two non-RAIDed drives. If you just want the speed of RAID 0, an SSD will be a better (read, faster) option anyway with your HDD as a secondary data drive.

Just remember that the 1600mhz is limited to only two slots, or a maximum of 8GB (as listed by other forum members). The manual lists 4GB max, but anecdotal posts say 8GB, 4GB per slot in the two supported ones.

 

I can confirm that 2x4gb 1600mhz ram works @1600mhz on the p150hm. I've got a eurocom racer. Is 1600mhz worth it for $20 extra bucks? i don't know, but it's only $20 extra bucks on a $2000 computer..........

I use the HyperX 2x4gb sodimm kit from newegg. Model#: KHX1600C9S3K2/8G

Make sure you don't get the KHX1600C9S3K2/8GX though!

 

yes, i am aware of the maximum of 2 slot of 1600mhz, i just want to make sure that i order ram that is JEDEC-compliant, but it seems it is. im just paranoid here i guess

 

I really don't understand why people are so obsessed with 1600 RAM. I mean, there are no discernable differences between the same, and you can only install 4GB in there...

Mr. Mysterious

 

I have 8gb (2x4gb) of the default Samsung DDR3 1333 memory in my Sager NP8130 config and want to expand to 16gb. My current Samsung memory information is attached. I am looking to purchase an additional 8gb (2x4gb) of the same default Samsung memory. It's my understanding that some Sager/Clevo owners are upgrading to DDR3 1600 memory and might consider selling their current Samsung default memory. Please leave me a message if you are willing to part with your Samsung memory for a reasonable price. Again, my Samsung specs are attached and I am looking for matching Samsung RAM sticks. Thanks in advance for your considerations.

 

Anyone with the 6230 having a problem with "internet access"? whenever I turn on my computer, I can connect to a wireless network, but I do not have internet access.

To solve this, I have been re-installing the wireless card driver every time I turn on my computer, which completely disables the card (not just the Fn+F11 function .. that doesn't solve the problem) and turns it back on. This solves the issue ...

Its not the end of the world, but was hoping for a permanent fix.

 

Have you tried just disabling/re-enabling the card within windows or running the troubleshoot diagnostic? Does this happen on multiple networks, or just one?

Open a command prompt in Windows and run "ipconfig /release" and "ipconfig /renew". Your router may not be reassigning you a correct IP Address.

 

I don't understand, you can connect to a network but you don't have internet access essentially? Hm... Do you have the correct drivers installed? I would assume its a router/modem problem though...

 

If I were to tighten the screws around the heat sink could this possibly improve cooling? I'm a little skeptical seeing as I've never done it before.

Do you tighten the screws around the copper plate with the warning sticker for holding it?

 

I seriously doubt tightening the screws would improve cooling...

if you want to improve cooling that much go for one of those notebook coolers.

 

Realistically, no. If it's already snug, tightening it further isn't going to do much and too tight could possibly damage it (though unlikely). Changing out the thermal paste and using a cooling pad are the two best options other than throttling back the part (GPU/CPU)

 

I just received my NP8150 yesterday from XoticPC and so far my experience has been less than pleasant. My 95% gamut screen has 1 dead pixel and 1 stuck pixel at the very bottom of the screen, which bummed me out cause I've gotten the 30 day zero dead pixel guarantee.

Next my laptop freezes every time I run 3dmark11 and boot up StarCraft II. I've tried installing the drivers for my ATI 6970m from the threads that was brought up on this forum, but still nothing.

I'm not sure if it's a hardware problem or software, but right now it looks like I may have to send it in for an RMA.

 

I tightened my screws on my GPU heatsink and it dropped 6° C. Maybe sometimes during transport they may loosen slightly. It doesn't hurt to try but if it's already tight, don't apply any extra force.

 

What were your idle/average temps before and after tightening the heat sink screws?

 

Tightening the screws of the GPU is unlikely to make any difference in temps. Raising the back of the laptop is what you want to do.