*** Official Sager NP8170/Clevo P170HM Owners Lounge ***

Now where can I get hard laptop covers for the back of my screen?

 

should receive my 8170 in a couple of days. First new laptop in three years. replacing a dell vostro 1400 for work/graduate classes and will be returning to some online gaming.

edited my post and added some specs:
-2670QM
- ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD6990 2048MB
- Ram: 16GB - DDR3 1333MHz
- Primary Hard Drive: 500GB 7200RPM
- Wireless: BigfootWireless-N 1103 (3x3)

 

Not bad, should have completed it with a SSD!

 

thought about it but I have that empty 2nd bay for an upgrade down the road.

 

Hi what does the hotkey Aplication do? Does it help performance??

 

Hi everyone,

Great forum and thread that was instrumental in helping me decide to purchase an NP8170.

After having it for a couple days, I notice the fan kicking in quite a bit when doing nothing intensive, just browsing. IThe machine is cold to the touch and the fan only stays on for about 3 to 5 seconds, but it seems to be occurring every minute (not an exaggeration - it could perhaps be even more frequently).

I read about the BIOS update from the end of October but my machine is up-to-date as far as I can tell. EC/KBC V 1.00.09 and BIOS 1.01.10.

Is anyone else experiencing this? Or was the fan issue even worse before the latest BIOS?

Thanks.

 

Or you can always get another HDD for RAID...

Not really but it does give you a visual indication of whether the functions are activated or not.

I think this is the "fan cycling" issue I am hearing... And as for BIOS, speak with your reseller for it instead of getting the Clevo BIOS; they may brick your laptop.

 

Going to pick up my NP8170 at the UPS center monday, can't wait! Definitely going to post a review/unboxing of it and some feedback about ReflexNotebook.ca!

Specs:
i7 2670QM
Radeon 6990M
8GB 1333MHz
1TB Raid-0
Bigfoot 1103

 

It does two things:

1) Visually indicates hotkey presses (some people have said that certain games minimize with it enabled, so they disable the service in msconfig).

2) Changes the power plan settings at the bios/ec level. This supersedes the windows power plan settings as well.

What temps are you seeing on the machine at idle? You can check with a program like HWmonitor. If it's only once a minute, that's not terribly unusual. If your temps are higher though, you may want to try repasting it to see if a drop in temperatures causes the fans to spin up less often.

 

That's news to me. I have not seen it before...

And you do not need this for your hotkeys to work; I did not install this in Windows XP and the keys still work (except for the Wifi, which will be kept constantly on without the light indicator until you connect to any Wifi network)

 

On idle, my processors' temps range from 29-46C. The graphics card is 37-44C. I'm guessing that's normal?

The fan is actually cycling precisely 30 seconds off, 40 seconds on. No idea if that's expected...

I'm getting used to it and didn't actually realize it was on for that long or happening that frequently.

 

Sounds normal to me; having similar temps here.

 

But it helps to set it to performance mode from balanced right?

 

Hey guys, I got a quick question regarding the newer P170HM's shipping with the Hannstar default screen...the only downside I can see is some complain that it isnt bright enough...looking for some feedback form those that have it... what do you think of the HannStar stock screen?

Thanks
-Tim

 

Those temps are definitely normal, so it sounds like you're just seeing the rather common fan pulsing issue. There isn't much else you can do as you have the newest bios, short of downvolting/downclocking the GPU and CPU. This is not recommended though.

As far as I've seen, the only real difference is between power saver and anything else. Going from balanced to high performance doesn't really make a big difference.

 

Hmmm... How do I change my speakers settings in Realtek? I am stuck in stereo; no sound will play in 5.1/7.1 configs (other than the two normal speakers)

 

I just got mine like 10 days ago. I don't remember the fan cycling on and off the first couple days I got it, but now it seems to be on the majority of the time. It'll cycle off for about 5 seconds, then back on for about 20, then off for 5 etc... really annoying.

Idle temps are ~35-40C on the 4 cores. I guess I just have to suck it up? Kind of disappointing.

 

I am wondering about one thing: What protective mods/accessories (skins/sleeves/covers e.t.c) are you all using?

I can't really find them so far =X

 

The fan cycling is "normal", I guess. Since everyone that has an 8170/P170HM has this problem, it's considered normal, right?

Does not matter what bios / ec you have, the fan goes on/off every couple seconds.

 

I have been having some issues with my temps. My gpu (GTX 485M) had been idling around 58c-60c. I decided to open it up and see what was going on and found that when sager replaced my gpu the tech that worked on it was a retard and put a glob of thermal paste on and it had squished out all over the resistors on the gpu and wasn't making very good contact.

Here is a picture that I took after cleaning about half of it off with a q-tip and a little lighter fluid: (still thick on the bottom part of the gpu)
Here it is almost clean:
And a thin layer of AC5:

Now I am idling around 43c-45c but still after pulling up firefox with 5 or so tabs it still jumps up to mid 60s... so maybe I need to re-paste again? Or is that semi normal? Also I plan to run it on and off for a couple days to see if it is a little better after the break in period.

 

That actually didn't look like an abnormally large amount of paste, as it's fairly common to apply that much at the factory (of course, it depends on how much was on the top of that die before you cleaned it off). If your temps are back about where they were before pasting, that would indicate as much anyway.

You said you used AC5- did you meant you used Arctic Ceramique? AS5 or IC Diamond may help even more than that paste, as they're more "premium" types. At least, it's worth trying if you still have higher than normal idle temps.

Part of the reason Firefox may be upping temps is due to the hardware acceleration. If you want to rule out the fact that it's not just Firefox taking advantage of GPU acceleration, try turning it off through options > advanced > browsing > hardware acceleration.

 

Yes even when doing 'light things' like web browsing the fan speed will fluctuate some.

If you have the latest EC (firmware) and Bios you should be all set.
_

 

Sorry, I meant I used AS5, BUT is there any chance that IC Diamond would give any better performance? Or should I just stick with AS5 for now? I heard something about the silver particles being bigger and meant for desktop chips, but haven't been able to confirm it.

 

I've got a question that I haven't seen asked or talked about, so here it goes! Would there be any detrimental effect to FN+1'ing your fans to max speed for hours at a time while gaming with an NP8170/P170HM? Are the fans at risk to wearing out any bearings, or are they designed to operate at this speed for extended periods of time?

 

I am pretty sure that the fans can take a beating and are made to run pretty solid, so I wouldn't worry about it. (I also fn + 1 my fans for hours at a time while playing BF3)

Hey, its a gaming laptop right?

On another subject, after re-pasting TWICE with AC5 I ran furmark for about 45 seconds, again TWICE, after the first repaste and after the second, my temps topped out at 95c before I shut the benchmark off, so that worries me quite a bit... Should I just head down to radio-shack and pick up some IC Diamond compound and re-paste with that?

I don't think myself to be a newb to re-pasting, because I did it to my acer aspire 6920g every year when I used it alot and needed to keep the vents clean and never had this problem.

 

It's the latter. I'd expect the fans to last for a couple thousand hours, at least.

 

How do I test whether ALL 5 speakers work?

Currently, Realtek does not allow me to play them (They will produce no sound)

 

For me it was Firefox that was making for high temps during web cruising. Turned off hardware acceleration and noticed no difference in my webbing

 

yeah, same here.... I didn't notice any difference so I turned hardware acceleration back on. But my temps still shouldn't climb to 95c that quickly even with my fans on normal when running fur-mark, and I had mine 'fn + 1ed'!

 

My GPU fan died on me recently and my laptop is barely over 6m old ;/

Still waiting on the fan replacement...hopefully it was just a faulty fan

 

AS5 has a curing time of ~200 hours. You won't notice optimum cooling until after this time has passed. If you've already repasted it to lower temps after the first application, odds are you hadn't let it cure completely. IC Diamond shouldn't be THAT much better than AS5, at least not enough to warrant going out and getting some. It does have a 3-5 hour curing time by comparison though.

As for Furmark, it's a VERY poor representation of overall temps. It stresses the GPU far beyond what you'll ever see normally. Temps in the mid to high 90's are quite common when running Furmark. I'd suggest running 3DMark or some gaming sessions and seeing what temps you get from that instead. They are much more representative of actual temperature loads. On my P150HM w/ IC Diamond, Furmark typically hits 93-94C after 10 minutes. On the other hand, games and 3DMark keep temps in the low 80's at max.

 

The manual has some steps you can take. See picture link below..



-

On of the things to keep in mind that the manual points out is...

"The Fn + 5 key combination allows you to toggle the audio system between stereo and surround modes.

The stereo mode will allow for a louder audio volume."
_

 

Ah, I keep forgetting that the Fn + 5 key will reset by itself every time you shut down =X

And how about 7.1?

 

Just wondering, will the inbuilt laptop speakers continue to work if I used an USB soundcard?

 

Hi guys sorry to ask this but I couldn't find any threads regarding the latest driver of nvidia 580m as to compatibilty with sager 8170. I tried the 285.65 driver but in the middle of installing the driver my screen went blank. I waited for 5 min assuming thats how it goes but i got tired if waiting then shut it off. When i run again and check the version it now shows 285.65. Any one had experience like this? Did i do it right? I am running the laptop now with no problem so far, i just thought something might be wrong during the process or might be files missing because i shut it down without waiting for the screen to come back.

 

I can confirm that the drivers on the Nvidia website are FULLY compatible with the Clevo P170HM-3D GTX 580M. I actually installed the 285.65 for about 1.5 months but now I'm running on the Beta 285.79 drivers.

There is a NEW Beta driver pack from Nvidia here: NVIDIA DRIVERS 290.36 BETA It looks like they added some new Ambient occlusion for MW3 and Elder scrolls V, I might try them latter today.

You can also test some alternative drivers from 3dguru since they include more drivers on the package, but I do not think thats the issue here, some users experienced a "driver recovery" black screen, but the cause was related to the execution to some applications requesting "hardware acceleration" (like firefox and MPC).

=) later

 

Hey guys, on a somewhat unrelated note, I wanted to post a handy link here for anyone who may have missed it in the P150HM thread:

Dual Monitor Power-Saving Mode (Nvidia cards) Fix

It is a guide to how to reduce GPU temps when you have an external monitor plugged in.

 

Awesome!!! Thanks a bunch. Lowered GPU temps from 150F to about 105F. That's one heck of a diff.

 

Just got my Sager 8170 today. Won't get all of my new software I ordered at other places until late next week so I can't move all of my work, school etc over until then but so far I look what I am seeing on the 8170. Keyboard has a totally different feel than I am used to but not in a bad way I don't think.

 

Yep. You may need to control them separately in the volume mixer within Windows though. It may try to make the USB card the default and mute the on-board speakers, but you can change that in the volume settings.

 

Yep, you will need some time to get used to it as the keys are more spread out than your usual keyboard.

Hmm... How about using whatever software they give you?

 

A question about color profiles, I tried to search on this but there were so many methods based on different notebooks... Does anyone use a specific software or special Windows7 config for their colors? I find that my notebook is too "cool" and want to make it "warmer".

 

I know some owners of this machine have had luck with Calibrize.

 

Now I can play "some" 3D in youtube.. yet to no luck 3d movies. Has anyone here tried to watch downloaded movies (SBS .mkv files)?? I can't make it work or It not really gonna work .

 

My new record. 195F running rFactor at 1920x1080 with full eye candy maxed out. I did not do FN+1 until after the game. The laptop was not on my 2" high rear feet.

 

Ok,

Looking to replace my busted laptop, and trying to decide between two setups, MSI and Sager... both setup from xoticpc. Unfortunately, it's been a long while since I purchased a new laptop, so I have no idea which is really better. The choice between the two is:

Sager NP8170 - $1599.53 after $200.00 off from Sager Sale
17.3" FHD 16:9 "Glare Type" Super Clear Ultra Bright LED Glossy Screen (1920x1080)
2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-2670QM, 2.2-3.1GHz, (32nm, 6MB L3 cache)
ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD6990 2048MB PCI-Express GDDR5 DX11
8GB - DDR3 1600MHz Dual Channel Memory (2 SODIMMS)
500GB 7200RPM (Serial-ATA II 300 - 16MB Cache)
6X Blu-Ray Read/8X DVDRW Super Multi Combo Drive
Intel® Ultimate-N 6300 - 802.11A/B/G/N Wireless LAN Module
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit Installed
LIFETIME Ltd Labor* 1 Year Parts Warranty Lifetime -24/7 DOMESTIC Based- Toll FreeTelephoneTech Support (Labor Warranty through Xotic PC)

Vs.

MSI GT780DX-406US - $1608.26 – no real discounts
17.3" FHD 16:9 "Matte Type" Super Clear Ultra Bright LED Matte Screen (1920x1080)
2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-2670QM, 2.2-3.1GHz, (32nm, 6MB L3 cache)
nVidia GeForce GTX 570M 1,536MB PCI-Express GDDR5 DX11
16GB DDR3 1333MHz Dual Channel Memory (4x4GB SODIMMS)
750GB 7200RPM 16MB Cache Buffer (Serial-ATA II 3GB/s)
4X Blu-Ray Reader + 8X DVDRW/CDRW Super Multi Combo Drive
Intel® Advanced-N 6230 - 802.11A/B/G/N Wireless LAN Module + Bluetooth
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-Bit Pre-Installed + Drivers & Utilities Disk
3 YearMSIUS & Canada Parts & Labor 1 Year Global Warranty w/ Lifetime Tech Support
+ 1 Year Accidental Damage Warranty

Honestly, I have no real clue about the differences in these specs. MSI seems to have a lot more bells and whistles (backlit keyboard, nice speakers, etc), a matte screen, and a killer warranty. I can also fit a larger hard drive and more ram in the same price point.

The Sager has a better graphics card, although, the last computer I bought was in 08, and I don't really know much of a difference between the two.

I have to buy one or the other within the week (for tax reasons), so any advice I might be able to get could really help me out. Thanks!

 

Got my IC Diamond 7 in the mail today and just repasted as soon as I got in the door. After running furmark for 25 minutes my temps still haven't gone over 84c.
When running furmark with the AS5 my temps rose to a cooking 95c within 45 seconds of starting the benchmark! (which I quickly shut down to prevent damage)

I think its safe to say that I will NEVER use AS5 again, even if the temps would have improved after 200 hours of cure time.

 

Odd -- I see temps of 95C+ running both furmark and pretty much any game. Repasted twice, didn't see much of a difference either time. Pretty sure ICD7 vs AS5 isn't supposed to be an 11C difference.

 

Well the 6990M is a much faster card overall. I just depends on if you want to run things at the native 1080p. If thats what you want, only a 6990M or 580M will really do.

 

Hello folks,

I had ordered the Satori P170HM from MALIBAL and was quite happy with it except for an irritating stuck pixel and right side speaker distortion similar to the one described by the link below.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...er-np8170-clevo-p170hm-owners-lounge-440.html

I believe this is becoming a widespread issue on the Sager/Clevo models. Anyway, I sent it back to Malibal for replacement along with a Blu-Ray upgrade order. I can't wait for it to return and start some gaming before I write a complete review.

I have a question on overclocking on these models. Is it possible (and advisable) to overclock the i7 2630 CPU to maximum speed on the Satori 170HM (Sager 8170-S1)? If so, I will appreciate the procedure. Thanks a lot.

Cheers!