*** Official Sager NP8180 / Clevo P180HM Owners Lounge ***

i have the p180hm, whit:
i7-2820QM - 2,3Ghz
12 Gb ram
1Tb Hard drives
Dual GeForce 960GT Sli

around 1800€ this price was in a campain that as -300€

I'm liking it very much.

 

Dual GeForce 960GT SLI? Did you mean the 560M's in SLI?

 

Malibal has a great sale on these going now from 11-24 to 11-28.

 

So I've been drooling over one of these machines for about a month now and I have a quick question:

While I understand that the drive, RAM, and vid card are user-upgrade-able/swap-able I was curious if the cpu is user upgrade-able? In every laptop I've ever had the cpu was soldered into the mainboard and thus couldn't be changed no-way no-how.

In looking to get something along the lines of an 8180 I'm planing on upgrading the machine over the course of ownership and just want to be clear what pieces can be changed out.

 

Yep! CPU is definitely upgradeable

 

The fact that the CPU is upgrade-able is a huge plus for me. I've been planing on getting a desktop for some time due to the ability to tinker and change-out and upgrade parts.

I've been thinking of picking up a base model 8180 and working on upgrading parts as I go [ssd>graphics card>cpu] .

Thanks again!!

 

bumb for this ^^ anybody knows whats wrong?

 

I have no idea. Could be a problem with the LED connections on the Motherboard.

 

We've seen this happen before, we think its a loose connection as there are a lot of different ribbons that make all that work. But these are not easy to take apart for sure.

 

This Clevo / Sager model is very easy for the user to upgrade!

In less than 1/2 hour, so many components can be exchanged or upgraded.

This is one of the reasons so many are turning to Clevo / Sager.
_

 

Just wanted to say the audio on this notebook is effin' amazing, despite what other people are saying. The problem is, it's 5.1, not 2.0 like you're probably used to if you're a notebook enthusiast.

When I first got this notebook, I too was severely disappointed by the audio, especially considering I'm a bit of an audiophile.

All you need to do is get an application to manage your audio. I use AC3 Filter, it's free and easy.

This is how it went down for me:

Opened up a movie/song in Media Player Classic Home Cinema

Palm to face 'cause audio volume sucked.

Installed AC3 Filter.

Another palm to face 'cause audio still sucked.

Opened up AC3 Filter settings while media was playing.

Had an epiphany.

I noticed when I was playing media, in AC3 Filter's settings, it was only using the speakers designated "Left" and "Right". This makes sense because a lot of the media you're likely to play is 2.0 audio (e.g. all your MP3's).

So, I fiddled around with it a bit. Obviously, the goal is to make it use all the speakers, but still give some sense of 3D feeling if you can call it that since it's pretty much all coming from the same place.

I'm an amateur, so this might not be the best solution, but it's what I was able to come up with quickly, and it settled the matter to my satisfaction.

This is the default

This was my first attempt at a solution, however for a 2.0 source, is still unsatisfactory

This was what I settled on

Go ahead, give it a try. Despite the fact that I'm an amateur, I did put some thought into it. For example, it's a Markovian matrix. Yeah... bet you didn't think you'd see that outside of your Linear Algebra class... me either. To be honest I probably misused it, but the word did jump to my tongue after I decided that each row ought to sum to 1. It does sound damn good, though. The resulting sound from the speakers that is, not the word "Markovian."

Make sure you configure your speakers in Windows to use all the speakers first:
Right-click speakers icon on toolbar
Playback Devices
Speakers
Configure
5.1 Surround

Before you ask, I could not find the specifications of the speakers. Best leave it at no full-range speakers. If anyone here has any information regarding the speakers capabilities, I could definitely make use of it.

Also, when using AC3 Filter in this way, probably a good idea to disable THX's TruAudio.

I know this isn't an end-all solution. I'm still working on either making all applications use AC3 Filter, or finding a solution that can do that. Anyone who knows more on this subject I'd appreciate some input.

This computer is the first time I've owned a Blu-Ray player and to commemorate that, I went out and bought Star Wars IV-VI on BD. Because that was a 5.1 source, I decided best not use AC3 Filter, and simply used PowerDVD's 5.1 solution with THX TruAudio. THX was designed for Star Wars VI anyways, right? At any rate, it sounded phenomenal.

You'll find if you mess around with AC3 Filter for your mp3s or whatever, the P180HM's speakers are outstanding and can be very loud.

EDIT: for those of you not satisfied with what channel comes out of what speaker, this is a solution for you as well. Just swap them in the matrix and you're done.

 

can you explain little more about display quality and details , like contrast and especially compare to AUO displays on other clevo notebooks !

 

It's a Chi Mei CMO 1807 N184H6-L02 display.

Detailed specifications can be found here: http://www.notebook-lcd.ru/pdf/N184H6_L02.pdf

I can't seem to find it at the moment, but a review of a notebook with "the same" model display put it at a contrast ratio just north of 200. All in all, they weren't pleased with the display. "The same" was in quotes because I was certain the display being reviewed was 120 Hz and this one is definitely not.

I was actually a little hopeful this screen was 120 Hz capable and that perhaps Clevo just underclocked it or whatever you might call that for a display. It indeed isn't 120 Hz capable. My P180HM's monitor capped at 106 Hz, and anything higher resulted in an unusable screen. Although 106 Hz is a lot higher than the standard 60, I don't think it'd be up for any stereoscopic 3D. Besides, any length of time at that refresh rate would likely either damage the screen or severely reduce its lifespan.

As to my personal opinion of the monitor, it's great. Looks beautiful. Only complaints I have are:
The light-sensor reduces the brightness of the screen based on room lighting. In general, this is probably for the better, save some power, increase usable life, etc. However, in a constantly-changing environment, it's a bit annoying. Not a big deal at all, as that feature can be disabled by the button sitting just to the right of the light sensor.

Also, the screen is rather glossy. Turn the lights off and it's not a problem, right? Not that easy unfortunately. In dark environments, the screen reflects the light given off by the blue perimeter of the touchpad. Not that annoying actually. While watching movies it either gets drowned out by the luminescence of the display, or you stop noticing after 5 minutes. In either event, you could likely either get the screen replaced with a matte, or perhaps after some time, Clevo resellers might offer a matte screen to ship. It really isn't a big enough deal that I'd bother, but hey, there it is.

But yeah, the screen is pretty amazing. I absolutely love one thing about it: the size. My wife and I just recently moved overseas and don't have a TV for Europe. As such, we've been watching everything on our notebooks. A few months back, my notebook died after a good ~4.5 years and we were forced to watch on her 11 inch netbook. Holy mother of god, I'm so glad I got the 18.4 inch. It makes a BIG difference. I know what you're thinking. "This idiot dropped 3 gee's on a laptop, and STILL doesn't have a TV?!" I'm happier this way =D and I'd do it again.

 

ftp://usftp.clevo.com.tw/ALLBIOS/P18xHM/

NEW FAN UPDATE?!?!? EC_05 11/17/11

 

Exercise caution making modifications to your BIOS.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/416916-clevo-bios-thread.html

 

HI all,
I have been debating for too long on what my final purchase will be. I basically was trying to decide between the 8170 with 580m and upgraded screen for 3D games or an 8180 with dual 6990s. I think 3D is a novelty and not sure if I will ever use it much though. Before I was thinking of 3D gaming I was thinking of getting the 8170 with 6990m. If I went with the 8180 with dual 6990 could I hook it up to a 3D capable monitor and game in 3D that way?

I want to play battlefield 3 on ultra settings and wasn't sure if a single 580m or single 6990m would be enough. Also, I won't be traveling too much with this laptop, so originally I thought 18" was too much, but my entire reason for getting a gaming laptop instead of building a new pc is b/c I don't want to be tethered to a desk in the evening when I am tethered to one all day at work. I want to game on the couch, up stairs, down stairs, or possibly connect the laptop up to my 65" plasma. So since I can get a 8180 with dual 6990 for about the same price as a 8170 with a single 580m, I was thinking to go with the 8180. What do you think? I think about $1950 is the absolute max that I can dish out for this laptop.

 

The only thing setting me back on this laptop is that it doesnt have a backlit keyboard, is one isntallable, Im thinking between this and MSI because the MSI has a Steelseries BACKLIT Keyboard and other goodies that the SAger np8180 DOesnt have. Sorry about the types typing on a non backlit keyboard on my bed hahah

 

Well you've got this guy who's using a 8130:
SAGER NP8130 GAMING LAPTOP SPECS
Nvidia GeForce GTX 560M GPU with 1.5GB GDDR5
Intel® Core™ i7-2670QM Processor (6MB L3 Cache, 2.20GHz)
8GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1333MHz
500GB 7200rpm SATA 300 Hard Drive
15.6" Full HD LED-Backlit Display (1920 x 1080)
MS Windows® 7 Home Premium 64-Bit Edition
Plantronics Multimedia Stereo Headset (Music, Gaming, Voice) (Audio 350)

and you can see how fluid he runs and records the game with a single 560m SWTOR Trooper Commando PVP Video: Combat Medic @ 16 in Huttball Taugrim's MMO Blog

I've just ordered the P180HM in mind for MMO's with single 560m (waiting for next gen MXM 3b compatible cards), 8Gb RAM, i7-2640M CPU, windows 7 Pro and 2x SSD in RAID 0. That should take care of TOR needs and more. I also went for the SB sound card upgrade and will let you know how it fares when I get it.

***EDIT the 1600MHz RAM ain't compatible with the 2640 CPU so had to upgrade to the i7-2760QM.****

 

Yes, you can play 3D with an external monitor/tv.

Source: CLEVO - Products

 

I finally managed to get all 4 cores / 8 threads to 100% CPU consumption (see attachment)

When the screenshot was taken my P180HM was converting simultaneously 7 HDTV movies into standart DVD format (.VOB files, i.e., MPEG2). The total runtime was 40 minutes. On my old HP notebook the same convertion took about 10 hours.

The amazing thing is that during this very heavy operation there was no overheating at all, that the fan was not too loud and that I was able to use the notebook for other tasks such as Browsing with Firefox or opening big Word documents with normal response times (on my old notebook opening a big Word document during heavy video convertions would take 10 minutes).

This notebook is really powerful - i simply love it

 

Hey guys. I've been around the forums for a while and am ordering a new laptop. My Sager 8180 is be built right now. Specs are below. I'll post reviews when it arrives

 

Well nevermind, turns out I can't use a sig yet. How many posts til I get one?

Anyways, the laptop is:

i7-2760
8gb 1600mhz
Dual 6990s
Vertex 3 60gb SSD
500gb 7200mhz HDD
6x Bluray Burner Combo
Intel 6230 Wireless + Bluetooth
IC Diamond
300 Watt AC Adapter

I'm excited to get it. Actually installing the SSD myself so it will take a bit to get this puppy up and running.

 

Very nice rig. SSD install is cake on this machine. I did it in like 5 min tops. I think you need over 10 posts for your sig and pm rights.

 

Thanks. Im not worried about the install, just thinking the clean windows install with all drivers will take a while. Then im going to be moving the paging and index files as well as other stuff that will be constantly writing and rewriting from the ssd to the hdd. Aside from extending the ssds life, im going to need to clear up all the space i can on that tiny thing.

I hope as more people get these machines this forum becomes more active. I want to find a way to modify the tribal design color on the sager. Malibal offers it when you buy from them so them, so im sure there is a way

 

What I did to speed up the install was put all drivers on a usb drive. I use a usb 3.0 16gb drive and it works wonders. You can download all the drivers before hand and put them on the stick. It saves alot of time.
I ordered mine from Malibal but got the orange/red tribal design. I actually like it more than I would the blue. It doesn't match the rest of the laptop LED's but everything I have that has an LED is blue so it's a nice change.

 

Ive got all the drivers on a jump drive ready to go. I downloaded all of them from sager's website, but have found a few newer versions. Not sure which to go with. Ill find all the version numbers and list them in a bit.

Ill be using the laptop in a professional environment is why im not a big fan of the red tribal. I think blue would be more subdued, but i might try to just cover it up alltogether. The old sager 8120 had a sager emblem instead of the tribal. When i called to order one they said it wouldnt fit though, even though they are both 18.4 inches. Boo

 

Does anyone know how if possible to change the memory timings? This would be super lame if you can't.

 

Anyone know if the veda P180HM has an express card slot?

 

It does not have an express card slot. It seems to be a dying connection on a lot of newer devices. These are the available ports:

 

Ok, I am admitting defeat and seeking help. I have been trying to get my 2 Radeon 6990m cards to install for 2 days. I have reinstalled Windows 7 64-bit three times.

Each attempt fails with the same result, trying different drivers each time. Originally, I tried the drivers that shipped from Malibal, and then I tried the most updated driver set from the amd website named: 11-11_mobility_vista_win7_32-64_ccc. I have called AMD tech support and they have fobbed me off.

The ccc package installs fine with no errors, and I am prompted to reboot. Upon reboot, the "Starting Windows" screen appears and hangs after the initial animation finishes.

If I reboot into safe mode I can see the Radeon 6990m adapters in the device manager, and if I disable the adapters or uninstall the drivers then I can boot regularly again. The windows event log shows a variety of service startup failures related to a device failure during the failed boot, like this example:

Event ID 7001:

"The DHCP Client service depends on the Ancillary Function Driver for Winsock service which failed to start because of the following error:
A device attached to the system is not functioning."

Are there any programs I can use to verify the BIOS/firmware integrity? I am at a total loss here. Is the BIOS flashable? I am unable to find any information on this, and AMD support was zero help.

 

This is wrong.

Source: CLEVO - Products

Try this one:
ftp://usftp.clevo.com.tw/P170HM/VGA/HD6990M.zip

 

Thanks Elusive, yet that is the same driver Malibal shipped, I believe. I could be wrong though. In any case, I got one of them working! I wish it would have dawned on me ages ago to try disabling them in turn after the driver install. It looks like my secondary card is possibly screwed. Once I boot normally with the primary enabled and try to enable the second card from Device Manager, the screen goes black. The hotkeys still work, but caps lock doesn't toggle the light, so there is some kind of hard crash here. At least I get to marvel at a 17 second boot time now.

I am disappointed that the mobo BIOS setup is extremely lacking in features. It uses an Aptio Setup Utility from 2010.

There doesn't appear to be any memory timing settings, and I can't find a list of what timings the mobo uses for different ram types anywhere. For DDR3 1600 it appears to default to a 11-11-11-28 at 798.2 MHz frequency. AVADirect offers a huge selection of RAM types with their Clevo builds, and I imagine a great deal of them don't support that timing.

There is also no virtualization technology, which means no 64-bit VMs. I stupidly assumed such a new system would support this. But, this is a mysterious proprietary motherboard and I should have asked.

Edit: I might be wrong about this because the HAV Detection Tool passes, but that only mentions the processor requirements. SIW reports that VT is not enabled.

 

That's interesting because SIW reports no ExpressCard for my install.

 

I've got one in my Malibal. I didn't actually notice it until today. It's on the right side of the machine.

 

I had the same issues as you at first. The 6990m driver on the driver disk did not work. I downloaded the 11.10 preview 3 driver from guru3d and it worked like a charm. 11.10 preview 3 is the same as the 11.10 final release. Also DO NOT install 11.11 or any of the new previews. They cause immediate BSOD during and after install on crossfire 6990m's.

 

Right side of the notebook, on the side of the audio ports opposite the USB ports, you'll see a rectangular shape somewhat recessed. Push it in.

 

The 11.10 preview 3 ccc package is making progress. I can enable either card by itself now, but I cannot boot if both are enabled. A terrible fate.

 

What exactly do you mean? Are you putting both cards into the master gpu slot and testing them? If you are and both cards are booting up without issue, I would test them in games. If they both work one at a time then you have a problem with your motherboard.

 

Well, my P180HM has indeed an express card slot

But there seem to be two different revisions of P180HM, one with and one without express card slot. Before I bought my P180HM two resellers told me that they sell it without express card slot and two resellers told me that they sell it with such a slot.

 

Wow has it been a long time since I last posted anything in here!
Hey guys! I'm considering buying a P180HM and I have one little question for those of you who have got your hands on those babies.

I see there are three fans on the bottom of the P180HM. Do those suck air in or blow it out? It's probably the latter. I'm asking because I have a Cooler Master cooling pad that blows air up towards the bottom of my laptop. Would the pad diminish the effectiveness of the unit's cooling capability?

Thanks!

 

Welcome back!
They suck air in through the bottom and out the rear vents.

 

Thanks Eldaren! That is great news! I can't wait to get me one of these rigs now that what little doubt I had is gone!

 

Are others experiencing this same problem? I am receiving my system any day now and was planning on using all of the most up to date drivers, but now im worried that they wont work.

 

Hi I was going to order a P180HM soon and was wondering where I could find the exclusive Malibal discount for notebookreview forum members? Can't seem to find it, checked the reseller thread and it said about the discount but not how or where to get it. Thanks!

 

Check the M18x forums. Everyone with crossfire 6970-6990 machines are having BSOD issues. CCC 12.1 seems to work though.

 

You need to have 5 posts under your belt. Then when you order from Malibal tell them you are a member. I made my order over the phone. Painless process.

 

Are phone lines open this late? And alright I guess 3 more random posts wouldn't hurt anyone

 

Thanks again Eldaren, ill try the 12.1

 

does xoticpc ship the P180HM's with 1.5GB 6990M's or 2GB 6990M's? there seems to be some confusion on their website.

 

The 6990 cards that are used in that unit are 2GB cards. Sorry about the confusion!