*** Official Sager NP8671 / Clevo P670SE - Sager NP8672 / Clevo P670SG Owner's Lounge ***

It helps, but due to the size of any speaker you can fit on a laptop it's more about aiding the mid range.

 

Cheers, Meaker

Hope I live to see the days when Clevo start using higher capacity cells for their batteries. If this lappy comes with ~90Whr I'd gladly sell a kidney. .

 

Size matters, they say. . If u haven't had a 17incher yet, you'll love it. After a while the 15s start looking like netbooks.

I recently returned a 17" Lenovo with a subwoofer. Definately wasn't because of the sound, tho. Was marvelous. If the Onkyo ones are half as good, I'll be a happy man. (notebookcheck.net review says good stuff about them)

As Meaker mentioned, woofer is not large enough to make phat bass, but definitely contributes to those mids. I'll try and find some time to post a review once mine is here. Check back next week

 

It would be cool to have some extended options.

 

Battery capacity is something we have been pushing for years but it's always a toss up between size, cost and fitting around a cooling system. Here's hoping........

 

http://www.batteryspace.com/Customi...y-14.8V-6400mAh-94.72wh-14A-side-by-side.aspx

This pretty little thing has about the same dinensions and voltage as the one in the P67x. Probably quite steeper tho.
Definately will attempt to fit one in when I get bored after a year or two

 

Without having the detailed specs of both comparing maximum and normal charging/discharging etc it's hard to say which is more suitable.

 

So I've been tinkering with my new XMG P706 (Clevo 671RE) for a few days now. Its a beauty and a beast.
I'll type up a short review since info about this model is surprisingly obscure. Hope it is of use to someone

i7-6700HQ
GeForce GTX 970M, 6GB VRAM
16GB HyperX Impact, 2133Mhz
Intel Wireless AC-8260
1TB Samsung 850 Pro


Case

Build quality is almost impeccable. Aside from a minor screen backlight bleed in the top left corner (only irritating at max brightness on a black screen) I'm struggling to find something to nitpick and ***** about.
I guess the rear vents could've been made out of metal instead of a pretty decent quality plastic. But then they wouldn't be so shapely. .
Not a single visible gap. No body twist. Lid opens with one hand like a charm and yet is quite stable when opened. Max angle is about 130-140 degrees.
I gutted it a few times, installed various drives, swapped RAM modules, etc. Everything fits into place and is made very well and intelligently, which is a lot more than I can say about every other brand I've owned. (HP, Lenovo, Toshiba and to a less extent Dell)

Screen

No complaints. I don't notice the bleed 99% of the time. Brightness range settings are quite wide so even if you use it in full darkness it wont feel like it's scorching your retinas.
Already got to use it outside on a fairly sunny day (as sunny as Sweden gets in Dec). Works like a charm, as expected. Didn't have to use max brightness.
The fellas from notebookcheck did a screen flickering test on this LG panel, and it aces it even in lowest brightness settings so that shouldn't be a concern.

Gaming, noise, heat, battery

Fans run fairly quiet on idle. I say fairly since every once in a while (mostly after I switch between power modes), they "pump" a few times to max speed and then go quiet again. Its a very short lived phenomenon - three to five 1-second bursts - and there is no spike in processor activity before or during, so I cannot be sure what causes it. I suspect it has something to do with Optimus since from what I can hear it is the GPU double fans than do it. Was also toying with the idea that it's a "dust dispersion" solution but it does not sound very viable. If anyone has thoughts on the matter feel free to comment/discuss
The three fans do kick in loud during heavy loads, tho. Gladly it's not the high pitched annoying noise some other solutions make.
Tried a few heavy games on it. Runs them well on close to max graphics settings (Assassin's Creed: Syndicate, Rainbow Six: Siege) and struggles when set to "Ultra" but given that they are ported console titles, no surprise there.
World of Warships on the other hand, could not even make it break a sweat.
The notebookcheck review gets quite detailed on the gaming scores ( check P506 )

No heat. Not a single wrong degree reaches your hands. I like my laptops as thin and powerful as I can find them, which means I'm used to sweaty palms and molten fingerprints. This one stays nice and cool. Even the underside. Even during gaming. The portion above the keyboard heated up after I overclocked the GPU quite a bit, but still a frosty keyboard and palm rest. And while idle/browsing, you can chill your beer on this thing. Clevo should branch out into the A/C business. .

The battery, depending on your expectations, you might love or whine about. Gaming not plugged in barely reaches 1.5 hours, although I doubt it's a plausible scenario.
The Control Center program from Clevo brings different power modes (Quiet, Battery Saver, Performance and Multimedia) and they appear to do more than just switch the integrated Windows modes.
I tested all mixes between the Clevo battery saver and windows high performance/battery saver modes and it produces various results. I used the UserBenchmark site and it's tool since it provides scores for separate components of the hardware and I figured the Clevo Battery mode heavily limits CPU and SSD, but not so much the GPU.
Anyhow, using the most battery friendly scenario (Power saver + the integrated Battery Saver mode in Win10) I squeezed out almost 6 hours out of it. During normal usage, with battery saver and screen brightness half-way, it does roughly 4-5 hours. Way above my expectations for a capable gaming rig and I'm a happy man.

Sound, ports, misc

Onkyo speakers are doing a decent job. They are a little weak and my Lenovo Y70's were more punchy and loud, but when you tinker a little with the, quite awesome, SBX utility included, you can get above average results. Subwoofer helps the mids a little and if you are not afraid to use the "Loud" option they can get very. . well loud. It does hurt the quality a bit tho.

Ports are of the usual amount and variety. Well, if we are nitpicking, the sound output jacks are on the right side, which for some could be an issue when using a mouse but It's nothing to write home about. Cables bend and tuck after all I like the backside USB port. Great solution to plug in the rat of choice. I secretly wish a USB Type-C was onboard but no practical advantages for it yet, so I'll live.

Power cord is long and robust and the brick is large but thinner than expected. Carries well. A little more than 600gr with the cables. Plug is on the back side. Some will like that, some will not. I do not have explicit feeling about it.

Keyboard is pleasant. Usual arrangement (large enter key), good backlight (5 steps), nice feedback, convenient Fn+Key placements. Full sized numpad.

There are 8 LEDs on the front of the base (dGPU, HDD, Battery, Num, ScrLock, Caps, On, Charging - in no particular order) I like that the light they emit is gentle. Not a bother during movie nights, like I've had with some previous brands I'd rather not mention. . *cough*Lenovo*cough*.

Camera does what it's supposed to.

The Intel 8260 feels great so far. Quick, decent range and for the first time in the history of existence, no bluetooth connection/pairing issues.

All in all

A very robust piece of machinery. I do not regret a single euro (swedish crowns, to be fair) spent and would gladly overpay for it.
I am quite greedy tho, so I'd like to have a better battery, awesome speakers and USB Type-C. Sadly that would literally make it a perfect laptop. Nobody likes perfect. .

P.S. Pretty sure I missed some stuff. Drop a few lines bellow with any Q's you might have in mind.

Cheers

 

Fellas, I need a replacement power adapter... would ADP-180NB or TPC-AA501 work?

Anyone kind enough to measure me the correct diameter / length of the plug/jack? Long story short...I don't have access to my adapter.

 

What AC adapter do you guys use to overclock safely? The 200W is not enough acording to reviews and I don't know if this model is compatible with 330W adapter. Don't know if apart from changing the ac adapter do you need something else.

 

The most popular choice is the 240W slim dell brick and an adapter. The 330W uses a 4 pin plug so is not plug and play.

 

So I've had my NP8678 (P670-RG) for a couple of weeks now and I'm pretty impressed. I sprung for a bunch of options that no one needs, which has been an adventure. I'm used to knowing exactly how everything in my computer works, and I wasn't ready for UEFI and NVMe. Getting win10 installed was a breeze and booted insanely fast, but I really don't like 10 for privacy and machine-control issues (I want to pick the drivers and updates I install). Getting 7 on it took a week of creating new ISOs, slipstreaming in USB3 and NVMe drivers, changing settings in UEFI/BIOS, etc. Still not sure I have all the BIOS settings set up optimally but at least I got the damn OS installed.

Samsung Magician says that my Samsung 950 NVMe is a little below where it's supposed to be (it has target lines on its benchmarking screen and my drive doesn't hit them) but it's still damn fast. Not sure why I sprung for the 6820HK processor since I've never been into OCing, but it is fun to play around with XTU I guess.

The 980m runs incredibly cool and quiet, all the time. Handles everything I've thrown at it (not much since I've just been screwing with the OS mostly).

There are still some things that don't work right and/or confuse me. First, I can't control the fans. Messing with the Control Center manual settings doesn't change anything. FN+1 turns them on full blast but I want to be able to set a map of fan speed to processor temp. I have always been able to do that with the GPU vendor app, but I don't know what vendor this GPU is. I also saw some warning thread on these forums about bricking computers using those apps. If anyone can help me with this I'd really appreciate it. Also, I'd really like to know if I have UEFI/BIOS set up correctly. It was just dumb luck that I got one of my bootable win7 ISOs to actually go through the install. It was a MBR NTFS win7 ultimate image with Intel eXtensible USB3.0 drivers slipstreamed in with NTLite. I had Samsung NVMe drivers on my secondary drive; I loaded those drivers from within the Windows installation.

Can anyone explain what the hell settings I should be using in UEFI? Currently I have it enabled, with CSM on and Security Boot off, and I don't even remember the other settings. I miss BIOS - so simple and just worked. Booting Win7 takes a while - probably 10 seconds longer than 10 in UEFI - and I'd like to cut that down if possible. I imaged this win7 install so if I have to reformat and clone it I'm down to do that if it'll net me some performance gains.

I have not been thrilled with XoticPC support. Haven't ever gotten a person when calling their "24hr support" phone number, only what seems to be some poor guy's voicemail. Emails also take at least 24 hours for a response, often longer. And, they haven't really been any help with the windows 7 installation issues. They just linked me google results for "install windows 7 UEFI" and similar, all of which of course I'd already found myself. I absolutely love the computer, and would recommend Xotic, but that's my honest opinion.

e - Was just reminded of one more issue. The laptop occasionally produces a really high-pitched whine/buzzing sound. One of my gaming desktops did this when it was plugged in but not turned on, which I attributed to some trickle of power going through the power supply or something. It's usually barely audible, but it really is a piercing awful sound and when there's not ambient noise in the room it's very uncomfortable. It typically starts when I open a new program, or switch to a new window, or take some other kind of action (i.e. it doesn't just start randomly). It lasts from 10 seconds up to a few minutes, and then some other action that I perform will cause it to turn off. I'm really hoping this isn't going to be a warranty issue because I don't want to give up this computer after finally getting it all set up perfectly

e2 - here's a screenshot of my Samsung Magician benchmarking of the Samsung 950 Pro PCIe NVMe SSD - http://imgur.com/koXiT3O

 

Just replaced my ASUS G51J with a Sager NP8678-S (980m). I am really impressed with the machine so far.

 

Talk about a mega upgrade lol

 

You ain't kidding!

I actually came back to NBR to try to sell the ASUS (assuming there is still a market for it), but I need to get to 100 posts. It's hard for a lurker like me to find 100 things to comment on.

 

Welcome to the true gaming notebook world Keep posting and you'll be surprised how quickly that goes past

 

do you ever need to apply the oil for laptop fan? The CPU fan on my NP8671 was acting weird. It made this very loud noise that sounds like when the oil in a (normal) fan has dried up and the blades cannot spin smoothly. Or is my fan broken? I've had it since July 2015. I also opened it up and cleaned the dust. I actually just use compressed air to blow the dust inside. Couldn't open the fan up because there is no screws on the lid. It was the single fan (and I guess this is the CPU fan too). The dual fan didn't look too dusty so I just blow the dust a little bit though their lid is removable because there are screws.

 

Not as regular maintenance, no. If you get a noisy fan, it can help, but in some cases it might be easier to replace it.

 

thanks. I've contacted my reseller to ask about replacing the fan.

 

Does anyone know if the m.2 SSD slot is compatible with the PCI-Express 3.0 x4 m.2 SSD's that are out now? This link has an example of one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147467

I am trying to find a place with the mother board's specs, but I'm not having much luck...

 

The M.2 SATA and M.2 AHCI PCIE SSD's will work.. The PCIE NVMe SSD's won't work! Hence the Samsung you linked won't work.. Look for the SM951 AHCI version, don't get anything less than the 256GB one, the 128GB one has crappy IOPS..

 

Yeah, the 256gb and 512gb are faster than the 128gb. The chart on the intro page here has a break down of speeds.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8979/samsung-sm951-512-gb-review

Plus 128gb can be filled up pretty quickly though.

 

Yes more parallel chips give more performance, for this drive it tops out at 500GB for the maximum speed (a 1TB drive would be the same speed as the 500GB unless the controller changes).

 

Can anyone provide me a link for the adapter so I can use the 240W dell brick with the P670RG? Finding the brick is easy enough but I am not sure what adapter I would need.

I think I saw another post from the past about an adapter to use but I think that was for the P650/670SG systems which were only 180W so I would guess it's not the same adapter I would need.

Thanks.

 

Is this thread going to include the P670RE3 version? Or is there a separate thread for that? can't seem to find it if there is.

 

Really isn't another thread for that, since they are similar models basically. Should be fine posting questions about it in this thread.

 

i'm also looking to get a bigger power supply for my P670RG. Quite easily find the Dell slim power brick, but finding a adapter is a challenge.

I noticed recently GSYNC has stopped working, i've reinstalled drivers, fully removed them and reinstalled but it still doesn't work. i have GSYNC turned on also in the control panel. It was working when i first got the laptop. I read online that GSYNC stops when your FPS goes out of the refresh rate of the monitor but even with a capped fps of 70 it still doesn't work.

On a small note, I should've gone for the bigger brother the P770DM-G or P775DM-G cause the keyboard on the P670RG sucks and the ports placement are horrible.

 

G-sync is only on in dedicated video mode (not using optimus) which is likely what you have switched to.

 

There's no optimus support on my laptop and i've checked that i'm using the 980M everything says GSYNC is on, but i still see tearing. When i plug in my PG278Q i have the full GSYNC experience.

 

Your machine has a switch to go between dedicated and optimus mode. Double check this has not been toggled, regardless of this the external outputs are always connected to the dedicated output so it would still work with an external g-sync display.

 

I've checked with the control panel and i am indeed on the dedicated GPU instead of the iGPU. I experience tearing in CSGO, BF4, WoW almost any game i play.

 

Is the G-sync tab not there when you have no external monitor plugged in?

 

The GSYNC tab is there and its enabled and it shows as enabled in game but I don't see any of the GSYNC benefits on the laptop display but i do when i plug in ASUS ROG Swift. Read online that VSync has to be enabled in the NVIDIA CC i get no tearing but that's because of VSync and not GSYNC and it introduces input lag. Also read that when GSYNC is enabled and your FPS goes out of the screen refresh rate in the case of my laptop 75 fps GSYNC turns off. On my desktop where i use my ASUS ROG SWIFT even if my fps goes out of the 144 fps range GSYNC still works. It's strange because it worked when i got the laptop.

 

Try turning VSync off.

 

VSync is off. so it seems that it's a hardware problem, which is strange because mobile GSync is software.

 

They did add options to choose what happens when you breach the maximum refresh rate.

Your Swift has double the refresh rate making tearing harder to notice, once you go beyond the refresh rate G-sync can't work any more.

You have two choices at that point, introduce V-sync or let it run up and introduce tearing. You can overclock the monitor to raise the point where this happens but that of course is going beyond the official spec of the machine.

 

That's what i read online, but what i don't understand is it worked perfectly fine when i first got the laptop. If i overclock the monitor to 100Hz i get weird lines going down the screen and the monitor get dimmer and happens at any refresh rate higher then 75.

 

What happens if you put the overclock between 75 and 100hz? is there a middle ground that you might be able to get it to work?

 

You may not have noticed to be fair, it likely did V-sync beyond 75fps as standard (the default mode before).

You need to choose which you would prefer.

 

I tried 75, 85, 90, 100 and at every rate it introduces the vertical lines that can be seen on certain colors. guess i got a crappy monitor.

v-sync introduces very noticeable input lag which imo is worse then tearing. tearing just ruins the graphics fluidity and not the game experience.

 

I'm thinking about buying a NP 8677-S model soon ... just dropping by the lounge here to see if there are any long-standing issues/concerns with this particular build/case. I haven't been able to find a nice review that talks about heat + noise from the current mode. How's the stock cooling on this? (note I don't plan to overclock anything).

I guess my only other question is whether it's a good time to buy now, or if next gen GPU's around close around the corner and I should wait till later. Thoughts?

 

Notebookcheck do fairly detailed thermal breakdowns of the machine.

 

Anyone have issues with The Division and keyboard lagging or getting "stuck"? My character will continue to move when i release my W key. The length of the continued movement seems to correlate with how long the key was held down (the longer the key was held, the longer the character runs after releasing the key). I'm currently using an external keyboard but that is extremely inconvenient and uncomfortable.

 

I thought that you guys might want to take a quick look at what EVGA is offering for pre-orders.

http://hexus.net/tech/news/laptop/91667-evga-sc17-gaming-laptop-pre-orders-open-ships-april/

Big chunk of money, with the biggest draw (and cost) being the 4K screen from Sharp (IGZO? IPS?). Nevertheless, not thaaaat sure of the utility of 4K on a 17" screen. Once similarly decked out, the P670 is of a similar cost to the EVGA (before factoring in the cost of the 4K screen; c.f. AUO 4K screen cost).

Hadriel

 

It's a fair amount more expensive, the panel does not justify all of that gap

 

Prolly the all-metal chassis. Really heavy too.

Hadriel

 

Entering the market with a new design for the first time is not cheap either.

 

Another article did mention that they will have a G-Sync version coming out later this year... hmmm... I'll wait and see what else unfolds.

Hadriel

 

There are a lot of changes happening between then and now of course

 

Just dropping a line that I ordered and received (last Friday) a P670RG-G (i.e. Sager NP 8678-S) from Pro-Star. Great customer service and communication on Pro-Star's side of things.

As for the laptop, it's really great! So far has met all my expectations. I haven't had a new (or even upgraded) laptop in over 6 years so this a long-time coming. I stretched my budget to get a model with the GTX 980m, so it should hold up longer.

Very impressed with the build quality of this model as well. It is MUCH quieter, even under gaming loads, than my old MSI laptop. So I'm really pleased with that. Great design, great functionality all around. The ONLY nitpick is that the "pause" key isn't a dedicated key, and requires using the FN- key. Not a big deal, but for a gaming laptop it's an oversight in the keyboard design.