Sager NP6165 / Clevo W150ER Review

Heat's been fine on my rig. Been playing a lot of Diablo 3. The fan works great and my palm rests are fairly cool!

 

Just got the laptop, but whenever I turn it on, after about a minute the spekars begin to beep loudly, and 2 of the green led lights on the front beep also. I just recieved the laptop less than hour ago, any help?

 

The battery is also fully charged. Or at least it says it is (I only charged for about ten minutes)

 

Are you running on power or batteries? 10 minutes is not enough to charge the battery.

 

I've tried both, I thought it was wierd that it said it was fully charged. I tried doing it while plugged in and got the same results I let it charge for about 45 minutes and it worked for about 5 mins longer.

I'm letting it charge for several hours now, but it says that the battery is fully charged and it still turned off when it was plugged in. Do you think the battery is defective?

 

I just tried after charging for about an hour and a half. Only went for about 7 minutes untill it started beeping so I just shut it. I still had it plugged in also

 

Sounds like you got a defective unit. Maybe the heatsinks are not properly connected, so it overheats and shuts down.

Maybe you can run it on power to rule out the battery problems and watch the thermal monitor in the BIOS before it does the crazy stuff.

 

What reseller did you buy from?

 

Xoticpc. I'm planning to call in the morning, it does get hot on the bottom pretty fast. It's a bit late now but I'll try taking the battery out and run on power in the morniing Ill see if it does anything.

Thanks, really appreciate the help

 

I just ran it on power, took out the battery yet it still shut off. It didn't beep though but was still hot on the bottom (in the same spot, middle left of it).

It turned off without warning so would that be over heating?

 

Some motherboards have this feature of shutting off after reaching a critical temperature. I'm not sure about this laptop, but definitely points to a serious problem.

 

got a chance to call the comPany, the fan isn't working properly. Thanks for the help

 

Has anyone experienced problems with the NP6165 and Optimus? The only place I can seem to get the dGPU to kick in is the NVIDIA Control Panel (the bit with the rotating logo). Otherwise, when I start a program that should use the dGPU (and I have configured to do so), it switches betweens the iGPU and dGPU lights a few times while the program starts, and then the iGPU light stays on, and I get poor performance. I've tried changing Optimus settings in the NVIDIA Control Panel; changing Optimus settings for application profiles with NVIDIA Inspector; installing new drivers; and uninstalling and then reinstalling the Intel and NVIDIA drivers provided by Sager.

Is anyone else experiencing this problem, or has anyone seen this on another Optimus setup?

 

Mine works fine. I see the flashing you mentioned between dGPU and iGPU at the beginning after starting a program that requires it. But after that it stays on the Nvidia dGPU and I get good performance. I assume this is something specific to your unit.

 

I thought it might be, but reinstalling Windows seemed to cure the problem. Everything is working smoothly now

 

So close to ordering, but could anyone please run DPC Latency Checker for 5 minutes or so and let me know if it gets any spikes in the red? Had some bad luck in the past with notebooks and audio/video latency.

Thanks so much!

 

How is the wireless with the standard card? I have the choice between these three

- Standard WLAN (BGN) Modul intern +00.00EUR
- WLAN Intel Centrino 300Mbit + Bluetooth +14.99EUR
- Wireless LAN Killer Wireless-N 1102 2x2 Wifi Module without Bluetooth +34.99EUR

 

The standard WiFi+BT card has been working fine with my home wifi. I haven't tested the BT yet.

In Linux, I couldn't (yet) get the WiFi portion of the card activated. The BT module seem to be recognized and working.

I opened a new thread about the status of Linux on this laptop here.

 

Nice review, I picked up the same notebook, only I used Malibal. So far very impressed with Malibal and Clevo.

 

That's an interesting program. I just ran the DPC LC and it says the laptop "should be able to handle real-time streaming...". Most of the bars are <500 us, mostly about 100 us. I saw one spike up to 883 us, but it was still in the green zone.

 

ThrottleStop 5.00 was able to bypass this limitation on the W110ER. It can probably do the same on this model.

Full CPU Turbo Boost with a 35% increase in CPU speed can help smooth out any CPU demanding game when using the Nvidia GPU.

 

Cheers for running the test! It's reassuring to know this is a low-latency system. I've been burnt before and it's crippling when you're doing real-time audio or video prodution. Thanks again for testing for me, really appreciate it. +rep

 

Unclewebb-

Would using Throttlestop be safe on this laptop?
It is already running relatively hot without the overclock; but with it, how much higher would the temps be? Hot enough that I would have to use a cooler?

 

Nice! Thank you for this application! Lifesaver!

 

charliyu: You will have to do your own testing and run your laptop at whatever temperature you are comfortable with. As long as your CPU is not reaching the thermal throttling temperature, it is running within the Intel design specification. You can set ThrottleStop to use two different profiles. A default profile without CPU Turbo Boost and a performance profile with Turbo Boost. ThrottleStop can then automatically switch profiles based on whatever maximum CPU or GPU temperature you are comfortable with.

W110ER owners have seen some significant increases in performance depending on the game or application. A 35% increase in the CPU score during a Cinebench test by using ThrottleStop is worth looking in to.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/8622508-post783.html

You can also use ThrottleStop to use some Turbo Boost. It does not have to be an all or none deal like the bios is currently doing to these laptops.

 

Hey Everyone,

First, let me apologize for not being around. Unfortunately, I had surgery and that had left me out of commission for the past few weeks. Those damn tonsils screwed me up big time.

Unfortunately, I haven't gotten any further in testing or even touched my laptop for that matter. I truly apologize to all you guys.

Now that I'm getting reacquainted to my system, feel free to post or message me with any questions, comments, concerns, or suggestions. My mind is still a little out there due to the pain medication, but I'm here!

Awesome news. Will definitely have to test this out. I don't see why it shouldn't work, but we shall see!

 

You're very welcome! And thanks for the +rep

 

Just ordered mine! Will be putting a 750gb WD Scorpio and a 120gb Sandisk Extreme in so hopefully it should be a nimble little performer! Excited

 

I just ordered mine from LPC with the specs in my sig!!
I'll post a review of it when it arrives.

 

Look forward to reading it!

 

So my W150 arrived last night and it seems great so far.

Just for future reference for anyone considering a purchase, the W150 has low latency and works flawlessly with real-time audio editing and mixing.

 

Have you tried any games like LoL, FIFA, COD, MF3, Dirt, anything?

 

hi guys

just got this laptop for a week and may i say , a great value/performance notebook this is , it ran most of my games in high and sometimes beating my desktop HD 5770 , there is yet the problem of the turbo boost ( but heard in previous posts that it could by bypassed , even though haven't figured it out yet ) , overall , what a great $1000 deal , and a great performance laptop with the video graphics being only 100Mhz slower than the GTX 660M in the coveted G55VW which cost almost $1600 , just adds the pros to this laptop , and with an MX-4 thermal cooling and a room which is air conditioned , never goes over 70 degrees !

 

Oh man, you can push so much performance out of this thing. With Throttlestop 4.0 you can disable throttle and allow full boost with clock modulation.. during gaming.. I am able to play all my games at 3.1GHz(but i settle for 3GHz) and 1100/2800 GPU... With a nice paste job and a few extra mini-heatsinks, you can get awesome temperatures too. With Prime95 and Furmark full load max heat with 3ghz CPU and 1100/2800 GPU, Max temps were 96C for any CPU core and 78C for GPU... this is insane considering reviews had higher temps at 2.1Ghz cpu and stock GPU. I used PK-1 and bent the screw pins upward for better contact, and used a technique i made up for applying the paste(dabbing the cpu/gpu die surface with a latex covered finger and a couple drops of paste till it was 100% covered).. I also have 12 mini-copper heatstinks from Cosmos and 1 aluminum one from XBRDepot.

 

wrong thread

 

so how is everyone liking this laptop. Any issues I should look out for? thx

 

Has been working perfectly for me since past two years. Some things to watch for:

• I hate the keyboard layout: The arrow keys are not separated from the rest, so it's hard to find it without looking. Also it's not backlit.
• If you chose the default wifi card, it doesn't work properly under Linux. Keeps dropping connection.
• The full HD screen is very hard to see - even though I think I chose the upgrade option. I always find myself squinting. Maybe I don't know how to adjust the brightness.