Sager NP8651 / Clevo P650SE with GTX 970m First Look

WC in a laptop,nice! so u wont miss a moment of gaming anymore since no need to stand up and go to the john kidding

 

lol...<s> I"m sure they'll add a filter option </s>

So yeah I'm curious why the TW site for Clevo doesn't even have these listed.

 

You would never want water cooling IN a laptop, it would have to have some sort of external hook up and docking mode to use it.

Water cooling would be restricted by the fin area inside the machine, the pump and pipe space could be used to make the regular heat sinks larger. Water cooling setups only shine when you have 240mm to 360mm radiators and more.

 

no worries about that, theyre actually a bit slow. had my SG order down for weeks before they even listed the SE version

 

Have missed a few days of info... whats the difference between 650 vs 651 and SG vs SE?

 

Check the first post of this thread for the details

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...se-sg-sager-np8651-np8652-owner-s-lounge.html

 

Must.. See.. More!!

 

Thanks! I think sandblasted looks better, the brushed metal really tracks prints.

 

Plus the sanded version has black accents in the back, compared to the chrome accents of the brushed version.

Unfortunately I have yet to find the sanded version available from a US vendor

 

cant u just go with eurocom? i think they have the sandblasted version, dont they?

 

I don't think so - the system in their First Look video is definitely brushed.

 

mkay, bummer

 

I can wait a few months if I have to

 

I wish I knew if waiting would even make a difference Good luck!

 

Hopefully will have mine by the end of this week. Waiting is killing me.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Thanks for the great review! All other reviewers should model from you. I'm planning on buying a sager laptop myself, and I'm pretty sure I'm gonna buy this one. Do you have an estimate for how soon you'll get out a full review?

 

Congrts man! I was gonna wait till HTwingnut would come with his full review, but reading posts everyday, that anxiety! Placing me order now from Gaming Laptops - XOTIC PC - Gaming Notebooks - Custom Laptops - Custom Notebooks.

 

Yeah! Congrats on the soon to be purchase

 

the notebookcheck review showed that the CPU hits 100C during their stress test, has anyone experienced something similar after couple hours of gaming?

 

I placed my order last night for the XMG P505 Pro. I will be only too keen and happy to run whatever benchmarks you guys want with it, once I receive it! I live in London so it'd probably take a few extra days to get to me. I do hope it arrives late next week with a bit of luck. HTWingNut has been comprehensive, but if there's anything else I can help with, I will be happy to.

The specs I ordered totalled £1299.01 (£1311.01 - including the £12 shipping cost to London).

- 1080p IPS Matte
- i7-4710
- 8GB RAM
- 970m
- 256gb Crucial m550 m.2
- Intel wireless AC 7265
- Windows 8.1 Home

I'm very interested in providing some real-world tests for you guys.

Some notes:

1- I don't own a 'notebook cooler' and to be honest the reason I purchased the 505 is so that it actually has enough cooling capacity to not require one. I think the whole idea of a 'notebook cooler' is silly for the intended purpose of a laptop, therefore I won't buy one/test benchmarks with one.

2-I'm not really interested in doing 'stupid' benchmarks i.e. running Furmark + PrimeTools at the same time for 1 hour like Notebookcheck. I mean what????

 

First off, notebookcheck was using the 4870HQ, not the 4710HQ, so we won't be seeing the same heat. Second, HTWingNut posted his temps after gaming in the first post of this thread.

 

Under the keyboard and under the bottom plate:

 

Oh it looks so sexy naked!

Do you think that 16GB CL9 Kingston memory is a good deal at $145 upgrade from the single 8GB stick?

 

way too expensive, better to get a 16 gb kit urself itll cost the same if not less than upgrading from 8 to 16 gb. plus ull be able to go for smth faster (eg 1866 or 2133 mhz) for basically the same price.

sexy indeed, almost like undressing a sexy lady

 

Hmm which kits are recommended these days since Ill be going with a 32gb kit if anything pref 2133 vs 2400 that way I dont have to push the vcaa to much

 

juuust so happens that i looked up some kits yesterday and found this here:

G.SKill 32GB Kit SO-DIMM DDR3 PC3-17000 CL11 (F3-2133C11Q-32GRSL)

dunno about the pricing in your country though, but that seems to be the only 2133 kit at 32GB available in germany at the moment one can always go with 2x16gb kits, of course, but thats always a tad more expensive

aside from the g.skill ripjaws theres really just two other brands at high speeds in so-dimm factor: corsair vengeance and kingston hyperx. personally i have the corsair vengeance at 2133 2x8GB, and im pretty happy with them will be looking to oc those puppies to 2400 once batman finally pays me a visit

as for 2400 kits, nothing has shown up here yet, but ive already heard some rumors state-side... wouldnt be surprised if theyll be popping up soon

 

If Samsung made 8GB chips like their 4GB chips that were DDR3-1600 but easily clocked to 2133MHz, many to 2400MHz without a sweat... but for some reason Samsung only makes, if they still do, 4GB 1.35V modules.

 

took hyperX impact 8go easily overclockable to 2400mhz

 

Just remember ... populating more than one DIMM per channel is always going to cause more EM "noise" than a single DIMM per channel. So a 32GiB Kit (4x8GiB) will often be less capable than a 16GiB Kit (2x8GiB) when it comes to synchronous clock.

I have some ECC Registered 16GiB DIMMs with Samsung 1.35V ICs that are also 4Gb (typically 1Gb x 4-bit) technology. So that means Samsung very much does make ICs at 1.35V for 8GiB DIMMs.

I can't condone overclocking, let alone over-volting, memory. Memory is one of those core aspects in a system that, when corruption happens during a buffer flush, will can render a system unusable. Especially when booting a Windows system, which doesn't boot read-only, the system is writing to various, key areas. I wouldn't say this if I hadn't seen it happen many times.**

It's better to spend money on specific memory modules timed to not only a specific, synchronous clock, but more importantly, lower CAS, CAS-to-RAS and RAS timing. Remember, the clock is only the burst transfer, and seemingly only instantaneous during writes. During reads, it has to wait on the latency of the DRAM ICs, and the faster/lower latency the ICs, the far better the performance.

JEDEC has specified 2133K for DDR3 with 11-11-11, and its best to pay a few bucks more for a vendors that has developed such and tested to the standard.

EDIT: NewEgg has that same 32GiB, 4x SO-DIMM DDR3L (1.35V), 2133K (11-11-11 timing at 266MHz x 8DR) kit from G.Skill here in North America
- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231776

**NOTE: This is one of the reason why technicians boot Linux to test memory, even if on the hard drive (not just a Live CD/USB). A Linux system boots read-only and does not write/flush to disk, so any issues (like a kernel panic due to memory corruption) will occur before the system pivots to the read/write filesystem. NT boots in a read/write mode. Again, I cannot emphasize how many times I've seen people screw up their Windows systems by overclocking/overvolting on boot, because they were flushing corrupted blocks. I would always use a Linux system (a Live CD/USB if needed) to test memory fully when overclocking/overvolting to verify operation, if not in a full 48 hour test.

 

Yes you can get higher capacity samsung chips but they don't have the same qualities of the magic run chips.



All day every day (note speeds are limited by multiplier options). Stock is fine for most users, for the enthusiasts round here you need to do a little better.

 

G.SKILL Ripjaws 32GB (4 x 8G) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3L 2133 Laptop Memory Model F3-2133C11Q-32GRSL - Newegg.com

YIKES, that's some expensive RAM!

I'll see if I can find a decent 16GB kit running at 2133MHz at a decent price lol.

 

I would like to use my 512GB SSD with this laptop. Does anyone know of a youtube video or an instructions manual that will help me not make a mistake when unscrewing the back of the P650SE and putting this in? Or is it very easy?

I'd appreciate it if someone can give me some step by step instructions... Thank you so much for your help.

 

That is easy! 07:30 in first look video by HTWingNut FIRST LOOK
Just alot of screws.. "Remove screw" I believe you have to remove them all, and then just swap the harddrive with your SSD! Probably 2 or 3 screws holding the hd down, and you just replace the bracket onto your ssd.

 

Huh? Just what gives you that idea?! Even far worst timed DRAM is running a good $10/GiB these days.

Understand that's 11-11-11 timed at 2166 (266MHz 8DR) at JEDEC standard DDR3L 1.35V, which is the absolute fastest and lowest timed JEDEC spec out there. So costly just a tad over $11/GB is hardly what I'd call "expensive."

Oh, sure, you can probably find some DIMMs that can do similarly outside SPEC, and probably with quite a bit of over-volt, for $30 or maybe even $50 cheaper. But you're still going to pay $300+ for a 4x8GiB kit.

Of course, 16GiB is going to be half the price of 32GiB.

Here's the 16GiB kit version:
- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231760

Again, $10/GiB is about what DRAM costs these days, and definitely at least $10/GiB if you want things to JEDEC spec. Oh, you can maybe save $10-30 going with lower clock and lower timings. At least with SO-DIMMs, they are usually closer to JEDEC spec, unlike desktop DIMMs.

A lot of vendors do a lot of things with their "specifications." The one thing I've really liked about G.Skill is they virtually always do their specs to JEDEC standards. They don't list specifications based on over-volting outside of the JEDEC standards. And they are one of the most inexpensive vendors for actual JEDEC spec.

That's why G.Skill became very popular almost overnight. I've had *0* issues with their DIMMs and SO-DIMMs, and I've purchased dozens upon dozens over the years.

 

No, I just meant in general 32GB is a lot more expensive than what I was thinking it would cost. I did look up that 16GB kit and plan to go with it.

 

Okay, that makes more sense.

Also remember that JEDEC standards are often for only one (1) DIMM per channel, and synchronous clock is reduced with two (2) DIMMs per channel. However, I'm curious if G.Skill is quoting the specifications as if -- as the kit with four (4) DIMMs -- with two (2) DIMMs per channel. Again, more DIMMs per channel equals more noise.

So going with only the 16GiB kit -- two (2) DIMMs -- means you're definitely going to get 2166MHz. Timing doesn't change for the same clock, although 11-11-11 timing at DDR3-2166 (266MHz 8DR) would be 10-10-10 at DDR3-1866 (233MHz 8DR), 9-9-9 at DDR3-1600 (200MHz 8DR), etc...

So a lower, synchronous clock with the same memory doesn't mean performance is greatly reduced, because the timing is still very good compared to a lot of cheaper memory with poor timing. DRAM cells are very slow, even at a 200MHz+ clock (with 8-bits/clock in DDR3), and take several cycles to return data.

 

b.j.smith, I just want to note that I appreciate all the info you are providing. I'm glossing over them for now, because I'm not researching that part of my laptop yet, however I have tagged them for later reference. Thanks

 

The ultimate irony here is that I hadn't purchased a personal notebook in 4 years. I've been issued HP, Lenovo and other "corporate" type notebooks, all while doing embedded, server and other developments. Even my personal, Mini-ITX gaming desktop is around 3.5 years old (H67 / i5-2500 SandyBridge generation), and I only upgraded its video card to a 660Ti about 2 years ago. Any other, personal purchases are all server or embedded.

I discovered Clevo by looking at who System76 was whiteboxing from, and the rest is history. I was totally ignorant of Clevo before a few months ago, but am not any more.

It's been several years since I've done any embedded design, although I get pulled into projects for time-to-time. And I always get pulled into boot-time issues with just about anything, even NT, despite my heavy Linux focus in recent years, because of my deep knowledge of NT internals. That's why I ask a lot about the PCIe booting aspect, especially with all of the stupid things Intel does in software, and even microcode.**

Just a couple of years ago, I was at a major and I mean major US federal customer. Microsoft was blowing them off, even though the new SP1 release for 2008 R2 managed to render 100% of all their bare metal Windows Servers unbootable for days. i still remember that ... "Yeah, we're having the Red Hat guy look at it. Yes, he works for Red Hat. Oh, now you're going to send us someone." Again, just a major part of the reason why everyone boots Windows Servers under a hypervisor with a Linux host platform (e.g., VMware ESXi v4/v5 uses a rebuild of Red Hat Enterprise Linux release 5).

I've literally seen it all. I've also been through the guts of CE and NT for embedded to, and there some stuff I'm under NDA on with Intel**, Microsoft and others over the years that I cannot talk about, but you wouldn't believe. Kinda the reason I prefer open source, you cannot hide the messes, and you are forced to address them, when they are known.

**NOTE: I don't dislike Intel as a company, or Microsoft for that matter. I dislike the idea of jumping on those "hate" bandwagons. But I've seen them turn absolutely white when I disclose something to their engineers and architects, and when they give me those "you don't need to see his identification" type answers, I back them into a corner until they admit what they did, and finally confess why they haven't fixed something.

 

if anyone´s interested, i can reaaaaally recommend these Corsair Vengeance sticks: CMSX16GX3M2B2133C11

you can check out my personal experience with those right here, including oced / tightened timings:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...reme-boost-1600-2133-beyond-jedec-xmp-17.html

im optimistic ill be able to oc those puppies to 2400 mhz with batman´s help

 

What would be your suggestion then if I want the higher capacity of 32GB?

 

go with 2x16 gb dimms but nah, its totally fine if u want to run them at PnP / stock speeds just when u consider overclocking, u wont reach as high a frequency / as tight timings with 4 dimms compared to 2 dimms

 

Overclocking your ram that's quite great only if your bottlenecked by your CPU, that's like NEVER the case but ok ^^. For games like Watch dogs, GTA V ( i predict it !!), and future intensive RTS games, it can be a little + to have 1866mz-2000+mhz rams, for the rest, it's too pricy, and once again, juste a number to show in benchmarks.

 

yep of course, ram should be the very last thing to overclock or invest extra money in, only makes sense if everything else on ur system is already tweaked and overclocked to death

 

I'd have to test, or find a review that has tested, the G.Skill 32GiB kit to see if their SPD will sync to 266MHz 8DR (2166MHz) when two (2) DIMMs are populated per channel (4 DIMMs total). It maybe be that they run at 266MHz 8DR 11-11-11 or it may be they slow the clock down to 233MHz 8DR (1866MHz) with 10-10-10 timing.

That's assuming, of course, one doesn't override the SPD. Overriding the SPD is certainly possible, and could work without overvolting, and be quite stable. It all depends. As always, test if you override the SPD -- i.e., if you don't use the "auto" memory configuration in the firmware.

I'm just taking the stock, 32GiB DDR3-1600 (200MHz 8DR) kit Mythlogic offers. I don't know what timing that will be, but I fully expect to be lower performing than the G.Skill kit. I only recommend G.Skill because of the experiences I've had with assembling so many systems and upgrading so many notebooks, especially given their specs (clock, timing) are almost always against JEDEC standard ... if one is going to buy their own. I'm looking for a tested and warrantied unit, hence why I'm just sticking with what they use.

I wasn't aware that 16GiB Unbuffered DIMMs were available, at least they are not in 1R. I've only seen 8GiB Unbuffered DIMMs in 1R.

The 16GiB DIMMs I have are 2R Registered DIMMs, which don't work in Unbuffered systems. There are a few, non-standard 2R Unbuffered DIMMs out there, but they are not very useful for a system that offers two (2) DIMM slots per channel (4 total). I.e., 2R DIMMs are the same as two (2) 1R DIMMs from the standpoint of JEDEC standards and how the SPD will report how to setup the channel and timing.

 

I have those same RAM chips in my W230SS. But I can't get them to go any faster than 2133MHz. Maybe you'll be more successful.

 

For me HyperX Impact auto-overclock ability up 2.4ghz (or manual overclock) what else ?

 

@ HTWingnut, thanks for the "first look" video. I was just curious what your thoughts were on the monitor? I saw a post by you in another thread saying the P650 SE screen wasn't very good and wasn't sure if NP8651 has the same one. I think the screen is the main thing holding me back from this purchase.

 

you'll always be able to replace it by a sub 100$ IPS matte or glossy screen.

 

Most of us will end up buying an IPS for ~115.00. I have already added it into my budget because like you the screen is very important to me. I really thought this models would have an IPS display stock but unfortunately not the case

 

There are a lot of DIMMs out there, especially for desktop, that claim much higher synchronous clocks, but usually at 1.65V, when DDR3 is 1.5V or 1.35V (with 1.5V tolerance). At least in the notebook world, they rarely claim such specs on SO-DIMMs because they are almost always quoting RAM spec at 1.5/1.35V.

Anything DDR3-2166 (266MHz 8DR) at 11-11-11 timing is already going to be quite good, and any increase in clock is just going to increase cycle timing -- as the latency of DRAM cells doesn't change. Lower cycle timing at the same clock is always where one should put their money. E.g., don't purchase a DDR3-1866 (233MHz 8DR) with 11-11-11 (or worse) or a DDR3-2166 (266MHz 8DR) at 12-12-12 (or worse), because one "has heard" it's over-clockable to "2400" (300MHz 8DR), because the latter already have worse DRAM cell latencies than the first. Lower timing at a clock is always going to be better in the end.

For the most part, while desktop folks love to do all sorts of things, given the density and packaging of components, along with the far more limited DC-DC room, in notebooks, one usually doesn't seem the same "tolerances" for overclocking/overvolting in notebook components. I cannot fathom overclocking a notebook, and stopped doing such on desktops years ago because it's not worth not merely reducing lifespan, but getting corruption, especially in something like memory that is constantly used for memory mapped I/O to ... say ... commits to storage.

But I live over half of my life on the road. So YMMV.