Sager NP9752 / Clevo P750ZM - HTWingNut's Initial Impressions and Review

I just got my NP9752s and for the most part Im very happy.

A few things I would like to note that I dont like, that dont seem to be a part of the review:

1: The laptop itself gets pretty warm. I dont mean the processor or the gpu, I mean the case itself. The keyboard especially gets really very warm, and it makes my hands sweat badly. The heat even projects to the bottom of the screen while the laptop is open. I dont know it this is normal or not, but my old laptop everything but the bottom of it stayed at room temperature.

2: The power cord (from the brick to the laptop) is tiny, its only 3 feet long. This might be only my particular one, but its not long enough to have the brick on the floor and the laptop on my desk or lap. I have to move the brick up on the desk.

3: It took me hours to adjust the color on the monitor to something satisfactory. Again this is probably just my particular unit.

Now with that said, the laptop is amazing. Its super powerful, Ive been playing Dyeing Light at max graphics, and it doesnt skip a beat. Im very happy with its performance. Its also very quiet, and the speakers are pretty good for a laptop.


So I have a few questions. Is it normal for the body of this laptop to get warm, and for the keyboard to get extremely warm? Intel Extreme Tuning Utility reports that the CPU is 55 degrees C, so the internal guts arent getting to hot. Also on the subject of temperatures, while idling it runs at 50-55 C and when playing a game it runs at 80-90 C. Are these good temperatures?

 

Just the left side of my keyboard gets warm. The rest is cool. And look at how power is under the hood. Heat has to go somewhere.

 

The only thing you can do to improve the temps is to repaste the CPU+GPU with some good thermal paste like Gelid GC Extreme.. it will keep the heat down.. Also tweak the processor.. Undervolting can help to drop temps further.. You have to play around to get everything perfect for yourself

 

The CPU and GPU have already been repasted. Also I have the laptop on a cooling pad under it. The hottest part of the keyboard is in the center, the left side is a little less warm and the right side is almost room temperature. Also does the heat go up to the bottom of your screen too? I understand that the heat has to go somewhere, but in any laptop Ive used before, it wasnt the keyboard or screen that the heat went to. Im worried about it damaging something important, not to mention its just uncomfortable for my hands.

And how do my running temps look? 55 C for idle, and 85 C for games.

 

Those are my temps too for my 3940XM... And it's a mobile CPU in AW with great cooling system lol.. Temps are fine but to get the heat out, you need a cooler like Notepal U3 which elevates the back.. A flat cooler won't be good enough.. I didn't like the Notepal U3 putting my notebook on an angle so I returned it!

 

The cooler does put the laptop at an angle and prop the back up. A 20° angle according to the box. Its a Spyker, it looks a lot like the Notepal U3 but it uses one big fan instead of 3 smaller ones.

I find it funny that in order to use this laptop on my lap, I have to put the cooler pad under it, and then another flat surface under the cooler pad.

 

I prop it up again on the cooler, it helps since you want a decent gap between the fan intake and any surface the machine is on (be it a table or cooler).

 

So you have the cooler propped up at an angle, and the laptop propped at an additional angle as well?

 

Has anybody taken any surface temperature readings? I'm curious as to what the keyboard is like under load.

 

Yes although my stand is adjustable and on the lowest setting is quite flat.

 

If anything like the 770zm probably about 120ish *F on left side. The middle and right less than warm.

 

Hmm, that's quite toasty. My Alienware 17 R1 and the ASUS G751JY stay under 34C at load. Of course, they also don't have a desktop CPU.

Still, while I'm interested in this laptop, for me having a cool chassis/keyboard is a must.

 

@Meaker, what cooler are you using? Would be interested especially if it's relatively flat..

 

It's an earlier cooler master ergo stand type one (though I think it was a U model) with two placeable fans (that I never bother to turn on).

 

Great review as always but the gaming benchmarks are not to far off the P650G.... for gaming seems the like desktop CPU does not really offer that much better performance than the mobile CPU's besides a few more CPU dependent games but still great review.

 

which was to be expected gaming-wise, a desktop i5 or mobile cpu are completely sufficient

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

That's the major downside for me. I love this so far based on reviews, but the slight performance increase doesn't seem to justify the large price premium. For me, anyway.

 

ill go out on a limb here and say that the ZM series is not primarily aimed at gamers... ull see a far more significant performance boost in other (CPU)dependent areas, where the price premium will be worth its size

 

Exactly. It's basically a portable desktop, and a very light and portable one at that considering the power and cooling it holds. For users that don't like or want soldered components it's also a good option. Hopefully we'll see more of this in the future. With Skylake hoping to have greater than i7-4790k performance in a much cooler and less power consumption package.

 

Indeed, I like the concept of this machine. If the price difference between this and the Clevo P650/670 wasn't as large, I'd pick this up. Currently the only real difference (aside from sockets) is the CPU. And for my usage it won't really make any difference.

Hopefully Clevo expands upon this idea with future models.

 

Completly understand what your saying.
That's the thing unless you need the desktop CPU power for more than gaming it sort of is a waste of hard earned money.
And yes jaybee I know some people need the extra horsepower of the desktop CPU that's why I specifically said "gaming"
I love both laptops that's why I'm still on the fence on which one to buy .Either way it's great to have choices and really can't go wrong whith on or the other.
I swap laptops every couple of years do soldered hardware while I wish all laptops were not is not a deal breaker.
I know blasphemy right!
But it is what it is

 

Heck, I change laptops once per year. Hence why BGA vs sockets isn't really a big deal to me. Nice to have, but not a deal-breaker.

 

That's the thing with laptops, everyone has different usage patterns so what is critical to one user has no impact to another.

 

I need a laptop for videoediting and some 3D-animations and I think it would be perfect. And it's not that expensive compared to other mobile workstations.

 

It even supports Quadro GPU's which may be great for your use, as long as your software supports GPU acceleration.

 

For a video editor who likes gaming I don't think any other machine makes sense unless you must have a more ultrabook class machine. It was designed for people like yourself.

 

It would be nice if the laptop would be thinner but that's ok. At the moment all the thinner models have major issues cooling the CPU and GPU or haven't that powerfull components as the P750/P770.

 

Thats the trade off you make for thinner notebooks. For a pure performance notebook you'll want to get something thicker so it can accommodate larger fans and better thermal design for better cooling. But these models have consistently shown great temps.

 

There are no major issues with throttling, they stay in the expected bahaviour of mobile CPUs, the P7xx models perform like a desktop CPU should.

 

I love how people complain about the P750ZM being thick but my Alienware is probably thicker lol.. It doesn't even handle anything more then a 57W mobile CPU

 

totally agree! i still think its actually amazing how THIN this beast is, considering what kinda power its packing!

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is the IPS better than 120hz screen?

 

depends how ur very own definition of "better" is... is ur focus on refresh rate, viewing angles, color accuracy/color gamut, or response time?

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sorry, what I mean is there any significant frame per second issue related to gaming?

 

ok so its either refresh rate or response time

even though the current IPS displays offered are rated around 20-35 ms, there havent been any user reports on ghosting yet in fastpaced gaming situations.
as for the refresh rate, that again depends on your personal sensitivity towards flickering. some users dont see much difference between 60 and 120Hz, for others its a difference like night and day. for that, of course, ull need to make sure that ur hardware/resolution and game settings allow for 120+fps in a specific game...

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So is there any update on what other users surface temps are? One person said it gets warm on the left side, but not in the middle and right.

However on my NP9752 it gets really warm in the middle of the laptop, and only mildly warm on the left and right side. Should I be worried about my laptop? What are other users experiences?

 

u should specify during which particular usage and in what ambient temp u get that warm surface in ur case...

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All the time. Running idle the keyboard gets mildly warm. Under high load the keyboard gets really warm, mostly in the middle. And as I said before, I have it on a cooling pad, that props it up at an angle so the vents are nice and clear.

 

I was talking about the 17" getting warm on left side. 15" may vary due to smaller size.

 

tbh, ive never really noticed the keyboard getting really warm, aside from stressing the machine to the max during benchmark sessions. when gaming or working on it, theres nothing uncomfortable that ive noticed when using the keyboard....

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^^^ this is true. The warmer temps temps I mentioned were basically when stressed. I run boinc all the time and the left is not at all umcomfortable.

 

@HTWingNut,

For the 9752, when you refer to the M.2 SSD's being limited to PCIe 2.0 if you RAID them, does that mean 500MB/s max combined? So, RAID 0 is pointless aside from extra capacity?

Great review, by the way. Thank you.

 

It's limited to SATA speeds. Only one port is PCIe M.2 compatible. Otherwise when running RAID, they will run as SATA drives. I haven't tested this because I don't have two Samsung M.2 drives though.

 

Okay, thanks. I may buy two 850 EVO M.2's later on if I decide I need more space.

 

Some SATA drives actually have faster small file speeds anyway which means they may be better for certain workloads.

 

I just got mine, and it does indeed get warm around the middle of the keyboard when idle, and hot during load. I think it's just how this machine is. NBC reviews show idle temps close to 39C, and load temps close to 50C on the keyboard. Hot by my standards.

Some people may be used to warm keyboards, so they don't notice.

 

Thanks for the reply. Im surprised that no one else is bothered by this. 50C is pretty freeking hot. I use this as a gaming laptop, and Im forced to use a game pad whenever possible. The keyboard gets so warm its very uncomfortable, and my hands sweat all over it.

 

I totally agree. These temperatures are not fine nor acceptable (IMO). The pro reviews mapped out the surface temps, and most of them are in the same ballpark (close to 40C idle, 50C load). How was this not ever mentioned? That's really hot.

So again, either you and I are the only two with these faulty machines, or they're all like this and people simply think this is normal/acceptable in a laptop.

I'm going to try placing some reflective tape underneath the keyboard to keep the heat away from it, see if that helps.

 

46C (114F) is a comfortable bath temperature. That's the warmest that the keyboard and top case reach under load. The bottom case can reach 50C (~120F) under load. This can cause burns but it takes 5 minutes of direct skin contact for that to happen. The industry stopped calling them "laptops" something like 20 years ago for this reason.

But yeah, these are perfectly normal temperatures for notebook computers, have been for something like 20 years. So I don't understand why you think that these temperatures are "really hot" and unacceptable.

 

Because they aren't. They're uncomfortable, and even my Clevo P650SE stayed cooler.

My AW17 R1 is actually cool to the touch, even under heavy load. Same with the ASUS G751 I had a while back.

Notebooks that usually have these kinds of temperatures are things like the Razer Blade. You know, really thin gaming laptops. In that case, it's a trade-off for how thin the laptop is.

In fact, of all the notebooks in my signature, only the AW17 R2 got this hot. All the others stayed cooler. Now, you could make the (very valid) argument that none of those others laptops had to try and cool a 88w desktop CPU, and I would concede that as a valid point.

My question was simply why nobody mentioned these warm/hot surface temps. Reviews for the Razer Blade clearly indicated surface temps of around 50C as a drawback. This machine suffers from (almost) identical keyboard temps, yet not one word.

Heck, even HTWingNut's review of the W230SS mentioned the keyboard can get toasty, even though those temps are pretty much identical to the 750ZM (the W230SS is even a bit cooler when idle).

Again, I'm thinking it partly has to do with the fact people will be a bit forgiving of a warm/hot keyboard considering the innards of this machine.