The Sager NP8130 Review by Mr. Mysterious

All done. The pictures are up, final edits have been made, and I'm happy that I'm helping people make their decisions.

Mr. Mysterious

 

looks great! thanks for your time and effort!

+rep

 

Thank you, much appreciated.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Yes, Great job with the review mate. I'd already +rep-ed!

 

Good Information and Pics! (+rep)

 

good pics! +rep

 

Thanks for the effort for full review.. From the picture it looks like I can accept the build quality (not the best though), it was once worried me when some of you complain about them..

 

What do you mean? The build quality was fine...I said it was a rock-solid machine. What specific complaints are you talking about?

Mr. Mysterious

 

I tried to post about this earlier, but for whatever reason my post dint go up

I too am wondering what, in his pics, suggests sub-par build quality. Only thing I can think of would be the keyboard, and that's more of a preference thing since it's supposedly pretty solid to type on

 

Perhaps dumild meant the occasional threads that highlighted bad experiences with Sager. I would agree though that the pics definitely do not suggest questionable build quality, unless one equates a plastic-y look with poor quality.

 

I don't think that the plastic is that bad (heck, it's not bad at all!) but there is certainly good plastic and bad plastic.

I believe that the Sager NP8130 is made out of very good plastic. And to be honest, the only "bad experiences" I have heard of with Sager are with their CS quality and the quality of the 8170's stock screen, which is quite unfortunate, really.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Aye. Unless the quality of plastic is immensely shoddy, I don't think one is able to tell how good or bad it is just by looking at most pics.

The quality of the 8170's screen is probably not THAT bad. Otherwise, there would be complaints here coming from the wazoo. Of course, putting it next to a higher gamut, matte screen will diminish its quality without question. It is just perceptual contrast. If someone has not had any experience with a better screen, then I don't think the stock screen will really give them any issues.

 

Madkid has just pointed it out.. Sorry for the confusion, it wasn't "you" but the other you...

 

Ahhh all right. Those Sager's customer service is suspect, their build quality is top-notch and easily upgradeable, all of which I appreciate greatly.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Great review, especially the awesome pics. +rep

 

Thank you!

I asked XoticPC about their keyboard, if it they had any other KBs just in case mine wore out down the line. It seems like right now they don't have any, but I'm thinking that very soon they'll have user-replaceable keyboards in case you guys lost a button or something. Just a helpful tidbit.

Mr. Mysterious

 

This is particularly relevant, as our PCs support USB 3.0:

USB 3.0 and Thunderbolt: Intel's Take

Mr. Mysterious

 

Are you having any sound issues with the cd drive ? heard people complaining about it and that its making like vibration sound, just wondering.

Thanks
What321

 

There's a slight vibration associated with high speed spinning, but it's not an issue for me. As far as sound from the blu-ray drive, it's a low whirring sound. Not bothersome or distracting for me at all.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Does that article mean that Sandy Bridge isn't going to support 3.0... wait... I'm confused.

"When Intel includes USB 3.0--which is about 10 times faster than current USB technology--in Ivy Bridge silicon in 2012 that will mark 10 years since the chipmaker upgraded its chips to the newest USB tech.

Today, Intel has support for USB 3.0 only in select desktop motherboards. And those boards don't use an Intel chip but a separate part from NEC to implement USB 3.0."

 

Well current motherboards use a 3rd party chip to provide USB3.0.

What the article is saying is that Intel chipsets will now provide native support henceforth

 

I don't think it will mean that one is faster or slower whether it has native support or not.

USB 3.0 is still a very new technology, and the speeds are not where they should be right now. But I am optimistic that they will rise steadily.

What worries me are not the speeds, but the USB 3.0 drives. Eventually we will come to a point where traditional platter HDDs are not fast enough to support the USB 3.0 speeds. At that point, SSDs will step in, though that seems pointless to me right now. Until SSDs get down to $0.50 per GB, it's most likely that we'll hit a botleneck of some kind with the bandwidth.

Mr. Mysterious

 

mrmysterious66, did you place the crucial c300 in your NP8130 yet? I ordered the same SDD and will be adding this as the boot drive when I get my NP8130. Any tips or tricks to consider?

 

Oops, I'm sorry Scarzy. I forgot to update my sig because I've been so busy lately.

No, I will not be going for the SSD right now because I am just going to wait until prices keep falling further. Until then, I'll just use my Momentus XT as my drive, which I had laying around for a while.

As for tips and tricks: SSD Optimization Guide

Happy Halloween? Lol, no that's "tricks and treats". Nvm

Mr. Mysterious

 

Thanks for the link. I will check it out.

 

Yeah sure, no problem.

Do me a favor? Could you please let us know about your results with the Crucial C300? Since it's very likely going to be my next SSD when I get around to buying it, I would appreciate the extra info.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Will do, I had to get my screen replaced due to dead pixels in the NP8130 so it will be a week or two before I get back from XoticPC.

 

I just installed a C300 in my NP8130. I highly recommend using the 0006 firmware. The 0007 firmware released yesterday slowed me down.



Waiting a long time for Sager to send me a optical drive caddy to replace the ODD drive with an HDD for the old 750GB drive. It's been over a month.

Benchmark your own drives with AS SSD to compare.

 

Sounds good! Looks like those are amazing speeds!

Mr. Mysterious

 

I threw my old 750GB drive back into the 8130 to try to get a benchmark comparison but I'm going to give up now. The test that took 5 minutes on the SSD is taking over an hour on the mechanical drive. I'm going to just abort lol.

I'll just put it this way, the SSD writes OVER 50 TIMES faster.

4K Write on SSD - 40.82 MB/s
4K Write on HDD - 00.70 MB/s
5000% difference.

C300 is $199 on Newegg right now.

 

I know but...I just don't have the funds right now! Well I do but...I should be happy with my XT500. Don't tempt me! Begone, temptations!

Mr. Mysterious

 

Updated with info on the 3.5mm jacks, thanks to Electric Shock

Mr. Mysterious

 

I recently installed the C300 in my NP8130. I have the 0007 firmware so maybe that's why Electric Shock has me beat slightly. Regardless, it's quick and very snappy.

 

0007 is slower than 0006. I regret flashing.

 

Maybe 0008 will eventually come out and get us back to full speed. Have you looked into if backwards firmware flashing is possible?

 

Some people tried backwards flashing from 0006 to 0002 and it bricked their drives. I'd rather not tempt fate even though 0007 to 0006 seems like it would be more realistic.

 

I hear that. Do you have an 0007 benchmark for comparison to the 0006 from previous page?

 

Has anyone else had any experiences with SSDs on their 8130 as well?

Share your thoughts

Mr. Mysterious

 

I'm running a Crucial 128GB C300 (SATA III) with a 500GB HDD as secondary. No complaints here, it's plenty fast and stable. I haven't run the data transfer benchmarks myself, but the ones that came from Mythlogic showed it to be plenty quick. (By the way, I loved the fact that Mythlogic sent me a CD full of benchmark results for CPU/GPU/disk testing!)

I am running Windows 7 on my SSD drive with Ubuntu 11.04 dual-booted from partitions on the HDD. If anybody wants tips on how to do that, PM me. It took a little while to figure it out (hint: you need the latest beta version of EasyBCD to work with GRUB2, if that means anything to you.)

 

Here's a tip I just discovered this morning:

Running the computer in "balanced" power mode leads to much lower temperatures. Lately I had been idling in mid-40'sC and that was worrying me. But Once I started to use it in balanced mode, I got the same oomph out of my machine but with lower temperatures, around mid-30's.

Ideally, I'd want all of my components to be under 40C at idle. That's why even though Clevo has a good cooling system, I'm going to buy the SF-19 in a couple of days.

Anyone else having temperature issues?

Mr. Mysterious

 

Why would balanced power mode make the computer run cooler than the Power Save mode? Cooling is not an issue for me but fan noise is.

 

Oh, it (shouldn't/wouldn't) make it run cooler than power save mode. It would make it run cooler than High Performance mode, which is what I'm almost always on.

My temps were above 40's C idle, so I got a little worried.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Typically speaking, Balanced mode lets the CPU/GPU throttle, and offers more drastic brightness and throttling when on battery than High Performance. High Performance will usually run the parts at higher clocks, even when idling (hence the name). Power save is the best on battery because it drastically throttles most of the parts, even on AC power and cuts the screen brightness.

Of course, you can manually go in and edit all the settings making the above moot.

For obvious reasons, cooling/fan noise is quietest to loudest going Power Save > Balanced > Maximum Performance.

 

As you would expect it to be. Since you're a reseller, mind telling us if you guys would be able to come out with a BIOS that addresses the fan issues that so many of us are suffering from? I'm happy with my computer, but would you care to comment on it?

Mr. Mysterious

 

nice review bro

whats the exact weight of the machine have u calculated?

please dont give me from the datasheet

i hope it will get a 560m soon with a 288 core version

 

Umm....I'll weigh it on a scale and get back to you then.

Just the machine itself or with the AC Adapter as well? Battery in or out?

Mr. Mysterious

 

machine with battry only thanks bro

 

I just weighed it, and it comes out to exactly 7.0lbs.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Update: I have included a video with my M4 128GB SSD Startup time

Mr. Mysterious

 

Fixed the BSOD and stuttering problems on the M4, thanks to a registry patch...so far it's working fine.

Also, I've been playing Mass Effect on the PC, and I have to say, it's much easier to aim and shoot with a KBM! I was intimidated that it might have been too difficult, but it's actually a breeze...

Wait...I think I forgot to change the settings from "power saver" to keep the temperatures to the high 30's....to "high performance". But I didn't notice any change in gameplay or frame rate. What's up with that? Is the 460M not constrained by the Windows settings?

Mr. Mysterious