The Sager NP8130 Review by Mr. Mysterious

Is there a frame rate cap on it? Because graphically for that game, your GPU might only need to be used at that certain setting.

 

I'm not sure how I would check that....maybe with FRAPS?

Mr. Mysterious

 

MSI Afterburner also has a customizable OSD for fps, temps, load etc.

 

Mr. Mysterious, thank you for the great review!

I have a few questions for you:

1.) Upon ordering the laptop from xoticPC, did you pay the extra $100 for the 0 dead pixel guarantee? Why or why not?

2.) I've heard some complaints about the noise 8130's make...both fan noise and optical drive (when watching a DVD/Blu Ray possible) noise. Any comments on this?

Thanks again for the write up!

 

I don't know if you were only asking for Mysterious' comment, but my comment on the dead pixel fee is,

It is all up to you. Personally I don't think that one dead pixel is going to freak me out. If you are OCD about that stuff or are using Engineering/architecture/video editing programs then I might get it but otherwise its your choice if you want to pay $100 for it.

 

1) No, because I trusted my reseller. I was one of the lucky few to get my PC with 0 dead/stuck pixels.

2) To be honest, I don't mind noise. It's there, and it's definitely noticeable, but you have to realize that you're getting a portable powerhouse. The fan noise is there, and that's probably good because it's keeping your temps nice and low.

About the optical drive...well it beeps and you can hear it whirring, but trust me, most people will get used to it and just tune it out as white noise. Not a factor, IMO.

Mr. Mysterious

 

I didn't buy from Xoptic because I'm not in the US and my reseller offered to replace my screen without extra cost if neccessary but it may not be the same situation for everyone.

IMHO, optical drive is useless in a modern laptop. Just have an external USB one. I replaced mine with an HDD caddy. Thin notebook drives will always be loud. There is no way around it.

 

Yes well you already provided a solution, electric shock: Remove the optical drive and put a HDD caddy in there

This is exactly what I'm going to do, not because of the noise issues or anything, but because I want to use my new SSD with my 500GB XT.

Mr. Mysterious

 

I ordered my HD Caddy on Friday from xoticpc. I hope it gets here by Wednesday, though the basic shipping charge was a little high.

$13 shipping on a $40 item? Really?

Mr. Mysterious

 

I was a bit disappointed, the Sager/Clevo caddy doesn't have a plastic plate that matches the outside of the laptop. You need to take the plate off both the caddy (which is just flat) and the one off your optical drive and then put on a white piece of plastic onto the caddy and attach your optical drive's cover onto the caddy. Also, remember to take the metal screw tab off the back of your optical drive and screw it onto the caddy so you can affix the caddy to the post inside the HDD bay.

My reseller got me my caddy for cheaper so I can't commend on what Xotic is charging.

 

Well the Clevo caddy is a generic one that works with all of their laptops, so if they had a computer with a different color then it would be good that they offer the ability to match the faceplate to keep everything seamless, don't you think?

Mr. Mysterious

 

No it's not generic for all their laptops. My reseller ordered the wrong one originally, even though it was from Clevo and had to make another order. The good thing about the Clevo caddy is that it comes with the mounting piece to make use of the optical bay cover. Some of the people who bought caddies off ebay, etc. (for much cheaper I might mention) had to superglue their covers on which makes it so they can't use their DVD drive anymore.

As it comes though, you have to use something to knock the LED out of the flat plastic plate that comes with the caddy in order to remove the plate and replace it.

 

Yep. While the 12.7mm form factor for the optical drive IS standard, caddies are not. (and some laptops do fiddle with this standard, so even that isn't always set). Caddies sold by most resellers allow you to pop the optical drive bay bezel right on to match the case. If aesthetics don't matter, then any SATA caddy should fit- though not retaining the stock look.

 

Really? Justin told me there is only one model for the OB Caddy. Odd...

Mr. Mysterious

 

I just bought a Malibal and I'm kinda freekin' out. I'm sending my HP dv6 back. the HP was almost perfect with the battery life and it was almost a real desktop replacement but with all the driver issues I just went with the low end Malibal.....ok I'm kinda freakin' lol

 

The only other thing to look out for is if the back of the caddy has the two holes tapped and threaded for the metal tab you have to take off your stock ODD drive and screw onto the caddy so it can be locked into the place (the screw inside the HDD bay). Without this, the ODD could slide out given a strong knock or if you pull it out by the front plate.

 

You went with the P151HM1 then? Are you having issues?

This is a good point. Some caddies have anywhere from 0-2- too many and you have to cut one off, not enough and your drive isn't secure. It depends on the caddy. The third party ones fit in form factor only, a lot of the other bits may or may not line up

 

That's what happened with me! Grumble grumble.....

The caddy is now in IL, and it's not moving arghhhh. It should be here by Monday though.

Once it's here, my computer will finally be complete, and I'll be able to start installing and playing games. Right now they're just sitting there, taunting me with their whispered promises, lol.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Whoa! What is this???

I made no changes or updates recently....Does this mean we can control fan speed finally??



Mr. Mysterious

 

^ I don't have that at all! Let's discuss this in the main page so more can see it!

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sag...gpu-section-hope-fan-control.html#post7586159

 

Hi All,

I'm quite close to purchasing the 8130, but have a question regarding the fan noise.

Anandtech has a quite negative review of the P151HM fan noise, especially saying that it constantly oscillates between two fan levels even if the load is constant (not changing). Is this something that you have noticed? How is the fan noise while gaming (can be heard over the speakers?) Here is the link to the article (scroll down to the "Noise and Temperatures" section):

Anandtech article

 

Old article. It doesn't happen anymore with the current ECs. Happened to stock models ordered in April 2011 or earlier. The fan issues are when during idle. When gaming, I don't notice the fans at all. Even after gaming for a long time, the fans never spin up to their max speed which you can test by pressing Fn + 1 to turbo them. The Clevo cooling system is quite robust and quiet and keeps temperatures down better than Alienware designs. When gaming I can't hear the fans over the speakers. It's during idle that I would like a more relaxed EC for a more silent fan profile. At least it doesn't spin up and down anymore at 40° like it used to. Now it's at a more constant speed at idle. Before it would turn on and off.

 

i ll order this week an ati 6970m and the 180watt psu for np8130!!i ll post some benhmarks and screenshots when i installed it!!!

 

Lol all right. I wanted to be the first one to install a new GPU in a 8130, but it looks like you're going to beat me to it, lol.

Enjoy

Mr. Mysterious

 

Please take pictures and videos and tell us how it goes! Are you using the stock heatsink?

 

ill not use the stock heatsink.i ll buy an ati 6970m+heatsink and the 180watt psu.i ll keep u informed all!!

 

Question:

I bought a Crucial M4 and applied a registry fix patch for it after numerous BSODs. Then I put my old (the one that came with the machine) 500GB drive in my machine because I was playing Mass Effect 1 on it.

Now that my HDD caddy is arriving, I am going to put the SSD in the main drive bay while the Momentus XT 500 in the caddy.

Will the SSD still work like it used to after the fix? As in, perfectly fine?

I haven't done anything to it. It's just been sitting out on my desk for the last 2 weeks.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Are you saying you have windows installed on both drives, and you'd swapped them out temporarily? I can't see why you'd have any issues with the SSD after putting it back and adding another drive to the optical bay. The only real issue is that with the Momentus XT as a secondary drive you won't benefit at all from the hybrid nature of it. If it's got Windows installed on it as well, you may have to set the boot drive in bios, but that's it. It'll just show up as your new D: drive on boot.

 

No, I don't have W7 installed on my Momentus XT, so that's not a problem. I know that I won't benefit from the hybrid nature of it, but I don't have any extra drives and I want to keep my original 500GB drive as a backup image just in case anything goes wrong.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Then in that case, you shouldn't have any problems. Just put the SSD into the primary bay and the 500GB into the caddy and you're off. Windows will autodetect the new drive and set it as D: (or any free drive letter). If the SSD worked before, adding a new drive won't change anything.

 

I don't understand what you are saying. Why would the original drive be a backup if there is no Windows 7 on it?

Are you saying you have 2 mechanical drives? A 500GB that came with the computer and a Momentus XT?

The Momentus has no Windows but the 500GB one does?

Your M4 has a fresh installation of Windows on it right? Caching disabled, page file as small as possible, hibernation disabled, TRIM on, etc.

Make sure you make symbolic links between non-speed-essential but often written to files from the SSD to whatever mechanical drive you put into the caddy.

 

No no....I used the 500GB with W7 on it while I waited for the caddy.

The M4 has a W7 fresh installed on it with all of my programs.

The XT has my pictures, music, videos and now video games.

I have put the M4 in the HDD bay and the XT in my optical drive caddy.

The 500GB is not touched or changed or altered. It has a W7 installation on it which Sager has put when I ordered it. Now I just keep it in a safe place, padded and protected.

Now, god forbid, if something happens, I can just take out the M4 and put the original 500GB with W7 on it and use it like that.

I guess "backup" was a bad word, but it does fit the definition.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Yes that works fine. Plug and play

 

How are the speakers on this laptop as compared to Dell XPS JBL speakers and HP Envy Beats audio ???

 

They're good, full sound, but nothing compared to the Dell or the HP, I'm afraid.

The NP8130 has two speakers and a subwoofer on the bottom (speakers above the keyboard, sub on the bottom of the machine).

Mr. Mysterious

 

Are there any other 8130 owners planning on upgrading to the 580M sometime down the line? Like I am going to?

Let me know, and I'll post up a guide on how I did it, which will hopefully be helpful

Mr. Mysterious

 

hi, nice review, but is there any build-in microphone for the np8130 ?? thx!

 

Yes, there is a built in microphone for the laptop.

Mr. Mysterious

 

I would just like to say - thanks a lot for putting this review together. It helped me a lot with my decision to purchase one or not, and I ended up getting the 95% Glossy, 8GB RAM, 560M, 2630QM for around $1250, if I remember correctly.

However, I ordered it without an optical drive and only the caddy in the ODD slot, so I don't have to deal with buying a third party caddy or something of the sort.

And also, I'm thinking of getting a Crucial C300 (and I recommend it to everyone over the Crucial M4), solely because of the random read speeds. The C300 has more IOPS compared to the M4, but also offers around 100MB/s less sequential read, which isn't that important to a boot drive anyway.

So all in all, awesome review. Thanks for it

 

Of course, no problem I enjoyed writing it up all throughout.

A small note about the SSDs....While it's true that the C300 may have faster random read speeds, I'm sure the difference is so negligible that it will only show up on benchmarking tests, and not on a day-to-day basis.

The bottom line is: Most (I don't want to say "all") SSDs nowadays are so fast that you'd need extensive experience with them in order to tell the differences in speed without using a synthetic benchmark.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Hey, how'd you get both the SSD and HDD in there while keeping the blu ray drive? I thought the extra harddrive had to go in the optical slot?

 

It does. The BR drive is now external.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Yes you are right. That's why I chose the C300 over the M4 when I was looking for SSDs. Like Mr. Mysterious says however, the differences are negligible in feel to the average user. The C300 will boot faster and random reads and writes are more important for the small day to day tasks of an average laptop user on the go with a small SSD. Sequential read speeds would be more advantageous for large, contiguous files (2GB movie for example).

 

Hi there,
I bought mine a week ago, now I notice that on a black background if I move a window the screen shows part of the previous window in red and then fades away looks like the refresh time is high or something. Does anyone has the same problem or does anyone has the solution to this problem I have a 95%NTSC screen.

 

Hows ur laptop treating u Mr.Mysterious ? Te only im having with it is that the booting time is rlllllllllly slow, and sometimes when im putting it to sleep the fans and lights stay on then i have to foce shutdown.

 

My computer's doing just fine, thanks

The booting time is entirely dependent on your hard drive speed. As for the sleep issue, i'm not sure what could be the cause.

Mr. Mysterious

 

My boot time is about 1min and 20 seconds from the time i hit the power button to all of my start-up programs loading. What is your boot time?

 

If you read my review (fully ), you'll see with the stock hard drive that arrives, that's exactly what my time was.

I have an SSD in there, so my boot time is 20 seconds

Mr. Mysterious

 

Sounds about right. My (very slow) SSD in the P150HM boots in about 30 seconds. Now if only Clevo gave us mSATA machines so it could be mSATA + HDD + optical drive all internal.

 

Mine is 15 seconds

There's definitely enough space that could be found inside the chassis to mount mSATA SSDs. Maybe on the next generation but regular 2.5" SSDs are still going to be the most abundant and best in price to performance because of market share.