Just received quanta kn1-pm

It came about an hour ago from istnc. Build quality seems good. Sturdier than my old v4000. Design is very simple but attractive (looks better in person than in pictures). Screen looks great. My old notebook had a glossy screen and the matte on this is extremely nice, although I haven't done any gaming or multimedia yet. No bad pixels that i've noticed yet. Keyboard is good and easy to type on fast.

A few issues that aren't necessarily a huge deal.

- 7200rpm hitachi hdd is much noisier than my old seagate and toshiba. It's somewhat distracting right now but i think i can get used to it.

- I ordered a 2200 wireless card but received a 2915 (at least that's what it says in the device manager). I'm actually pretty happy because i was worried about the connection issues you hear about all the time with the 2200.

- The touchpad kind of gets in the way of typing. I never had this problem with my old notebook. I think it will be easy to work around though.

I'm getting started with a few tests right now. So far temps seem to be around 50-60C for the CPU operating at full 1.86ghz and 50-55C for the GPU. HDD stays around 46C. Fan comes on about every 2 minutes or so and is pretty quiet. I'm downloading 3dmark05 right now and will probably take some pictures tonight.

Again, thanks to Flanken and Chazman for the suggestion. So far I'm pretty happy with it

 

Glad you're liking your new KN1! The 2915 is a better card than the 2200, anyway; mine works just fine. You'll get used to the touchpad over time; it took me a while to get accustomed to it. Sometimes I still forget how huge it is, and accidentally swipe it.

I paid an arm and a leg for my Seagate; it probably isn't the fastest of drives, but it's so quiet it's impossible to hear.

 

l never really had any problems with my 2200, except that it had to be used with a wireless b router

 

So I did a few benchmarks and this is how it did:

3dmark05: 2390
Superpi @ 2M: 1.42

I also installed BF2 really quickly to check performance. I didn't encounter a single stutter throughout the whole thing and it stayed around 50-60fps on medium quality. My v4000t had pretty bad stuttering issues, although it could have been due to the fact that it only had 1gb ram. Another intesting thing is how great this things cooling system is compared to my v4000t. The fan goes off almost instantaneously, and temps are back to normal once I exit a game. It will be interesting to see how it holds up to long periods of gaming.

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to do a reformat pretty soon because they registered windows to the cardholder (my mother). I guess I could live with it, but my OCD will probably prevent me from enjoying it

Flanken, just one question. I noticed that my gpu temps when just browsing the internet are not very stable, and seem to go up rather quickly. The fan takes care of this quickly as well, but i'm just wondering if this is normal.

 

Yeah, the GPU temps are normal; my GPU temp can go up to 72 degrees or so when I'm not gaming. This is pretty harmless, as the danger zone is around 95 degrees, and it never goes up there. When I play games, the temp is always around 50 degrees. Even when I ran UT2004 overclocked (don't tell Rick!), the temps were around 50 degrees. That's another quirk of the KN1; since the fan runs most of the time you're gaming, the GPU is actually cooler during gameplay.

Just so you know, in case you had no desire to overclock, the KN1 gets about 3056 in 3dmark05 when overclocked to 435/743.

 

Ahh, so i must have been incorrect. The temps were already that low even when i was gaming! I was used to the fan on my v4000t staying on for about five minutes full blast while it was recovering from playing games. That's nice to know about its overclocking potential. Of course i'm not ready to go trying that yet haha, and I can't find a setting in the nvidia control panel anyways.

One more thing; I notice that my wifi light isn't always staying on. The wireless is still otherwise fuctional, but the light is not on. Pressing the button twice will turn it off and bring it back up, but agian, not sure what this is.

 

That's excellent! Glad you are happy with it.

Your temperatures are very similar to what my Sager has - HDD around 46, CPU about 50, right on. If you pick up a cooling pad - I recommend the ones by Vantec, they are made of aluminum and are good at getting rid of heat - you can keep your notebook at a lower temperature. Certainly has helped me. I have a cheap plastic cooling pad, and it keeps my temps about 5-10* less.

I think the WiFi light might go out to conserve power - the Dell i9300 does that, there was a thread on that I noticed a while ago. Probably the same thing with the Quanta.

Congrats!

Chaz

 

The Intel wireless can be a little finicky once in a while. Overclocking is only possible if you use a non-stock driver like the Nvidia 81.98 Forceware with a hacked .inf from a place like laptopvideo2go. But I really only use it for the sake of curiosity, and I usually don't overclock.

But you are right; the GPU does get a little hot when the fan isn't running all the time. It's just counterintuitive that the GPU is actually cooler during gaming, but that bodes well for the stability of the laptop.

Man, after reading your v4000 threads, I'm really glad I didn't get one, because I had been seriously considering one at the time.

Oh, and since ChazMan talked about cooling pads, the Coolermaster Notepal works very well with the KN1. It's hardly necessary, since most operating temps are already fine, but it knocks down HD temps by 10 degrees, prevents the GPU from ever going above 70 degrees, and props the notebook up at a nice ergonomic angle. You can see what it looks like here.

 

I think I figured out the problem. After reformatting I only chose to install the "drivers only" for the intel 2915, and was letting windows handle configuration. I think this was creating the issues.

After installing the whole package (proset software), I haven't been having any issues, and it's actually not as bad as I thought it would be

It is quite interesting how the 6600 go literally has the same performance as the x700 mobility. Playing through all of my games displays nearly identical performance down to the framerate being within a few fps from each other. The image quality is a tad bit different, but I can't tell if that's due to the GPU or LCD.

 

There was a big update to the Intel wireless cards posted a few weeks ago - it's big, almost 100MB, but it helps. I noticed a small improvement in response time with my 2915.

I personally like the Windows wireless software, easy to use and is stable. Never had any problems with it!

Yes, the Go6600 is a very competitive card to the X700, you can't go wrong for a mid-range gaming machine with either one.

Chaz

 

That's the software/driver version i'm currently using as well. Unfortunately, letting windows handle wireless gives me issues with the device occasionally being off when booting up and other strange connection issues as well. It behaves differently when using the intel software (LED blinks while first connecting for instance) and performs much better. Only thing is it adds like 7 processes!

Strange, since my old computer didn't need the intel software to run properly, although I think hp used a modified version of the drivers, because it didn't use the same intel software installer.

 

im glad that your happy with your KN1...because i most happily AM!!!! your temperatures are exactly what mine are. though my CPU is a bit slower than yours...but hey! i got mine for $1054 so i cant complain!!!!!

my temps:
CPU: 48~54 (idle) 58 (gamming)
GPU: 50~68 (idle) 50~52 (gamming)