Feedback to Clevo R&D Team: What's missing or broken in your Skylake laptops?

Didn't mean to be insulting/rude in anyway sorry if it came across like that but I was saying its bit difficult for us that live in a country where there is no prema partner to purchase from these specific prema partners especially when it is quite a bit more expensive for us compared to just purchasing from our different local re-sellers who might or most likely not be a prema partner.

 

Understood. Your frustration make sense. That sucks. Sometimes we all say things that we do not mean to come across a certain way, especially when we are frustrated. I know I sure do.

Talk to your reseller about becoming a Prema Partner Shop. Perhaps @Ionising_Radiation can do the same in his area. There is a possibility they might qualify, assuming they are interested. @Prema is appropriately selective about who he does business with, and not every Clevo shop is going to be a good fit. But, it might be safe to say that you do not have any Prema Partner Shops in your area only because none of the top notch vendors that fit his criteria have asked to be a Partner Shop. (I am assuming to some extent so I said "might be safe to say" that.) What some people may not understand is some vendors just want to slop stuff out the door the way it rolls off the assembly line, which can mean the vendor doesn't want to be special, distinguished and pursue excellence in everything they do. Excellence is not possible with stock notebook cancer firmware. The best they can hope to achieve is mediocrity.

The problem is at the vendor level and and pathetic stock firmware notebooks ship with from the factory, not @Prema. Clearly, he is the solution.

 

Let's see if Clevo's next generation of laptops impose less or more limits in the BIOS...

I know P870DM3 improved over P870DM a bit but we'll see how things go.

Did P870KM1 improve, stay the same, or make things worse than the P870DM3 BIOS?

 

Just because something was free once, does not create an entitlement forever...particularly when it was abused while being free. It was a gift when it was free...but is no longer available as a gift, nor is it for sale to the public. It is a bit awkward to criticize the donor of a gift when they decide to stop gifting.

If an enthusiast is chasing prices, then I question their level of enthusiasm...I would think they would be chasing information on how to get the most performance for their money, not just the lowest price. When you get the lowest price, you usually get what you pay for. When you chase quality and performance, it rarely comes at the lowest price.

We sell thousands all over the world to enthusiasts who understand the difference, and those who don't, won't know the difference once they get it.

We will be here to serve you whenever you are ready!

 

People forget the stealing - reverse engineering!! You can thanks people's dishonesty for most of the changes. People ****s in his own nest.

 

I have to agree. You guys have shipped me out machines twice with absolutely fair shipping prices and warranty programs in case s#it hits the fan. All is fair. Plus it's not like you price hike your machines with the Prema BIOS anyway. They're every bit as competitive with the goodies to boot.
Too many people gets scared dealing across borders. I see it even when I've sold my own systems in the marketplace here - they get snapped up because I don't exclude international shipping. It's just not that big of a deal.

 

It did get better in terms of menu options. Still not great, but moving the right direction. But, menu options only represent a portion of the issues with stock firmware. Menu otions don't help that much when behavior and performance sucks. Clevo introduced some extra nasty power limited throttle cancer with KM1 that @Prema had to open a can of whoop-ass on. Or, was it two cans of whoop-ass? Anyhow, they just need to hire @Prema, give him a nice salary and benefits, then make every Clevo sold function properly right out of the box. That would be ideal. I'm sure that Partner Shops could offer some extra "advanced" Prema magic of some kind... including vBIOS mods. They already offer more than most of their competitors on top of the Prema magic.

 

I live in Dubai and when I had 2 Clevo laptops, they were all from HIDevolution. They have a global warranty that covers shipping costs both ways so I wasn't concerned, and these Clevo machines in my experience never broke and I never needed anything other than keyboard replacements which were sent to me and shipped internationally for free. All I am saying, it's not that hard buying from a Prema Partner especially one that goes the extra mile, excellent thermal paste jobs, quality control, Prema BIOS. I'd never buy a Clevo laptop without the Prema BIOS even if I had to buy it from Mars. I've seen how crappy the stock BIOS is, how it throttles for no reason randomly. No thank you. Give meh teh Pr3m4 power at any cost

 

it improved in small things, at least now they allow you to undervolt or overvolt and do basic overclocking from the BIOS but nothing crazy and not as advanced as the Prema BIOS can. But the Prema EC Firmware works magic also by preventing throttling.

 

I agree, Prema would be worth whatever he asks from them. The problem is, I bet they've thought about that and then decided instead to shift that cost to system integrators and resellers, let them handle it.

 

If I were a betting man, I would bet at least one paycheck on that. If it were not true, I suspect it would have already happened. It's a lot cheaper to not care and let it be someone else's problem.

 

Also it's less liability to them since they can just ship out whatever works out of the box and then any risk is distributed along with cost.

 

This is my gripe with Clevo. They're content with 'near enough is good enough'.

 

I see it as more really aggressive cost management. They are going for bang for buck.

 

I see it as not caring enough to do it right...this includes the heat sinks as well as the BIOS.

 

Amen to that. I think you nailed it Brother Donald.

As long as the kiddos keep feeding the pig, we can expect more of the same.

 

THIS Heatsink is bang for bucks!! For the OEM!! How can a engineering team cooperate and all engineers being agree that a TWOPOD design is ok? TRIPOD is bad, but what with TWOPOD? I don't get it.

 

Clevo is actually not doing that well financially. Also kind of surprising that their net profit is only $10 million.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Clevo...ted-to-rebound-with-new-devices.241664.0.html

Among the mistakes they've made in my opinion is investing too much into thick, heavy, upgradeable gaming laptops for too long. Not a popular opinion with many on this forum I'm sure but these laptops are for niche enthusiasts. Profit margins and sales overall are better for well-built thin and light gaming laptops with premium options (a la Razer, Aorus). It seems like they are finally realizing that with new models like the PA71HS-G...

 

I would like Clevo to do better. They should also focus on design. At this point every manufacturer has the nearly the exact same components inside.

There are tonnes of people buying the xps 15 for its svelte formfactor fully knowing that they are paying a premium for its internals. 7700hq and 1050

The key differentiator and aspirational margin is in design.

I would like to see clevo ultrabooks, external gpu docks, svelte full voltage laptops with minimum bezels
and market their desktop cpu based laptops better.

 

Even so, they are the only ones offering those things...

Those design factors are just design pieces at the end of the day... No real difference, if I'd be going for a GTX 1060 laptop, I'll get the cheapest one possible and be done with it.

 

MSI has the 16L3 still, so they're not entirely out of that game.

 

Im guessing nobody has heard back from clevo in regards to....anything?

Fans on my clevo p15sm1b have started to produce the dreaded "high pitched metallic rubbing noise" again. This time, i didnt remove the fans from the casing at all. Im going to have to try to find replacement fans from somewhere now...the noise is driving me nuts. Imagine hearing a high pitched metallic noise when using your laptop. Constantly.

 

So for some time now I can feel that the keyboard for my P870DM-G sometimes locks up when I start typing too fast. Because of this, I had to slow down when using just this machine.

 

Tried to reseat connection cable?

 

Just wanted to bump this. Hope the team is working on a new chassis!

 

We have the new thinner chassis that released.

 

I actually love my np8153 in every way. It is the perfect laptop for my needs and checks all the boxes, except for the side exhaust for the CPU. it would be completely flawless in my eyes if all exhaust were in the rear.

 

It's that decision about having rear I/O for a neater desk or side venting....

 

I think the P870DM series has the perfect back side layout. Vents and then the USB, HDMI, POWER, I think it's good that way.

 

Definitely one of the better ones, though I wish more models had intakes on the top and bottom even with the added noise.

 

By top do you mean like where the speaker grills are on the P870DM?

 

Yeah, between the hinge and the keyboard, I've seen it on one or two models, and while in at least one case it's because there were no vents on the bottom the increased airflow of having both in a larger system would be awesome.

 

Are you guys able to push the info to Clevo that we want a anodized aluminum chassis similar to the M18x in quality? Also HDMI IN again like the X7200 had.

I'm sure we won't need HEDT sockets if mainstream will be getting 8-cores on Z290.

 

I doubt those two things are happening, chassis is a place where they can keep the price down, and I think if any video in happens in the near future, it would be via USB/Thunderbolt.

Shhh. You can't just go around talking like that here.

 

I have a feeling that a metallic chase is a horrible idea since #dents, #electromagnetic isolation, #sound properties #scratches #fixability #cost #weight #etc

About 8 cores, I have a feeling that the biggest of the issues would be cooling, that would require a much beefier cooling than we have now. I wouldn't mind a thicker and heavier laptop, but I wonder if it would mean some kind of danger for the chasis itself, the motherboard, and the hinges, since the wieght would always pull on the motherboard and all the other components, maybe wrap the heatsink under its own weight.

 

Done so many times during modding and tuning. The keyboard has been like this since I got it, but only became more of an issue when I start typing very fast or increasing my APM.

 

All those reasons are why I try to avoid metal chassis myself. And the fixability really hits home, I remember those earlier ASUS aluminum models where they were really hard to take apart, and you ran the risk of bending the case when opening them. If you did that it would never fit exactly right again no matter how much you worked on it. I know plastic makes people think cheap/low quality but the only actual advantages I'd give metal are that it's tougher to break the bezel near the hinges from years of opening it wrong, and it looks prettier.

As for high core count CPUs, I would bet the people who want them are not concerned with weight or bulk, as long as it's cooled well. The true desktop replacement fans are alive and well at least here.

 

Contact reseller and see if they can ship to you a replacement keyboard?

 

I've owned at least four different M18x laptops and never had any of those issues. My friend even dropped his M18x on concrete and it was still fine (only got some scratches, chassis was fine). Don't know if my P870DM3 would have survived the same situation with it's plastic chassis.

 

ha i am still super salty that despite what a lot of enthusiast wanted, we didnt get to have x299 HEDT in laptop. which imho is fine due to 8 cores coming in 1.5 yrs rather than another 10 yrs of 6cores mainstream milking from intel. i'd still love to have quad channel memory though but definitely benefit way more from 4 more cores than 2 more channels of ram based on consumer software available to us.

m18x and r2 was golden in those days, i was lucky enough to get into laptop space around that time to know real "quality" otherwise i'll prob be lazily following trend and going for bga junks right now.

 

@Meaker@Sager agree with above, wish they could do this for the next evolution of the p650. The space is already there just closed with the exhaust pointing left rather than rear!

 

The P870DM is a much larger chassis. Even then the heatsink is shaped around the rear ports, something the P650 does not have that much fin area to play with.

 

we need those gigantic heatsink like gt83vr but aimed for CPU as much as GPU. and vents around the back and the side for more surface area is the way to go.

 

The GT83 cooling system is inferior though....

 

If it was possible push +110w cpu heat through the heatsink on gt83 and I'm sure the Intel BGA would beg for mercy from MSI's firmware. Aka fully thermal shutdown, No throttling

The fans in the bigger Clevo chassis like P8xxKM can still be better optimized for more airflow and static pressure. This can compensate a bit if there ain't being changes in heatsink size.

 

if you look at how gt83vr's cpu heatsink is you'll realize it isnt that great.
first the two primary heatpipe that direct to back of two GPU exhaust fan, which can only be cooled after GPU being cooled first, THEN the extra overflowing heat is directed to the stacked heatpipes directed to 3rd fan.

had they at least make 4 heatpipes in total but not stacked 2 by 2 it would have been much better. but yeah that heatsink is barely enough for 4 cores, for 8 cores we will need at least 2 fans and radiator cooling it dedicated for CPU only, which has to be somewhat comparable to P570wm CPU heatsink or better, cause CFL 14nm runs hot at 5ghz.

 

Well, you regularly push 200 W through your GTX 980, which is BGA soldered onto your MXM board...

BGA is not the problem, poor firmware and thermal dissipation is.

 

Oh'well. Even if you can hold your unlocked i7 BGA under throttling temp and force needed voltage, the silicon don' clock very well But you have probably right. I'm sure yoo seing a Hell lot soldered trash running +4.6-4.8GHz nicely out there(stock voltage is more than enough). The key... Under Throttlig temp!!

 

whats a rather poor remark there sir. you could simply say CPU die is also soldered onto PCB, or usb port is soldered to motherboard. there are things that are okay being together, where as others aren't. tbh i would want chipset to be socketed but i think thats just too much to ask, forever upgrade cpu and chipset LOL. comes down to is cost, effort and performance.

assuming MOBO is $300, GPU is $800, CPU is $300:
replacing 1 mobo with CPU + GPU soldered on = simple effort, cost $1400
replacing CPU = simpler effort, cost $300
replacing GPU = simpler effort, cost $800
- no brainer here

this is just on effort and cost alone, not mentioning on performance which only adds cons to soldered BGA trash.

 

You have a valid point against the whole soldered business, but we are talking about performance, not replacability.

At any rate, I am fairly sure a P650HS board with a soldered-on GTX 1070 + 7820HK is cheaper than the P870KM board + GTX 1070 MXM + 7700K.

@XMG, @Donald@HIDevolution, could you confirm or deny this?