HD photos: My Nyx1712 (P170EM)

It's been a while now that I've been playing around with the laptop. So far so good. I've placed an order on the 16th of April 2012 at Myhtlogic, and the whole team were very very responsive and kept me in touch with the whole process of the laptop's build phase etc. The whole process took around 10~13 days and it was delivered. Below are the pictures I took of the laptop.





















the whole laptop fits inside the Slappa 18" Sleeve that I carry with me always along with a small backpack for my power adapter, mouse, and work materials. Since I'm mostly in the design/modeling/editing business I've also placed an order for an ODD bay HDD adapter. I have a Seagate Freeplay 1tb drive (10mm version) inside the ODD bay now and it's working very smooth, I had to modify the ODD bay adapter to fit the terabyte drive inside since the space in there is wee tight.

First impressions on the laptop is that it is very fast, the OCZ Nocti Msata really flies for me, windows 7 Ultimate boots in under 10 seconds from cold boot to desktop and the dual 7200rpm 500gb drives in raid0 does the job of my capture and render tasks fine. Overall I've got around 2.13tb of storage on the laptop and it stays cool to the touch.

next in my upgrade list is an ivy cpu (not in the near future) when the time comes. so far this 2860qm bleaches all of adobe's suite without breaking a sweat, I've downloaded the intel XTU tool but still learning how to keep that turbo at it's highest for the longest time possible.

The GTX675m is a really good card, I've choses to stick with it instead of an AMD for personal reasons and work requirements. The only real downside I have with it so far is the broken drivers, even the beta drivers don't deliver all the options this card has to offer. CUDA is seen as being installed in the nvidia panel but it's not showing up in my CUDA enabled apps, the GPU is always stated "not supported or drivers not compatible".

The keyboard is very crisp and typing on it is a real joy, though I'd wish the tab button would work like the rest of the keys without exercising a bit of force to get it to register, it's as if it had fallen asleep. The fingerprint reader I took out the drivers, as it's acting funny and I'm not able to register any finger strokes. It's looking funny too, as I've an HP laptop with a fingerprint reader and the sensors are different from this P170EM (golden plated in the middle) is that black thing in there a protection hood? I didn't dare scrape it with my nail but I can make out a small film of plastic on the edges making it look as if it could be peeled off. I'll take a macro shot of it when I have my camera around to show what I'm talking about.

On to the speakers, they sound nice, when you tweak them for 5.1 they sound awesome. When you crystalize them with the THX configurator they sound superb, best sounding laptop so far on my side of the woods, I've compared it with 5 laptops 2 Toshiba's (a satellite pro, and a Tecra) 1 HP 620, an IBM Thinkpad I forgot the model number, and an Asus G74sx.

The quicksync feaure of the intel chipsets make H264 encoding faster than realtime. I was able to render a 15minute video sequence in a mere minute and some seconds. I like the fact that I can use either quicksync or nvidia's CUDA for my projects.

3DS MAX 2011 really shines with the laptop, each task is very smooth. and realtime previews via active shade are very nice too.

Work stuff set aside, and onto gaming. I've only got a handful of games to test this thing out so far but the main on my list are:

CRYSIS 2 (complete with tesselation and DX11 upgrade) which I much say is buttery smooth with everything on Ultra in 1920x1080. I don't like antialiasing in my games and especialy since this laptop is native 1080p the pixels will blend in without jaggies anyway.

FARCRY 2 this game is actually one of my favorites not because of the graphics but because of the unique freedom of travel I have with it. Plays back smoother than a babies bottom maxed out at 1080p.

GRID This is the only game I have that has refused to run at all with the GTX675m and I don't know why, when I right click and select run with intel HD graphics the game boots and plays fine, thought the performance is so weak you're stuck with watching postcard pictures in an endless slideshow. with the GTX675m selected it would just spit an error and quit upon boot.

COD:MW This game is my favorite online game ever, it's the first modern warfare and the first to not make you relive WWII over and over again too. running at 1080p with everything set on high it's a feast for the eyes, though not very pretty like BF3 and MW3 it hold it's own nicely.

for the games I do not have fraps or any other form of fps measurement, I'll grab HD videos of games running on this with my camera so there should be 0 lag on the PC.

***UPDATE***
HD video of the keyboard in pitch dark

Youtube Video

***UPDATE 2***
Screen View Angles
more videos will be posted here soon!

***Update 3***
from a request by Tyranids here is a tutorial of how to fit a big HDD in the ODD bay, big like 12.5mm big
Alright Tyranids, here is the complete photo tutorial of my HDD in the ODD bay setup. I didn't get to the shaving part as it was already done before I just ripped everything back apart to take a photo tutorial for you as promised. Will get that up sometime though



Before any operation with the laptop, make sure you pull out the battery first. Anything done witht the battery in there is just pplain stupid, you'll risk more than you'll gain.


Remove the tab fixation screw that holds the DVD drive in place and put it in a safe place for later use.


Remove the fixation screw that holds the DVD in place, and gently use your thumb or pointer finger to slide it out of the laptop. There are two screws that holds the tab on the DVD drive you need to remove those two screw and assemble it on the ODD tray caddy later on.


ODD bay without the DVD drive, this is a good time to use cotton buds to clean out any eventual debris or dust before you move on to assembling the ODD tray caddy in there.


In this example I'll be using the HDD SSD Solutions ODD tray caddy that Mythlogic shipped with my laptop. You can use any universal tray caddy you lay your hands on as long as it's the SATA type ones.


the ODD tray caddy and a 9.5mm HDD.


Comparison between a 9.5mm and a 12.5mm drive. in this example we're comparing a Hitachi Deskstar (9.5mm) against a Seagate Freeplay (12.5mm)


Comparison between a 9.5mm and a 12.5mm drive. in this example we're comparing a Hitachi Deskstar (9.5mm) against a Seagate Freeplay (12.5mm)


This is the ODD tray caddy, notice how thick it is, it's rated 12.7mm on the packaging. We need to give it a diet for it to fit inside our ODD slot.


Remove the top cover of the ODD tray caddy, we wont need it anymore, just don't throw it away as you might need it later on for another laptop etc. That should shave off 3~4mm off the tray.


The ODD tray caddy and our original DVD drive, along with the 9.5mm (that we wont use) HDD.


Next up we need to remove the faceplate off the DVD drive, this faceplate will make the ODD tray caddy fit perfectly in the ODD bay. Slowly insert a straightened paper clip in the emergency eject hole and push with moderate force, care not to slip, that would suck. Use a plastic tool to gently pry the clips holding the faceplate in place, from left to right preferably as that makes it easier to take off.


DVD faceplate installation on the ODD tray caddy, be careful not to snap any of the plastic clips, since we need them to hold the faceplate in place.


Seat the drive in place and connect it to the SATA connectors, notice how it is sitting flush with the ODD tray caddy, as we've already removed the top cover (of the tray not the drive)


Screw the HDD in place, don't over tighten them as these small screws can break very easily.


Another view of the drive in place.


This is the tab fixation screw from the DVD drive, Once the screws are in we're ready to put everything back together.


Start out by sliding the drive halfway into the slot, then inspect the pathway to prevent the naked ODD tray caddy from ripping any ribbons or cables inside the laptop. Once everything is clear plush it gently all the way in and align the connectors so they snap in place.


with everything aligned and going smoothly you should have no problems with the modified caddy.


Once everything is aligned and put tgether don't forget to screw the tab in place, this will prevent your drive from ejecting out the bay with you carry it around.


This is how everythign should look when it's all put in place. notice the spare top cover. Put it in a safe place so you can use it again if ever needed.


Check the final assembly and make sure there are no bulging or humps, if there is you need to take everything back apart and make adjustments.


There we're all finished, the laptop is back in one piece (thank heavens) time to test her up.


The bios screen posting the Drive mission accomplished yes!

***Update 4***
New video up benchmarking the new CS6 trial on the Nyx1712
After Effects CS6 render performance

excuse my accent, English isn't my native tongue.

***Update 5***
As promised to Quickstrike2 here are the size comparisons of the Nyx1712/P170EM against a 15" Acer 5732Z, my does that Acer look small what do you think Quickstrike2 you up for a 17" inch beast?












***Update 6***

Now here are some benchmark results done in Cinebench R11.5 I've used MSI afterburner for checking the temps of the GPU and Intel XTU for the temps of the CPU. it's confirmed by me, the temps on this laptop are stellar. The maximum highest on the GPU was 63C I've the photo as proof also the maximum temps I got off the CPU was also around that figure 60~63C.

The minimum Temp stated as 0C on the MSI monitor is my GPU reverting to emergency shutdown, since I pushed the clock a over the 750Mhz line on the core and the shader over 1500Mhz, I just eased off a little and everything was good to go


Rendering done using the "CPU Multicore" profile, it manages to get 4th place beating out the desktop i7-960 and the i7-860 CPU. Leading the pack is the Xeon W5590 Octo core.


Rendering done using the "OpenGL mode" Profile. The i7-2860QM & GTX675m manages 2nd place, beating out the Xeon W5590 & Quadro FX5800, Xeon X5570 & Radeon HD 4870/ i7-860 & Radeon HD 4850, and the i7-960 GTX280M. Leading the pack is the AMD Opteron 2435 & FirePro V8750.


Rendering done using the "SingleCore mode" Profile. The i7-2860QM cpu placed first, meaning it's single core management is the best amongst the competing CPUs, 2nd was the Xeon W5590 followed by the i7-860, then the X5570, followed by the i7-960, and lastly the Opteron 2435.

I hope these figures give those wanting to know how good the 2nd Generation i7 sandy bridge processors are. I really can't wait for someone to test the Ivy bridge CPUs as I'm sure and certain it will be much better than the 2nd Gen's scores .

Cheers everyone

PS: to get a better view of the image please right click on any image and select "view image" if you are in Firefox

***Update #7*** REVIEW AND AIDA BENCH of the memory and processor
Hey everyone, I've now had the laptop for 3 months and thought why not write a small review of my impressions so far.
This review is for those who are still wondering or are looking into buying the P170EM and would like to have the say of someone who's had physical hands on with the machine. I've used AIDA x64 extreme Edition to benchmark the laptop I have, you can see the specs in my signature.

My adventure began when I was looking to replace my aging Core 2 Quad desktop PC with a portable version. I've looked high and low for a laptop that would be able to stay with me through my day and provide me with the necessary tools and muscle power to finish my drafts and deadlines for my clients. One of the first machines that came into my mind was a Dell Precision series notebook but as my office has had enough Dell material I didn't want to go through the headaches of dealing with SH (service hotline) things are hard when you live out of the safe zone. Next on the list was Falcon Northwest and their DTR line of notebooks, again the price was enough to give me a heart attack.

Then I stumbled upon this forum and the Sager/Clevo brand of notebooks, I read the posts, I looked at the sites, and read the reviews. I couldn't believe it at first that such a notebook exists. Not only would the specs be up to me to decide but also the price was in the line of my budget.

I went with Mythlogic as my laptop builder and never looked back, I had to jump a few hurdles to get the laptop here in Madagascar, like find someone who would carry it for me, convert my currency to US $, etc etc, but I was happy I made the move, and my what a feast for the eyes indeed when it came.

So without further ado here are the AIDA benchmarks I have done, mainly on the memory and the processor.
*** if you are using firefox, right click the images and select "view image" to view them in full resolution***

AIDA CPU AES


AIDA CPU Julia


AIDA CPU Mandel


AIDA CPU PhotoWorxx


AIDA CPU Queen


AIDA CPU Sin Julia


AIDA CPU VP8


AIDA CPU Zlib


AIDA Memory Copy


AIDA Memory latency


AIDA Memory read


AIDA Memory write


AIDA Memory info

The charts pretty much speak for themselves, one of the things to note is that the gap between desktop and laptop has completely narrowed down to a hairline if not completely disappeared. Using the laptop with an external monitor along with keyboard and mouse will get you thinking your on a desktop and not a laptop at all.

The 2860QM processor is pretty amazing for a mobile CPU, never had it dropped blow the 3.3Ghz line on all 4 cores when working, the max turbo I've hit with it is 3.5Ghz 4 cores. Only when all my windows are closed down that I had seen it at it's stock 2.5Ghz speed. The fans aren't as loud as they had said them to be, though you will hear it go up once in a while. When concentrated with work I do not hear a thing from the laptop. Nearly all things I've done on my desktop before seems to be accelerated 10 fold on this laptop, it really show how far the mobile platforms have evolved.
Graphics wise, I went with the GTX675m as at the time of buying the laptop that was the GFX available to me and also I wasn't very keen of buying an AMD graphics card due to my work platform that tend to favor nvidia to AMD. Though I never had problems with AMD or their line of GFX cards, I do have to admit that I feel sad to head the various reports of owners about the Enduro and such.
Currently so far, as I have stated in other threads of this forum, the GTX675m is very capable. No noticeable slow downs nor has it froze on me yet. It will please anyone looking to game or finish some work, tough, it may not be as fast as that 7970 or newer 680m, it doesn't mean it's a slow card. Far from that, I personally think it could hold out for another two years or so before really showing it's wrinkles, games above the 1080p res will slow down to about ~14fps, while if you stay within the margin of 1080p you can almost always hit 30+ fps which is more than adequate for playing. Again 7970 and 680 will propel you beyond the 60line but those are different beasts.

the keyboard is smooth and crisp, each keystroke give you a distinct "stchick" sound and it floors, the only drawback I had with the keyboard was my tab key with had a lazy feel to it, after prying it open I found out there was a piece of clear plastic like material reminiscent to those plastic wraps you get from the food store. Once I took that out it was good. The backlit keyboard is wonderful to look at, my primary favorite colours to work with at night are purple, cyan, yellow, the ones that stick out in the daylight are cyan and yellow.

Next up comes the sound, ah yes it does suck at first you think it's an AM radio playback. But don't shy away or chicken out upon hearing that, I didn't mention yet that the nifty little THX tool will change it to crisp and clear listening. upon first usage of the laptop I didn't really think the THX would make much difference to the sound. The feeling you get from it is that the stereo separation is very narrow, meaning you tend to think it's in the middle of you head. The external speaker option will make the separation wider, moving the sound away from the laptop and more into the room. I had found that using a combination of 5.1 settings in windows speaker settings AND using THX's external speaker setup with Subwoofer crossover frequency set to 76Hz will give the most sound volume and texture.

The screen of the laptop is very very good, so good in fact it puts most dubbed "professional" LED screens to shame. The ones I got were the stock Chi Mei Glare Type ones but first glace of the lapop, without even turning it on I had known it was going to be good. Usually as a general rule of thumb when it comes to buying LCD screens it's better to buy the ones that have the most amount of black WHEN not turned on, which basically means the darker the screen the better. This is because the fluid used inside them varies from maker to maker. The more black you see on a powerless screen means the more the screen is able to cancel out the backlighting helping you have more contrast and more depth to the picture. The viewing angles are also very very good, it as advertised 178, the color shift is not noticeable at all and you don't get that nasty washed out or solarized image effect when looking from an angle.

Battery life of the laptop depends heavily on the usage you do to it. I for one do not use it on battery, I prefer the mains most of the time, but I can say that in balanced mode the batteries can hold out a good 4+hours of office use. I benched it while playing back video files and it toped the 3h38minutes line before asking me to input a different power source, phenomenal if you ask me for the size of it. nVidia's Optimus really shines, as I was able to work on 3DS max most of the time I go that 4+ hours of office use, the cpu and gfx cards will half if not fourth their speeds, but this is a tradeoff you will have to live with as it is dangerous to push them full power on batteries.

Lugging around the laptop wasn't as big of a chore as I had imagined, it's hefty but it feels solid. the build quality of the plastics and aluminum are stellar. it wont warp not breath in your hands, even if you excurse some force into it. God forbid those who are willing to drop it though, I haven't and wont try it for the sake of my shy of 3grands budget I slammed into it. The black color shines professionalism and it doesn't hurt your eyes with glare, it silent enough to live in and out of the office going by without raising suspicions like an alienware, or a G series Asus notebook.

Lastly comes the trackpad and the fingerprint reader followed by the camera. Bisoncap, a small tool that came with the laptop lets you test the camera by taking video recordings live. the camera is very sharp and bisoncap picked it up as a FHD cam, letting you snap 1920x1080 videos at full frames without dropouts. If you set the environment right you get instantaneous video no lag, in poorly lit areas the camera still give clean pictures but you get small lag from the cmos needing to capture enough light data to process the image.
The track pad is very smooth, the right side wont let you do much navigating albeit because it has the scroll function on it. Multi finger gestures are supported and in apps like google picasa it will let you zoom slide pan and pinch rotate the image anyway you like.The pad buttons are a little stiff for my liking and they make a pop noise when you click them, a bit annoying if you do a lot of clicking, especially in a library.
The fingerprint reader I did not use at all, though if you do notice a persistent "bad quality" pop up message, it isn't the fault of the biometric reader but instead the drivers, uninstall them and use win7's biometric drivers and inbuilt app instead. Not only will it let you registers your swipes faster but it will not nag you every few minutes. My guess on this biometric sensor is that it's picking up the random lights ways in between your finger while you are using the laptop and mistaking those for swipes, it's sensitive yes, but annoying.

Well that's my review of this laptop for those interested for the price I nabbed it, I did not regret a thing. I'd highly recommend a 170EM to anyone who is looking to buy a good sturdy laptop for everyday use.

 

+1 rep and that is one sexy laptop

 

Saw this on Myth's Facebook page last week - had no idea it was you! Congrats. Nice pics. Can you post anything that shows the size of the laptop to scale - i.e. compared to a standard DVD case or something like that?

 

sure! I'll post it side by side with two 15" laptops tomorrow so everyone gets the feel of the size of this thing.

I forgot to mention all of the plastics on the laptop feel like they are alpax and not ABS plastic they fell, smell, sound like aluminum alloy and is cool to the touch I love it.

 

HD pictures please!! This is pure eye candy love it! well done mate

 

will upload the full 21megapixel versions tomorrow might also do a video review if I have the time.

 

Epic, thanks. I had no idea Mythlogic branded their laptops, it looks really cool. However, I think the keyboard is still the best eye candy, if/when you do a video review make sure to turn out the lights and spend a few minutes fooling around with it
Is your mSATA configured for storage or SRT?
I also have 2x500GB drives, if you could do some benches on those that would be appreciated. I'm specifically interested in sustained write as that's all that matters for video/gameplay capture.

 

Those are some great pics, thanks a lot. Glad to hear you're happy with the 675m, minus the driver issues. If this 7970m stuff doesn't work out, I'm jumping back to the 675m and will upgrade later once the 680m (or whatever) is out.

 

What a sexy beast! Maybe a dumb question but, how did you tweak the sound to make them better?

 

Nice camera, nice pics, very nice screen.

 

Nice pics and a nice machine. I've always thought that the 17" versions looked the best. I wish they come to use that same finish on the 15" machines too.

 

Noooooo! Don't do it!


/Support

 

The only branding they did was the name on the back of the laptop's LED screen, the rest in the OS were done by me.

I'm still in search of more storage on this laptop, but 5400rpm 1tb drives are too slow for me so I'm looking for a 1tb 2.5 9.5mm drive if they exist to replace the 2x500gb ones in the drive bays. intel's SSD solution is still way too expensive for me, aint no way I'm sinking a grand on a terabyte SSD drive

 

Why do you care about speed on a storage drive? I have a 5400rpm 1tb from samsung(bought it the day they came out) and it has served me well in the cdrom tray.

 

Fraps?
10char

 

Unfortunately, I won't have a choice if the 7970m's aren't delivered in time to have my build completed by 06/18. I can always upgrade later. Thanks for lookin out though.


Those Mythlogic backgrounds look great. OP, you should hook us up!

 

He posted them in the P170EM owners' thread. You're right, though, they do look great!

 

Frapsing to a storage drive make it not a storage drive. Still fraps requires nothing more than 40mb/s when recording at 1080 with sound and this drive will do that even at the slowest part of the platter.

edit: just realized my picture was read speeds, can't find the write speed test anymore but it does 40mb/s please believe me!

 

Thanks bro! I've got the 150EM on order, so I haven't been lurking that one.

Thanks OP!

 

I do multi capture and renderings on these drives, if they don't work fast enough I lose time it's a client honour thing, so the fastest the better. the one in the ODD bay is 7200rpm but the ones inside the HDD bays can't be over 9.5mm or else they wont fit. So far the only 1tb drives that are in the 9.5mm height limit are 5400rpm drives

I've searched newegg all over for a 9.5mm 1tb 7200rpm drive but no cigar.

here you go I'm making more for later but I'm a little tied up so did get much done, that video review is on hold for the moment till I get my job done for the weekend.

 

Hey

So when you fire up the CS Suite it just doesn't show the 675m as a mercury device?

You may have to manually add the card to the list of supported. What version of CS are you rocking?

 

Love that design on the lid. It goes nicely with the radially brushed finish. It actually looks sexy without going over the top! *cough* Alienware *cough*

 

right now I'm using a trial version of CS6, but my main work suite is the CS5 one here is a snapshot of the CS6's options:


After Effects doesn't pick up the CUDA at all and the GPU is greyed out


Photoshop on the other hand picks it up just fine

ho would I go about editing manually to enable support for the card?

Hell Yea thanks Myth! I did a google search on the CUDA support hack and got a site having a cuda.exe/cuda.bat file that did it for me automatically here it is for anyone else wanting to make the change.

CUDA HACK

 

Glad we could be of assistence

Also can you let us know what kind of performance you get with Premier etc? We are looking for on the ground benchmarks of CS type stuff

 

Well, you could always go 3x750GB... I'm not sure how useable external storage is for you, but this looks like it could be useful... usb3 external enclosure 2.5inch 2xSATAIII hot-swappable with RAID switch

Now that you mention it, newegg doesn't even have any 12.7mm 7200 1tb drives...

 

yeah I know, the fastest you'll get is a 5400rpm and that's only 200 higher than the lowest in their offer
I looked for:
- Seagate Constellation.2 (ST91000640NS) 1 TB Hard Drive
- Dell (Y035J) 1 TB SATA Hard Drive
- Western Digital Caviar Black WDBAAZ0010HNC-NRSN 1 TB SATA II Hard Drive
- Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000.C 1 TB SATA II Hard Drive

but 0 results

 

That is exactly what I am doing, hello christmas present

 

Congrats, whats on your desktop? you dont have taskbar?

 

I noticed the picture you shared for your logon background was bigger then the 245k limit I've read that is allowed. How do you jump that hurdle? Thanks!

 

Why not use 2x750GB hybrid SSD/HDD 7.2k drives?

 

Those are very nice drives, but the problem lies in disk space, you see, one video edit job takes around 246gigs of space off the drives, and I've got three to four of those in one go.
For the house it's no big deal as I've a gigabit network and a network drive hooked up so I pull and push all the files in the network. The main problem is I'm not home most of the time as I edit in the field and sometimes over at the clients office.

I am aware of the 256k limit. This might be due because I had my jpg saved with the progressive flag enabled, it's still 750k+ but it works without any trouble on my PC. For anyone interested I found a tutorial on changing the background logon HERE hope that helps

 

Right - but in the meantime you have 2x500GB drives. So it's definitely an upgrade. I guess 2x1TB is even better - but if you want capacity/performance it seems that the 750GB SSD/HDD hybrids are the best way to go for you, today.

 

yea I've got my sight on those. the ODD Bay drive I'll probably pop in a 2tb one as that bay can take a 12.5mm one (I've tried) you just need to be creative and daring at modding the drive body and universal tray before popping it in. you got to love Dremels (devilish grin on face)

 

Yikes...Dremels? I have a 12.5mm drive in the ODD bay of my W860CU and didn't need to modify anything at all. I would think it'd be the same on the P170EM, no? I hope so, because that's my plan when I get mine.

 

physically a 12.5mm drive would fit in the ODD bay but with a caddy it's a tight fit to say the least, and yes dremels nothing damaging really I just shave .3mm off the shims and it fits. Not all 12.5mm drives are the same so you might not need a dremel.
I don't modify the laptop though only the drive and caddy.

 

I've updated the first post with a link to my youtube video showing off the keyboard light cycle in the dark. It's here also for those who don't want to rewind all the way to the beginning of this thread.

HD Video of keyboard

***UPDATE 2***
HD Screen View Angles test
will post more soon

 

Great stuff zombie boy

 

Thanks, tomorrow maybe I'll have time to record the CPU speed while compiling videos off after effects, and do a gameplay of mw3 recorded on cam, no Fraps record since I want to record the PC playing a game without other processes running in the background.

 

I love the video of the keyboard, it looks great. Thanks for posting (and congrats on the nice machine)!

Maybe my eyes are playing tricks on me, but did you theme the windows environment? Mind sharing?

 

Thanks, and yes I themed my windows environment, will probably compile the theme in one huge pack and upload it soon for everyone.

 

That would be hugely appreciated, thanks!

 

No matter what I do I can't see to get that to work!

 

Looks great, mate! Congratulations on your new beast!!

 

If it's not too much trouble, would you mind uploading a picture of this modified drive/caddy? I myself am looking to jam as much storage into the ODD as I can fit, so any help here would be greatly appreciated. I actually googled "hard drive caddy 12.5 mm" and was directed back here again ;p.

If you'd rather not tear apart your new machine (perfectly understandable), maybe a detailed written explanation of how you did it? I don't mean to take this thread too far off topic, but I think this knowledge could help lots of people out.

 

Thanks mate benchmarked just finished benchmarking her on cinebench R11.5 Since I'm in the audio/visual editing and modeling industry I favor these type of benchmarks over game based one, but that doesn't mean I wont benchmark it on vantage or mark '11. Will update the first post as soon as these pics upload

Sure thing mate! you should know though that not all caddies are the same, some have a thicker base-plate than others, so your mileage may vary. I'll tear her up right now for you and snap pictures of it.

Alright Tyranids, here is the complete photo tutorial of my HDD in the ODD bay setup. I didn't get to the shaving part as it was already done before I just ripped everything back apart to take a photo tutorial for you as promised. Will get that up sometime though



Before any operation with the laptop, make sure you pull out the battery first. Anything done witht the battery in there is just pplain stupid, you'll risk more than you'll gain.


Remove the tab fixation screw that holds the DVD drive in place and put it in a safe place for later use.


Remove the fixation screw that holds the DVD in place, and gently use your thumb or pointer finger to slide it out of the laptop. There are two screws that holds the tab on the DVD drive you need to remove those two screw and assemble it on the ODD tray caddy later on.


ODD bay without the DVD drive, this is a good time to use cotton buds to clean out any eventual debris or dust before you move on to assembling the ODD tray caddy in there.


In this example I'll be using the HDD SSD Solutions ODD tray caddy that Mythlogic shipped with my laptop. You can use any universal tray caddy you lay your hands on as long as it's the SATA type ones.


the ODD tray caddy and a 9.5mm HDD.


Comparison between a 9.5mm and a 12.5mm drive. in this example we're comparing a Hitachi Deskstar (9.5mm) against a Seagate Freeplay (12.5mm)


Comparison between a 9.5mm and a 12.5mm drive. in this example we're comparing a Hitachi Deskstar (9.5mm) against a Seagate Freeplay (12.5mm)


This is the ODD tray caddy, notice how thick it is, it's rated 12.7mm on the packaging. We need to give it a diet for it to fit inside our ODD slot.


Remove the top cover of the ODD tray caddy, we wont need it anymore, just don't throw it away as you might need it later on for another laptop etc. That should shave off 3~4mm off the tray.


The ODD tray caddy and our original DVD drive, along with the 9.5mm (that we wont use) HDD.


Next up we need to remove the faceplate off the DVD drive, this faceplate will make the ODD tray caddy fit perfectly in the ODD bay. Slowly insert a straightened paper clip in the emergency eject hole and push with moderate force, care not to slip, that would suck. Use a plastic tool to gently pry the clips holding the faceplate in place, from left to right preferably as that makes it easier to take off.


DVD faceplate installation on the ODD tray caddy, be careful not to snap any of the plastic clips, since we need them to hold the faceplate in place.


Seat the drive in place and connect it to the SATA connectors, notice how it is sitting flush with the ODD tray caddy, as we've already removed the top cover (of the tray not the drive)


Screw the HDD in place, don't over tighten them as these small screws can break very easily.


Another view of the drive in place.


This is the tab fixation screw from the DVD drive, Once the screws are in we're ready to put everything back together.


Start out by sliding the drive halfway into the slot, then inspect the pathway to prevent the naked ODD tray caddy from ripping any ribbons or cables inside the laptop. Once everything is clear plush it gently all the way in and align the connectors so they snap in place.


with everything aligned and going smoothly you should have no problems with the modified caddy.


Once everything is aligned and put tgether don't forget to screw the tab in place, this will prevent your drive from ejecting out the bay with you carry it around.


This is how everythign should look when it's all put in place. notice the spare top cover. Put it in a safe place so you can use it again if ever needed.


Check the final assembly and make sure there are no bulging or humps, if there is you need to take everything back apart and make adjustments.


There we're all finished, the laptop is back in one piece (thank heavens) time to test her up.


The bios screen posting the Drive mission accomplished yes!

I hope that helps you out mate . Now I'm back to sharing the petition note to my friends via facebook and twitter, we NEED that bios update. everyone else that hasn't signed the petition please do so, don'tdo it for me or for yourselves, do it for the good of mankind and to the community. The more we get the more our chances to get Clevo off their butts and provide us with wither the source or the bios itself.

 

Thank you tremendously, +rep for sure. Your pictures and guide were very helpful. I might even bookmark this page for future use lol. Thanks again!

and I've already both voted in the poll and signed the online petition

 

You're welcome and thank you very much for voting and signing the petition too

New video up benchmarking the new CS6 trial on the Nyx1712
After Effects CS6 render performance

excuse my accent, English isn't my native tongue.

 

Nice video, thanks for the share. Was that rendered out on the CPU or was that using Mercury to do the rendering? (GPU)

 

it was done on the CPU. The Mercury engine hasn't been used, I'll redo one with the mercury engine soon.

 

Great work mate. Appreciate the commentary too, accent or not, you clearly have a very good vocabulary seems like you enjoy the machine