Interested in something from the Clevo line. But I can't figure out which model this is?

I'm looking for a DTR in Japan. I'm interested in Clevo, and I think I've found some okay resellers. The thing is, I can't seem to figure out which chassis they are using so I can search for other reviews online.

I've attached some pictures below.

It actually looks like a Clevo P170SM but with the thumbreader removed and the microphone dot moved up next to the camera. I would actually prefer the layout in the pictures above, though, so if this is a real model and not an outdated mockup, that would be awesome. But I'd also like to see reviews of this chassis as well in case it has, I don't know, maybe a worse cooling set up or other things to be concerned about?

Also, I actually really hate the Japanese keyboard layout. It's fine for WASD and gaming, but they add all these buttons next to the enter key which makes it a pain in the neck to type quotation marks or anything like that. I know, it's kind of anal to pick on this, but where would I start if I wanted to replace the keyboard with the English layout? The actual process looks simple enough, but would the only suppliers be in the US? Are there any closer to my neck of the woods?

 

Looks like a slight revision on the NP8275/170sm yes.

It's a single card machine right?

You could get a UK keyboard from europe perhaps.

 

Yup, single card 780M. These Clevo resellers set a performance line (e.g. High Spec, Premium Spec) based on the GPU installed. It also determines the chassis being used. So, the P170SM is used with a 780M single-slot solution, while the P370SM is used for 2x780M in SLI.

Anyway, I did a mock run on customizing the laptop to my specs. Would anyone be able to comment on how reasonable the prices are? Both final and for the customizations? Specs are as follows:

Base unit: $2150
i4800MQ (from 4700, +$200)
GTX 780M
16GB DDR3L-1600, 8GBx2 (from 8GB, +$180)
256GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD (from unspecified 120GB SSD, +$140)
750GB SATA HDD (actually don't need this, but due to a campaign, it's cheaper to get an SSD+HDD combo)
Unspecified Wireless (not Killer)
Matte Screen (no gamut specified)

Arctic Silver 5 on CPU only, +$15

Total: $2685


It seems ridiculous to me because I mocked up the same on XoticPC and I got $2444 (switching to the basic matte screen there). And it's it's not even a perfect apples-to-apples comparison because Xotic can do thermal paste on the GPU as well, and I threw in the copper cooling upgrade.

Has anyone else paid roughly $2700 for a Clevo with the specs above?

I'm going to see if I can wait a bit because the two Clevo resellers I found seem to be playing some kind of discount game where they alternate with each other on discounts offered.

 

We do normally see prices outside of the US a bit higher. It may be they've already paid some import taxes etc on it that they have added to the configuration price.

 

That and it depends on sales tax too. The US system is quite unique, in most countries they collect sales tax at the point of sale regardless of where in the country you order from.

 

Yeah, tariffs are definitely going to explain some of it. And sales tax as well, as Meaker mentioned.

Still though! I feel like I'm being gypped somehow. The Sager model I was trying to compare to also has some spec differences. It has a cheaper base price, but already starts out with 16GB of RAM, whereas I have to eat $180 to bring my specs up to par.

Damn, I really feel like I might be setting myself up for failure here. It's already a huge chunk of change, but I can't even specify the keyboard. They only sell machines here with Japanese keyboards, which, fine, "when in Rome", but they add all these extra keys. So the space bar becomes half the size. I'm also not fluent in Japanese, so I know if I do need to take advantage of the warranty, or even fire up like an RMA or something, I'm going to have one heck of a time. Damnit!

Maybe I should just hop over to Taiwan and get a machine from the source. Haha.


Add: Meaker, I just noticed your avatar hahaha! Isn't that an Amarr frigate? Do you play? I'm actually trying to get a DTR with EVE in mind.

 

Oh the malediction? Yeah I have interceptors V training as we speak Can't wait for the patch for non focussed interdiction immunity and the light missile bonus for the malediction >

That's not even mentioning the new warp acceleration mechanics.

Might have to do some 0.0 diving with a few friends to try and spot some juicy targets.

Just watch your warranty coverage on getting it abroad, if that's not an issue then if you can pick it up then you could save some money.

 

One other thing, it's $630 to extend the warranty to 3 years. Worth it?

 

Warranty options are always a hard subject to advise on. If you have something big go bad like the video card then yes it would be worth it, or a few smaller problems that add up. But if you have no problems or smaller ones you're comfortable changing yourself like RAM then it may not be worth it.

The best thing is to ask yourself how important warranty coverage is to you and how comfortable you are replacing parts yourself after the standard warranty is. I would assume the computer will come with 1yr by default so is the extra 2yrs worth it to you for that price?

 

I'm definitely comfortable doing a lot of that stuff myself. It's getting the individual parts to that might be a problem. I can't gauge how likely it is I will need the extended because I haven't owned a Clevo before or a gaming laptop for that matter, so I'm not sure how reliable they are or not. I have had 2 other laptops/notebooks though and my experience with them sit at opposite ends of the spectrum. One is a Gateway that is still going strong after 6 years. The other is an Asus eee that had the worst thermal tolerance and is basically a brick.

 

Clevo/Sager are suppose to be solid built machines, a few horror stories out there, but EVERY manufacturer has those. There's not one company with a squeaky clean record, it's how they handle an issue like that when it comes up that sets companies apart.

I wouldn't give you $50 for a brand new Asus these days, they remind me of the HP's from early 2000's, full of bloatware, horrible q/c and non existent C.S.

 

Gaming computers dont have any higher failure rate then "regular" computers. We do sell both and percentage wise for repairs vs total sold I would say they are the same. When it comes to failures for computers its the individual parts that goes bad. The RAM, HDD/SSD, CPU etc are what causes the issues and they can last you years or have issues quick. The safe play is to get the extended warranty then you know you'll be covered.

 

I suspect the quality to generally be higher to be honest that the throw away lower end models.

 

$630 is a lot of money for extending the warranty out that far, how long is the stock warranty and are there other time period options?

 

Actually, I misread the description for that. It's 10% of the final unit price for the extended warranty.
Stock warranty is 1 year, and the extended adds 2 years on that. No other time options.

For the specs I outlined on the previous page, it's going to be more like $270 for the extended warranty.

So it's a lot better than the $630 I mistook it for, but I'd rather put that towards two year-long EVE subs, y'know what I'm saying?
But seriously, I see that Xotic and PowerNotebooks have fixed-fee extended warranty which makes sense to me? A scaling warranty leaves makes me feel even more like I'm getting ripped off. It's like they're saying "the more expensive of a machine you buy, the more likely more things will go bad?"

The way the site auto-calculates the 10% is dumb too. One of the options you can select is a laptop cooling pad to ship together with the laptop which is nice and convenient. But the extended warranty includes the price of the cooling pad when calculating the 10%.

I might gamble and stick with the 1 year stock warranty in this case. I lean towards a 3-4 year cycle upgrade anyway, so if she can stay together for 3-4, I'll be in good shape. Anyway, there's a 40,000 yen weekend discount on one of the sites right now, actually let me link the page:

GeForce GTX 780M“‹Úƒm[ƒgƒpƒ\ƒRƒ“‚Ì‚±‚Æ‚È‚çƒpƒ\ƒRƒ“H–[’Ê”Ì

So I may put in the order tomorrow. We'll see (I've been monitoring the prices for the past two weeks, and it seems like they bring out increases discounts--perhaps because we're approaching holiday season again). I've ironed out the specs I want except for the processor. I'm still hemming and hawing between the 4700MQ or the 4800MQ. A few sites saying 4800MQ is worth ~$100 as an upgrade, but it's around $200 for me. So not sure if it's still worth it.

 

Well the 4800MQ overclocks much better since it can add 400mhz instead of 200mhz to the frequency which extends the gap between the two. $270 for an extra 2 years is not bad.

 

Ah well, I skipped on the extended warranty. I'm gonna gamble a bit and hope any critical failures happen in the first year. I put in the order last night. Everyone keep your fingers crossed for me.

 

Congrats on placing the order, the hardest part is pulling the trigger, the second hardest part is waiting . Let us know what you think when you get it and /figerscrossed.

 

Dangerously for me it's the waiting I hate and pulling the trigger becomes the easy part. ^-^

Good luck with your system.

 

She's here! Heavier than I thought! It came with Windows 8 Japanese installed. I was able to get the display language to change to English, but some crap was still in Japanese. Decided to strip it out and load Windows 7 Pro on there.

Is there anything else on the warm-up check list? I might go out later today or maybe tomorrow to get the paste since I didn't bother getting the reseller to repaste anything. But software-wise? BIOS update? Should I mess around with that at all?
Also, because I started with a fresh install of Windows 7, I don't think I have the utility to control the keyboard lighting. It seems to be defaulting to some garish rainbow setting which I'd like to change!

 

Bios is not necessary, make sure you have the latest chipset and VGA drivers, other than that you are good to go really.

 

+1 on the wait.

I'm ordering my XMG P723 (Clevo P370SM) Monday morning and will have to wait till Thursday/Friday to receive it, as I'm paying £45 for a quick build it basically guarantees that it will be sent out from Germany by Wednesday.

Wish me luck on the waiting stage.

 

I rushed mine too lol, but it has been a lot of fun, I hope you get the same enjoyment out of yours, lots of possible tweaks

 

Good to know!

I was about to order it last night, but at the checkout I did my own calculations (IE.. base price + components cost) and it seems that there is a discrepancy of £57. So there seems to be a sizeable difference between what their total excluding tax and my total excluding tax. No idea how that has happened as there is nothing that shows any other charges applied.

I emailed the MYsn sales support guys this morning, and waiting for their reply now. Kinda bummed though since I wanted to have ordered it already.

 

Did you guys get your machines yet? I'm really happy with mine! Been playing EVE on it Meaker! I was a little worried about the temps though. CPU seemed fine. I forget what the peaks were but the CPU average temps were between 50 to 60 on load I think. GPU peaked at 85 celsius though. Average was between 50-60. I've only tested with X-COM and with EVE, but alt-tabbing two clients--whiiiiich shouldn't tax the GPU twice as much since the minimized window isn't rendered, but just putting it out there.

Anyway, I repasted the CPU and GPU today. I used GELID GC-Extreme, which, if anyone else decides to use it, I recommend warming it up or something before hand (stick in a ziploc and then submerge in warm water maybe?) This stuff was really viscous. I probably wasted half the tube reapplying, no exaggeration. Still, glad I did it because they used some kind of thermal-pad looking things for both. Not cool.

When I opened her up I was happy to find that she had the one-piece heatsink for the GPU though. Wasn't sure if I had the updated 170 with the one-piece. Also, I peeked at the memory DIMMS. They gave me Kingston! So I'm glad I didn't pay to "pick the brand of memory" because Kingston is alright with me!

 

Those original temps were fine so no need to worry

 

Those temps are fine mate, I got my P370SM on Friday and been thrashing it all weekend with Metro 2033 and Crysis. Got CPU temps around 40-60C and GPU maxed out at 85C on Metro 2033, but saying that Metro is a badly coded game anyways.

 

I just went though my heatsinks and replaced all the pads with exactly the right heights to sit nicely and reduced my temperatures a little, takes some time and patience but it can be done.

 

Ah nice! Which model do you have Meaker?

I'm wondering if I should do the same, although my temps aren't really causing an issue. CPU = 40-60C, GPU = 37-85C