My 8 year old Sager still rocks! Toughest laptop i know so far!

Hi to all, i just wanna share my gratitude for owning a sager, a Sept 2009 sager np8662. In all honesty i never thought it would last this long. I bought it online 2012 here in the Philippines, and after a few months started my heavy modding. This thread was inspired by another poster who's currently reviving a similar laptop, and i realized, I never stopped using my sager all this time, and even preferred working on it over my newly built desktop workstation last 2015. I wonder how many other laptop owners can say they have a working 8 year old laptop used 8-16 hours a day on a daily basis, because we've had other laptops ( HPs, Compaqs, Digitals, Toshibas, Acers) but all of them had serious trouble after 2 years and are now junk. I wanna find out, do all Sagers last this long? Or is mine a special case? (please let me know by posting here)

My laptop mods are in my signature, and i am very happy with this machine from the day i bought it, well not exactly because i did some serious mods too, but the platform is really capable and flexible, even under demanding loads which i use for 3d modelling, BIM, rendering, but i don't play any games. The mods are so heavy that i can easily push 185 watts (and then the power brick trips) on my 120 watt power supply. Many times it feels comparable to my power hungry i7 desktop on single threaded applications because i can push the sager up to 4.25 ghz but normally work at 3.6-3.7 ghz on the 4 core core2quad qx9300. It's vintage tech but still packs a punch. it had some blown chokes a while ago but its working like new now. Sometimes i think about purchasing a new one but can't help but think about how to mod the newer ones too, can it match this one? But it will be a sad day when this machine stops running, after all the hours spent in front of it. But knowing i maxed out the living daylights out of it will forever keep me impressed. Bravo Sager!

 

Impressive stuff. I hope it makes it to 10 years.

 

I might need ur expertese. You said you added a 2nd fan that runs at full speed, mind telling me how you did it?

I was planning on getting a small fan in my P157SM as well, since I noticed that the air would stick inside the case not finding a proper way to get out, so I wanted to mount a small fan under the case so it would get the hot air out of my notebook instead of letting it heat up like an oven.

 

Hi Arrbol, that would be great but some part of me does hope that it doesn't, just so i could force myself to upgrade, i'm starting to envy my colleagues with the new USB speeds since we generally work with large files and would be useful. I used to have a 3 port usb 3.0 Mini PCI card but it wasn't reliable, but i might just get another one. But to be honest, other than that, i don't have any other whishes, well aside from a backlighted keyboard.

 

Hi Danishblunt, the good thing about some sagers is that the battery configuration is more square than elongated, I simply had a battery that stopped charging so i carefully dismantled the battery, punched a hole in it using a and along the sides, here's the link of my old post but it's a bit more updated now: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...l-laptop-fan-to-your-laptop-heres-how.745654/ . Most laptop fans i know of run on 5v and a common 5v power source is USB, so i initially just cut up an old slim USB cable took the positive and negative leads and then connected it into the fan. Now take note that the fan will have 3 wires, just connect the positive and negative but don't cut off the yellow one, as it might be useful later on (more on this later). We both have a similar problem having warm air stuck inside the parts away from the fan intakes, the additional fan ( the third one in your case) actually works similar to an external laptop cooler pressurizing the whole inside of the laptop chassis. But you have to be able to separate that warm air from your other fans blowing air into the heatsink as it will just warm up those critical fans needing the coolest air to blow into the heatsink. You can do that by finding (this will be tricky) some thin foam and cutting it similar to a donut where the inner hole diameter is slightly bigger than the fan's intakes and just attach it there (youcan use thin double sided tape)

The beautiful thing about this hack is that if you remove this "contraption" hehe, you can still put a fresh battery and it would still work, but come to think of it, being power users we'll need more battery life than 45 minutes, so i just eventually decided on a large external battery pack for the same amount as a brand new battery.

You have the option of making the new fan more permanent also by buying a 2 port mini pcie usb card like i did and connect it to the 3g slot making the USB available internally, just wrap it carefully to avoid short circuiting the mother board. I tried adding a small step up voltage regulator also so i could raise the voltage to 6.5 volts but sometimes it made the USB ports unstable due to the larger power draw. But using a usb 3.0 port would negate this.

If you want to have the option of hot wiring the other fans you can take the positive lead of the fan and connect it to the positive lead of the internal USB port while keeping the negative lead and yellow wire connected to the laptop fan's original fan hub. But you have to be careful not to interconnect the circuits. (i'm no electronics expert but keeping the connections isolated prevents shorts and keeping the components removable made the hacks reversible back to the original design)

I thought of other creative ways to do this and bumping the fan's output power but i would not recommend it because of the risks so i won't post it just yet, and that involves that other yellow wire on the additional fan. I'm not sure if on the newer models the laptop will shutdown from boot if it detects the CPU fan is not running (or not connected), so you can get creative and use the new additional fan to fool the bios into thinking it's the original cpu fan so you can bump the built in fans' power from another power source aside from the original fan hub.

 

haven't thought about the battery as a powersource. Dang it.

Also, wait.... you made a 48 cell battery? holy s***

 

I was trying to connect the fan to the battery port too ( that's one part of the other mods i chose to withold hehe but i couldn't detect the power from the terminals, i think there's some sort of protection circuit or something.

Yup it's 48 cells, still a prototype but it's enough power for 8 hours probably more than 10 in 2.7 ghz mode, it fits in the laptop bag too but i used a 8 amp step up voltage regulator bumping 12v to 19.5v (laptop requires 20v) which i plan to put externally. I use an old 350 watt 12.23v desktop power supply as a charger and it charges in about 8 hours also, i used another step up voltage regulator to bump the voltage for optional full charging which charges the batteris to 12.65 volts. Lithium Ion batteries tend to have more charging cycles if they don't get fully charged so i typically charge them up to 12v, and just connect the full charging circuit when i need the full charge.

I'll try to post photos soon
https://scontent.fmnl9-1.fna.fbcdn....=19b1deedb58667bdea892c4c63b35b65&oe=5998D56B

here's one before i connected the battery management system, it's just there but it's not yet connected. I had to change the case because it looks like an IED (explosive) with the led volt meter and all, i wouldn't want to be held up by security hehe.

 

Hi, joker105!
I drive clevo m860tu since 2009 and wanna make some upgrade.
Main specs:
T9400 2.54 gHz,
9800GTS 512 mb
4 gb RAM


I've already installed SSD to SATA0 instead of original HDD, and put 1TB HDD instead of optical drive. Everything is working fine.
OS - win10.

So my questions are:
1. which is most modern graphic card possible to install? 260 or 280GTX? What will be the difference between them? Some sellers saying that even 480 GTX is possible to use. Is it really or not?
2. What is the best CPU? QX9300?
3. What Bios do you use for install your hardware and whether you face any problem with support? Original bios is terrible, and it is not suitable for overclocking
4. Our Phoenix bios has row in Advanced - Legacy OS disable. Is it really EFI type Bios? Cause i face the problem "Unregistered exception hander" while trying to boot from EFI type boot usb-hdd and even Google didn't give right answer how to fight with.

Maybe you also have a good tips for upgrading, except of that you already post here.
Thanks in advance

 

Mine is also working fine.

 

Take good care of your laptop and it will last a decade or two
I have :
_2010 model NEC Versa Pro (i5 480M )
_2011 model Acer 4743 (i5 560M + Nvidia GT 540M)
_2013 model Fujitsu AH574 (i5 4300M)
_2014 model IIYAMA/Clevo W230SS (i7 4700MQ + Nvidia GTX 860M)
All of them are still working fine . My motto is same as yours , keep laptop cool 100% , I never let the temp go higher than 85 degree celsius even at full load
Liquid Metal is awesome

 

I'm impressed that you have fermi GPU's that are still alive, are they original or did you replace them over time?
Also, why so many notebooks?

 

The GPU is soldered to motherboard , I can't upgrade nor replace it .

It's my hobby
I have no luck with desktop , every desktop I own doesn't last more than 3 years

 

I even have a desktop from 1999 which is still alive and kicking, I am wondering how you manage to kill of desktops, considering that I believe that the desktop's are way more sturdy than notebooks.

 

1st Desktop : GPU failure 3 times in a row due to overheat (Nvidia Tesla 9800GT) even though I used Arctic MX4 on it
2nd Desktop : Bad PSU caused a short curcuit in my mobo.. and I had paid $120 for that PSU...
3rd Desktop : Some broken pins in my mobo... and that is a very expensive one too

 

The only time when I ruined a graphicscard was when i overvolted it with pinmods on my mainboard. Also PSU shorting a board is REALLY rare, hell even the cheapos don't do that usually. And breaking pins on the board is probably ur fault for bad socketing?

 

I RMAed my 9800GT 2 times and Asus sent me 2 different cards (same model ofc) . Still , no luck either
9000 series run really really hot out of the box , just like my Pentium D lol

True . My original PSU for that build was Delta SFX 300W which i bought used at $15 , I believe it's still in good condition. I upgraded it to Silver Stone SFX 600W 80+ Gold Modular which was $120 at that time,I shouldn't have done that...
Edit : Yeah , I shouldn't have done that . Just check customer feedback on Newegg now and it's indeed a bad PSU despite the high price tag

Spoiler

I travel a lot , not as much as TechYesCity though
The pins were bent by my CPU cooler and my baggage was damaged in transit
Intel LGA socket sucks ! AMD PGA socket and Intel mobile PGA socket are much more durable

 

Hi dalin.selmash!

regarding your questions based on what i remember the best gpu for GTX280m and for workstation graphics the quadro fx3700m. but take note that the m860tu's GPU slot uses a different MXM fromat (2.1 on the m860tu vs the more common 3.0b) I have poor memory so i could be wrong on the details. I think a major roadblock for a gpu and 4 core CPU upgrade would be the power supply (120watts), and the heat since the card and CPU would be sharing the same heat sink.

The best CPU would be the qx9300, but the easiest to check if it's compatible is if the CPU Socket is purple based on the Penryn family. This cpu can really take a beating and can really OC. I use throttlestop 6 and you can actually disable the other 2 cores if you want to save power (to balance between gpu and cpu because if it reaches the threshold 180watts it's gonna trip and turn off)

I retained the original bios, yup i think it's really basic but like i mentioned i'd rather use throttlestop so i can switch my settings on the fly as needed.

To be honest i am not familiar with the UEFI type bios, but i am able to boot via hdd dock or usb. It would be good to note that this generation of laptops are usb 2.0 and still requires a USB cable with a 2nd power cable since it only delivers 2A or 2.5 watts per socket Unfortunately i am unfamiliar with the problem you are experiencing. Let me check my Bios Settings and get back to you.

For me the best upgrades I made are the CPU, SSD, collabortatory liquid ultra and 8gb RAM, in that order because it's enough to suit my needs, Do you plan to use this for gaming or for an all around machine? If your use would be for gaming, i think it would be good to try upgrading the GPU to the best that you can find but be mindful of the socket and compatibility. If i remember correctly you will need a Dell compatible version but my memory is rusty so i could be wrong. You can find some at aliexpress, that's where i found my CPU also and for just a fraction of the price, as well as the MIni PCIE USB card.

Do you live in a warm environment? i think the next priority should be cooling, you can follow the mods i made above but i can post an update to that. I don't recommend putting a lot of copper heat sinks as it gets more problematic as it gets hot.

What display do you have?

Thanks!

 

Hi Thousandmagister,

Unfortunately i can't say the same, we've had a toshiba, HP, Compaq, Acer, all of which suffered motherboard failure. that's just from around 2008-2012 and looking back it seemed like a terrible waste of money. The thing i fear with current gen laptops with soldered CPUs and GPUs is their risk of desoldering because of the tremendous heat and power they generate, it used to be a problem but i'd like to option to replace or reseat my CPU/GPU when i need to, paving way to an upgrade down the line as well hehe. Yup temps are really a major killer of laptops, good thing Sagers have easy access bottom panels that make things easy to clean and MODIFY hehehe.

 

Thanks for your answers! I use this laptop daily for routine tasks, and from time to time for gaming. I don't work with graphic, so definitely quadro fx3700 for me is not required. But to prolong its life i think i will upgrade first gpu to 280gtx. Yeah, the power supply along with cooling is problem, but i think it is also possible to solve. Also, i changed recently wi-fi card, due to malfunction of old intel5100.
Biggest question for me is bios. I use win10, but in bios it is still showing win xp and win 7 which are not existed anymore )))and this very strange error when bootung with legacy disabled mode. Dispaly is 1650x1050.
Climate i live at is ok. It is not hot.

 

i've been through several laptops....

ones with soldered parts and parts you can't upgrade without dismantling the whole thing annoy me, also ones with stupid metal lids that dent from the slightest knock!
i also hate glossy screens as default when you purchase, having to replace them yourself can be a pain as some have really crappy thin bezels around the screen that tend to snap when removing

nearly every netbook is garbage, atom / celeron processors are just rubbish and slow, even with a ssd & plenty of ram, the crappy cpu's are just really pants at doing anything, nvidia ion is pretty awful too as a gpu on a netbook and some slightly larger notebooks. if you get a hp or acer netbook you can bet it's got a atom or celeron in it and some god awful slow hdd.