My NP9150 Experience

Hello everybody

Well I've been an avid reade of these forums for the last...I dont know....6 months or so since I started looking at laptops again as I needed an upgrade.

After much deliberation I decided on an NP9150 and ordered through Mythlogic as they had a BTS special.

My experience with Mythlogic upon ordering was excellent, truly excellent. The follow-through however was less than stellar. The laptop went into production several days after I was told it had, despite being re-assured by their CS reps that it had, which I came to know was basically a lie. I'm not sure why Myth felt they needed to do that, I suppose because I paid an extra $100 for rush build and they didnt want to admit that they couldnt do it on time.

Anyway, after some discussions with their reps they refunded me the $100 rush fee and upgraded my CPU to a 3720QM which was nice of them but I must say at this point I kind of lost some confidence in them and was worried about the quality of the finished product.

I ordered the following:
Matte 95% Gamut LCD
3610 (Upgraded by Myth to 3720)
Nvidia 680M
4x4GB Samsung 1600mhz Memory
Intel 6300 (upgraded to Killer 1202 BTS Special)
Crucial 512GB SSD (BTS Special)
Steelseries Keyboard Upgrade

In total the order took 13 days from order to delivery and that was half way around the world.

The laptop was very well packaged and very neatly organised.

I dont know if you guys know much about Myth, I certainly didnt, but they do a lot of pre-shipping testing and inspections which was very necessary since the laptop was being shipped international.

Anyway that's just some background information. Now onto my thoughts on the laptop itself.

 

Keyboard
I dont know if it's the Steelseries itself but my keyboard seems to miss alot of keys when typing. It's like I have to stop and go back and press them again or slightly harder for them to be recognized.
It's fairly quiet and feels good to type. It's got a satisfying amount of depress, and just enough resistance back so as not to be tiring and not to feel empty and hollow.

The keys are not remapped btw so beware, I was not made aware of this when ordering and I think it's very annoying. I will be talking to Myth to see if something can be done.

Noise
On idle or browsing, this thing is SILENT. Measured on my Iphone decibel app, it rates 39dB which is practically inaudible.

Fire up a game however, and it turns into a Jet Engine. It's almost enough to give you a headache after a while. On full blast, Crysis 2, DX11 with High Res texture pack, it reaches 54dB

What I have noticed is that, even if the system is cool, and the air being blown out is cool, the fans are still going at 100%. And when you exit a game, the fans won't tune down either to the idle level, more like 50%. You have to open Nvidia Control Panel for them to return to idle levels.

Does anyone have a fix for this?

Display
Stunning, if not a little saturated. But really stunning. I highly recommend the Matte, especially the 95% Gamut. I have two other laptops, one glossy and one matte, and this thing blows them both away. It's almost comparable to the Samsung Series 7 Gamer display though not as good, but still really cant recommend it enough.

Sound
The sound is abysmal. It's fine in windows and youtube but load up a game like Crysis 2 and notice zero bass. Everything sounds like a percussion instrument. Totally flat and totally dull. This part of the system is extremely disappointing.


User Manual
My system didnt come with a User Manual and there are a bunch of random applications, one called 6.0045 which seems to be a system control panel, with mode switches and other things. But this doesnt seem to be linked to Windows power management. Not sure how to use this.

Well that's my short synopsis after playing with the system for 4 hours. I will write some more later.

 

everyday i get more and more depressed about buying this beauty... The sound, keybord and fans are really a downer....

 

The sound is only bad if you use 2.0 stereo headphones, I have a true 5.1 analog jack headset so it was never a problem for me, sound is great. And indeed the keyboard is really bad, I'm used to keyboards that are more sensitive, and on the P150EM you have to press really hard to not miss any letters typed. And for large keys like space and shift, gotta press at like dead center. Usually gets me killed in games. And the fans... GPU fan doesn't turn off itself automatically, have to launch random stuff to trigger it, it's the only bad thing about the P150EM fan.

 

Could a BIOS/EC update resolve the fan issue? My P170EM (aka NP9170) spins down to idle fan speeds after I exit a game, even if the temperatures were bouncing off 90°C.

 

Are you speaking specifically about the Steelseries keyboard upgrade, the stock keyboard, or both?

 

Was on about stock keyboard with backlight.

 

did you receive the disk with all the drivers on it as the user manual is on there.

 

This sounds exactly like my P170EM.. Keyboard, speakers, and fans are all pretty meh - but 90% of the time i'm docked to an external monitor, keyboard, and mouse and game like a mad man and it's just as smooth and fun as my previous desktop.. Personally the fan noise is something i'm used to - all my desktops/laptops have always been noisy due to all the overclocking I do.

 

So what is it you expected out of laptop speakers?? Surround sound and thumping bass levels?? Poor laptop speakers are that crushingly disappointing?? Really??????

I think most people who use this as a true gaming system have at least a decent pair of headphones, if not more. I use HDMI to output to my home theater system and guess what?? It sounds awesome.

Seriously if you can afford a $2200+ laptop then you can probably spring for some decent headphones or desktop speakers. Laptop speakers are not meant to blow you away.

As for fans, I barely notice it. When I am playing and temps reach a certain point, they speed up but it's no biggie. When I turn the game off they turn down and are silent again. I don't do anything manually to make that happen, so the fact that you have to manually set them seems odd. You might want to look into new drivers or something.

As far as the keyboard goes, you can't blame the system for that since you have an aftermarket keyboard. Get a stock keyboard and try it out. It works fine for me.

 

There's no driver for fans, only EC firmware. The thing with the fan control in the P150EM is that when the game/dGPU monitoring app is shut down, the dGPU will be shuts down as well, and the dGPU will stop reporting the temperature to the EC results in that the EC thinks the dGPU stayed at the temperature before the dGPU goes offline. The only way to fix this is by launching any random application.

When an application is launched, the dGPU will be powered on to check which GPU is the application assigned to in the NVIDIA Control panel. If it is assigned to HD4000, then the dGPU will shut down until another new application is launched. If it's assigned to the dGPU then the dGPU will stay on and process the application.

Above is how the Optimus currently work in the P150EM/P170EM, however if the dGPU shuts down before the temperature reaches the fan off zone (0C-42C), the fan will stay on until the next time you launch an application.

 

Strange, because every time I exit the Witcher 2 I hear the fans throttle down. As soon as the game ends, even though the temp is certainly over 70C, the fans slow down right as I hit the desktop.

Is this odd behavior???

 

It'll always slow down when the game is exited. However, not turn off, to have the fan turn off the temperature has to reach the fan off zone before the dGPU shuts down. The period between game exit and back to desktop can already decrease the temperature to the medium speed fan zone. If you look closely, from 80C>65C only takes a few second.

The odd behavior they are saying is that the fan doesn't turn off when idle.

 

Gotcha. I just only hear the fan when it is running faster. As soon as I exit a game the fan might still be on it's just that I don't hear it at all.

 

Well complaining about the speaker is completely understandable, I'll do agree with you for the headphones, but don't forget it's a laptop I'm not gonna bring my speakers when I'm out to watch movie with my friends or play.
Even if the laptop speakers are not mean to blow away there's some really good one like the lenovo Y480 with JBL speakers and the Onkyo seems to be far away from that quality.

 

I think there's quite a bit of difference between expecting mind-blowing sound and reasonable sound quality.

My 4 year old Acer 6930G sounds like a home theatre system in comparison. Sound is very good, punchy and bassy.

The Np9170 sound is frankly a joke and rather tragic when you consider the price tag of the machine. It sounds like those Ipod speakers you pick up for $10 on the side of a street and even they have more bass.