My experience with the Sager NP9377-S

Hi everyone,

I’ve had my Sager NP9377-S for a few days now and I thought I’d write a little about it. I ordered through XoticPC and everything went excellently with the order and delivery.

My specs:
i7-4810MQ
GTX980M SLI
16 GB RAM
Windows 10

I now have 5 hard drives installed in the laptop. I ordered it with a 250 GB Samsung 850 EVO mSATA as the boot drive and a 1TB Samsung 850 EVO SSD. I have a few drives at home, so I installed those as well—a 120 GB mSATA and a 512 GB Samsung 830 SSD. Instead of an optical drive I went with a caddy for another drive. I have a 256 GB Samsung 830 SSD in there. Now the machine has 5 SSDs with just over 2 TBs of space. This is totally awesome! Later, if I need the room, I’ll upgrade to a 1TB mSATA.

I’m using the laptop primarily for gaming. I have upgraded to Windows 10 and haven’t had any problems. A few games have crashed, but verifying the game cache through Steam seems to fix that. I haven’t got S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat to run without crashing, but that game is a crash fest on any system.

The laptop arrived in excellent condition and everything seems to be working fine. Although I’m not used to the matte screen, the more I use it the better it looks. I have the laptop hooked up to a 27 inch monitor and a keyboard and am using the laptop’s screen as a secondary monitor.

Before I ordered the machine I was really worried about heat; however, the cooling system in this laptop is incredible.

I’ve been using RealTemp and MSI Afterburner to monitor temps while gaming. I have not done any overclocking and everything is at stock. I’ve been testing with a few games so far. Here are my unofficial benchmarks. Temps are in Celsius.

Bioshock Infinite: everything maxed out running in SLI with vsync on:

CPU: mid 50s
GPUs: mid 50s

I have similar results with Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor.

Dying Light: everything maxed out with vsync on:

CPU: high 60s to low 70s
GPUs: 52 and 60

Dying Light with everything maxed and no vsync:

CPU: high of 82
GPUs: 73 and 76

On my older machines, vsync always seemed to create tremendous lag and mouse issues; however, with this system I notice no lag or sluggishness in the mouse at all. vsync keeps the temps down quite alot.

A few issues I am encountering:

The temps of the CPU seem to vary quite a lot among the four cores, sometimes by as much as 3 -8 C. There is also a similar difference in the two GPUs at times. I have heard this may indicate that I need to repaste.

The audio on the laptop is incredibly low. I installed the Sound Blaster software and that seems to have fixed the problem, but I need to do some more testing on this.

The backlit keyboard is nice, but seems rather dim even at the brightest setting.This is not a big problem and is something that I can live with.

Overall, I am extremely happy with the laptop and it is running my games superbly.

I’ll close with a question or two:

Does the difference in temps between the cores of the CPU and between the two GPUs mean that I need to repaste?

Has anyone had problems with the audio being too low? I upgraded to the newest Realtek drivers, but that did not help. Sound Blaster seems to be working better for me, but I need more testing.

 

The GPUS can naturally vary a lot and cpus depending on load. On each core or load balancing in sli.

 

I have the same system (specs in my sig) the np9377sm-s and my speakers are VERY loud, I never go over 60% volume and I normal have it set to about 30% and everything is loud and clear........here are a few things you might check out that might give you some louder volume. Right click on the volume speaker on the taskbar far right and bottom of the screen and click on playback devices> then click speaker and then click properties> then click Enhancements> then click Loudness Equalization. Then after you have done that click on the Advance tab> then I have mine set on 24bit 48000hz...besides these settings I am not sure what else could be different between our systems for why your volume seems low......now when you say that audio is low do you mean the speakers or are you using headphones? Hope this works for you, let me know, also Congrats on your new beastly machine, I know I haven't found one thing that this laptop can't handle with EASE! I can't wait until these new more graphically intense games come out because I know my laptop can handle them with ease and produce some amazing scenes!

 

Your temps are looking pretty good. It is common for a little bit of difference on CPU temps across cores like that (maybe 2 to 5 degrees), and there can be a bigger difference between GPU temps. That is something that you will see on desktops as well, where the first graphics card seems to be working harder than the ones in SLI.

 

Thanks for the replies! This is my first experience with SLI. So far, the cooling system seems excellent.

 

Hi Brent R., thanks for the reply. I'm glad to join the NP9377 club! My sound settings seem to be the same as yours. I am using a pair of Logitech speakers hooked up to the headphone out of the laptop. They're not the most expensive speakers; in fact, they are quite cheap, but on my old system they were very loud. I would normally have the volume on Windows set at 40% or so and the volume was very loud out of the external speakers; however, with the NP9377 set at the same volume level it seems extremely low. Maybe this is just a difference between the two systems, but the volume level as it is just seems too low for default settings. I will keep fiddling around and doing some searching online. Maybe it could be my speakers. The volume out of the laptop itself seems pretty good.

I'm really enjoying the laptop so far. I'm waiting Mad Max and Fallout 4. I've heard that The Witcher 3 has some incredible graphics; I might pick that up (but waiting for a sale )

 

I agree with the others in that a variance of 3-8 degrees is probably pretty normal. While the paste might be slightly off, it's also possible that maybe the heatsink is slightly different in places or something else altogether. In that situation, you have little to gain and probably more to lose, so I'm not sure it's worth it unless you wanted to check for another reason.

The Witcher 3 is a lot of fun and I really enjoyed playing it (I hadn't played the series previously). I would definitely recommend it if you're into that style of game. I'm very jealous of the 980M sli config that you'll be playing it on!

 

It can also be the silicon sensors inside not all being calibrated equally.

 

Thanks for the replies. As long as the variance in temps between the GPUs and the 4 cores of the CPU are within the normal range then I'm good with that. I did a marathon gaming session yesterday. I broke down and bought the Witcher 3. I played 9 hours! Over those 9 hours, the CPU maximum temp never went over 73 C (mostly stayed in the mid 60s) for all of the cores and the GPUs maxed at 75 C, but were generally in the mid 60s. I'm pretty happy with these temps so far.

The Witcher 3 looks awesome and runs excellently in SLI. I did turn off the Hairworks and had the shadows set to high instead of ultra. I think that shaved a few degrees of heat off. I kept wanting to experiment with the settings, but everything looked so great that I just ended up playing the whole day. My next step is to check temps over an extended play session with everything maxed on ultra. I'm comfortable with the temps now though and am sometimes afraid to push them too high.

I've been checking into my audio problem. With headphones plugged directly into the laptop, the volume is incredibly loud, but when I go out through my external speakers the volume is pretty low. The volume coming out the laptop speakers is fine too. Maybe it's just my speakers, but I think it is most likely a driver/setting issue. When I installed Sound Blaster, the volume level increased quite a bit. Who knows? Maybe it's my speakers, but I'm thinking that the NP9377-S can make anything sound good. It's like David Gilmore playing a crappy guitar. It's still gonna sound awesome.

 

Experimentation is fine, but playing the games is usually the aim after all

 

Those temps are really nice. I think there is plenty of room to turn on Hairworks and change shadows to Ultra. Might as well and see how the temps react. I bet if anything your temps stay the same but your FPS drop a little.