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I'm looking for a new laptop built around 980M to use for years to come. My top choice is Clevo, and after hours of reading opinions and reviews and I cannot come to a conclusion which model is more fit for me.
Whether to buy the newly made P670SG or the P170SM-A.
I don't mind parts being soldered, as I'm not likely to upgrade any of the key components, but perhaps what I would like to hear is just opinions why to choose one over the other, as right now I'm 50/50.
170sm or 770zm. Personally, i think the 6 series is a waste. If wanting to use for years, the 770zm would probably be a good choice as you can start with little and have plenty of room to upgrade. On top of that, it is highly believed it us future proof somewhat, minus usb3.1, SATA express, thunderbolt and HDMI 2.0. The 170sm oughta be a good 3 year laptop before it's time to start looking around again.
You'll get better cooling and an MQ processor with the P170SM-A. The advantages of an MQ processor over the HQ you'll get in the P670SG are:
they are upgradable
they are unlocked, meaning that they can be overclocked
they generally perform better than their HQ counterparts (although their is no direct counterpart to the 4720HQ in the SG, the processor options for the SM-A are still more powerful)
You'll get a thinner, lighter and more portable machine with the P670SG. You'd probably also get better battery life, but I haven't seen battery runtimes for this laptop yet.
Yeah, the 770zm is ~$200 more than 170sm but upgrade and tweak potential is awesome. And again, you can start out small, perhaps with parts you may have already, negotiate with a reseller to get as bare bones to your needs, perhaps no ram or CPU as you can get those on your own cheaper. OTOH though, parts bought at POS are covered under sager warranty. Don't forget, the 6 and 7 series both need external ODD's, but that may not matter to you or you could always cheap out on a cheap ODD or get a good one when money allows. The main advantages of 170sm over 770zm though are built in ODD and better battery life. But if you're buying a 17" laptop I am guessing it is more a DTR and doesn't need to be very portable. The 770zm is just a beast as is. Sucks that SATA express and USB 3.1 are around the corner, but will probably take up to two years before they gain traction and have competitive options. Plus, waiting for the next big thing will just have you window shopping longer than necessary. Also need to mention that the 170sm has upgrade potential, but the market is dictating that mobile stuff is going BGA and you'll have less options for upgrade besides getting stuff from this generation. The GPU might have an upgrade or two potential though, but that is not certain. I don't know your needs but I would weigh how long term the 770zm would last you with the upgrades and as your wallet allows future upgrade or filling up empty slots. Spend a couple hundre more upfront, but save a few more hundred down the road.
I went with the Sager NP8278-S (Clevo P170SM-A) a couple months ago, and while I have yet to fully ring it out, I'm quite happy with it.
I do a lot of photo and video-editing, but have enough need to be mobile in doing so as to justify the performance loss / increased cost in going with a fully capable mobile platform. Thus, I stayed away from thin & light because the power just isn't there. This laptop is just about the same size and weight as my previous "desktop replacement" laptop, a Dell Inspiron 1720 from 2007 -- but about 1000x more powerful. I went with the following config:
Sager NP8278-S (Clevo P170SM-A) from XoticPC
4th Generation Haswell Core i7-4810MQ (2.8GHz - 3.8GHz, 6MB)
NVIDIA® GeForce GTX 980M (8.0GB) GDDR5
32 GB DDR3 1600MHz RAM (4 x 8GB DIMM)
Windows 8.1 Professional
2 x 120GB Samsung 840 EVO Series mSATA SSD (Raid 0)
250 GB Samsung 840 EVO Series SATA SSD in Bay 2 (Scratch Disk)
1 TB WD Black 7200 RPM HDD in Bay 1 (Data Disk)
BD-R / DVD-RW
One of my favorite features is the built-in firewire port (not something you'd expect to find on a laptop these days) which will help me immensely as I have miles of old tape I need to capture from the D8 days that only output to firewire.
I'd like more USB 3.0 (this rig only has 3, plus one additional USB 2.0 port), and thunderbolt would have been nice, but I'm sure to make more use of the firewire than the latter anyway; and I have a powered usb 3.o hub in case my EIGHT onboard hard drives aren't enough (5 internal, plus 3x 2TB WD My Passport Ultra drives gaffer-taped to the back of the LCD -- a configuration that STILL fits snugly in my laptop case.
I'm not much a gamer; I went with the GTX980 solely for it's massive capacity to crunch numbers ... but the games I have tried, well, they are a lot of fun on this thing. The screen could be better, but it gets the job done, and I imagine I'll use a larger external with better color gamut for anything really mission critical down the road. That is, unless, we are lucky enough to someday be able to swap in a nice high-res IPS display. I keep my fingers crossed.
Finally,
Obligatory plug for Josh K. and the guys and (presumably) gals at XoticPC. Service has been great both before and after the sale. Not that there have been any issues of note with my computer; everything has worked wonderfully. The inevitable questions I did have, however, the guys have researched for me with grace.
get it already. i was leaning towards the 170sm-a but batman caught my eye and i chose batman. lol. i think the 170sm-a is a better choice unless portability matters more.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
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