P775 Buyer's Advice

Hello! I apologize in advance if this is the wrong section or these kinds of threads aren't allowed as I'm not familiar with the forum.

I've been looking to buy a decently future-proof high-end gaming laptop recently, and Clevo seems to be the best option. I first came across OriginPC's website but quickly learned they were just rebranded Clevos. Currently I'm looking at the Sager NP9172 / Clevo P775DM3-G or the Sager NP8177 / Clevo P670HS-G.

I'm mostly interested in a machine with pretty good gaming specs (GTX 1070, i5 or i7 6700/7700) and a great 17-inch display, preferably one with an excellent color gamut for multi-media use and some light image editing. I'm none too savvy, but I would like it to have an IPS display with a good response time for competitive gaming, but as long as it looks and performs well I'd be content. It doesn't need to be a 4k display, but from what I've read, they generally seem to be nicer than their lower-resolution equivalents.

I was using these as reference for Origin's 4k display on the EON17X:
MobileTechReview's video review
Laptopmag's written review
Does anyone know if the 4k display referenced in the above reviews are the same as the other resellers'?

Another concern I've heard with the P755 is of overheating. Is that the case primarily with overclocking on the bleeding edge 1080 and 7700k, or in general? I intended to spring for the better thermal paste, but I'm not completely comfortable reapplying it myself, nor am I interested in overclocking.

Ultimately I'm not too sure which to buy or from what reseller. I've heard good things about LPC, HID, and Xotic, but I'm not positive which machine I'll end up going with. I'm leaning towards Origin's P775 just because I've been able to find more review material online.

Any advice is appreciated, thanks.

 

Have a look around these forums for much more detailed info than standard tech press stuff, also the owner's lounges will have more detailed specs

The 4K 17" are all the AUO B173ZAN01 is far as I know. The 01.0 version has been around for ages. I think there's a 01.1 version I've seen mentioned a couple of times, not sure if that's significantly different

As a panel they are great for brightness, contrast, colour gamut and accuracy, but being 4K and IPS it does have a slower pixel transition time (>40 ms) than more twitch-shooter FPS friendly TN panels (~10-30ms) and a default refresh rate capped at 60Hz with minimal overclockability (eDP bandwidth limitation). E.g. the 1080p 75hz TN my laptop came with that I swapped out in favour of a 4K went up to 90hz fine and many people get it to 100hz. Whether a 120Hz option (either 1920x1080 or 2560x1440) is offered depends on model - if considering the 2560x1440 option do investigate the banding issue first

I don't know about others but HID offer liquid metal, delid, and pre-overclock all covered by warranty if you want better temps or the benefit of OC without the usual DIY risk

 

Just remember for gaming you would be better off with a mobile CPU and a GTX 1070 over the 1060 in a desktop CPU based model.

 

Origin PC is stupidly overpriced for what you get. Much of that extra expense is going into advertising and marketing, which is why you see more information online.

I'll echo Meaker's advice in that a 1070 with a mobile CPU will get you better performance than a 1060 with desktop one. Matter of fact, once it's back from repair (a BIOS flash gone bad, not from a hardware defect), I'm going to be putting a Clevo P670RS-G up for sale. It's essentially the same as the P670HS-G but with the "older" Skylake i7 6820HK CPU. It has a GTX 1070 and a 1080p G-Sync screen that has a default refresh rate of 75 Hz, but it can be overclocked to at least 90. Once you have 5 posts outside of the general/off-topic sub-forums, you can send me a PM (start a conversation) for more details if you're interested. @Wraeith

 

Do you think to upgrade the gpu gtx1060 in the next years? If your answer is yes than that P775dm3 is better because it has a mxm gpu. If your answer is not than p670 is a good choice IMO

 

Yeah, I was aiming for a 1070 with a slightly weaker processor to offset the overheating issue stock 775s seem to have. I was looking at HIDevolution to try and compensate for that with their delidding and repasting, but they don't offer lesser CPUs for the 775, much less non-OCed. Also I very rarely mess with the BIOS unless a technical issue necessitates it, so I don't think I'd find any use from their customizations there.

Would going for a 1070 and non-K processor help this at all? Most of the complaints I see about overheating typically involve the very high-grade desktop 1080 and a 7700k. And if HID doesn't offer one, which reseller and CPU would be best?

Also, I'm still weighing the pros and cons for the displays. The 1440p 120hz 5ms would obviously be the best choice for gaming, but between the banding issue and poor color clarity, I'd rather not roll the dice.

After doing some more research, I'm wondering if buying the 4k then downscaling the resolution to 1440 or 1080p (as I've read 1080p would be 2:1 conversion) might be the best option. This thought is purely because the 4k display seems to rate far higher in terms of overall color quality and sharpness.

The display in the laptop I've been using for a long time now is this old HannStar TN.
While this is the 775 4k display.

Correct me if I'm wrong on these being the models used for the 775 and/or its equivalents.

I'll just ask for the sake of clarity, what is the 1080p display used in the 775 and the 670?
Most information I've scoured is focused on the 4k panel.

The only concern I have is jumping to a higher response time after using a low one for so long might be too jarring. I don't generally play twitch shooters like Counterstrike so I don't need insanely good TN speeds, but I still decent smoothness for some MOBAs, RTS, and my own sanity. My only reference for this is something like latency in online games where 25ms base isn't much too terrible (granted that's being added on-top of actual latency), but I don't know if that's really comparable at all.

Edit: Studied a little more on response times and learned there are several different metrics for measuring them (grey-to-grey, black-white-black), so a Tr+Td response is less substantial than a grey-to-grey.

Although I've noticed NoteBookCheck has grey-to-grey as the slower metric, which is the opposite of what I would expect.
As seen here.

Again, I was also considering the Sager NP8177 / Clevo P670HS-G since I was planning on a slightly-lower specs anyway. However, the P670 doesn't have any display options beyond what I assume is the same 1080p panel as the P775. So if I do end up not going with the 4k display, I will probably go the P670 route.

Thanks for the replies and pardoning my ignorance.