PC Specialist Cosmos II advice?

I've been hankering after a new laptop for ages and having got a new job I can finally afford one. One of the main requirements of a new laptop for me is a full HD screen, not for watching videos but to give me more space in my DAWs as my current 1366x768 Acer is too cramped. I would use it for a bit of gaming, but I'm mostly not interested in modern AAA games.

My searches have brought me to PC Specialist in the UK and the chassis I'm sort of interested in is the 15.6" Cosmos II. As I understand it PCS are a Clevo reseller (a company I'd not come across until the beginning of my laptop search a couple of weeks ago).


I'd really appreciate some opinions on PC Specialist in terms of customer service and assembly quality as well as opinions on the Cosmos II (or its equivalents from other sellers, I'm not sure what Clevo's name for this model is).


Also, while I consider myself to understand more about computers than the 'average person', I don't actually know much and I'm not all that confident in picking the specs so I'd really appreciate it if people could look over my choices and advise so I don't have any bottlenecks. I'll post possible specs in another post in a moment.

Other suggestions are welcome and I do not have my heart set on a Cosmos II, nor am I set on buying from PC Specialist.

 

About the reseller: no clue.

About the specs:
CPU: Intel Core i7 4700MQ
RAM: 2x8GB 1600mhz
GPU: Nvidia gtx765m or gtx770m

- You can choose between matte or glossy for your FullHD screen.
- If you decide on a SSD + HDD setup, you will see the true benefit of the new machine.
- You have more than 2 Clevo chassis of 15,6" to choose from, depending on your graphics card choice.

Any Clevo at the 120W power rating range (and upwards) will do the job in your case.
If you really play games that are less demanding, I suggest a Clevo W370SM chassis for you. Its 17,3", gorgeous screen (matte or glossy, up to you), very energy efficient, small power supply, lightweight, long battery life, very good audio output (stereo + optical, with 98db SNR and THX, robust enough chassis, 2 slots for hard drives and an option for a third slot (in place of the DVD drive).

 

full list of clevo suppliers in the uk http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/652403-clevo-resellers-european-union-v1.html#uking

 

I'm afraid 17.3" is definitely too big for me, I don't want to go bigger than 15.6". Thanks for the info though.

 

Does anyone know what PC Specialist's Cosmos II is normally called by Clevo (or other resellers)?

Here are the specs I was considering:

Chassis & Display
Cosmos Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD IPS LED Widescreen (1920x1080)

Any opinions on whether the matte IPS is worth it? They also have a glossy non-IPS (TN I'm guessing) FHD screen which is cheaper.


Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™i5 Dual Core Mobile Processor i5-4330M (2.80GHz) 3MB

This is an area where I'm having lots of trouble choosing. I don't know much about the differences between i5 and i7 for example other than that the i7 options for this laptop are either faster or have more cores. Are those the only differences or is the i7 better in other ways that I don't understand?

Memory (RAM)
8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 (2 x 4GB)

Again, advice here would be much appreciated. I have some vague understanding that 2 x 4GB is better than 1 x 8GB. I'm guessing (if it's true) that it's to do with being able to access it in parallel?

Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 750M - 2.0GB DDR3 Video RAM - DirectX® 11

I have no idea here. Neither option seems to cost more than the other so I'm not sure.

Memory - Hard Disk
1TB SERIAL ATA II 2.5" HARD DRIVE WITH 8MB CACHE (5,400rpm)

Would the WD Scorpio Blue actually be that much of an upgrade?

mSATA SSD Drive
120GB Kingston SSDNow mS200 mSATA (upto 550MB/sR | 520MB/sW)

I quite like the idea of an SSD but I still need large amounts of storage space. Is an mSATA drive adequate to be used as the boot drive or are they only suited to working as cache drives?


DVD/BLU-RAY Drive
8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)

I don't honestly think I'm going to be using blu-rays in the near future. As a medium for films, sure they're fine but computing seems to have mostly moved on from using optical storage media so I don't think we're going to be getting PC games (or anything else) on blu-rays any time soon.

Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)

I've had plenty of overheating problems with laptops in the past so I'm hoping to avoid that. It's only £9, but does it actually make a difference? I don't like to think that I'm paying £9 for nothing.

Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® N-135 802.11N (150Mbps) + BLUETOOTH

Am I wrong in assuming this would be completely adequate?


Operating System
Genuine Windows 8.1 64 Bit - inc DVD & Licence (£79)

Is W8 really as bad as that? I mean if you have Classic Shell installed or something similar is it still that much worse than W7? The W7 licence I have on my current laptop seems to be an Acer specific OEM version so I'm not sure that I'd be able to just install it on the new laptop and thus I will probably be buying some kind of Windows licence for this laptop. W7 and W8 cost the same here, so that's why I'm thinking I might as well go with 8 if it's not absolutely dreadful.

 

Ah, cheers! I did see that in the thread list but at the moment I'm trying to get opinions on PCS. I will have a look at other resellers though, especially if they're better value.

 

im the worst person to ask about pcs as i have a gripe about their warranty. not me personally but 2 other members over the last couple of years asked for advice on here. i always tell everyone its always worth paying the extra to extend the warranty but they didnt. they took out the basic supposed 3 year standard warranty without reading it properly. they actualy got 1 month courier, 1 year parts, 3 years labour. as far as i can remember both their graphics cards failed after roughly 13-14 months and they had to fork out upto £300 for a new gpu and also pay for the courier to return it.

most of the other suppliers including mysn who i buy from have a standard 2 years warranty which covers courier both ways,parts and labour.
owners are unlucky when things do go wrong as clevo's are very reliable and thats why i wont buy any other make now.

now this is a strange one. the model you mentioned above looks exactly the same as mySN.co.uk | XMG | Schenker Technologies - Schenker B513 15" Laptop
but the mysn config page only shows intel HD4600 graphics while pcs has nvidia cards. i will check on this on monday as if it is exactly the same laptop then i think someone could have made a booboo on their site.

also this is the one thing i hate about clevo and supplier model numbers. its a total pain to work out the equivalent from america and the eu as everyone has their own names. i did have a full list about 6 years ago but so many models are released i gave up after 2 years.

 

No, far from the worst person. In fact, I'd say that was very helpful. I had read and understood the differences between the PCS warranties but I certainly didn't realise how much better other sellers' standard warranties were.

The PCS version of that model does have Intel graphics as well as the nvidia. is it possible that mySN just configure it with only the internal graphics while PCS installs an nvidia card as well?

 

I haven't heard of PCS, nor do I know which model you are talking about.

I will give some generic Clevo answers.

I just got a 90% Gamut TN panel in my 17inch and it looks great. Most are happy with TN. IPS is better, but deciding if it is worth it is a personal decision. Same with matte over glossy, but I think matte is more popular. But it depends on how much reflections and glare bothers you.

cpu, I would check some benchmarks for your DAWs. I.e. what other people use for cpus and see if they are fast enough. i7 I believe offers hyperthreading which i5 does not. And there are some VT differences, which only affects virtual environments, i.e. most users don't need it.

The 750M is a good gpu. Not sure what your other option is. It is a little slow for modern AAA games. I don't know if your DAWs use it or not, nor if it is critcal or not.

The 1TB drive gives you a good amount if space. Getting a 7200rpm drive will be faster. I didn't have the blue option, but I did get a 7200rpm drive since the perfermance upgrade for the price was worth it for me. Keep in mind you want to put data only on the 1TB HDD, and put the OS and important programs on the SSD. The 120GB SSD is big enough for the OS and some programs, so it is fine for the boot drive. But most of your storage space will be on the standard hdd, not the sdd. Keep in mind for best performance you only want to use about 70-75% of the space on a SSD.

Dvd, blu-ray, this is up to you. Some even skip it entirely since they rarely if ever use it. Others use dvds often, and etc. So this is a personal question, but as I said many don't even get a optical drive. Keep in mind you can get a external usb blu-ray or dvd drive. Also keep in mind the OS and drivers come on a dvd disk with the computer. You can download drivers, but what if you have to install the OS.

Better thermal paste does lower temps. I recomend it. It is easy to do yourself, and many do it themselves. The MX-4 is good paste.

Wifi depends on your router and how fast you want your downloads and the number of simulatanious downloads. Of course this depends mostly on your isp speed. Also considure your future upgrades. But worst case you can upgrade it later, if not internally, at least externally.

I have Win 8.1 on my new computer. I also have been using Windows since Win 3.1, and played with it before then. I think if you are willing to do research and look up how to do things or fix problems, then it is fine. In fact, now that I have mine configured and I know how to use it, I have no real problems with it. Also, I didn't have to load something like classic shell, and I am just as productive as I was before. A couple of quick tips. Set it to boot to the desktop, and right click on the start button to get to things like shutdown and control panel, etc. My thought is the people that hate it didn't spend much time in figuring it out, I spent a few hours... or they are stuck in one way of doing things. Granted, an OS shouldn't take hours to figure out. So it is far from perfect, but now I have things set up, it is good. Just my two cents.

 

honestly have no idea mate. but i will try and find out for you tomorrow.

after a painstaking search through all the Clevo 15" models CLEVO - Series

the only one that looks the same in the pictures is the Clevo W650SH

ive got a M860TU which is still going strong after 6 years but i bought the P series to keep up with the latest games.
when i bought my P series 18 months ago i was going to go for top spec on everything. mysn advised for what i wanted it for i could cut down on a few things and save some wonga which i did and what ive got does everything i need.

what will be your main uses for the laptop? general use, gaming, picture editing, video editing etc.
depending on use will determine what you really need and what you dont need.

i went for the standard matte screen and it sure blew me away from all the previous gloss screens i had used. very vibrant bright colors. so the 72 and 95% gamut will be even better. dont think mine is IPS though.

processor is always worth getting an i7 if it fits within your budget. but supplier can advise on whats best for you.

not sure about the ram sticks but clevo's are user upgradable so you can add more later without voiding warranty.

heres a list of graphics cards. yours is 96 on the list Mobile Graphics Cards - Benchmark List - NotebookCheck.net Tech

the 5400 hard drives are the slowest now. they still do the job but you can upgrade it yourself later. a 7200 is better but i do recommend a ssd which makes a hell of a difference.
i dont know much about msata drives as when i ordered they only had sataII so i got the largest ssd instead.

thermal past upgrade is a good idea even if it only lowers temps by 2-3c it still makes a difference.

i know nothing about windows 8 so can advise on that. i went for 7 pro as it supports 16gb ram and more.

 

Thanks, all useful stuff. +1

My DAWs don't use the GPU at all to the best of my knowledge and I'm not fussed about playing the absolute latest games so I'm thinking the 750M will probably be at least adequate for my uses.

 

Thank you so much for working out which model it is, much appreciated!

I'm not a huge gamer these days, not really interested in modern AAA games but I do play some indies and slightly older games. Other than those games and general use the primary use will be for music recording and production. This is why I might be after what seems like a disproportionately powerful CPU and amount of RAM compared to the GPU, because both of those would be used by DAWs while the GPU wouldn't be.

As for matte vs glossy and IPS vs TN for some reason PCS only have glossy (presumably TN) or matte IPS, no matte TN or glossy IPS.

The 750m seems pretty respectable according to that list you linked to, I probably don't need anything better than that.

My reasoning for getting a slow HD is that I'm planning to use the mSATA as the boot drive. Thanks for all the info, I'll keep looking into different sellers, PCS don't look like a great choice any more.

 

right. was unable so far to talk to uk branch but have talked to germany and to get me even more confused theres another model number to add.
as far as i can tell its the same as the B513 but with the added nvidia card.

the M503 which is on the german site is the equivalant to the cosmos mySN.de | SCHENKER XMG | Schenker Technologies - SCHENKER M503 MEDIA Notebook 39,6cm (15.6")

 

Oh weird, so it's a model that's on the German site but not on the UK site? Ah well, thanks for your help.

Oh and sorry for the delay in replying to the thread I've had an unusually busy week.

 

Doesnt mean you cant order it though. When i ordered mine on opening day of the uk branch it was still built in germany and then sent to uk branch and then to me. All warranty work is then done by uk branch.still only took 10 days from order to receiving it but like all companys it depends on availability of parts.

 

O...k, so would I have to order it through the German site, or write to the UK site and ask to order this model?

 

Doing it through the uk site would be ok i guess but i will try and confirm that early next week as every time i tried to chat to uk office it was diverted to germany.
If you see the uk live chat on before me you could ask them and just say jim told you to contact them. They are both very helpful guys.

 

Thanks very much for your help!

p.s. You don't work for them do you?

 

Nope. Im just a happy customer who got to know the guys at the last 2 gadget shows so i offer advice when i can.

 

hi SirPrimalform

lookout for a PM coming your way.

 

Hi SirPrimalform

Just to confirm MrDJ's comments, the M503 is now available on the UK website. It has been added at the same time as quite a lot of other updates, so there might be some further models available shortly which are only currently available on the .de website. This is sometimes due to keyboard language availability, but anything available online is currently in stock!

At the moment, the build/testing/quality control processes take around 3 business days and delivery via DHL to a UK address is 1-2 business days.

 

sorted

 

Cool, thanks very much both of you!

 

So yeah, I'm now pretty settled on getting a Schenker M503.

There's a couple of points where deciding on the specs is really hard, particularly the CPU and mSATA drive.

I'm stuck between the i7-4700MQ and the i7-4702MQ.

The 4702 is 200MHz slower and £30 more expensive but has a rating of 37W instead of 47W. Now I would assume that a lower wattage would mean improve battery life (maybe only slightly), but would it also have any significant reduction in heat output?

Heat output is a big concern of mine, especially since I'm putting in what would be considered a fairly beefy processor for a non-gaming laptop. On the one hand, would mySN offer that choice if it was too much for the cooling capabilities of the fan in the chassis? On the other, they do sell custom laptops. What would be the point if they didn't allow possibly unwise choices?


The other bit I'm completely stumped on is the mSATA drive. I know I want a 120GB (or 128GB) mSATA SSD, but I'm completely new to the world of SSDs.

Schenker M503 15.6" Notebook

They offer 4 choices in the size range I want and... I've having trouble working out whether getting the SanDisk one would be false economy. Is it slower than the others? Less reliable?

 

I would get the i7-4700mq. The wattage is the max wattage used, not the minimum. So best to have the power if you need it. If you become concerned about heat, you can under clock and undervolt it.

The link doesn't work for me as I block tracking and spam sites, etc. 120GB is not big. If you don't install much at all, it can be fine. One thing to keep in mind is SSDs work better when not full. Best to leave 20-30% free on them.

You could post the models in the SSD section in this forum and ask those people thier opinions.

 

Yeah, but if that's the max wattage then the 4702mq only runs 200MHz slower at 37W than the 4700mq does at 47W. It sort of seems like a fair trade... sort of? Thanks for your input though. Although I'm questioning it, it doesn't mean I outright disagree or haven't taken it on board, I just want to understand it better.

By the way, what do you mean about the link (spam/tracking site)? mySN is a Clevo reseller, I just linked to their store.
Yeah, I'd heard that they work best with a bit of room. The system partition on my current laptop is 120GB with only about 80GB used so I should be ok. I plan to install most programs on the 1TB HDD and choose carefully which are installed on the SSD. For example, my DAWs and other music software would be installed on the SSD but sample libraries and things would be on the HDD.

 

no idea on the msata/ssd
all i know the standard ssd by samsung has the fastest read/write speeds so i guess the msata would be the same.

i went for crucial ssd as it was the only 512gb at the time of buying. if i ever upgrade i will buy a 512 or even bigger samsung.
ive only got 128gb space left and its still running flawlessly. think i will have to delete some games soon though.

cpu
i was going to go for the top spec i7 when i bought but for wat i needed mysn advised to save some money and get the 3720 instead. so while your waiting for replys here also ask the experts.

 

No at max the 4702mq will use 37w and at full load that is nowhere near it's max turbo.

 

Can you elaborate? I didn't quite follow.

 

Thanks, yeah I'll ask their advice.

 

The link for me tries to open as http://track.webgains.com/click.htm...get=http://mysn.co.uk/shop/schenker-m503.html

Here is a DAW article on cpus that might help you. https://www.soundonsound.com/sos/jan08/articles/pcmusician_0108.htm

It is an older article, but you get the idea. I am not running DAWs right now, but my understanding is that having lots of sounds, and effects, etc, can use a lot of cpu power. Here is a Cakewalk page that mentions picking a cpu https://www.cakewalk.com/pcresource/build.aspx

Also, check out the power consumption part of this review. http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Intel-Haswell-Processors.93189.0.html

 

thats strange about the link as it works for me. try this one Schenker M503 15.6" Notebook

 

That's odd about the link, as I get that too but it's definitely not what I put in my post. Can only assume it's the forum software trying to sneak some advertising in or something.


Thanks, just skimmed that article and I think it'll be useful. I'm pleased to see that my DAW of choice (Reaper) comes out well in terms of utilisation of multiple cores. Music is the main reason I'm picking what appears to be a really beefy CPU compared to the graphics card.

Just to confuse matters though, I'm now wondering about the A503 from the same site. When you load it up with the same specs it's actually a tiny bit cheaper but has a better graphics card and I would imagine better cooling. It's a bit thicker and a bit heavier, but that's not necessarily a terrible thing as it'll mostly be on a desk or table.

It's a tough one now...

 

Yours comes out as a tracking site too! I think it must be the forum up to something.

 

really, thats even stranger then as when i clik on it its direct to their website.

final try. Schenker M503 15.6" Notebook

this is using the url link. if it still does it ill let the admin know on here.

just tried ajnindlo's link above and it takes a while to open but does finally open the mysn page.

 

This also gets blocked as track webgains. I do see the link is direct to mysn.co.uk. So maybe the forum or maybe it is the tapatalk I use on my mobile.

Edit.

I opened up this thread in a browser on my mobile. I then tried the links within the browser and they opened up without problem. So it appears to be my tapatalk pro version, or some malware running in the background. At least for me. I suppose it could still have something to do with the forum. I.e. if you access mobile you get it, but otherwise you don't. My mobile browser accesses sites as if it was a desktop pc.

 

Hmm, very strange. I was getting the tracking site through Chome on Windows 7, but now I'm getting a direct link.

Oh well, in other news I think I'm probably going to go with the A503 rather than the M503.

 

one of those never to be solved mystery's.

hope all goes well as the worst bit for everyone is the wait after ordering. kids in a candy shop comes to mind.
tell the guys i helped you out and they will look after you.

 

When a forum member posts an HTML link, notebookreview has the ability to monetize this link. If the site being linked to has a relationship with the same affiliate partner, the link will be tracked through this affiliate - hence monetizing the link. This is why the link text can appear as more than the direct hyperlink in a browser.

We were not aware of this practice until it was discussed on this thread, so thank you all for bringing it to our attention. Now that we are aware, we have immediately cancelled our relationship with the affiliate in question.

 

it was the first time ive seen it as well. me posted loads of links to your website and never had this happen so glad its been sorted.

 

It's the sort of feature that's built straight into the software so it was likely just a partner utilising a check box option and easy to miss.

 

The implimentation is purposefull and was working how it is designed to. Seems to have been sorted out now though