Please check my spec: XMG P722 (Clevo P370EM/Sager NP9370) from MYSN by Schenker Notebooks.

Hi,

I’m looking to buy a new gaming laptop and have narrowed it down to an XMG P722 (Clevo P370EM/Sager NP9370) from MYSN by Schenker Notebooks.

Link: mySN UK | XMG | by Schenker Notebooks - XMG P722 17.3" Pro Gaming Notebook

This is the current spec I’m looking at, would appreciate some feedback. Mainly is there anything I’m missing or should really know about, and should this be able to play modern games at high settings now, and modern games at reasonable settings a few years down the line. Please note the system comes to £1954 + Delivery, which is pretty close to my absolute maximum of £2000, so if I need to add something that’s more expensive, I’ll have to take something else away.

My Spec:

Display
1 x 17.3" (43.9cm) Full-HD 1920x1080 Matte £0.00
Graphics Card
1 x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M 4096MB GDDR5 | TDP: 100W £239.17
Processor
1 x Intel Core i7-3630QM Quad Core - 2.40 - 3.40GHz 6MB 45W "Ivy Bridge" £0.00
Memory
1 x 16GB (2x8192) SO-DIMM DDR3 RAM 1600MHz CORSAIR Vengeance (only with Quadcore-CPU) £70.00
Hard Drive
1 x 750GB SATA-II 7200rpm Seagate Momentus 7200.5 (ST9750420AS) £17.50
Hard Drive 2
1 x 750GB SATA-II 7200rpm Seagate Momentus 7200.5 (ST9750420AS) £50.83
Optical Drive
1 x Blu-ray Combo (Blu-ray reader / DVD RW) - without Software £24.17
WIFI Card
1 x Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6235 (with Bluetooth) £17.50
Keyboard
1 x Backlit Keyboard UK English £0.00
Warranty
1 x Platinum Warranty : 48 Month Collect & Return (inc parts, labour, support, shipping) £140.00
Operating System
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit £63.33
Office Software
1 x Microsoft Office 2010 Home and Student 1 user 3 PCs £74.17
Power Cable
1 x UK Power Cable £0.00

Games I would want to be playing: X-Com: Enemy Unknown, Total War: Shogun 2, Civilization V, Hearts of Iron 3, Total War: Rome 2 (when it’s out), Company of Heroes 2 (when it’s out), but also older games like Galactic Civilizations 2, Civ 4, World in Conflict etc. Also other new games as they come out.

(You can find my original thread in the “What Notebook Should I Buy” forum here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/what-notebook-should-i-buy/696029-gaming-laptop-united-kingdom.html)

Thank you in advance.

All the Best,

Union Jack.

 

Hi mate, finally decided then
it shows how prices are coming down as this wasnt available a few months back and my P502 was just over £2000

are you dead set against the P702 then which can have exactly the same spec but save quite a bit on the chassis.
my only real advice would of been as you are going for the top of the range its slightly being let down by not having a SSD like i got below. i know nothing about the Seagate Momentus though so hopefully someone could shatter my idea. maybe just buy the one and then upgrade yourself at a later stage which would be cheaper. its the one great thing about clevo's that they are user upgradable. i use ebuyer a lot and they have some good prices.

the platinum warranty is the best you can get so im glad to see you went for that. the amount of times i slag off another companys warranty for being very misleading and not covering diddly squat after the first year.

anyway, microsoft office. have you looked into open office > Apache OpenOffice - The Free and Open Productivity Suite which is free and compatible with microsoft. that would save £74 and also one less hardrive saving £50 and theres £124 pound towards a crucial M4 SSD at £296

hopefully someone else can give some more feedback. glad i could help on the what should i buy thread.

edit:
scrap the 702 idea as i just checked the specs on both and see the 680 upgrade on the 702 is £403 and on the 722 its £287
it was £410 upgrade on mine

 

Hi MrDJ,

Yeah I seem to have decided on a Clevo based system as they seem to be the best (gaming power to cost) and I’m not paying out for extra lights, looks and brand names that I wouldn’t really use. And after checking various resellers, XMG does seem to offer the best Warranty and reasonable parts prices. I’ve got a lot of use out of warranties on laptops over the years so it’s well worth it.

Re: Solid State Drives

What’s the real advantage of an SSD over a traditional HDD? I’ve done some research but I’m still not clear. You seem to have to pay a lot of money for a smaller hard drive with an SSD, which kind of puts me off. But I don’t want the system being held back by the Hard Drive, if it’s going to badly affect the gaming and mean I’m not getting so much out of the other components.

Also, anyone know anything about Seagate® Momentus® XT Solid State Hybrid Drive? It seems to be promising the best of both SSD and HDD and it’s only +£45 for the same capacity, so might be an option.

My thinking behind getting the 2x 750GB is having a lot of space so that I can use drive 1 for operating system, multiple games etc and drive 2 for storing documents, photos etc. Basically, so I don’t run out of space anytime soon.

And thanks, you have been very helpful MrDJ.

All the Best,

Union Jack.

 

I have two drives inside my P702. Win7 installation + all applications and drivers in Samsung 830 256GB SSD. All games, steam, origin, photos, music + other stuff are in Seagate Momentus XT 500GB drive. Samsung SSD is lightning fast and 256GB is just enough for OS and applications. Momentus XT has algorihtms witch "learns" what files are used often or not. XT 500GB is older (first gen.) and slower than XT 750GB (2nd gen.).
I just thought what kind of performanse will be two XT 750GB RAID 0?

 

An SSD is still massively faster than a hybrid, and are a lot cheaper these days. It's something you could buy separately to save some money. It is worth every penny IMO.

 

I agreed that!! Just go for SSD...

 

i received my P502 on 10th august and ive got 313gb left of my 512 ssd.
my boot up time is about 20-30 seconds on my old clevo with a 7200 western digital compared to 12 seconds with my ssd and im already on the forum.

just found a video with 3 hard drives




this video is from 2008 and ssd's have got soooo much faster now

 

Amazing congratulations, seems like it is going to be awesome

 

I have a P370Em barebone with 7970M CF for sale. Shipping from germany.

 

You have to list your system in the members market if you want to sell it on here.

 

Firstly, I just want to say how much I appreciate the help that everyone has given on these forums, both here and in the other thread. Without it I’d still be completely lost and you’ll all be getting +Rep from me. (I’ve given some of you +Rep already, but there’s a limit to how much it will let me give in one day. )

Secondly SSDs. After much research and considering factors like price, speed and capacity, I’ve decided not to get an SSD. To put it simply, I cannot afford to buy an SSD with what I consider to be sufficient capacity for what I want to do with this computer. For example, to get a 500GB SSD with this system is £300+. I’ve already increased my budget from where I started out, so I really am at the limit of what I can afford. I appreciate that I could get it cheaper if I did it myself, but I’m simply not confident in my technical abilities to get it right and I also like the convenience of having the entire system covered by the single warranty.

Instead, with the money saved on not getting Microsoft Office (thanks MrDJ) I’m going for two 750GB Seagate Momentus XT Solid State Hybrid Drive. After doing more research (I’ve been busy) it seems to offer the best compromise between speed, cost and capacity. It also has a lot of good reviews on a variety of sites, including NotebookReviews. While I appreciate that this means the system won’t be as fast as it could be with an SSD, I think it seems to be the best option for me within my means.

So the final system should look like this:
(Note: Prices all seem to be off from when I customise it, so I’m guessing these are prices without VAT)

Display
1 x 17.3" (43.9cm) Full-HD 1920x1080 Matte £0.00
Graphics Card
1 x NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M 4096MB GDDR5 | TDP: 100W £239.17
Processor
1 x Intel Core i7-3630QM Quad Core - 2.40 - 3.40GHz 6MB 45W "Ivy Bridge" £0.00
Memory
1 x 16GB (2x8192) SO-DIMM DDR3 RAM 1600MHz CORSAIR Vengeance (only with Quadcore-CPU) £70.00
Hard Drive
1 x 750GB / 8GB SATA-III SSH 7200rpm Seagate Momentus XT 7200.1 (ST750LX003) £55.00
Hard Drive 2
1 x 750GB / 8GB SATA-III SSH 7200rpm Seagate Momentus XT 7200.1 (ST750LX003) £88.33
Optical Drive
1 x Blu-ray Combo (Blu-ray reader / DVD RW) - without Software £24.17
WIFI Card
1 x Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6235 (with Bluetooth) £17.50
Keyboard
1 x Backlit Keyboard UK English £0.00
Warranty
1 x Platinum Warranty : 48 Month Collect & Return (inc parts, labour, support, shipping) £140.00
Operating System
1 x Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium 64 Bit £63.33
Office Software
1 x Microsoft Office 2010 60-day trial version (only when Windows 7 or 8 is ordered) £0.00
Power Cable
1 x UK Power Cable £0.00

So including VAT, Delivery etc it comes to £1989.09. I should hopefully place my order within the next week, just got to finish getting the money together.

Once again, thank you everyone for your help. I really appreciate the time and effort you’ve all made to help.

All the Best,

Union Jack.

 

You should not put momentus drives in a raidcarray, just so you are aware.

 

your welcome mate. thats what we are here for.
it was this great forum that pointed me in the direction of clevo after my nightmare with alienware and ive never looked back since.

honestly updating your hard drive at a later stage is simple. take base plate off and its there in front of you. think its 2 or 4 screws and it lifts out and just replace with a new one.

i will upload the user manual for you when i get a chance so you can take a gander inside.

 

Sorry, what's a raidcarray?

 

Was typing on my phone, "Raid array" where you join the two drives together in some fashion to be treated as one drive.

 

user manual pdf XMG P722 (Clevo P370EMSager NP9370).pdf

 

Ah right. Thanks.

No, I'll be keeping the drives seperate.

 

Thanks MrDJ. I'll take a look at that later.

 

One thing to keep in mind with a powerful system like this - remember to clean it whenever it gets dusty.
Download this: OrbLog » Blog Archive » GPU Observer – Sidebar Gadget
And this: Windows Desktop Gadgets - All CPU Meter Version 4.4
You need this too: Core Temp
Use these to monitor your temperatures while gaming and while idle.

You will be ordering from MySN (Schenker Notebooks) and the guys there are awesome. They install Arctic-MX4 as thermal compound (their representative on these forums told me this), so you should expect the best heat conductivity and low core temperatures in your machine while under load.
Measure the temps with the 2 gadgets (the third is used in tandem with the second) and observe over the weeks and months if the temperatures tend to rise.

If they rise by more than 10'C, then its time for a good clean-up of the fans and heatsinks!
When that time comes, dont hesitate to write in the forums, we will give you a long and detailed guide on how to clean and maintain your laptop from the inside.

Congrats on your purchase, I wish you pleasant times with your laptop!

 

^bob1man, side gadgets run away run away havnt used them for ages ever since the warning from microsoft that they had been hacked.

tons of free software/benchmark and to monitor and keep clean your lappy can be found > http://forum.notebookreview.com/win...rything-you-need-monitor-your-temps-more.html

 

Just clean i every 3-6 months depending on how dusty your environment is regardless of temperatures.

 

It's been fixed and pinpointed by Microsoft, but they say that several other loopholes might be there.

I feel its ok to use them, just make sure you know what tools you use and what they monitor...

 

Union Jack,
In my opinion, you won't really need 16GB of RAM. Unless you're doing some really heavy video editing. I would suggest getting 8GB now. You can always add 8 more later on. That will save you some money.

Also, re-consider getting a SSD! Instead of getting the Momentus HDDs, just get one SSD. Buy your HDD separately. It will save you a ton of money. Look at the costs, you're spending £55.00 to get one Momentus & then £88.33 to get another one!

Installing a HDD/SSD is the simplest thing to do on a Sager!

An alternative, if you want to save cash: Buy the configuration with just one normal 500GB HDD. Don't get Windows 7 pre-installed. Then buy an SSD within your budget separately & buy Windows separately. Put your SSD in when you get it & install Windows.

Also, if you're not going to playback Blu-Ray discs right away, consider getting a normal DVD-R to save some cash (may not be much saved). You can always get a Blu-Ray player later or upgrade the DVD-R yourself.

Hope this helps!