Received my d-900c yesterday

I received my pre-ordered clevo d900c from RJ Tech yesterday. I ordered one without a cpu but with a 160gb drive and 2 gb ddr2-800 ram.

First impressions: RJ Tech installed the HD and memory and provided a very nicely packaged kit, inside the included carry bag, of all the extras I ordered, spare battery, 2nd ac adpater, etc. I pulled the hard drive because I wanted to order a second for a possible raid combination in the future and found that they had upgraded the hard drive to a seagate momentus 7200.2. This was cool. They also provided the 4965-wifi card. Two CD rom disks came with the unit one for XP and one for Vista.

Installation of the CPU took about 10 minutes, I used a core 2 extreme x6800The heat sink for the cpu weighs about a pound. It is copper and its shape dictates how you will mount it on the cpu. The processor drops into a standard desktop cpu slot with a tension lever and metal retention bracket. I used artic silver ceramique for my thermal compound, although the notebook comes with a small tube of thermal compound should you want to use it.

The AC adapter power brick is almost the size of a real brick and weighs the same. This thing is huge. One con with this unit is the length of the cord that goes from the brick to the laptop is much shorter than most other laptop ac adpaters. This means you must keep the brick on the desk near the laptop or have a very low desk. The brick is so heavy it can not dangle in the air. I just put it behind the laptop.

The battery is held in place with several slot screws. The bad news is that there is no quick change to a spare battery. The good news is that these screws can be undone with a dime or penny for a screwdriver.

I puchased a new oem copy of win xp and the machine posted on the first try, found the cd and began formatting the hard drive.
I encountered no problems installing win xp.

Driver installation was tricky
The driver disk is labeled 1.0 for win xp. The versions of the drivers were older than the clevo ones Goph posted a few days ago on the eurocom site. I opted for the eurocom drivers. Except for the wifi driver as they newer one on the eurocom site is 180mb. Download them in advance the eurocom site was sending them at 14-19 kb/sec.
Trying to use the intel driver on the cd-rom gave an error: no device found! I knew there was a wifi card so I had to wait for the newer eurocom driver. It installed without problems. Probably my fault here mixing an older driver with the newer ones.

Driver order of install is actually laid out on the cd rom so just do the same order with the newer drivers from eurocom. I reboot after each driver install.

Glitche 2: the bluetooth driver is offered as a 3rd party, at first I skipped this and used the one from windows which worked fine but was limited in its device support. So I installed the 3rd party driver, it worked fine but was a limited version of a commercial product which pops up at every restart asking if you want to upgrade, should have known.


Fit and finish of the laptop:
I ordered the highest resoultion screen and it has no dead pixels-whew!
The screen brightness is not as high as some other laptops I own but I have no experience with 17 inch screens. I would rate brightness a B+, as turned all the way up, I still feel that it could be just 1-2 steps brighter. Color and clarity are excellent.

The keyboard is full size, with some mild flex, nothing too serious, definately usable.

Monitor hinges are wide but I can not tell if they are metal as they are covered with black plastic.

The base of the LCD gets warm.
Only mild heat is detected on the left palm reset.

Camera works fine.

I am using a Zalman laptop cooler

There is a shiny gray plastic cover for the palmrest, definately gets finger prints, I would have preferred a matte type of plastic or metal.
The lcd is framed with the same type of shiny plastic only black.

LED placement: this is my only major complaint, the caps lock, hd access, lcd are not readily visible but are shown in a single slit of lcd located above the keyboard function keys. Checking for hd activity you have to lean and look down to see the light. The base of the monitor has three large lcds which I wish were for hd access, instead theyshow your power, battery charging power, and I believe audio, the symbol is hard to read as it is stamped into the shiny black plastic that frames the monitor.

Software I wish was included:
Power management: I am using the windows power management as the included cds had none.

DVD playback software: none included. Anyone have a good rec for a free vesion? I ordered the DVD RW drive with the unit and I thought it would come with some type of burning software as well. Any recommendations for dvd writing software?

Noise: its not bad, hitting fn +1 toggles the fans to high and they are fine, my older sony vaio had a louder, more annoying fan. This is good IMO.

Performance:
So far only 1 benchmark and no screen shots yet.

Super Pi 1.1e 2 million: 42 seconds!. Not bad!

When I get more time I will add more to this post. Feel free to ask questions and benchmark requests: I am pretty selective with my benchmarks as I do not feel they are worth the risk of screwing up the system. I can tell its quick simply by the way its perfoming the tasks I purchased it for: small molelcule rotein docking and 3d rendering.

Was it worth it? Yes. I had the cpu already as a pull from a crappy desktop that died so for me it makes sense. My asus w7j was too tiny to take home and do serious work. Its luggable, not portable but I purchased a rolling bag so we will see how it holds up.

 

Considering the Clevo M590K with a ML-44 overclocked to 2.6GHz scores 1min 26sec in the SuperPI 2 million, that's a nice x2 performance increase over AMD for a single core test. ;P

RJ Tech is quite awesome.

One note, I think you have LED and LCD switched. LCD can be considered the screen, and LED the lights for buttons and etc.

Did this config come with one or two 7950GTX cards?

 

I have only 1 7950gtx card in mine. Thanks for the correction, yes I meant LED when describing the hd activity light etc.

 

Congrats on the new beast.

Can you do a wPrime mulithreaded benchmark for me, its much more reliable than SuperPI (single-threaded)? And Post it. I want this notebook to get top honors in the hall of fame.

As for your CD/DVD software, most of the time you should have a Nero CD included. If note, you can just call RJtech and they will just send you an OEM version.

As for the LCD hinges, it should be the same as the D900K (that I have), its just for show, underneath the plastic hinges are steel hinges that are really doing the work.

As for the Power Management, make sure to install Notebook Hardware Control. [Leave the setting at Dynamic Switching.]

As for the CPU.... be ready to pop-in a Quad-Core .... because it is about to ship with those.
______________________________
In any case here is my pre-requisites for a high-end notebook owner:

1) Battery: to maintain the longevity of any rechargeable battery
- you must NEVER overcharge it [especially for long durations of time] by keeping it plugged into AC
- when it reaches 100% you should unplug it and let it discharge to 5-15%, then plug it back to power
- OR you can just charge it to 50%+ and remove the battery and store in cool place [remember to use it occasionally to charge and discharge it].

2.) Heat: to prevent a healthy notebook from overheating
- ALWAYS use the notebook on a hard & flat surface
- RECOMMENDED to be used on a notebook cooler... namely the Zalman ZM-NC1000
- (for Clevo's) ALWAYS use the Fan Speed Toggle (Fn+F2) to switch all fans in the notebook to Max Speed (defaults at Auto Speed) when gaming and such.
- check your fans underneath occasionally (at least once a month) for any dust clogs [clean them out with Q-tips and air cans/compressors]
- ALWAYS monitor the temps (CPU, GPU, HDD, etc..) to watch for fluctuations, which would indicate overheating

By doing these simple things, your entire system will easily last for more than 3 years.
_________________________________

-Gophn

 

@Gophn,
Hi I dont see Notebook hardware control anywhere on the driver disk. Is this a third party program?

Thanks

 

go here, for you notebook monitoring needs:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=81852

 

Hi Gophn, NHC will not run on this machine tried installing it twice and tried the dell bug fix version. Loaded MS.net 2.0 first so I dont really have any answers. I am running wprime 1.43 right now the 32M result was 30.66 sec
the 1024m result is still calculating its at 25% and 230 sec so 920 sec possibly. This doesnt appear to be too fast compared to the hall of fame folks.

 

Hmm.. try this version:
http://www.addict3d.org/index.php?page=downloadfile&ID=5356

I use it and it works fine with my D900K.

WOW. nice score... although if you can beat 30.265s, you will be #1 in the NBR Hall of Fame.

Optimize your score by:
- disabling System Restore (an almost useless resource hogger)
- disable any Anti-Virus and/or Spyware utility
- Switch Appearance (in Display Properties) to Windows Classic Style

Tell us how it goes.

 

@Gophn the link for NHC at the addict3d site is dead. Not sure if this program is compatible, the program crashes when running Error: selectindex -5 is not valid. I am happy with the wprime scores. Nothing optimized and 30 sec is ok to me. If NHC doesnt work, are there any other utilities I could use to monitor the this machine? I have tried Mobilemeter after NHC and it works but for some reason it does not show the battery charge/discharge information. Also I am curious whether this machine will cycle the fan speeds on its own based on the cpu temp or does the end user do it manually using fn +1? This is my first whitebox type build, I like the computer but I am realizing that some utilities are definately not included. Right now I am relying on winxp powermanagement to tell me how much battery life is remaining. I have a spare hard drive that I intend to put vista on. This was one of my main reasons for choosing this notebook is that it can hold 3 hard drives, I prefer separate boot drives so its just a matter of selecting the boot drive in the bios. The bios of the D900C (my tag actualy says d901C) is very limited IMO, the advanced settings does not allow you to enable or disable speed step or any of the throttling bios parameters. My cpu idles at 1.5 ghz and steps up to 2.93 ghz only under load, I suspect some benchmarks would improve by finding a way to turn this feature off. Maybe the bios will be updated to allow the end user access.

 

Did RJTech put a bage on the unit?

 

Here is a working link:
EDIT: removed link, bad file...

 

Tried the link three times, all three gave me corrupt archives.

 

DANG IT... stupid links..

HERE IT IS:
(my upload)
Notebook Hardware Control 1.10 b3
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=HRGS19N2

Enjoy.

 

Wow... never seen Gophn upset.. anways.. RJTech did not badge my laptop.. in fact that kinda bugged me at first because instead I got a hole in the face of the laptop where the badge is suppost to go. Still trying to think what I want to put in the spacer for it.

 

@Charr
No bage on the machine.

 

LOL. I was not upset or mad really.... just annoyed.

In any case, when I built my notebook from barebones, I have a metallic mirror-like square on top of my LCD casing that is blank.

I never cared to put a sticker there... maybe later when I design a cool sticker and then place it there.

Its kind of nice not having a brand.... makes people ask: "What kind of notebook is that?"

Then my reply: "Its custom" OR... "Well... it aint no Dell... thats for sure"

 

yeah but sometimes I would rather not have to repeat the same answer over and over again..

 

@Gophn,
Yes the 1.10b3 NHC works. It reports the cpu speed at 2.172 ghz, CPUZ shows it at 1.5ghz, at idle for both programs. Under full load (2 x superpi) cpuz correclty reports 2.93ghz for the cpu, NHC does not change. I suspect that NHC may not be set up to read the desktop cpu. I have tried coretemp and intel thermal analysis tool (Desktop monitoring programs) which both work well on this machine.

 

thats perfectly right.

Most notebooks are set to be clocked near 1-1.5GHz when you are idle and then it Dynamically Switch to Full Clock Speed. Its pretty much for power optimization and power saving.

Seems fine to me, my CPU clock is at 1000MHz at regular casual use, until I start gaming or doing some video encoding... then the CPU clock switch to full 2.2GHz.