Sager NP8454 (Clevo PB51RF-G) early impression

I just got my laptop a couple of days ago and I wanted to post a minor review of the setup for anyone interested in the laptop and hopefully this answers some of the questions anyone may have.

Laptop Setup:
- 15.6 Inch 4K OLED Screen
- Intel Core i7 9750-H processor
- NVIDIA 2070 GTX graphics card
- 16 GB ram (2x 8 GB Sticks)
- 2x Samsung EVO 970 500 GB SSD drives in Raid 0
- Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut on both CPU/GPU
- Intel AX200 wifi

Order:
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I placed my order with Gentech PC after a ton of research. They also offered several upgrades as a spring sale which saved me a few dollars. Ken and Kevin both were very responsive and that plays an important role me as I paid for two year of warranty on the laptop through GenTech. The laptop took a little longer than what I expected but they showed patience when I bombarded them with status requests on it.

Delivery and Usage:
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The first thing you see when you turn it on, is the gorgeous OLED display this thing has. The colors pop out. Upgrading from a 5 year old AW machine, this was a welcome sight and its a lot of fun to watch movies and videos on it. One of the best things about this thing is the weight which stands at 5.6 lbs for me. Much better than the near 8lbs of my old machine. Im so happy to have a laptop that my wife cant use to murder me with.

I dug into the laptop as soon as I got it and used 3DMark right out the bat. My scores are as follows:
- Firestrike 1.1 - 17049
- Cloud Gate 1.1 - 25834
- Ice Storm 1.2 - 63182


I did have a couple of scares within the few days of having the laptop. First snafu was when the laptop decided to go blank while I was surfing the internet. The keyboard still had lights on and I could hear sounds but no display was showing. I spent the better half of the night figuring out what happened but I had to connect an external monitor and blindly working on it. After pressing the FN+F7 key multiple times during multiple attempts, I finally got a display and I had to install the drivers for both the 2070 and the Intel gfx card. I had emailed both Ken and Meager here at the forums and they both responded to the issue but by then I had figured out the issue but their responsiveness gave me a piece of mind.

The second snafu I had was my own doing where I bought the Obsidian fan app and did not follow the proper procedure to activate it but John with Obsidian said he would get me squared away.

This brings me to why I had to switch to that app. The laptop even with its beauty and an very acceptable weight, comes with certain issues. First is the battery. I was hoping for a maybe 4-5 hrs but I'm getting 3. I've adjusted the screen and all the other apps but im sure I can tweak it a little more. Second is the Clevo Control Center. My laptop came installed with two of these CC2 and CC3. Both are (for lack of better words) atrocious. They are very restrictive programs and feel like a cheap gimmick and not giving me anything worth while. The fan app doesnt let you setup custom points like I want and I hate that it only allows for either the profiles or full blast. At full blast the laptop can get loud but thats not a concern for me. I installed the control centers and got hit with the infamous Blue keyboard backlit issue. I'm open to any methods of fixing this but Im getting forced to like this blue light.

I'll add more to this as I continue to use the laptop. I dont plan on pushing it or overclocking it. Ive been out of the computer game for a while and im not sure how to undervolt this thing but im welcome to being taught about that.

If anyone has questions, feel free to PM. I'm also planning on selling my AW machine. I just dont meet the requirements of the seller section yet. Hope this helps!

 

Push.

I also got this laptop as we had bought at the same time. I haven't had all of the same issues but the Control Center is absolute trash. It doesn't even work. I also can't even run World of Warcraft Classic (A game nearly 20 years old) without extreme lag spikes and rubber banding. It seems that the computer can't figure out when to kick into gear so I'm constantly getting frozen frames and frame rate spikes. My Lenovo y700 from 5 years ago with 16gb of ram and a XPG 8200 pro 1tb HD starts up and loads all my startup apps in less than 1 minute. This laptop, with an i9-9980HK, 32gb 3000mhz of ram and the same hard drive takes 2-3 minutes to start. Nearly every program takes 2-3x as long to start.

There's something in this computer that's self-sabotaging and ruining it for me. There's no excuse this $$$ laptop with the upgrades can't even run half as quick as my Lenovo Y700 with an i7 6th gen and half the laptop speed and a 960m GPU. lol. PREMA Hasn't responded to any messages I sent asking for his BIOS to possibly help alleviate the issues. I also got the obsidian app. I noticed that the actual Intel driver update app gave me newer Intel drivers than what Obsidian app gave me. Oh, and there is no overclocking, that's a total lie. The control center doesn't work so you can't overclock a damn thing. I'm very concerned that these people selling Sager/Clevo laptops are aware of this serious issues and are still selling them.

 

I was told Prema didn't have anything for the laptop and that since I bought from a non Prema partner I might be out of luck.

I'm using Obsodian's command center. Fan app and keyboard app but the keyboard app does not work and my keyboard has been lit blue ever since i uninstalled CCC3. The Fan app works good now that I have it setup and going. I'm using the default stuff in it.

As far as issues, Not sure how much battery life you are getting but I'm at 3 hrs and I'm not exactly happy with that. It's a 5500mAh battery and should do better than that. What are your 3DMark scores looking like?

 

The 4K OLED screen is more power hungry than the 144Hz or even 240Hz screen models. You will lose some battery life there, at the compromise of a richer display.

Are you using the laptop in Optimus mode, or Discrete mode? Mostly curious because in Discrete mode the Intel graphics are disabled and you should not need to install the drivers. However, if you plan to run in Optimus mode you're all set now with the Intel drivers.

Clevo Control Center 3.0 v1.24 is the latest, I believe. I would only run one version of CCC, and uninstall any older versions. What version(s) did yours ship with?

Quite frankly, I don't understand the switch to Obsidian software over CCC. It claims to be an alternative for CCC, but everyone using it loses their keyboard or some other feature(s). Literally every app in Clevo Control Center works for me, and I'm running ThrottleStop and MSi Afterburner simultaneously with no control/voltage problems. Per-key RGB works (all modes), fan profiles and offset works, overclocking and undervolting the GPU works, undervolting the CPU works, CPU Modes work, Flexikey works; "Everything just works."

This is what I mean. I have 100% the opposite experience running the same software. The GPU overclocks just fine, I've played for weeks with it overclocked. The memory overclocks in BIOS amazingly well. "H" SKU processors have always been multiplier locked and incapable of overclocking so there is no new news there. If you want a "HK" or "K" SKU expect to pay a lot more!

 

OLED draws more power than LCD/IPS. This is almost universal across all brands where OLED is offered along side LCD options.
Unfortunately most battery tests found online will be done with the LCD.

If you're trying to maximize battery life I'd also be looking at the power consumption of the RAID0 NVME drives. Every Watt counts and RAID0 by it's design will mean both drives will be active a lot more than usual.

Rubber-banding is a networking artifact, not a hardware one.

Clevo CC is not great, but it certainly works. Also make sure you grab the version straight off the Clevo site or reseller site as the one on the included media may be old. I use Throttlestop myself (as I don't like the profiling system ClevoCC has).

However, I highly recommend you contact your reseller for a new BIOS revision. If it's anything like mine, it was running an initial release BIOS which was seemingly designed for the 9750H only and was capping out at 85W. With a new BIOS I'm hitting upwards of 140W @ 4.6ghz on all cores which is nothing to scoff at (also, basically the cooling limit on my rig with standard paste).

 

My battery is about an hour 1/2. Clevo CC has version 1.30 now. The CPU overclocking gets stuck on a loading pattern and doesn't do anything. My CPU IS "HK". I paid a lot more for it.. Now my laptop has zero display. I restarted it because, again, I was playing classic WoW.. And my game would literally freeze and repeat sounds, freeze, freeze.. Non stop. I have a killer wireless 1650 with 1 gig internet speeds with a ridiculous home network setup. Network isn't the issue. Even playing WC3 I would have a frame rate freeze for a half second every 15 seconds.

Every program takes 3x longer to load than my Lenovo Y700 from 5 years ago. This is outrageous.

Now I'm sitting here with a laptop that has no display and a lit up keyboard. I've had it less than 20 days. I wrote an email to gentech requesting a refund just now. I didn't drop $2500 to deal with this crap out the gate. I've NEVER experienced this in all my years of buying computers. Gentech is a great company, great guys, but I should have listened to the reviews on Sager/Clevo and stayed away.

 

I'd pay $100 to Prema for him to mod the BIOS, I really don't care at this point. Clevo/Sager can't get their act together and if getting his mod means unleashing the beast within this machine, I'd do it! @Prema @PremaMod

 

Okay.. So if I want to keep this sucker.. Something big needs to happen. Prema has chosen his partnerships so we're SOL with him.

What would I message my reseller what would I specifically say to get a revised BIOS?

 

Prema does not tend to release BIOS files for the machines with mobile CPUs.

Good things to check with high power consumption are no background apps keeping the CPU clocked up, be in the balanced power plan and check the nvidia graphics are not being used by say the web browser by mistake. Activate the nvidia usage icon in the nvidia driver panel from the menus as the top of the driver panel.

 

@Sabs47 thanks a lot for your post, as you know, I was looking for feedback on this laptop. I'm a bit disappointed as a good battery life (and not too much noise) are 2 important requirements for me (even if I can't judge the noise factor). It feels like that globally it's more a miss than a hit for you even if the display is a very nice point. There is not a lot of competition with a 15.6 OLED screen. Concerning the battery life, did the Obsidian software improve that ?

 

I'm using the laptop in hybrid mode. Not sure what caused the driver issue in the beginning but its been fixed and the laptop has been performing well since then.

When it comes to the clevo center, I didnt really like how the cpu fan graphic was restrictive when I tried to create my own profile with it. Obsidian's fan control app helps with that on a much better scale and ever since I started using it, the laptop has been running cooler. I'm not planning on overclocking this laptop. What I really dont like is that everything is tied into the CCC. I've switched over to OBsidian and because of that i've lost control of my keyboard leds and they are now only showing Blue color which cant be changed or turned off. I think it would have been much better to keep it as a separate app instead of tying it down into one big app. Overall I dont think the laptop is bad, its just there are small things that can be improved on. I also had a misconception that OLED would be less power hungry that what it is.

 

Well, the problem of OLED is that it is unpredictable in the way it impacts the battery life. The darker the content, the longer the battery life will be. That means that watching 2 movies for the same duration may give different results. Better watch Star Wars than a particular "bright" movie. I think it's a really great display if battery life is not an issue. If it is, then it's better to choose a more reliable screen in terms of impact on the battery life.

 

That is one of the things im learning with OLED. It is more of a power hog than imaginable. As the reviews for other OLED laptops come out, they have bigger batteries but the battery consumption is on the higher side. At the end of the day it just depends on what you want to do with the laptop and if you are ok with it. I think knowing what I know how, I would have gone with the p65 creator because it has a bigger battery so I would get a little more battery time with it. I still dont regret buying this laptop but only the longevity will tell how things go from here.

 

It can depend on what the screen is displaying too as black pixels can be turned off. Night mode and a black background would help battery consumption.

 

Just ask them if they have the latest version. For reference, the version I have is 1.07.11TMB.

 

Yep, just always ask for the latest fule for your machine.

 

@Sabs47 I've another question for you : did you try to open the case ? I heard that maintenance is not as easy as what you can expect from Clevo (you've to remove the keyboard to change any component or clean the fans - I've read that somewhere).

Another question for anybody : I know external battery exists to extend your battery life on some devices like smartphone. Is this a reliable option for a laptop ? Is there any restriction (apart the price, I guess, which will be higher than for a smartphone) ?

Thanks

 

Didnt try to open the case but from the looks of it, it shouldnt be too hard to open should the need be. I have a 2 year warranty on the laptop so I dont want to void that in any way.

External battery is a good option if you know you will be needed it and you dont want to carry the charger. Personally for me, the laptop wont leave my home much, if at all, so i'm always near my charger. I perfer to carry that over an external bank but there are plenty of good ones available in the market that can hold a decent charged

 

The case does indeed have 2 screws that need to be removed from the KEYBOARD side to open the bottom panel.
It's not as easy as the typical Clevo rigs, but it's not really "difficult" either, just more time-consuming.

If you're careful, you don't need to actually remove the keyboard completely, just pop it out and move it out of the way to access the screws.
From what I can see, you also don't have to actually put the screws back in, but they do help with overall keyboard deck stability.

They're not great for anything other than Ultrabooks. The portable power batteries are very current limited (maybe ~40W-50W typically) so you're liable to over-draw with the pb51.
If you heavily throttle the CPU/GPU it will work, but remember that the laptop will "think" that's it's plugged into AC and not necessarily run using the typical battery limits/throttles.

 

I'm interested in knowing how much battery time everyone is getting out of the PB51RF.

 

I only ever run in dGPU mode (G-Sync) and I get about 3.5 hours.

When on battery I usually run about 50-60% brightness and I have a Throttlestop profile set to 3.6ghz all-core (5ghz on 2 cores only) and a -120mv undervolt.

 

It's surprising that with G-Sync (so no Optimus), you seem to have a better battery life than with an OLED.

Is it a good display @Stooj ? Clevo displays are generally just average (except for the OLED screen, because there is only one panel available at the moment)

 

Could you guide me as to how to switch it to Dgpu?

The display is amazingly good. Its the primary reason I'm putting up with the laptop's short comings. I ran Ghost Recon Wildlands in very high settings and ran without a hitch. Every thing looks better with the OLED panel

 

The 144hz/1080p panel is actually very good IMO. It's the AUO B156HAN08.0 which is AHVA (IPS-like technology, not related to traditional VA) and a full 8-bit panel which avoids some of the ugly gradient issues of older 6-bit 144hz/IPS panels used in laptops. It's the same panel used in the Alienware m15 and MSI GS65 among others.

It gets quite bright which is surprising. I work in a very well lit office (huge bay windows) and I run it at around 60% brightness to match levels on my Dell U2917W which runs at 100% brightness. I don't have proper test equipment but I suspect it's somewhere around 300 cd/m2 at said 60% brightness level. Max brightness is probably something more like 350 cd/m2 which NBC has tested on the Alienware m15.

The setting is available in the BIOS. I'm not sure exactly which model you have, but the setting is not present in OLED variants.

 

Got an answer from GentechPC and Sager. The battery time on this laptop for just regular surfing is around 3 hrs and if you run anything graphic intensive it drops to 1 hrs.

That's a breaking point for me. I'm going to start looking at the Aero

 

Or there is the non OLED option which does run a fair bit longer.

 

Indeed. In many cases (ie white backgrounds) the OLED screen draws as much as 4x the power of a typical IPS panel.

On battery, power consumption is in the range of 10W->20W (for H-series), so literally every watt counts. To take it to the extreme even things like DIMM count will contribute (each stick consumes ~1-1.5W).

 

Yes even 1w makes an difference at that point.

 

Well the laptop is on its way back. Unfortunately the battery time was a deal breaker. I'm looking at the Aero Oled now. I'll post back once everything gets settled with the return and new order. I'm spoiled by the OLED display.

The NP8454 is a solid laptop if you want to use it plugged in but I don't think it's a good travel companion with the low battery time for the OLED version

 

do you have to pay restocking fee ?

 

Ken at Gentech told me no restocking since I'm just taking store credit and going to an Aero Oled

 

are you not concerned about gigabyte support ? from what I heard they are not so good

 

I am but I'm also buying support from Gentech. I'm getting it done with Thermal Grizzly. The laptop is good enough review for me to take a chance with it. I'm not a fan of Dell or HP with their Oleds

 

May I know what's wrong with Dell? I'm now considering sager or alienware

 

Dell is having heating issues and they don't offer the GTX cards for their laptops. It's the TI series. Sager is a good option if you don't want to move the laptop. They told me the laptops are desktop replacements so battery time is not really there.

It just depends on what your application is. What's your goal with the laptop?

 

Some models still have better battery life than others though the desktop CPU models are on the bottom of that pile.

 

If battery life is important, make sure the system has a muxer, so you can enable Optimus when desired, and turn it off when you want GSync.

 

Alienware 15 has oled and RTX 2070 max q I'm actually considering that

 

I just saw that. They are about the same price as the Aero. I have to stay with Gentech to avoid the restocking and honestly they have been working with me on the issue so that's a plus.

The Alienware is definitely more attractive at the same price. If I had the option I would go with it.

 

Alienware right now is at $2280 with only 16GB of RAM and 512 SSD but it only uses max q while sager uses the full one
by the way you mentioned a blank screen on your original post and you installed a driver what was that about ? because I had a clevo laptop before that gave be blank screens and after a while it died

 

So im looking at the Alienware 15 oled and it comes with a standard 76 watt battery. Reviews are saying it will last around 4 hr max. That's still better than the Sager

The black screen I had was a driver issue. I'm not sure what caused it but everything was working on the laptop except for the screen. I had to connect an external monitor to get the laptop to work and then reinstall the drivers. I'm waiting on Sager to process the rma which hopefully gets done by tomorrow and then order the Aero.

 

Why is sager involved in this? i thought you're dealing with gentech

 

Gentech told me they contacted Sager for the battery issue. I sent the laptop back to Gentech and I was told Sager would inspect it and make everything is there and then I get my refund. Hence the wait. They got the laptop this past tuesday

 

OK please let us know how that goes this is why i'm weary dealing with resellers

 

Will do for sure

 

Also if you have been following the BGA Hatred thread, cue @Papusan , that Alienware has been leading the charge down the BGA path, and have been soldering more and more to the motherboard, including RAM, Wifi, CPU, GPU, so I don't know how upgradable that Alienware would be.

You may wish to consider this vs the Clevo. @Sabs47

 

You can’t come nearer an Apple-book. Almost as Tim Cook has taken over the Alienware brand from Dell and pushed his first Windows-book ever. The Ultimate tragedy in the Gaming book world. Soldered on storage next and you have a 15 inch phablet/smartphone.

 

You can get closer, you just need more glue.

 

That's interesting. I did not realize that. I've been out of the computing game for 5 plus years and so much has changed. I'm learning something new everyday. My concern with soldering everything in such a manner would be the Longevity of the laptop. That's a key part for me considering my last Alienware is from 2014 and still running strong.

 

Basically, if anything goes wrong, you are talking about a very expensive motherboard swap. No other real option, unless you avoid Alienware. On my Clevo, I have BGA CPU and GPU, but everything else is socketed.