Various questions I want to ask here before buying a new Clevo laptop.

It's been years and it's time for me to finally buy a new laptop, but first I want to ask you guys a bunch of questions about some things I'm still not sure about.

1) First of all, is there a "best" Clevo model at the moment?

2) Can you explain to me who exactly produces a computer motherboard? I was under the impression that Intel makes (all?) motherboards, but then sometimes I see other brand names attached to the same exact model of motherboard, like Asus, MSI, Gigabyte... But if they are different companies, why is the motherboard model the same? Is it like Intel basically creates a blueprint on how the motherboard has to be created, and then all companies produce that same product on their own and put their name on it? If I buy a Clevo, is the motherboard inside of it made by Intel? By Clevo? By who?

3) What are exactly the benefits of having a desktop motherboard in a laptop? For example, what's the benefit of having a Z490 (desktop) vs a WM490 (mobile) motherboard? I thought you could only put a desktop CPU on a desktop motherboard, and that was the point of having a desktop motherboard in a laptop, but I've seen there are models with a mobile type of motherboard + desktop CPU, so I guess that's not the case.

4) Where can I find the retail base cost of Nvidia cards? Comparing TFLOPS of theoretical performance I could roughly calculate a percentage of how much more powerful a card is than another, but I would like to know if the increase in price is higher or lower than the increase in performance. But couldn't find a price for mobile cards. Specifically 2070 Refresh, 2070 Super, and 2080 Super (all mobile versions).

5) RAM question: for the exact same price and type of RAM, which brand would be better and why? 2x16 GB DDR4 2666 Corsair Vengeance or 2x16 GB DDR4 2666 Samsung?

6) Is there any Clevo with touchscreen panel?

7) Can you explain to me what's the deal with Quadro GPU cards? It seems that they are much more powerful than whatever is the latest in "normal" GPUs, let's say, the Nvidia 20 series, right now, but they don't seem to be that popular. Why don't I ever hear any fuzz about Quadro cards? Are they not intended for gaming?

8) Some websites I've been checking for laptop models mention "supports up to 4 monitors". Eh, what does that mean exactly? There's 4 connecting ports to attach 4 separate additional monitors? Normal laptops can only connect 1 additional monitor?

Some of these might be dumb questions but please take a moment to reply if you know more than me. I try to learn as I go. Thanks!

 

First thing First...
Clevo/TongFang are makers of a different kind. I would consider them as "Enthusiasts' Builders" that they're different from most other big names you know. It's like AMG of Benz, and M3 of Beemer, or Shelby to FORD... Except that Clevo/TongFang builds the base, sells to resellers around the world for rebadge with the resellers' marque, with further internals offered by resellers depending on what they can source, before selling to potential buyers.

Ok. To ur queries... as possible to my knowledge as i can.
1. From Clevo, INTEL side of product, currently the x170 that stirs alot of interest.
AMD, with their NH5#A@@ variants of laptops where the # stands for the type of styling on the LCD lid cover, @ for the type of graphic cards used in base build.

3. As i've mentioned, these are base builds. Owners are Enthusiasts that they tend to do their own internal change of components to play around for performance. From the changing RAMs, to HardDisks, to CPUs, and even to the type of thermal pastes of their choice.

5. Some would pay for the name of Marque, some would pay for the specification. There are brand followers, there are detail followers.
Let's say, Crucial produced a 2666mhz 16GB CL20 SoDimm marketed under the brand Ballistix, Samsung produced a 2666mhz 16GB CL19 SoDimm with no special marketing brand. Ballistix sells @ $15 extra than Sammy. Which one will u go for? To me, in general, the focus would fall on the size of the RAM, then the clocking speed which most of us will look on. However, the one "little crucial" field which affects the performance... the CL value. Hence, i myself may not go for "Attention Grabber" since once installed, nobody will be able to identify what kind of RAM i'm using.

7. The Quadros are mostly used in workstations where gaming performance will be lack lusture. Quadros are good for ACAD, 3D image rendering, or content creation works. But not gaming!

8. My shallow understanding... Different monitors can be connected to different ports at the same time. Beside Display PortOut, HDMI, external monitors can also be connected thru Thunderbolt USB-Cs.

2, 4, 6 shall be left for others who have better knowledge than me.

 

2) Intel provides the specifications/blueprint to motherboard manufactures. The process doesn't matter a whole lot. They standardize on model numbers across the board so it easier to understand the what specs the motherboard was designed for. It's also easier to compare across different manufactures too. In general Intel may come up with some of the specifications for the motherboard but they really don't spend a whole lot of time optimizing and adding other features to their boards. It's not their bread and butter. The other manufactures (asus, gigabyte, MSI, ect...) optimize their boards and have more features and tend to be better overall.

*Edit* I'm new to Clevo but I believe the brand motherboard will vary depending on the model. The one I bought comes with a Gigabyte board. As far as I know Clevo doesn't make their own boards.

 

1 - Clevo has a lot of chassis, or in other words, laptop models, the "best" only depends on your needs and your budget.

2 - Intel makes the CPU and the chipset, and has guidelines on how to implement things like CPU power supplies(the so called VRMs), RAM trace routing, trace routing between CPU and chipset, and how to implement the chipset, BIOS chips, and auxiliary chips for things like standby power supplies, power sequencing, how to get SATA, USB, I2C and other interfaces working, Intel also makes reference motherboard, but that is mainly for the desktop market, on the laptop side there isn't much standardisation because each laptop chassis requires different form factors and more or less ports due to chassis constrains. Clevo is an Original Design Manufacturer, Clevo did the original Alienware laptops for example, but their main target are system resellers, Clevo the company doesn't sell any laptop to end costumers, they sell to stores that apply a brand and finish the laptops(add CPU in case of socketed chassis, add the display, add RAM, add storage, swap the keyboard, swap the WiFi card if the costumer paid for a different one, apply branding). Clevo had their motherboards made by Quanta and/or Pegatron(not so sure now), but those are mega factories that make motherboards for almost all laptop brands in the world, just because Quanta makes all the HP and Acer boards doesn't mean your Clevo has an HP or Acer board, Clevo boards are designed or comissioned by Clevo, and Clevo only, you can replace boards on a laptop besides one made for that same chassis.

3 - Its not a desktop motherboard, its a desktop chipset, different things. A desktop chipset usually has more PCIe lanes, more SATA, more USB, and in the case of the Z series chipsets, allows for overclocking, but there are some mobile chipsets that also allow for overclocking, like the CMxxx series, the mobile chipsets are lower TDP, and I expect them that they will start cutting on performance if you really load them, because if you run a RAID0 of a couple NVMe SSDs you can see the chipset temperature rising fast if you load those SSDs, so they can appear to be equal, but they are not really the same.

4 - Nvidia doesn't lists prices for Mobile GPUs, you need to sign an NDA to know that, MXM is more or less a dead format, so in the case of an MXM GPU assume twice the cost of the same GPU in a desktop card format. Above 2060 the price/performance ratio drops like a rock, 500€/$ price different between a 2070 and a 2080 is expected, but you wont get 500€/$ more performance out of the card, due to being TDP limited its more like 15-20% in most use cases.

5 - Depends more on what CL each RAM kit has, if equal, just buy the cheapest one.

6 - Dont know any Clevo that has touchscreen, maybe search on their website for such a model.

7 - Quadro GPUs allow you to use Quadro drivers, the difference in performance in software like SolidWorks or Siemens NX can be over 6x despite the cores being the same as used on equivalent GTX/RTX cards, Nvidia neuters the way a consumer card performs so they can sell the more expensive Quadro GPUs, in laptops the Quadros are super starved in power, the RTX5000 has the same CUDA cores as a 2080, but performs at 2060 levels because its limited to 80Watts TDP. If all you do is gaming, you dont need a Quadro at all.

8 - It means exactly that, there are lots of laptops with only one HDMI port, or one DP port, or two, or three, depends on the laptop model, not all Clevos have enough ports for 4 displays, and 4 displays can be misleading, that means the internal display and 3 external displays, NOT 4 external displays.

 

Thanks for the replies so far. I admit that I don't quite understand some of the terms or meanings but I am researching and trying to make sense of it. A few comments to reply to the replies:

1) Yeah the Clevo would be for gaming and some music production. I have a pretty good budget since I saved up for years so I just wanted to know if there's like a "best model money can buy" or a model that is considered the top of the class for gaming.

2) Okay so first of all I have come to realize that motherboard and chipset are not the same thing. So when I see different brand names with the same numbers (like, let's say "Asus Z490" and "Gigabyte Z490") I am seeing different brands making their own motherboard, which uses a particular chipset made by Intel. Is that interpretation correct? And as I understand it doesn't particularly matter who makes the motherboard, just what model of chipset it uses.

3) Right, so we're talking chipsets, not motherboards, got it now. But still a bit confused on the overall choice. So in the case of Z490 (desktop) vs a WM490 (mobile) which would be better? Mostly for gaming and some music production.

4) Okay so among 2070 Refresh, 2070 Super, and 2080 Super, the best performance per price would be the 2070 Refresh? There's a 3.2% increase in power from 2070 Refresh to 2070 Super for an additional 273€, and 40% power increase from 2070 Refresh to 2080 Super for an additional 717€. I can only tell that the price increase (of 717€) from 2070R to 2080S is 2.6x the price increase (of 273€) from 2070R to 2070S, but the 2080S has a 12.5x of the increase in power from 2070R to 2070S. So definitely the 2080S has a better price per power than the 2070S. But between 2070R and 2080S, since we can't tell, should I just go with 2070R?

5) The RAM kits have the same price. I'll ask about the CL.

6, 7, 8) Got it!

 

X170 is the top dog currently, just released.

 

With Z490 chipset you get an desktop Cpu. A replaceable Cpu. HM470 is for mobile Cpu's. Aka Cpu soldered on the MB. You'll overall get better performance from an desktop Cpu. With a Mobile Cpu you are also forced into a soldered on Gpu.

 

Right, there's the HM470 too. But I've also seen laptops with the WM490.

But anyways, I also thought that a desktop chipset means a desktop CPU, but then I saw mobile chipset with desktop CPU, so I guess that conclusion is not correct? Let me see if I can find again where I saw this.

Here, scroll to the bottom and check the Specs tab: https://www.hidevolution.com/custom...4k-uhd-i9-10900k-rtx-2080-super.html?___SID=U

WM490 mobile chipset with i9-10900K dektop CPU.

 

Then it's a rarity. 3 brands offer laptops with 10th gen desktop Cpu's as I can remember. Clevo, AW and Msi. Both Clevo and Dell AW is sold with Z490.

But yeah, Msi have put up WM490 chipset on specs for one of their models with desktop Cpu... https://www.msi.com/Laptop/GT76-Titan-10SX/Specification

 

I'm wondering now if that's just inaccurate information displayed on that page I linked to, as the model is a MSI GT76 Titan DT 10SGS and the official MSI page lists it to have a Z490, not a WM490. And this MSI page also shows a GT76 Titan 10SF with a WM490, but specifically for this model it says "Up to 10th Gen. Intel® Core™ i9 Processor", omitting the word "desktop", present instead in the description of the other two models which use the Z490.

Also I'm searching a little and I can't find any other case of mobile chipset + desktop CPU. So after all maybe that's not true? Desktop chipset goes only with desktop CPU, and mobile chipset goes only with mobile CPU? Would be good if someone else chimes in.

 

Msi don’t let you click on 20xx Super cards on their website. Could also be differences in specs depending on region. Have seen this before.

xotic.pc list same GT76 machine as HID https://xoticpc.com/collections/ultimate-series-gaming-laptops/products/msi-gt76-titan-dt-10sgs-055

 

LapTop configurability is not comparable to DeskTop.
At the moment, it seems that only AlienWare offers capability to let owners to swap GPU in their system...if i'm not wrong.
Most of other laptops in the market are only configurable to buyers' choice of screen, keyboard(backlight or no), harddisk, RAMs, and in some occasions, batteries. Base builds are mostly stuck to pre-combinations of GPUs+CPUs.

 

Why are so fixated on what laptop has what chipset?
Curious about the why of that.

 

No but that's also a DT 10SGS, which MSI says it has a Z490, not a WM490, and in fact the "DT" in the name probably stands for desktop.
What are you saying about being able to click on the 20xx cards?

Nothing, I initially asked what was the benefit of having a desktop chipset, and then it was said that it is to have a desktop CPU, and then the whole discussion about mobile chipset with desktop CPU started.

 

MSI have a messed up website. And why bother? MSI GT76 is in short a Jokebook with soldered on graphics. A huge no in my book!

Put your mouse cursor over the Super cards. You can only click on old 2080.

 

Okay... So the top dog from the blue Kennel is unleashed. How about the Red Kennel? The 15inch puppy of the NH5#A variants? Or the skinny 17 TongFang breed?

 

TongFang is a different make so no idea.

 

My apologies to bring TongFang into the picture. As it's pretty obvious that "enthusiast marques" around the world that sources base builds from ODMs like Clevo, have no AMD based builds with big screen options from Clevo are now relying on TongFang their 17inch builds. That's where the first thought that comes into mind.
I think we'll hv to wait and see for a new 17inch big build like the x170sm INTEL based design alike from Clevo to turn the thoughts around...

 

The desktop models are big investments, it's hard to justify the AMD chips in this gen to certain compromises to the typical users. Plus there is development time. It's just not a market that makes wild changes quickly.