Wound up getting the P170EM from AVADirect

Hey guys been awhile since I posted about getting the mini notebook and I will make this short and sweet but the smaller notebook was nice but when gaming I like a lil more screen real estate. so tto my wife went the lil guy but I will note the thing is damn powerful playing many games I threw at it without much issues except when pushing seriously demanding games.

now to my new toy its the P170EM and this thing definitely was a higher priced one as it came in just under 2K complete to my door.

One thing to note is I have always been an overclocker and performance gamer/enthusiasts so if I list something in correctly bear with me as im not used to customizable laptops and some features as I usually build liquid cooled desktops until I realized I needed something mobile.

First up the specs.

CPU: Intel Core i7 3720QM Ivy Bridge
Display: 17" glassy finish 1920x1080
Ram: 16GB (4x4GB) Kingston Plug N Play 1600MHz
HDD: Main - 750GB Seagate Momentus XT hybrid
HDD: secondary (empty)
HDD: mSATA (empty)
GPU: Intel HD4000/ Nvidia GeForce GTX670M W/ Optimus Technology
OS: Windows 7 Professional x64

The reason i chose AVADirect again I can be honest on here. It was the service, I know many laptops with Clevo Chassis are pretty much identical but when it came time to look at how the notebook arrived to me including being pre setup with my name and even test reports in the system so that you can view and see how it performed before shipping. This may not seem like much but it made a difference to me and being the consumer I see alot of times where stuff delivers on one thing and misses another. so with that said lets take a look at the laptop itself.



Here it is and yes it is a brushed/anodized black aluminum finish on the lid panel. This in itself I find it pretty cool as the previous 15.6" Clevo unit I had was a piano finish or super glassy on teh whole laptop and was a fingerprint magnet like you wouldnt believe. This one does collect some fingerprints but not very bad honestly.



This is what you see when you first open the lid and notice I have used the unit for a bit to get a feel fro it before I reported back to you guys about it. The keys themselves you will notice are not island style but do have a raised center potion to help differentiate from key to key. also the touchpad has a metallic finish which really helps with the issue I experienced previously to where the plastic super glossy touchpad would not glide easy on the fingertips and instead your fingers would catch or drag on the surface. in between the 2 mouse buttons you find a fingerprint reader which comes with preinstalled software which can tie key passwords to a finger swipe to make login of both windows along with other accounts easier but just remember which finger is for which account if using multiple



Here is a walkaround of the connectivity on the exterior of the P170EM. the right hand side carries the optical drive which on my unit I got the DVD/multi burner, I may still opt for swapping in a blu ray in the future if I see the need. also 4 analog audio jacks including headphone, mic, and line out's for the EAX supported audio. lastly you see a standard USB 2.0 port.

On the left hand side we have triple USB3.0 ports with one being combo eSATA. also there is a gigabit LAN port and Firewire along with a multimedia card reader.

the rear we have 3 different display connections with a DVI, HDMI and DisplayPort connection but only 2 displays can be run at any moment. This is likely due to the fact that the GTX670M is a Fermi based chip which is limited to dual display connectivity for a single GPU. Also here you will find the large power plug which unlike most laptops that have a metallic barrel with a single center pin, this one is a bit larger and is similar in connection to a studio microphone cable as it plugs in one way and has a 4 pole connection. Also the power brick is quite large likely due to the power this unit can pull at full tilt.



Here we see the backlighting on the keyboard which can be customized in zones and even has some different effects such as pulsating or other effects I actually made a small video of it below. (Cell phone quality)



I keep it at the green backlighting or even the dark blue as it seems to be what best fits me but as you can see it is fully customizable which is pretty cool as I honestly thought it was just blue backlit when I first ordered it.



The top row above the keyboard there is an indicator that the speakers which come installed are produced by Onkyo and they do sound pretty nice from my music and game testing but I am no audiophile so take it for my word as a gamer. the top is also home to all of the status LEDs along with the power button with its own lighted indicator which illuminates as it is powered on.



at the bottom there are multiple access panels which all can be removed rather quickly and allow access to key parts of the innards of the system. the largest spanning almost the whole width of the laptop and about half the depth as this covers the cooling system and key components of the assembly. Also here is the mini sub on the lower edge of the laptop which is one of the preinstalled speakers in the Onkyo audio solution.




The fartheft left panel caovers the optical drive which when the single retainnig screw for the optical is removed I was able to slide out teh optical drive. Below the optical drive was an empty caddy which I quickly filled with another hard drive (WD 1TB Blue) it was nice to find the installation hardware in place so I didnt have to go inline and hunt it down.



the middle panelis where the main storage drive came preinstalled and surprisingly no caddy was necessary as it fits snugly in place with the removable panel holding it and bracing it into position.



Here is the main panel shown earlier which is large and now you see why. The dual cooling nits are completely separate with one being for the CPU and one being for the GPU. they both employ blower style fans which are not necessarily loud from my testing so far and seem to do the job well with the CPU never eclipsing 83C even under long heavy encoding loads. Also here is the mSATA port uncovered with a preinstalled 64GB mSATA SSD and also two of the 4 ram slots which are holding a total of 16GB of Kingston 1600MHz RAM.



Here is a close up look at the GTX670m with cooler installed you will notice not only the heatpipes coming from the GPU but also the larger aluminum sink which cools the Vram and components with its own heatpipe to cool the discreet card which is also MXM which means can be replaced or upgraded if I see the need.



Here is the CPU cooler keeping the IVY nice and cool like I said before I have tested this in the worst environment I could think of by putting it under heavy render loads and the CPU core temp monitored via Realtemp software never exceeded 83C on any core. this likely has to do with the large cooler but also I did have AVADirect preinstall IC7 diamond thermal material on the GPU and CPU as I use it regularly on my desktop system builds and it works nice. and having that option during checkout was definitely cool as well.

coming soon I will run some benchmarks such as 3Dmark11 pcmark and whatnot. along with some games to show how it performs.

Stay tuned

 

BTW if this is in wrong place im sorry please move or redirect to wherever should be posted.

also hang tight as I will be updating with performance numbers and other info as I think of it

also after playing with this thing for awhile I may even throww up some pics of the mini me laptop the 11 incher.... as that thing is a beast but my wife loved it and so she ended up with that one

 

+1
This is the perfect place!

Love the pictures and very nice you actually tell, detailed, whats on them too ^^

 

I very much try, I actually have written reviews for desktop components so reviewing comes easy for me, but in this case its kind of nice to review it as a consumer because when writing product reviews for products for print you have to be more unbiased and leave your feelings at the door for teh most part..... you have to be very dry and by the number. I bought this so I can say whatever I want about it or how I "FEEL" about it but after looking at some of the pics I do see that my popup card table may need to be replaced LOL!!!!

this laptop is very nice man, I wish I could show how well it games but honestly that would probably make for a boring video

I am working on putting it through its paces on some games/benchmarks like just cause 2 and stuff like that, I know the games are a little older but they are some of the only ones that offer an in game benchmark tool which is pretty accurate and repeatable.

 

Here are some results as promised



Here you see while its not gonna blow a high performance desktop out of the water it can hold its own here.



for the productivity side its definitely got something going on here as well.

i am working on game benchmarks now. how do you guys normally test or which games do you normally test on a new laptop to show how it runs?

im not gonna run Metro 2033 on it then complain it wont run smooth when it wont run smooth on a desktop lol