xVx Monstruo-M S400 (Clevo M570U) Reviewed!

Hey guys, I just wanted to let you know that I reviewed my Clevo M570U based xVx laptop on my site, AcceleNation.com. It is a long one with plenty of benchmarks and it covers quite about about the screen and other important issues from a user perspective. I even give Gophn his props for the Multi-Core config hookup!

I hope you enjoy it. Here's the Link!

AcceleNation.com's xVx Monstruo-M S400 Review

I should mention that it is sort of written for a general audience, so there is a lot of fluff covering things you guys are probably already aware of, but are spelled out so as not to make any assumptions about the reader's laptop savvy.

 

Very nice machine.

Nice review.
I'll just point out one typo you made on the specifications page:

 

Thanks for the compliment, and catching the goof. It's fixed.

 

Wow nice review And i can see you have a different front lid. Where did you get that??

 

it is actually a sticker from schtickers.com - http://www.schtickers.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=85

 

Did you have them to cut it to a specific size of the 17" did fit like a glove?

Is it as easily removable as they say, without damaging the lid finish?

 

I applied the sticker, then cut it with a razor along the natural seam between the aluminum piece and the plastic base, then peeled off the excess.

It is just a little bit wider than perhaps it needs to be, and when I say a little bit, I mean it. We are talking a millimeter or two. It works just fine, it's just that it wraps just a hair around the curves on the sides of the lid, and if you use your fingernail you can detect a little overhang.

It took me three tries to get it right, and yes it was easy to remove and reapply. It left no sticky residue at all.

 

Excellent review!

About the only thing I would consider adding is some reference to the Clevo, Sager, etc. line so people searching for a M570U or 5760 would come across your review!

Kudos, sir! Fine writing.

 

Thanks a bunch! I actually did mention it at the bottom of the introduction page, just after the picture of the machine.

I'm glad you enjoyed it though, I am totally loving the machine.

 

Oops. My bad. I skimmed the intro part wanting to get right to the meat and potatoes!

 

nice review.

as for your wireless signal being low...

To boost the performance of a Wireless Module (usually with Intel)
1) you should go to Control Panel
2) go to Network Connections
3) open Wireless Network Connection and hit the Properties button
4) (you should be in the Wireless Network Connection windows), Click the Configure button
5) (you should be in a new window) go to the Advanced tab
6) under the Property section, scroll down and look for Power Management
7) (as you can see it defaults at Lowest) UNCHECK the "Use default" option, and change it to Highest (for max performance)
8) hit OK and OK.

Thats it.

You should notice an increase of wifi performance, both in speed and range.

Enjoy.

 

I didn't even think to try that, I just sort of assumed it was immaterial while on AC power although the descriptive text doesn't really seem to indicate one way or the other.

I *had* already verified that transmit power was max'd, but I just breezed by power management.

I'll give that a try next week at school.

 

oh, and also take a look at the wireless card (it should be under your keyboard).

make sure the antenna cable is connected securely, that something that most people over look as well.

Note: (to remove the keyboard) its very simple to detach the keyboard, no screws, just four little retractable tabs on the top end of the keyobard (the side closest to the LCD), use a small flat head to press them and the keyboard will be detached.

 

Hey JPB,
Excellent review.
I'm wondering if you can adjust the blue cast by changing the screen gamma, or adding a color profile. Is that possible with your graphics card?

 

I was wondering the same as Elliot108nl.
I returned a Dell recently, due to a very bad blue bias, dim screen, and shimmering as well. I tried every setting, and could not get it to look good.
This is the laptop I was considering to replace my returned laptop, but the blue bias in your review has me skeptical.
Have you tried manually adjusting the individual RGB values in the nVidia Control Panel?

 

I'm thinking your best bet is waiting until OLED screens come out. I tried every setting I possibly could to more accurately duplicate the color of the desktop, and spent a lot of time spinning my wheels and was never quite able to nail down a balance that matched my desktop LCD. I did come reasonably close though, givent he technology difference. Problem is, I changed drivers before I wrote down my settings. I will give it another go, with a set of before and after pictures, to give you an idea of what I managed.

 

thanks very much, appreciate the quick response
looking forward to the pictures

what's weird is that my wife has a 15 inch sony from a few years ago, and the colors are spot on with desktop LCD's, and twice as bright as the Dell I returned
maybe it's the brand of the LCD and not the technology itself, as some LCD's seem to have no perceivable color bias
unfortunately, I haven't found a brand that has both the great LCD and a top of the line vid card available :confused2:

 

Hi JPB,

Just found your post and read your review. I have the same beasty as you do and I concur that it's one very nice machine. However, I've found that no matter how much I fiddle with the power management settings (even using software like speeswitchxp) I cannot get the machine to run at more than half speed when it's on batteries (yes I've tried desktop/always on/minimal PM etc). So I was wondering, is it just me or do you find the same thing?

The system properties (right click on my computer) doesn't always seem to tell the truth. Try playing a game and then pulling the plug out to see what happens to the framerate.

I've heard that some manufacturers force their systems to degrade the cpu frequency when running on batteries. I'm really hoping it's just me....

 

I went to the shtickers site before I read your review. I thought the shtickers looked rather "eh". Then I saw your laptop with the shticker on it and it looked great. They need to update the pictures on their site to give it more pop. They look way too plain on their website. Maybe they should pay you to take the pictures for them.

 

yeah. they pictures didn't seem that great. but i bought one anyways. and its 30 bucks well spent, especially since you can print your own images :]

It's called Intel Enhanced Speed Step or some other weird name like that.
Its not the manufacturer's fault, they do that b/c you aren't using your cpu.
if you run something cpu demanding, it'll throttle up to its full potential
if you don't care for battery life and like to see it running at 100% all of the time, the setting is in your bios option. you have to disable one of the options under cpu management.
i've done it before, but i get an extra 30-40 mins letting it throttle down, and i value my battery.
if you don't know where to go in your bios, shoot me an email and i'll give you more detailed directions.
dieu.est.bon[at]gmail.com

 

Hey was there anything bad about the service from xvx? I just ordered a notebook from them a couple days ago. Customer service was very nice and I got a good sale. Im just waiting for it to ship

 

I've got nothing but good things to say about xVx and my experience with them. You can read my review of the buying experience at http://www.resellerratings.com/store/xVx_Corporation . My Name is Uniballer on that site.

 

thanks jp ^___^

 

That's the problem, it won't throttle up even under heavy load. I'm in the middle of a game (trackmania), fraps is indicating 100fps, it's running nice and smooth. I pull out the power cable, and it instantly drops to about 50fps. The game is noticeably less smooth.

The bios on this machine has very limited options. There is no access to the usual cpu and power management settings. So, I might see if I can track down a bios upgrade. Although flashing the bios is never a particularly enticing option on a laptop.

 

one possible explanation is that the computer usually enters one of its powersaving sleep states (c3) when it goes on battery. to check it out, you might want to consider running perfmon from start menu > run. add the counter c3 % to see if it enters the c3 state on battery power and on high load. if this is the problem, you can try getting rmclock and enabling the option of running the hlt command on os idle that essentially disables the c3 state. don't know if this will work for you, but it is worth a try.

 

It is supposed to throttle down when on battery. that's what is supposed to happen.
There are 2 main reasons for this; 1. to preserve battery life, and 2. because the battery alone often can't provide enough juice to run the cpu and gpu at full speed.

I think you can override this using programs such as NHC, but i've not tried it.

There is also a function in the nVidia drivers to clock down the GPU when on battery, it does this by default. This can be changed, but i'm not sure if it will override the actual hardware.

It sounds like you thought you could do hardcore gaming without being plugged in. This is not and has never been the case. Unless you have a battery the size of a briefcase, you're going to have to plug in to the wall to get full performance.

 

haha. if you're talking about framerates, then its most likely gpu related. go to your nvidia control panel, and find the powermizer setting. and tell it to stop helping your computer.
powermizer is like speedstep, but for the gpu.
but still. when you pull the plug, performance will still get decreased, but not as much :]
but battery life drops like 30%.. haha.
[assuming you have a nvidia based card]

 

That always happens with my system, i fix it under the settings, but like said above, my battery life goes fast

 

Great Review! Changed the direction of my search.

Looking to replace my laptop and xVx seems to fit my needs, but worry about heat. I'm a pen tester and lecturer so can't have shut downs in the middle of work or on stage at Defcon or Netsec. (My last dell died during a presentation for a 1000 people, all the event reviews told me not to buy another dell)

SO, would someone address the heat issue for the S320 laptops please? Was looking at alienware (to hot) voodoo (to $$) so xVx seems just right. The TPM chip makes this a perfect choice for penetration testers.

Anyone using LoJack on their laptop? Works on Dells and have recovered all the stolen ones so far, but not sure on xVX.

Also any word on the new updated paint? While I don't mind the plain with a sticker, would be nice to be a little more colorful. I'm not a plain kind of person.

Any help or rants from this group would be greatly appreciated. Thanks