Clevo W870CU Review With ATI 5870m

Hello i am a touch typist! It's just convient to have especially when you live in an apartment that no matter what you do doesn't have enough lighting! It looks to cool, those new chicklet keyboards are really nice though.

 

I'm using a razer arctosa keyboard now, which is black, with black labeling on the keys, and no back lighting, so it's impossible to see the keys unless you stare at it directly perpendicularly, making it essentially a label-less keyboard, but I don't have any problem with that.

 

Then buy brighter lights for your apartment. A true touch typist knows their keyboards by instinct and needs no more than the light from their screen to move around. Our fingers are like prowlers in the night.

 

I have to keep my entire room free of dust because when a single grain falls on my keyboard, my rhythm is disrupted because of the obstruction. A true touch typist can feel the molecules of paint forming letters on each key.

 

a true touch typist don't actually touch to know the key, he already remembers the location of the keys by instinct.

 

That would make him a memorization/instinct typist, not a touch typist! Which, as we all know, is on a different level altogether.

 

I think the term touch-typist comes from the fact that you touch to trace the 2 bumps on F and J to start typing, and not really touching every key to know what it is.

 

I don't know how you guys got memorization out of that. Perhaps my use of the word instinct threw it off. By touch typist, I am talking about the highest level of skill a touch typist can go: just by feeling the reference keys even for a split second, the user knows exactly where he is on the keyboard.

The next level up is a memorization typist, which is built from a touch typist. CS:S can train even two finger typists to become a memorization typist. It's the lifeblood tool of hand eye coordination for both typing and moving an object on a 2D X-Y plane. Typing under pressure/fire brings out the best in people.

 

Instinct is actually the word to describe it, I can't really memorize the keys, if you just ask me 2nd roll 10th key is what I can't answer it directly, but once I place my hands on the keyboard I know exactly where to press to get what keys sub consciously.

 

Our minds cannot fully memorize the keys, but our muscle memory can. It becomes a passive ability along the lines of breathing; we can control our breathing if we are conscious about it, but our muscles have memorized the intricate movements to a point where we no longer need to think about it. For me it's a bit different. Instead of finding my position on a keyboard using the F and J keys, I find my position by placing my left hand on WASD, left shift, and spacebar. On different keyboards, if my fingers on my left hand don't immediately sync with these keys, then I'd adjust and I'd know the rest of the keyboard at that very moment, unless it's one of those stupid ergo curved keyboards or those split keyboards.

Off topic time. My professor tried to hate on my G9x and I-1 during my engineering midterm today saying that I have to use the mouse that is already connected to the terminal, which is a cheap Microsoft optical mouse and a plush cloth mousepad. I knew that we only had 50 minutes to complete the exam, so I wanted to get the least interference from UI as possible, in this case using a high DPI mouse that I know how to use. His argument was that it is unfair/unequal to use a piece of equipment that gives me an edge over the others. I thought that was a load of bollocks as not everyone is on the same skill level in communicating with a computer with UI to begin with. All of us have taken those scantron "fill in the bubble" tests before, and we know we have the option to opt to use our own pencil and eraser instead of the wood number two pencil that they give because we know how to use it and we know that it "performs" better on paper. Mechanical pencils have the precision and writing/erasing performance that the user is familiar with while cheap wood pencils most of the time have dulled tips, crappy erasers, and uncomfortable narrow octagonal shafts. The same goes for my mouse; the tracking, ergonomics, and speed from my mouse and mousepad is a (big) step up from a computer lab mouse and I am able to complete my work a lot faster and more efficiently. It still does everything that the optical mouse can do, but better. The same thing with the mechanical pencil. Neither example is giving me a new additional feature or tool that I can use to aid me in the exam. And because the exam is about the course material and not about human or equipment performance nor is it dependent on human or equipment performance, I brought the hammer down on my professor and happily used my mouse. The next time he whips out his Microsoft Wireless Mobile Mouse 6000 for class lecture, I'm calling him out.

 

That's an odd thing to say. Is it supposed to be a competition?

 

Not at all. It was just a typical midterm exam. He just likes to hunt for cheaters.

 

SS goes to a weird hippy infested school.

 

Pretty much. This is what I have to deal with on a daily basis.

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Silly teachers....just pwned a BIOL exam myself

feels good

 

Not such a ridiculous thing to me, reminds me when I was freshman at the U and someone showed up with an algebraic calculator for the 105 math exam and got caught. I didn't really care but you could use the calculator that guy had to take almost the entire exam and ace it.

That example is a little more extreme then Soviet's but I can understand a strict policy on the professors side.

 

and maybe he was thinking it could could be one of those mice with a flash drive built in? and you maybe had files on it?

is a stretch...but maybe?

 

The difference with the calculator is that it allows the student access to many more functions (though should not be needed for a 100 math class) as well as the ability to store custom made formulas. Also, it is the halmark tool of any math or science department. A simple calculator like a Casio FX-260 cannot do the things a higher tier calculator can. For human/computer communication, a mouse is mouse. It does only one thing; point and click. It does not give the user access to features like built in storage for keeping files or any number crunching ability. One person might be the cat's meow with a Microsoft optical mouse and the other might not. And for me, I can't stand the mouse and decided to use my own mouse and mousepad.

 

Actually the Steelseries Xai (although there are more mouses) can store files into its mouse and load them up during boot in any computer. It's supposed to only allow the boot of mouse related files but it can be hacked to preload any type of files, whether for nefarious or otherwise use.

 

In which no one has done yet. The onboard memory on the Xai is only big enough to store the small .xml files that contain the mouse settings and the driver itself, but you do have a point that it can be hacked at the hardware level by equipping the mouse with a proper memory controller. Though the possibility is on the extreme side, the same can be said with the calculator above. There are calculator forums that have people that like to hotrod their boring calculators to do insane things.

 

True. Also as Scook pointed out there are mouses with built in USB ports so you can load reasonable sized files that way, although clearly you would never get away with using a USB mouse in exam, they look pretty obvious.

I don't think you can blame a professor for being overly paranoid these days with peoples creativity and the advancing tech.

brb googling modded calculators

 

Yes, very much so. A professor has every right to double check a student. But in my case with my professor, he did not have a logically sound premise against me. His notion was that my mouse explicitly gave me a performance edge, not an availability to features that other students cannot access with the existing mice on the terminals. Had he said that he suspected that I may have access to a hidden mass storage medium on the mouse or similar, then I would have folded and just use the optical mouse.

 

you guys are so far off topic it aint even funny!
be glad this aint the AW forum threads..rotfl

 

Everything in the Alienware forum is off topic. Unfortunately, the Clevo forum doesn't have enough traffic to warrant having it's own off topic section. Perhaps we should borrow some of the veterans from the Alienware forum to start posting random nonsense to boost activity so we can finally have one. Oh wait... they're already here.

As long as Gophn is on his lifelong vacation and nobody cares to report stupid posts, the Clevo forum is unregulated and free for anyone to post their hearts' content whether it be about last night's episode of The Shield or what Heathkidd did last summer at band camp. The post traffic is also slow enough that needing a janitor to clean up the place isn't really needed since people can just skip over the chit chat and head straight for the real talk between men.

 

Well this is the only place we can talk....with batboy coming down and closing up all the threads

lol

 

That's because BatBoy has a chip on his shoulder. As a freshman moderator on NBR, he has a level of expectation to keep up. Believe me, I know. I was a mod on a few larger, yet less civilized, forums before. The Dell and Alienware forum are by far the largest on NBR, and larger than a lot of technology sites as a whole, and slacking off on the job over there isn't tolerated unlike over here in the Clevo forum.

 

Yeah man it does get very very annoying, that random thread was awesome, i want to get an awesome clevo someday when i have some cash. The rules on this site is way way too much at times, like the nwo is coming down on us in Germany...

 

we need that one universal link that basically allows all the people with the same ideas/theories/notions and so on link that is posted in all the high-end gaming parts of the forum.it can link to a topic in the general chat section...which would be very cool. then it would be open season to discuss what has to do or partially to do with over clocking/ modding / theorizing. And the only mod intervention need be…the respect factor

I think that would be a pretty decent idea.

 

Yes I totaly agree, the one thing I love about this site is that their are so many people dedicated to having awesome reviews of their own and overclocking, modding, and less and less I am seeing those type of things on this site being taken away and its getting quite annoying why pay for something when you can just mod etc... The random thread also allowed us to talk about our lives to some of the people we speak to daily and talk about other electronics like cell phones smart phones, desktop graphic cards etc... Lol we don't always need supervision you know, were not kids.

 

Can someone tell me what is a the idle and maxload temp of their 5870m please ??? Mine is 58'c idle and got as high as 86'c at maxload ... i'm kinda scary

Maybe a vbios could help ? mine seem old 03-10-2009

 

86 is fine as long as it doesn't go up to 90+. That card is only using 50 something watts that's pretty high for this card. What games are you playing?

 

you may need to re paste your GPU. that is kind of high if you read before posts some people is getting 78c to 83c max under load

 

Yeah 83 under a max load is more like it! lol Repaste your GPU with AS5.

 

check vents as well...make sure your getting plenty of air..and if need be...turn fans up full and see if it drops by about 10 to 18 degrees.

 

My max temps were up to 95 degrees !Did a re-paste, now it's sitting around max 80...

 

I have been fighting with temps in this thing since I got it. I've removed and redid my thermal paste so many times (tried 4 diff brands at least 3x each) that the foam on the heatsink that covers the memory is pretty much shot. No matter what paste I used, I was getting high idle temps. Best I could muster was 60C idle and finally I got sick of it and tried doing the copper shim trick. Using 0.25" copper I cut it exactly the same size as the GPU and it made 0 difference. I tried doubling the copper for a combined 0.5" and it lowered the temps some, but not drastically.

Like Quad and the others, I decided to bend my GPU tray (did this before reading Quad's post.) I bent the left side and the right side of the tray and temps went from 60C idle down to 56C idle. I decided to keep trying since obviously there was room for improvement so I bent the bottom part of the tray and I applied A LOT of pressure screwing in the heatsink. Now it idles 49-51C depending what part of the house I am in.

Overall I am happy now with the temps because before I couldn't even run Furmark Xtreme Burn mode without the laptop shutting down and this is with a 180w powersupply.

 

hummm well i play ALiens vs predator with the DX11 mode (that keep my maxload at max all the time).

Like rancid I allready reapply the thermal several time with no luck. I even have a shime on it right now.

Rancid can you tell me what is that bent trick ? seem good. Do you still use a shime after the bent ?

Edit: Ok i've tryed the bent trick and i gain 10'c on full load (i'm at 79'c max now). Do you thing i will get better without the shime and more thermal past ?

 

Is the bend trick really worth the risk of breaking your lappy ? You guys just bend the metal at this sides right, so that the heat sink can sit more flush with the GPU ?

 

i've done it with the heatseak insteed. it's much more easier.

Did someone get a driver stop responding with a too high overclock with or without the 120w psu ?

 

How did you do it with the heat sink ? What did you have to bend ?

 

hahaha well there are some plate with rivet on the heatseak that just site on the videocard. Just bend where is than on. toke me like 2 min to do

 

Is that 10 char

 

Won't hurt the laptop at all and you can rebend if you need to send it in for warranty work or whatever. You are just bending the outside metal tray some so the heatsink sits flush over the core.

 

in case some body wants to know how to get 46c idle and 78c max with furmark on the GPU. you will have to trim the aluminum case like Quadzilla mention before and also put some shims on the lift springs to make more pressure on the gpu die

 

Yeah i could not be happier with my GPU temps after trimming the can ... I started with bending it but decided i wanted to have it sit even more flush and it paid off .... When gaming i rarely see my GPU temps after hours go beyond 73c ....

Overall i love this machine and dont really need much more ... Nice to finally find something i am happy with and am in no hurry to find a replacement...

 

we should get some credit from clevo because some people reporting 90c on the gpu after gaming

 

do you still need to put a shime over the gpu with this ???

 

You should not need a shim at all.... His shim is between the leaf spring but not on the GPU... Im not using a Shim on the spring like his because my temps are fine as is but he got even better results from doing what he did...

Trimming the can seems to do the best because when you bend out the sides of the can it can get in the way of the CPU heatsink and it does not have enough room to bend out far enough to get the GPU to sit evenly...

 

no just paste on the GPU. and shims on the lift springs just to make better contact please don't try this if you not comfortable doing it because with the extra pressure on the GPU. die you can brake it and i am not responsible for that, if i did it because i know what kind of pressure i can put on the die but if you don't bent the shims and just put them flat is going to do even more pressure and brake your card

 

With some test, I've found that if i don't put a shime on the die, It won't even make any contact with it. You think that with this shime on the spring it should resolve this ? the moo told me to apply alot of thermal to make sure it contact but... i can't put 1/8' thermal on the die