**D900F (Sager 9280) Owners Lounge**

The best way for correctly updating the 7 drivers is to use a specific soft, such as drivergenius pro (which is the best in my view) the only hack is ,it is not able to get the game and hotkeydrivers.
U are supposed to have them there * ,but It was impossible for me to achieve the full download ,that waz always cancelled near the end,which is very frurstrating.I have tried many times and will carry on .Maybe U will be more lucky

* http://www.clevo.fr/contents/fr/d38.html too slow ftp

Maybe someone has got an alternative link for downloading them?

---EDIT-------- sorry I forgot to resort to Sager's site.Problem solved

Ps:I will soon come up with gamebenches.Due to work ,I did not have that much opportunity to play during last 2 monthes

 

I got my D900F with memory, CPU, and HDD from RJTech, but no OS, and I had exactly zero problems installing Linux on it. You must have some hardware problem/incompatibility somewhere. I've never heard of OS installation problems like this being tied to driver issues. My first suspect would be RAM, and I would try some other memory if I had it available. Also you mention scrounging disks but never say what you have installed. I would be trying your testing with just 1 SATA disk installed, to reduce the number of variables, (if you haven't already of course..).

Lastly you may want to ping RJTech with an email and ask them if there is anything specific that needs to be set in the BIOS, or anywhere else, for the CPU and RAM you have installed. Maybe it's something simple that was missed. BTW, if you don't have the D900F BIOS 1.00.03 or later installed, and want to try and see if that's an issue, you can upgrade via the link here.

Good Luck..

 

Mine came with bios 1.00.03i
The BIOS does not seem to have that many options in it, though to be honest I have been considering contacting rjtech by monday if I cant smooth this thing out. I got this machine last tuesday. I havent really been able to dive into this thing until saturday when I got off work.

Right now I am only using one disk drive, a desktop type 500GB sata hard drive, installed in a external storage box thing, attached via esata. Not a SSD, a normal hard drive.

Even though my D900F with some pretty fast G.SKIL ram, PC3-10666, passed several runs with MemTest86, I am still considering if I have a memory problem.

I just wish I could find a place that would recommend what ram would be best?

I have a feeling this is the _only_ laptop using the X58 chipset.
And all other X58 based systems wont use laptop style DDR3 ram.
Correct? So could any one come up with what ram they would recommend for the D900F?

Although I did find this:
http://www.crucial.com/store/listparts.aspx?model=NP9280

2GB Part #: CT1001644 • DDR3 PC3-10600 • CL=9 • Unbuffered • NON-ECC • DDR3-1333 • 1.5V $48 a piece of ram.

It would be a lil bit slower than the ram I purchased, but if the ram is unreliable, or too fast for this type of machine, I would consider it.

But I dont want to buy new ram if the ram I have now is not the problem.

Oh well, now I will test the sata parts of this thing some more, lets see if it works.

 

Alright, Intel Storage Matrix is installed, interesting it says that my hard drive is using generation 2 transfer mode, while my internal blu-ray drive uses generation 1 transfer mode.

Any ways, I decided to also try giving 3D Mark Vantage a try, it ran the whole benchmark!

I got a total score of P5429, my GPU got 4732 marks while my cpu got 19785. It also says my GPU is a Geforce GTX 180M. But then I remember reading some one saying that Nvidia changed the name of the GPU before it got released to market..

Also I have one more question folks, even though my GPU temps seem to be fine so far, has any one noticed when they removed the heatsink from their GPU, were there any noticeable thermal material on the GPU it self?
I am used to seeing thick sheets of material, or globs of the stuff, so much that it oozes out the sides of the chip when the heatsink is installed...

Like I said the GPU seems to be doing ok so far, but I have some Arctic Silver 5 left over and just wondering if I should apply some to the GPU.

Thanks again for every ones help! This big guy seems to be finally making progress!

 

http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/

http://download.intel.com/support/chipsets/imsm/sb/8_x_raid_ahci_users_manual.pdf

http://downloadcenter.intel.com/Sea...&ProductProduct=Intel®+Matrix+Storage+Manager

 

My D900F came from RJTech with 3 - Super Talent W1333SB2GV modules installed, which are 2GB PC3-10600 DDR3-1333MHz non-ECC Unbuffered 204-Pin SoDimms. Here's the memory with specs from Memory4Less, and here's the manufacturer's webpage. If your G. Skill memory is this one, then you should be fine, as they appear to be the same specs. Also the Crucial specs you mentioned above also appear to be similar to the Super Talent.

The only thing to be aware of with the D900F, is that you have 3 DIMM slots. Two under the CPU/GPU heat spreader unit, and 1 under the keyboard. Mine has 2GB DIMMs in all three slots, for a total of 6. However the service manual seems to indicate that you can run the laptop with memory in only 2. I'm assuming that means you need to have DIMMs in both slots under the spreaders. You could always check by reading the service manual. Someone kindly posted it to one of the filesharing sites, and there's links to it earlier in this thread.

I actually missed your earlier post when you mentioned the fact that you are testing the laptop without an internal HDD installed. I would now guess that this is the source of your problems. I'm surprised you were able to get anywhere installing XP, as there isn't supposed to be a driver for the eSATA hardware under XP for the D900F (per the spec sheet), but knowing what the eSATA chipset is, and what drivers it needs, would help determine if this is the problem. It looks like eSATA is supported under the Intel X58 chipset.

Maybe you can verify what hardware the eSATA port uses by looking for it in the Windows 7 device manager. I've not tested the eSATA port under Linux for my D900F, otherwise I would know what hardware it's using. (For example sometimes the eSATA hardware is using a chipset from JMicron) If it is an Intel chipset, Windows 7 is supposed to be current with all of the drivers. However, if you wanted to try the latest Intel chipset software you can do so here, and also try the latest Intel Matrix Storage Manager software, (which I think also installs the latest hardware drivers), here.

Regardless I wouldn't really expect to get a good test of the laptop running it off of an external drive as you're doing, no matter what drivers I had loaded. I think that I wouldn't really go any farther with this testing until I simply removed the entire eSATA variable and installed an internal SATA drive in the laptop and tried installing my OS on that. (In other words, don't hook anything up to the eSATA port) BTW, you're correct in that the Intel Matrix software is software that you need to load if you are going to run the HD drives in RAID arrays under Windows. Otherwise running the software provides no additional value. (Doesn't hurt though either)

Lastly, when I removed my heat spreaders there was a sufficient amount of thermal paste on the CPU, and some on the GPU as well. (Not a lot) I reapplied new paste to both, and temps lowered a degree or two. However it's important to realize that this laptop is designed for hotter temps. So I wouldn't immediately suspect that as the problem, until I had eliminated other things first.

Good Luck..

 

Service manual in my sig as usual...

 

I had the same problem with that driver,

I eventually ended up putting the cd with drivers in, found the driver, manually run the installer from the CD using Run As Admin option.

and then it installed correctly.

 

Hi,

I have been following this thread for quite some time. I have finally decided to get a sager 9280 with the following configuration.

i7-920 with 6 gb ram
2 80gb ssd in raid 0
1 500gb 7200rpm hard drive

I do have a few questions before i make the order. I use linux as my primary operating system (for development and stuff) and boot to windows for playing games or syncing my ipod.

1. Has anyone had experience in installing linux in this system. Are all the drivers availble/supported?
2. I would like to use fake raid to dual boot both linux and windows from the Raid-0 setup ( so both os can take advantage of raid). Has anyone done this sucessfully?
3. I am planning to order from xotic pc. From the reviews i found here, they seeem to be reliable. This is my first sager notebook. Do i have to lookout for
anything like the brand of memory or harddisk that will come with my system? do they let us customize or speicify those (if at all they make any difference?)

Thanks for your time.

 

why does the d900f "Beep and pause the system every few seconds"..its so annoying? anyone has a solution?

thanks!

 

I installed 64 bit Gentoo Linux on my D900F and it installed fine. nVidia GPU, Sound, ethernet and WiFi work fine. I haven't tested whether the bluetooth, webcam, and SD/MMC work, although I would assume they work fine too. I also haven't tested the eSATA port as to whether it works under Linux.

I setup all 3 of my HDDs in RAID configurations, (1 and 5), using Software RAID under Linux, since I don't plan on booting Windows on this machine. It works fine. I would then assume that setting up a Linux partition with dmraid support, (so it can recognize the Windows fakeraid arrays), would work as well. This would allow you to setup your RAID array under Windows and then allow Linux to be able to use the RAID array as well.

Xoticpc doesn't let you specify the components, but you should feel confident that they will provide you with known tested good configurations in terms of HDD and RAM. If you want to specify components you need to choose a reseller like AVA Direct, RK Computers, or RJ Tech.

Good Luck..

 

Hi Jas,

That answered all my questions. Thanks a lot.

 

I've ordered a d900f from xotic and so far there's nothing to complain about. They are currently assembling it, and I expect to get it next week at the latest.

(i7 950, 6GB RAM, 2x500GB 7200 RAID 0)

 

hmm... now that I no longer have the windows email program (upgraded win7)...

can anyone suggest a good email program to use?

thanks.

 

Thunderbird by Mozilla is very good.

Also, since W7 doesn't come with a MS email program, you can still download the latest MS version. It's part of the "Live" package.
http://download.live.com/wlmail
I've used it and it's OK, but doesn't have much of a search feature.

But, I think we are straying from what this thread was intended for.

 

My D900F seems to be getting more and more stable.

I finally decided to buy a Core i7 920 from Newegg, I ordered monday, and it came today, tuesday, I love Newegg.

I cleaned the heatsink, applied a good evenly spread out layer of artic silver across the cpu, and then put the laptop back together and booted back into Windows 7.

I ran three sessions of IntelBurnTest, and then one 3D Mark Vantage, so far so good!

I noticed CoreTemp said one of my cpus cores got up to 91C, the other cores only got about 85C

Those high temps were only temporary, it seems like the real average temp under load is in the 70's. And only today did I notice what sounded like the fans spinning up high, which I wouldnt call loud.

Also it seems like going from a Core i7 965 to a 920, the ram under clocked, from 666mhz to 533mhz.

It seems like the laptop is happier now ether because changing from a 965 to a 920, or the rams speed dropping down.

Now if I could only get Fallout 3 to run...

 

Good to hear Jad, what is going on with fallout 3?
I'm wondering if any GTX280m owners have been seeing what looks like goofy driver level glitches in graphics? It's not really that annoying or anything, Ive seen stuff like it on other cards. Usually my cards artifact for the first few days and then quit, like a break in period it seems. This card has strange issues..not artifacting, but like glitches with walls and such. Like on Fear sometimes a black stretched wall shows up somewhere ( sometimes I think it's a wall and it's not ) and other times in any other game.. I get like little blips on the textures, maybe every once in a while. Kind of like a blip in an old black and white movie, somewhat like a really squiggly C shape, not too noticeable, but I see it. Do you think it is a driver level issue? I can't see it being hardware, I haven't noticed any other issues.

 

n/m I think Fallout 3 is working now.. I don't think it liked me using extended desktop with two monitors, I Was going to try leaving CoreTemp and GPU-Z open on a second monitor just to watch the temps while playing Fallout 3. >_>;

Now for some reason Windows 7 reverted back to just one desktop, cloned across two monitors, and Fallout 3 is okay with that..

 

I'm puzzled on wether to buy a NP8760 (i7 902xm) or a D900F (i7 950).. could you guys help me make my mind?
I'm a software developer, work with windows 7, and i sometimes use virtualization (Virtualbox).
I'm looking for great performance (of course)... don't care too much about weight and battery life. I love high-resolution screens. Design is important but not fundamental (or else I wouldn't consider thd D900F).... I will post this in the NP8760 lounge too, and see that they say...

Thanks.

 

Both are good choices... the W870CU (Sager 8760) might be a better choice if you care about having less heat since the D900F (Sager 9280) can get hot since the desktop Core i7 draws so much power.

.... I went over how to overcome the Core i7 (Socket 1366) heat by getting a die-shrink in Xeon (Core i7 spec'ed).

 

On the side note, my long awaited Clevo D900F Ultra-Detailed Review has finally been published.

I have been MIA on NBR since I caught a rather nasty strain of the flu... couldn't finish up the charts for the review.... until last week.

Remember to get your flu shots.

P.S. More D900F posts to come... for:
- my 4th fan mod
- fully compatible XP drivers
- and video tutorial for VirtualBox on the D900F

 

glad to see you back

 

Quick question folks, about the fan vents.
I just started reading Gophn's review, and I read the part about the fan vents.
Is it true that the vents on the rear of the D900F is where the air goes in, and the vents on the bottom is where the air goes out?
I ask this because of my laptop cooling stand, if my cooling stand blows air up against the laptop, up against the bottom vents, if it blows air up against the fan pushing air down.. would that be bad?

The laptop seems nice and cool as it is, with the cooling stand..
but it just seems like a bad idea to have one fan pushing air up against a fan trying to push air down?

 

Welcome back Gophn



long time no see ...

 

the bottom fans intake the air
then the hot air gets exhausted out of the back of the notebook vents

so the notebook coolers should have a positive airflow by blowing air up from the cooler's stage.

 

Thanks Gophn, for the awesome review. It backed up my decision to order the machine even more.
So it's possible to add the 4th fan if one wanted to? Can't wait to hear more on that (though I take it that it is not really necessary unless I do heavy media-encoding... but then again.. what exactly is heavy, especially on this machine)
I agree on the flu shots - get them!

greetings,
Brato

 

A highly professional and detailed review, great job Gophn! I look forward to reading this thoroughly. The heatsink for the i7 is a monster

 

Ive already got my 'normal' flu shot from my employer for the year, rumor has it they will be providing the H1N1 flu vaccine _next_ year.

Thanks Gophn for the clarification on the fan directions. I am paranoid enough about fan placement and heat managment that I was going to yank the cooling pad right out from underneath! The thought of trying to force the cooling pads fans to spin the opposite direction even entered my mind...

One more question about Fallout 3 and the D900F.. I can't seem to get any reaction out of the ~ key. I can't bring my self to play through Fallout 3 with out using the command console...

Just what does those hotkey/gamekey applications that come on the D900F driver cd do? Being a completest I installed them while setting up Win7 on my internal SSD's.

 

Great review, Gophn! I ordered an M17X earlier this week after considering the NP9280 for the past couple of weeks but chose the AW for the extra battery power (mobility). Reading your review though has gotten me to reconsider the NP9280 especially for its raw cpu power. Always tough to balance cpu/battery power for these two laptops...

 

Btw, can folks talk more about how comfortable their keyboard feels for typing long periods of time? I am a software developer so I'm curious to know how folks feel about the ergonomics of the keyboard. Thx.

 

I for one am using a ABS usb keyboard, even if I did travel with this thing I would probably drag my usb keyboard and mouse along with me. Ive never been a fan of touch pads.

Although before and after work, I do find my self typing my passwords on the D900F's keyboard, and I don't have any trouble hitting keys on it.

I am still waiting on a 18" or 20" laptop to provide a full standard 102-107 key layout. Just like a normal desktop keyboard.

I would never let size or weight of a laptop hold me back. :|

 

Actually I had no issues with Fallout 3 when I was testing it... on XP

The problem is Fallout 3 on Vista (both x86 and x64)... if you google it, its all over the place.

The Solution:
- go the "Device Manager"
- click on the "Human Interface Devices" tab.
- If you have something called "Microsoft eHome Infrared Transceiver," uninstall it by right clicking.
- It should work. Apparently the transceiver affects the tilde key.

Hope it helps.

Note: occasionally, when you hit tilde, the console might be a bit off screen, so type a lot of crap and press enter a number of times to be able to see the text first, then you can do you console commands like normal.

The CPU performance is the best... no doubts about that.

Even the gaming performance is quite amazing, even with just one high-end card in there... but the CPU and Memory performance helps greatly.

If you are mainly gaming, a dual videocad system would probably be the better choice.

If you plan on doing a good amount of CPU intensive work (media, 2D/3D, rendering, editing, mixing, converting, etc.).... then getting a Core i7 would definitely have a better advantage over a typical Core 2 system.

 

oh dude the keyboard is a dream.... I swear. It's awesomeness to type on it. Feels great. I'm learning Java programming as well and it's all cool

 

Thanks again Gophn!! Now my Fallout 3 experience is complete. <3
I think I may just drag my D900F off to work tomorrow and utilize that 1 hour of battery life to show it off to my friends.

 

Awesome review Gophn! Had everything I was looking for! Unfortunately I've decided I just cannot pay ~$2300 for something that beastly. I need zero portability, but I will need to look at the laptop on a daily basis.. I think I'd actually be embarrassed for people to come into my home and see that on my dining room table.

Call me shallow, but I think I'm W870CU bound..

 

Although this came after I bought my 9280, I enjoyed every line and character of that review. Best on the net by far, and in that nice single page format that I love! I was wondering why mine didn't have the 4th fan! I thought they forgot to put it in, and yet I still get immaculate temps ( like 30C idle and no more than 55C load so far with the 920 yet no prime95 temps, just gaming ) so I guess for the extreme model you would definitely need that 4th fan it looks like. My GPU never even broke 72C on Furmark, I thought I was going nuts, my friend was just cracking up because I was just cussing and pacing around due to being simply flabbergasted about the cooling system. So far the system is flawless, other than goofy little graphical glitches that happen sometimes in games, but I think that's probably just early driver issues due to the card being so new. ( hah I mean a G92 recycled 5 times with different names )

 

I am actually finishing my 4th fan mod article right now.

ETA... 1 hour.

 

4th fan? I am interested! Although to be honest I am considering posting a topic over at Danger Den this weekend about commissioning for a custom full coverage water block for the D900F ..
although I don't think my wallet would be interested in just what water cooling the D900F would cost... >_>

 

4th Fan Mod Guide is done... Enjoy.

my mod only costs ~$20... or less.

You guys can post it on this site as well if you want.

 

Good job, Mr. Gophn. Have you done any measurements of the D900F in combination with the Zalman cooler? What temperature improvements do you get?
And, it looks like the i7 920 actually idles a bit hotter than the 975, comparing your temps to mine. Mine idles at 57-60 degrees with fans on auto.

 

want to show it off take the powerbrick with you, the performance is 1/3rd when on battery

 

those temps are about right for idle.

its the full load temps that you should really look at.

 

I swear, I hate the build quality on the LCD panel, the middle of my panel is already bruised from the lid flexing. Now I use a hankerchief to keep the screen from hitting the base, seems to work ok, but a warning to everyone, keep something in between when you travel with it. The lid is the only sketch part on the whole laptop, but I wish it was a little thicker on the back.

 

I have a similar issue with my D900K... so to solve that, I replaced the 6 rubber nubs with new and thicker ones (you can cut it out of a sheet of black rubber).

Then when you close the lid, the screen is not touching anything (like the keyboard keys and such) since it is braced further away.

But when you travel and theres other stuff in the notebook bag/backpack... definitely stick a thin piece of cloth (or microfiber cloth) between the LCD and the keyboard area.

 

I have had my 9280's keyboard completely go rogue on me twice, first time I couldn't even hard reset. I had to take the battery out just to turn it off. I just installed the 195 nV beta drivers and it did the keyboard thing again, and never did restart when I hit restart..screen just went black. But this time I was able to hard reset at least.. anyone ever seen this happen? laptop is about 2 weeks old.

 

make sure you have the latest BIOS update and the KBC/EC firmware update.

That happened to me when I was reviewing the D900F unit.

 

after upgrading to win7 I get this problem when trying to install the win7 drivers that have been released on sagers site:


this computer does not meet the monimum requirments for installing the software. Setup will now exit.


anyone else? how do i fix it?

thx

 

i did not have any trouble with win 7ultimate x64 .i have resorted to driver genius pro to install and update all 7 drivers but for game key and hotkey.I only went to eurocom's site for last both mentionned drivers.BTW gamekey is not working( maybe it is not really x64 compatible)

I have updated to the new released official clevo (not Sager) 3.0 bios ,which is for win 7 intended.i did not notice any change (gamekey still does not work)

 

Some tests

Blu-ray rip to Mkv h264 (70 to 85mn to rip a blu ray disk)

1---> using Xilisoft blu ray ripper



2----- using Best Hd soft blu ray ripper




Borderlands 1920 x1200 each option to the max






Dream killer each option to the max

 

been lookin everywhere, how do I get the bios update? cant find it for d/l anywhere.