**D900F (Sager 9280) Owners Lounge**

Thanks very much. I found the cooling buyer's guide, but hadn't come across this yet. I'm thinking I'll go with the NZXT Cryo LX. I think I recall reading you can replace the fans with nice quiet Noctua NF-S12B (although I wish I could recall where I read that).

 

So I sent my 9280 back for a 8690... yeah yeah, I know it was crazy to do so, but I think the 9280 was just overkill for what I do. After I bought the 9280 I started seeing all these posts about like " hey is a 9850 better for gaming? Or is the 9280 better? " Well most answers were basically the same... 9280 is great for CAD and as a mobile workstation... I don't do CAD, and I don't need a mobile workstation...as I work at a pizza joint, and even when I go back to college, I won't need that much power even then. So I'm basically using it to game/casual use and take everywhere I go. Well any 9280 owner knows that you aren't taking this thing everywhere you go, you'll pull a muscle lol. Riding my bike with it was nerve racking, it was so heavy and cumbersome that I would actually lose my balance because of it. Also I was constantly paranoid of breaking a strap in either my backpack, or the carrying case that came with it. Then I have a laptop acting as a $2400 bowling ball! But it was the nicest machine I had ever laid eyes on, and I will miss it. Honestly for the amount of money I borrowed to pay for it, I should have bought the 9850, but I would have had to wait 2 more weeks to get the extra $200 so... I'm not the most patient consumer. So I really hope the 8690 fits my needs a bit better, I will miss the socket 1366 CPU, and the triple channel memory though, and of course the 16:10 aspect ratio...I hope I get used to the 16:9 in the 8690...at least I can say I have a standardized aspect ratio now. I do have to compliment the screen quality, I have seen a lot of laptop screens, and the 9280 is in the top 10 for colors/blacks on laptops. So anyone who is fearing some washed out crapo-deluxe panel, don't worry about it, it's all you'll ever need.

 

Man, I don't even have mine yet, but this breaks my heart .

 

I know what you are saying but I still dont see how you brought yourself to send it back lol

 

I can play MW2 all the F'n way maxed out : :

 

Wow, good for you.

 

lol yeah I was gettin nervous wounderin if the superlaptop would be able to give me max graphics with smooth gaming

 

How's MF2 for you, enanthate?

 

Im thinking on upgrading my 900F with two 750Gb 2.5" drives but I noticed these are a 3 platter design and therefore slightly thicker than the normal 2.5" ones. Will they fit the dual HD compartment on the 900F or not? Looking at it I'd venture to say there is enough left height space for these larger drivers but Im not sure if the SATA connector will stretch to attach to both!

Thanks in advance for the advice if anyone know about this

 

for the time being, only the 500GB and maybe the 640GB drives can fit.

 

Is this the best minipci tv-tuner in general and will it work in a M570TU?

I am thinking of getting one over the summer.

 

it depends on your system, and if you want ATSC or DVB-t (which depends on which country you are in).

in general, Clevo usually has recommendations for TV tuners in their User's Manuals... as well as their supplied drivers CD (which would have the drivers for those recommended TV Tuners)

 

I am really enjoying it so far Tried it?

 

I am posting about this again.

After trying out the two 30 inches screens without any success at getting a resolution higher than 1280x800 (connecting them both through DVI cable or HDMI to DVI cable), I bought a DVI to VGA adapter which I plugged in the laptop to link it to a VGA 24" Samsung monitor, a VGA 23" Samsung monitor and a VGA 19" LG monitor... without any success. Even after installing the monitor's drivers and seeing the monitor recognized by the Computer Management panel, the NVIDIA Control Panel, and the Display Settings.

This is really disappointing. Am I doing something wrong, or is that monster not capable of handling any external monitor properly?

My reseller is waiting for answers from Clevo and Nvidia about it, but any help is appreciated really!

Thanks in advance.

 

I connected this notebook to a 1920x1080 54" LCD through HDMI with no issues.

I did not test it with a WQXGA screen like your 30".

Contact your vendor to confirm if this notebook has Dual-Link DVI output.

I will look into it to see if it does... because the previous D901C model had the Dual Link DVI

 

Thanks for the help.

I have contacted my vendor who in turn contacted Clevo and Nvidia about the issue and is currently waiting for a hopefully definitive answer to the question. I will of course post said answer on the forums so I can contribute with something!

Here's already some information from my vendor which I guess could be helpful for others as well. It's in chronological order, the first three before I received my laptop, the rest after:

 

I can confirm that the DVI-port on the D900F is not Dual-Link DVI.... and it does not have HDCP.

That means that the max digital output is 1920x1200 @ ~60Hz through the the DVI port or the HDMI port.

Thats kind of a shame since the precious D901C had it.

 

I discovered to my great dissapointment that you can NOT connect both an externam monitor and an external projector/monitor at the same time. It looks like two displays are the absolute maximum. Quite sad really, I was hoping to run both!

Also, I'm sick of running my 300 dollar speaker system out of my headphone port! Any recomendations for a good sound card that supports optical audio out?

 

the notebook supports SPDIF coaxial for digital 8-channel audio output.

so you can connect it to your speakers if it supports SPDIF coaxial.

 

I'm looking to buy a 9280 and have a question about docking stations.

I've been told that the docking stations I was looking have inferior inputs for the monitor ... why get a fast processor and lose performance when you dock the computer? I wanted to know what docking stations people would recommend.

Thanks, Julie

 

Goph, I noticed that but the output from the laptop is a headphone sized hack and the input on my Z5500 speakers has an RCA style input. How the hell does that work?

 

I have went over this many times here on this forum.

read these:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=391037
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=355525
... and much more if you search it.

 

Just ordered from eBay
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300367600784&_trksid=p2759.l1259

I think i got a steal at that price for the hardware

 

nice specs... definitely the fastest for any notebook.

 

Thanks man, Im really chuffed i got it at that price
Just gotta sell the current laptop now...
Any estimates on what this is worth?
Its in the Sig

 

thats a nice fully loaded rig.

you can get about $2000 for it.

I know a number of those systems with the X9000 in them that sold for around $2000-2200 on ebay recently.

 

Cool cheers man, iv got a few desktop GPUs, CPUs and Cases that i need to put up too so ill do the eBay turbo lister thing and up them all in one go

 

also, check out the same deal with nearly the same price.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=435367

 

Man thats gotta burn for him, and 3x SSDs
I went for storage over 3x 60Gbs, ill have that filled with my backup file from this (280gb) Also Raid5 for me i have had one too many HDD die in Raid0 >.<
And hes in the US id get burned for VAT etc
Do many laptops get sold on here? as in is it worth my while posting up the XPS? Thanks for all the help dude

 

there are many notebooks sold here on NBR.

here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/forumdisplay.php?f=18

it might be worth it to post it on here and then later on on ebay if you do not find a buyer.

 

Which one is better for D900F from these bluray drives: Panasonic UJ-230A or LG GBW-B10N ? Apparently the specs are the same...

 

Hi,

I got my 9280 a couple of weeks back. The screen actually looks a lot bigger (than it appears to be in the pictures). Also from some of the comments i thought it would be looking ugly and would need a paint job. But i was quite surprised. I am very much happy with the plain look.

I have seen noticible performance increase when compared to my previous dell. I have not tried any games yet. I am using it with Arch linux. Every thing seems to work except the bisoncam.

My specs are i7 920, with 6gb ram and 500gb 7200 harddrive. I am thinking of buying two 80 gb intel ssd and running them in Raid0.

When i was looking at the ssd, i found two types
Retail and OEM. Newegg seems to have some deals for the OEM. After searching I found the OEM may not include all the accessories needed to connect (SATA data cable and SATA power cable). There seems to be a considerable price difference between Retail and OEM after the deal. Have any of you bought the OEM ssd. If so, did you buy the SATA cables seperately or were they included ?

Thanks for your time.

ok. I checked the clevo D900F manual. it seems no cables are needed.

 

hey, i have a basic question:
It seems like with a d900f one should always be monitoring the temperatures. So I'm doing that with HWMonitor, and so far the all the max temps are between 70-80 degrees Celsius, none has ever hit the 80; normal use everything is around 50, except the GPU low 40ies.
So that's okay, isn't it?

I can see the ACPI, Core and GPU temperatures, but it doesn't show the HD temps. I've read the cooling thread in this forum, it said there the HD temp should never go higher than 65 Celsius.
Is there a way to monitor the hard drive temps? Or is that not necessary, as long as the other temps stay alright?

maybe you can shed some light on this for me, thanks

 

As I recall, HWMonitor will not read the temperature information from HDDs in RAID.

 

So which program would you suggest to use instead?

 

I'm not sure of any. Part of the problem may just be the nature of RAID, wherein it attempts to present itself to the OS/applications as just a single drive. This abstraction could mean that attributes with multiple possible entries such as temperature are just ignored. The fact remains that most (if not all) windows HDD monitoring applications won't read the temperatures of RAIDed drives.

 

yeah, I noticed that when trying other programs (like SIW). but thanks for asnwering anyway. I guess the temps I can see will just have to do for monitoring, and I'm just gonna assume that as long as the other temps are fine the HDD temps are okay, too.

I have another question regarding autostart:
I found 4 programs linked to cyberlink in the autostart. since I don't use cyberlink, I've disabled them.
I also disabled the hotkey-software, because I don't use that either.

Can I safely disable the two entries linked to BisonCam, or will my webcam not work anymore then?

 

The problem is a bug with Intel's Matrix "Firmware RAID" technology, that they don't pass along the S.M.A.R.T. HDD information correctly, once you configure the drives in a RAID array, (some RAID controllers do provide access to this information, like Areca). You could always try and download the latest Intel Matrix Storage Console software and see if you can at least set some HDD temp alerts via the Intel software. Otherwise since's Intel states in their bug technote;

I suppose you could see if there are other diagnostic tools that have been able to get the proper information out of the Intel Matrix drivers. You can try the latest versions of the following;

Speedfan
Astra32
PassMark DiskCheckup
Everest Ultimate

Otherwise you could always ping one of the authors of those tools and ask if they plan on adding Intel Matrix RAID HDD Temp support in the future.

Good Luck..

 

thanks for suggesting these. I tried the first three, none of them can do it. So whatever, I just rely on the temps I can see for now. I'm sure they're gonna fix that bug at some point.

 

Can someone with a D900F please try run the game "Divine Divinity" and see if it gives a black screen of death ???

I bought divine divinity on the budget bin today and got the black screen of death ...



running Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit

D900F
GTX280M

Thanks

Sparky894

 

I'm a D900F newb as I just got the laptop. Its an awsome machine so far compared to my old Dell 9400.

Im just wondering what kind of temps fellow owners are getting (I have the 920 CPU and 320GB 7.2k HDD).

Room Temp: 18C

Idle:
CPU: 45C
GPU: 44C
HDD: 34C

Under load:
CPU: 59C
GPU: 60C
HDD: 40C

Got IC Diamond compound on the CPU and GPU and a Zalman NC2000 Cooler working together.

Thanks.

 

well, these are certainly lower than mine. my room temp is approx 21 or 22 degrees.

Idle:
CPU: 51C GPU: 43C HDD: don't know
Under load:
CPU: 74C GPU: 71C HDD: don't know

I got arctic silver 5 and I don't have a cooler.

 

Yup, those temps are seriously cool for a D900 ... are you sure you are running with full clocks? High performance power plan?

 

LOL you're right my setting was balanced.

The idle temps remained the same but under load (after running WPrime and 3dMark) the temps are:

CPU: 72C
GPU: 68C
HDD: 42C

 

This program by piriform " Speccy"

All the info you need including HDD Temps in RAID

 

hey everyone!

just received my 9280 from xoticpc and looking forward to using it for architecture (CAD, 3ds MAX, VRAY, Rhino) and a little gaming.

hopefully this will be as good as everyone says haha

 

Does anyone know of there is a specific order on the 3 available HD compartments on the 900F as to which Drive the BIOS reads natively as the 1st, 2nd and 3rd? I'm upgrading my 900F with one PhotoFast Monster V5 Solid State Drive (as my system drive) and two 640GB disks (as my storage devices) and am wondering where they ideally should go inside the 900F or if it does not matter at all.

Thank you very much for the advice

 

the HDD in the battery bay is the 3rd HDD.

the first two are together under the touchpad area.

read the user's manual.

 

Thanks! I actually dont have one but was on the way to download one from Eurocom's site. Thanks again

 

I assume the order of the main 2 drive compartment (which drive goes on top of the other) doesnt really matter right? Thanks again