**OFFICIAL SAGER 8850-Clevo W880CU Owners Lounge**

good stuff!

 

Now that a few have theirs, I know you all can beat my brief demo scores with the W880CU...

 

Yeah, I still have to run Vantage, didn't have time. 18000 3DMark06 is nice, gotta get in overclocking when I have time. Can't wait for nibitor support for the GTX480m, need to get that puppy at least to 0.9v, 73c load temps is no fun

 

Great numbers, hopefully you can get some of these numbers OCCT stable.

 

Hey Guys
for the love of God
Can someone make a Video & put on youtube, Please


Thanks

 

Reporting a problem:
With latest nVidia drivers, when gaming in Bad Company 2 (sadly that's the only game I have with me now), there are stutter spikes (not related to ping) where for maybe 2-3 seconds it stutters horribly. I've noticed that when I exit the game right after, my battery that was 100% charged is down to 99%, so for some odd reason the laptop switches to the battery for a few seconds, kicking in power saving clocks for GTX480m, at least that's my most logical explanation.
Gaming at 1920*1200, all settings high, HBAO on, 8x AA, 16x AF, plays smoothly until stutter.

 

Can you make a Video
to show us the issue

looking to get this Laptop or Asus G73 JW

 

Hey I'm sorry I have no time atm for that.
Check that in the meanwhile if you haven't:
YouTube - NFS Shift Dual Screen

 

put my order in earlier. specs in sig!

 

who did you buy your laptop from ?

 

Great Specs, will be waiting for your own Review
if you could upload some Youtube Videos On YOur NP8850 that will be great~

 

Barebone from RJTech, all components from different places.

 

Ok I don't know what's up with that but there seems to be a power draw problem. While my battery was charging (so I guess some of the power to the laptop is sacrificed for charging the battery), laptop shut off straight while playing Bad Company 2.
As Falcon69 reported, the battery can't support heavy 3D things, it's a lame 11v battery or so when the laptop requires 19V lol!

This would make a lot of sense since for some reason the laptop switches to the battery that can't handle the load and just shuts off.
This reminds me of an obvious and expected issue when I ran my GTX280M in the M860ETU, in about a minute the laptop would shut off on battery while gaming. I had to edit drivers to prevent the GPU from ever reaching "Extra clocks" (highest 3D clocks) on battery. Maybe this laptop needs more than a 200W PSU to operate well.
The thing I'm also surprised with is that the PSU is 19V whereas my older 15.4" M860ETU was running on 20v.

 

You must be under warranty with RJTech
they should help you with it

 

I emailed them to report the problem but I'm sure the laptop is fine, it's a power draw issue. But to my surprise this happens when all my components are officially compatible with the laptop. Even though the QX9300 and GTX280M weren't supported on my M860ETU, laptop never crashed when on AC.

What may be done is using a D900F power supply, it's 20V but it's safe. 220W would guarantee enough juice.

 

No component on a modern computer requires 19V. Input voltage is just bucked by stepdown converters to common voltages, (ie. 12V, 5V, 3V, 1V, etc.), since computer components are more current dependant than voltage dependant. Some of the efficiency is lost through the buck conversion (Lenz's Law) so the battery or PSU has to supply more power to meet the current requirements of the component. For example, most fanless PSU's have a VAC to VDC efficiency curve of ~70-75% at a 50% load at room temperature.

The battery is not limited by voltage, but rather by the amount of current it can supply. The W8x0CU's battery is three cells in series equating to a maximum of 4.2V, 3.8A per cell. Li-po isn't exactly a new technology, but it hasn't matured as quickly as the Li-Co 18650 since the 18650 size was the number one battery used in notebooks for years and the demand for more battery burntime is stronger in the consumer notebook industry than in any other field. Li-po cells are good for a max draw of 4C and for some really good/expensive cells as much as 10C. However, for Li-po cells, higher capacity cells have less max current draw than lower capacity cells. The RC/hobby enthusiasts have to deal with which cells to use depending on the motor they use in their hobby cars/helis. So our batteries in our W8x0CU's most likely have the same ballpark 2C draw as standard Li-Co cells. Part of this is due to increased internal resistance that has greater incluence on max draw from other factors such as heat and overall wear.

The reason why your computer is cutting out on you is because you are charging your battery while heavily taxing it at the same time. Even on a 180W PSU this would be unadvisable. It is the motherboard itself that cannot distribute the power to all of the system demands. The rails simply cannot handle it. Second, no engineer, including myself, with a right mind would think of pushing a performance notebook that is fully loaded and overclocked while charging the battery. The battery alone during CC charge is using around 30W or so. The cable supplying power to the system from the jack is also not made to handle that much power in an enclosed notebook casing. The greater ambient temperature inside the chassis as well as the heat given off by the wire itself from thermal resistance is just going to increase electrical resistance. The issue here isn't the notebook itself, rather it is the user. It is up to the user to get to know his hardware and it's limitations. This notebook was made to handle what it can handle. By it dropping power is the notebook crying.

There are several posts that I made before that I want to link to in this post, but I am in class and the internet is snail slow right now so I can't search for them within a reasonable timeframe. A few of those posts are tightly related to the user issue of people taxing their notebooks to the extreme while charging the battery. Peak hours sucks when everyone is downloading torrents and starting drama on Facebook.

 

I was also suspecting that the motherboard might not be able to deliver all the power needed. However your explanation is no longer valid when the laptop shuts off while stress testing the video card and battery is fully charged. There is no overclocking at the moment. I also think that a 100W TDP GPU + 55W TDP CPU etc doesn't leave much room so I still think that a higher PSU could help.

I would be very happy if someone with the same CPU as me tried and see if they also get the same problem.

 

Oh, I guess I misinterpreted that part. Then it is simply the power lanes to the card that cannot supply the great amount of power needed to satisfy the power demand. Temperature also plays a factor here. There have been a few cases before where I was repairing notebooks for clients where the alignment of the heatsink and the aplication of thermal paste between the die and the sink also come into play. On one set of runs I would consistently get the same cutouts at a given temperature compared to a repaste where I would get a consistently higher or lower cutout point. User technique surprisingly helps out in applications where most do not think it would.

 

Laptop shuts off anywhere between 79c and 87c and that's when I'm gaming or stress testing. I thought too that maybe there was a specific temperature where the laptop would shut off but that's not the case. I was playing BC2 and this time since my battery is fully charged, I saw the battery indicator go from green to orange and the lag started, got out of the game and there again battery was at 99% and GPU-z monitors showed that the GPU clocks had gone down in the meanwhile.

This is how I see things:
-GPU load + battery charging = shut off in BC2
-GPU load + battery charged = lag in BC2
-GPU load + battery charged + 40W extra = stable possibly?

Because right now, stress testing the GPU crashes the laptop whether it's charged or not, so there is a power problem that's for sure. I kinda doubt that Clevo would have made a laptop that wouldn't work well with an included component. They supposedly redesigned the W870CU for the GTX480M, I hope they did more than modifying heatsinks because that behavior would be the one of a W870CU running a GTX480M. I would really be surprised if Clevo let that happen.
And on a side note, my laptop has a W880CU BIOS version so it's not a W870CU with a shoehorned GTX480M

 

It sounds like you have a lemon mobo on your hands. Though there has been a case where I have taken in a W860CU for repair from some guy south of me. His 920XM was stock, but his GTX 280M was overclocked to something similar to my clocks, I forget what, but with a lower memory speed. When I asked him to recreate the scenario where his notebook would fall to battery while plugged in during a game, we were able to do so in a very short term and controlled attempt. But after plugging in one of my 160W PSU's, the power loss was resolved. However, his case was more severe than yours. His notebook would switch over to battery and remain on battery for several minutes at a time before the system cools off enough and the PSU would kick in again. But at that point the PSU was trying to power the notebook while charging the battery at the same time, resulting in line power going out again and the system sucking the life out of the battery. When his battery voltage fell below (from what I calculated) ~3.5V, the battery would no longer power the system on games and at some points fail to power up the system at all until the cells cooled down. As to how he was unable to notice that his game was lagging during online frag sessions is anybody's guess, but in the end his battery was pretty much destroyed to >30% wear from just a few months under his ownership, and the potential damage done to his components is frightening as I expected that the CPU and GPU temps were in dangerous territory.

This is more of a power issue since his W860CU was overclocked fairly aggresively. Quality of the components does come into play here, but in your case your W880CU is factory tuned and shouldn't be showing these symptoms with officially supported components during gameplay. It is eligible for an RMA. Since there are no purchasable PSU's larger than 180W on the market that have the 2.5/5.5mm barrel plug, your options at the user level are limited, unless you pick up the 220W or 300W PSU and resolder the DC cable from your original 180W unit onto them.

 

Well my temps are in safe territory temperature-wise. I'm worried about my battery too because these little charges all the time are gonna wear it out.
Now, lemon mobo would suck as I am abroad on a semester.

 

@H-Emmanuel,
Is the 87C your GPU load temp reported by GPU-Z during/before the crash?
If so, that might be the memory chips overheating. If I understand correctly, Clevo uses pads for the memory and paste for the die. GDDR5 runs way hotter than the core. If the core gets to 87C - the memory chips (provided stock pads are used) could be hitting 105C+.
My 2 cents, of course.

 

Yes, multiple charges and discharges within a very short time is bad for a battery. That is part of the reason why his battery was damaged.

For now I guess you can work on technique and see if you can better remount the heatsink and the thermal paste. There have been quite a number of times here in the Clevo forum where users would buy and apply X23 onto their chips and get worse performance out of it. And when they posted their pictures of their heatsinks removed, I can already tell that the application was lousy. Hell, sometimes not the entire die is covered, and when they reapply the paste to compensate, way too much paste is used. When I was at a LAN party before, we were messing around with thermal paste. I was able to get a P8400 cooler with MX-2 than when my friend put on X23. Then I applied the X23 myself and was able to get the most optimal temps. It's just like sharpening knives. It is 99% technique and 1% tools/material. I still stick to X23 as my primary paste, but for routine repastes on customer's computers, I just use MX-2 or PK-1 because it's much easier and I'm a lazy guy. The performance difference isn't noticeable for casual and power users, but for benchmarkers and tempmarkers, every little bit counts.

You can remove your battery if you want and line the exposed bay/HDD bracket with EMI shielding and just prop up that corner with an eraser or something. If you're just going to use it on the table, you don't have to put shielding and just use the eraser.

 

The symptoms for overheating memory aren't present in H-Emmanuel's W880CU.

 

I wonder, what would be the symptoms generally for overheating memory?

 

Black/grey screens, driver crashes to desktop, BSOD's, purple/black checkering, horizontal lines, and anything else display related. Drops in power are very rarely correlated with overheating GPU memory.

 

OH trust me, I've been building desktops and laptops for years, I apply thermal paste perfectly and my temperatures show that, they aren't high at all. Anyhow, I recorded the problem:
YouTube - W880CU Power Brick Problem

This looks like a bad power brick to me, the LED dimming shows that the laptop sucks more power than the power brick can supply to the point that the low power consumption LED dims too. I hope that if that is the problem, that's it's the ONLY one and that there isn't a motherboard problem behind or something.

This is my verdict for now, based on Falcon69 and my experience.
So...
When gaming and the laptop switches to battery, it's because the powerbrick just stopped providing power, therefore it's just like when running your laptop and pulling your power chord out, the laptop doesn't turn off but switches to battery immediately. The battery can last long enough for the power brick to make up it's mind and start providing power again, that's why it's all stuttering and suddenly performance comes back, because on AC full performance is unleashed. However, in the event that we're running a much more stressful application, such as Furmark, when the power brick cuts and the load is offloaded to the battery, the battery can't take it, hence the sudden shut off.

Also I'd like to point that to the touch, the power brick is not hot, it's warm but not hot. I've had my power bricks run a lot hotter with my M860ETU and I never had the problem. So I really doubt there's a power brick overheating problem.

Anyone with a W880CU, try running Furmark, 1920*1200, extreme burning mode (to increase power consumption) and tell me if you get the same problem. That way we'll be able to see if the problem is widespread and Clevo will probably take action.

 

Hot PSU's is what we want. The heatsinks inside are effectively capturing the heat inside and is slowly dissipating through the Lexan casing. After watching your video, it is definitely an issue isolated at the PSU; god forbid it includes anything else. The power draw from the notebook is massive and the adapter cannot keep up.

 

That's what I hope for, defective PSU is nothing to replace but something defective in the laptop is just impossible right now, can't RMA from overseas.

I'd be interested to get a D900F female plug PSU. 220W would be optimal, especially if overclocking. Gaming load temps of 74c leaves room for overvolting and overclocking. I bought a 17" notebook for headroom when overclocking, to not be limited by temps. Lack of power was my last worry, so I'm gonna see if RJTech is willing to exchange my 180W PSU for the 220W.

 

With all these Issue
I think the Asus G73JW is a better buy ?

 

I might have a bad power supply, that's what I think. I LOVE this laptop but this problem is very irritating. I had considered the G73 and still decided to get the w880cu.

 

Look like you are the only guy who bought it
& the one with the problem in his New Laptop

 

thanks! my payment just got to nebraska, so my NP8850 should be on it's way soon. hopefully i'll have it by some time next week.

i'm a pretty casual user compared to alot of u guys. i don't care about benching numbers, OC'ing, and all that stuff. i just like to have a great piece of machinery, that works like how it's supposed to. with that being said, just let me know, specifically, what kind of programs u wanted me to test out with the NP8850 and i'll try to do what i can. a list would help cuz i'm not too familiar with all of the different benching programs.

as for the videos, i've never made or posted anything on youtube. i do have my GF's sony digital camera, so i'm pretty sure it does have a record/video function. pictures and a really brief description will be a for sure thing though!

@ current NP8850 owners: what drivers are u guys using and how are they working? does the 480M have good driver support yet?

 

Hey, congratulations on your purchase, this laptop has great potential.
There are two applications I'd be interested to see you running:
-FurMark: FurMark 1.8.2 download from Guru3D.com
-3D Intensive game: Battlefield Bad Company 2 if you have it

Now the only big difference between your laptop and mine is the CPU so we'll see if you get the same symptoms as me.

What I want you to do with FurMark is running it for 10 mins at 1920*1200 in stability testing eventually with "extreme burning mode" ticked and see if the computer remains on during the process.
When gaming, it will take longer so try playing 2 hours lol without getting out of the game and try to stay away from menus and loading screens as much as possible. See if the battery indicator in front of your laptop ever goes from green to orange and at the same time you get lag in your game.

Thanks!

 

will do. i don't have any games that are really GPU intensive right now. as far as PC games right now, i only have starcraft 2, team fortress 2, and counterstrike. i guess what i could do is run some hardcore SC2 for a few hours and see how the laptop will react. i'm really wondering how well the laptop will perform when there's a big game with over 300-400+ units attacking at once.

 

The only problem is that those kind of games are more CPU-intensive. All the AI is calculated by the CPU so you're not going to be putting much stress on the video card. Well FurMark anyways will replace any other tests so I'll be able to deduce out of those results what would happen while playing games.

 

yea, that's why i wanted to let u know which games i did have access to. i've been taking a long break from PC gaming, so i haven't really bought anything new in a while. SC2 is the most taxing game i have at the moment.

 

Does this have a backlit keyboard ?

Thanks

 

No, but it does have a frontlit keyboard.

 

Palundra! Ye seem to dislike em fancy lights. Why so?

 

All notebooks have frontlit keyboards.

 

Aye, but why not have both?

 

Because real men don't need to look at their keyboard. http://forum.notebookreview.com/5256528-post87.html

 

:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

Good one!

 

Damn..... and here was me thinking I was a real man but I am looking at my keyboard as I type this. I have to otherwise it just comes out like this. hgwkwgbs hwqbf. See what I mean.

 

Aikimox, do you really have an M17x and a HP8740 and a W880CU? The reason I ask is I am in the market for a new laptop and these three are on my short list. So which is better? If you had to choose one which would it be?

Edit: I withdraw the question. I just read your excellent review of the 8740w.

 

Mans keyboard:



Damn photobucket is being sh*t tonight...

 

it's finally in it's building/testing stage!

 

Ah thanks, keep me posted! I wanna get some furmark results!! Can't wait!

 

The wait for GTX 470M continues....