*** Official Clevo P150EM / Sager NP9150 Owner's Lounge ***

Double the price, double performance
Besides, you also score higher on the CPU. I'm using 3630.
Is there a way to increase the clocks on this baby?

 

Heres my score, with the 680m & i7-3630. NNVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M(1x) and Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3630QM CPU

 

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/5029319

This is after I set the clock to 680 (+80) and the memory to 2200 (+800).
The GPU is still very cool, 49c tops. Can't feel it on my keyboard at all, the vents are pretty cool as well.
Does anyone know how can I configure the fan speed etc? It drives me mad that the drives spin up every time the card goes over 42-43c.
I can see why I need the cooling when I'm gaming, but why would I need the extra fan spin when I'm using office? meh...

 

Sorry but I don't play any of those XD
Will test planetside2 later.

 

If you didn't think there would be such a big difference why did you fork out an extra $500 for the 680m?

You set the dGPU to always be on. If you don't want it for office, then just don't set it to always be on.

 

I have only had my 9150 since the 20th, but I have not had any issues with the keyboard. I use this laptop as my work machine and I type on it all day being in the networking field. My KB is the newer version with the windows 8 style windows key on the left side, i'm not sure if that makes a difference or not. I been playing CoD Black Ops 2 on it and again I haven't noticed any issues with the keyboard.

As far as the sound goes... I am using beats solo's and I also use the Zune earbuds that came with my zune a long time ago with the braided cable. Anyhow, they did sound like sound coming out of tin can when I plugged them in. After using the THX TruStudio Pro utility (which comes with the laptop on a cd) I was able to tweak and tune that out. I am not a sound guy now, but they sound good to me after I used that utility. I didn't touch anything in the realtek utility either...

I will post a proper review of the laptop in the near future, but for now I am all around happy with it.

 

Just curious, does the msata slot have the screw to mount the msata ssd. I was reading reviews on other machines and it seems a lot of manufacturers do not include this.

 

Yes, the screw is in there to mount the MSATA.

 

I installed a mSATA drive in mine and can also confirm that the screw was there. Getting the computer to boot from the mSATA drive was a little confusing, as I'd never seen a BIOS set up this way before, but it worked fine once I figured it out.

 

I'm guessing just set the msata as the boot drive or are there any more steps involved?

 

bought win 8. do all the drivers will be stable in win 8 espiecially amd 7970m?

 

Expecting arrival of my new NP150 this afternoon from XoticPC!

Unfortunately, I requested the mSata be my boot drive, as I didn't realize at the time that it was SATA II instead of SATA III, so I plan in starting with a fresh install of Windows 8 and resetting the boot drive to one of the full SATA III drives.

I've retrieved most of the drivers for the machine at:
custom gaming laptops - Welcome to Sager Notebooks
Drivers - Download NVIDIA Drivers

But I didn't see the drivers for Windows 8 for the Bigfoot Killer 1202 + bluetooth network card, so I'm planning on grabbing that here:
Killer Gaming :: Support :: Driver Downloads

It also seems like the following drivers are missing for Windows 8:
USB 3.0 Driver for Windows 7 32/64 BIT
Integrated Video Camera Driver for Windows 7 32/64 BIT

Anything else I need or should know? I'm hoping the BIOS is straight forward for switching the primary OS drive.

 

IIRC, on Windows 8 the only drivers I needed to install were the Card Reader and Nvidia. Everything else was taken care by Windows already.

But if you want to install the THX TruStudio then you'll have to install the Realtek Sound drivers first.

 

It's not the reseller, it's simply a different market.


For instance, while in the US the 675MX is about 50-100$ cheaper than the 7970m, depending on the reseller, here it's around 50-100€ more expensive.

 

Interesting, I ended up installing whatever windows 8 drivers were available... I've noticed that my USB ports have been working sporadically, the port on the right never shows detected though it will power the device on, though its fine if i boot over to Win 7. Anyone else facing this kind of issue?

 

All the drivers should be fine, you will want to get the latest AMD beta drivers they do work better then the stock drivers.

 

how about intel driver?install seperately?

 

Intel drivers then AMD drivers.

 

Planning to buy a new NP9150 for this holiday. I have a few questions. Pls help.

1. I understand that the msata is SATA2 on this machine. If I use this as an OS drive will that have any performance impact? Or should I go for a full blown SATA3 SSD for the OS?

2. I'm planning to install one dedicated SSD in the main slot for storing all my VM's. If I do this I'll just be left out with msata and optical bay hdd. Is the optical bay slot a SATA3?

3. Why are the hard drives and SSD's in the optical bay section much more expensive than the ones in the primary drive section in xoticpc?

4. If I order for just the caddy instead of the dvd drive, can I install any 2.5" hdd/ssd myself?

5. What's the average read/write speeds that you get on this laptop for SSD, msata and seagate hybrid xt hdd?

 

1. The Msata connection is physically different than the Sata II connection, they just happen to have the same speed capabilities at 3 gb/s. A full blown SSD using SataIII will be faster and what you typically want to use.

2. The Optical bay, the last I saw, was Sata II. I haven't seen any official documentation supporting that, but that's what they typically are. Having a mechanical HDD in that ODD bay won't impact performance at all if you put it in there.

3. The reason being is that the Primary bay prices take into compensation the drive you're replacing. If you're not going to be getting that drive, we aren't going to be charging you for it. ODD drives aren't really worth a whole lot, so the impact that they have the pricing is very minimal, and why they show higher prices.

4. You can install pretty much any HDD/SSD that you want as long as it's 2.5" and isn't too thick for bay. Typically any SSD will work and any HDD that is 1tb or smaller in size.

5. The average read write speeds will depend on the specific drive you choose to put in the system. If you google the drive and look for ATTO benchmarks they're a pretty good indicator of what you'll be getting. The Seagate Hybrid drive will depend on whether you are talking about the 500gb or the 750gb version. You can find a good comparison in one of the graphs here on this PAGE.

 

I know this might be a silly question but where can i buy a keyboard upgrade for my p150em? Ive tried searching but nothing seems to come up but forum threads that dont link anywhere. I would like the steelseries keyboard.

 

Hey Erokitsune, just sent you a PM.

 

The SteelSeries keyboard? You mean the same keyboard the MSI GT60 & GT70's have? It's possible to install that onto a Clevo P150EM? If so, where do you get it and how difficult would it be to install?

 

Pretty sure Xoticpc offers it.

 

Short question guys. I want to exchange my 675m with the 680m. But at the moment it isnt possible to get a Clevo Subvendor 680m 4g in china. But i can get for most likely the same price a 680m 4g from MSI. There are any problems or things i need to change (bios)? Laptop is a p150em.

 

It will work with a little modification and used to be offered by most resellers. We have had to remove it as an option though as Steelseries themselves only wanted it offered on MSI computers.

 

So if I put a Seagate Momentus XT 750GB SATA3 hybrid drive in the DVD Bay, even then the performance won't have an impact? I may go for a SSD on that bay in the future. The SATA2 on the dvd bay is probably the only thing preventing me from placing an order.

 

Unfortunately it's not something that is able to be swapped out. Even with the Hybrid drive in the ODD bay, I doubt it'll saturate the 3gb/s that the connection allows. According to some benchmarks I uncovered the 750gb variation gets just under 190MB/sec

 

The only SATA III bay is the main HDD one. SATA II doesn't really make a huge difference in real world use though, but it does show up on benchmarks. I have an SSD in my main bay, an mSata SSD, and then a 1TB HDD in the optical bay. The combination works great!

 

I finally received my machine! It's a lot slimmer and lighter than expected, so very pleased there.

The speakers are worse than expected. I tend to find that low volume pumps out worse / distorted sound than loud. Any ideas? And is this what you guys have experienced too?

I am currently installing games on this beast and I am sure it's gonna rock!

 

I'm going to buy an NP9150 from xotic soon, so a few questions:

-Have the 7970m Enduro issues been fixed yet?
-What is the noise on the NP9150 like?
-Is the 95% color gamut glossy screen worth it over the normal one (I don't like matte)

 

Hello folks, I'm new to the forum but I'm strongly considering having a Sager NP9150 built by XOTIC and I wanted to ask a few questions here first.

I've done quite a bit of research and I've found conflicting information in regards to the combination of both a primary SSD and an mSATA. I've heard that you can't have a Sager built with an SSD and an mSATA, is that the case?

I wanted to have either a 256gb SSD with a 128gb mSATA for my OS or a 512gb SSD and a 256gb mSATA for my OS. I need to keep my optical bay so I can't use that area for a drive.

Does XOTIC build the system with SSD + mSATA? I’ve heard no but it looks like they do on the build sheet.

Keeping my games and major programs on the SSD and the OS on the mSATA would be my objective. I know the mSATA is running at SATAII speeds but I think that would be fine for the OS and I want as much space on the SSD as possible to utilize SATAIII speed on my data, games, videos, etc.

Last question...would my boot times be faster using the SSD for the OS or using the mSATA for the OS?

Thank you all for the help! I appreciate it.

 

I haven't received my 9150 yet, but I'll tell you what I've read on these forums so far and what has worked in the past on to improve sound quality on notebooks.

Install the most recent RealTek audio drivers (which can be found at Realtek). They usually provide better sound quality than the default windows sound control drivers, and offer more equalizer settings you can experiment with.

A couple of people have mentioned turning off the "PC Beep" setting improves overall sound playback. Sometimes that can be changed in the BIOS, but from what I have seen of video and screen captures I don't believe the 9150 has a "PC Beep" setting. I'm not sure how the Windows 8 sound settings are structured, but in the past if you go into Control Panel -> Sound -> Speakers -> Properties -> Levels there should be a PC Beep setting there. Slide the volume to 0 (you can click mute too if you want to be extra safe).

(The below settings can usually be found in the RealTek HD Audio Manager after you have installed the drivers/software).

While in the Speaker property area you should experiment with enhancement settings tab adjusting pitch shift and or equalizer may help. Speaker systems usually have a build in tab of their own (systems with Dolby have a Dolby tab) which usually contain a bass boost setting and a headphone setting. In the advanced tab usually there is a setting to adjust the sample rate and bit depth. Setting it to 24 bit, and 192000 Hz usually give the best quality.

If you go into the recording (tab?) area I recommend muting the microphone. Since its in the area of the keyboard and touchpad it will pick up not only sounds of key presses and swipes it will also pull the sounds from the speakers and recycle them through the sound system again.

Install the THQ sound system software (if you haven't already). Many reviewers said the sound performance improved quite a bit after installation.

 

The primary bay and the msata bay are separate areas so you should be able to have an SSD and an mSata both running together without any problems. (Both areas are separate in the configuration area, so you can add both). Configuring both to be purchased and installed by Sager on the reseller sites can get pretty expensive. Many people (myself included) decided to go with a normal hard drive (ex: 750gb 7200rpm) when ordering the system, and add a mSata drive on our own. Since its much cheaper doing that than the price Sager charges.
Many people have said that the sata III (primary bay) and sata II (optical and msata bays) don't provide much of a real world performance difference (only noticeable in benchmark applications). People have said booting the OS from an msata drive takes 12-14 seconds while the sata III drive bay boots it in 10 seconds, so you're only looking at a 2-4 second difference. For (most modern) games a lot is loaded into memory, and not much is pulled directly from the hard drive, so you'll see msata and sata have less impact on gaming (you can read more about that on the gaminglaptopjunky website).

 

When ordering a computer in the configuration you mentioned, Sager will actually tell us they won't do that. It doesn't offer any benefit to do so and you're better off applying that money to a larger SSD in the primary and partitioning it up. You'll get faster read/write for everything on it instead of having to rely on two drives for doing the same thing.

If you can do without an ODD, you could replace it with a hard drive for the storage of music, videos, pictures, etc... eliminating some of the need for a gigantic SSD.

 

I think I will go with the 512gb SSD and the 128gb mSATA. I'll be running SolidWorks, AutoCAD, Adobe, and Photoshop. I’m still not sure whether I should use the mSATA as storage only or as my OS drive. I’ll keep reading and decide before I order. Although if Sager won't do this than I will go with just the 512gb SSD.

I want to future proof the system as well as have plenty of space. Because I have to keep my optical drive I think this is the best option for me. I know I could purchase an external OD but I bring my laptop everywhere and I use the OD a lot, bringing one with me everywhere I go will be inconvenient.

I know that this will be quite expensive but it will be worth it.

Here is the build I had in mind:

Display 15.6" Full HD LED-Backlit Display featuring 95% NTSC Color Gamut in Matte Finished Surface (1920 x 1080)
Zero Dead Pixel Insurance Guaranteed no dead or partially-lit pixels for first 30 days of purchasing
Video & Graphics Card Nvidia GeForce GTX 680M GPU with 4GB GDDR5 Video Memory
CPU Processor 3rd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-3840QM Processor ( 8MB L3 Cache, 2.80GHz)
Thermal Compound IC Diamond Thermal Compound - CPU + GPU -
Operating System Genuine MS Windows® 7 Professional 32/64-Bit Edition ( 64-Bit Preloaded )
Memory 32GB Quad Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1600MHz - 4 X 8GB
Primary Hard Disk Drive 512GB Crucial M4 Series SATA3 Solid State Disk Drive
mSATA SSD Drive — Crucial 128GB M4 Series mSATA SSD - Preconfigured as an OS Drive (Primary Drive C) -If this is possible but it looks like Sager won't do it
Optical Drive Bay — Optical Drive or Hard Disk Drive in Optical Drive Bay with Caddy case 6X Blu-ray Reader/8X DVD±R/2.4X +DL Super-Multi Drive & Software
Wireless Network Card Killer™ Wireless-N 1202 802.11 A/B/G/N Wireless LAN + Bluetooth 4.0 Combo Module

Any thoughts or advice?

 

Looks pretty solid, You probably don't need to go all the way up to the i7-3840 but the 3740 should be just about right.

I would just get rid of the Msata entirely, it's really not benefiting you any and you can just get a larger SSD with that budget it frees up.

Other than that, great!

 

Hey guys, I just got confirmation from the only reseller in my country that their newest keyboards still don't have the Win 8 key on the left side, like we saw in the pictures from some users a few days ago.
Is there any chance that was a custom modification by the reseller?
If it came straight from Clevo everybody should have it, I think (and a month has passed already, so any shipment delay shouldn't have an impact).
Should I expect my reseller to have the new keyboards at some point (they currently have those with Win8 logo, but on the right, latest shipment yesterday) or was that some kind of special deal for one country/reseller?

Thanks

 

If you're going to be using programs like SolidWorks you'd see much better performance out of the ATI 7970m GPU than the Nvidia 680m. If you are planning to play the Batman Arkham games or Borderlands 2 then the 680m would be the prefered GPU since it can display Physx. (Batman will only display physics effects if you are using a Nvidia GPU, and Borderlands 2 physic high settings works better with the Nvidia Physx engine). If you don't plan to play those games then go with the 7970m as it will work better in the modeling programs, preforms equal or better than the 680m in many games, and its significantly cheaper.

Here is the 680m vs 7970m done by notebook check. Both companies have improved there drivers quite a bit since the article was written.
Review GeForce GTX 680M vs. Radeon HD 7970M - Notebookcheck.net Reviews

As for the rest of the configuration:
I'd stay with the default CPU. I don't think you're going to see a significant difference between the default CPU and the 3840. Clock cycles are almost the same, and the 2mb difference in the cache doesn't amount to much. I'd save the $335 to spend on something else.
If you really feel like you need 32GB of RAM you can pick it up (4x8 chips) from many places for $130-$150 and 2x8 chips can be picked up for $55-80. Buying RAM separately would save you money.
While you'd see faster speeds from the primary drive being configured as an SSD drive (over a HDD) if you're planning to use it primarily as storage space then that seems like as waste of money as well.
If you don't have anything against Windows 8, then I'd recommend getting the Windows 7 home premium default along with the Windows 8 upgrade offer (it would save you $80).
That's my thoughts.

 

Hi guys, how do I go about connecting say my mobile to the Intel Advanced-N 6235?

Sorry a bit of a noob when it comes to wireless. Never had an upgraded card until I got this Sager.

 

Are you looking to share files between the devices, or are you trying to share the Internet connection?

What type of mobile device are you trying to connect? Is the mobile device running on an Android, Windows, or Apple OS?

 

You would want to make sure your phone is discoverable and then have the laptop search for devices. You should see it pop in the list of devices within 30 seconds usually.

 

Thanks Avid and Derek.

I am looking to share files. This new Windows 8 OS is really making my life difficult but fun at the same time So where do I go to get my laptop to search for devices?

I keep thinking it is the wireless that connects and not bluetooth?

 

Take your mouse to the top right and go to PC settings. Under devices you'll see "add devices" that'll get you going in the right direction. Then it's as simple as selecting the file to transfer and send to that device.

 

You want to make sure you turn on Bluetooth on your notebook as well. I had that problem earlier. I think it's fn+f12

 

I Always forget the first step. I've fallen into this fallacy so many times when troubleshooting on the phone. Thanks for the addition!

 

Your OS will benefit infinitely more from SATAIII than your media will; putting it on the mSATA just to free up space on the faster drive for file storage is a terrible idea. If storage space matters that much to you, get a 1tb HDD for data and use the mSATA for OS and programs. Even if you do get that configuration of SSDs, put the OS on the main drive and use the mSATA for file storage.

That's why Sager won't put the OS on mSATA for you when you have a better drive available.

Don't forget that you can but external HDDs for more storage.