*** Official Clevo P640RE/Sager NP8640 Owner's Lounge ***

Head down to the 'What Notebook Should I Buy?' section of the forum. We help people find laptops after they fill out a questionnaire (stickied to the top of the subforum) that asks you about specific things you want so we can narrow it down.

 

Hey Guys, first post -
I have been watching this thread for some time and I am about 98% committed to pulling the trigger on a p640 when it becomes available. I can't wait to get ride of my 17 inch dinosaur but from the specs on the Clevo site I have a few questions about the storage.
I have been adding and tinkering with my current laptop to keep it working and have added ram, hard drives ... and replaced key pads, fans and track pad etc - it has has been one big band aid after another and would like to salvage some of the parts - The new 2.5 - 500gb SSD is top of the salvage list.

I just found a p640 pre-order option from an overseas distributor. In the build options it looks as though it has 1 M.2 slot and 1 - 2.5 slot ... I was hoping for more (2, M.2 and 2, 2.5) for a possible raid option with the 2.5 - Can anyone confirm that there will only be 2 HD spots - I have seen specs on the Clevo site and as a barely computer literate guy, I was unsure.

Also on the site they are saying Dec15th for availability - anyone else heard of anything on ETA in north America?

Thanks -

 

Yep. One M.2 slot and one 2.5 inch 7mm HDD slot.

 

Thanks - Will invest in bigger Primary M.2

 

why would u want a raid setup anyways? only helps you out if ure big on sequential file transfers, otherwise its actually slower than a single drive...

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

A few good pics of this one...

 

So I'm guessing the Sager model is going to be the NP8640?

 

was going for redundancy on some key work files, not speed - won't be the end of the world, lot of other backup options.

pics look awesome

 

aaaah in that case itd make more sense u can always outfit the machine with a 2.5" and an m.2 drive and then use a software tool to mirror the two drives

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

I would say an external backup would be much safer, raid 1 just does not offer safety against a lot of sorts of damage/virus/theft.

 

true again. although external backups are just suuuuuuch a hassle.... much better to have it done automatically in the background

 

Yah, I am notoriously bad at backing up ... the one time an HD failed on me, I was 3 months behind

I have a couple more questions on the p640

I know it's a little like asking a crystal ball but is clevo going to put the 6gb 970m or a 980m in this later on? And if so is it worth waiting?
In this model is there any GPU or CPU upgrade options after purchase? (I expect not)

I am still on the fence of going 15inch or 14in... with the available options in the 15s

 

We have no idea.

Not at all. Both CPU and GPU in this laptop are BGA, i.e. soldered to the board. No chance of upgrades after purchase.

 

NAS plus a program that auto backs up to the network when you are connected

 

So I'm leaning heavily towards a 640RE (metabox in my case as I live in Oz) pending reviews of noise, throttling etc.

A question on choosing storage drives-

To maximise battery life/minimise noise I'm going to specify one 500GB SSD only (no HDD)

The question is- SATA3 850 PRO (standard SATA connection) vs M.2 PCIe 950 pro.
Yes I know the PCIe will be faster, but reviews seem to show the SATA 850 pro has lower power draw, seems a bit more stable (as the standard is more mature) , and probably real world usage speed that's fast enough.

What do you think?

 

What kind of program is that? I am interested

 

to be perfectly frank: unless ure dependant on heavily multitasked simoultaneous read & write operations and/or regular transfer of huge files, u wont notice any performance difference whatsoever between the two drives. in the end though, id actually choose the best that my budget would allow me

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Do you know if there's going to be an XMG-branded version of this, as MySn are my preferred reseller of Clevo machines?

 

most definitely havent heard anything about their naming, but based on their previous naming schemes it should be something like XMG P406 considering its 15 inch and 17 inch brothers are P506 and P706

 

There has got to be one out there you can set up that way, I'm not into backups at home myself.

 

Check out Crashplan. You can set your own encryption keys and backup locally and to the cloud.

 

Of course (and thanks for the XMG comments )

You said you wanted a job....already naming our products I see ;-) Seems to me like a pretty accurate naming stratergy you are suggesting there. ETA is still to be confirmed, we have had the samples for a while and stock was supposed to be landing in December, just no firm dates yet so will have to just wait a little bit longer.......

 

haha hey, u havent responded to that post in the other thread

but yeah, have had a good experience with u guys and always happy to talk about u and your products if people here ask for it

 

Okay, sounds good, thanks.

 

It's much, much cheaper to do this yourself using Cloudberry Backup Software and Google Cloud Nearline storage (or Amazon Glacier, but Google's Nearline is better), supports all the encryption you want, scheduled incremental backups, back-up of NAS drives and more. I'm paying less than $1 a month for 500Gb+ data backed-up! Data retrieval works well and is reliable too.

 

i still prefer local backups, cant bother to upload tons of data into the cloud....only use that for sharing files, otherwise its good ol´ magnetic and flash storage!

 

Thanks, I did consider it but I wanna make sure to have proper local backups before that.

Thanks, this is the first time I heard about Cloudberry, let me check it out...

Same!

 

Cloudberry offer trial versions, and using Google Nearline is dirt cheap, so wouldn't cost hardly anything to have a play with this

I also backup important stuff to Blu-ray disks

 

That stuff is expensive... :/

 

Not really, I don't backup everything to that medium and use re-writable disks

 

Yep, plus ISPs that has data caps or limits will be yelling at you for uploading too much...

 

I hope you don't use that for long term backups, discs deteriorate over time.

 

I just got myself this: https://www.serversplus.com/servers/tower_servers/hp_tower_servers/712317-421

Got the special 4GB RAM +200W PSU version.. Oh did I mention, paid only a £100... Put 4x4TB WD Red drives in there for another 390 and have a server to store everything for next 5-10 years ...

 

crazy purchase! enjoy

 

Is there any news on when this laptop is likely to go on sale or what UK retailers will stock it?

Callum

 

Probably not too different from the rest of the world.

 

Will this be powerful enough and future proof to play the latest games? (COD BO3 in ultra?)

Thinking of this or one with 980M GPU...

 

Yeah, 970m should be able to play games at ultra or high settings now. Should still be good for a while.

If you get new computers every couple years, 970m should be fine. If you want to keep it around for a few years, then maybe consider a model with 980m, as you can't upgrade the graphics card later.

 

This is probably a dumb question but what's the performance difference for frame rates in graphics cards when changing screen size? ... 970m in a 14inch VS 970m on15inch - is there any measurable difference when gaming? Obviously screens would have to be identical except for dimensions

 

Nope!
Unless one screen has a higher res than the other you will get the same exact performance.

 

Screen size doesn't matter, resolution is.

Sent from my potato running on Android 5.0.1

 

Apparently there's going to be an XMG-branded version, so mysn.co.uk will sell it, and they're a decent reseller (and their branding is quite subtle).

 

So does everything, best strategy is to have backups of the same data across multiple media - e.g. I have stuff backed-up on Blu-Ray, in the cloud on Google Nearline, and to external hard discs, as well as the original source.

 

Their prices seem steep compared to others like pc specialist though

 

If you contact one of MySNs representatives about their prices compared to elsewhere they will usually see what they can do to help with that....worked for me anyway! Also MySN offer a better warranty than PC Specialist, and I like the fact that the XMG-branded machines have the matte sanded finish, rather than brushed. Their support is also very good. If I was to buy another Clevo machine, I would buy it through MySN, unless they don't budge on any major price differences.

 

@cogden2 - as @Oxford_Guy kindly pointed out there are quite a few subtle and less subtle differences. Apart from the warranty (which is always raised but the PCS default warranty is only 1 year parts, 1 month shipping inside the UK) where our warranty is 2 years full parts labour and shipping Europe wide, there are other differences such as we have G-Sync on our XMG models as standard (you can choose the Schenker equivalent model without G-Sync if you wish) but PCS don't have G-Sync - this alone can account for £100 price difference!!! PCS also use a 45% gamut panel in some of their systems which we don't - that's another £65 or so which isn't by any means an obvious difference but does exist.

I do highly recommend that you contact our sales team if you see something that looks strange like big price differences and so on. There's never any hard sell and we know the products inside out so can help explain differences in price, specification and features

 

So the 980M is more for long term while the 970M is more for short term usage? (I know this is very simplistic way of looking at it but I guess it's a start...)

 

Can't dichotomise it that way. The 970M is a very capable card. In fact, how long a card lasts depends on how much you're able to compromise on graphical fidelity in future games. For example, your GTX 560M could run GTA V at low-medium or even medium settings at a playable framerate. But are you willing to dial down the graphics settings in the first place?

 

Trying to "future proof" PC laptop hardware by buying the fastest most-expensive version is not necessarily a good idea, in most cases it can often be better in the long run to buy what's a good trade off between price and performance now, as you'll likely end up buying a new laptop within 3-4 years anyway, if not sooner...

For me the 970M is capable enough and was far cheaper than the 980M

 

I am not that willing to do so; actually my issue with current games is that they cannot be run on 1080p smoothly even with lowest details. Then again., I have not used any such high performance GPUs before; I tend to stick with mid-range cards, whether desktop (e.g. FX5200, GTX 260, HD7850) or laptop (this Sager is actually my first proper laptop!) and maybe that's why I am a little... for the lack of a better word, confused about this lol.

I am trying to find a nice sweet spot here; sounds like the 970M is the way to go in my case (or even 960M?)