*** Official Clevo P65xSA/SE/SG / Sager NP8650/51/52 Owner´s Lounge ***

If you're based in Europe, I can recommend XMG, based on my (and other's) experience: http://www.xmg.gg/

 

+1 for recommendation their service was flawless, great communication and also got a great deal on the price

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

BTW by default they supply a 180W power supply with all models (even the 970m versions), which is nice, and paste with Arctic MX-2 by default (okay, not the very best, but better than stock), also their models all have a lovely matte (but with sparkly bits in it) bead-blasted finish, which I much prefer to the brushed finished you see on other Clevos. Communication with them during the buying process was excellent, I also got a good deal on the price, and turn around was very quick (3 days from ordering to receiving it, even though it was sent from Germany to the UK). They also offer 2 year collect and return warranty as standard,

 

Thank you for the recommendation. I was about to buy it from xmg (mysn) but I got this for a very reasonable price. An open box-offer. Got it for 1454 EUR.
i7 4710hq
970m
16gb ram
128gb SSD
1tb HDD
AC7265

That setup cost a bit more on mysn.eu I'm afraid.

And It's a great reseller here in Sweden with good customer support. Just that the specs on this one was a bit off

 

Yeah, I have 16GB Kingston HyperX 1866MHz installed. I originally had the stock 8GB, and my CPU temps stayed around 80C in the XTU benchmark and stress test, even with the stock paste. But when I upgraded the RAM, my CPU temps shot up to 99C, although I think this had more to do with switching to dual-channel and removing the single-channel bottleneck than it did with the higher RAM speed. I think it was just a really, really awful stock thermal paste job, and I just didn't notice at first because of the RAM bottleneck limiting the CPU. I used ArtiClean to clean off the old paste, and there was so much old paste that it took 5 applications before I got it all off. Then applying GC-Extreme dropped my temps from 99C to ~80C.

Before repasting, I tried figuring out what exactly was causing the temperature spike. I started with the stock 8GB, which had low CPU temps. Then replacing it with a single 8GB stick of the 1866MHz RAM caused a small jump in temps, but it wasn't serious. It was adding that second stick in Dual Channel that caused a 15C temperature spike.

 

I think I got the sanded one, picture below. Sorry for messy workplace-desk
Under that is a picture of my backlight-bleeding. It´s a bit less in real life though. But it is annoying on dark images.

Spoiler

I´ve read somewhere that reassemble the display can cure some of the bleeding, is that true? Also, seems like a repaste job is recommended?

 

MySN price matched when I compared them with a competitor and spoke to them... Well, more or less, as they pointed out they offered some things that the competitor didn't offer as standard (such as 2 year collect and return warranty, 3 day delivery, and MX-2 thermal paste)

I only bought mine with 4Gb RAM, as wanted 2133Ghz RAM, which they didn't offer, and I could buy this myself cheaper than their 1866Mhz RAM, but other than that, the spec I bought was as in my signature.

Excluding postage (£12) and the extra Corsair Vengeance 2133Mhz 16GB RAM I bought elsewhere (for about £140) it cost me £1496.99 (about 2070 Euros) - this price includes 20% VAT. The 1TB Samsung EVO 850 SSD represented quite a big chunk of that (£342.99), but I don't like HDDs in my laptops. I also paid for a Windows 8.1 license.

 

Do note however that mySN.eu, mySN.de and mySN.co.uk *ALL* have different prices to each other. I don't know how close germany is to sweden, but CEG is another choice.

 

Thank you, I have compared those three. Their starting price without ssd, hdd, ram and win 8 is the price I got mine for with all that included. But the I got over 200 EUR off because of the opened box.

What is CEG?

Do you think my screen bleeding is over the edge and a reason for me to return it?

What disturbs me the most I think is the anti glare coating on the screen. Reminds me of the old IPS. Dell u2711 etc. But I can manage to live with that. Don´t know if the other screens are different.

EDIT: How the h*ll did that old picture of me make it to my profile picture on this brand new account?

 

CEG = Clevo Extreme Gaming. Not sure of their prices compared to yours.

 

Okay, I've run some more XTU tests on my XMG P505/Clevo P651SE - all on the automatic fan setting ( not fn+1 full blast - my temps are quite a bit lower then). No cooling pad, Arctic MX-2 paste (factory applied by XMG). In between tests I let the CPU cool back to an ambient 39/40 degrees C:

Stock voltage:

Stress Test (1 x 5 minute cycle):

Max temp: 80 C (though mostly 76-79 C)
CPU: steady at 3.39Ghz on all 4 cores

Benchmark CPU test (average of 3 cycles):

Marks: 787
Max. CPU: 3.35Ghz (was 3.28Ghz on the first test, 3.38 Ghz on the next 2)
Max Temp: 81 C (same for all 3 cycles)

-60mV Undervolt:

Stress Test (1 x 5 minute cycle):

Max temp: 76C (though mostly 72-75 C)
CPU: steady at 3.39Ghz on all 4 cores

Benchmark CPU test (average of 3 cycles):

Marks: 806
Max. CPU: 3.33Ghz (was 3.32Ghz on the first test, 3.33 Ghz on the next two)
Max Temp: 76.5 C (78/78/74)

Does this look reasonable? I have a 2.6Ghz i7 4720HQ CPU and 16Gb (2x8Gb) 2133Mhz RAM running in dual channel mode, if it makes any difference.

I'm getting a Coolermaster U3 cooling pad in a few days, which should help cooling further.

 

BTW to round off this lot I did a single 3D Mark Firestrike test, this is on an stock clocked 970M using Nvida driver 347.52 (I was thinking holding off on OCing until Nvidia re-release a driver again that doesn't lock the GPU from overclocking):

Score: 6524
Graphics: 7468
Physics: 9440
Combined: 2707

How does this look for an non-overclocked 970M?

 

Here's mine with an i7-4710HQ and stock 970M:

3DMark Score
6521
Graphics Score
7454
Physics Score
8970
Combined Score
2778

 

You have a golden chip. You better hope you don't need to RMA for a CPU, GPU or mobo problem.

Driver is out. 347.88. Has been out for about a day.

 

they already did, go and grab the 347.88 driver

edit: ah, didnt see that ultima already mentioned that

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Really? So these are good results? Might be a few degrees worse in summer, I guess, though it never gets that hot here (southern England)

Oh, I didn't know that, thanks! Looks like I will be torturing my GPU over the weekend!
What's the best tool to test out Nvidia GPU overclocking? MSI Afterburner? NVIDIA Inspector? EVGA Precision? Something else?
I guess I could use HWInfo64 in sensor mode to monitor temps and frequencies etc.?
I was thinking of just a mild overclock that I could enable all the time (when the Nvidia GPU is used, that is) - what settings would be a good place to start/aim for? I do have the Prema Mod bios (not vBios yet) installed, but not sure I want to OC the GPU beyond what Nvida allow

 

Afterburner is fine for OC on stock voltage. If you want to overvolt, use Inspector. Don't use that buggy copycat piece of software called Precision.

 

Thanks, I don't want to overvolt. Is +135 core and +400 vRam likley to be feasible and stable?

 

Every GPU is different. You won't know until you try it. But based on 970M's track record your chances are good.

 

Okay, thanks.

BTW all the default MSI Afterburner skins look pretty horrible and make it difficult to figure out what's what, but I found these nice flat UI skins that make things much clearer:
http://grum-d.deviantart.com/art/MSI-Afterburner-nVidia-Flat-Skin-BIG-EDITION-507998828
http://grum-d.deviantart.com/art/MSI-Afterburner-Dark-Flat-Skin-BIG-EDITION-508383543

 

Yeah I agree, the new Derex skins look awful. Much prefer the old v2 and v3 skins, thankfully they're included. Or for ultimate troll you can use the fugly Precision skin since that's all that copycat is anyway, a skin over AB!

 

Okay, to establish a baseline, on the new Nvidia 347.88 driver, no OCing, I get these results (one pass):

Score: 6560
Graphics: 7567
Physics: 9529
Combined: 2759

I'll try OCing with afterburner at the weekend

 

Okay, results of first test at +135 GPU + 200 vRAM:

Score: 7250
Graphics: 8371
Physics: 9486 (slightly lower!)
Combined: 3076

Max GPU temp 67 C

Seems stable.

Will try upping the vRAM OC a little this evening

 

Thank you, didn't find the p505 at that site.

Soulds like you got a good deal there. Still, I think I won't get the same price as I did now. And even though I'm sure XMG has a great customer support, so do webhallen.com which I've bought the laptop at. So I'm feeling very comfortable with warranty and service. So the reason to buy elsewhere would be price difference and/or features. And what I can see, I have got the p650se. So it should be identical to the one xmg sells? Except for the i7 4710hq rather than i7 4720hq.

 

Pretty much, though XMG might offer different RAM/SSD options. There are some cosmetic differences, in that the 970M XMG P505 is a P65 1SE - this is the version with the nice bead-blased, rather than brushed finish, which I prefer, though that's really down to personal preference. The laser-etched XMG logo on the lid is also one of the nicer and subtle examples of branding.

 

Yes, I will look into exactly what Ram and SSD I have got in my. I have the P651SE and I like it! It's a bit of a finger-print magnet though
I got no branding on mine, which I actually like. I will bring mine to photography jobs so I like it to be quite discrete. Even though the XMG-logo sounds pretty!

So far, no more wierd problems have shown themselfes, so I really hope the laptop will continue to function.

Do you know if there are any BIOS-updates that will get rid of the sometime sudden fan-increases?
They are quite rare though. I tried the Aorus x7 pro with gtx970m sli last week which I got for a great price, but that thing was really annoying. Constant loud fan-increases and mine also had a faulty second graphic card so I had a good reason to return it. It also got extremely hot on the surface even when only browsing the web. Very happy I went with this instead.

 

So how do these results look? Better or worse than average for this OC?

This is with the just-released new (unlocked) Nvidia driver, without a laptop cooler or re-paste (though as I said, it had Arctic MX-2 applied by the reseller).

 

Which paste is the recommended? I would like to avoid the electrical leading kind. I have MS-4 at home but I think there is better pastes by now?

 

Prolimatech PK-3 has served me well in the past, but I think the favourites within the NBR community are Gelid Extreme and IC Diamond. Oh, and that metal one, Liquid Ultra.

 

So, if anyone had an opportunity to compare, how is the grain on Samsung 4k and Panasonic 3k compared to the glossy Sharp 4k? I'd downgrade to 3k if it has less grain than the Sharp - and if I can find it.

 

Thank you. Am I right about all those are non electrical leading except the liquid ultra?

 

Where do you get your displays from? I mean you're talking about a replacement screen right?
I'm thinking about 4k IPS instead of my current 1080p TN display

 

Anyone?

 

Have the P65x even been sold with TN panel? Thought it was only offered with IPS.

 

The P65xSA (960M) and P65xSE (970M) both come with a TN panel as stock; only the P65xSG comes with the IPS panel by default. For the SE, you can upgrade to an IPS panel for like $45, or to one of the 4K panels.

Some places, such as Eurocom, forego the TN display and only offer the IPS display as stock. You will only see that from custom builders though; resellers of Sager notebooks will start with the TN display as stock.

 

XMG only sell these laptops with IPS screens
BTW HTWingnuts original review of the P650SE only had a TN panel: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...650se-with-gtx-970m-htwingnuts-review.765376/

 

No idea yet, might ask one of the resellers or check some Chinese sites.

4k has this really annoying grain on light or flat backgrounds, so be aware of that. Gorgeous in games though, but not so much with work/browsing/cartoons. Not sure about Samsung 4k, but I have a certain aversion to pentile.

 

Oxford_Guy, if you want comparison there are on the thread, htwingnut I think had the highest score when overclocking, look for his post.

 

The 3k has the same. Or atleast it has some of the annoying anti glare coating. But compared side by side by an eizo color edge which has alot of it, it's not much. I think the ultra high resolution increase the effect.

 

thats about what my score is on +165 core and +225 memory

 

Exact same grain on Panasonic 3K. I had a P35X v3 with that display before RMA'ing it.

Exact same as the grain was on my old P170SM with Chei Mei FHD TN panel too.

 

Glad to hear it would have make no difference with the other panel option. I like the 3k resolution. Non-scaled stuff is still readable.

Now I just need to do a calibration off the screen and see the result and compare to the macbook pro's retina.

 

anyone know if we can do something about the cpu being downclocked on battery? It is only able to hit 1.6 ghz on 4 cores according to intel XTU.

 

i dont recommend using it full blast on battery anyways, but if u absolutely must have it u can use throttlestop for example and set the multipliers there manually. either that or u can try to uninstall the clevo hotkey utility, another user had the same question and solved it by uninstalling the hotkey utility. but throttlerstop worked as well

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

I see, thank you very much. I wonder if the other insane resolution laptops (Asus, MSI, Razer, etc) have the same grainy screens, not counting the Macbooks which don't have it from what I've noticed.

 

Okay, thanks

 

What sort of temps to you get on the GPU with that OC?

 

Off hand i believe it was around 76C i would have to double check when i play some bf4 tonight.

 

Okay, I've gone up as far as +135 / +400 so far and am still only getting max GPU temps of 67 in the Firestrike test, so is looking good, I think!

 

So Ultima was right, my P650SE got picked up today for RMA due to the HDMI port being broken, and PCS are going to replace the motherboard.

While I wait to get it back, I've been looking into getting a second, lighter PSU for carrying around since the stock one is so big. I searched and I know there have been some chats in this thread about it, but I'm still looking for advice. I want it to be fully functional so I want to buy another 180W PSU, just a lighter one - if such a thing exists. When my laptop arrived it came with a 'manual addendum' that says the provided PSU is either 19.5V, 9.23A or 19V, 9.5A . The PSU I got is 19V,9.5A, but does this mean I could safely use one with the other rating? Or am I better sticking with something with the same rated voltage and amperage?