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

As Octiceps says, plastic. However it's a very good plastic held by 14 screws so quite rigid.

It's a matte 'shot blasted' textured plastic and you don't realise it's plastic till you feel it. Inside there is a small metal plate (4" x 6" IIRC) secured by standoffs to the base. The key point is the extra 4mm or so that allows for better cooling.

Another upside is it's fine directly on my lap even when maxed out (although I haven't done too long a session). You can feel it's warm but it isn't uncomfortable

SE & SA are the same. It's only the SG that has the deeper chassis and a plastic base for the improved cooling.

 

Ah true, I forgot the chassis is even bigger slightly.

 

Does anyone know if you can fit a 2tb hdd and a 2.5inch ssd in the 970m model?

 

Nope

 

[Deleted]

 

nope, u can only raid two m.2 sata drives or two 2.5" sata drives in this machine. pci-e raid aint possible, thats a batman-exclusive

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Get your own Gelid GC Extreme and repaste yourself... AS5 and MX4 are total junk.. You'll see 5-10C drop in Idle and Load temps with GC Extreme...

8GB RAM can be a bottleneck.. Also expecting 100fps++ with a single 970M on BF4 Ultra is stupid.. I get 60-75fps usually on Ultra and I don't have a BGA turd CPU (have a 3940XM running at 4.0GHz)... I also have a 8GB RAM stick +4GB RAM stick in dual channel mode... I would strongly suggest getting a 2nd stick (even if it's 4GB) as in the P650SE, Single channel mode has been proven to affect fps by @omer.sak...

Set profile to max performance in windows and in your NVIDIA control pannel under 3D settings set power managmement mode to Prefer max performance.. also what drivers are you on? Use DDU, clean out old NVIDIA drivers and install 347.88...

AUO has better colours and I think response time is lower..

@omer.sak has proven that dual channel RAM increases the fps by 10 at least on BF4...And of course increases in other games... Single chanel RAM is a massive bottleneck in this machine..

You have special ears... No such noises here from my 7K1000..

P65xxSA is plastic I believe...

 

BTW I get quite a lot of background hiss through the headphone port on my P651SE, though none through the centre speaker out socket (which doubles as the SPDIFF socket). I get no hiss through the headphone socket on my Macbook Air. I'm using £100+ Sennheiser headphones and all my audio drivers are fully updated. Could this be a faulty headphone socket? Does anyone else notice any hiss through the headphone socket?

 

I am having problems with CPU temperatures while running chrome and decoding video. If I watch a livestream on twitch.tv, my CPU temps sometimes skyrocket to ~90c, which is pretty stupid. And my cpu is idling ~60c in chrome when I am on reddit or these forums. Are these temperatures normal?

 

Use IE. Hardware acceleration is pretty borked in Chrome which causes high CPU usage.

 

Also causes stuttering like mad in games.

I tried using IE but half my bloody websites would not load and I cried and grudgingly went back to chrome

 

Hopefully Spartan will be much better since it is dropping the IE engine and being written from scratch.

 

Stop multitasking so much

 

NEVER

Spoiler

 

How much ram are you using in this SS?

 

A bit over 7GB. I frequently sit near 7-9GB before launching games. #16GBIsMyMinimumDesiredRam

 

Anyone else get this?

 

I have a hiss only when an audio content is paused. During an audio playback i have no probz

 

In case anyone was wondering the outcome with my laptop (pages 302/303 I think), it had serious software issues and I got a replacement.

Next question, in the Control panel, I go to Mouse but there is no 'Device Settings' tab. I'm trying to enable two finger scrolling but can't without the tab. Do I need to download the Clevo touchpad drivers? If so, has anyone got a link? I literally hate using laptops without the function.

 

I get the same hiss during audio playback too, though only on the headphone port, not the centre speaker out. Think I may have to RMA it, which is annoying as my P651SE's CPU and GPU run very well (low temps and I can overclock the GPU and vRAM all the way to +135/+500) :-(

 

Make sure that you don't have an app running in the background that keeps the 980m active. I was getting about 2.5-3 hrs battery life with the 4k LCD between movies and browsing. But if you really want better battery life, you will have to go with a lower res screen. It will be some time before they will be able to drop power consumption on high DPI LCD screens in 15" size.

 

ArmA 3 is horribly optimized and is more CPU heavy than GPU heavy. BF4 Ultra just hammers any bandwidth limited GPU, but even 980m has dips well below 60. Make sure you have performance profile in Windows and Clevo Control Center set to High Performance.

8GB RAM should be sufficient as long as you don't have a lot of stuff open in the background, but I've seen Windows RAM usage with BF4 suck up to 6-7GB with some apps open in the background. BF4 is sensitive to dual channel too though.

 

I think i had something like that before but somehow changing the settings in the sound blaster made it go away. All i did was change it from stereo to builtin speakers and back and it disappear so I was quite confused how that does anything. Also, does anyone know the 65 watt TDP rating is accurate for the 970m? Or does it not apply when say... Furmark and Prime95 runs?

 

My P650SE automatically turnsoff when it reaches 12% battery. Just did a clean install of win 8.1 and running latest stock 306 bios and ec. Anybody else run into something similar?

After it turns off I can't turn it on either, it's like the battery is depleted. If I plug it in and turn it on the windows battery gauge shows 12%.

Any tips?

 

I suspect the windows estimate of your battery charge level isn't accurate yet. It takes several cycles of charge/discharge for windows to learn it's characteristics. So windows thinks it's 12% but in reality it's <5%. Accuracy should improve with time/cycles.

 

It seems to be doing so since a while ago, weeks before this recent reinstall.

 

@myx

I guess you probably did this already ....but did you check the battery percentage at wich windows is set to shut down?

Maybe you installed some software that automatically changed this setting.

You can try to reinstall windows without any drivers/software and see if it exhibits the same symptoms

 

make sure to recalibrate battery by completely charging it to 100%, then discharging it until the laptop switches off on its own without interruption, then charging it again to 100% without interruption.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

The odd thing is that any battery info software i;m using, it shows 0.0% wear. It is quite absurd taking in consideration that when I bought the laptop it reported around 5-6% wear. I don't recall exactly.

I just did another test, letting it drain completely and the laptop went in hibernation @ 5% and it wouldn't turn on. Meaning normal behavior.

Gonna try a couple more charge/discharge cycles and let you know.

 

Thanks for the tip. I did a repaste with AS5 yesterday and it was pretty easy (compared to my old Gigabyte P35X V3).
I also a bit pissed off at the retailer/reseller I bought my Clevo from. He either didn't do a repaste at all (although I did order it) or he did a terrible job. Just look at it!

Those are some damn fine tmeps, but for how long did you stress it? If I stress it for like 10-15 minutes, I now also have temps below 80C in XTU. But if I stress it longer, temps will increase until max 90C. This is without any fancy cooling pads and fans on auto.

Since I did a repaste using AS5, I also saw a drop of 5-10C in idle and load temps.
The difference in temperatures between high end TIMs is rather low: http://archive.benchmarkreviews.com...k=view&id=150&Itemid=62&limit=1&limitstart=12
As you can see, the results are pretty marginal. I think it all comes down to application, that is when using a good brand of TIM.

 

Under normal usage, your machine should never exceed 87C on heavy load. 92-93C is pushing it and probably doing something on par with Prime95 with forced max cores. My machine never goes above 75C under gaming conditions in any game on High/Ultra 1080P. I'm still tinkering with my settings before I say my laptop can no longer overclock beyond what I currently have... its been through hell testing and back.

 

What re-seller did you purchase the laptop from if you don't mind me asking ?

 

Thanks for your reply.
With normal usage, you mean gaming?
The temps I gave are indeed from stressing with XTU (so not normal usage).

From a Dutch retailer called 'Laptop Plus' http://www.laptopplus.nl/

This is the 5th thing they've messed up with my order;
- They supplied the wrong AC cord (wrong plug)
- The supplied BIOS/EC was not compatible with the Killer WiFi, i.e. their claim of testing every notebook they sent out is bogus (as the WiFi would/could never have worked)
- My F11 key wasn't assembled correctly
- They forgot the extra accessoires I ordered
- Repaste was not performed or if it was, performed horribly

 

When will Premamod release the unlocked 306 bios versions? :/

 

So I got my P650SE back a couple of days ago after RMA'ing it for the borked HDMI port, and obviously the first thing I did was try the HDMI...nothing. PC Specialist say they replaced the mobo and are totally stumped as to how it stopped working because it worked for them...

Looking like I'm going to have to get another new mobo, calling them again in the morning. Fingers crossed this isn't an issue with the whole batch of boards they have and it'll be third time lucky. Very surprised at this since nobody else in this thread seems to have any problems with their HDMI. Do I just have astronomically bad luck? It's all a little weird that 2 boards would have the exact same fail, isn't it?

 

I'd say the odds are so low it might be an issue on your end...

 

I've had the same thought, but I've tried 4 cables, 3 TVs and a monitor, all of which work perfectly for other computers. There hasn't been any trauma or electrical issues. The only thing that's vaguely weird about my setup is a VGA to HDMI adapter I use because my monitor has no HDMI port, but as I say, it works for other computers. I have no idea what's going on.

 

I hope you'll get that solved this time Eclenic. Sounds like you've tried enough to be sure it isn't a fault in your end.

Can anyone else try to have XTU open when playing some games and see if the "current limit throttling" is spiking constantly?
My does this 100% all the time when I have a game running.

 

Sound Blaster X-Fi MB3 causes a pop-up everytime I plug-in/remove cords like HDMI, headphones etc. It says "current selected audio device is disabled, not present, or not supported..." etc.

How can I disable it doing this check?

 

Does anyone know how to force my computer to try to hit 3.6ghz max turbo with a single core?

When playing intensive games I can only hit 3.4ghz consistently.

I tried using Prime 95 with one worker thread but it immediately throttles the Current Limit to 100% and my cpu only hits 3.19ghz.

Everything is at stock settings and I'm not trying to undervolt or do anything else. My temperatures are in 60-70 range so shouldn't be an issue.

1) Is there something wrong with my system or am I doing something wrong in trying to test it?
2) Will getting a larger power supply unit fix this?

 

Ain't happening unless you ONLY stress one CPU core load
Because you stress 4 cores when gaming usually
Prime95 draws way too much power than that HQ CPU allows
Temps have nothing to do with it, but undervolting will keep you boosted at higher speeds in P95
Nothing is wrong with your system, that is exactly how it is supposed to work
No it will not fix it

Enjoy reading my mobile i7 CPU guide if you want to know anything more.

 

you can try this tool to manually regulate the stress put onto a specific number of cores: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vijaysk/archive/2012/10/27/tools-to-simulate-cpu-memory-disk-load.aspx

 

That won't work for intensive games, as he'll instantaneously discard the benefit of his multi-core CPU... he said intensive games do it, which means they're stressing a lot of his CPU. Forcing it to one core or so will kill his performance, and if the program "simulates" single-core load, it can overload his chip at stock settings sitting at 3.6GHz when 4 cores are actually being loaded.

Plus, he's using a TDP locked cow. It'd make downclocking more likely.

 

For anyone that ordered from Eurocom can you guys check if you can OC the GPU (GTX 980M)?
I'm about ready to order and don't want to get stuck with a GPU that's locked down.
Do they use there own BIOS?
Going to get the minimum and basically upgrade to a SSD and add more RAM I have in my parts bin
About the RAM if I add 2 sticks do I have to change anything in the BIOS to get dual channel mode or is it automatically switched to dual channel once you add more RAM?
Thanks

 

It's looking more and more likely I'm going to have the RMA the machine because of this, which is annoying, as I was getting good temps with my CPU and GPU.

One thing I was wondering, are mysn.co.uk going to be funny about my machine having the Prema Mod bios on it if I RMA my XMG P505? I don't really want to have to flash this back to the XMG bios (if that's even possible), but am concerned they might imply the audio problems are down to the Bios!

 

It will be overclockable on 347.88 drivers or later.
But you're going to be an enthusiast and flash Prema's vBIOS to it. Or face the wrath of @LunaP. Remember, Luna breaks people. The sound of breaking and crunching bones soothes her anger.

 

Have you tried not using the adapter and just straight HDMI to another TV/Monitor?

 

Also, have to tried connecting one of your miniDisplay ports to HDMI using a miniDisplay port to HDMI cable? This is what I do anyway for outputting my computer to a TV

 

Just got my razer blade adapter it seems to fit well, and seems to have no problems so far with gaming although I've only played for like 20 minutes on shadow of mordor. Does get very warm quite quickly though but that is probably because of its size. Its so remarkably tiny though!

 

Afraid so, I only use the adapter for the monitor as it doesn't have an HDMI connection. The TVs all do, so have been using straight HDMI cables for those.

Haven't tried the miniDisplay ports yet as I don't have a cable for them. Have definitely been considering doing that, but ultimately I paid £1200 for this laptop and it's 2 weeks old, there shouldn't be bits of it that don't work.