*** Official Clevo P870DM2/P870DM3 (Sager NP9873/NP9872) Owner's Lounge! - The Phoenix 2 is here! **

Thanks for listening.

The last video is no fans and it's raining.

 

Honestly, it is not as bad as everyone is making it out to be. Maybe some of the buyers of the DM3 are not used to strong fan noise from a portable powerhouse / noisy laptop, but for me it's pretty normal and the db's even at higher percentages sound relative in ratio to what it should be.

Sounds good to me. Music to the ears...

 

A personal opinion, I'm using a custom modded U3+ with 3x Vardar 2200 RPM fans add max notebook fans when gaming, I barely could feel any disturbance (Dota2 mmo-rts without a hitch), Yeah the new fans are super loud but I think we are getting the best of best machines with MSI and Clevo pushing to the ultimate fan cooling

Beasts tend to be loud right & Pascal needs that else ka-boom..

 

No one has a DM2?

 

I've got one being built with a single 1080.

Has anyone had any success with the custom fan settings? It was useless on the previous Control Center on the DM.

 

Maybe
Custom
start temp 50 to 70
stop temp 40 to 60
full fan speed 80%
But these numbers might be able to be changed with an unlock.

 

I have a DM2 and these are my observations:

(I am running a single 1080 with 4k screen and an i-7 6700);
(I also still own a P150SM with 780m and a P751DM with 980m)

- Idle temps are very good as is idle noise
- Control Center seems to reset fan profile to "overclock" after every reboot and after every interaction with "gpu overclock"
- "overclock" fan profile is really noisy and annoying (for me at least in day to day operation)
- this is why i switch to "automatic" or "custom" after every reboot
- in "automatic" and "custom" the laptop seems to aim for a ~90° gpu temp under load. This means that fans don't spin very high and temps creep up to this temperature. But temps dont seem to exceed this mark: If I put more load on it (gaming with AA / in 4k) then fans spin up further but don't go full blast until they can't hold ~90° anymore.

I actually like this behaviour: The laptop is much quieter than previous models I have when it can go up to 90° without fans at full blast. Because, yes: Fans at full blast sounds like an oldschool rack server on this thing

 

What are the temps like with higher fan speeds?
Im trying to figure out if the cooling is better then the DM3.
Still seems a bit high. Which rebrand do you have? Also what TIM is used? ICD?

 

Since I was worried at first because of the high gpu temps and the low fan speed / noise I hit FN+1 while testing Crysis 3 and gpu temps went down to ~72°.
CPU temps are basically the same as in my P751DM with the same processor: mid-high70s to low-mid 80s in Crysis 3.
Yes, GPU temps really do seem high but I am starting to think that this is "working as designed" like this. The benefit is how rather quiet the laptop can be under most circumstances (excluding the most extreme loads- fully pounding the 1080).
This must be the reason why they included the "overclock" profile: The benchmarkers' insta-load is too much for the slowly and passively reacting fans on "automatic" and "custom".
My rebrand is a German shop: notebookguru.de; Sorry, what is TIM / ICD?

 

It's disappointing the settings don't stick. What happens if you use a temp target in Precision X/AB and also keep the power target full? Do the fans spin up earlier?

The fan profiles was something I really disliked about the original DM. They weren't very granular.

 

For me upgrading to the latest CCC 5.0001.0.81 from sager; http://www.sagernotebook.com/drivers/misc/P750DM2-G/win10/07_Hotkey.exe fixed this issue, I also removed XTU Service with autoruns that CCC installed. Now fan settings sticks after reboot.

 

Power & temp target doesn't seem to do anything with Precision X

 

Yep, that's what I get. Sets itself back to over clock.

What is xtu with autoruns?

Does not work on mine either.

 

Okay, so for me in conclusion I think I will accept the fact that the gpu has a temp target of 90 degrees in this model. I just tested Just Cause 3 max settings in 4k and temps crept to 90 slowly (meaning there is no problem with thermal paste / contact etc) and then just stayed there. Fans are not spinning too fast and everything is nice and quiet. GPU did throttle from ~1900 to ~1700 but FPS didn't notacibly change. I am very happy with the DM2, only annoyance is the fan settings not sticking.

 

Probably disabled XTU with Autoruns.exe
You can't uninstall only XTU. Then you need to uninstall the whole CC. But disable Xtu can you do as well in Win services.

 

Hummmm, thanks @Papusan.

XTU seems to work fine for me so that is what I'm using. Although I'm glad i went back and installed the Control center. I use that only for fans.

 

XTU is a mess with the first P870DM. Can you overclock with BCLK without problem when you use xtu?

 

Base clock is not unlocked.

 

Nope.

 

Everything else works as expected though.

 

Are you going to buy one? Would love to hear how much you love the fan noise after you live with it for a while. Please let us know.

 

That's awesome, so sitting there in the room you can't tell the difference between 100% fans on the P870DM3 and rain?

The sound of Rain = 100% fans on DM3

 

I am shocked anyone could find this level of fan noise acceptable to be honest. It sounds like a low power hair dryer.

I can't use my DM3 in my bedroom or my office because of how loud it is. Even when gaming (when I actually expect some substantial fan noise) it is unbearable, unless I wear headphones.

 

Maybe rain and thunder with a phantom drone in the room.

 

Wear headphones on your office and bedroom(all places you use your new beast). And all will be good

 

No. I knew exactly what it was. It was for everyone to guess what they thought it was. So in your case since you can't stand loud noise, best to stay out of the rain.

On full blast they are loud. That is for sure, but if your room is cool you can run those fans at 50 to 60 percent which would be a lot quieter. Although if the laptop heats up, then get ready for lift off because fans will revert to auto and take off.

 

I do, dry and warm

Hopefully Sager will find a calmer fan option that doesn't require a headset to survive it

 

That's too bad, that means I can't take it to work.

There's a strictly enforced, no firing up server hardware in your cubes, the fans are too distracting to everyone.

 

There is also a strict policy of no gaming at work. So since you wont be gaming you won't hear the fans.

What was the DB rating on the GT83VR?

 

I always let my boys game at work during the breaks or after completing a project, unless the system needs to do rendering...

 

Simply put: the fans they use are cheapo ADDA fans with very bad noise characteristic. I have no problem with sound generated by moving air but these fans unfortunately generate a lot of intrinsic rotor noise, probably by using low quality ball bearings.

I ordered a MSI gt72 12v replacement fan (Aavid) from China and will try it out in the DM3 when it arrives. I hope it will fit without much modification.

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What would need to be done to have better access to fan control? Would it take a software wiz or could Sir @Prema manage something in the bios?

 

You already know I'm my own boss so If i wanted to game at work I can and no one would be the wiser.
Gotta love my job.

That is exactly it. It's acoustic sound the fan makes. As someone already mentioned. It sounds like a hair drier. literally, but I'm thinking this gen of laptops are all bound to be loud, but I could be wrong.

 

I Would replaced all my silent fans with the better new noisy fans yesterday, if this was possible If they costed three times as much, I would gladly paid the extra!!

 

Noisier does not necessarily mean that the fan is performing better

I also fear that the new ADDA fans Clevo use are among the cheapest, for sure cheaper than Sunon Maglev fans (ASUS, ACER) and AAVID (DM1, MSI). Also, the other brands seem to put more thoughts in their blade design (aero metal blades, differing blade geometry, cooling design of GT73VR with 2 big quality fans and 4 exhausts).

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I mean I have read that the newer 12v fans push more air through the heatsink. This is what I want. Not silent weak fans.

 

My personal laptop doesn't game during work hours, I get paid too much to waste otherwise billable time gaming.

It's been critical a number of times over my career to have my personal laptop able to function and communicate to the outside world when client power or network go offline, and to do independent testing and measurements from external to internal.

A laptop that sounds like a server, while impressive, would be too distracting.

The @GenTechPC GT83VR review video has noise measurements, but they say those numbers are only to be used to compare between their other laptop review videos, and not to use the absolute values - they aren't calibrated or controlled for independent reference.

MSI keeps the temps high so the fan noise is low, similar to custom tuning to lower noise suggested here for the DM3.

The GT83VR Max fan sound doesn't have that same urgent turbine whine sound the DM3 fans have in comparison, check it out just after 8:20, and more noise measurements during benchmark runs after 15:00. To see the fans check out the tear down after 23:00, Dragon Center Fan tuning after 14:00.

 

You are right. However, at the same rotational speed the DM1 fans and the DM3 fans push approximately the same amount of air, maybe the DM1 in fact a little more while beeing more silent at the same speed.

I have both machines here for a side by side comparison.

I want a fan with the higher rotational speed of the DM3 but with the noise characteristic of the DM1.

I bet these ADDA fans are not designed for consumer electronics in the first place and are industrial grade fans e.g. for server racks.

I am looking forward for a review at notebookcheck, they do acoustic measurement.

The noise DM3 generates is unacceptable for people that are not using it mainly for benchmarking.

When gaming it is for me even distracting when using closed headphones with nc technique.

Compared to the DM3 the DM1 is a very silent product.

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I hoped Clevo pushed out better 5v fans for the new models who could replace the one in my DM1. For me isn't the noise important. I want best possible airflow I still haven't forgot the junky fan profiles the Morons at Dell created for my Aw17. Useless... Without Hwinfo in that machine..., Forget benching.

 

I am running it now on top of my U3 plus set on medium and the control center set to quiet with fans on custom (Start temp 60,
fan stop 50, full fan speed 60%). It is nice and quiet! Can anyone advise if it is safe to push the start temp to 70, fan stop to 60 and full fan speed to 50%?

This is a HUGE Relief!!! I have noticed however that even when Control Center is showing a temp of less than 45 degrees a fan spools up. Not sure why. Does control center custom setting only cover the cpu fan?

This is very interesting!!! Please keep us posted.

 

I wonder if the fan noise is similar to the noise that the fans of P775 DM3 creates?

I also wonder why they went with this new design.

 

All DM2 & DM3 systems use the same FAN model (for CPU & GPUs).

 

Lets hope the fans can be swapped out

 

All you need to do is try it and see if it holds..... It's not going to let you burn it up because the system will over right you if it can't hold what you want at 90C for longer than something like 7 to 10 minutes or so.

 

That's how I feel about work and vacation. It's really not that serious to be gaming.

A my dell E6510 does exactly the same as any of my gaming laptops do in the field. (Repair server drives and raid configs) And my usb flash drives do more work than today's laptops do when repairing networks and user error's
While I totally understand the need for a power house to do certain business task related operations. I have clients doing these task off of dell workstation laptops with ssds and a quadro grade dedicated gpu and most of the time it works out perfectly fine. They do get into some trouble doing certain 3d projects. This is what they have shown me to be fact. (Autocad MEP/Solidworks/Revit/Avid/CMC Software are just a very small handful of programs. All while using those 3dconnexion mice. And you know how fast & convenient these are for architects.) Only a few examples.

Sorry, but that fan noise is louder than the DM3. The highest record DB is 78 From the DM3. I posted the DB levels a few pages back unfortunately....

This is why I really wanted to go hang with Ken to test them side by side. Then that would give me a chance to test my equipment against his. Just need my Flir camera or rather a very capable competitor camera for about 280 dollars.

Edit:
I'll leave room for error because the bottom cover is off. I'll retest once i put it back on. Took it off because i'm not going to be altering anything at the moment and wanted to gage the heat off the hottest points on the rig.

 

By request, I got my DM and DM3 together to see if the 1080 was going to be possible, but unfortunately it's a physical no-go unless you do a case mod. The distance from the edge of the MXM slot to the bottom edge of the case is around 112mm, and the 1080 is 122mm long.

I was also going to apply some CLU, but some initial testing showed that it didn't want to adhere to the copper shims so that's going to have to wait until I figure out how to make that one work out. (Any insight on this? I suspect I just need to sand the shims. @Mr. Fox @Johnksss@iBUYPOWER @bloodhawk) But on the plus side, during my spacing tests to see what size shims to use, I discovered that the heatsink wasn't flush with both cards. I used some TG Aeronaut that Newegg sent me by mistake that I was planning to use as a caulk around the die for CLU to check the mounting alignment.

Spoiler

The master GPU is both angled so that the user-facing side has worse contact and positioned slightly further than the slave GPU. So I installed very thin washers (~0.3mm flexible plastic that I stole from my GPU AIO kit) under the mounting screws, then added a 0.3mm copper shim on the core. I went from a 10C delta between the cards under max load to 0.

 

Wow thanks for trying to fit it in the DM. So Clevo did bone us for good. Would have loved some pictures though. But cant have everything i guess. Thank you for the effort none the less.

Yeah, the shims need to be sanded a bit and then cleaned with Isopropyl to be able to adhere to CLU.

 

That would be great if @GenTechPC could compare the temps and fan noise of the DM2/DM3 using the same tools, location, and methods they use for all their tests - then the results would be comparable.

Right now the numbers aren't directly comparable against other calibrated / uncalibrated measurements.

Although different Microphone pickups can change the timbre of the recorded sound, the DM3 recordings I have heard all have that shrieking turbine sound, while the GT83VR has a "pleasant" whooshing sound to it.

For that comparison also, it's better to be there in person and listen to both in the same environment running the same 100% fan and Auto fan on load tests. Or use the same recording equipment in the same environment to record the sound for comparison.

Looking forward to those Video's @GenTechPC

 

The sound of Rain = 100% fans on DM3

Spoiler: It kinda does, doesn't it :)

 

I have never owned, seen or used any laptop that I viewed as being was "too loud" so I'm not sure that such a test would be meaningful to me. It certainly would not be be an important factor in making a purchase decision. But, I know some folks are really over the top OCD about fan noise. High performance notebooks is probably not a good fit for people like that. When you are cooling notebooks with fans, silence means something is either broken or running too hot.