*** Official Clevo PA71 Owner's Lounge ***

Certain drivers can, apps won't.

 

DL directly from Clevo website or use Obsidian tool, but it's paid software

 

Hey y'all - finally found some time to finish my review, which I've replaced my original post with, so go have a looksee and lemme know if there's any other details you want and I'll try to accommodate. Churrs! @jaybee83 @vIkInG_w0w @whambamsam @Stephan_N @ Meaker@Sager

 

Thanks, it's a very good review and you've also given attention to the smaller details!

It's a pity about the default speakers, so thanks for optimising them and sharing the profiles. One thing I'd like to know about the speakers that plagued the older PA7* models is one side being noticeably louder than the other. I wonder if its still a problem.

The CPU temps indeed are on the higher side even with liquid metal so if you could do a CPU undervolt to show a temperature difference, that would be awesome!

 

Hey ,
First, @LeiEn thanks for your review, actually the only one and the best one so-far ;D.

So, i've bought the laptop, updated windows, installed drivers from the reseller website, and i can't find g-sync in nvidia pannel ... and barely no options ( no display options).
So do you guys have it on the pannel ?

 

Thanks man, no prob. Yes, I can confirm the weird speaker balance. It may be somehow related to the actual chassis itself; the left speaker may be slightly obscured by a bit of paneling or something (?) At any rate, it is possible to mitigate the effect thru the Viper4Windows balance controls.

I'm going to mess with undervolting after (another) OS reinstall due to some sort of software conflict that is not allowing my CPU info to be read by Clevo Control Center or XTU. Will prob try to reinstall next week sometime, but no guarantee on that; at the mercy of my design work schedule as this is my only machine now.

Appreciate the appreciation! Nvidia settings are accessible through the Nvidia Control Panel. Just right-click desktop and you should see it on the menu that pops up. G-sync setup is one of the submenu options within the control panel.

 

Well i just figured out why dispaly options were missing from nvidia pannel.
Seemingly optimus and g-sync can't work together in the same time.

So i switched the gpu from MSHybrid to discrete ( can be done through control center or BIOS) and g-sync is back !

Actually, in my configuration, there is no left speaker.
Thus, this weird speaker balance is due to the unbalanced repartition of speakers as there is just one subwoofer in the right side.

This issue might be fixed by assignating only low frequences related to bass to the subwoofer.

 

By the way, did you installed Sound blaster x from their website ?
Because i can't acces to any control pannel even if the driver is apparently set up...

 

You need to be in dedicated mode to get the options yes.

Optimus has the IGP drive the display (and has all the video options) so the dedicated GPU can switch off to save power. In g-sync the dedicated GPU needs a direct connection to the display so it can control the timing. That's why the two cannot work simultaneously.

 

How did you determine that? Can you physically see the speakers?

Should be accessible through Start menu folder, but I thought it was much less effective than using EQAPO + Viper, TBH

 

One last thing, could you tell me the model number of the display using HWInfo? Thanks!

 

As listed in the specs on my review: AUO319D - B173HAN03.1

 

****, I'm absent minded my bad. And thanks!

 

No worries! I'd love to have something with the reknowned 120hz 100% sRGB Chi Mei N156HHE-GA1 (CMN15F4) right next to it for the sake of comparison. Definitely 2 of the best screens in the 1080p range.

 

Have any owners found the surface temperatures uncomfortable gaming? If anyone can say its comfortable I'd appreciate hearing that too... Thanks.

 

Seemingly the CCC nerfs the GPU when it reaches 72°C by violently disabling the GPU clock boost. Thus when you reach those temps ( quite easy as you can even reach them idling with this outstanding cooling solution) the GPU will stuck at 1468 mHz.
When the software is uninstalled, the gpu reaches 90°C before normally throttling.

 

Just tested it with Timespy + custom fan profiles set way low, and saw throttling restricted to 1468 @ 75C. However, when I play tested BF1 for an hour, my GPU never went over 70C. When I'm doing my usual design workload, it maybe gets to 55C, so I'm personally not real worried about that ceiling on my machine given the LM was doing its job, but can certainly understand how that might affect others without the repaste. Did you get your system repasted?

 

I didn't get a liquid metal repast but i paid for pcspecialist's cooler master mastergel repast.
Maybe it hasn't been done properly though ...

 

I bought a laser temp gun and tested the surface
-repasted kryonaut
-laptop cooler
- undervolted -0.100 MV
-* FN+ F1, max fans
Max Temperature of CPU and GPU 80C

WASD showed 38c
Heat vent left chassis 40c
None of these temps feels uncomfortable, Gaming solid for 3hrs, But I'd imagine any higher and your finger tips will be toasty. If youre having troubles with the temps, then maybe external mouse and keyboard?

 

I have the same and couldn't for the life of me figure out why! I was even trying to overclock it to get it to boost again.
Thanks for the info, CCC is gonna get nuked.
Don't need it anyway

 

Here's a recent review of the (competing) MSI Raider with the same components, that has temp stats in the review (9 - 11mins in).
***SPOILER ALERT***
The temps are pretty similar.

From what I've gained from surfing these forums, Clevo machines don't have the best cooling to begin with, and the effectiveness of any cooling system is very dependent on proper contact of heatsink to components, which I've heard can be quite shoddy out of the factory. Given that you've already had yours repasted, I'd definitely contact the reseller and let them know about your temps, because breaking 70C at idle sounds like a problem regardless of who caused it.

Champion! Thanks for the info! Couple Q's:

Did you see any significant drop on temps after undervolting?
Did you have the fan on max while gaming?

 

What are people going to try controlling their fans (and keyboard LEDs, for that matter) with now that the GPU throttling has been discovered?

ICYMI: There IS another option out there, but it's at-your-own-risk until Obsidian graces us all with some specially developed software (that I would so gladly pay for):
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/rlecviewer-custom-clevo-fan-control.818858/

 

Ah yes, I forgot to mention max fans.
Which I only need for pubg, Fortnite,
Other games such as dota, Cs, auto fan curve is fine.

In regards to the undervolt, if u can get it stable then yeah. my out of the box temps were 89c full load. I repasted, and it brought it down to 83c, then I undervolted -0.125, and it was stable for 1month, and my temps never went beyond 77c ish
Then it kept blue screening, so the -0.100 was the next best thing, so now it's 80c, never seen it go beyond.
I used the Intel utility to undervolt

*Ps. Subject to change, I haven't uninstalled ccc yet. I won't see my laptop for a week so will have to wait and see

 

Well, i've undervolted mine -150mV on Cpu offset - cache and i get 90°C max instead of 99°C. Moreover the clock can reach constant 3.9 ghz instead of getting thermal-throttled to 3.5Ghz or less while gaming.

Btw, don't you guys think that using a liquid metal repast on a constantly moving laptop is dangerous as it is conductive.....

 

DIY, nice one. Will update with my undervolt experiment as soon as I get a chance to mess with it.

As long as it's applied correctly in the first place, I don't think there's any issue with it leaking out from under the heatsink, but I may be wrong about that. Somebody more knowledgeable, like one of the company reps: @Meaker@Sager or @Donald@HIDevolution perhaps?

 

Others may disagree, but I say save the LM for desktops, and use a more viscous paste for laptops.

 

You can use a barrier or the PERFECT install but it's certainly more involved.

 

Regarding your concerns about the safety of liquid metal thermal interface material, yes applying anything metal conductive to a piece of electronic equipment has its risks, but we have a proprietary means of application to prevent leakage. Also, you can rest assured that any upgrades that we perform will be covered under warranty. Regarding its long term effects, we have been offering liquid metal thermal compound for over two years with no ill effects or reports of issues from users. On the contrary, we found liquid metal thermal material to be more effective than traditional thermal interface material over the long term.

 

Sealed well it does maintain its consistency, if it goes odd either there is contamination or a poor fit and it's a good indicator of that.

 

Ive uninstalled clevo control center, and nothing has changed lol
my gpu clock still sits at 1456hz regardless of what game i throw at it., all temps hovering around 71c
anybody know the actual clock speed the 1070m is supposed to be rated at?

 

According to this notebookcheck review (PA71HS, but the GPU should work similar), the default core clock is 1480mhz, but it runs around 1700mhz and it can almost reach 1900mhz.

I am interested in buying this model, but I have seen a review here with a low score on 3DMark FM (Graphics: 15500), while the equivalent model of MSI reaches 17980 points in the same test.

 

my mistake, i didnt give it enough time, i was just booting games and changing after a few mins.
have just been playing fortnite and pubg for more than an 2 hours, and the gpu clock was reading 1836hz
so i guess the ccc did throttle the gpu, crazy

strange, no clue why the benchmarks should be different. essentially its the same hardware.
different variables in testing maybe, air conditioned office, latest drivers, number of test runs?

 

After uninstalling ccc and overclocking the gpu, i reached 4k500 one heaven benchmark which is a way better than the former 3k8 i had before.
The result is similar to a 1070 on a desktop without oc and is better than the 4k2 i got with an asus gl702.

However, temps stay arround 60°C on the desktop and 80°C on the gl702(due to software-controlled thermal-throttling) whereas i reach 90°C on the pa71es g.

 

NBC has a new review of the PA71 with the i9-8950HK / GTX 1070 combi (Eurocom Q8):

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Eurocom-Q8-i9-8950HK-GTX-1070-QHD-Laptop-Review.313514.0.html

To no surprise it throttles heavily!!! It's really infuriating that companies sell overpowered CPUs/GPUs, fully aware that the bodies cannot handle the heat production. PC-Specialist for example already had heat problems with the i7 8750h version that were supposedly fixed by undervolting ( https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/foru...uld-have-done-better/page4&highlight=defiance // https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/foru...-8750h-1070-Lots-of-issues&highlight=defiance) but they continue to offer the i9-8950HK version at a huge markup, knowing full well that it cannot handle the heat and an undervolt won't be enough for this CPU to reach its potential.
Gullible/badly informed customers pay a huge markup for these components only to receive highly throttled machines .

Anyways, I'd love to see a comparison of the i78750h/i78850h versions to see if the 8850h can reach its potential in the PA71, obviously the i9-8950hk can not!

 

And that’s why careful research becomes important for making informed decisions. One only has to compare this thin laptop with the MSI Titan Pro. There is a reason why the Titan is much thicker. Same CPU.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

Honestly I can't even guess what they were smoking when they decided to cram in a GTX 1070 and a 6-core CPU into such a thin chassis that reaches ~80C WITH liquid metal and lower clocks and what more, they even throttle the GPU at 72C shdikskwnwoxhwjsow

P.S. perhaps they have a new model for 6-core 1170 laptop? We can only guess

 

Eurocom does not use liquid metal on BGA models.

 

Also: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Euroc...0-QHD-Laptop-Review.313514.0.html#toc-verdict

So killing CCC will fix the GPU throttle, but CPU+GPU combined load throttle will still make the CPU bounce around like a cat on speed when the GPU is loaded, unless either Clevo or Prema fixes the firmware.

 

Hi everyone,
So i got a PA71 a few weeks ago with 8750h and 1060 and wanted to share some details about this laptop.
The cpu got to 97 degrees max with Cooler Master MasterGel Maker Nano Diamond paste and stable clocks of 3.9Ghz with cooler lapping(the cpu side is not flat). The original paste is that crappy junk than hardens. With mx-4 and no lapping the cpu throttled to 2,7Ghz.
I didn't want to undervolt the cpu to make it unstable so i lower the multipliers with intel xtu to 4Ghz for 1-2 cores, 3.8 for 3- 4cores, 3,4 for 5 cores and 3Ghz for 6 cores active.
This got the cpu to a max of 83 degrees, no power throttling and the likes.
The original multiplies let the cpu to consume about 60W of power (this is a lot for the cooling), now it gets to 43W.
The gpu got to 75 degrees with mx-4 and 65 with MasterGel Maker Nano.
The laptop was a bit unstable from the beginning on the memory side so i lower the ram clocks to 2000Mhz with latencys for 2133Mhz at 1.3v and upped system agent voltage with on offset of 50mV. Now the laptop seems very stable.
The cooling solution barely copes with a 45W cpu, but with 60W its just ridiculous.
https://ibb.co/mRp51o
https://ibb.co/mSk67T

 

If it's unstable at stock there could be an issue. You also may have a heatsink issue.

 

... yes the issue is the heatsink ... it is designed for 45W cpu's. Intel says that the 6 core cpus are 45W, but wait that would mean a huge lowering in power consumption. Intel does not make miracles it is lying to everyone so laptop producers just stick a 45W cooler on a cpu that does 60W easily and is power limited to 78W.
My laptop may have some issue with stability because i would get blue screen's when it was idling and not when some intensive task was running.

 

Its still not normal, get it back to the reseller and get it looked at before judging the design.

 

So seems that my laptop is stable at least hardware wise (left it overnight memory testing) but one in a while i get a BSOD: "System Thread Exception Not Handled".
Does anyone know what drivers could be the source of the problem ? The first time i installed the system i upgraded the video driver and got some weird behavior. I've read on the forums that 1060 does have some problems depending on the driver version. I've installed all the software on the cd also in no particular order.

 

It should give you a driver file after that error message.

 

Something about kernel ntoskrnl.exe

 

So that's either likely os corruption or hardware instability.

 

Hey im thinking of buying a laptop from a reseller and the barebones is a clevo pa71, can u guys recommend this chassis? reseller said that laptop comes with 3 cooling fans does this help to keep temps down?

Config i am going for is 1070 with 8750

 

please research 'Prema BIOS' and determine if you can use the machine how you want without it.

 

I understand that the PA71 comes with a 230W power supply. How big is the PSU and how much does it weigh? I'm trying to figure out how portable one of these is alongside my usual work gear (15.6" laptop plus basic accessories, network cables, external HDD, etc). I'm trying to keep maximum weight around 10Kg, so I don't have problems with carry-on luggage requirements.

L.E.: with a bit more googling, I found that the PSU weighs about 730g, which would put the laptop, PSU and a mouse at around 4Kg total.

 

That sounds about right.