*** Official Clevo X170SM-G/Sager NP9670M Owner's Lounge ***

Cinebench is way too low that’s not normal
A regular 10900k scores 6200 to 6300
like the Alienware

 

The stats are skewed in favor of the Alienware bench since that bench was done with only cinebench open, whereas this bench for the X170 was done with other programs open. Also, the clock speed was only 3.7 GHz during this run compared to max stock speed on the Alienware bench, so I'd say the results look good so far.

Now it's time to actually unleash the beast and target the highest scores possible.

 

Where did you see that the CBR20 run was done with 3.7GHz? I can't see any CPU-Z/Hwinfo screenshoot confirm that.

For your info. AW run with TVB All-core boost. It looks like Dell ignoring Intel's TVB frequency recommendations (processor has to remains below 70C to utilize 4.9GHz TVB all-core boost).

It's up to the MB manufacturers follow Intel's guidelines/recommendations or not.

 

Does this not mean the bench was done at 3.7 GHz? Cinebench has always stated the clock speed of my CPU after benching. It seems Cinebench will read the max clock speed you set in the BIOS.

I did a bench on my i7 7700K at 800 MHz before just to see how bad the score would be. Cinebench reported the clock speed as 0.8 GHz. This was with R15, however I was expecting R20 to behave the same.

 

Yep. Won't see boost clocks.

 

I can only say that I shared your entire comment with various contacts in Clevo shortly after you posted it.

We tried to ask Clevo for enhanced review support but didn't get much. But anyway, the thermal constraints of the system don't leave much headroom for overclocking anyway. He did try some Undervolting. der8auer still has this loan unit in his posession. If you have some ideas on what he should test next, feel free to comment under his videos.

Yes, you get full performance without battery as long as both chargers are connected.

Yes, can confirm. X170 (back then it was X170TM) was first seen behind closed doors during Computex 2019, over 14 months ago.

The support contact might have mixed up APEX 15 and ULTRA 17. We had a little BIOS issue with a new batch of APEX 15 last week which caused a bit of a hold-up in our production. Nothing major though. For XMG ULTRA 17, there hasn't been any hold-up. It's just that the barebones with FHD panel arrived pretty late due to logistical reasons. Sorry for the delay of your order. Feel free to send me your order number via PM for an update.

Can confirm, our UHD barebones carry the "-G" denominator and are validated for G-SYNC, just like P775TM1-G with the same panel before.

Cheers,
Tom

 

I did not. I'm used to using the slider on my PC, so just did the same thing on here. Topped out at +200 core and +1500 memory with no crashing issues.

I'll have a mess with the curve. Thanks.

 

Damn. If they have been working on it this long and it still turned out this bad I think it's pretty obvious they all suck at their jobs. When a person isn't very good at what they do, it shows in what they produce.

So here we are now... The one laptop manufacturer that still had a sliver of respect remaining among enthusiasts commits hara kiri by releasing a half-assed piece of crap as the flagship. Nice!

At this point it may no longer matter. When you miss the mark by this much on the hardware and thermal engineering losing sleep over how to fix the firmware mistakes could prove to be an exercise in futility. The people at Clevo need to pull their head out.

Time for the rest of you to join me in writing off the idea of having an impressive laptop and move back to desktops. If the X170 and Area 51m are examples of what the future holds in store, there is no future and there is nothing left to look forward to. All that remains is broken garbage built by imbeciles that don't know and/or don't care about what they're doing.

 

so is the x170 not a good computer? is the alienware area 51m R2 better?

 

This is kind of like asking, "Do you prefer projective vomiting or diarrhea?"

There is no way in hell I would consider a product from Alienware, but that's my opinion. Their reliability is terrible and their firmware issues are uncorrectable and irreversible. So, no. I'd rather deal with an overheating Clevo by running it on top of my portable AC unit. But, it's time for the nonsense to stop. There is no legitimate excuse for poor results from either of them, and there should be no forgiveness for it. It's your money they are taking and giving a pile of crap in return for it. That's unacceptable no matter what brand.

I think you'd do well to avoid both and spend as little as possible on a turdbook like the Eluktronics MAX-17 or the XMG variation of that machine (sorry Brother @XMG I do not remember what your model name is for that little guy) and divert whatever you would have spent on a beastly notebook on a more beastly desktop. It seems the whole idea of having an impressive DTR monsterbook has gone the way of the Dodo Bird.

Edit: Please correct me if I am wrong Brother @XMG

I think this is the one if you are in Europe. https://www.xmg.gg/en/xmg-neo-17

Yeah, it's soldered junk, but it's built well and functions correctly. The latter is more than we can say about the so-called DTR options that cost 2 to 4 times more. Build a desktop and call it a day.

 

Both systems have their shortcomings, pick your poison accordingly.

Yikes, you realize that this is bad, right? I mean, if you look through this thread, there are many issues that were raised about the cooling, thermals etc. way before any official word about this system was out. Yet, none of the issues were addressed or acknowledged prior to launch. And now here we are, half a year later and the resellers are stuck holding the short end of the stick.

What's the point having him test his locked down unit any further? Only thing he can do is to cool it down in hopes of not triggering any hard/soft limits, but that's useless for the vast majority of customers who need a system that runs well out of the box and does not require exotic cooling to beat competition.

Defeated by their own hybris.

 

i see so x170 has bad cooling? and the alienware doesnt ?

 

If you are interested in mod firmware, Rocket lake and possible upgrade to Ampere... Forget it with Dell. + Dell is known for use of cheap components on MB (cheaply made MB). Most of the Alienware models from 2012 and forward are known for burning up within a few years usage.

 

having the machine myself, i think as long as we can get a control center and a bios which are a bit more functioning and with a bit more options, it'll be very fine and dandy for me. Yes you have to reduce the power targets, even, I suspect, with the best paste around. The machine can handle the 200 gpu watts and around 100 125 cpu (more or less) continuously no problem without hitting temp limits and staying decently below them, not necessarily with max fans ( talking about 10600k and rtx 2080 super here). If you were looking for the god-tier machine capable of overclocking a 10900k to the moon and back and staying cool too without spending 10 grand, I would kindly send you some good thermodynamics books I am a fan of.

 

Maybe there were expecting a 10nm Intel CPU, not an even hotter revision of the 9th Gen ****show.

 

10nm Intel will use other chipset, and most likely yet another socket, its just another example of how the same Clevo is(as in, they dont have epic cooling, or epic chassis rigidity, or great software, or firmware, its all the same crap), and how yet again they end up being heatsink limited, like everybody else, as well as locked firmware, but what good can firmware do when you are hitting thermal limits even with crippled TDP values?..

 

Indeed, you can't fight physics but you can use them to your advantage, ie. reducing the # of thermal interfaces and using materials that can quickly spread high power densities.

For next gen it's only going to get hotter with higher core counts, then they might be forced to do a revision of the heatsink.

 

Or, they could always just pull an AMD. Add more cores with higher latency and make them run slower.

 

Or less cores with Rocket and same heatsink

 

If i read all the overheating problems, i remember back to P570WM with 3960X CPU. With downclocked bios, this device was heating my hole office.
Maybe Intel will have a heart again and brings out a 12 core oc able Xeon ,like at that time, the 8 core 1680V2. .

 

Thanks for correcting me Papusan. I'm sorry for any confusion that caused.

Time for portable battery powered desktops to make their debut to the mainstream. That'll give us a much better price/performance ratio than today's DTRs. The only downside is they won't be as convenient as a laptop, but it's still possible to build a small, lightweight monster desktop for gaming that will fit into a large laptop bag.

That being said, I'm a sucker for high performance laptops. I'm still holding onto hope there will be a revision of the X170 worthy of being the successor to my Alienware 17 Ranger.

 

I guess it really boils down to what a person wants. If you don't actually need a portable desktop, then it's kind of silly to have one. Better to focus on everything else except that.

We are casting lots of stones at the X170 because it was so poorly executed. Even so, I'd almost say it would be better than something like a battery-powered portable desktop for most people. But, I don't want to minimize the failure or make excuses for the shortcomings on the poor execution. They don't deserve any wiggle room.

There are some people that actually need a true DTR for mobility. It's probably more accurate to say that those that want it more often than not actually have no need for it and their needs/desires would be much better served by building a desktop to their expectations. I still hate BGA turdbooks. They're crap. But, at this point my preference would be to spend ~$1500 on a BGA pile of junk and spare myself the disappointment of a malfunctioning $4000 wannabe desktop that is poorly executed like the X170 and Area 51m that shares some of the same engineering failures and flawed traits that the inexpensive BGA turdbooks are famous for. I mean... really... pay $1500 or less for something with cancer firmware, thermal management problems and throttling or $4000 for something with essentially the same problems and engineering defects. The difference is one is a disposable piece of junk that costs less and the other one is a modular piece of junk that costs more.

I am not defending either of the bad options. Neither option is a good one, just stating the obvious about the cost of acquiring a product that is compromised in too many ways to be acceptable. Might as well go with the lower cost abortion at this point.

 

True words. I’ll probably stay with my Lenovo Legion Y740 for now (which work fine btw), and come spring I’ll just build a compact stationary gaming monster rig and be done with it.

 

They can't because actually the infinity fabric is pretty damn impressive.

 

I don't think this is how it works. The project was put on ice for a while due to undisclosed reasons (that have nothing to do with thermals, mainboard, Intel, AMD or NVIDIA).

The reviews so far have been generally positive. I would attribute the lack of OC options in the BIOS more to chipvendor policies and a general "playing it safe" mentality.
Yes, Clevo is not the most innovative these days and is lacking this nice "thinking around the corner" company culture that we are seeing in Uniwill and other brands. But they are still doing quite well for themselves. Their factory is fully booked, laptop demand has skyrocketed this year while the whole eco-system has gotten more and more compliacted. First with MLCC shortages, then the US-China trade spats, now entering AMD as a new platform where everything has to be learned from scratch and you basically need double the amount of R&D people now for debugging the same number of systems.

It's a tough time.

You could also argue about how much you're actually missing out here. How "bad" is X170SM really?
With a CPU that is as power-hungry as Intel's Comet Lake S, how much headroom do you really have for overclocking?

I might not be as deep as you are in terms of system tuning (but neither are a large majority of the customers, including the target audience for X170SM in B2B verticals), but I think you can just Undervolt the CPU and be done with it.

We tried to advocate in ODM for Undervolting Options directly in the BIOS, but didn't get the support for this model. Undervolting options are rather flakey ever since Intel published new guidelines after Plundervolt. We have covered this topic in detail in our article on Igor's Lab.

We are going to ship some more X170SM loan units to other reviewers. Based on the feedback, we will report to the ODM again.
But our volume with such systems is relatively limited. So far we only ordered less than 400 units of X170SM from Clevo. This number might pick up as soon as more reviews are out, but I guess most people would rather wait for Ampere cards, because it's pretty late in the current GPU cycle right now.

If you really want to make your voice heard, find out who is selling these systems in Japan and China and see if their customer complain about the lack of BIOS OC options as much as some people do in this thread here. Clevo has their ears on where the volume is, not on the minority oppinion in derelict online forums. (NBR does not even have SSL/HTTPS support right now. When are we going to abandon ship?)

Until then, let's try to keep a more constructive/positive spirit and refrain from using too strongly exxagerated languages. What I'm reading on some pages in this thread makes this forum seem rather toxic and no ODM is going to want to collect feedback from such an environment. Especially not a Taiwanese ODM, where etiquette and showing/giving face is everything.

If any owner can demonstrate signficant improvements based on stock components with ThrottleStop or Intel XTU and make a good argument why XTU and ThrottleStop are not sufficient, I can try to share reports like this with the ODM again. Until then, my current limited attention span is more focused on XMG APEX 15 with AMD Ryzen (which sells in much larger quantities) and on all of our premium mainstream laptops (the ones you affectionately call 'turdbook') such as:

• XMG CORE series
• XMG FUSION 15
• XMG NEO series
• XMG PRO series
• SCHENKER KEY series
• SCHENKER VIA 14
• SCHENKER VIA 15 Pro

Thank you, 谢谢拜拜
XMG|Tom

(puts on flame suit)

 

Reading more and more, I realize that we need a Clevo X170 with desktop ryzen and nvidia MXM. That will break the market

 

XMG, thanks for that write up, alot of great points. It can get a bit toxic in here reading the forums, but I think its due to the lack of options and costs of the products. Got one of these coming from Origin PC this week fully decked out, will most likely under-volt/re-paste to get throttles in a good place as you mentioned as the best option. These 10th gen are gonna run hot no matter what system its slammed into, both Alienware and Clevo show that.

Anyone know of a good guide to under-volt this CPU without bios settings? Does throttle-stop still work since plunder-volt?

 

What I can see is that Intel are going to great lengths to apply for bankruptcy

 

"Their factory is fully booked, laptop demand has skyrocketed this year while the whole eco-system has gotten more and more compliacted. "
That's good news, sounds like they will make money despite this pandemic and global recession.

How "bad" is X170SM really? With a CPU that is as power-hungry as Intel's Comet Lake S, how much headroom do you really have for overclocking?
It's disappointing, but like always the community will find ways to improve these machines and squeeze every last bit of power out of them. As for the "iTs A hoT cPu" excuse, same was true for the 9900K, and look how people managed to get those CPUs to run 5-5.2Ghz in EOL machines with lesser heatsinks.

This number might pick up as soon as more reviews are out, but I guess most people would rather wait for Ampere cards, because it's pretty late in the current GPU cycle right now.
Super cards are a bad investment so late in the game, and offer marginal performance gains for a price premium. They might be interesting for people upgrading from the likes of GTX1060/1070, but for 1080/2080 owners it's a sidegrade and should be avoided.

Clevo has their ears on where the volume is, not on the minority oppinion in derelict online forums. (NBR does not even have SSL/HTTPS support right now. When are we going to abandon ship?)
Oof, don't bite the hand that feeds you.

Until then, let's try to keep a more constructive/positive spirit and refrain from using too strongly exxagerated languages. What I'm reading on some pages in this thread makes this forum seem rather toxic and no ODM is going to want to collect feedback from such an environment. Especially not a Taiwanese ODM, where etiquette and showing/giving face is everything.
Don't take this as a personal attack Tom, you seem like a stand up guy, but I'm not going to sugarcoat it and give it to you straight.

 

Thanks for the write up.

More and more ODM's have started offer Vapor chamber in their notebooks. Even Intel talk nice about this newly discovered cooling tech.. See link
Intel Planning To Innovate Thermal Design For Laptops & Notebooks – Vapor Chamber & Graphite Sheet Cooling

I'm sure Clevo's engineers could see what would come with 10 cores on the 5 years old Intel 14nm++ tech. But why offer wimpy Cpu copper cold plate and not a real Cpu Vapor chamber coldplate in a brand new developed X170? And why go for quieter fans when they knew the need for better Cpu cooling would continue increase vs. last years 6 and 8 cores chips?

With todays notebooks we have fan control software. As well opt for different fan profiles for those who want or prefer a quiet enviroment. Put in too weak fans (5-6 CFM can mean 25w better heat removal) to make it sounds less noisy will hamper cooling capapcity.

Amps and power limits has increased for every move up in cores. Can't be too difficult see the changes coming and prepair a good enough Cpu cooling for it. Good Vapor chamber GPU cooling can't help cool down processors. Max graphics TGP have been 200w the last 5 years. Aka have stand still. The change have been in the Cpu part. Make better Cpu cooling should be equal prioritized.

Clevo's engineers know very well that PL2 for 10 cores Cpu is wopping 250w and 200w for the Graphics.

Give it a heatsink that can't cool hardware at specs and advertice it with overclock options is a bad combination.


This specs below doesn't make any sense. I know both Cpu and GPU won't be taxed at max power simultaneous but the cooling should handle hardware specs + headroom for cooling changes as etc fans and fin stack will be slightly dusty after a few months of usage (anti Dust fans is nice but won't totally stop the dust buildup). Hence the need for cooling headroom above specs.

The whole orange part (see heatsink below the pipes) in the pict, should be a whole Vapor chamber. Or minimum a two piece Vapor chamber. Maybe it was on the engineering papers in the beginning but they went away from it due costs or complexity. I expect you remember have seen similar for the EOL flagship P870Tm1. They added 4th fan header on the MB but went as we know away from it before the final product reached the sales channels.

See... They had taken account for possible higher power consumption (increased Amps, power limits and more cores) and engineered for it on the old TM model. But safety margins (here better cooling) can be circumwent for the final product.

I'm sure you have seen Intel go own ways for undervolting vs. the well-known notebook brands we have had here the later years. That Clevo lock down firmware options now even more than vs. their previous models is a wrong move.

You mean they will listen more on the reviewers than from own OEM/Resellers and vendors (their partners) that test the machines before they being thrown out to buyers? This is worrying.

 

Well, kryonaut arrived, did some tests with it, it seems the limits are around 300 315 watts with a room temperature of around 4000C and a humidity of 150% ( yes i live in a ****ing swamp for the moment) for the cpu to occasionally spike to throttling, but hovering on high 80s low 90s usually, gpu sits at 66 67C. Stress tests were aida cpu fpu cache + unigine heaven.
Reminder these tests are run on 10600k ( 100 and 125 PLs ) and 2080S ( voltage limited to 0.825 to avoid power limit throttling at around 1800Mhz)
For most games / loads it's going to be fine, but if anyone's like me, and hates high temps, then regardless of -0.100mV is going to lower power limits to something more feasible for the heatsink.

 

Yup, it can get pretty hot during the summer on the surface of the Sun.

 

Hi all -- apologies as this is my first post on the forums, but I've been a long-time viewer and am highly appreciative the knowledge and insights shared from everyone here.

I've just ordered the X170SM-G with a 2080-S, 60hz 4k UHD panel, and i9-10900K configuration -- I'll post back when it arrives, let me know if there are any details you'd like to see about the system and I'll do my best to accommodate! For the time being, I'm curious to see details about the UHD panel's model and specs, as information about it is difficult to find.

 

I don't mean to beat a dead horse on the Prema Bios topic or anything but I was just notified by Xotic PC that my machine has finished stress testing and is on its way to me. I asked how will the Prema bios will be applied after I receive it , they stated it has been installed on my machine prior to testing? When I do receive it sometime this week, how will I know I have the "special" bios? Just trying to make sure I don't get shafted for a 70 dollar add on they state that may or may not be on my machine.

 

It should indicate somewhere inside the BIOS, and there will be far more options exposed than the locked down stock BIOS.

 

Yeah man!!! Bring It On! And I'll Buy 1 Off!

 

well nvm, seems like the fantastic clevo banana center did not register the voltage offset I applied ( hwinfo failed to report it) and now aida + unigine heaven doesn't go over 90C , total power consumption was hovering on the 300Watts

 

Sorry, however that is impossible. The Prema Bios for this model is not available at all yet....

 

Part of the issue is how close to the limit the Intel chips are running out of the box compared to the past, the process does allow a few more Mhz but at twice the power consumption which is silly.

 

Is @Prema around to clarify what's going on?
How can Xotic PC have a prema bios if no one else has one? If they're lying, I'm never buying from them again.
How can a bios be installed that isn't available?

 

Regarding Intel XTC and BIOS...

I've set the voltage to 1.175v in XTC, but if you hit the chip with a full load, then CPU-ID reports as 1.25v instead. (offsets are set to 0 so it should JUST be 1.175v).

When I had a desktop 6800K, I remember this being a problem using XTC due to LLC settings. So if that were available directly in the BIOS, it might allow us to tweak and undervolt more and save some temp.

Having said that, my 10700K is running fine at that voltage and 4.9ghz on all cores. Next thing I may get for this machine is a delidded 10700KF since we can't use the iGPU.

 

Eurocom Unveils Sky 27 Mobile Workstation Powered by i9-10900K and RTX 2080 SUPER
PRESS RELEASE by Techpowerup.com | Today

In September 2020, Eurocom will launch its newest Mobile Supercomputer, the Sky Z7 Laptop. Users are able to configure up to the highly-anticipated and incredibly powerful, user-upgradeable, NVIDIA RTX 2080 Super (Non-Max Q) desktop graphics card. The laptop will be available with a choice of 10th Generation Intel CPUs up to the i9-10900K on-board CPU. Users are able to configure and re-configure the Sky Z7 with up to 128 GB of high-speed DDR4 memory and up to a whopping 13 TB of SSD storage via user-upgradeable, easy-to-access internal components. The Eurocom Sky Z7 is a Mobile Supercomputer with easy-to-access internal hardware and battery, showcasing Eurocom's commitment to provide power users on-the-go, heavy-duty laptops that are upgradeable, and reconfigurable with the most impressive hardware today and beyond.

The Eurocom Sky Z7 Mobile Supercomputer utilizes the Z490 Chipset and LGA 1200 socket technology configurable with the most powerful desktop GPUs available today, up to the supercharged NVIDIA RTX 2080 Super (Non-Max Q) desktop GPU, which boasts a whopping 3072 CUDA cores with 8 GB GDDR6 video memory and up to 1815 MHz boost clock. The RTX 2080 Super is among the most advanced and sought after desktop GPUs available today due to its unmatched performance when running AAA games and other GPU-intensive applications.

Direct link to the customization... https://eurocom.com/ec/configure(2,468,0)SkyZ7

I wonder if they have the 144HZ 4K panel at stock. Or if this is a paper release. And I love that DDR4-36000 ram specs

 

the magical control center inteferes with xtu and with its own tuning mods, moreover, every time you change mode ( power saving , entertainment perf and such like) the voltage offset applied is reset and you have to re apply it every time, and reboot. This thing is a nightmare, I so do not like this

 

obsolete before launch. pity...

 

Although the price of base configuration is competitive to the German, it's not competitive to the Dutch @ laptopparts4less...
https://laptopparts4less.frl/17.3in...080-Super-Comet-Lake-game-laptop-samenstellen
...however, gotta admit, Eurocom gives the best options of screens out there for interested buyers!

 

Will 10600k bottleneck 2080 super? 1080p.

 

Listen to this post, because this is the truth about the current situation with the Premamod bios. No one has it, if it's listed by any reseller it's likely due to error.

 

CPU-Z is likely reading the VID and not actual vcore.

That kinda sounds like a bug, does the same happen if you were to set offsets in the bios?

 

What's the gamut in that 144hz panel? Are you pleased with it?

 

He has a point, the forum is kind of abandoned.
Also, I highly doubt that this forum is an essencial part of XMG marketing....

With exotic cooling solutions that most of us wouldn't dare to touch, and most people here are fine with tinkering.

Different culture expect different approaches. But I find that most of the time the "give it to you straight" approach is just an excuse for being rude.