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

Have you tried the drive in another device to be sure the drive is good? If it is not recognized, it could be a bad drive, or not mounted in the correct M.2 slot.

 

The drive is brand new, I'll move it to one the NVME slots maybe that will pick it up. I thought all of the ports would recognise any m.2 ssd...

 

Yes, they generally provide a more functional BIOS than the sparsely usable stock crapware. Personally, I'd remove the light bar and side lights and put them back in the box for storage in case you ever decide to sell it. Unless LED chassis lighting is something you find stimulating there is no point in having them. Just give me a solid white backlit keyboard and I am good to go.

 

The A2000 says it's NVME.

It has to go in the NVME port.

The port on the right hand side is SATA ONLY. So you'd want something like this.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B073SBW3VD/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o06_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

If this is what you have in the SATA slot that is why it does not work. SATA does not support NVMe.

https://www.amazon.com/Kingston-Int...t=&hvlocphy=9030021&hvtargid=pla-810354091136

 

Ah ok, thank you guys.

I will move it to the NVMe side I thought it would just run slower on the SATA side which would be fine for storage.

I believe I've been given pads, should I use them to match the OS drive?

 

Hi!

1.
Quick update regarding memory instabilities: After returning the Kingston the 128GB 3200 CL20 memory and replacing it with 128GB Samsung CL22 3200, the laptop works without any system freezes! Problem solved, and I guess the Kingston RAM was not compatible with the system. I got very frequent freezes with all 128GB of the Kingston memory installed, and very rare freezes when only 64 GB Kingston Memory installed. I tested in total 8 brand-new 32 GB of Kingston memory sticks. My reseller also tested their own Kingston CL22 3200 ram and confirmed instability issues with 128GB Kingston RAM, but in their test they could run 64GB Kingston RAM. I guess they probably didn't test as long as I did, because with 64 GB of that Kingston RAM I get freezes only about once every 24 hours.


2.
I have a question regarding installation of a second SSD NVME drive. I ordered the Laptop with a 970 Pro 1TB and installed myself an additional 970 Evo Plus 2TB. I followed the guide of a forum user that was posted a few days ago and additionally checked out a youtube X170SM-G assembly video. But I found a difference in my X170SM-G. It appears that my reseller has installed thermal pads on the SSDs and supplied further thermal pads for any additional SSDs. I haven't had any experience with thermal pads before, so I wanted to get your input whether the installation was correct.

I placed the first (thicker) thermal pad with the adhesive side towards the mainboard (picture 1), then I put in the SSD, and then I placed the second (thinner) thermal pad with the adhesive side toward the SSD (picture 2) and then I re-assembled the metal plate to cover the SSDs. Does it matter on which side the adhesive side of the thermal pad is? I hope my installation was fine?

Picture 1:


Picture 2:


Thanks for your replies in advance,
Cheers, J

 

Pad below the drive if it fits is good, pad on top yes if it makes contact with a conductive surface.

 

Slot 2 and 3 with Sata/PCIe support.

 

Yes, and the slot on the right hand side of the machine is slot 5. It ONLY supports SATA.

So what I said is correct.

 

If only there was an option to not have such an option in the first place I swear I would have chosen it. Yes I disconnected it manually too

 

Finally a proper review for this baby...............

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Schen...laptop-review-Power-without-end.497925.0.html

 

That's a good review. And, with appropriate steps, the thermals can be managed a lot better than what they experienced. The 10900K really stretches the limits of what a laptop (or even an air-cooled desktop) can handle under heavy loads. The 10700K is not nearly as much of a challenge to subdue.

 

And yet again another review where the ghosting/overshoot caused by factory enabled overdrive is not mentioned. Or maybe it is just not that noticable with that really slow 4k panel... a lot of people saying that the previusly used 9 ms 144 hz fhd panel for the p775tm1-g was barely acceptable, however this 4k panel has 50 ms response time?! Holy hell!

 

I'm rocking the 10900k, Thermals are not really as big of an issue as one would think. Granted, I repasted it with Kyronaut and redid the pads with Fujipoly. With the fans on, its hard to make it thermal throttle in games / real world usage (prime95 is not possible without throttling). The machine holds up for whats in it for sure, while holding great performance close to a desktop with similar parts.

I use it for work travels, where I need to compile on the go mixed with lots of gaming. If you are using this day to day at home, honestly just get a desktop.

 

Its been said here and other places. the ghosting is a non issue and its due to you using the panel incorrectly. You keep talking about it like you don't understand what you are doing wrong so I will try and explain it one last time.

This monitor runs at 240hz, its also IPS, its also Gsync compliant. These 3 things make any monitor extremely finnicky if not used properly. Make sure you are running the screen at 240hz at all times (not 60hz in the nvdia control panel), also make sure Gsync is on. When using it like this, you will never see any ghosting at any framerate, as the anti-ghosting tech will kick in per framerate/refresh rate tick and compensate properly allowing anything from 240hz-30hz seamlessly and without fail. You will never have an issue doing this.

Now, for why its possible to see ghosting on this and every other 144hz+ IPS Gysnc Monitor. Its easy for the anti ghosting tech in the monitor to become confused, do to either user error or game engine error.

User Error - You set the monitor to 60hz instead of 240hz in the nvdia control panel while having Gsync on. This messes up the monitor and makes it think its still at max resfresh rate (240hz) even though its at 60hz, I think you can see the problem here. The anti-ghosting text kicks in, but at 4x the needed amount, and bam, ghosting everywhere, major issues, don't do this. Make sure the monitor when running Gsync is at the max refresh rate always and swap it to 240hz in the Nvidia Control Panel, easy fix.

Engine Error - This were where you lose control a bit and while it should only effect a very few percentage of old game engines, its still a real issue but luckly with a fix. Basically, what happens is, some old game engines can only run in fullscreen, and while in fullscreen can only max the refresh rate to 60hz. This again messes with the monitor tech, and while its thinking the screen is at max refresh rate, its only doing 60hz. This causes the screen to kick in 4x the amount of anti-ghosting and causes huge ghosting artifacts all over the screen while looking around. You can test this by running Skyrim and looking at the mountains, huge trails will come off of them in fullscreen with Gsync on due to the creation engine maxing out at 60hz refresh rate in fullscreen without mods to fix this. The fix for this would be to run the game in borderless windowed mode with a 3rd party program and run Gsync windowed option from the Nvidia control panel, this will force the game to run at the desktop refresh rate of 240hz and fix the issue.

 

Ghosting is a function of the panel rather than anything else.

 

I am anxious to see what Prema can do to unlock the potential of the 10900K in this notebook. In my TM1 with a 9900K i can run 5.0 GHZ on all cores as a daily driver if i wanted to in that notebook. Although I would have to maximize the fans to anything strenuous. lol

 

More than average to high speed with quiet fans is what a top laptop should do, not jet engine and earplugs. That's kind of what i'm hoping his tuning does.

 

Not enough radiator surface area, so you need crazy airflow instead. I don't think there is much to be done except heavier and thicker notebooks, or more efficient CPUs.

 

You could argue that they shot themself by sharing heatpipes and then only using one big radiator instead of two. People with 10900k and 2070 (115w) seem to have much easier time.. seems like a bad design imo.

 

I appreciate the work and time you are trying to put into this however I feel a little bit disappointed that even after all the evidence I provided you still try to convince me and even yourself that there is actually no issue and only I am the one that does not even know how to use this laptop.

I had used more laptops than a lot of people usually do and hopefully from the early topic I made http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/acer-predator-g5-modding.826771/ even you can see that I am not the typical user who's technical skills ends at opening chrome, a game or ms word and knows a few inside and outside stuff regarding laptops. I also believe that most enthusiasts visiting this forum are not your average user who doesn't even know what CPU/GPU temp is and only checks in a laptop if Counter Strike "runs good or not".

I have of course troubleshooted this on driver side, including default refresh rate. So no, I am not an idiot who can't see the visible difference between 60 hz and 240 hz and because of this I leave it on 60 Hz. But even if I did, it should not be causing this problem, but I will talk about this later.

I know that first when I mentioned this problem I was not really familiar with the issue, however since then I was able (hopefully) point out the source of the problem.
I already talked about this in my earlier post:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...m-owners-lounge.831618/page-257#post-11053349

However it seems that you missed it, so please read it and check the pictures and watch the entire video. Everything is explained.

In case you read it, but did not understand, I will try to explain it for you, hopefully this time I will be more successful.

I now believe the issue is caused by a monitor tech called "overdrive" which is both used in desktop monitors and laptops. This feature tries to emulate faster gray to gray and black to white response times (the time it takes for a pixel to change from 1 color to another), however has the overshoot/inverse ghosting side effect as seen on the posted pictures and video.
Many other laptops like ASUS and MSI laptops had this issues (yet again, as I have posted), however they fixed it by adding an extra button to disable this feature.
This feature in competitive situations like Counter Strike and Rainbow Six Siege can be good because the panel with it gives slightly faster response time and at 144/240 Hz (144/240 FPS) the side effects are barely or maybe not at all visible (check the video for another proof).

However there can be a problem when the display is not running on the fastest available refresh rate, in other words when a game with high system requirements is running.
In the above mentioned video you can see that the issue is hardly visible at 144 Hz/144 FPS, however when the variable refresh rate technology lowers the refresh rate (in this case to 100 Hz due to 100 FPS) the issue starts to become more visible. I know that this demonstration was made on a desktop monitor, however the issue and in my opinion the cause is the same, so that is why I linked that video, to demonstrate the problem I am talking about.
The lower the FPS/refresh rate the more visible the problem is.
The visibility also depends on the displayed image, so even in game the visibility can change depending the displayed image.

The issue is not caused by the game engine. You mentioned Skyrim. If the game engine was bad, then it would look horrible on consoles where the fps is locked at 30/60 fps. The reason why it is "fixed" running windowed mode where the fps is not locked at 60 FPS is because like I said above, the issue caused by overdrive is much more visible at lower fps. The issue is there even it 240 FPS, however due to the higher refresh rate it is not visible. A very old, unoptimized game engine can indeed cause issues with G-Sync, however it does not produce a problem like the one I am talking about.

You believe that this is normal because of "IPS tech+ G-Sync". No it is not and you are misunderstanding things.

Yes, IPS panels have "ghosting" because they are not running at 1 ms or lower response time like TN panels and the higher the response time the more visible the "ghosting is".

Let me explain, there are 2 types of "ghosting" and you don't really know which one you are talking about .

1) ghosting caused by slow response time (for example with IPS panels)
This one is caused if the response time is too high. The faster the response the less visible it is because pixel diodes can change the image faster. Looking really close when you move an object it looks like a comet and it leaves a trail. In real life usage this does not bother most people and it looks like a motion blur effect. The slower the panel is the more blurry the game becomes.
In short this causes motion blur effect during gaming.

2) overshoot/inverse ghosting caused by overdrive
This is an issue where the image is duplicated or a corona effect is added. This problem is usually caused when the enabled overdrive feature is too extreme. How does overdrive work? Overdrive adds more voltage for the pixel diodes this way they become "faster" then the originally designed, however too much voltage can cause graphical side effect. We can say that the pixels are overclocked/boosted. Same way when overclocking a gpu after an amount you can see graphical artifacts. Too high voltage/too high overdrive results in duplicated image and or corona effect.
In short in games this can cause a corona effect or duplicated image and either the image seems like displayed twice or its like the the images have an extra outline.

The X170SM-G is suffering from 2) overshoot problem and not ghosting which is common for IPS panels.

Here is a demonstration, you can see the effects with no overdrive, normal overdrive and extreme:



Personally ghosting (and like I said during real usage motion blur effect) is acceptable for me and it is not really annoying, unlike the corona effect like on the images I displayed. I'd rather have my game have a minimal motion blur then some textures having an extra white edge added.

This is why Clevo should give users the same option and MSI and ASUS did: to turn off overdrive.
People who want to play competitive games like CS:GO, Rainbox SIx and fortnight can use overdrive for a minimally faster response time and no visible issues at 240 Hz, however for gamers who dont care about response time and want to play games like Metro Exodus and Gears of War single player where the FPS is around 60-70, they should have the chance to disable the overdrive which is causing issues with low framerate.

I personally would play Metro Exodus or Battlefield without overdrive and have a very slight motion blur effect when moving instead of having overdrive which causes that annoying corona artifact.

The reason why this issue is not present without G-Sync is because like you said, the refresh rate always stay at 240 Hz even if overdrive is active.

When an Issue comes up companies usually do either of these 3 things:
1) good company: fix it
2) bad company: keep quiet and don't care
3) worst company: Say that a computer engineer who found this issue is an idiot and the reported problem is "Not a bug, but a feature"

However I have never seen a user deny countless evidence and explanation and instead of demanding a fix from the manufacturer, turn against the person who reported it.

You also keep referring some kind of "anti ghosting tech", could you please explain what you mean? What is the official name of this tech and how does it work? Or you are referring the overdrive feature I am trying to explain so hard?

I hope I was able to clear out the misunderstanding you were having right from the start.

If you still do not understand something, feel free to ask.

ps: I did not mention in my previous post, but not just ASUS,MSI and Clevo has this issue but also Acer.
This issue looks like this on a Triton laptop:



How did Acer fix it? Same way ASUS and MSI did ->they gave the user the option to disable overdrive in Predator Sense. In other words almost every other big gamer on the market (ASUS, Acer and MSI) gave the option to disable overdrive for gamers who are bothered by it (probably everyone besides competitive gamers), but Clevo did not. Hopefully they will realize this in the passing days/weeks and add this and they will not use the "If we dont talk about it, they will forget about it method".
Oh and Clevo P775TM1-G did not have overdrive enabled and thus did not have this annoying problem.
It is really disappointing that a laptop which aims for enthusiasts does not have this basic option, but their rivals and their bga turdbooks have it ... but seeing how Clevo butchered the final release of the bios I am not suprised at all. The only question is, will they release a new CCC with this option like Acer, ASUS and MSI did or they just dont care to fix issues after they got our money.

 

I wonder why in case of skyrim minimizing and going back into the game after fixes the problem, overdrive should still be on.

 

is the fps still limited to 60?

Is the game running as smooth as did before tabing out? In rare cases with bad driver/bad game engine alt+tabing in and out can momentarily disable G-Sync for that program until it is restarted. Can you please enable G-Sync notification in NVCP to see if G-Sync remains active after tabing in and out ?

 

Does anyone have a model with 300 Hz panel yet?
If yes can someone send me the panel info and the BIOS version?

 

Im unable to because i returned it back then for its loud fans while keeping the heat. Wasn't up to spending so much money without proper returns.
However the game ran just fine after alttabbing, the ghosting disappeared. Yes the FPS was still 60. The game can't go higher due engine limitation.

Might pick up the neo, its not too much worse while being half price. Will see for a good offer. Liquid metal is also applied by odm. Will compare myself which one is better and strong guts say 50% cheaper while being 20% worse should be the better deal.

 

Yeah.....I HATE shared heatsinks. I like the MSI GT76 because it does not utilize shared heatsinks. Only reason why I would not bother purchasing it is because of BGA GPU and no Prema.

 

When the X170 is built correctly, expect max CPU temps in the high 70s or very low 80s, and GPU temps in the 60s or better.

 

How would it look like if it was built correctly? My 10700k 2080 super hit 90s cpu and 70s gpu playing games, no overclock with undervolt

 

It will look like our zTecpc zT-X170SM-G that is about to be released within the next week or so. The temps to which I referred are with the Intel® 10th Generation Comet Lake i9-10900K & nVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super.

 

Many reasons for high temps. Uneven/warped heatsink, thermal paste, How thermal paste is applied, Correct thermal pad thickness vs the gap between heatsink and components (variety in HS perfection), Cpu binning (not all chips is equal), You run stock voltage and without undervolt, Cpu not delidded etc.

Unified heatsink means more difficult to make perfect fits on both Cpu and Gpu. Many of those flaws mentioned can be fixed if you go into modding your cooling system.

 

Done well you get better idle and single point load temps.

 

A unified heat sink is absolutely not ideal. It's a compromise. It's cheaper to engineer and produce and you can fit it in a smaller chassis. As the case almost always is, where there is compromise results are diminished. That much is unavoidable. Unfortunately, big and heavy (my preference) isn't popular with the boys and girls. Cuteness wins out over excellence... disgusting, but true.

We have to keep things in perspective though. The X170 is actually a great product. With proper attention, it is pretty amazing. The OOBE is probably going to suck for most people. Some more than others, and to some extent that will be influenced by where it was purchased. Some sellers care more than others. But, that is the status quo with laptops. Whether you purchase a chintzy BGA turdbook or a monsterbook, nothing is awesome off the assembly line. It's going to run way too hot, throttle, maybe worse. That's unfortunate, but it is reality. Unless it ends up in the hands of someone that cares enough to make everything right between the point that it leaves the assembly line and ends up at your door, your work is already cut out of you as soon as you open the box. Exceptions are rare. Welcome to 21st Century laptop world.

You have to look at it as being a good foundation to work with. The alternative is to buy a pile of garbage that no amount of effort will be sufficient to transform it into something awesome.

 

Small amount of info regarding 30xx mobile cards.



Looks like Max-Q and Max-P versions of the 3080 and 3070. Only one 3060 variant though?

 

3060 should be Ok in thin & light without Max-Q, so no need to make one.

 

The only other alternative is build a desktop. Nothing in between.

 

That was kinda my assumption, but I hadn't seen any info regarding the desktop version of the card for TDP and the like.

I'd probably look at a 3070 for this machine tbh. I think that'd be a good replacement for the 2070 Super.

 

There are positives and negatives to shared vs not shared. If I was buying today I would buy a X170 too. There’s no other good choices. I do not consider the 51M a purchasable laptop so I went MSI instead as the P775 was long in the tooth and not ideal cooling wise.

 

That's gonna be one hell of a beast when released! If possible, could you elaborate on what improvements you guys are making to allow for these temps with a 10 core CPU? If not, that's ok. I'll just be happy to see the laptop with such a cooling system.

 

https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?sp...dy8dfr&id=37588398476&ns=1&abbucket=14#detail
I saw this on Reddit. A guy said he got this on Taobao fpr 23,000 RMB. This is the ad in Shanghai.

 

Getting support, if needed, might be an interesting exercise.

https://moneyexchangerate.org/currencyexchange/cny/usd/23000

 

How much of a foundation is it tho?
BIOS locked
No thermal headroom
Seems like a last second rushed idea, even tho it was announced a long time ago.

100€/$ more and youd probably have a much better cooling system, wise man decided against it.

Of course it's the best one if theres no competetion, same as saying tesla has the best rockets if nasa gets no money.

If Dell would crawl out of their comfortzone we'd probably see much better cooling systems among those 2 laptops.

 

It is an undeniable fact that Clevo's execution leaves something to be desired. Their OOBE on thermal management is always lackluster if not ineffectual.

Dell cripples everything they touch. And they put mechanisms in place that make their products unfixable. I view them as the least desirable brand because of the way they handle things. Anything they do right is overshadowed by the things they do that are unacceptable.

The X170 has great potential and responds well in the right hands. I cannot identify a single laptop that I can say isn't a piece of garbage the way it leaves the factory. Most of them have zero potential to be transformed into good products. At best, most can only be made to suck less. The X170 is a rare exception to the norm. Not necessarily an ideal choice for the novice that is scared to get his/her hands dirty.

 

Very true, and sadly it's not limited to only one SKU. I remember very well how my P870 ran 95c out of the box due to poor contact caused by ILM grinding on the heatsink.
And it's probably one of the factors as to why mainstream doesn't give Clevo more attention, since you need to be a somewhat advanced user to try and fix some of their FUBARs.

 

ur right . I don't speak Mandarin or Cantonese.

It is on Ebay for $2900. IS this MSI a X170 variation?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/MSI-GT-Ser...TX-2080-SUPER-i9-10th-Gen-10900K/184497919698

 

Is that the same model where MSI did the right thing with the CPU only to wuss-out and do the panty-waisted sissy-boy thing with a POS BGA (aka disposable $1500 motherboard) GPU? Or did MSI backtrack, repent and do it right using MXM for 10th Gen refresh? (Imagine the sense of betrayal that would be felt by purchasers of the 9th Gen version if they did. Not good.)

 

Nope...same old BGA GPU...not likely to change from that.

 

I have never been able to take anything MSI does seriously in the laptop space. Some things never change.

They seem comfortable and complacent in their mediocrity. They've been there for a very long time. Along with most of their competitors.

 

The MSI is not a x170 Variation? I am learning here.
And the GPU is no good? How is the performance compared to the x170?

 

GPU performance is.....ok. It's the fact it is BGA and soldered to the system board. Zero potential upgrade ability.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/MSI-G...op-Review-Late-Game-Exotic-Gear.496571.0.html