**Official Sager NP5160 / Clevo W150HNQ Owners' Lounge**

Well depends on the reseller and the type of support. And sager has lifetime tech support I believe

 

Hey carl - I don't suppose you feel like posting what that caddy looks like from the outside of the laptop...
did you end up attaching the plastic end piece from the original optical drive - or did you just leave the end as is... ?

I wonder if the laptop would look neater if the end piece was attached...

 

@awayish
How do you change "the max processor rate" ? Through BIOS/UEFI ?
With a particular software ?
Thank you for your help

 

I attached the cd tray bezel from the optical drive so it looks just like before. The tray bezel pops on and off easy enough so switching drives isn't a huge hassle.

 

it's under "processor power management" or something like that in the windows power profile options.

 

My left trackpad button shipped to me depressed so it is not on the same level as the trackpad. It's quite annoying. I'd have to say the two buttons quality is questionable.

 

• Just go to your Power Options (right click on battery meter in lower right taskbar).
• Select the profile you want to change
• Go to Advanced Options
• Processor Power Management
• Change max to 99%

 

Thank you very much awayish and INEEDMONEY.

Very helpful ! (4 or 5 years I haven't touched windows... )

 

NP. Just remember you gotta do it for each profile you use.

 

I've read every post of the first 51 pages of this thread and was going to wait until I reached the end to make my post but I couldn't wait any longer.

I'm not a "computer guy" so I have some questions as to how I should customize my 5160.

I will not be gaming at all. My heaviest load will be: Photoshop (website mockups), a program for front end html and CSS coding (haven't learned how to code yet so don't know what I'll be using), ~20 Chrome tabs, A couple Word Docs, and either streaming music or tv (pandora, hulu, etc.) or playing a movie or show in VLC media player. I may be doing some solid modeling (SolidWorks) in the future, but I'm not certain and it won't be a lot or very complicated stuff.

1) I don't know which processor I need. Will my machine get too hot if I use the i7 under my load conditions, or does it only get hot when you play games? Money isn't a huge factor, so if the i7 is best for what I need and good future proofing, I'll definitely get it. The only reason I'd get the i5 is if the i7 will do more harm than good for my usage.

2) How much ram do I need?

3) On XoticPC it says the default wireless network is: "Built-in 802.11 Wireless B/G/N - Stock Wireless Card + Bluetooth." There is another section where you can pay $29 for a "USB bluetooth adapter." Can someone explain to me the differences in these bluetooths?

4) Is it worth it to get any of the wireless network upgrade options (Intel Advanced, Intel Ultimate, Bigfoot Networks killer)? Does it really make a difference in wireless speeds?

Thanks SO much, in advance for your reply to this and for all of the other posts that have taught me more than I need to know

 

FILLLEEERRRR. See bolded answers above

 

Honestly I think you're looking at the wrong laptop. If you're not going to be gaming there is no reason you would benefit from a gt540m graphics card at all. The Sager NP3250 starting at $679 is basically the same thing but with a gt520m.

Upgrade to the 1080p monitor this will give you more screen real estate to work on (I highly recommend the 95% nstc matte one if you're doing graphics)

The cpu upgrade is not necessary but if you do video encoding or rendering the Quad core 2630qm will help reduce those encode/render times substantially (if you don't then the dual core 2410m will serve you better).

It sounds like you might be using a lot of ram on occasion if you're multitasking, you might consider upgrading to 8gb of ram.

Lastly I highly recommend purchasing an ssd, this will dramatically reduce the load times of your applications and increase work flow. The Crucail 64gb C300 can be had for as little as $129 and very easy to install.

There's my 2 cents, good luck.

 

1. you should probabaly get the 2630m at minimum.
2. i suggest 8 gigs if you're going to be doing what you're doing. if you're just a web surfer/email checker no need to upgrade.
4. it's not necessary but i suggest upgrading to the 6230 for the intel card. no need for the usb bluetooth adapter if you stick with stock or my suggestion. you'll just have unnecessary bluetooth adapter sticking out of your laptop when you will have it already.

 

Fillllllll

 

load times of applications and increase work flow? that's not any reason to spend excessive money on an ssd. boot times and file transfers will be increased tremendously. application loads are not any noticeably faster and i'm pretty sure ssd's don't make you work faster. if nike really made you think "it's gotta be the shoes" i think a lot more people would be world class athletes.

 

Wait...are you saying that i'm not running at Olympian level with my Nike's?

 

@UXD

as far as i know this particular model isn't even being offered, so yea.

 

YouTube - Crucial C300 64 GB SSD - single and multiple programs opening time. Applications have to load to Ram from the disk, they do load much faster from an ssd with super low access time and high read transfer rates. Its one thing if you work on one thing, and only that for hours but if you're like me and have a lot of different kinds of applications and files to load you'll benefit from the ssd's speed tremendously. As someone who spends a lot of time working on the computer (I keep all my work projects and applications on the ssd) I really like not being interrupted waiting for the hard drive to spin up. The cpu and ram isn't going to make anything load from the disk any faster, he's by the sound of it not encoding or rendering anything, and Ram is just a limit of how many things you can load/run at once which he may but no necessarily need, if he's concerned about performance (running the applications he mentioned) load time is his biggest bottleneck which is storage limited if I'm not mistaken.

 

and where was your point? you just want to get in the car and go without having to use the ignition? you want to move at the speed of business? please enlighten us on how you will use your ssd to get the industrialized world off it's oil addiction and in the meantime i can tell you how in less time than it takes for your super Super Duper flash drive takes to boot your os. better yet. i can tell you how faster than it takes to load an app.

 

All I'm saying is the ssd upgrade shows more performance gain then a cpu or ram upgrade for his applications as far as I know. Of course there are situations where an ssd upgrade does close to nothing like a pc meant for pure rendering & encoding, or gaming pc. If you don't agree please explain why because I'd like to know.

 

At this point an SSD isn't that costly. $200 for 128GB isn't bad and far from "excessive"

And depending on the application, load times are significantly faster. Boot times. Most certainly. And SSDs work way better under stress. I had a 7200 RPM HDD, and won't be going back to one.

For the most part I agree with McToon.

 

Which ports have SATA III? I've heard only ports 0 & 1?

The hard drive bay is on port 0?
The CDrom bay is on port 5?
eSATA is only II right?

 

Only the HDD port is sata III

 

Woo, I just got mine yesterday! I've been installing all my programs and testing out some games, and it's been great so far. I got mine from Mythlogic.

Here's my setup:
- 1920x1080 Matte 95% Color Gamut screen
- 2720QM cpu
- IC Diamond Thermal Compound
- 8GB RAM (PC3-10600 from Crucial)
- Swapped out optical drive for...
- 64GB Corsair Sata 3 SSD
- 500GB 7200rpm SATA drive (Seagate)
- Intel 6230 Wireless Card
- Windows 7 Professional x64

Pros:
- The screen is amaaazing! It looks better than my desktop screen. 1920x1080 is a huge resolution for a 15.6" screen.
- It's pretty quiet. I've read complaints about the noise but I can't hear a thing. When gaming, yes, the fan kicks in, but it's drowned out by the gunfire.
- SSDs are worth every penny. Even a small one like mine (64GB) is big enough to hold all the documents and programs I need (I do programming, art, and music editing, so there's a lot I need to run). Everything runs blazing fast, and I just put all my media files in the HDD.
The difference between running your OS on a normal HD and on a SSD is huge. Recently, I upgraded my desktop with one and kept an OS install on both a disk drive and a SSD. The SSD one boots in 30 seconds, and loads all my programs near instantly. Going back to the disk drive is unbearable. My SSD has spoiled me.
- I haven't done much gaming yet but I loaded up Bad Company 2 briefly. I could run it playably at 1080p with medium-high settings. It worked best with slightly less resolution at medium settings (and it still looked fine).
- It's lighter than I thought! At under 6lbs, I can comfortably pick it up with one hand without any issues.

Cons:
- The touchpad is pretty dissapointing. It's small, the texture is weird, and the buttons click funny. I'll be using a mouse mostly though, so it's not the end of the world.
- The top is a fingerprint magnet, but oh well. Also the inside bevel around the screen is glossy.

So overall it looks awesome so far!

 

Hmm....you should put the SSD in the HDD bay. The Optical is only SATA II I believe.

 

the only necessary advantages worth mentioning are file transfers and power savings. otherwise ssd's are for impatient people with money. loading apps and os boots faster? no thanks. that's like bragging about i can put my shoes on faster than you. file transfers and power savings? i can run a marathon more efficiently than you. that i can see value in.

for my personal use, i really wish i had gotten a 7200 rpm hdd. i got a 5400rpm 640 gig for only ~avg of 60 mb transfer rate. a 7200rpm would've netted me at least 20 megs faster for less than double what i paid. don't get me wrong. i would love a ssd drive but i wanted capacity and a 600 gig ssd would've cost more then my laptop. most people, even business users don't need the speed. it's only economical if you transfer data back and forth alot, and then i can see it being worth the "money to blow".

and then there's the need all juice i can get from my battery. you have the 'in case' i go on a trip crowd and the people who actually are away from the socket for long periods. they have some interest in an ssd also. is the extra ~25% juice worth it. probably.

it also is frustrating to see how much they charge for it even though the longevity hasn't proven itself but more importantly it's a technology that has been around for a while, much like led's. yet there is this awful premium to pay for the latest and for how much it costs it's generally not worth it for different reasons. and the premium that is being paid should drive the price of micro sdhc's down much further than it has.

 

agreed Sata II will limit your transfer speeds to less then 200MB/s when they can read 300MB/s+ in Sata III ports. If your SSD is in the hard drive caddy swap it with the 500gb into the normal hdd bay the 500gb will not exceed the transfer spec of Sata II.

 

Power savings is hardly noticeable compared to a 7200RPM HDD. Nowhere near 25%. It's not for impatient people with money. I, for example, don't need huge amounts of storage on my HDD. I have a desktop with 3TBs and several externals. I wanted to be able to whip out my laptop and have it up and running asap cause i'm on the go a lot

The reason they're expensive is because they're expensive to make. They're slowly becoming cheaper to make such as Intel's new line of SSDs.

It may not be cost efficient for you but that doesn't mean someone else won't find value in it. I found at the $200 price point well worth it for my 128GB

 

Anyone familiar with the Power Life "power conservation modes" that comes with the laptop? This is in addition to the usual windows power plan.

If i set the windows power plan to power saver and the sager's power life is set to performance, would i have to power life to power saver as well?

 

@pukemon
Better performance is a matter of removing the bottleneck. Storage is in my opinion bottleneck. It is a waste of money to invest in anything else but the bottleneck in a computer. In other words its actually cost effective to invest in storage speed (vs other components).

The bottleneck is the component that is being pushed to its limits constantly.
For example:
Gaming - GPU is most often the bottleneck component
Rendering/Encoding - CPU is almost always the bottleneck
Office and general use - Storage

Test: I just launched Photoshop CS5 on a Pentium D 2gb machine. The cpu didn't go over 35% during launch and Ram jumped 70mb. The weird thing is, while the machine wasn't breaking a sweat I had to wait. Thats because the drive was working at full speed to launch the application. 100% disk utilization in other words.

Would you call it impatience if you were a video editor and had to wait longer for render times because you chose not to invest in a faster cpu? More to the point if you're doing a lot of design and coding (especially on live sites), you're going to be loading a lot of files all the time. Isn't the point of UXD's question to help him identify what will accelerate his tasks?

 

the power savings i was talking about was comparing hdd to ssd's in general. not 7200 to 5400rpm's.

 

I know. And you probably won't get 25% increase in battery life from an SSD. Some SSD's even reduce the battery life like the Vertex 3.

This is usually not listed as an advantage to an SSD

 

since more than one person fails to see my point and think faster, faster is better and more economical for the seconds, perhaps minutes "saved" in a work session, i give you and others this. 'even an egg needs time before it can start walking.' to illustrate my point in a much larger perspective to everybody's individual 'work economics" is this... the world is in a big rush to get nowhere really fast these days. i am going off topic a little bit, but it does relate. just how fast do you need to go? the world is running out of oil and we're in a big rush, no matter the pollution we cause or the deficit in oil we use to get the last drops. you need look no further than gas prices to realize this. but look at north africa. not many people are willing to go public and say oil is part of what caused what's going on. look up canadian tar sands and see what they're doing to get the tar off sand. anybody notice that saudi arabia accounts for ~25% of the worlds and they're into offshore drilling now? notice the brown stains on the back of the oil billionaire's robes on that side of the world? work a 9 to 5 job and ever notice a ferrari won't get you to your job any faster than a yaris, much less an electric car? think fruits or vegetables come from the store or electricity comes from the wall? ever notice how many out of season vegetable we have the luxury of eating or realize how much oil/resources are used to get that uranium out of the ground, that nuclear plant built, that uranium enriched and then the resources used to monitor/guard the used up uranium? do you still think 200mpg cars or electric cars will solve the oil issue still? and i could go on and on...but back to the egg. i see similar issues like this all the time. "but this x product/type is better for this x reason". what i see is a world shooting it self in the foot. with a machine gun. and telling everybody but i can run faster now. hmmmm...

for what it's worth, there hasn't been one product in my entire life or anybody's for that matter, that has saved me time or slowed me down. there are still 24 hours in a day, and you will always get to where you're going, barefoot or shoes, ssd or hdd, hd or sd, std or not. heh.

but anyways, back up a few posts and i said i could tell you a way to solve problems like that faster than an ssd could loan an os, much less an application. while the world keeps gaining momentum to hit the bottom of the oil barrel faster i keep looking to "the sun" for solutions. the most high tech things in the world have been here longer than man has been here but we need to have it high tech to be better or we scoff, stick our noses up in the air and think that's so 3rd world.

i hope in about a year i can be having these silly discussions about which is better, because somehow we've all become tools to the hype, from my solar powered home, and not just solar panels. and by then maybe ssd's will only a little bit higher per gigabyte than hdd's and we then we can argue my sager is better than your sager because mine has a cool sticker on it.

sorry, i ranted like this. when you work on elevators and most people don't realize we take the stairs, just as often as we take the elevators you start seeing the world a lot differently. just to rant a little bit more, elevator techs don't have elevators in their back pockets, pushing the button 50 times doesn't make it come 50 times faster, pushing the up and down usually makes the wait longer for you AND other people, it's not a good idea to race doors closing on an elevator with your hand/arm and even more so your body, elevators are safer than cars, trains and planes, if you get stuck in an elevator with me or hell even 5 elevator techs we can only help you scream if you get stuck. it has to be da shoes. or ssd's. i don't know.

 

@pukemon
next time you invest in your laptop give an ssd a shot man, I think it'll clear things right up and I'm not trying to be a smart alec I really think you need to experience using an ssd to see the benefits I'm talking about because its not what you describe in your analogies.

 

I want to see empty space on the HD or i get claustrophobic.

 

i know what instantaneous is. i've used others. i apologize because i just didn't get that 'instantaneous ooooo that was fast' smack you on the face and left a handprint like you did. i noticed the speed increase using 8 gig microsdhc speed boost. sorry my screen is not sticky. i'm sorry i haven't been more productive because i have an 8 track in my' puter sir. i'll do better next time.

 

i was giving the benefit of the doubt and even conceding it gets better power. i honestly think minutes, or tens of minutes better will actually be the case.

 

I'm gonna go with the np3250. I guess my mind was made up for me because the np 5160 isn't being offered anymore.

I'm definitely going with the 95% gamut and the 8gb of ram.

As for the processor, it seems like the 2630qm is the way to go - others have said it will boost performance because of my multitasking and it shouldn't overheat because I'm not doing any gaming. Is there any other downside to an i7 over an i5?

I also decided on 120gb SSD and 750gb HDD. I've seen on this thread that people are buying their own drives and putting them in themselves. It's $275 for the SSD and $135 for the HDD in the optical drive bay from the reseller, is it way cheaper to buy these hard drives separately and easy enough install them myself? If I get the 3 year parts and labor warranty, does getting the HDs through the reseller make it worth the extra money because they are covered if anything happens?

Finally, any idea why the 3250 is ~1/4" thicker than the 5160?

 

Is the 5160 really not availible, because it can still be configured on the XoticPC website. With that being said, how is the 5160 build quality as in, will it hold up for 4 years? I know the speakers aren't very good but I have heard there are problems with the heat.

 

There is no downside to an i7 over a i5 whatsover I just didn't think you would need it but if you're not overbudget defintely you'll see twice the cpu multitasking headroom with the 2630qm. That monitor will not dissapoint and man you're really covering all the bases here with 8gb of ram

The Intel 510 120gb is priced @ about $280 on the market so there's no reason to install it yourself, it is also a very fast and reliable ssd (Read speeds to 450 MB/s Write speeds to 210 MB/s). The most you could really save is maybe $20-30 buying the hard drive caddy and 750gb seperately and installing that yourself which isn't a bad option because you get a free optical drive doing that. And yes if you get the 3 year parts warranty they will cover any components they ship your laptop with.

as far as it being almost a 1/4" thicker it looks like the display bezel is thicker maybe they are trying to improve the durability of that part which is known to have a little flex on the otherwise solid np5160. Otherwise I don't know why the chassis is slightly thicker, maybe for better cooling, not that this model would need better cooling then the np5160. It is the same if not less in weight then the np5160 though. Hmmmm now that I think about it this is a newer model then the np5160 they might be trying to improve on np5160's flaws with it, I'm guessing.

all in all I don't think you could build a more equipped machine for your purposes, the only thing it won't do extremely well in is gaming (which will still be capable at lower settings and older games)

looks available to me too. There is some flex like on the back of the display bevel. I wouldn't sit anything heavy on this thing though I don't think it would break unless somebody jumped on top of this thing. Otherwise the chassis is solid, overall not bad but not the best durability in its class (because of the bevel).

 

I just purchased my 5160 from xoticpc today so they are definitely still available.

 

How hot swapable is the CDrom bay?

 

It should be a matter of removing one, or at most, two screws and gently pulling the drive out of the bay. You just have to make sure you have the right caddy. This is what a lot of folks, including myself, have used. The nice thing about it is that you can transfer your existing optical drive faceplate to the caddy so you don't mess up the visual aesthetics of the notebook.

I actually have a spare one that I'm not using any more that I'd be willing to sell a lot cheaper than what I linked to above. Send me a private message if you're interested, though I think you have to have 10 regular posts on this forum in order to do so.

 

Hmm
Just a simple question that I was thinking about:
Does the ClevoW150HNM/Sager 5160 support 16GB of RAM (2 x 8GB 1333 MHz) ?

 

I can't find any spec sheets that discloses the maximum amount of RAM. 8gb sticks are not mainstream as far as I know (desktop ddr3 8gb dimms go for hundreds of bucks a pop) and I don't think anyone makes them in the laptop form factor anyway.

Edit: Apparently they do exist but are not available to the consumer. But if you really want them they'll set you back a couple grand per stick.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...pgrades/551570-8gb-ddr3-sodimm-where-haz.html

 

Yeah 16GB, that's quite excessive. Anyways, you cannot exceed 8GB on this model.
CLEVO - Products

 

Sorry for continuing this convo, but I just talked to my brother who thinks he knows about computers and he suggested I go with the 5160 because of the better graphics card. He said that you never know what programs are going to come out in the next 4 years and there may be tv shows coming out at higher qualities and all that, so why not get the better card just in case as it isn't that much more expensive.

Are there any downsides to having the better card (other than cost)? For example, if I am doing the same task on a np5160 and on a np3250, will I get different battery life because of the different graphics cards?

Thanks peoples

 

Mostly don't. Since both uses Optimus technology, when saving battery juice is important you'll be on the same Intel iGPU anyway...

On the other side, more powerfull GPUs tend to be hotter (but not necessarily though) when you're stressing them, but I dunno that would be really the case to break a deal...

Get the better one if it fits your budget.

 

The integrated Intel graphics chip that comes with these machines is enough to accelerate HD content on its own. If you're not gaming, the only benefit to getting the higher-spec NVIDIA GPU is for taking advantage of its CUDA capability for photo and video editing.

 

the 540m does not offer anything besides more CUDA cores (only 2x more) for gaming over the 520m. There is no difference and will be no difference in media playback performance and image quality. If you don't know what CUDA is, research, you probably can't find any use for it, I for example do video encoding/rendering all the time and I have no use for it. I think your brother wants to use your computer to play games . However there is no downside to getting the 540m besides the added cost, you'll just find little to no use for it unless you're using it to game.

Edit: And if you're still not sure, the np5160 is only $60 more with the same configuration so if it fits your budget I would definitely get the np5160 despite it being less cost effective for your stated uses.