*** Official Sager NP8170/Clevo P170HM Owners Lounge ***

As he said but don't use that much thermal compound. Im sure it was just an example though.

 

If you're referring to the photo posted by babyhemi, that's directly from the Innovation Cooling website with instructions on how much IC Diamond paste to use. It says to use a 5.0-5.5 mm bead.....

 

The second photo also shows both GPU heatsinks removed, you only want to remove the one over the GPU itself, and leave the back heatsink (the one connected to the GPU RAM) alone. Basically just undo screws 1-4.

 

My CPU overheats (a core or cores reach 100C then it throttles), which is a problem I'd usually take care of myself, but unfortunately one of the spring-loaded heatsink screws (#6 or 7 I think) refuses to give. It just spins in place, and won't loosen.

This is one of the many reasons I need to send my machine in for servicing.

 

i should be diligent to clean my laptop every month, yesterday i cleaned my laptop for the 1st time after 5 months... all i can say wow!!! that is a wholesome of dust gathered in the heatsink, especially on the cpu side.. i should have taken pictures of it

now my cpu running cool at 60 degree celcius compared to the previous at 80+ degree celcius

 

Yes, but I believe they also post a picture of a desktop CPU, not a laptop model which is significantly smaller. That said, you also have to take into account that if you're doing the GPU- it's not square, so you might need a little bit more than you'd think to cover the whole die. (which is also why there always appears to be a bit squeezed out on factory applied models).

 

Good to know, thanks.

 

Hey forum, as you can tell, I am new here.

Just bought a NP8170 today!!

Here are my specs...

Display 17.3" FHD 16:9 "Glare Type" Super Clear Ultra Bright LED Glossy Screen
Processor 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-2760QM, 2.4-3.5GHz
Graphics Video Card ATI Mobility Radeon™ HD 6990M 2048MB
Ram 12GB - DDR3 1333MHz Dual Channel Memory
Primary Hard Drive 120GB Intel 520 Series Solid State Drive (SSD2 Serial-ATA III)
Second Hard Drive 500GB 7200RPM (Serial-ATA II 300 - 16MB Cache
Optical Drive Bay 6X Blu-Ray Read/8X DVDRW Super Multi Combo Drive
Wireless Network Intel® Ultimate-N 6300
Operating System ~Windows 7 Ultimate 64-Bit

Very excited to get this

Question:
I know you guys were talking about the 90% glossy and I want to know if the picture quality is very significant from the stock. I have the stock and I feel like kicking myself for not getting the 90%.

Also, I'd like to thank the active members of this forum for giving me knowledge I would never know otherwise. Proud to be a Sager owner!

 

Yessir! I am a testament to that one too. I have had my 8170 for about 12 months now. I had just cleaned all the fur and dust out of my wife's G73. I did not even think to look there for my recently raising temps in my 8170. So I removed the fans (sooo easy compared to the G73) and found basically another cat lurking there. You can tell if its bad because the fur and lint can be seen between the cooling radiators and the fan units. When running Duke Nukem Forever, the temps would hit an astronomical 95C. Now, with all eye candy running, the GPU and CPU temps are only about 65C. Also, when hooked up to my external Samsung monitor, the temps used to be about 85C and now it idles around 61C. I was even thinking of repasting ... glad i took the time to look inside there. The laptop idle temps are now at about 38C to 41C for the GPU and the CPU stays around 50C. The ambient temp of the room is about 22C.

 

Hi, I recently got my Sager np8170.

I was wondering what the red led light coming from the SPDIF port was. I have never used the port, and was wondering how to turn this red light off.

 

Thats the optical part of the optical output. You can't really turn it off.

 

Well if you never use the port you could stick some gum in it.

 

You can turn it off.

Go to realtek control and mute the optical output. It should get rid of the red light.


Sent from my iPhone with Tapatalk

 

I'm thinking of upgrading to an 8170 from my 5796... Is this model likely to be replaced or outdated any time soon? When I bought the 5796, it was surpassed by a motherboard revision (the 5797) only a few months later.

 

Around April~May.

I'd say wait 3 more months.

 

Thanks for the reply. What's coming then?

 

Now I got the np8170 with an I7-2760qm recently with the 580m gtx inside and I have noticed in games such at rift in a raiding environment I get 15-25fps, in WOW in a raiding environment I get 30-50fps, is this normal?

I also notice the CPU when gaming never seems to hit that supposed "up to 3.5ghz" mark, at most I've seen it go to is 3.2-3.3 at most when I am doing my thing.

 

Raiding is very demanding on graphics cards. The FPS you'll get will depend on what you have the game settings to. If AA is maxed and you have all the settings set to max like shadow detail then your FPS are right where they should be. There's just so much going on when you raid, all the AoE spells etc will be demanding on the GPU.

The CPU should kick up to its max Ghz when needed, it could be that it just doesnt need to hit 3.5Ghz to accomplish what you're asking of it. If you want to see it max out get a CPU stress test like Prime95 and it should hit 3.5Ghz right away.

 

- New generation of CPUs from Intel which is 100% confirmed to not be backwards compatible.

- Updated Clevo models with backlit keyboards which are not backward compatible

- New generation of mobile GPUs from both AMD and Nvidia (reportedly will be backward compatible)

Buying now would be significantly more extreme than what you experienced with the 5796 -> 5797 situation.

 

Just to piggyback on your response, do you think that the price differential will be significant when the IB stuff comes out (ie... 20% price drops in 2-3 months) or will there be pretty much just a continuation in price but better internals?

 

If you're doing multi core work, it will never hit 3.5Ghz. That max turbo rating also assumes 1 core under load. Each successive core in use lowers the ceiling on the turbo just a little bit. For a quadcore optimized application, you'll probably see 3.2-3.3Ghz maximum. Run an application like Prime95 but only on a single thread and you should see a max turbo up to 3.5.

 

That does make sense yes. Mostly my curiosity stems from the fact that didn't expect such FPS dips from raiding with the hardware provided. Is it simply poor coding on the mmo's part?

 

Hello Tezen,

Have you gone into the options > advanced in the graphics in WoW and enabled DX11? Also, if you are running a 64-bit OS, Blizzard did recently release their 64-bit client and the bugs have been squashed with it so it should work as well. Some players did state in the forums they have noticed an increase in FPS with the 64-bit client. Try those out. How maxed are your graphics settings in WoW?

 

I tried on max and min settings and seems that in a raid setting in either game, there seems to be a drop of frames to as low as 35fps, if I am in a crowed area, I can get around 80fps. This is in WOW mind you.

In rift in raid with midway or even low settings I have gotten as low as 20-25fps. Just am unsure if it is a bottleneck of somekind that I am not taking into account.

 

Yes, World of Warcraft. I will test my GTX580M out and see what I am getting and post my FPS after my raids. It will likely be tomorrow evening when I post them. Just to check to see if it is the laptop or it may very well be something in the MMO coding.

 

On 25-man bossfights with tons of combat events (Ultraxion seems to be the worst) I can definitely drop into the 20s at times, I don't think it's GPU-related. I'm almost always CPU-limited in WoW unless I'm standing around Org with a zillion other players in view.

 

I don't see an optical output tab in the realtek control panel.

 

Okay, so I did run the LFD Dragon Soul Raid both sections all bosses today. Ultraxion seemed to be the worst of them for FPS. I did dip down to 35fps during that fight and Yor'sahj the Unsleeping. I can't tell you what I was getting for fps on Spine of Deathwing or Cthulu Deathwing because of that button for dragon aspect buffs or whatever it was overlaying my fps monitor. It did come right back up to 60fps right as the bosses went down though. That was all on Ultra settings with DX11 and in 64-bit client and no OC to the GPU. In SW I was getting consistent 60-70fps on ultra settings, dropped down to 58fps at lowest.
I think it would be safe to assume it has something to do with the MMO coding.

 

The IB + new GPU machines should have the typical Clevo launch prices, meaning.....

Base quad core + 7970M = ~$1.7k
Base quad core + 680M = ~$2.1k

 

I would almost be willing to sell my 8170 and get the new one because of the .... BACKLIT KEYBOARD!!!

 

What WLAN/Bluetooth combo should I have in this (built in, not intel add on), or how can I more specifically check? It has randomly dropped out now, requiring being turned off and back on to make it even see a network.

 

The default wireless is a Realtek RTL8188CE Wireless LAN chipset. You can try the drivers in this thread if you want to try newer ones:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/sager-clevo/573379-clevo-driver-thread.html

 

Windows is installing the Atheros AR9002WB-1NG driver automatically, and doesn't consider the dl'ed driver from that thread as newer. I know I can force the install, but is this normal for this adapter?

 

Hi everyone !

If anyone is interested to know (as I've seen some say they wanted to play the game with their laptop) I ran throught the Diablo 3 Beta with a Demon Hunter so far and the framerate with mine (see my sig) is almost always 60 fps with all graphics maxed and with Vsynch On, it sometimes dips into the 30s when there's heavy physics (environnement) going on but the rest of the time it's stable at 60 even with lots of foes. Without Vsynch it's hovering in the mid 70's.

 

since were in the same boat can i be captain i promise i wont bail out of the boat before all the passengers or steer it ashore lol

 

we can call the boat " patience "

 

This is so fun!

Nascar_Racing_2003.MPG - YouTube

 

New Sager NP8170 owner here, just put my order in yesterday. Here's my specs:

Display 17.3" Full HD LED-Backlit Display with Super Glossy Surface (1920 x 1080)
Video & Graphics Card AMD Radeon HD 6990M GPU with 2GB GDDR5 Video Memory
CPU Processor 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-2670QM Processor ( 6MB L3 Cache, 2.20GHz)
Thermal Compound IC Diamond Thermal Compound - CPU + GPU
Operating System Genuine MS Windows® 7 Home Premium 32/64-Bit Edition ( 64-Bit Preloaded )
Memory 16GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1600MHz - 4 X 4GB
RAID Storage Options Non-RAID Storage
Primary Hard Disk Drive 750GB 7200rpm SATA 300 Hard Drive
Optical Drive Bay — Optical Drive or Hard Disk Drive in Optical Drive Bay with Caddy case 6X Blu-ray Reader/8X DVD±R/2.4X +DL Super-Multi Drive & Software
Wireless Network Card Bigfoot Networks Killer™ Wireless-N 1103 - 802.11A/B/G/N Wireless LAN Module

Decided to take advantage of their $100 off the 6990 and total order deal. Will be primarily for gaming and video encoding (hence the RAM size) while I'm deployed (currently out here floating around 5th Fleet, USMC avi tech).

I'm interested in critiques and comments, where would my money have been better spent, and where did I go right? I have a Corsair Force GT 120g on the way as well, for a boot drive and most often used programs (PShop and ARMA, Fallout, Skyrim, etc).

Happy I found this forum, I'm digging into all the useful juicy info here.

 

Thank you for serving, I'm a retired Chief. If you could swing it, I think the only upgrade that you would really appreciate is the 90% Gamut screen for $200. It is so much better than the stock screen. The colors are amazing and the brightness will make you squit and full brightness.

 

The 3D screen is pretty too, right? That's the one I'm picking if I order this week...

 

The 3D screen is also great, its a 72% gamut range making a nice upgrade from the stock, you also get the 120hz capabilities making things look more smooth.

 

Just hope they don't make an Asus-like backlit keyboard.. it would suck.

Lights don't shine through the keys

 

I agree, those end up more annoying than useful to be honest.

 

Thanks for welcome and the recommendations! Unfortunately the extra $200 for the screen was a bit more than I could get past the wife (not for lack of trying!) so I went with the performance I could. One of the other guys in my shop here has an NP8170 (my inspiration for looking into Sager tbh, I've always been a big desktop guy), and he has the regular screen as well. Still looks pretty outstanding to me, so I think I should be ok

 

OK, so I've ordered me a nice little NP8170 with 3D monitor from XoticPC.

Against my better judgement, and despite what I've read about it, I went in and invested in their 'Redline Boost Overclocking'. Unless anyone knows any better, I doubt I'll be able to notice the difference, but my reasoning behind this decision was that it might allow them to keep testing my laptop a little further, thus noticing any faults (from past experiences, laptops are highly prone to memory sticks' issues) and fixing or replacing the faulty parts before sending the laptop over.

Since I don't live in the US (I do have a shipping service in the US due to my American Express services), I really dread getting a faulty laptop, which will really ruin everything for me as I'm about to move away from my original address, and I figured this step might help.

What do you guys think? I was wondering if a XoticPC rep might offer their insight about their 'Redline Boost', as well.

 

Congrats on your choice!!!
There is no overclocking for CPU with 3D screen, only GPU...but would never give up my wonderful 3D screen for it!

 

Yeah, I bet it would be pretty useless to attempt to overclock a CPU which already has dynamic frequency scaling, but I still hope that this is not a completely wasted cash.

 

As mentioned the CPU is not overclocked as the multiplier is locked. We will over clock the GPU though and average 10-15% increase in performance while doing so.

 

Never considered overclocking the CPU, those days are long gone by now

Thanks again!

And thanks for the congrats, Prema!

 

Would just like to mention on an upgrade I made.

I've applied VGA Memory heatsinks to my GPU/CPU Heatpipes/Heatsinks. eBay - New & used electronics, cars, apparel, collectibles, sporting goods & more at low prices

I had noticed how much room there was around the stock heatsinks and wondered if I could increase cooling passively. I applied 8 heatsinks to both using the stock adhesive (along with extra precautions to make sure they don't touch the chipset if they fall off, but they should be fixed down pretty well.

Results:

2920xm WPrime 8 Threads Full load:

Before: Max: 78C
After: Max:67C

Idle: Before: 45-50C
Idle: After: 28-34C (Depending on room temp)

6990M - FurMark 1080p 16x:
Before: Max: 87C
After: Max: 82C

Idle: Before: ~60C
Idle: After: 40-45C (Depending on room temp)

I'm happy with the results, but there is still room for about another 12-16 heatsinks on the available real estate so we'll see how much temperatures improve once they come in!