*** Official Sager NP9877 / Clevo P870TM-G Owner's Lounge! - Phoenix 4 ***

Does anyone here run the P870TM1 with the OS on Intel 800p? Just curious

 

Probably none. But I have posted a few reviews of Optane800P in this thread

 

For most users the loss in capacity is such a big hit compared to a good SATA based drive.

 

I usually have 1 ssd dedicated to OS only while other things like steam games on another ssd. In this case size isn't really an isue for me. So just wondering if the optane drive performance can be "felt".

For example, I didnt really notice a difference going from sata SSD to nvme. But how about nvme to optane? Wondering about the effects of low QD in random reads...

 

Same vs. NVMe drives. The reviews of Optane 800P tell you everything you really need to know.

 

It's like RAIDing' NVME drives.
You won't see a difference just loading the OS unless you have a stopwatch. You won't feel any difference.
But for large file operations, you will.

Basically, for SSD's, you want to balance Size, Reliability and Speed, depending on your actual needs.
Size is obviously the most important factor. Then you have to balance reliability and life expectancy, with how fast your drives will be. E.g. MLC vs TLC + generation.
Buying a very big last gen evo drive may be a better purchase than buying a current gen and smaller pro drive (relating to samsung here of course). But if you can afford it, if a big last gen Pro drive is substantially cheaper than a current gen big pro drive, then purchase wisely. It's all a balancing contest combined with shopping for bargains or items on sale. And being very, very careful about ebay.

 

Makes sense. I just recently purchased a 1TB 970 Pro for $500 which seems to be decent compared to 960 1TB PRO prices. Also the better endurance is a plus for me as a software developer - a lot of compiling and things like that. Read the 800p reviews and decided to stick with Samsung NVMEs for now

 

@ aznxwill
Thanks man
I was planning to buy "Laptop Trolley, fits 15-Inch to 18.4-Inch (EKB420)" but after comparison I consider buying "Checkpoint Friendly Laptop Backpack, fits up to 18.4" (EKP120)" @ 185$ including shipping & import fee.

 

It depends how you want to handle the machines, as a trolly or a backpack.

 

Question, With an SLI setup, shouldn't I see the clock speed of the GPU at like 800 when idle?

Currently, the GPUS idle at 1555Mghz and at about 52c.

 

we waiting patiently for 905p m.2 to come, hope that it'll work within spec of m.2 and uses 3.3v. that way it is a x4 lane optane SSD that would likely fit in our laptop with a simple chassis mod or with an extension add-on. 380GB not bad at all.

 

If max performance is set to on in the Nvidia control panel that's what you will see.

Anyone happen to know or have a for sure picture of the correct size thermal pads for the 1080sli heatsink and the CPU heatsink ??

 

The optimal size is the same as those listed for the dm3.

 

Thanks Meaker
I happened to get my hands on a few different IHS's. Soooo I'm going to solder the ihs to the heatsink , LM between the IHS and the die. And see what happens. Lol

 

You can't solder the IHS to the die as the socket needs to latch it. Plus the tolerances for such a setup would come down to fractions of a mm.

 

Had to edit. Lol I'll hopefully get to post some pics when it's done.

 

I'm not saying it's impossible just it will take a lot of reworking and precision/care.

 

Ahoy! I’m about to retire my p370em and purchase the p870tm. I was about to press go on one with the i7 8086k cpu, but I thought I’d just ask around to see if anyone had specific thoughts on that? Anybody had a play with one?

 

All roads point to Intel hoarding the top bin 8700K's (approx 5.2 and better) for the past few months and rebadging them as a "new" SKU.

All the pre-binning providers seem to be almost completely out of anything faster than 5.1 for a little while now. That means to me the chance of an 8700K you buy right now (unless old stock) being capable of 5.2 or better, is basically zero.

If you're not planning on heavy overclocking you could easily match the slightly increased single core turbo in 10 seconds of changing BIOS settings and you'll get the same experience

 

Then again the cost is a lot lower than those binning places.

 

Well...I’ll prolly not OC it for another 5 years and then try a half assed attempt to keep up with whatever cpu’s are doing in 2023, like I did with my 3940xm bought after reading about your tinkering.

That’s assuming I can’t upgrade to the next gen after the 8’s...dunno 100 bucks extra is not so bad? It would certainly cost me more than that if I got an 8700k and then wanted to upgrade to the 8086 later.

Is an upgrade to gen 9 on the p870tm likely?

 

Its a 10-20% boost over stock.

 

OK new question. I'm doing my best to read EVERY post in this owners lounge (ways to go...), so it may have already been answered, but I see XoticPC is listed as a Prema Bios partner, yet I specifically asked them if their P870TM's had Prema BIOS and they said it did not. Now the argument is moot as I went with another reseller, but I'd just like the clarification...

 

If asking a reseller directly @ one of their representatives to notify them.

 

Not on the version that's Sager branded. It's only on XPC branded Clevo models.

 

Right. Wow that’s information I really could have done with knowing earlier. I’ve officially bought from the wrong reseller and regret it before it arrives.

Ah well, not the end of the world. @Eurocom Support is the unlocked bios available on your clevo p870tm1-g upgrade page Prema bios? And available to anyone who has $145 in their pocket?

 

You can check with @woodzstack


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

It's not the PremaMod.
But they will sure as heck take your money and sell you anything at anytime.

 

They’re who I got my 970m’s from with your bios for the p370em...thanks for making that last so long. It’s got legs in it yet too...I’m passing it on to one of my staff as a workstation.

 

NO! It's definitely not the Prema Mod

 

Okeydokey. I’m real good at making assumptions. Ah well hopefully one day I’ll be able to get it with a GPU upgrade or something. I should’ve read the entire thread BEFORE I pressed go...

What a dumbass...

 

It's always trickier checking after the fact on a decision

 

Yes. The full 200 pages should have been read. I went backwards from 200 to 150 and then forward from 1 to 100. The crucial information which tipped me off was between 100and 150. TBH I asked support at xotic about their sager build, to which they replied ‘no sorry it doesn’t have Prema bios’. Their next sentence should have been ‘however we do have an xotic pc build that is exactly the same and has Prema bios’ but it wasn’t.

Anyways she’ll still be pretty and do the job I need her for...

 

No I do not believe they are the Prema's modded bios.
They have all the menu's unlocked and allow for the CPU and finer tweaks, and usually they wait until one of the later revisions of the bios to unlock it all.

I do not know entirely what features Prema offers in his bios for this system or if he does at all, but maybe you can ask him, or if someone has a link to where this is said elsewhere.

Whenever I have asked EUROCOM over the years what thier unlocked bioses are, they have never ever once replied with any details. I always got no reply, or "you know, the usual" or like "what do you think?

I've addressed it so many times that anytime I even remotely start to mention it I get angry so I can not simply email them or talk to them about it anymore, because I've had such a bad experience personally trying to get an answer to what it offers that I give up.

What I will say is, you do not actually need any of these unlocked or modified bioses in 95% of cases. There was a time I used to check in with customers and would ask them 3 month or 6 months down the road, if they looked around in the bios, and the ones that did say they did, admit they were extremely confused, didn't know 99% of what was in there , and were worse off with it then having it, in terms of functionality because of how confusing it gets when you have 500+ options in 4-5 extra menu's without any guide as to what is what and how to use it effectively.

Most people are fine using something like XTU to tweak or undervolt thier CPU and maybe adjust thier RAM timings, or flash your RAM to support whatever timings you need with a spdiftool (think nowadays we use Thaiphoon burner). So, save your money, no one has ever really given me a compelling reason why they need any special unlocked or modified bios, ever, but I remain willing to be convinced.

The only exceptions where I have admitted and willing accept modified bioses were good, where when there were issues in the current revision of a system bios, like fan tables not working properly or support for newer GTX cards etc... all things that usually get addressed within the laptops lifetime, but if your an early adopter, buying a system from a few resellers 2-3 months before an official launch world wide of a new lineup or laptop, there is most definitely going to be some earlier stage system bioses then what people will ultimately use in the long run. A quality control issue really. Bigger companies like DELL and Alienware for example, update bioses all the time, but they also have higher revision by the time they start selling them then A01 or something. Sometimes with Clevo's or MSI, you can actually buy the laptop and it has an alpha or beta system bios on it that is actually outdated by the time you get it, because of buying it ASAP. Seen it plenty of times.

The alternative is we could delay orders, but we all know thats not going to happen, no one in sales wants to hold back orders. Even for support. Many have adopted the "lets be quiet and not say anything, maybe it will go away by itself" sort of problem solving mechanic. What I hate about that mindset is, it's split down the middle with people who CAN actually help and people who do not know a damn thing and are praying to have the issue go away. Then you got this vocal minority in the middle who will always help you, but wishes they had the resources to make a difference, they are capable, but do not have all the documentation or knowledge they need, but still try 10x harder then the big companies with the resources to actually help you. Hence why we have such a community of modders and after market support. There are more "volunteer"-like people here helping with real bugs and issues then in most brand specific official forums for many of these laptop brands. I make an exception for MSI, which has SVET who can help you like a god if needed.

 

To keep it simple you get a clean menu with actually working additional functions to support a wider range of specific user setups, be it power savings, broader OS support or enhanced security features.
Clevo, like all other ODMs out there, throttle their Notebook systems under load. That's removed in the PremaMod as well.
We don't provide a custom BIOS just to make you (the user) buy into something that you don't need.
If a system fails to meet our quality standards during testing or it doesn't actually provide a real benefit over using CCC, TS or XTU, we don't offer a PremaMod for it.

I am sitting on a bunch of unreleased mods that I invested many weeks of work and testing into, which for one reason or another didn't end up meeting the quality standard to deserve the PremaMod branding and which subsequently have never been made available to Partner.

If you see a system being offered with PremaMod by a Partner, then you know that it's working.

 

So I finally got time to sit down and do some testing of the IHS soldering shenninangans and so far it's been pretty damn neat.
But I do have a question for the GPU gods here. @Meaker@Sager @mrfox @hmscott @bennyg
When testing the GPU for the default voltage, and setting the curve to allow for an undervolting, is it normal for the core clock to max out as if I've set the cards to max performance in the Nvidia control panel? When I change my curve , the cards shoot straight to max clock Speed. Lol is this normal?

 

Yes, your undervolting removed thermal / power limiting and the response by the card is to take advantage of the improved operating environment and further improve performance. It's a nice side effect of undervolting Pascal GPU's.

If you can take the time to tune the GPU downclocking with the new undervolt, you can reduce power consumption and reduce the FPS to near G-sync / display refresh rate limit (60hz/60fps, 120hz/120fps, 144hz/144fps).

And, MSI Afterburner comes with RTSS, install and configure the included RTSS frame limiter and it will do that for you without further tuning the GPU - try both and see which you like best for power consumption, fan noise, and ease of configuration.

 

Thanks man. I was wondering if CCC done something pants on head stupid or I was loosing it this morning lol. Makes me feel a bit better.

 

A manual tune targeted at a specific frequency will usually be more efficient as you can get the voltage just right but setting a frame limit is a lot easier.

 

I can tell it had been a long day and morning after re-reading my comment. Lol
My idle core speed is staying at whatever the volatage allows. When i Press L on 950mv and raise the speed to say for example 1899 MHz, when I click the check in afterburner, my core speed never comes back to a normal 135mhz . It stays maxed at 1899 no matter what I'm doing, idle = max clock lol.
And for the frame limiter , the games i play already have the cap in place within the game themselves.(Warframe, and Bf1) sorry if my earlier post was confusing guys.

 

L is to lock it to that frequency, that's why (unless a power or thermal throttle occurs) its useful for testing a specific clock/volt point. Press L again and when you apply it may shoot up to max for a bit but (unless you have high performance in nvidia control panel instead of optimal or adaptive) it'll clock back down after a few seconds

 

L to lock voltage / frequency for testing.

Spoiler: Details...

New curve builder?? L-o-c.k any Voltage & Frequency on pascal!
Thread starter Nicholas Peyton Start date Oct 9, 2016

Oct 9, 2016
#1
Anyone already tried this? How did you get on?? \/ \/ \/

Just noticed with 'MSI Afterburner' 4.3, Beta 14 you can now actually lock your voltage and core frequency at any point along your curve to test for stability at each voltage point to build your overclock.

Officially they only support FE and MSI but I just tried it on my EVGA Classified 1080 and its working 100%

Here is a quote from the page:
-----------------------------------------------------
"You may press <L> after selecting any point on the curve with mouse cursor to disable GPU dynamic voltage/frequency adjustment and lock the voltage and core clock frequency to a state defined by the target point. This feature allows you to test graphics card stability independently for each voltage/frequency point of the curve using real 3D applications or any stress test of your choice. In addition to stability testing usage scenario, MSI Afterburner allows you to save a curve with locked point setting to a profile, so you may easily switch between dynamic voltage/frequency management and fixed voltage/frequency settings in realtime (e.g. to achieve the maximum performance during benchmarking). Please take a note that fixed voltage and frequency settings do not allow you to disable power and thermal throttling"
--------------------------------------------------------
And link: http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/msi-afterburner-beta-download.html

There is no button on MSI Afterburner yet to access the voltage curve you have to press CNTRL-F to get the window up.

This should let us squeeze every last drip of performance out of our cards by fine tuning them to the absolute limit.
https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/...o-c-k-any-voltage-frequency-on-pascal.226592/

Here are some older threads on Reddit that might give you some more info and perspective:

PSA: Undervolting your GPU can give you a free performance boost, even if you don't try to exceed your stock boost frequency.
https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/6ejqja/psa_undervolting_your_gpu_can_give_you_a_free/

Pascal undervolting really deserves more attention.
https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/6hmk55/pascal_undervolting_really_deserves_more_attention/

@kfxsti - You might also find better - lower - lag response by turning off in-game / Vsync or FPS limiter, turn off external Nvidia 3D Vsync setting, and use RTSS to set FPS limit.

Same for laptop's with G-sync, turn off V-sync and use RTSS to set FPS to display refresh -1 as G-sync needs FPS to be under display refresh.

 

There a list of what the Premamod offers in each respective laptop ?
For the longest time, that is mainly my real issue of contention, the little information on what each one does.
It is safe to say, IMO, that each mod is different, and not the same features from one notebook to the next, although maybe by same author, many of the same features were tweaked, correct me if I am wrong ?

 

PremaMod changes a LOT under the hood to make the hardware perform at its best. The few additional options differ from revision to revision and model to model, but they play just a small role.
Simply exposing more options doesn't do much if anything at all these days, so don't buy into that hype. Whatever these kind of Mods do can already be done by using TS, XTU, CCC & a stock Clevo BIOS.

 

Indeed, all the important base options are exposed normally.

 

Now that I have the undervolting on the gpu going like I want , and while I'm waiting for the other heatsink to come in. Is there anyway to modify the fan tables ? And is CCC absolutely necessary to have installed? I saw the thread about being able to change colors of the keyboard and what not without it. But I can't find a for sure answer if CCC is that important in fan controling or anything else lol.

 

If you want to change between the fan profiles within CCC or the custom fan profile you set in it then yes. For normal operation with the default fan table and keyboard colours then no it's not needed.

 

Thanks Meaker !!

 

Well, did a little more testing. The Km1 heatsink for the CPU I am seeing tends to flex alot less when mounted with a thicker shim . The Tm1 heatsink has a thinner shim soldered in place and I am observing warping at the four corners. Allowing a pocket to build in the center of the CPU ihs. Had the dual vapor GPU heatsink not overlap the CPU heatsink , I could have fabbed up a X retention bracket to help hold it's shape. So it's looking like I need to mill out another shim and see if there is anymore dropping in temps i can do.
A word of caution to anyone playing around with different mounting pressures by changing the CPU heatsink screws. M3 hex socket heads are to tall due to the head to allow a flush fit of the GPU heatsink . Yes, it will still mount, but it does shift that side of the GPU heatsink up. Use the M3 Flathead Countersunk screws instead. They seem to allow the springs to nestel better than the shouldered screws that come from the factory. Not to mention the countersunks are stainless and you can use a hex key lol. Damn you Phillips heads.
Last Edit for tonight LOL
With playing around with the fans for the 2nd portion of the CPU heatsink, I have found it better to mod the stock shroud to allow the one fan already there to be able to pass air through that portion of the heatsink. As it also helps pass air through that whole section of the heatsink.

 

I used the taller bitspower IHS and expanded the groove (originally there for the 6xxx series):