New Samsung Series 7 NP700Z7C-S01US Laptop i7 3615QM 650m Review!

And what about GT 650m overclocking? I heart that there are some modified BIOS that overclock it pretty nice..

 

I just got two Z7C's. One for myself and one for my brother. Only one of them has the windows 7 recovery disk included. Mine is a newer built and does not have the disk. I feel bit skeptical. Did yours come with the recovery disk? Thanks.

 

Merlok please contact me if you are interested in the Z7C. My email is [email protected].

 

Actually I managed to get the most used and important keys working; I remembered a procedure described here in the forums and applied it to this problem. I was lucky to have saved the files in the installation folder of Easy Settings, so I uninstalled the new Settings program, and made a shortcut in the start-up folder to the dmhkcore.exe file, which is the Easy Display Manager, the Control Center needs to be in compatibility mode to be able to run, Windows 7 will do the trick. The only keys not working are the configuration one (F1), which is the Control Center and can be launched manually, and the silent mode doesn't seem to be working.

 

Gotcha. I'm trying to get it to work with the newer version so that there's not as big of a delay in using the function keys. I've actually contacted Samsung about it and they are investigating. Kind of crappy that they half-assed one of the features that you can't control without their software.

 

I got a used one which was an older model from March or April and it had a recovery disk. I sent it back and the next one I got was from August and it had no recovery disk.

 

But can you make one using Samsung Recovery Solution?

John

 

Is it just me or is this particular laptop model not very popular outside this forum? To me it seems the 15" 700z5c is more popular than this 17" 700z7c despite having lower quality display and speakers, and ratings.

Samsung has uploaded commercials for all the Series 7 models EXCEPT this one.
SERIES 7 - YouTube
(the 14", 15" and 15.6" ones are listed, but no 17.3"

This model isn't listed on Newegg.
http://www.newegg.com/SAMSUNG-Laptops-Notebooks/BrandSubCat/ID-1077-32

These slickdeal threads on this laptop have but only several replies and only +1 rating:
Samsung NP700Z7C-S01US Laptop i7 2.3GHz 8GB 1TB DVDRW (Preowned) $799.99 + Free shipping - Slickdeals.net
SAMSUNG SERIES 7 LAPTOP 17.3" FULL HD screen (Samsung Series 7 700Z7C-S01) $799 - Slickdeals.net

Am I missing something here? Is this model still really new?

 

Did you ever get to set your hackintosh? I'm wondering about installing OSX on mine and would like to hear if you were able to do it and what's your experience with it. Thanks!

 

No it does not. As you can see in my sig I have two SSDs in mine (second is for games), but 4k read/write speeds are still insane on SATA II. Anyway, I can confirm that the optical bay is hooked up to the Sata port 3 via the bios, while the main HDD is hooked up to port 1. I'm not entirely sure why they didn't go with port 2, considering it's empty, but my guess would be they didn't expect people to swap out the dvd for an SDD/HDD. As mentioned in the beginning of this post, SATA II speeds are still very fast and outside of benchmarks you're never going to notice or feel a throughput bottleneck using a Sata III SSD on a Sata II port.

 

Hi guys, I would like to ask one very simple question to all of you who owns this laptop... What is the Basic 3DMARK 11 score of yours without any overclock. I think there might be something wrong with my score which was around 1279 ish ... I see that it is shown around 3400ish in some benchmark websites. I dont know what I am doing wrong. I switched the power mode to high performance. Installed the latest drivers from samsung website and got this lousy score. Are there any other suggestions you guys can give me to get my gaming performance a boost....I have checked the device manager and I have no errors by the way...I have to also mention that I have changed the GPU setting according to the program to Nvidia 650M high performance via the Nvidia settings software for 3Dmark11.exe
Thanks for the suggestions in advance...

 

Are you watching the temperatures? This laptop is known to throttle its CPU

 

I'm sending my laptop in to Samsung due the wireless card and it's left speaker... internet always drops and speaker is in and out, i'm started to get tired... Someone here have experience with Samsung...? wish me the best.... be well guys.

Rob

 

hey guys, i recently bought this laptop, and i noticed the right speaker is crackling sometimes, i tried reinstalling the samsung drivers and then installing the original realtek drivers but it still does it :s
Does anyone has this issue? For instance, when i use skype and go in skype options and play the original skype ringtone (tools>options>ringtone>play), it does crackle like hell!
Can any of you try this and tell me if this does make your crackle too? even at mid volume setting... thanks

 

I have no heat issues because I have not overclocked the laptop and haven't faced any lap burning situation . But the question I ask is still a mystery . It is about the graphics card. and its low performance. If it gets overheated and burn that would be another scenario

 

I've had this laptop a couple of months now, and apart from the infuriating issues installing drivers from a clean install on an SSD, it's been great!

I have been playing Starcraft 2 frequently without issue, but today suddenly after a few minutes in-game the laptop would totally shut off like it lost power......... I'm not sure if it's because I updated nVidia drivers recently or not - but I'm sure I've been playing it before and after I upgraded.... Nevertheless, I downgraded back to the recommended drivers that Id been using for a while before, but the problem persists. So I'm guessing it's an overheating issue, and the laptop is shutting down to prevent damage. But why has this issue just started now? I've not changed any settings on the laptop or anything!

Is this a known issue with this laptop? And is there any software that I can test my GPU/CPU temperatures to try and find out what's going on?

I will be mortified if I can't find a fix to this issue - this is the first computer I've not had a problem with, and been able to play games on, and now this happens!!

Any help would be much appreciated.

Cheers,
Dan

 

I went to the Samsung website to check on drivers available for the NP700Z5CH and noted there were a number of Win XP drivers there. I didn't think that i7 computers could run XP. Am I wrong? I still use XP on my desktop because of the legacy software I have that reportedly won't run on Win 7.

 

Have you used the minidisplayport to view 2560x1600 resolution on a displayported monitor?

I am getting a 30" with displayport and I just bought a minidisplayport-displayport cable to check it out.

 

These are available at Cowboom again, but they're even cheaper than before - Samsung NP700Z7C-S01US Laptop i7 2.3GHz 8GB 1TB DVDRW - CowBoom.com
Use promo code Holiday5 and it comes out to $693.49 + Tax

 

is this laptop capable of using an msata drive?
like this one msata ii

http://www.amazon.com/MyDigitalSSD-...dp_top_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1

im definitely looking at this one closely.

also is the gpu using ddr5?

 

No msata capabilities and it does indeed use 2GB GDDR5. The one in my signature is maxed out in terms of upgrades

 

your signature lists two hard drives...

 

Correct! I replaced the HDD with an M5 Pro for the OS/Apps (runs at Sata III) and replaced the ODD with an M3/Caddy for games (runs at Sata II).
I don't like noisy mechanical drives, and stream all static data from my server (Movies, Music, Photos, etc.)

 

Could someone add a bit of weight to my diagnosis, before I go ahead with this idea, it would be appreciated!


So continuing on from my previous problem with the laptop cutting out power while running intensive games - no BSOD, no warnings, it just cuts out:-

I have done rigorous 'stress tests' on my system, to check for overheating problems.

I used Folding@Home to place 100% load on the GPU for extended periods of time, I could not replicate the cutting-out power issue, but found the GPU reached a maximum temperature of 95 Celsius, but averaged around 90, and averages around 85-90 playing games. (I tried Furmark, but chickened out because it was buggy, and didn't want to melt my GPU).

I used Prime95 to place 100% load on the CPU, and found temperates over the four cores to each average in the late 80's, peaking at 90 or early 90's, but never more.


I did each of these stress tests more than once, and over a half and hour period each.

I believe these to be in an acceptable range. I have read for a laptop to melt or cut-out I'd of have to of reached temperatures of 100-105 degrees.


I also used Intel Extreme Tuning to do stress tests and measure temperatures, among other things, and replicated these figures (though not to the extent of Prime95 and Folding@Home).

IET did not record any CPU throttling however, as I have read other people have experienced on this forum.


After all this, I have deduced (still a guess, however) that the cause is an insufficient power adapter, providing not enough power for the power hungry components that this laptop is made up of.
I also guess that (yet untested, will update after) I could not replicate the power cutting out because I did not stress-test the GPU and CPU at the same time.

I have been testing and monitoring power usage through the Samsung Easy Settings 'power management' section, which has a graph showing the usage (in Watts) of the system at any given time. I don't know how accurate this is, but it seems to be accurate enough.

I found that on average, running Steam uses 8W extra, and running Chrome with multiple tabs open added 5W. When the battery was charged and just 'drip charging' to keep the battery at 80% (I have battery life extender enabled), usage is around 20W (large margins either side). And when charging this goes up to around 60W, then opening Steam and Chrome brings this up to over 70W.
When testing the machine with games that made power cut out - 'Supreme Commander' and 'StarCraft 2', the power would go from 20W to 50W - this was without the power lead plugged in however.

I did not notice problems when playing StarCraft 2 (the only graphically intensive game I played at first), because I did not have Steam or Chrome running in the background.

I started to notice the power cutting out because I started to play the games with both these applications on in the background - I did not realise this before.

I have a lot more testing to do, and will report back here, but does anyone else agree with this possible diagnosis, or has experienced the same power cutting-out issue that I have?

Would anyone be able to try and replicate it?


My potential solution is to buy a 120W power adapter to replace the 90W one provided by Samsung, and see if the problem persists. As I have done research and as long as the input voltage is the same, the increased current should only be used by the system when necessary, so this is a viable solution.

 

This is an amazing deal. Has anyone had any experiences buying this model from cowboom? I want to take the plunge, but I've never bought used before.

 

Unless there is a problem specifically with my battery/software configuration/charger - I can categorically confirm that the laptop power management is not sufficient to play games of heavy load.

I just played Supreme Commander for the entirety of my 80% charged battery, without the system power cutting out.

This is a change from with the power adapter plugged in and the system charging, when the game cuts out after a few minutes in game.


I can't deduce any other possible cause of this problem if it only persists when the charger is plugged in and the system charging.


I have read about 60% of this 188 page thread, and haven't read anyone else with the same problem however. My laptop is an S01-UK configuration, so I can either understand from this that it is a problem limited to A) My system, B) laptops not using a UK model (I believe most people on here are from the US), or C) No one has else has tried playing a graphically intensive game with the charged plugged in?


This does seem to be a major flaw with the power system of this laptop, however, so could someone else please try and get the same results as I have achieved, because I don't want to think it's only my system!

I'm going to phone Samsung tomorrow and explain what has happened, and try and get them to send me a 120W adapter, to see if the problem is fixed that way. Or I'll just have to buy my own 120W adapter.

 

How you overclokced its GPU?
I always see throtlling and when I try overclock it in MSI afterburner the gpu is going to throtlling
how to dissable throtlling?

 

I just noticed that Samsung doesn't have a print screen key on their keyboard. How do you get around this? Is there some key combination that does the same thing in Windows 8?

 

FN + Insert?

 

Doh! How could I be so blind? Thanks Jocelyn84!

 

Hey guys!
I need your help.

I recently bought the Samsung Chronos 7 NP700Z7C-S03 with Windows 8 already built-in.

Everything is ok besides the slow Wireless connection.
I just can't browse anything, the wireless internet is so slow that pages like google take like 3 min to load, and sometimes they don't even load properly.
But using cable its just fine, everything is ok.

Anyone had the same problem? Any solutions?
If not, I will go to store and ask for another one, because its still within the first 30 days of use.

Thanks in advance!


PS: I had already tried to uninstall and install again the latest drivers from Intel website (15.5.6), and the power management is in best performance too, but those things didn't worked.

 

Explain more of what it is doing when it cuts out. Just shuts off or what? I have the US version and have played 100's of hours of long gaming sessions on it for 8 months with no issues. You might have some broken hardware.

 

Dead Pixels ?

got my samsung 7 NP700XC S01 US on the 12th, (after a month long free shipment) -

putting it through its paces -
ran dead pixel buddy and did not detect any dead pixels mid screen (though i didn't use a magnifying glass) - but aroud the edges there was a fine line, most particularly on the bottom, but with some colors along top and sides too - wasn't sure whether this was effectively a frame of dead pixels, or just a function of the monitor .... any input ?

re: wireless - tried it out at a coffee shop and it was fine, but later found out i was within a few feet of the router. have to put it through a tougher test.

despite some of the quirks mentioned by many - so far i have been pleased and am leaning toward keeping it, but would like input re: dead pixel question. (and will test wireless again).

thanks in advance -

 

It literally just shuts off, it's like all of a sudden the power is gone. It's immediate and without warning. I've gone ahead and ordered a 120W adapter now and will report back when I do some tests when it arrives.

I've been doing quite a lot of research into it, and what is interesting is other brands with similar hardware include power adapters with substantially higher current's. Looking at Alienware's gaming laptops:

"English Windows® 7 Home Premium (64 BIT)
3rd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-3630QM (6MB Cache, up to 3.4GHz w/ Turbo Boost 2.0)
2GB GDDR5 NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 660M
6144MB (1x2GB + 1x4GB) 1600MHz DDR3 Dual Channel
500GB 7,200rpm SATA 3Gb/s HDD
17.3" WideHD+ (1600 x 900 ) WLED LCD
Alienware M17x Stealth Black
DVD+/-RW (Read/Write)
Intel® Centrino® Wireless-N 2230 with Bluetooth 4.0
Primary 9 cell Li-Ion Default Base Battery


180W AC Adaptor"


Looking at this base Alienware 17" laptop and comparing it to Samsung's NP700z7C - bearing in mind that the only difference really is the CPU, but both are 45W total power consumption, there is nothing in particular to distinguish power consumption here - Dell have included an adapter that provides twice the current as the 90W adapter in this similarly spec'd laptop.

Something is telling me that this isn't right.

EDIT: And of course the GTX 650M vs 660M, but I can't find the power consumptions for these cards.

 

Can I direct attention and add some more weight to my argument by this review also: Review Samsung Series 7 Chronos 700Z7C Notebook - Notebookcheck.net Reviews

"In our stress test, the Chronos 17 constantly consumed 95 Watts. The consumption did not vary despite the fact that the 90 Watt power supply was overtaxed and heated up to 61oC (142oF). The underpowered power supply forced the system to draw power from the battery to cover the shortage. When loading only the CPU using Prime95, the system consumed 60 Watts and the CPU was not throttled. When loading only the GPU using Furmark, the system drew 69 Watts."

These are the same things I am finding when gaming - bearing in mind I'm playing games at full 1080p resolution with everything maxed out but keeping the fps above 30fps - I'm guessing the CPU and GPU are both used to full load simultaneously, and this is what the problem is.

Although, it could be a problem with my PSU, or battery, or power management system - or a combination. Specifically because the battery charges at a pretty fast rate, and consumes a significant amount of power to achieve this. Maybe it is because I've set it to only charge to 80%. Nevertheless, if no one else has found these issues.... But has anyone tested games like Starcraft 2 on 1080 resolution with everything on Ultra, like I'm doing? Other games I've played work without the system powering off, I've managed to play "Transcripted", which is pretty graphically intense at points, since this power issue has cropped up.

Either way, I do hope it's fixed by trying another PSU, as I've voided my warranty by swapping out the HDD for a SDD!

 

Forget what Samsung support may tell you about voiding the warranty - they want to discourage less skilled people from creating problems. You have only voided the warranty if you have caused damage and no longer have the parts provided by Samsung. If you can restore the computer to the condition supplied by Samsung then you can expect to get warranty service.

John

 

Thanks for the information - I didn't know that was the case at all! I do hope I don't have to go down this route, but if it comes to it I can always swap back in the HDD.

So my 120W adapter came today, and I booted Supreme Commander up expecting everything to be fine and dandy - but oh no, the power cut-out again... Absolutely mortified!

In a last ditch attempt, I've gone to the hassle of reinstalling Windows fully... Did this about 5 times when I first got the laptop because little bugs kept putting up while installing drivers - so this time I restarted the machine after each install.

Now I'm just downloading the game off Steam again, and expect to be able to test within the hour. Fingers crossed.

Massively holding back frustration and anger at the moment!!! One day, I will find a machine that works without issues! Or at least I can dream.

 

Hello everyone!

I just wanted to say THANK YOU for the wonderful information found in this thread. We really need a wiki post that collects all the major information on here and makes a FAQ for this wonderful laptop.

I purchased mine from Cowboom.com during their holiday sale and although it was rated a 7, I could not find any signs of wear on the machine and am extremely pleased with the purchase.

I replaced my HDD with a SSD and am planning on taking out the ODD and putting the 1TB HD back in there. I might even purchase an external USB3.0 Bluray drive to enjoy this amazing screen! Has anyone done that yet?

I've already wasted several hours online watching various 1080p videos on this glorious screen and enjoying the best laptop speakers I've ever heard. I can't believe how quick this thing loads up Win7 and performs! I also formatted the express cache and made it into a second HD where I've installed MS Office and still have 6GB free (only installed Word, PPT and Excel). The performance is ridiculous.



Fortunately the WiFi has not been an issue for me. It has the same range as my iPad on my network which is excellent.

No over-heating problems but I haven't stressed it the way some of the others have on here.

Overall, after the SSD install, this has to be one of the best computer purchases I've made. I'm so glad I took the time to read this thread and didn't end up paying several times more for a Macbook Pro!


And a funny part, I went to Best Buy to look for a sleeve for this beast, and instead ran into Josh Freeman of the Tampa Bay Bucs and had a nice 10 minute conversation with him

This laptop has been great so far LOL

 

Well, a fresh install did nothing to help the situation. Nor did the new 120W power adapter.

I'm totally out of ideas

Is the only option left really to send it back to Samsung? I've tried every tool I can find to solve the problem, and can't find anything that even points to what the problem could be...

And I don't have much faith in Samsung being able to replicate the issue, as simply as I could say to them: "Play this game and wait for 5 minutes for it to power off...." - I doubt they would, and would end up sending me back the same laptop?


EDIT:

Collecting all the information together ---

Problem only persists in certain games -> this points towards a software issue. But, trying various drivers, and a complete reinstallation changed nothing.

Playing games only on the battery prolongs the time in-game before power cutting out. But on the most recent test, it still cut out (but after a 20 minute game instead of a few minutes). This is despite changing advanced power management settings to make the settings equal between 'on battery' and 'plugged in'. There must be more 'hardwired' power management solutions on the motherboard or somewhere that have some kind of impact how power is used on battery...

Giving the system the ability to take more than the 90W limit the previous adapter gave, by use of a 120W adapter did not work.

It can't be a heat issue, as extended stress testing of each component did not raise the temperatures to a fatal level. 95C max for GPU and ~85 for CPU.


Collecting all the data here, before I have to prise apart this machine and set it up ready for sending back to Samsung (if they will let me), can anyone please recommend anything else I could try, or does anyone notice anything this information points to? It seems it is looking likely to be a hardware issue

 

Something, somewhere, is tripping up. Somehow you have to find someone in the Samsung support who is willing to take ownership of the problem. A gaming machine which dies when playing games isn't good news.

Running on battery, in spite of you trying to have the same performance settings, is likely to reduce some speed and power consumption. Did you log the power consumption while gaming? You should be able to get HWiNFO to write sensor data to a log file which you can inspect afterwards.

John

 

Quick question: Has anyone tried out the new WHQL-nvidia-driver 310.70 ? Is it much better than the older ones like 29x.xx ?

 

I have indeed done many logs, and everything looks in normal working limits. I am going to ring Samsung and try my hardest to get them to take it in to look at.

 

Hi there,

I recently got the Samsung Series 7 Chronos (17.3"). I just wanted to know how exactly I can configure my GPU settings since this laptop has Intel HD 4000 and Nvidia GeForce 650m. I'm aware that optimus automatically configures the GPU depending on tasks executed on pc. But how do manually configure this? For example, how do I activate the Nvidia GPU or how would I know its activated? Since I want to use it for movies + gaming.

Also, talking about movies, there is a relative difference when watching the movie in its original size in comparison to fullscreen (doesn't appy for web videos). I know this sounds logical but even when I convert the file to HD and to a resolution of 1920x1080, the quality is still the same. In addition to this, my mac pc plays the exact same videos with fullscreen in stable and decent quality. Thoughts?

Thank you in advance

 

NVIDIA Control Panel: 3D Settings > Manage 3D Settings. , should come with the drivers for the GT 650m.

How are you "converting" it?
Thank you in advance[/QUOTE]

 

I bought a Samsung 840 series SSD (250 GB) drive. I cloned it including the recovery partition. Is the recovery partition accessible? It's not seen by windows explorer. If not, would it be safe to format it and merge it with the primary drive?

 

The recovery partition is of a type that won't be seen by Windows Explorer but it should be shown as a partition in Disk Management. The recovery partition should be accessible through Samsung Recovery Solution. If you are keeping the original HDD then you can put it back if you ever need to use SRS to do a full restore, in which case you can delete the recovery partition on your SSD and make use of the space that it occupied. That's what I've done on my X4C.

John

 

That's a brilliant solution John. I will do just that. Should I format it it first and then add it to the SSD? Or just by deleting it will it automatically add the free space to the primary SSD?

 

Very late reply, but answering just in case it helps someone else with this problem. I just installed Windows 7 on my NP700Z7C-S02UK but had a yellow exclamation mark next to "SM Bus Controller" in the Device Manager. This usually indicates a missing Intel Chipset driver. I could not find it on the Samsung support site.

To resolve the issue, I installed the "Easy Software Manager", which on the first run updated itself and renamed itself to "SW Update". In SW Update was the option to install the "Chipset Driver". Once this was installed, the SM Bus Controller was correctly installed.

For the US version, "Easy Software Manager" can be downloaded from here:

Support - Notebooks NP700Z7CH | Samsung Laptops

The UK version can be found here:

Support for NP700Z7CH (under "Software", not "Drivers").

 

Hello everyone, been a while since I've posted here. Yes the new Geforce 310.70 drivers work with this laptop, as do the newer 9.17.10.2875 Intel HD 4000 graphics drivers. I also updated the Intel Wi Fi driver to 15.3.1.2. I have noticed a large increase in battery performance on these drivers as well. I've seen 7 hours claimed with a pandora stream open. Gaming performance seems great on the new Geforce driver as well. This machine cruises through Crysis/Crysis 2 on high at native resolution. Unfortunately I haven't been bench marking but I would like to believe there has been a performance improvement on these new drivers.

On a separate note does anyone have a suggestion for a reasonably sized laptop cooler, or am I better off putting this thing on a box fan when gaming?

 

It won't get automatically added to the available space. You will need to delete the recovery partition and then expand the existing partition into the empty space (provided there is no other intermediate partition, in which case the easiest solution is to create a new partition with a drive letter in the empty space). Note, of course, that SRS won't work without the recovery partition.

John