**Official Clevo W150ERQ / Sager NP6165 Owner's Lounge**

[plancy]

It's part of the design and it's up to Clevo to fix it, that's what it means... but according to discussions in the the W110ER thread, Clevo is getting enough criticism about it, so it might change.

[joboman]

I got this laptop last week and I guess I'll post some info about it since I haven't been able to find much.. I bought it from reflexnotebook since I'm located in Canada.

I'm not a hardcore gamer, but I've been able to play all my games on max settings.. league of legends, dota 2, portal 2. portal 2 is consistently in the 60-100 fps range, although in some levels it goes down to 30-40. Temps are never over 68C but usually lower.

I've also been able to overclock the 650m using MSI afterburner.. I've been able to max out the GPU clock to 880 MHz and the memory clock to 1500 MHz with no problems at all. (stock clocks are 745 MHz and 1000 MHz) I stress-tested with furmark and the temps never went over 72C. Someone please let me know if I am doing this wrong or if it will damage my GPU.. since I am not an expert on OCing, but so far no problems.
EDIT: The above is incorrect, I was under the impression that the gpu was overclocked but in reality, something is preventing it from going over stock levels. I have only been able to overclock the memory, right now it is at 1200 MHz with minimal performance gain.

I didn't know this until I opened it up, but there IS a secondary HD port (2.5 in sata) located near the fan intake. You can see it in the picture of the open laptop that someone posted. I bought an optical bay HD caddy before I knew this.. so if I remove the DVD drive, I have the option of having 3 HDs.

I have also had a few problems with optimus and games not recognizing it (especially on steam). This was easily fixed by going to nvidia control panel > manage 3D settings > global settings > preferred graphics processor > choose the high-performance nvidia processor. or if you want, you can go to nvidia control panel > manage 3D settings > program settings to manually change it for whatever game or program it won't recognize.

I think someone also asked for the windows experience index.. I personally got the i7-3610 ivy bridge for $70. (although they upgraded it from the sandy bridge for free, since I ordered it before ivy bridge was released, but they shipped it after.) This was my only upgrade.

-processor 7.4
-memory (RAM) 7.8
-graphics 6.7
-gaming graphics 6.7
-primary hard disk 5.9 (limiting score)

One thing I ALSO just realized is that although the laptop was supposed to come with a 500 GB 7200 rpm HD, I actually got a 500 GB 5400 rpm HD.. this definitely affects my primary hard disk score and is currently the bottleneck of my laptop. I emailed reflexnotebook and they are handling the situation right now.. they have been great and very professional thus far. I doubt this was a mistake on their part since the laptop was shipped directly from Sager in the US. Make sure you check to see if you got what you paid for!

Anyways, that's a small summary of my experiences with this laptop so far.. hopefully this will encourage other people to post their own experiences since it's been a pain finding information about the np6165. This laptop is great, definitely the best computer I've ever had and the best performance for the price range.. I paid a bit more than $1100 but there's always a premium to get anything in Canada.

[R3d]

Holy crap, 1500mhz memory? Is that really stable? Ihat's an awesome OC.

[joboman]

Holy crap, 1500mhz memory? Is that really stable? Ihat's an awesome OC.

yeah I was worried about this too.. I'm going to run furmark RIGHT now, just in case lol

[plancy]

That's insane.... lol but seeing as the 660m is technically the same core and the memory runs at at 2000mhz but of course not of the same process bin...

[joboman]

I'm having a problem with the gpu automatically throttling when i run furmark so im going to try unigine heaven.. will post results since my OC is probably inaccurate but i was too tired to notice last night when i was testing.

EDIT: Despite GPU-Z saying that my GPU clocks are above stock levels, when I stress-test and run MSI afterburner, the gpu never goes above 835 MHz (stock).. I can overclock the memory, but the gpu won't budge.. any help?

[plancy]

Can anyone who has received their's try this if you're not scared:

You guys know you can overclock the lcd

[autobulb]

What does this even mean? With the translation I can't tell if this is a mistake, a feature, a thing that's going to be fixed or what.

If they put that limit there intentionally my guess is that they did so because it is likely that the user wants the GPU to run at max speed at the expense of limiting the CPU's turbo boost frequency. Since both chips share the same heatsink and cooling system, they have to be balanced in order to main proper temperatures so that the chips don't throttle themselves.

For example, perhaps they did testing and saw that when the CPU was at max turbo boost frequency, the temperatures got so hot that the GPU was throttling itself, giving lower graphical performance. Since gaming relies mostly on the GPU, it seems wise that you'd want it to always be running at it's maximum clock speed, even if you're limiting the CPU a bit.

[Rauch]

If they put that limit there intentionally my guess is that they did so because it is likely that the user wants the GPU to run at max speed at the expense of limiting the CPU's turbo boost frequency. Since both chips share the same heatsink and cooling system, they have to be balanced in order to main proper temperatures so that the chips don't throttle themselves.

For example, perhaps they did testing and saw that when the CPU was at max turbo boost frequency, the temperatures got so hot that the GPU was throttling itself, giving lower graphical performance. Since gaming relies mostly on the GPU, it seems wise that you'd want it to always be running at it's maximum clock speed, even if you're limiting the CPU a bit.

That's plausible.

However, they even have a throttle on the Turbo Boost. 3.1GHz: If that's the case, I'd want some sort of partial refund for not receiving my extra 200MHz.

[autobulb]

That's plausible.

However, they even have a throttle on the Turbo Boost. 3.1GHz: If that's the case, I'd want some sort of partial refund for not receiving my extra 200MHz.

Unfortunately the max Turbo Boost speed is not a guarantee, especially on laptops. That is the max frequency it can run provided that there is enough thermal headroom. In laptops this is likely very difficult to do so it's normal to see a few hundred megahertz missing from the max Turbo Boost clockspeed. My previous laptop with a Sandy Bridge CPU couldn't hit the max Turbo Boost frequency either, it was usually 100-200mhz under.

EDIT: I read the (translated) article that someone had previously mentioned and the temperatures they measure seems to support my theory. At 2.1GHZ (no Turbo Boost) and full CPU/GPU load the temperatures are very, very high in the mid 90's C for CPU and almost 90 C for the GPU. Even if Turbo Boost wasn't disabled when the GPU is on, I doubt it could increase it's clockspeed at all due to the high temperatures. Unfortunately it just seems like Clevo's cooling system is (yet again) rather inadequate for the components used.