*** Official Clevo P64xHK/Sager NP8x40 Owners' Lounge ***

I've been here two and a half years, and I finally get to start an owners' lounge for the product range of my sort.

Thanks to @Stooj for discovering that Metabox, the Australian Clevo reseller, already has listed this machine as the 'Metabox Prime P641HK'. All in all it looks like an entirely internal refresh compared to the P640RE/RF. Specs are as listed below:

I probably will not purchase this machine as I wish to move away from gaming onto more 'productive' stuff like programming and 3D designing, but it's still interesting to follow the market.

Things to note: this still doesn't have G-Sync, even though we now have a discrete GPU mode like the 15/17" models. It has a USB 3.1 Type-C port, but it isn't mentioned that it supports Thunderbolt 3. Power supply is 180 W, even though the GTX 1050 Ti supposedly draws the same power as the GTX 960M. The battery is still extremely anaemic, given that the GS43VR has a 99 Whr? battery.

All in all, it's an incremental spec-change; anyone with a current P64xRE/RF would do well to give this a pass as they'd be paying lots for a brand new machine that isn't much more powerful.

It is, however, good for someone that may come from stuff like the W110ER, or the W230ST even. It's also a good alternative to the AW13 r3 (though the graphics and battery life would definitely take a hit).

 

I think the one thing that stands out as a "reason to buy" is the P640 series have always been quite cheap (In Australia at least). They're far and away the cheapest P-series machines even going so far as to begin undercutting the N/W series.

I highly suspect the the largest reasons to buy the P640 are:
A) You want something <15" that is 2KG or lighter.
B) Your budget is only $1700 AUD (or regional equivalent, depends on relative pricing of course)

A friend of mine is looking at one for this very reason (replacing an old W350ET in fact). For that money, there's no competition.

If price isn't a factor, the new XPS15 (tiny bezels actually put it in the 14" competition), Aero14 or Aorus X3v7 are all better on paper (hell, even the Blade14 is...eek). The Aero14 and X3v7 have 94wh variants, weight less, are thinner and have the faster GTX1060. But they also cost damn near twice as much (here).

The GS43 only has a 61Wh battery in it. Clevo has always skimped on battery though. Usually to accommodate 2.5" drives which are all but abandoned by other manufacturers of "light" gaming laptops.

AFAIK the reason the P640 has only shipped with a 45Wh battery and not something 60+ is because they've retained that 2.5" HDD slot.
All of the above alternative systems are strictly 1 or 2 M.2 SSDs only and the whole palm rest is then free to be occupied with a battery.

I highly suspect this may be the last iteration of the P640 chassis as they may go to pure M.2 + large battery like the competition which would likely necessitate a new design.

 

Really interested in seeing how the 1050ti performs.. Should be around 970M at least I guess..

Sent from my LG-H850 using Tapatalk

 

That's honestly not an upgrade at all, because the P640RE already had a 970M in it.

 

Except clocks and temperatures of course..

 

Indeed. The impression I got with the original P640RE was that it was really stretching the limit on thermals in that chassis and throttled when you weren't in a cool environment.

The other thing is the 1050ti has 4GB VRAM rather than 3GB (970M) or 2GB (965M). There's a surprising amount of games which hover around the 3.5GB mark by using 2K/4K texture assets which will benefit hugely.

 

I don't know about that—according to HTWingNut's review, temperatures appeared to be plenty decent. Admittedly the 1050 Ti would supposedly give even better temps, but I don't buy it. The HK still comes with a 180 W power adapter for a reason, not a 120 W one like the W230 series if the GPU were truly less power-hungry.

This, however, is very true. 2 GB of VRAM just isn't enough in 2017; plenty of games begin to lag severely when assets begin to swap between system RAM and VRAM. Nevertheless, there have been GTX 960Ms that have released with 4 GB, such as in the Inspiron notebooks.

 

As far as straight power, the 1050Ti Notebook is marked as 70W on notebookcheck vs 81W for the 970M (according to NBC).

Even though it's a sample size of 1, NBC has a review of the GE72 with a 1050Ti.
http://www.notebookcheck.net/MSI-GE72-7RE-Apache-Pro-Notebook-Review.189684.0.html

Fortunately, they have a review of the same chassis with 6700HQ and 970M:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/MSI-GE72-6QF-Apache-Pro-Notebook-Review.153798.0.html

Of course, it's possible/probably some other stuff could've changed to affect temps, but (comparing the screenshot with Prim95 + Furmark stress-tests) the GPU max temp (on HWMonitor) is 9C lower on the 1050Ti. The 970M is thermal throttling as well (GPU load is down, frame-rate is much lower).

Concerning the power brick, even the P640RF shipped with the 180W PSU. The GM206 965M it shipped with used even less power than the 1050Ti. I would say this is more likely because they couldn't be bothered shipping a different charger around 150W mark. 120W would've been cutting it close and could break cross-model compatibility. MSI's 1050/Ti models use a 150W brick.

 

Yeap in the previous generation it didn't made a lot of sense that the P640RF had such AC adapter. It never went near that. I usually have my eye on the power measure at the plug, even the 970M was staying bellow 120W, i guess for the 970M i could see it as a "play it safe" move, but i think that a 965M or the new 1050Ti would be just fine with a 120W AC.

I really like the P640 models, specially the cleaner version "P641" without the chrome on the back.

 

It was likely influenced by the forum who was witch hunting any machine with a lower rated adaptor at the time.