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I started searching for “gaming” laptop in July. And after sale in July, where I suggested my friend to get Asus GL502VS with GTX 1060, I was almost set on GL702VS with GTX 1070. But after some interactions on forums, 1st with LTT and then on NBR, after reading through Glam’s guide and so many posts I decided to get Clevo from HIDEvolution. I was set on P670 with GTX 1070, with PA7xxx rumors at that time. By the time I was set to confirm order, they had stopped selling those and it was replaced by PA71HS-G. I wasn’t sure initially, with this being newer model and Asus also showing off GL703 with Ryzen. But later decided to go for this, as Ryzen offerings were with RX 580 at that time, so no signs of pairing Ryzen with more powerful GPU in near future. This is my 1st review, so apologies in advance. Specifications Model – PA71HS-G Screen – 17.3” 1080p IPS 75Hz Gsync (optional upgrade 4K UHD) CPU – i7 7700HQ (no option of 7820HK, I believe Sager offers that?) RAM – 2*8 GB 2400MHz DDR4 Samsung Graphics Card – Nvidia GTX 1070 8 GB Audio – Sound BlasterX Pro-Gaming 720, Built-in two 2W speakers with a 4W subwoofer SSD – Samsung 850 EVO.2 HDD – Hitachi HGST 1 TB 7200 RPM WiFi – Intel Wireless-AC 8265 Keyboard – RGB keyboard with 3-zoned backlit customization and macro capability Battery – 4 cells 66WH Ports Front – 8 LED indicators towards left. Right – 3 audio ports, 1 DSD/MMC Card reader, 2 USB 3 ports, Ethernet port, Kensington lock Left – 2 USB 3 ports, 1 Thunderbolt port, 2 mini Display ports, 1 HDMI port, power in Back – Air intake on right, exhaust accents on both sides Dimensions and Weight 16.48”(W)*11.3”(D)*0.98”(H) / 418mm(W)*287mm(D)*25mm(H) 6.61lbs / 3 KG Appearance PA71HS has slight “gaming laptop” look without being too flashy. There are 2 LED’s on side of power button which are lit when system is on, kind of gives them look of eyes. Cuts on top side as well as on side of the keyboard adds to that. But all this is too subtle. It seems to be good balance of some non-business design and not being too flashy. Top https://imgur.com/tLGaFwl Bottom https://imgur.com/dZTuDKA Size comparison with 14” laptop https://imgur.com/Mfo42Oq In 17” Sleeve https://imgur.com/YfXZh03 Screen Having used 14” laptop for work this screen size is certainly welcome. 1080P resolution seems fine at this size (especially considering price of 4K screen upgrade). I haven’t seen 120Hz or 1440P options so far. Aida64 reports panel as LG173WF4-SPF5. I don’t have good screen to do comparisons. But compared to a budget work laptop, image quality is easily noticeable. Here is comparison between those 2 laptops. Windows wallpaper https://imgur.com/ZbsIX7b Youtube homepage https://imgur.com/fV9g8WF Sound Comes with Sound Blaster Connect 2 software per-installed which has bunch of profiles even based on different games. I haven’t played around with it yet. But so far paired with HD 598SR, audio has been great in Game of Thrones Season 7, Witcher 3, Battlefield 3, Witcher 2. CPU & GPU Benchmarks 3D Mark benchmarks TIME SPY 1.0 - 3791 https://www.3dmark.com/3dm/21986920 SKY DIVER 1.0 - 25882 https://www.3dmark.com/sd/4798856 Fire Strike Ultra 1.1 - 3845 https://www.3dmark.com/fs/13517517 Fire Strike Extreme 1.1 - 7231 https://www.3dmark.com/fs/13517502 Fire Strike 1.1 - 13534 https://www.3dmark.com/fs/13517480 Cloud Gate 1.1 - 23741 https://www.3dmark.com/cg/4099533 Ice Storm Extreme 1.2 - 97192 https://www.3dmark.com/is/4223187 Ice Storm Unlimited 1.2 - 142353 https://www.3dmark.com/is/4223188 Rise of the Tomb Raider Benchmark Mountain Peak: 135, Syria: 101, Geothermal Valley: 100, Overall: 113 Max CPU temp: 70, Max GPU temp: 71 GTA V Gameplay Avg FPS: 78 Max CPU temp: 72, Max GPU temp: 68 Batman Arkham Origins Benchmarks Avg FPS: 90 DiRT 3 Complete Edition Benchmark Avg FPS: 188 GRID 2 Benchmark Avg FPS: 156 Fans & Temperature During individual furmark and Aida64 stress test no thermal throttling or overheating was observed, with gpu and cpu maxing out around 84c and 76c respectively. 7700 HQ was able to boost to 3.4 GHz on all 4 cores. Running furmark and Aida64 stress test together though leads to thermal throttling with temps reaching 95c on CPU, which leads to clock speed lowering under 3 GHz. GPU temperature didn’t exceed 85c though. Room temperature 25c Witcher 3 is probably most demanding game in my library and after half hour of gameplay in different areas of the game got below temperatures. CPU max temp 77c, GPU max temp 79c, room temp 21c Fans do get loud when system is under load, but that is expected. While gaming wearing headphones I didn’t notice them, even with open headphones. In silent environment you will hear them though. When system is not under load, I didn’t notice them either. Also I believe this can be configured as well. I haven’t tried undervolting or setting up fan profile, everything so far is result of stock settings. Surface Temperature Area near left side exhaust gets too warm, so WSAD keys and area around that also gets warm, and little uncomfortable. This happens only while gaming, when system is under load. I guess this is due to overall design. I don’t really notice it as far as my hands are only on keys. I would suggest get input from other users of this laptop if you are extremely serious about comfort. Keyboard & Touchpad Keyboard seems pretty good to me. I wrote this complete review on it and I don’t feel I am missing anything. Keyboard supports 3 zoned LED backlit with full set of RGB options with some effects. There are posts about light fading out from top to bottom of the keys, but I don’t really notice it in my keyboard even if I try to look for it. Touchpad has nice feel to it. Good enough I guess. I am mostly desktop user, and prefer mouse over touchpad even for just browsing and regular use. Fingerprint scanner is also present on touchpad itself. Conclusion I would have preferred some things to be different, Ryzen or Coffee lake cpu, 1440P screen option, lower surface temps near exhaust towards WSAD. But those CPU’s aren’t available anywhere right now, 1080P resolution is fine at this screen size, and temps around WSAD keys area is something that I can get used to. If I have to choose again right now, I would end buying this same laptop with same specs. Let me know if you have any questions, I will try to answer if possible.
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Hey everybody - thought some of you might be interested in a review I slapped together. I've recently moved from a desktop workstation to a completely mobile one, and after MUCH diligent (aka agonizing) research, I finally settled on this model for my nomadic designer lifestyle for the next few years. Happy to try and answer questions or accommodate other requests as time permits. Cheers~! Specs are as follows: EVOC High Performance Systems PA71ES-G 17.3" (42cm x 29.5cm x 2cm) FHD 144Hz (AUO B173HAN03.1 w/ color calibration) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070 w/ 8GB GDDR5 + Intel UHD 630 (user switchable MSHybrid mode via CCC 2.0) Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut on CPU + GPU, and Stock thermal pads 16GB Crucial DDR4-2400 (CT16G4SFD824A.M16F) Single Channel SDRAM (OEM) Seagate ST1000LM035-1RK172 (Aftermarket) WD Blue 3D NAND SATA SSD M.2 2280 (500GB) Intel® Wireless-AC 9260 802.11 ac/a/b/g/n 2x2 NGFF w/ Bluetooth 5 RGB Per Key illuminated full size keyboard with numeric pad Windows 10 Pro 66600 mWh Battery 230w Power adapter (16.5cm x 8cm x 3cm) VIDEO REVIEW [MEDIA=youtube]cQ65mqqUTVU[/MEDIA] WRITTEN REVIEW Great performance in an affordable package, with a few caveats. Benchmarks are at the end of the bottom. SCREEN The 144hz G-Sync ready IPS screen may not offer the best NTSC coverage at 72%, but it looks pretty flaunting what it’s got. Having owned this machine for 2 weeks now, I’m happy to say that I’ve been very content with everything I’ve experienced on the display thus far. Design work, gaming, and general daily use all look fine straight out of the box. A bit surprisingly, there was no discernable difference between the professional color calibration profile and the default calibration after OS reinstall. Being an IPS though, you may want to minimize backlight bleed via your reseller if they offer it, as I bypassed that option and definitely have noticeable bleed in the top left corner which may annoy me into a screen upgrade in the future. It’s also worth mentioning that the inner panel cover is plastic, and the back is aluminum. The hinges feel smooth and sturdy and you CAN open this laptop with one finger, if that’s your thing. WEBCAM It’s a 2MP 1080p 30fps webcam, and it does the job fine. Most other options on the market have 720p, so I’m glad Clevo remembered it was 2018 and went full HD. SPEAKERS Stock speakers are invariably ‘meh’ unless you tweak them thru driver or software mods. I opted for the easier of these routes, and after some TLC via EqualizerAPO, they got noticeably louder, clearer, and more well-rounded in their frequency response. No matter what though, you will not get bass out of these things, so if you really want an upgraded audio experience, the addition of any kind of external speaker will be a (major) improvement. Don’t get me wrong, EQ APO + Viper4Windows working in conjunction make a great team, and squeeze a lot more performance out of them, but they’re still just tiny drivers at the end of the day, so just keep expectations low and you’ll be alright. My config files for both programs are available at the bottom. KEYBOARD / TOUCHPAD / LEDS The full RGB per-key backlighting looks nice, but as mentioned in the one line review, it is somewhat crippled by the (laughable) Clevo Control Center module used to control it. There’s no way to save configs, and the sleep timer has severe amnesia. The typing experience is OK: A little more stiffness/clickiness in keypress would be nice, but the travel feels good and typing pretty natural after an hour. What I really like about the per-key lighting is you can light the lettered-keys and arrows differently than the rest, so a quick glance down will allow you to (re)orient yourself if your fingers start to wander due to the full keyboard layout being offset from center. Also nice: ZERO flex thanks the structural integrity of the Al-alloy body. I typically use an external mouse, but the touchpad does just fine in a pinch, with gesture recognition and pleasantly clicky buttons below. There’s also a group of 8 status-indicator LEDs on the front that add to the angular spaceship look + feel of this model, though no more than 4-5 of them are typically lit up during normal usage. HEAT / FANS The whole aluminum body stays cool enough while doing everything except gaming, in which case it heats up pretty quickly; especially the top-left corner. I never found it uncomfortable, but it was certainly noticeable, and that may detract from your gaming experience.The aluminum body + fans dissipate heat well enough, so the CPU/GPU temps are back down to idle range within a minute after ending your session, but the top left area of the faceplate will stay warm for much longer. On that note, the aluminum gets warm on the left side while using the keyboard after an hour or so of work too, so I’ll probably be using my external keyboard most of the time to avoid sweaty palms. With fans on auto, they’re generally pretty quiet, but will ramp up to 80% as soon as you get into your game. For whatever reason, Clevo doesn’t allow for the customizable fan profiles to be set at 100%, so it’s 80% on auto or manually selecting 100%, which is a dumb caveat. I game-tested BF1 with all settings on high, and although my GPU never got above 72C, the CPU was at 85C after 30mins, at which time I threw the fans on maximum*, and the CPU + GPU dropped a few degrees and hovered around 80C / 65C, respectively for the rest of my session. All that said though, I did go with the TG Conductonaut re-paste from HID, so I imagine temps might be too high without, since they are packing all this power in such a thin chassis. I should also mention I have my laptop on a stand (https://amzn.to/2xKFU76) for max air flow, so your experience may vary. If anybody else is looking into stands, keep in mind the screen only opens to about 45 degrees, so you’re pretty limited in how much can angle it. *I’ve heard lots of talk of unbearably loud/high-pitched Clevo fans, and maybe I’m blissfully ignorant due to not having anything to compare to, but even at maximum, the fans didn’t get in the way of my BF1 experience. If it does for you, some headphones or an external speaker will cover that distraction up with ease. PORTS / LEDS The PA71’s have a great selection of ports finding another machine at this price point with TB3 is nigh impossible without compromising something else. Nothing is future-proof, but at least you have the option for an external GPU or 4K monitor with this one in addition to 2 mini-display ports. I’ve had my FHD external graphics monitor taking up the HDMI + 1 of the USBs, and have yet to feel wanting for more. With my calibrated speaker software in place of the included SoundBlaster X suite, the headphones + bluetooth speakers sound great, and there’s even another 2-1 audio jack besides the dedicated headphone + microphone jacks, so it should have you covered on all fronts. There’s an SD card slot as well, but I didn’t have anything on hand to test with, apologies photog friends. BATTERY I think the battery on this beast is respectable enough considering it’s mid-range 66wH size. I put it to the test doing some light work in Photoshop, had a dozen tabs open in Opera browser, a music mix playing on Youtube in the background at 35% volume, display at 75% brightness (until battery hit 50%, then brightness down to 40%), dual displays running, keyboard lit up on lowest brightness setting, battery saver clicked on 25%, and I ended up squeezing out a little over 2 hours. If you were just browsing or movie watching, I’d figure you could get at least another half hour on that or more. Recharge time is about 1hr 30mins from 1%. SERVICEABILITY / GENERAL PERFORMANCE One of the main reasons I ended up going with this model besides the obviously attractive hardware, was the ease of access to the guts. I had all the screws out in a few minutes (HID even removed the screw under the keyboard for me , and the base plate popped off with zero hassle. A lot of the other big name-brand models I had this stacked up against didn’t seem as serviceable, so for those of you who like to switch out components, do DIY repairs, or just keep it clean, that’s all easily accomplished with the PA71 series. Only thing I couldn’t see was the speakers, as those are front firing on the top, which I actually think is a good design decision...if only they’d use slightly better materials or drivers in the first place. The 6-core Coffeelake chomps through most tasks with aplomb. It handles my daily design routine (3 Adobe apps, a dozen browser tabs, and a handful of windows apps) like a champ. While the 8750U is not overclockable, you can undervolt it, which I may try down the line, and will update this review if I do. Judging from my gaming experience thus far, the laptop 1070 (NOT a Max-Q, mind you) in this machine handles heavy lifting dutifully, and will hopefully be sufficient for light forays into VR. If not, having that TB3 as a fallback option is real nice, I gotta say. My closing thoughts are that this thing is a great buy for the money, IF you get it repasted, can live with the sloppy Control Center AND the VERY VISIBLE FINGERPRINTS. It’s an absolute magnet, so keep your spray + cloth nearby. Benches are below - let me know in the comments if there’s something else you want me to run; if it’s free and I have the time, I’ll update as soon as I can. Thanks for reading~! BENCHMARKS https://imgur.com/a/5vgDfyU EQUALIZER APO CONFIG https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ65mqqUTVU VIPER4WINDOWS CONFIG https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQ65mqqUTVU