Clevo \ Sager Laptops

ZDevilInside · December 8, 2018

I really wish that Linus would test one of these mind blowing systems. Clevo was the OEM for Alienware before Alienware was bought by Dell. I have owned 4 of them and am amazed at the performance they have available. Can you name another laptop manufacturer that puts a desktop CPU in a laptop? My last system had a 7700k, 64GB RAM, 1080m video card and was able to be overclocked. It was a truly amazing system. Too bad some POS thief burglarized my house recently and took it with a ton of other things.

Anyhow, if you want to check out some mind-blowing laptops, you really should check out Sager / Clevo. There are a lot of companies out there that sell laptops with a Desktop CPU in them but they are most likely Clevos that have been rebranded.

orbitalbuzzsaw · December 8, 2018

He did a few reviews of the Sagers back in the day IIRC

aisle9 · December 10, 2018

On 12/7/2018 at 8:37 PM, ZDevilInside said:

I really wish that Linus would test one of these mind blowing systems. Clevo was the OEM for Alienware before Alienware was bought by Dell. I have owned 4 of them and am amazed at the performance they have available. Can you name another laptop manufacturer that puts a desktop CPU in a laptop? My last system had a 7700k, 64GB RAM, 1080m video card and was able to be overclocked. It was a truly amazing system. Too bad some POS thief burglarized my house recently and took it with a ton of other things.

Anyhow, if you want to check out some mind-blowing laptops, you really should check out Sager / Clevo. There are a lot of companies out there that sell laptops with a Desktop CPU in them but they are most likely Clevos that have been rebranded.

They pack great specs for the price, and I'd buy a cheaper one without any hesitation, especially if it had a socketed, upgradeable desktop CPU.

There are two main drawbacks to Clevos. One is battery life. Once you start dropping a 65W+ desktop CPU into a laptop, you start cooking through battery in a hurry. I experimented with one a couple of years ago, can't remember the exact model number but it was being sold by Eluktronics and every tech channel bought eight. It came with a G4560 and a 1050 Ti, and just for funsies, I swapped the G4560 out with Banzai's i7-6700T. Even with a 35W chip, it had issues with battery life and, as you might expect, thermals.

Speaking of thermals, Clevo made a laptop called the W650SF (Sager NP4658) a handful of years ago with an i7-4810MQ built in. A friend of mine bought one. It looked beautiful. Went supernova. The CPU ran painfully hot, in a constant state of throttle. This was after repasting, cleaning the fan and vent, all that fun stuff. The thing finally decided one day during a Left 4 Dead 2 session that it was going to kill itself, and it did. We assume something in the motherboard's power delivery overheated and failed, and that took, well, everything else with it. The CPU was dead. Fast forward to 2016, and I get a message from a guy who wants to trade me an i5-2400 and a laptop for an HD 7770 I had for sale. The laptop? A Sager NP4658 that wouldn't boot, and he wasn't sure why. He was watching a movie on it, and the fans started screaming like they usually did when he was watching video or gaming. A few minutes later, the thing just shut off and wouldn't come back to life. I sold the 2400 for more than I'd paid for the 7770, then did a little rudimentary troubleshooting on the Sager before deciding that the motherboard was dead, most likely from a power delivery failure, but the i7-4810MQ, RAM and 750GB HDD were worth enough by themselves that it was a great deal for me all the same.

So, yeah, drawbacks. Clevos tend to be pretty cheaply made, and they have (or at least had) serious battery life issues and inadequate cooling.

kokakolia · December 12, 2018

@aisle9 Same can be said about MSI and many other gaming laptops. I suspect that Alienware has better cooling and build quality and they’re generally more expensive as well. But Alienware laptops have their problems too.

aisle9 · December 12, 2018

6 hours ago, kokakolia said:

@aisle9 Same can be said about MSI and many other gaming laptops. I suspect that Alienware has better cooling and build quality and they’re generally more expensive as well. But Alienware laptops have their problems too.

Alienware laptops are a hot mess. Emphasis on "hot". There's really no such thing as a great gaming laptop, because the hardware needed for high-end gaming tends to be too big and hot to adequately cool in something reasonably portable. You have to get really pricey (north of $1k) to get a really solid "gaming" laptop. Even then, I don't consider anything 15.6" or bigger to really be all that portable. I have a Dell Inspiron 15.6" with an i5 and a GTX 1050 Ti that basically sits around unused because my ThinkPad T460--Intel HD graphics and all--is so much easier to carry around.

kokakolia · December 13, 2018

14 hours ago, aisle9 said:

Alienware laptops are a hot mess. Emphasis on "hot". There's really no such thing as a great gaming laptop, because the hardware needed for high-end gaming tends to be too big and hot to adequately cool in something reasonably portable. You have to get really pricey (north of $1k) to get a really solid "gaming" laptop. Even then, I don't consider anything 15.6" or bigger to really be all that portable. I have a Dell Inspiron 15.6" with an i5 and a GTX 1050 Ti that basically sits around unused because my ThinkPad T460--Intel HD graphics and all--is so much easier to carry around.

LMAO!!! We’re basically the same! I have an MSI GE62 with an i7 and a GtX960m and it’s collecting dust as I’m using my old Dell Lattitude E7440 everywhere. It’s not that the MSI is heavy, it’s just that it’s a loud toaster haha.