We've had "true desktop replacements" for quite some time now. The problem is that just as this one they can only replace "some" desktops. It's never the top ones, and never at an identical price level.
So historically DTR can replace at best an upper-mid range desktop for substantially higher price, or replace a desktop at the same price but then offer substantially lower performance. On top of this there are the additional annoyances that may or may not be worth it in the name of mobility (noise, heat, weight, small screen, less versatility and expandability, uncomfortable keyboards due to the thickness of the body, etc.).
And as an additional note about upgradeability: a socketed CPU and MXM GPU give you some freedom but you'd still be limited by availability (my DTR has an MXM Quadro card but no real upgrade path because even if I get my hands on a better card it won't be supported) and TDP. You can probably go for an eGPU but at this point you're already stretching that "mobility" concept into something unrecognizable.
For a desktop availability of upgrade parts is basically a non-issue, and TDP can be relatively easily worked around.
Interesting notebook, but that power supply may raise eyebrows at an airport. Since the cooling is adequate but loud, it may be better off with a 35-65W TDP or less CPU and one of those gimpy lower TDP graphics cards (Max-Q?). Keep the existing cooling and the fans would stay quiet while the hardware stays cooler. The chunky power supply could be replaced with someone less alarming looking as well. Oh and someone may want to poke Clevo about their network adapter branding if they're looking for premium rather than glam-chic. Who designed that logo too? That's just asking to look like some *chan-manifesto-posting nutter.
I liked the write up about the laptop so much, that I went to Eurocom's website to configure one. I was blown away by how much money they are charging for a M.2 drive. The 1TB 860 EVO is $583 when newegg sells it for $153. That is just one example, all of the prices seem out of whack. I expect a slight price premium, but that seems extreme.
Configure the lowest spec chassis that can support your needs then buy your own RAM, storage, even CPU (although for this last one the cooling might have to be upgraded so a no-go).
While it might be equipped with a desktop 9900K, it will never run the same speed and temperature as desktop counter parts. 9900K is notorious to overheat and I have seen it easily hit high 90C during Realbench with many motherboards WITHOUT overclocking using out of the box default settings (AIO liquid cooling), good luck getting it to run inside a tiny laptop. I have to manually lower voltage on most motherboards just to keep 9900K under 80C full load since most motherboards set like a ridiculous 1.2-1.3V voltage by default.
If you read the article you would see they did exactly that. Loaded down the proc and were hitting 87c under load. Maintaining 4100-4200Mhz is very commendable in a laptop form factor. There could be more performance to be had by undervolting the Proc. As you say you do it on a desktop, it goes double for a laptop and can do wonders for throttling if there is any present. 80-90c is par for the course on Laptops that are desktop replacements.
"Maintaining 4100-4200Mhz is very commendable in a laptop form factor." 9900K on desktop Z390 motherboards is able to maintain 4.7GHz all core turbo. Now go back to read what I said in the very first sentence: "While it might be equipped with a desktop 9900K, it will never run the same speed and temperature as desktop counter parts." 4.1GHz < 4.7GHz, point proven.
Thanks Brett! I have a soft spot for these DTRs (I like the even older name for them: luggables). I wonder if Clevo&Co. could come up with a true hybrid design: portable notebook format with socketed CPU, and the main second GPU in a docking station with integrated large PSU, connected via a PCIE3-16 (or PCIE4) snap-in connector, all in a case with a handle. That would give the graphics more thermal headroom, and avoid the potential bottleneck of running the dGPU over TB3. And, with an optional smaller, maybe GTX dGPU card on board, the laptop itself would still be quite capable.
I think TB3 is going to be your best bet. I dont think external PCIe is going to be a thing due to length limitations and a needed external connector of some kind. The ribbon connectors aren't exactly made for unplugging and plugging in 100's of times. They have people who have done it, but the implementation is pretty wonky and you gotta have access to a Wifi card slot to do it. If I remember right they are also limited to PCIex1 so the difference between that and thunderbolt, thunderbolt can actually be faster. Just better off getting a laptop with a true thunderbolt 3.0 slot that can push 40gbps = PCIex4. Maybe Thunderbolt 4 will offer a true pound for pound replacement and get the throughput closer to 100% instead of the 70-80% now on external GPUs.
It's not cheap. The particular panel has just been plagued with issues since it was first put in these 17" models in 2015/2016. The original B173QTN01.0 had horrible banding on alternating rows of pixels and the individual panels are quite variable. This would be a 1.2 or 1.4 revision I'm guessing. A colour calibration is necessary for this panel in particular. But its the only >1080p 120Hz out there.
I have a P870DM3 with the same 17" 4K IPS panel that's an option for this P775, being 400nit 95% gamut and good colour accuracy it's the content creation and general beautifulness option, but it's transition of >20ms is not great for fast games.
Since the article title talks about 'true desktop replacement', could we get price and performance comparison to desktop with "same" parts? ie. DDR4-3000 + 9900K + RTX 2080...
Our GPU bench is currently an i9-9900K as well. As a comparison I got 116 FPS on Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and Ryan got 114.6 with the desktop version, so the performance seems similar. Unfortunately we don't have a lot of overlap on our tests though because Ryan is able to keep GPUs and benchmark them on new suites whereas laptops have to go back to the manufacturers so I don't rotate the tests as heavily since every time I add a new test it starts out with zero results to compare against.
Is there a particular title you'd like to see compared against other than Shadow of the Tomb Raider?
nice, thanks... Compile Chromium (time) test would be nice... or in general anything that puts the machine under high sustained stress for longer period (45mins+)...
I have one of these laptops - a Sager branded one.
It really is quite heavy, and the 330W power brick is equally beefy - I selected the RTX 2070 to avoid needing double power bricks. I do use this on my lap, but the power plug at the back falls out a lot in this configuration. It's not a very secure connection. Since it's at the back, the only way to notice is that suddenly the CPU is running at 1.3Ghz instead of 4+
I almost always run this in Quiet mode, as the fans are almost silent in this mode. When I'm stressing the machine, the CPU clocks down to about 3.4-3.6 Ghz, which is still good enough for the work I do on it. If I run in performance mode, the things I run go a little faster, but the fan noise is not worth the extra speed.
There really isn't enough cooling for Nvme drives. Even small amounts of writing to them immediately pushes the temps to 90+, and there's no room for extra heatsinks to help with this.
I have the 4K screen, which seems pretty good, but if you dual boot into a Linux OS, the bootloader screen is hilariously small, and some versions of Linux have poor scaling options
I mostly use this on my desk, and it (or Windows 10) really doesn't like my CalDigital TB3 dock. Luckily, everything plugs into the chassis (unlike recent Apple hardware)
I don't play games on this, so barely use the GPU (RTX 2070). I'd love to have options to push more power and cooling to the CPU whilst scaling them back to the GPU without having to poke at the values manually.
I think you'd be much better off with a (I hate to say it) nVidia creator laptop, or a 9880H/9980HK laptop with a 120/144hz Gsync IPS screen. We need a comparison with Clevo of the MSI Stealth and Raider and Titan.
I have sager's version of the x9e2 with a 7700k and 1080sli and the same 1440p panel, and the panel is both one of the best and worst parts in the thing. One thing not mentioned in this article is the gtg does not really support the refresh rate, but by reporting a 120hz refresh it at least still cuts down on input lag. I really have no complaints though. When I got it I had a mobile lifestyle and had the money for it, my only two real gripes are ZEN and RTx. Not 3 months after I got the thing AMD goes and makes 8c16t a thing and even if the architecture is pretry much the same from the 6700k to the 9900k the productivity of the same class chip is now double. And with RTX going to NVLink for an sli bridge Nvidia has axed mobile sli due to the complexity involved in producing that type of connector. So this X7c is really the way to go anymore. Damn you progress!
No Overclocking detail... bahhhh! Pushing these DTRs to the max that their cooling allows for is what at least half of their buyers do... Next time, yes please! (Especially in the wake of similarly spec'd DTR machines burning out under mild OC's, which SHOULD NOT HAPPEN, it would be nice to know if this SKY is also part of the bad choices group.)
I recently got this laptop as a replacement for a 10 1/2-year-old laptop. I wanted a full-sized keyboard, which means 17” or larger. Potable means 17” really it the limit. And 17” is perfect for 2k screens. The Sky X7 was one of the few which offered that and it had all my desired other connectivity (multiple NVME, multiple DP out, a few fast USB ports, thunderbolt, …
What really was surprising is how few other there are. Many with low res displays (1920x1080) which makes sense for gaming. Some with 4K displays future proof but quite small on a 17” display.
That made the X7C almost the only sensible choice.
And from an engineering view the thicker than average body was also very attractive. As were the looks. Form over function simply looks good, while designed stuff tend to look odd and twisted to me. The only thing it lacks for me is more battery capacity. Lugging the large charger around is not fun and two battery slots (or 2x 80) for airplane use would have been my choice if it was offered.
The elephant in the room: Alienware Area 51-M. It is more expensive but if you wait for the Dell semi-annual sale, the price is much closer. The Dell has a better keyboard layout, is quieter and looks better.
If my coworker starts a 60dB laptop I am gonna throw it out in a window. And little kids don’t have four grand to spend on a cool gaming machine. Who is it made for?
It seem like a rather sensible build - for what it is. At the same time and for the money asked someone could build both a high-powered desktop and buy a highly portable laptop. But I guess that's not the target demographics for these, rather the gamer moving from a few times a month from place to place, say a young kid with divorced parents, someone staying at a boarding school etc.
Anyway, these tend to age really badly in regard to residual value, and I guess it says a lot of the way we as consumers value these once their are no longer top of the line.
How long will Clevo persist with the twin 2.5" storage slots? All that space inside could be used for more cooling, a dozen of m.2 2230 SSD cards, or a warm slice of pizza :P
"As before, we're looking for results under the yellow line of 3.0 error level, and almost none of the color achieve that." Missing "s": "As before, we're looking for results under the yellow line of 3.0 error level, and almost none of the colors achieve that."
"...but TN display tend to not offer the greatest results,..." Missing "s": "...but TN displays tend to not offer the greatest results,..."
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close - Monday, August 5, 2019 - link
We've had "true desktop replacements" for quite some time now. The problem is that just as this one they can only replace "some" desktops. It's never the top ones, and never at an identical price level.So historically DTR can replace at best an upper-mid range desktop for substantially higher price, or replace a desktop at the same price but then offer substantially lower performance. On top of this there are the additional annoyances that may or may not be worth it in the name of mobility (noise, heat, weight, small screen, less versatility and expandability, uncomfortable keyboards due to the thickness of the body, etc.).
close - Monday, August 5, 2019 - link
And as an additional note about upgradeability: a socketed CPU and MXM GPU give you some freedom but you'd still be limited by availability (my DTR has an MXM Quadro card but no real upgrade path because even if I get my hands on a better card it won't be supported) and TDP. You can probably go for an eGPU but at this point you're already stretching that "mobility" concept into something unrecognizable.For a desktop availability of upgrade parts is basically a non-issue, and TDP can be relatively easily worked around.
ballsystemlord - Tuesday, August 6, 2019 - link
I'll never be able to replace my desktop with a laptop because they all* have inadequate cooling.* At least all the DTRs that I've seen.
Kishoreshack - Monday, August 5, 2019 - link
Wanted to see inside of the laptopsSome pictures of the cooling fans would have been appreciated
close - Monday, August 5, 2019 - link
Official images.https://eurocom.com/ec/images(430)SkyX7C
https://eurocom.com/ec/data/images/m430_15.jpg
Brett Howse - Monday, August 5, 2019 - link
Great suggestion I added an image in on the thermals section.Kishoreshack - Monday, August 5, 2019 - link
Should have opened the laptopShowed us the heat sink
It's high time the best in depth review site needs to up it's game
Brett Howse - Monday, August 5, 2019 - link
I added an image on the thermals section to show the inside.PeachNCream - Monday, August 5, 2019 - link
Interesting notebook, but that power supply may raise eyebrows at an airport. Since the cooling is adequate but loud, it may be better off with a 35-65W TDP or less CPU and one of those gimpy lower TDP graphics cards (Max-Q?). Keep the existing cooling and the fans would stay quiet while the hardware stays cooler. The chunky power supply could be replaced with someone less alarming looking as well. Oh and someone may want to poke Clevo about their network adapter branding if they're looking for premium rather than glam-chic. Who designed that logo too? That's just asking to look like some *chan-manifesto-posting nutter.PeachNCream - Monday, August 5, 2019 - link
*something less alarming - ugh I'll be happy when the 1990s are over and we get an edit feature for the new century.ballsystemlord - Tuesday, August 6, 2019 - link
Does not matter because, like Trump, no body will use the edit feature.ballsystemlord - Tuesday, August 6, 2019 - link
For the easily confused, that's a joke.AMD Die Hard - Monday, August 5, 2019 - link
I liked the write up about the laptop so much, that I went to Eurocom's website to configure one. I was blown away by how much money they are charging for a M.2 drive. The 1TB 860 EVO is $583 when newegg sells it for $153. That is just one example, all of the prices seem out of whack. I expect a slight price premium, but that seems extreme.close - Tuesday, August 6, 2019 - link
Configure the lowest spec chassis that can support your needs then buy your own RAM, storage, even CPU (although for this last one the cooling might have to be upgraded so a no-go).Psyrecx - Monday, August 5, 2019 - link
It's cute when noobies to technology think that Clevo and Eurocom just started doing this.Yeah, they didn't have Dual CPU, SLI laptops over a decade ago.
MaikelSZ - Monday, August 5, 2019 - link
check herehttps://www.notebookcheck.net/Eurocom-Sky-X7C-i9-9...
DanNeely - Monday, August 5, 2019 - link
It wasn't immediately obvious in the article, which 1080p option did Notebook Check get?MaikelSZ - Monday, August 5, 2019 - link
the IPSMaikelSZ - Monday, August 5, 2019 - link
Display: 17.3 inch 16:9, 1920 x 1080 pixel 127 PPI, AU Optronics B173HAN03.1, IPS, AUO319D, glossy: noMaikelSZ - Monday, August 5, 2019 - link
around 2009 - 2011 I had an Eurocom Phantom D900C, with a 4 core Xeon, 2 x 9800GTX M (SLI), 4GB and 3 x 320 GB HDD . Boy, o´ Boy!!DanNeely - Monday, August 5, 2019 - link
It's good to see that 1440p laptop screens aren't dead yet (4k is overkill for high DPI uses) even if this model gives a rather poor showing.anactoraaron - Monday, August 5, 2019 - link
$4,000 machine with literally the cheapest display they could find. Just embarrassing.airdrifting - Monday, August 5, 2019 - link
While it might be equipped with a desktop 9900K, it will never run the same speed and temperature as desktop counter parts. 9900K is notorious to overheat and I have seen it easily hit high 90C during Realbench with many motherboards WITHOUT overclocking using out of the box default settings (AIO liquid cooling), good luck getting it to run inside a tiny laptop. I have to manually lower voltage on most motherboards just to keep 9900K under 80C full load since most motherboards set like a ridiculous 1.2-1.3V voltage by default.MrRuckus - Monday, August 5, 2019 - link
If you read the article you would see they did exactly that. Loaded down the proc and were hitting 87c under load. Maintaining 4100-4200Mhz is very commendable in a laptop form factor. There could be more performance to be had by undervolting the Proc. As you say you do it on a desktop, it goes double for a laptop and can do wonders for throttling if there is any present. 80-90c is par for the course on Laptops that are desktop replacements.airdrifting - Tuesday, August 6, 2019 - link
"Maintaining 4100-4200Mhz is very commendable in a laptop form factor." 9900K on desktop Z390 motherboards is able to maintain 4.7GHz all core turbo. Now go back to read what I said in the very first sentence: "While it might be equipped with a desktop 9900K, it will never run the same speed and temperature as desktop counter parts." 4.1GHz < 4.7GHz, point proven.eastcoast_pete - Monday, August 5, 2019 - link
Thanks Brett! I have a soft spot for these DTRs (I like the even older name for them: luggables). I wonder if Clevo&Co. could come up with a true hybrid design: portable notebook format with socketed CPU, and the main second GPU in a docking station with integrated large PSU, connected via a PCIE3-16 (or PCIE4) snap-in connector, all in a case with a handle. That would give the graphics more thermal headroom, and avoid the potential bottleneck of running the dGPU over TB3. And, with an optional smaller, maybe GTX dGPU card on board, the laptop itself would still be quite capable.MrRuckus - Monday, August 5, 2019 - link
I think TB3 is going to be your best bet. I dont think external PCIe is going to be a thing due to length limitations and a needed external connector of some kind. The ribbon connectors aren't exactly made for unplugging and plugging in 100's of times. They have people who have done it, but the implementation is pretty wonky and you gotta have access to a Wifi card slot to do it. If I remember right they are also limited to PCIex1 so the difference between that and thunderbolt, thunderbolt can actually be faster. Just better off getting a laptop with a true thunderbolt 3.0 slot that can push 40gbps = PCIex4. Maybe Thunderbolt 4 will offer a true pound for pound replacement and get the throughput closer to 100% instead of the 70-80% now on external GPUs.imaheadcase - Monday, August 5, 2019 - link
Um no laptop is a gaming desktop replacement.You literally showed it wasn't by the specs. THe price is insanely expensive, and the screen is laughable.
bennyg - Tuesday, August 6, 2019 - link
It's not cheap. The particular panel has just been plagued with issues since it was first put in these 17" models in 2015/2016. The original B173QTN01.0 had horrible banding on alternating rows of pixels and the individual panels are quite variable. This would be a 1.2 or 1.4 revision I'm guessing. A colour calibration is necessary for this panel in particular. But its the only >1080p 120Hz out there.I have a P870DM3 with the same 17" 4K IPS panel that's an option for this P775, being 400nit 95% gamut and good colour accuracy it's the content creation and general beautifulness option, but it's transition of >20ms is not great for fast games.
bennyg - Tuesday, August 6, 2019 - link
No idea how my reply got here, it was to the guy bagging the "cheap" panel on about page 4 of the comments.Same old stuff going on in the comment section at AT....
p1esk - Monday, August 5, 2019 - link
I love the option of 1440p at 120Hz! Hope to see it in normal laptops (perhaps new MBPs can lead the way to improved refresh rates?)HollyDOL - Monday, August 5, 2019 - link
Since the article title talks about 'true desktop replacement', could we get price and performance comparison to desktop with "same" parts? ie. DDR4-3000 + 9900K + RTX 2080...Brett Howse - Monday, August 5, 2019 - link
Our GPU bench is currently an i9-9900K as well. As a comparison I got 116 FPS on Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and Ryan got 114.6 with the desktop version, so the performance seems similar. Unfortunately we don't have a lot of overlap on our tests though because Ryan is able to keep GPUs and benchmark them on new suites whereas laptops have to go back to the manufacturers so I don't rotate the tests as heavily since every time I add a new test it starts out with zero results to compare against.Is there a particular title you'd like to see compared against other than Shadow of the Tomb Raider?
HollyDOL - Tuesday, August 6, 2019 - link
nice, thanks...Compile Chromium (time) test would be nice...
or in general anything that puts the machine under high sustained stress for longer period (45mins+)...
craz8 - Monday, August 5, 2019 - link
I have one of these laptops - a Sager branded one.It really is quite heavy, and the 330W power brick is equally beefy - I selected the RTX 2070 to avoid needing double power bricks. I do use this on my lap, but the power plug at the back falls out a lot in this configuration. It's not a very secure connection. Since it's at the back, the only way to notice is that suddenly the CPU is running at 1.3Ghz instead of 4+
I almost always run this in Quiet mode, as the fans are almost silent in this mode. When I'm stressing the machine, the CPU clocks down to about 3.4-3.6 Ghz, which is still good enough for the work I do on it. If I run in performance mode, the things I run go a little faster, but the fan noise is not worth the extra speed.
There really isn't enough cooling for Nvme drives. Even small amounts of writing to them immediately pushes the temps to 90+, and there's no room for extra heatsinks to help with this.
I have the 4K screen, which seems pretty good, but if you dual boot into a Linux OS, the bootloader screen is hilariously small, and some versions of Linux have poor scaling options
I mostly use this on my desk, and it (or Windows 10) really doesn't like my CalDigital TB3 dock. Luckily, everything plugs into the chassis (unlike recent Apple hardware)
I don't play games on this, so barely use the GPU (RTX 2070). I'd love to have options to push more power and cooling to the CPU whilst scaling them back to the GPU without having to poke at the values manually.
Overall, I like mine, but it does have quirks.
Alistair - Monday, August 5, 2019 - link
I think you'd be much better off with a (I hate to say it) nVidia creator laptop, or a 9880H/9980HK laptop with a 120/144hz Gsync IPS screen. We need a comparison with Clevo of the MSI Stealth and Raider and Titan.https://www.newegg.com/matte-black-with-gold-diamo...
Brahman05 - Monday, August 5, 2019 - link
I have sager's version of the x9e2 with a 7700k and 1080sli and the same 1440p panel, and the panel is both one of the best and worst parts in the thing. One thing not mentioned in this article is the gtg does not really support the refresh rate, but by reporting a 120hz refresh it at least still cuts down on input lag. I really have no complaints though. When I got it I had a mobile lifestyle and had the money for it, my only two real gripes are ZEN and RTx. Not 3 months after I got the thing AMD goes and makes 8c16t a thing and even if the architecture is pretry much the same from the 6700k to the 9900k the productivity of the same class chip is now double. And with RTX going to NVLink for an sli bridge Nvidia has axed mobile sli due to the complexity involved in producing that type of connector. So this X7c is really the way to go anymore. Damn you progress!LsRamAir - Monday, August 5, 2019 - link
No Overclocking detail... bahhhh! Pushing these DTRs to the max that their cooling allows for is what at least half of their buyers do... Next time, yes please! (Especially in the wake of similarly spec'd DTR machines burning out under mild OC's, which SHOULD NOT HAPPEN, it would be nice to know if this SKY is also part of the bad choices group.)peteraustin - Tuesday, August 6, 2019 - link
Amazing article https://www.anandtech.com/ you should definitely read it in your spare timehennes - Tuesday, August 6, 2019 - link
I recently got this laptop as a replacement for a 10 1/2-year-old laptop. I wanted a full-sized keyboard, which means 17” or larger. Potable means 17” really it the limit. And 17” is perfect for 2k screens.The Sky X7 was one of the few which offered that and it had all my desired other connectivity (multiple NVME, multiple DP out, a few fast USB ports, thunderbolt, …
What really was surprising is how few other there are. Many with low res displays (1920x1080) which makes sense for gaming. Some with 4K displays future proof but quite small on a 17” display.
That made the X7C almost the only sensible choice.
And from an engineering view the thicker than average body was also very attractive. As were the looks. Form over function simply looks good, while designed stuff tend to look odd and twisted to me.
The only thing it lacks for me is more battery capacity. Lugging the large charger around is not fun and two battery slots (or 2x 80) for airplane use would have been my choice if it was offered.
TheUsual - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link
The elephant in the room: Alienware Area 51-M. It is more expensive but if you wait for the Dell semi-annual sale, the price is much closer. The Dell has a better keyboard layout, is quieter and looks better.not_anton - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link
If my coworker starts a 60dB laptop I am gonna throw it out in a window.And little kids don’t have four grand to spend on a cool gaming machine. Who is it made for?
Calista - Wednesday, August 7, 2019 - link
It seem like a rather sensible build - for what it is. At the same time and for the money asked someone could build both a high-powered desktop and buy a highly portable laptop. But I guess that's not the target demographics for these, rather the gamer moving from a few times a month from place to place, say a young kid with divorced parents, someone staying at a boarding school etc.Anyway, these tend to age really badly in regard to residual value, and I guess it says a lot of the way we as consumers value these once their are no longer top of the line.
madhupkumar - Thursday, August 8, 2019 - link
How long will Clevo persist with the twin 2.5" storage slots? All that space inside could be used for more cooling, a dozen of m.2 2230 SSD cards, or a warm slice of pizza :Pballsystemlord - Friday, August 9, 2019 - link
Spelling and grammar corrections:"As before, we're looking for results under the yellow line of 3.0 error level, and almost none of the color achieve that."
Missing "s":
"As before, we're looking for results under the yellow line of 3.0 error level, and almost none of the colors achieve that."
"...but TN display tend to not offer the greatest results,..."
Missing "s":
"...but TN displays tend to not offer the greatest results,..."
MandiEd - Monday, August 12, 2019 - link
Have they fixed their bios? Clevo should really sort their software mess.