1610ftw

Looks like Eurocom has done something to the fans for their power supply as early iterations were criticized for fan noise for example at notebookcheck.com. The y-cable is my ticket so to say to take the X170 on the road without the hassle of carrying around a trunk full of cabling and power supplies. That always annoyed me and then there was the chore of extracting the whole assembly from its place in the office which also was rather painful. So it works for my use case and power cables are not something magical and with proper isolation there is not really an issue with having a Y-cable. Maybe at some point SlimQ will even produce one themselves which would be much nicer than having to resort to DIY versions.

Obsidian could at least make the latest versions available again - it is not like people will be able to do much with them without a license.

Glad you got the one where the fan speed can be adjusted! How loud would you say it is approximately when you compare it to the fan noise of the Clevo - like the Clevo at 30% or louder?

OK guys, after a 4 month odyssey from SlimQ to a forwarder, then to me, then to a good friend and now back to me I have finally received my Y-cable for my current X170KM-G (10850K and RTX3060) and it seems to work just fine. I connected it while the laptop was running with three screens and other periphery so I first swapped one connection and then the other just in case but it seems that all went well. I did a quick Cinebench R23 and easily made it to 150W on the CPU alone so I am quite happy as at least with the KM-G not even a reboot seems to be needed. Then I made a quick weight comparison of the two complete power supply combos: combo 1: 2 x 280W original Chicony chargers with cage I really prefer to take the cage with me as it makes a setup on the go a lot cleaner 1 x special Y-power cable to supply two adapters from one socket - that saves a bit of weight over two power cables but the main attraction was to have cleaner cable management and only needing one power socket total weight: 5 lbs combo 2: 1 x SlimQ 330W charger with Y-adapter 1 x power cable total weight: 2 lbs So in the end it is "only" savings of 3 lbs but with a lot less volume and hassle on the go and I also can use the SlimQ with all other laptops that I had / have which over the year are or have been from Clevo, MSI, HP, Lenovo and Dell - very convenient 🙂 Now 330W may be stretching it for hardcore gameplay with the biggest CPUs and GPUs and especially with the SM-G with its 200W 2080 Super and Prema Bios but when stationary one can still continue to use the original combo. Then on the go the SlimQ combo is an option with a not too big power reduction that should still be good for something like 250 to 275W combined CPU and GPU usage which I almost never exceed as I like my laptops to be reasonably quiet and with only air cooling even the X170 gets much too loud for my taste beyond a combined load of 200W so the SlimQ fits my needs just fine.

Happy to help, this is what the forum is for 🙂 In defense of the Eurocom it CAN be had for a lot less on Ebay when there is an occasional auction, but: It would only be for one type of laptop while I wanted something that can at least take five different types of tips and that would have been rather expensive with Eurocom. Also the Eurocom is really big and has fan-based cooling that I am told is rather audible and it is VERY big - all not very helpful for traveling.

Thanks, sounded to me that 200W would have been with a stock card so I thought I may be missing something with my system. Sorry to hear that one card did not survive as these are not the easiest cards to come by! And yes, judging by your signature I would have guessed that you kind of prefer Alienware laptops 😉

Ah, so you had an 8th gen CPU with the 2080, that is of course easy. As you wrote GT75 VR I thought you had started out with a model with an Nvidia 1070 or 1080 as those have a different heatsink array. I have only ever seen these being marketed with the "VR" moniker: I am just puzzled that you could pull that much power from the 2080, mine only ever pulls up to 155W despite overclocking in MSI Afterburner while the Area 51m happily goes up to 200W.

The 780W Eurocom power supply is rather big and noisy, I do not think it is a good alternative. The SlimQ version is nice for traveling as it weighs in at not much more than 2lbs when before the total power supply assembly with its rack and cables was more like 6 lbs. That is a lot of weight and volume that one can save when on the road and it is quiet, too and also charges other devices via two USB-C ports, of course only when the laptop is not already pulling 330W! Just one caveat: It it small and light and therefore can get quite hot, especially when nearing its power limit.

After several crashes suffered by using the worthless Clevo Control Center I had to again search for something different to control fans. So I have in the last weeks tested RLEC Viewer and Clevo Fan Control and I have settled on Clevo Fan Control: At first RLEC viewer seemed to have some advantages as it also supports three fans but I only need support for two and for me it has an annoying glitch where at least in my Clevo X170KM-G the fans go briefly down to zero when they ramp down from one temperature bracket speed to another. They would for example ramp down from the 60° to the 55° bracket and there was always an annoying clicking sound in between when the fans turned off and then on again. So for a two fan chassis I would definitely recommend Clevo Fan Control and use RLECViewer only if needed for Clevos with three fans as the third fan is not recognized by Clevo Fan Control in its current state. So far Clevo Fan Control also seems to work reliably and I always turn it on manually on powering up, same as Throttlestop. I have the program and my CPU and GPU temps (via Throttlestop) in the corner of my task bar to be able to check temps if needed (CPU power only as I am not much of a heavy GPU user): From left to right is: temp Nvidia GPU power uptake CPU temp CPU Fan Control symbol I also like the option to quickly ramp up fans to max or 50% if needed or to give control back to the Clevo Default, all via right click on the fan control signal.

This is what it also says with 2.4.9 fan control: So pretty much looks like the latest to me. I have in the last weeks tested RLEC Viewer and Clevo Fan Control and I have settled on Clevo Fan Control: At first RLEC viewer seemed to have some advantages but it has an annoying glitch where at least in my Clevo X170KM-G the fans go briefly down to zero when they ramp down, so they would for example ramp down from 20 to 18% with an annoying clicking sound in between. So for a two fan chassis I would recommend Clevo Fan Control and RLECViewer only for Clevos with three fans as the third fan is not recognized by Clevo Fan Control in its current state.

@Falinov how did you upgrade that GT75VR to the 9980HK? The "easy" way by getting a 9th gen mobo or the hard way by replacing the CPU? Of course the easy way is not really easy as you also have to make changes to the heatsinks or source different heatsinks so I am curous how you did it. Still a fan of the GT75 chassis as it has the very best mechanical keyboard, up to 5 NVME and one 2.5“ slot and the earlier versions also have 10G network. And putting 128GB of memory in there also is very straightforward and much less complicated than it can be in other gaming laptops. Too bad that in the 9SG the 2080 is limited to 155W when 200W could be cooled just fine.

Hopefully you'll get the version that allows for fan speed adjustments as the non adjustable version will unfortunately require some closed-back headphones, preferably with noise-cancelling on top 😄

Would not hurt to do the math but I can see that you would not want to do it if this is all built by hand.

Very nice! Too bad that it above the cabin luggage limit for several airlines I travel with.

Have you tried a Linux boot stick? I use Ventoy and it is very helpful to have a look at different distros: That may be the least effort required and you can throw a bunch of distro isos on there and with a bit of luck something like Nobara will allow you to gain some further insights into the (lack of) capabilities of your Radeon:

I had a look and I would be sceptical if those two would be large enough for an 17.3" or 18" laptop. My favorite combo would probably be the Everki ContemPRO 17 with a regular suitcase unless the laptop has to be very deep (320mm and above). On flights with carry on luggage that would probably be too much and if you want something that can be used in trolley form Everki has that, too with the Wheeled 420 case. I have to admit that I do not see that much value in getting a special trolley based solution for laptops when it is clear that they are rare but there are many great suitcases with a trolley that I would personally prefer going on trips via airplane. I use the Everki Titan myself and in fact it is wide enough to fit the very deep Clevo X170 and MSI GT77 laptops but it can also get quite heavy.

Better save that for when you have 25G 😄

For new installations indeed cat8 seems to be the way to go for copper cables but if I already had cat7 everywhere I would not get all worked up about it as 10G is still plenty fast.

With Killer being known for their "reliability" one does not immediately think that the cable is the culprit so that is an unexpected - and cheap - solution! 2.5G is nice as in my experience it works fine with even cat 5e in short runs and with cat6 for everything else, no need for cat7.

528.24 It is indeed the last driver where I found somebody mention that the slider works. You may want to search people who mention others but that one has been confirmed on Techpowerup. I have no experience with the fans on Taobao or elsewhere I just typed in P870TM fans so you will have to check - in the end nobody here has ordered any fans as of now so you would probably have to be the guinea pig. Shame that it is much easier to find fans for the P775 and X170. As for the LG C1 it has less than 800 peak nits and around 130 to 125 nits full white, that is pretty well documented like for example here: It also dimms when brighter areas are on screen for too long. The LED has probably more like 5 to 7 times as much brightness in full white so you may want to keep that in mind for other applications apart from gaming that require you to look at a possibly much brighter screen. I still have a bunch of programs where this is the case.

Yep, it is unlikely that Intel will make a separate announcement just for that. It would also see more tempting for the development teams of all manufacturers to work on a new chassis when they really can go with new technology for a lot more components / parts. There are new developments with regard to memory, SSDs, screens and screen sizes already but it makes more sense to put it all together when some of that has matured / becomes more widely available and then it can be paired with next gen CPUs and GPUs. It also seems that with next gen we may finally see Thunderbolt support in high end mobile AMD CPUs so that will be another option for manufacturers that is not available this year.

Nvidia driver 528.24 should still work with the power limit slider but you could also reduce voltage on later driver versions with the MSI afterburner curve tool. That Eurocom power supply has been tested to work with the P870 and there has been an old thread about it on the notebookreview forum, you may want to check the archives. For fans you have to go on a chase on sites like Taobao which is not easy to navigate but it seems there is at least a fan with a higher number of fins for the GPU. About the display: 1000 nits will be a lot brighter than OLED when there is a lot of white in the picture and I doubt that this level of light output is that easy on the eyes. Myself I was already annoyed by a 400 nits display that I could not adjust for a while. So I would rather go with one of those 400 to 500 nits LCD panels with 120 or 144 Hz and have less issues even if brightness cannot be adjusted and it should also be less costly.

Or it just means that Intel is late to announce the special CPUs that are needed for workstations. But I agree that it is more likely that this CPU cycle we will see that the big manufacturers release nothing. MSI obviously does not wait for special CPUs so they have already announced a few workstations including the CreatorPro X18 HX with a 270W power envelope but nothing so far from Dell, HP and Lenovo and those are all companies that would wait for somethink like a 14850HX.

Spot on - desktop will continue to run away from laptop for a number of reasons although I would think that with a 14900HX, 192GB memory, 3 to 4 SSDs and the i/O that is available in top end laptops most people would be happy already. The biggest issue for "normal" high end users is obviously the GPU where we are now getting something between 4070 Super and 4070 Ti performance out of a 4090 mobile which is not so great given the money that we have to pay for that level of perfomance in a laptop. With a 14900HX on the other hand it is possible to get something that is not too far off from a regular non-overclocked 14900K performance which is much better than the GPU situation. What will be interesting to see this year will be Thunderbolt 5 and its eGPU performance that may help a lot to close the gap for laptops once they are stationary. If TB5 is really good then we could get a laptop with something like a mobile 4080 equivalent in next generation (5070 maybe) for pretty good gaming on the go and with TB5 helping to close the gap very good performance at home at the level of a 5080 or above and all that with better CPU performance in the laptop as most of the power and cooling will be used for the CPU when stationary. Alienware had this solution for some time with their graphics amplifier and I just did a Time Spy with a 4070 Super at 21700 for the GPU in the AGA. That is top ten 4080 mobile performance for a very moderate price and on an old laptop and with 200$ more for a 4070Ti Super I could probably have gotten top ten 4090 mobile performance for still a comparatively moderate price and all that wth a 2014 eGPU platform. Of course those eGPU options only apply for people who do not literally sit at their laptop at all times and use its keyboard and screen - in that case it is probably best to maximize / optimize that performance which will be both more difficult and more expensive when top end performance is the goal.

A desktop will continue to be much more capable than a laptop as long as there will be desktop GPUs with huge power limit and bandwidth but with Thunderbolt 5 it may be possible to harness most of that power via an external GPU. So you could get some 4080 equivalent (5070 maybe) for pretty good gaming on the go and if TB5 is finally done right plug in your external 5080 at home with a performance that will be better and more quiet than a laptop with the laptop 5090. Of course that only applies when you do not just literally sit at your laptop at all times and use it exclusively and without peripherals. In that case it is probably best to maximize that performance. Alienware had a nice external solution for some time with their graphics amplifier although to the surprise of no one the case itself was poorly executed with regard to noise and cooling. I just did a Time Spy with a 4070 Super in an older AGA and achieved 21700 for the GPU which I think is a top ten ranked performance for the 4080 mobile. I got it for the very moderate upgrade price of the 4070 Super and therefore brought the attached laptop to quite impressive performance levels and with 200$ more for a 4070Ti I could even have gotten 4090 laptop performance for still a very moderate price. All on a 2014 eGPU platform although in my case it is connected to a 2019 51m R1 - probably the best upgradeability Alienware ever achieved!