1610ftw

Maybe it is only us who see the disconnect between the aim to have a true high performance flagship and to have something thin and light? What is thin and light is also an ever moving target and we are now getting told that a laptop that has the form factor of previous 15" models is very heavy and too big, this is not going to end well. That being said a properly implemented HX processor will be so superior by design that both single and multi core performance is better than ever and the new 3080 Ti can keep up with last generations finest which is the prema-fied Clevo X170.

Yep, that is one smart design and the cooling station seems so affordable that one could get a second one if one is for example using this one at work and at home - very interesting. The only thing that I am not sure about is reliability but so far the Tongfang / Uniwill laptops seem to have a good track record. In separate instances I have both read that Tongfang wanted to build a socketed DTR style laptop and also recently that they wanted to increase power for the current 3080 Ti mobile but no support for either of these projects apparently as just about everybody seems to be happy to be in that safe area where they can all wallow in mediocrity. Going back to the GT77 somebody on the MSI forum got over 14500 in Time Spy by now and he has yet to upgrade his firmware. So there is a good chance that the GT77 will get closer to the Eluktronics but without liquid cooling and Prema goodness it may only fight for second place.

The GT77 is more than 1.5" wider so screen size is indeed the culprit if you will. Manufacturers have been making laptops more narrow for several generations now: 18,4" wide bezel 16:9 17.3" wide bezel 16:9 17.3" narrow bezel 16:9 16" narrow bezel 16:10 - 4" more narrow than the 18.4" units used to be and with today's narrow bezels the old 18.4 units could fit a 20" 16:10 screen! The GT77 is also more than 2.5 inches longer/deeper than the Lenovo and it also is thicker except for the thinnest part that MSI conveniently quotes - the thickest part is probably closer to 1.5" thick. I do not think that laptops have to be that deep to hold 4 RAM sticks and 4 m2 slots - that is not a problem when one also uses the other side of the motherboard for some extra RAM and storage but then it will create a slightly thicker laptop which is a big no-no today. As for the heat pipes taking into account that the heat pipes are in a significantly wider chassis I would estimate that they cover a similar area if not more. Not that I feel like defending the GT77 as it has shrunken down too much compared to the GT76 and GT75. Lenovo is doing a lot of things right with their small laptops and the Legion 5 and 7 series is very competitively priced for what it offers especially with the new HX processors. They could probably be right at the top if they ever have the chance and the desire to get really serious with a bigger chassis that is also socketed and using a vapor chamber design.

There is no more space because this is a tiny ass laptop. not sure if the total volume of this unit is even half of a Clevo P870 or MSI GT75. The other reason the batteries look so large is because they are extremely flat - no wonder as the laptop hardly is more than an inch in total height including the screen. While I I can see that 2" laptops may be considered excessive these days we have gone full retard with even flagship models hardly exceeding 7 lbs in weight and 1" in height. As for SLI we do not need that obviously but we do still need more power for CPU and GPU than 250W max. For the HX processors it would be very helpful if total power for the CPU and GPU would be at least 325W and preferably 350W but yet we are stuck at 250W so far. As for Nvidia I have nothing but contempt for a company that pushes and pushes the power envelope in desktops yet wallows in utter mediocrity in laptops. With a maximum power uptake of 250W there would again be a reason to invest in more and better cooling and maybe a bigger chassis but obviously for a 175W GPU this is not really necessary. Not that hard to cool 175W so it is the same sickness that we have with kids today where everybody gets a medal and where there is no real competition any more to get significantly better than the competition. Case in point Eluktronics: From what I heard they also wanted to work on some socketed GPU and Nvidia would not really let them do that and now it is the same with the power for the 3080 Ti. We can only hope that somebody will put pressure on Nvidia by just moving to AMD and working on some kind of MXM successor with them. Maybe then Nvidia will wake up.

That is true in so many areas - we used to regularly have laptops that could take up to 5 drives and some of them could even be 2.5" or optical. Now we have smaller m2 drives where it would be much easier to have at least 3 slots in the space of essentially one 2.5" drive and yet many laptops have only 2! MSI used to have a board that sat on top of a 2.5" drive that held 3 m2 form factor drive. Then then they switched to thinner and more modern all but their current top model seem to be reduced to two tiny m2 slot - ridiculous but unfortunately the new norm. Screen size is an excellent example and what probably many people have wondered about is the power envelope for CPU and GPU: We had laptops with SLI and it was common for them to consume up to 500W or more with two GPUs that alone would take up to 400W. Instead of now offering at least 400W for one CPU and one GPU combined we almost immediately saw a regression to a total CPU and GPU power of 325W or less for the last generation followed by an even more disappointing 250W for this generation. Same with fans and cooling: Instead of offering more silence with a given volume and level of cooling or better cooling with the same noise level we get roughly the same noise level and cooling (still very loud and hot) with a smaller form factor.

I also prefer slower ramp up and in fact I have never kept a laptop for longer that did too much ramping as for my use enough laptops do not do it. Most of the time I think it is just a very bad implementation of the fan control and a poorly tuned CPU and this is also the reason that I could neither stand Dell 7740 nor Zbook 17 G5 and G7 nor any laptops where I cannot use Throttlestop. With the X170 I probably have the good luck that the 10850K is quite well behaved and I also work with an even load on many cores instead of a high load on few which probably triggers the fans no matter how the temperatures actually are. I am very disappointed to hear about Silent Option not working any more on MSI. It will be interesting to see how that works out on the GT77 / X17 when I hopefully will be able to test drive it at some point. I am sure that CAMM will get cheaper but it will be a generation or two until that is the case. It is also inconvenient to upgrade CAMM as one will have to sell the CAMM one currently has and go for a very big single module instead of being able to add modules. In the end if CAMM allows for superior performance it will probably be the future if the speed increase translates to performance gains. Yes MSI is late to the vapor chamber party as by now Asus, Dell, HP and Lenovo seem to have high performance models with vapor chambers. Time for MSI to get with the program for their biggest and best.

Very good points, especially the last one. The problem with a GPU and CPU being socketed is a very reduced choice in even the simple area of choosing a specific screen, CPU and a GPU for a laptop and with manufacturers like Asus, Dell and HP there is also the matter of cooling. So for example for your Asus what I see on the website is: CPU: 12950HX only, no other HX option GPU: only 3070Ti and 3080Ti, tough luck if you only need a 3060 or 3050 screen: QHD only, no 1080p or 4K vapor chamber: only with 3080Ti The MSI GT77 is also a lot of fun: CPU: 12900HX and 12800HX - no big selection but they can at least be combined with the 3080 Ti AND the 3070 Ti which is a surprise! GPU: only 3070Ti and 3080Ti, tough luck if you only need a 3060 or 3050 screen: UHD only, no 1080p or QHD vapor chamber: well that is only meant for thin and light if you ask MSI.... As for tool less access I love how it is possible to open up HP top of the line workstations and swap the battery without any tools, not even a screwdriver is needed - perfect. The Clevo X170 is even better in theory with an external access to the battery but that one is rather hard to get out - not sure if I really prefer that. It should also be possible to swap a keyboard and the RAM and / or SSDs below it without having to take apart the whole laptop. I would like to have the easy first access and accessibility that we have with HP and combine it with good accessibility of the keyboard and the stuff that is below it - should not take more than a few screws to get out that keyboard.

If repairabiliy and modularity would be mandatory then it would drive up costs and size of laptops. Yes the masses are buying that thin stuff but who says that is a good thing and that we should let them? We have certain minimum standards as to how things are done in other areas and that is a good thing so I would like to see more rigid standards applied to notebook - away with disposable trash and hello modularity and repairability.

It is easy to forget that once there were mobile socket chips! If they had to Intel and AMD could bring back mobile CPUs that are socketed and even reduce the height a little but not if they are not forced to. As for thin bezels I think everybody is going for those now which is why it would be very cool to have a P870 or MSI GT75 form factor laptop with a thin bezel and something like a 19" display. Displays are really something that has degenerated with regard to size: We used to have up to 20" 16:10 and now we are reduced to a maximum size of 17.3" 16:9 or 17" 16:10. Back then tablets were 10" and now they are up to 15" - give it a year or two and they will surpass laptop screens!

I do not think that we would need a standard for motherboards but MXM like boards that can be bought from different manufacturers would be VERY helpful. It is hard to promote such a solutions as it would still be a naked card without its own cooling so it can never be as cool as the flashy gamer cards with their big heatsinks, RGB and fans. Of course a swappable GPU and possibly CPU could be made mandatory, same as RAM, network card, display, keyboard, storage and battery. I do not see this happening though at the moment as it would kill super thin and light. Or it may be tied to a certain price point where you cannot exceed a certain retail price or screen size without allowing for that.

Not ramping up the fans quickly mostly should be seen as a good thing. The unnecessary ramping up of fans is also something you reported from your Clevo X170 from what I remember and I did not really have that issue but I have recently witnessed it in a GE76 that indeed has nasty sounding fans. Really annoying and luckily I do not really have that with the GT72 and GT75 as long as I use Throttlestop and silent option plus the pitch of those fans is nicer The Precision CAMM memory is a no-go for me as it would mean that I have to spend approximately 1400 extra on RAM as my current 128 GB (4 x 32) only cost about 600. So too rich for my taste and I will probably skip this generation and wait for something that is more than three step forwards and 2.5 steps back MSI already has introduced vapor chambers in their thin and light 16" workstation by the way so there is hope that they will also go for vapor chamber in the future for their top of the line units - hard to believe that at a cost of ca. 3500+ this cannot be part of the package of the GT77 / X17: .

New video from GenTech PC: They also have it in stock starting at ca. 3100$: https://www.gentechpc.com/searchresults.asp?Search=Msi+gt77&Submit= They have a few benchmarks in there that seem less than impressive and the cooler is taken out revealing the rather puny looking heatpipe system. Temperature in the performance cores also is all over the place and I would expect that to hold back performance: Eluktronics Prometheus with the Prema mod and possibly liquid cooling and the conventionally cooled MSI GE76 Raider smoke it for both CPU and GPU score in Time Spy, would have expected better out of the box performance: https://www.3dmark.com/search#advanced?test=spy P&cpuId=&gpuId=1433&gpuCount=0&gpuType=ALL&deviceType=ALL&storageModel=ALL&memoryChannels=0&country=&scoreType=overallScore&hofMode=false&showInvalidResults=false&freeParams=&minGpuCoreClock=&maxGpuCoreClock=&minGpuMemClock=&maxGpuMemClock=&minCpuClock=&maxCpuClock=

General answer to a general question: Ryzen 4xxx laptops can be quite good, same goes for Eluktonics laptops.

I am sure they will get you sorted out and next year there should be a lot more on offer.

Indeed. If you get the MSI let us know how it works out and you may also want to check out the workstation version that is supposed to come with a smaller GPU so it may be less costly and less flashy than the GT77. It probably also has a more silent keyboard if that is of concern: https://www.msi.com/Content-Creation/CreatorPro-X17-A12UX/Overview On the other hand the MSI workstations seem to be not that popular so resale value of the GT77 will probably be higher.

Looks like you haven't heard the MSI GT75 😁 The Clevo P870 and P775 chassis could be upgraded from initially having 4 core processors to 6 and then ultimately 8 cores over the span of 4 or 5 years so yes, it was possible although it was not exactly a plug and play kind of thing as you needed a special bios. I think they even made a special bios to be able to go from 64 gig of RAM to 128 gig for the later P870 units. If Clevo had made a socketed successor to the X170 with the 1700 socket that would have been my recommendation for you as we will probably get at least 24 cores by the end of the year. I will not need that but it may have been good for you.

Both Intel and AMD are coming out with extrmely powerful stuff so hopefully Clevo or others will be able to do something with that. It is about time that somebody - anybody - is pulling out some of the stops that have hampered DTR development over the last years. They used to be a lot more powerful and now with more power hungry hardware we are supposed to get by with a smaller power envelope? This can only lead to frustration and ultimately the complete demise of the true DTR.

In that case it looks like one of the better choices for this year as I do not expect even more powerful CPU's before 2023 and at the moment even the only one. As you say it has 4 NVME and 4 RAM slots that I also use myself and the pickings are slim for people who want to do that. One thing that I could think of as being an issue might be noise - not sure how much of an issue that could be compared to the Clevo but then some people just don't care and/or use headphones 😄

I guess this is what happens out of the box when you combine jokebook cooling and a socketed high end CPU.

Looks to me like Clevo is still heavily biased towards Intel. Look at their new top of the line BGA-book that is Intel only - they will probably sell about 10 of those but who cares if Intel pays for it. Hopefully all of that will pay off with a proper 1700 socket 17"+ unit in the future.

Another member in danger of falling for the cult of BGA I see.... This GT77 is so slim that they could have easily socketed the CPU and it still would have been a lot slimmer than the GT76 - shame! With that being said R23 single core should be up by up by 10 to 20% and R23 multi core about 50 to 60%. No idea how that will translate to real world workloads that you have but the numbers are certainly impressive. Modularity and repairability will go down by about 90% so you pays your money and you takes your chances after the warranty is over.

You would probably be better off with the new 15" model that takes Intel chips if you make the change and if your programs can make use of the efficiency cores. Both should give you an at least 10-15% higher multi core over the X170 not because it is a superior design but because in their infinite wisdom Clevo decided to not give their best chassis (X170) a proper upgrade to socket 1700 where it could then sport 25k+ cinebench R23 scores with the current generation and more later. Some users already got the Clevo with the Intel socket and and @win32asmguy is planning to put a 12900k in there, might want to check out that thread: Personally unless you want to play with new stuff I do not think that this is a good time to go for a replacement as the 15" units sucks compared to the X170 except for portability and even there Clevo went out of their way to make things worse than they had to be. Making two power bricks mandatory is bullshit if you mostly use the CPU and I hope they will change that assinine design in the future. So if you have to then better look at the scores of both the new Intel and AMD 15" Clevo unit and compare them but I would wait until the end of the year for a true X170 successor that would do a lot better due to superior cooling and the possibility to use up to 32 core intel processors on it: https://videocardz.com/newz/intel-showcases-13th-gen-core-raptor-lake-cpu-with-24-cores-and-32-threads And maybe there will even be for the first time a big DTR with Thunderbolt and the ability to hold even higher core AMD chips of the next generation.

Predator is an apt name as it preys on the fools who think they bought something cool and great. Of course it is instead (thermally) hot and disposable to the nth degree and an end user cannot even upgrade its SSD - way to go Acer. LOL at cash expenditure which I agree with. Best case scenario will be to sell these on before the warranty ends but that will be with a huge hit in resale value. And I do not even want to know how the noise level will be when one dares to use the 14+ cores on most of these with any decent workload - time to get out the headphones I guess....

Who needs a non-inverted motherboard when all is soldered on anyway.... Here is what one can do with the Clevo X170 or rather what I did so far: swap battery in an out without even opening it installed CPU installed and deinstalled RAM took out the keyboard installed and uninstalled SSDs installed a network card cleaned its fans I could also have swapped the GPU if I had wanted or needed to do that - no need to buy a new laptop as it is soldered in like I would have to do with EVERY SINGLE laptop of the current generation. This is how servicability is supposed to be and apart from the idiotic cables for the RGB and the slightly flimsy posterior cover it wasn't too difficult to do all of this on the X170. Same for the mighty P870 where everything is similarly simple except for the battery that cannot be accessed that easily.

I don't really blame them for not deducting that many points but not having upgradability or servicability as a criteria that will influence the final rating is completely ridiculous. For this Acer I would probably go with an upgradability rating of something like 10% at most for being able to clean the fans and changing the battery - after all there are laptops where not even that is possible for the end user! But hey, let's give some big points for the camera that most people uninstall these days - much more important than being able to open up and service / upgrade your laptop...