Gigabyte P27G V2 / Clevo W370SS Review: 17" Laptop (GTX 860M)

Now if you all know me, the GM106 I feel is a good step forward in terms of Power Draw and performance per watt. The GTX 860M from this 17" Monster is a mid-range GPU. With a Core i7 4700MQ it has, it can fulfil the role of a Desktop Replacement. Sure, the 860M may seem dated but I got this laptop on a Cheap impulse deal and with quite an awesome array of stuff which can double up as a Multimedia player.

I got this laptop as an impulse bid for 500 USD. And it's based of the Clevo W370SS Barebones which has 1 mSATA slot and 2 2.5" drive bays for mass storage. The build quality for most Clevos are average at best so I was kinda expecting this to be not as much different.

One thing I notice about the laptop, that it's absolutely huge! Here's a comparison when I lay my MacBook Pro on it!

Which means it won't fit in my standard sling bag, but it does fit into my CM Storm slingbag that I got some time ago.

I did have to do a couple of things to it.

When I received the Laptop from the seller, and I booted up into a fresh copy of Windows 10 Pro (Very nice), I found there was only the SSD instead of the 1 SSD + Hard Drive. So I opened up the back and found the HDD dislodged from its SATA Connector so it just needed to be reseated back in. Also, there was a open and missing 2.5" Drive Cover. It leaves fitting in a 2.5" drive abit floppy and less secure but being open meant that it could act as a Hot Swap bay which is interesting, so for the heck of it I installed a Samsung 850 EVO 250GB in there and secure it with tape.

The more interesting thing was actually the CPU. The seller advertised a Core i7 4700MQ that's in there. But it was actually a 4810MQ in there. Apparently I got a CPU upgrade instead! I confirmed it with the BIOS (if you can see it zoomed in on the photograph), CPU-Z and Device Manager. The 4810MQ is neither cheap nor low end. It can closely matchup to some of the flagship quad cores i7 currently on the market. I got thrown in a substantial bump and I couldn't be happier.

American Megatrends BIOS confirmed a 4810MQ, 16GB RAM, and all 3 Drive bays occupied.

So Specs are currently jacked as follows.
Haswell Core i7 4810MQ (4C8T 2.8 - 3.8 GHz Turboboost, 6MB L3 Cache)
16GB DDR3 RAM (2 x 8 GB Kit, one more Free slot)
DVD Burner
128GB SSD + 1TB Drive Combo. (Added a 250GB Samsung 850 EVO Secondary SSD)

Right IO: SD Card Reader (Full Depth), USB 3.0 x 2, eSATA / USB Combo 3.0 Jack, HDMI, RJ45-LAN
Left IO: DVD Burner, USB 2.0, Kensington Lock, Audio Jacks.
Back IO: VGA, Power Jack

Keyboard:

Not as good as an MBP Keyboard, but still more than satisfactory.

Keyboard is of Chiclet switch, and a full length with a full complement of Number Pad. It has albeit dim, backlighting. But usage in Dark areas, the Backlight is enough for the job. The Keys certainly have a good amount of travel and feel more tactile than the other keyboards. They may not be as good as MacBook Pro but typing feels alright and more than adequate enough for the job. It does take getting used to as the major side of the keyboard is slightly off centered, but for productivity and office work, having the Number Key Pad is always good to have.

Average Touchpad at best.

Touchpad:
Touchpad for a 17" laptop, is not considered large at all. Compared that to my MacBook Pro, the latter is larger and easier to use. Mediocre at best... thankfully the multitude of ports are enough to take in an external mouse.

Screen:
Users of the Gigabyte P27Gv2 will be well chuffed with this particular Chi Mei branded screen. The N173HGE it is fitted with is nice. At 1920 x 1080, it is still a good resolution for a gamer and most mid-range GPUs can run natively and relatively well on Full HD. Scaling of windows is less of an eyesore and problematic to run on. Saturation is fine, contrast is fine. It's a matte screen and anti-glare, good for using under light. Users who want something for professional work should look elsewhere but this screen generally does subjectively well.


MAINTENANCE

Bottom: 
The bottom houses 2 hatches. One hatch for a 2.5" drive. And the other hatch which houses all the main components. With the screws removed you have access to everything for upgrades and maintenance. The main hatch contains the 2nd 2.5" drive, the CPU, and 2 of the 3 (Yes, 3) RAM slots.  These can be changed but the GPU unfortunately is soldered to the board. Other than that little quirk, the bottom has tonnes of options. But that ain't all yet!

The main hatch allows access to the components:
2.5" Drive, 2 SODIM RAMs (1 currently filled), CPU, GPU (soldered), Cooling Fan.
Below it is the other 2.5" Drive Bay.

Under the Keyboard: If the bottom maintenance isn't even crazy enough, there's even under the keyboard should users be a little adventurous! Currently, all 3 slots here, the mSATA SSD, the 3rd RAM slot and the Wireless Modules are populated but they can be swapped out.


Drive Performance:
The configuration by default is an mSATA SSD and a 2'5" HDD Combo. There is also a second 2.5" bay should the user wish to populate it with a second drive. The SSD is in the form of a LiteOn 128GB SSD which is meant for your primary operating system and ensures a snappy response. Even though it's a standard mSATA drive, its speeds can beat most of the 128 GB SSDs out there. 128GB isn't much (which is the reason I installed an 850 EVO), but that'll really give any system a nice little kick.

The Hard Drive it comes with is a very nice 7200 RPM 1TB Drive from HGST, a sister company of Western Digital. The HGST HTS721010A9E630 has 32MB of Cache, and this combined with a 7200 RPM spin speeds, makes this a reasonably fast drive for mass storage. The reviews on it are mixed with many claimed to have died on arrival but mine has been fine so far and I don't intend to push this drive all that hard.

The HGST Drive is sufficiently fast, with 32MB Cache and a 7200 rpm.

SSDs really help for general performance and snappiness. 

PERFORMANCE

Synthetic Benchmarks:
Cinebench:
There's a little problem with Cinebench that often blue screens while running it, either something wrong with the download or outdated driver, I have no idea. But updating the HD 4600 Graphics driver seemed to have solved the problem.

This benchmark along with Rendering videos and stuff nets huge benefits with a high end Haswell CPU. The 4810MQ may be dated but with it ranking on the very high echelon of Laptop Core i7s, it is just about on par with other CPUs like the Skylake 6700HQ. It's also the most powerful CPU of all my CPUs I have, including a 2600K, so Multitasking should be easy on this CPU.

It's leaps and bounds over most of my other CPUs I have used: Core i7 3630QM, Core i5 2500S, Core i3 2100, AMD A8-5557M,

Having a Powerful CPU speeds up Rendering, if under favorable conditions, doesn't throttle much.

While a High Turbo of 3.8 for Single Core benefits Single Threaded Performance well

3DMark:

A GTX 860M and a 4810MQ is a reasonably balanced system. The i7 handles the physics while the 860M handles the graphically intensive tasks.

A High End Quad Core and a decent GPU make a balanced configuration, although it'll better with a GTX 870M instead.

Although not recommended, at least not by me anyway, the GPU can except a small overclock. So this is after a 50 MHz Core and Memory Overclock, and in the most favorable conditions possible: Air Con Temps, CPU and GPU hasn't heated yet prior to testing. The OC graphics score lies in line with a GTX 960M, GT 755M SLI and just a couple hundred points away from a GTX 870M. So people who are looking for laptops on the cheap should consider a GTX 860M one, and it's not really worth the upgrade to the 960M.

Games:

Now this version GTX 860M is a clock-modified GTX 750 Ti that has fared well in many games. There is a Kepler variant with 1152 CUDA Cores. The Kepler's config is essentially a downclocked and lower memory bandwidth of the GTX 760. This GPU is on par with a GTX 770M.

But the 640 Maxwell cores run just fine and it just seems to perform a little better than the Kepler one while being more power efficient, according to the Notebookcheck Maxwell vs Kepler Benchmarks:

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Review-Nvidia-GeForce-GTX-860M-Maxwell-vs-Kepler.114908.0.html

Having a powerful CPU also helps. For players who generally play MOBAS like DoTA 2, League of Legends or some other titles professionally, this GPU has your back. The games I tested are with the overclock:

StarCraft II: A dated engine since 2010
but is still especially CPU intensive during big battles.

StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void: StarCraft II's game engine may be dated for 6 years. But it is still a very relevant game that really emphasizes on a strong processor and good physics capability. As an RTS game, it still looks good and action packed for its age. It can still bog down even Hex-Core or Octo-Core CPUs extremely hard when a big battle rages on with max supply armies. But it's perfectly smooth at the Extreme Preset at 1080p when on normal circumstances.

In game screenie: Dota 2 at maximum settings

Defense of the Ancients 2: No worries running it maxed in 1080p. Easy to get between high 90s to 120 fps.

Diablo 3: Easy to run but benefits greatly from a SSD.

Diablo III: Already a GTX 750 could max at 1440p, I don't see why it shouldn't max 1080p. That said though it also helps to have a powerful CPU for physics as well as being the game that has the biggest impact by running on an SSD.

CS:GO - Easy Peasy on the Eight-Sixty.
The photo demonstrates some of the
good color saturation the Chi Mei Screen has. 

Counterstrike Global Offensive: For someone who plays CS:GO professionally or competitively, High Frame Rates are paramount to a his success. The GTX 860M just takes this game on stride. CS:GO is a very friendly title to run on, even on low-end hardware and integrated graphics that can run well on 720p even at high settings..

Left 4 Dead 2: Based on a similar engine to CS:GO, I maxed it and it gives me a locked 60 FPS.

Metro Last Light: The most demanding title I have in my library. It may be a dated title but a few years on, Metro Last Light remains notorious of bringing even high end hardware to its knees. Turning down the settings a little bit will improve performance but the game still looks good in general. At the Very High Quality setting, Normal Tessellation, 4X Filtering, the game still achieves an average of 32 FPS, 21 FPS at its worst and a max of 59.

Still a very demanding benchmark, even with a slight overclock to the 860M.

Doom:

Doom is the newest FPS in 2016, and it's even more demanding than Metro. The 2GB 128-bit VRAM appears to be the bottleneck here and gets tanked quite badly in 1080p. Lowering the game to 900p at the Medium preset helped the GTX 860M perform much better. It can get around mid 40s most of the time, sometimes hitting the mid 50s with occasional dips below 30 when shit hit the fan. It is a great looking game nonetheless, even when you turn the settings down to get a playable performance.

900p Medium Details seem to be the sweet spot

Sound System:
Clevo advertises the VIA Audio Chip system for Sound Blaster Cinema. But knowing Clevo, their speaker options are never amazing. The speakers are upward facing above the keyboard. It's not soft but for a 17" form factor it isn't loud. I would feel better if it had a small sub at the bottom. Users would obviously turn to external speakers or headphones for sound anyhow.

Heat:
Heat is manageable on this system when the surface temps on the laptop are concerned. Using the Keyboard WASD while gaming is very comfortable on load, which is testament on the cool wrist rest. The right tends to be a teeny tiny bit warmer than the left side but not a concerned anyhow. And it makes more sense since the left hand uses that keyboard for gaming a lot more often. So the good, the majority of the waste heat is channeled away from the general keyboard area for a comfortable use.

Not so good on the lap as due it gets a little warm on the underbelly, and of course it's heavy. Though it's usable but not recommended.

Battery: Battery life is poor despite having a 77Wh capacity, 3-4 hours on a regular use. For a Desktop Replacement class (DTR) laptop, you have to expect that but I was hoping for more especially due to the 860M being a Maxwell based GPU rather than a Kepler one.

Noise: Because of the SSDs that is on this thing, and fans switch off when the system idles with nothing going on, it's completely silent. At load, the thick chassis does help mitigate some of the noise, which although audible but it's still manageable.

PROS:
- I/O Options - Comes with a full array of Connectivity, including optical drives.

- Mass Storage Capacity: Already comes with a fast mSATA by default. Room for 2 2.5" Bays.

- Good Full Keyboard: Tactile with backlights. Positioning needs some getting used to but it's good.

- 3 RAM slots - A nice amount of RAM slots allow for some sick amounts of RAM. I have 16GB RAM in.

- Maintenance / Upgrade Room - There's a tonne of paths in there! Everything save the GPU can be swapped either for upgrades, replacement or cleaning. No space is wasted in this form factor.

- Cool wrist rest - Surface Temps on the chassis are cool to the touch on load.

- Acceptable Noise emissions.

- GPU Overclock as always is possible, but do that at your own risk.



CONS:
Mediocre Battery

Weight: Heavy at about 3.2 Kilos.

Questionable Build Quality: Screen demonstrates little flex and Plastic cracks easily.

Small Touchpad

GTX 860M is soldered on.

Average Speakers.


BOTTOMLINE:

Clevo has come up with a nice 17" Performer which offers pretty much everything a user needs at a very fair price. Their upgrade rooms just makes enthusiast drool. The GTX 860M is a mid-ranged GPU but it serves as a great GPU for both multimedia and light mainstream games and MOBAs. The form factor isn't for everyone but it does make a good all-purpose laptop that doesn't really sacrifice anything much. Build quality is average however so care must be taken with this laptop.