Questions about the Defiance II.

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thomasd221

Member
Hello everyone! I've been looking at purchasing a 15.6" Defiance II because of the insanely good value for money. However, there are some questions I would like to ask before I purchase the laptop.

These are the specifications I am looking at:



Chassis & Display
Defiance Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD IPS LED Widescreen (1920x1080)

Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 Quad Core Processor 6700HQ (2.6GHz, 3.5GHz Turbo)

Memory (RAM)
16GB HyperX IMPACT 2133MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 8GB)

Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 970M - 6.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 12
Free Item: FREE RAINBOW SIX OR ASSASSINS CREED with select GTX 9 Series GPUs!

Memory - Hard Disk
500GB SERIAL ATA II 2.5" HARD DRIVE WITH 8MB CACHE (5,400rpm)

Memory Card Reader
Integrated 6 in 1 Card Reader (SD /Mini SD/ SDHC / SDXC / MMC / RSMMC)

Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND (£9)

Sound Card
Intel 2 Channel High Def. Audio + MIC/Headphone + SoundBlaster X-Fi MB3

Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-3160 M.2 (433Mbps, 802.11AC) + BLUETOOTH

USB Options
4 x USB 3.0 PORTS AS STANDARD

Battery
Defiance Series 4 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (60WH)

Power Lead & Adaptor
1 x UK Power Lead & 180W AC Adaptor

Keyboard Language
DEFIANCE SERIES BACKLIT UK KEYBOARD WITH NUMBER PAD

Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED

Office Software
NO OFFICE SOFTWARE

Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE

Notebook Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE

Webcam
INTEGRATED 2.0 MEGAPIXEL WEBCAM

Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) (£5)

Insurance
1 Month Free Laptop Insurance inc. Accidental Damage & Theft

Now for the questions:

1) Is the build quality of the laptop good? Or is it reflected in the price?

2) Is the casing and lid actually metal?

3) Is the cooling system of the laptop good? What sort of temperatures would I be getting on the CPU + GPU when gaming?

4) What's the drive configuration and upgrade-ability like? How many drives can I have, and what type?

5) Is the screen good?

6) If I purchase the laptop with no OS, are the drivers easy to get?

Thanks very much!
Thomas Dunstan
 
Stephen M

Stephen M

Author Level
The Defiance chassis is the Clevo P650RA, you should find more info around the web if you put that in a search engine. Not had a Defiance but my other two PCS laptops have had a good build quality, not sure about the lid, have not heard of any cooling problems. It will take two m2 drives and two SSD/HDDs but it is a slim laptop so not all HDDs will fit, you will need to check. In general PCS machines are easy to work on and the warranty is not voided if you open them up. I have a similar screen on my Octane and it is fine. When you order from PCS you will create an account and on the home page of your account there are a few options, one is a link to drivers, you will be able to get them from there although you should get a drivers CD with your order, even ordered without an OS it will come with a trial version of Windows on it which was used for testing.
 
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ahad

Silver Level Poster
Just recently bought this laptop with the 980m so to answer your questions.

1)The build quality is excellent. It feels like a good solid chassis and not one prone to a lot of flex yet some people do say the screen has a slight amount of flex while opening and closing but that's literally just nitpicking to give you an idea and subjective too as i feel its much better than my old dell. So mostly very solid.

2)The lid is metal and the casing in your case should also be all metal. If you get a 980m the bottom plate is plastic but with 970m its all metal.

3)The cooling is excellent. The GPU has dual fans all to itself so can really keep the temps down. At full stress (and i mean complete full stress which 3dmark11 won't even reach) my GPU touches 82 but during most gaming its usually in low 70's. unless your on 100% utilization all the time while gaming (which i was) you wont reach these temps and even then 82 is excellent temps for a GPU in a gaming laptop. You can expect even lower temps as the 970m has lower heat output. I've never stressed the CPU but the highest thats also gotten with anything i've done is low 70's as well.

4) with the 970m you can have 2 7mm drives (or 1 9.5mm drive) as well as 2 m.2 ports as well. with the 980m you can have either 2 7mm drives or 1 9.5mm drive combined with a 7mm drive( due to bigger chassis of 980m version) as well as the aforementioned 2 m.2 drives.

5) I've never really cared about screen panels before this laptop....but this laptop made me realize how beauitiful a screen can actually be. Great colors and black levels but some people complain of back light bleeding but not something you will notice while using it normally but only if you actually keep a black screen and look for it. Despite many people saying they do have back light bleed i was lucky enough to get one with a very minimum amount.

6) And yes as far as the drivers are concerned you can just get them from your PCS account so very simple :)
 
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thomasd221

Member
ahad said:
Just recently bought this laptop with the 980m so to answer your questions.

1)The build quality is excellent. It feels like a good solid chassis and not one prone to a lot of flex yet some people do say the screen has a slight amount of flex while opening and closing but that's literally just nitpicking to give you an idea and subjective too as i feel its much better than my old dell. So mostly very solid.

2)The lid is metal and the casing in your case should also be all metal. If you get a 980m the bottom plate is plastic but with 970m its all metal.

3)The cooling is excellent. The GPU has dual fans all to itself so can really keep the temps down. At full stress (and i mean complete full stress which 3dmark11 won't even reach) my GPU touches 82 but during most gaming its usually in low 70's. unless your on 100% utilization all the time while gaming (which i was) you wont reach these temps and even then 82 is excellent temps for a GPU in a gaming laptop. You can expect even lower temps as the 970m has lower heat output. I've never stressed the CPU but the highest thats also gotten with anything i've done is low 70's as well.

4) with the 970m you can have 2 7mm drives (or 1 9.5mm drive) as well as 2 m.2 ports as well. with the 980m you can have either 2 7mm drives or 1 9.5mm drive combined with a 7mm drive( due to bigger chassis of 980m version) as well as the aforementioned 2 m.2 drives.

5) I've never really cared about screen panels before this laptop....but this laptop made me realize how beauitiful a screen can actually be. Great colors and black levels but some people complain of back light bleeding but not something you will notice while using it normally but only if you actually keep a black screen and look for it. Despite many people saying they do have back light bleed i was lucky enough to get one with a very minimum amount.

6) And yes as far as the drivers are concerned you can just get them from your PCS account so very simple :)
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Thanks to the both of you for the replies.

Just out of interest, did you get the Arctic MX-4 Thermal Paste with your laptop? Because that can reduce temperatures by a few degrees.

I'm switching from a gaming desktop to a laptop, so want to make sure everything is perfect because it's alot of money when you're only 16 haha.

How does your 980M handle gaming? Is it good?

Thanks very much,
Thomas.
 
Stephen M

Stephen M

Author Level
I would always go for Arctic Extreme paste in a laptop, any help cooling is a good idea. I also have a cooling tray, you can get quite simple but decent ones fairly cheap and they help as well.
 
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thomasd221

Member
Stephen M said:
I would always go for Arctic Extreme paste in a laptop, any help cooling is a good idea. I also have a cooling tray, you can get quite simple but decent ones fairly cheap and they help as well.
Click to expand...

The MX-4 is only £9 more so it's a no brainer really!

Thanks!
 
Stephen M

Stephen M

Author Level
When you get the laptop it will be worth cleaning the fans regularly as well, every few months as it is surprising how much dust, even in a really clean and tidy room, gets into it. PCS allow you to open the laptop and work on it without voiding the warranty. It will not need doing often but re-pasting occasionally is a good idea as well.
 
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thomasd221

Member
Stephen M said:
When you get the laptop it will be worth cleaning the fans regularly as well, every few months as it is surprising how much dust, even in a really clean and tidy room, gets into it. PCS allow you to open the laptop and work on it without voiding the warranty. It will not need doing often but re-pasting occasionally is a good idea as well.
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How easy is it to clean the fans and repaste the CPU and GPU?

Thanks
 
Stephen M

Stephen M

Author Level
A 15 minute job for cleaning. Take the bottom plate off and unscrew the fans from their mounting, then blow compressed air through them, at the same time give the heat sinks a good blast as well, you can get cans of air for next to nothing. Re-pasting is no longer, you need to take the heatsink out, not difficult, clean off the old paste and apply a small blob of new, then use the plate of the heat sink to spread the paste with pressure before you screw in back on. There are a lot of You Tube videos about this, some suggest using a card to smooth the paste over the correct area of the CPU/GPU, I would not do this, the small blob pressed into place is better. The Defiance model numbers are Clevo P650RA and Clevo P670RA, they will be better to use for a search.
 
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shogun1904

Active member
thomasd221 said:
Thanks to the both of you for the replies.

Just out of interest, did you get the Arctic MX-4 Thermal Paste with your laptop? Because that can reduce temperatures by a few degrees.

I'm switching from a gaming desktop to a laptop, so want to make sure everything is perfect because it's alot of money when you're only 16 haha.

How does your 980M handle gaming? Is it good?

Thanks very much,
Thomas.
Click to expand...
It is alot of money when you are 31 too. ;)
 
A

ahad

Silver Level Poster
thomasd221 said:
Thanks to the both of you for the replies.

Just out of interest, did you get the Arctic MX-4 Thermal Paste with your laptop? Because that can reduce temperatures by a few degrees.

I'm switching from a gaming desktop to a laptop, so want to make sure everything is perfect because it's alot of money when you're only 16 haha.

How does your 980M handle gaming? Is it good?

Thanks very much,
Thomas.
Click to expand...

Yeah i got the arctic paste as well. every little bit helps when it comes to cooling :p

And yeah its handling things great so far for me...can get upto 60 fps in witcher 3 on high with some tweaks to ultra. Everything else i've played is a walk in the park compared to that game...no game so far takes temps above 75 and mostly barely touch 70. Witcher 3 is just a monster which is why i gets to 82 since it maxs the GPU out completely and handles that game without any throttling whatsoever...i keep an eye on my clocks throughout and it did not fall even once during a full 3 hour gaming session running at 99-100% GPU utilization.

and moving from a 7670m laptop to this......DIVINE :D

You'll love everything about the laptop trust me...the only thing i don't like...is the finger print scanner...gives me tooo much trouble :p have to scan my finger 4-5 times before it registers...but cannot fault it on anything else...and even the scanner is me just nitpicking since i bought it for gaming and its exceeding them by far :)
 
T

thomasd221

Member
ahad said:
Yeah i got the arctic paste as well. every little bit helps when it comes to cooling :p

And yeah its handling things great so far for me...can get upto 60 fps in witcher 3 on high with some tweaks to ultra. Everything else i've played is a walk in the park compared to that game...no game so far takes temps above 75 and mostly barely touch 70. Witcher 3 is just a monster which is why i gets to 82 since it maxs the GPU out completely and handles that game without any throttling whatsoever...i keep an eye on my clocks throughout and it did not fall even once during a full 3 hour gaming session running at 99-100% GPU utilization.

and moving from a 7670m laptop to this......DIVINE :D

You'll love everything about the laptop trust me...the only thing i don't like...is the finger print scanner...gives me tooo much trouble :p have to scan my finger 4-5 times before it registers...but cannot fault it on anything else...and even the scanner is me just nitpicking since i bought it for gaming and its exceeding them by far :)
Click to expand...


Sounds like a great piece of kit.

I'm going from a desktop R9 290 to this GTX 970M. I'm hoping the decrease in performance isn't too major.

Thanks for all your great help!

Can't wait to sell this desktop and buy this Defiance II!

Thomas.
 
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welshnick

Member
I purchased the Defiance II less than 3 weeks ago, and my biggest gripe is the state of the trackpad and mouse buttons.. they already look worn and old... not happy when you buy a £1000 laptop that looks used after such a short time, and with rather cheap buttons.. I have got some screen bleed too, which I am waiting on a response from PCS to see what they're gonna do. Also the backlit keyboard never stays set to what I want, as after every reboot I need to turn it up again.
Apart from that it actually a decent machine, performance wise anyway...
 
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