Thinking about buying a COSMOS VII - I have a couple of questions

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DragonRazor

Member
Greetings! First to all, let me apologize beforehand for any English mistakes since I'm not a native speaker.

Well, I'm really, really tempted to buy a COSMOS VII, but I have a couple of questions (some more may arise in the future, but I'm sure you guys will be helpful :turned:)

- The first thing I'd like to know is that if the the device has scaling issues. I recently purchased an ASUS VivoBook Pro 15 (FHD screen) and the display had scaling issues. In short, the font in some programs was blurry and hard to read, sort of like this: 1459706990840169105.jpg
Even Chrome had said issues - reading some articles in some websites was starting to give me literal headaches. I tried lots of fixes and workarounds to no avail.

- The second thing I'd like to know may seem dumb to all you aces :D, but I'm not exactly an expert in these sort of things.
While configuring the laptop there's two options: 1st Storage Drive and 1st M.2 SSD Drive
I'm guessing the M.2 SSD Drive is better, but do I have to choose one Storage Drive also, or can I just use the laptop seamlessly without one? I'm kinda lost here, don't know the pros and cons.

I'd really appreciate your input!
Thanks for you time!
 
Stephen M

Stephen M

Author Level
What drives you have is governed by your budget but the most popular way of users of this forum is to have a small fast m2 PCLe NVMe SSD, such as the Samsung EVO, possibly 256GB and then have a larger HDD. The m2 would be used for the Operating System and main software while the HDD would be for all your data, music, films, pictures etc. It is also down to how much space you need, it may be one drive is enough but if you need more and as HDDs are much cheaper than the other drives it is usually best to go for the twin set up suggested above.
 
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DragonRazor

Member
Thank you very much for taking the time to reply!
Just a quick follow-up question.
Is an M.2 SSD Drive much better than a conventional SSD?
If so, that'd be great to have the OS in the M.2 SSD and put the other stuff in the HDD.
 
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DragonRazor

Member
COSMOS VII for Work/Lite gaming

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What do you guys think?
I'd really appreciate your input.
I put a 2666MHz, but I think the COSMOS VII only supports up to 2400MHz. Don't know if the folks at PCS will tell me to downgrade or can actually make it work.
 
Stephen M

Stephen M

Author Level
Some m2 drives are a lot faster but not all, if you look at the drop down menu they will give the read/write speeds of each drive, the really quick ones are the PCLe NVME drives.

To answer your question one the other thread (it is best to stick to one thread) you will be fine with that RAM, it would not be offered if the machine could not take it, plus when you have configured a system and click on proceed there will be a warning if something picked is not compatible
 
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Tony1044

Prolific Poster
Fuzzy fonts/graphics/badly behaved scaling is the bane of my life.

I'm currently in the process of rolling out a brand-spanking shiny Citrix environment for around 22,000 users.

Three of them have noticed that on some high resolutions - especially if their device also has a lower resolution external display attached - that they get fuzziness.

Unfortunately there's nothing much that can be done* as it boils down to how Windows still handles (or rather fails to in some cases) high-DPI scaling.

To be fair, there are lots of moving parts - the applications may not be high-DPI aware etc, but what really boils my blood is when Windows itself and/or modern Microsoft applications don't scale well. There's no excuse there, at all in my opinion.

*In fairness to Citrix there is one fix that we haven't implemented because in testing, it's shown to quadruple the load per user on each Citrix server and we haven't scaled the infrastructure to support that level of requirement.
 
Oussebon

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
What are you using the system for? A Vyper with a GTX 1050 ti might be a better option and is very little more expensive
 
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DragonRazor

Member
COSMOS VII Vs RECOIL II (15.6'')

I haven't made up my mind about which laptop to buy - perhaps I'll wait for the beginning of next year.
I was keen on buying a COSMOS VII, but at the moment I'm more inclined towards the 15.6'' RECOIL II.
I'm not really too much of a gamer - the games I occasionally play are not heavy on the GPU.

- Other than the slightly better GPU, what are some of the benefits of buying a RECOIL II?
I prefer the chassis much more, and I'm hoping it's a much more durable machine.
 
Oussebon

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
what are some of the benefits of buying a RECOIL II?
Click to expand...
It's lighter, has a mechanical keyboard, and thinner bezels around the screen. The cooling is meant to be pretty solid.

I'm not really too much of a gamer - the games I occasionally play are not heavy on the GPU.
Click to expand...
Remember that you can't replace the graphics card in a laptop, so even if your gaming is fairly casual, once the time comes that you can't play the games you want at all / at the settings you want, you need to buy a new laptop. The 1050 ti in the Vyper is ~35% more powerful (so it's actually not slightly better it's rather a lot better). I think the system cost about £40 more when I costed it up the other day. Or the Recoil has a 1050 ti option if you fancy the Recoil.
 
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uzzi38

Member
Oussebon said:
It's lighter, has a mechanical keyboard, and thinner bezels around the screen. The cooling is meant to be pretty solid.

Remember that you can't replace the graphics card in a laptop, so even if your gaming is fairly casual, once the time comes that you can't play the games you want at all / at the settings you want, you need to buy a new laptop. The 1050 ti in the Vyper is ~35% more powerful (so it's actually not slightly better it's rather a lot better). I think the system cost about £40 more when I costed it up the other day. Or the Recoil has a 1050 ti option if you fancy the Recoil.
Click to expand...


I have to disagree on the cooling part. OP said he wanted the laptop for mostly CPU work - same as me in that regard. I can't compare it to the Recoil II - I don't own one, but the cooling for the CPU on the Cosmos hardly is enough to stop thermal throttling. Barely. And that's with an undervolt and the stock thermal paste replaced with Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut. Trying to maintain 3.9GHz across all cores is possible, but the laptop sits around 93-94 degrees - barely outside of thermal throttling range at 96 degrees. This is with my 4 core i5. With a 6 core device, there's a good chance OP might be faced with larger thermal issues. Here's a bit of proof from a Youtube vid I posted a while back: As you can see, I've actually lowered the turbo limit to 3.7GHz and even then it hovers between 85-90 degrees in this excessively CPU heavy game.

So for somebody planning to use the device for CPU work primarily, I can't suggest getting a thinner laptop which could potentially have worse cooling. I don't know if it actually does, but if you ask me, its not a risk I'd want to take.
 
Oussebon

Oussebon

Multiverse Poster
The chassis are designed completely differently, and by different companies. Cosmos is by Clevo, Recoil is by Tongfang. Just look at the photos of the chassis with the vents...

Please note the reviews on this page for thermal performance of the Recoil:
https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/reviews/
And user reviews on the forums if you care to read through them.

e.g. on AIDA64 stress test (i.e. heavier load than a lot of work and gaming scenarios)

Starting with the CPU, a peak of just 81C is a top result, and that is only furthered by the fact that this temperature came with the CPU clock speed holding at 3.1GHz across all cores. The GS65, for instance, could only push all 6 cores to 2.8GHz, and even then the CPU still peaked at 85C.
https://www.kitguru.net/lifestyle/m...-recoil-ii-i7-8750h-gtx-1060-laptop-review/3/
Click to expand...

cpu-thermals.png

The 6-core i7s seem to throttle/ be unable to maintain max boost clocks (certainly at stock settings and under 100% load) in any chassis, which can be thermal and/or TDP related. Which shouldn't be a surprise ultimately, since it's 6 cores / 12 threads in a 45W TDP same as the quad cores...

You're absolutely right to be wary of the potential issues with thin chassis and high end CPUs - PCS even apparently pulled one model of Clevo chassis from sale due to thermal issues at the time - but the Recoil is actually very capable at cooling and seems to manage better than some of the Clevos like the Defiance, despite being thinner. It's a safer bet than any of the other chassis with an i7, as far as I can tell from the evidence... :)
 
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uzzi38

Member
Oussebon said:
The chassis are designed completely differently, and by different companies. Cosmos is by Clevo, Recoil is by Tongfang. Just look at the photos of the chassis with the vents...

Please note the reviews on this page for thermal performance of the Recoil:
https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/reviews/
And user reviews on the forums if you care to read through them.

e.g. on AIDA64 stress test (i.e. heavier load than a lot of work and gaming scenarios)



View attachment 12443

The 6-core i7s seem to throttle/ be unable to maintain max boost clocks (certainly at stock settings and under 100% load) in any chassis, which can be thermal and/or TDP related. Which shouldn't be a surprise ultimately, since it's 6 cores / 12 threads in a 45W TDP same as the quad cores...

You're absolutely right to be wary of the potential issues with thin chassis and high end CPUs - PCS even apparently pulled one model of Clevo chassis from sale due to thermal issues at the time - but the Recoil is actually very capable at cooling and seems to manage better than some of the Clevos like the Defiance, despite being thinner. It's a safer bet than any of the other chassis with an i7, as far as I can tell from the evidence... :)
Click to expand...

Alright then, cool (no pun intended). I'll take your word for it :) The recoil does seem to be an excellent choice, especially if you want the i7.

Though OP, if you do still feel like getting the Cosmos for whatever reason, I really wouldn't recommend it with an i7 for the reasons in my last post. The i5 simply gets too hot, and the i7 has 2 more cores. You certainly will get some thermal throttling.
 
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