Another great machine

[Stephen M]

Have had my Octane V for a couple of weeks now and very pleased with it, even more than my original Octane. Luckily I found someone to take the original off me as I could not really justify replacing a machine that was still working perfectly but the new i7s were very tempting and by getting rid of the old Octane did not have to shell out too much for the V.

It took 10 working days from order to delivery and would have been quicker had the 2TB HDD not been out of stock, although it did not matter as I ordered a day before going away and it arrived the day after my return. I was also kept well informed by PCS about the missing part and its ETA, this is an area they have not been great at in the past but I cannot fault here.

It arrived just into the hour slot given by DPD and the packaging was the usual high standard and there were no worries the machine could have been damaged in transit.

Now the fun bit, setting it up and getting to work. Installed Ubuntu 18.04.1 in about 10 minutes and it worked on first reboot, no messing with “nomodeset” or UEFI settings, which has happened on other machines. The switch from X.org to nVidia drivers was also painless, again not always a given in the past. The usual ‘nix problem of not being able to change the backlights on the keys was there but it is at a nice blue and am not worried about a fix, although may try one of the work arounds if have time.

The track pad seems OK but have not used it much as prefer a mouse. The computer is generally a bit quicker than the previous Octane but that is no surprise with the new components and it rushed through a few video trans-codes and converting a new CD batch to FLAC is something I can leave in the background while getting on with other stuff. Video and audio conversion, running a VM or two and having several web pages open plus my Office works stuff have not over-taxed it and the fans have come on much less than the original Octane, which was regularly cleaned and re-pasted.

Another good machine from PC and judging by the performance I was getting from the Old Octane before getting rid of it am pretty sure I can expect a good few years from this one.

Thanks to L. Rose and L. Shields for building and testing and to S. Lugowski who QC’d and packed it. If I wanted to be really picky, the Intel sticker on the chassis says CORE i5 but as all stickers are picked off anyway it hardly matters – I would certainly have been more concerned if the i5 instead of i7 error was made on the inside of the chassis

There are a couple of screenshot pics but nothing else as have mislayed my rarely used camera.

Chassis & Display
Octane Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD 144Hz 72% NTSC LED Widescreen (1920x1080) + G-Sync
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 Six Core Processor i7-8700k (3.7GHz) 12MB Cache
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair 3000MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1060 OC 1480 MHz - 6.0GB GDDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1
1st Hard Disk
1TB SEAGATE 7mm SERIAL ATA III 2.5" HARD DRIVE WITH 128MB CACHE (7,200rpm)
2nd Hard Disk
2TB SEAGATE 7mm SERIAL ATA III 2.5" HARD DRIVE WITH 128MB CACHE (5,400rpm)
1st M.2 SSD Drive
512GB SAMSUNG 970 PRO M.2, PCIe NVMe (up to 3500MB/R, 2300MB/W)
Memory Card Reader
Integrated 6 in 1 Card Reader (SD /Mini SD/ SDHC / SDXC / MMC / RSMMC)
AC Adaptor
1 x 330W AC Adaptor
Battery
Octane Series 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (82WH)
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre UK Power Cable (Kettle Lead)
Thermal Paste
COOLER MASTER MASTERGEL MAKER THERMAL COMPOUND
Sound Card
Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Bluetooth & Wireless
GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-9260 M.2 (1.73Gbps, 802.11AC) +BT 5.0
USB Options
4 x USB 3.0 Ports + 2 x USB 3.1 Type C Ports
Keyboard Language
OCTANE SERIES BACKLIT GERMAN KEYBOARD WITH NUMBER PAD
Operating System
NO OPERATING SYSTEM REQUIRED
Operating System Language
United Kingdom - English Language
Windows Recovery Media
NO RECOVERY MEDIA REQUIRED
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft® Office® 365 (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
NO ANTI-VIRUS SOFTWARE
Browser
Firefox™
Notebook Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 2.0 MP FULL HD WEBCAM
Warranty
3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
STANDARD INSURED DELIVERY TO UK MAINLAND (MON-FRI)
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 3 to 5 working days
Promotional Item
The Crew 2 FREE with select SAMSUNG NVMe SSDs!
Quantity
1

Price £1,887.00 including VAT and delivery

 

[Oussebon]

I take it you checked to make sure it does actually have the i7 in it *cough*

 

[Stephen M]

Luckily I had already installed the OS and checked the machine out before I spotted it, otherwise it may have been defibrillator time

 

[ubuysa]

I realise that Intel and Microsoft probably require PCS to put those stickers on laptops but I really wish they wouldn't. To me it looks tacky, like a 'go faster' stripe on a boy racer's car....

 

[Tony1044]

@Stephen - Nice review. Thanks for taking the time.

I realise that Intel and Microsoft probably require PCS to put those stickers on laptops but I really wish they wouldn't. To me it looks tacky, like a 'go faster' stripe on a boy racer's car....

I couldn't agree more. When I chose my Defiance, there were a few things that swayed it for me - bang for buck being top of the list of course, closely followed by how much storage I could fit into it and the fact that although it was clearly a meaty gaming rig (at the time!), it didn't look like a disco - no garish lighting under, on, round, in the thing.

Not sure if it's still the trend but at that time, on other models you didn't tend to just get a backlit keyboard, but you got LEDs everywhere and for me at least, I thought it made them look tacky but also not really appropriate for taking onto customer sites.

 

[SpyderTracks]

@Stephen - Nice review. Thanks for taking the time.



I couldn't agree more. When I chose my Defiance, there were a few things that swayed it for me - bang for buck being top of the list of course, closely followed by how much storage I could fit into it and the fact that although it was clearly a meaty gaming rig (at the time!), it didn't look like a disco - no garish lighting under, on, round, in the thing.

Not sure if it's still the trend but at that time, on other models you didn't tend to just get a backlit keyboard, but you got LEDs everywhere and for me at least, I thought it made them look tacky but also not really appropriate for taking onto customer sites.

This! That’s the reason I went for my vortex iv also, really plain looking aluminium chassis, not ruined with go faster stripes or led bars. Plus the zero bloatware is very appealing although easily fixable.

 

[Tony1044]

...Plus the zero bloatware is very appealing although easily fixable.

Wait..what?

You want to fix the lack of bloatware... ???

 

[SpyderTracks]

Wait..what?

You want to fix the lack of bloatware... ???

Lols, no, if there was bloatware, I’d just do a clean install...

 

[Stephen M]

I realise that Intel and Microsoft probably require PCS to put those stickers on laptops but I really wish they wouldn't. To me it looks tacky, like a 'go faster' stripe on a boy racer's car....

I agree, although in this case it is actually a "go slower" stripe, although from what I have read and heard of the new i5s not that much slower.

 

[fnf]

Thanks for the review . Would you care to share the idle CPU/GPU temperature of your build and the temperatures when you're encoding video?.
My CPU (8700k) easily does up to 99C when encoding with ffmpeg which is understandable as it uses AVX heavily for x.265. In normal usage both the CPU & GPU idle at 40-45C and prolonged gaming (over an hour) doesn't make the temperatures exceed 70C. Granted, I did repaste mine with Kryonaut after my unsuccessful attempt at applying liquid metal (it worked but I quickly found out that the cooling system was inadequate).

Regarding the keyboard backlight, I think clevo-wmi should work on this model. I haven't tried on this laptop as I don't mind the blue light but it worked fine on my P150EM.

 

[Stephen M]

It had been on a while but just playing music when I check but the CPU was from 40-43C across the six cores. Luckily I had copied an old favourite DVD (Goodbye Lenin) last night but still needed to re-encode for it to play via USB on my TV so have just run that through, two cores peaked at 82, one at 81 and the other three at 80C, the fans kicked in just after a third of the way through and temps dropped to around 65 before climbing to 75-78 for the rest. Has been back to just music for two minutes now and four cores at 42 and two at 41C.

GPU has not done a lot, maxed at 49 from an idle 42C.

Thanks for the Clevo link will give it a go.

 

[fnf]

Thanks, that looks like good temperature. I assume that you're not encoding using x265?. If you do then I'd be seriously interested in knowing why my CPU is so much toastier .
The difference between running with and without AVX is significant to me, probably 20C when the CPU is saturated.