Ionico 16” query

[Steve91]

Good afternoon everyone.



I’m looking at the new Ionico 16 inch laptop, and just had a couple of queries.

• Is this a new chassis to PCS, as I cannot seem to find evidence or reviews of this elsewhere. I assume it’s a Clevo chassis, and, if so, does anyone have the model number to hand?
• It notes that it is Vapor chamber cooled, I guess this may account for the substantial weight of 2.7kg? It would be good if I could see the performance of this cooling system elsewhere. Vapor chamber cooling certainly seems appealing!
• I’m looking to get this laptop predominantly for music production and guitar amp modelling (Archetype Neural DSP etc), with some gaming here and there, although I’ll do most of that on PS5. I wonder whether the RTX 4060 is worth the extra money compared to the RTX 4050?

Thanks in advance!

 

[SpyderTracks]

Good afternoon everyone.



I’m looking at the new Ionico 16 inch laptop, and just had a couple of queries.

• Is this a new chassis to PCS, as I cannot seem to find evidence or reviews of this elsewhere. I assume it’s a Clevo chassis, and, if so, does anyone have the model number to hand?
• It notes that it is Vapor chamber cooled, I guess this may account for the substantial weight of 2.7kg? It would be good if I could see the performance of this cooling system elsewhere. Vapor chamber cooling certainly seems appealing!
• I’m looking to get this laptop predominantly for music production and guitar amp modelling (Archetype Neural DSP etc), with some gaming here and there, although I’ll do most of that on PS5. I wonder whether the RTX 4060 is worth the extra money compared to the RTX 4050?

Thanks in advance!

Hiya

Yep, they're brand new, were just listed last week.

If you proceed on an order and produce a quote, it lists the chassis number at the bottom, or at least should do

I would say for 1080p, the 4060 is probably going to be worthwhile, think the lower end cards are quite cut down, although haven't actually seen any confirmation of this as yet.

 

[HomerJ]

im not sure if this is the same or similar model at 6.25 in the video, short circuit did a video on new clevo models which included talking about the vapor chamber,

edit - the modal number is Clevo PE60RNC-G for Ionico 16 inch laptop which at 6.25 in video they are talking about the PE60 modal

 

[Steve91]

Many thanks for the helpful responses.

The chassis looks great. Think I’ll stretch to a 4060 just for that 115W TDP; it’ll also serve 1600p better should I choose to game on it. We have to be so careful with RTX laptops this gen, that 35-115W TDP envelope is a ginormous gulf, but I’m impressed that the Ionico chassis is able to support that upper limit. Looks like the Vapor chamber is quite impressive.

 

[ArnPiz]

Here's the internals of the 16" ionico
Looks like they are using a vapour chamber.

 

[adamsk1]

I am considering this laptop as well. Looks to be pretty good.

 

[ArnPiz]

I’ve had the 16” RTX4070 Ionico for a couple of weeks and here’s a mini review and a few thoughts on this machine.

Dimensions.

The actual dimensions are 360 x 272 x 22

Build quality.

The lid is made from alloy and feels strong with very little flex, the rest of the chassis is plastic but feels firm and well-engineered.

Weight; yes, it’s a little on the weighty side but I’d rather have a strongly-built laptop versus a slightly lighter one that falls apart after a couple of years.

The most critical engineering feature on slim laptops are the hinges. For some unfathomable reason manufacturers seem to always set the hinge preload too high resulting in a large bending moment on the lid, screen and bezel whenever it is opened/closed, resulting in early failure (my previous MSI GP66 hinges snapped TWICE in 3months and I used the refund to purchase this machine), I can happily confirm that the Ionico preload is about right; not too stiff, not to floppy with no alarming creaking.

Keyboard.

I’m not a fan of chiclet keyboards and this machine’s is no better/no worse than others I have used, Clevo have managed to fit in a numerical pad however which is very welcome.

The keyboard is RGB and I believe it is programable if you like that sort of thing.

The clamshell back is easily removed for upgrade with no stupid warranty stickers. Internally, the laptop is dominated by the large vapour chamber which covers most of the motherboard (see by previous post) The PCB assembly is pretty much industry-standard pick and place (although the eagle-eyed might notice the slightly wonky choke on my PCB). There is room for another M.2 SSD and a second SODIM.

Overall, this feels like a premium, well put together machine.

Performance.

The cooling system is audible at idle but not intrusive and at idle, the cpu runs about 35 degrees above ambient.

Under load, the fans ramp up pretty aggressively and are definitely audible but, if you buy what is essentially a monster GPU with a laptop attached you have to expect that all that waste heat has to go somewhere. With regards to the Optimus system, there is little audible difference whether you run on the integrated vs the discrete GPU at idle.

The software control centre allows some leeway on setting the fan profile to minimise fan noise although it could in my opinion be a little less conservative and allow for the CPU to run at a higher temperature.

The battery on these machines is pretty small and is probably ok for 2-3 hours of productivity as long as the GPU is switched off (this is in line with other machines with similar specs) A very welcome feature is the ability to set the battery charge state at less than full (I run mine at 50%) -this is a great feature if the machine is being run predominately from mains power and should result in the battery lasting for effectively the life of the machine.

With regards to game/GPU performance, there’s not a single current game that won’t run well with all the graphical bells and whistles turned up to 11, for example, Doom runs at 240fps on ultra at 2K, Halo infinite runs at >60fps at 4K.

I’d imagine that the lower-level RTX cards would perform just fine on modern graphical/GPU compute workloads. And yes, it will run Crysis.

The 3Dmark score for firestrike is >25K (and could probably be pushed even higher with some GPU undervolting)

With regard to the CPU performance, this is in line with the well-documented results published for this iteration and this processor can keep the GPU well-supplied with draw calls (which is all most people will care about) and should be more than capable of running most conceivable CPU workloads.

In summary, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how good this machine is; in the past I’ve has Dells, Asus’ and (shudder) MSI’s and this is probably the best of all of them.

If you have any questions regarding this machine let me know and I will try to answer them.



Arn

 

[SpyderTracks]

I’ve had the 16” RTX4070 Ionico for a couple of weeks and here’s a mini review and a few thoughts on this machine.

Dimensions.

The actual dimensions are 360 x 272 x 22

Build quality.

The lid is made from alloy and feels strong with very little flex, the rest of the chassis is plastic but feels firm and well-engineered.

Weight; yes, it’s a little on the weighty side but I’d rather have a strongly-built laptop versus a slightly lighter one that falls apart after a couple of years.

The most critical engineering feature on slim laptops are the hinges. For some unfathomable reason manufacturers seem to always set the hinge preload too high resulting in a large bending moment on the lid, screen and bezel whenever it is opened/closed, resulting in early failure (my previous MSI GP66 hinges snapped TWICE in 3months and I used the refund to purchase this machine), I can happily confirm that the Ionico preload is about right; not too stiff, not to floppy with no alarming creaking.

Keyboard.

I’m not a fan of chiclet keyboards and this machine’s is no better/no worse than others I have used, Clevo have managed to fit in a numerical pad however which is very welcome.

The keyboard is RGB and I believe it is programable if you like that sort of thing.

The clamshell back is easily removed for upgrade with no stupid warranty stickers. Internally, the laptop is dominated by the large vapour chamber which covers most of the motherboard (see by previous post) The PCB assembly is pretty much industry-standard pick and place (although the eagle-eyed might notice the slightly wonky choke on my PCB). There is room for another M.2 SSD and a second SODIM.

Overall, this feels like a premium, well put together machine.

Performance.

The cooling system is audible at idle but not intrusive and at idle, the cpu runs about 35 degrees above ambient.

Under load, the fans ramp up pretty aggressively and are definitely audible but, if you buy what is essentially a monster GPU with a laptop attached you have to expect that all that waste heat has to go somewhere. With regards to the Optimus system, there is little audible difference whether you run on the integrated vs the discrete GPU at idle.

The software control centre allows some leeway on setting the fan profile to minimise fan noise although it could in my opinion be a little less conservative and allow for the CPU to run at a higher temperature.

The battery on these machines is pretty small and is probably ok for 2-3 hours of productivity as long as the GPU is switched off (this is in line with other machines with similar specs) A very welcome feature is the ability to set the battery charge state at less than full (I run mine at 50%) -this is a great feature if the machine is being run predominately from mains power and should result in the battery lasting for effectively the life of the machine.

With regards to game/GPU performance, there’s not a single current game that won’t run well with all the graphical bells and whistles turned up to 11, for example, Doom runs at 240fps on ultra at 2K, Halo infinite runs at >60fps at 4K.

I’d imagine that the lower-level RTX cards would perform just fine on modern graphical/GPU compute workloads. And yes, it will run Crysis.

The 3Dmark score for firestrike is >25K (and could probably be pushed even higher with some GPU undervolting)
View attachment 36149



With regard to the CPU performance, this is in line with the well-documented results published for this iteration and this processor can keep the GPU well-supplied with draw calls (which is all most people will care about) and should be more than capable of running most conceivable CPU workloads.

In summary, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how good this machine is; in the past I’ve has Dells, Asus’ and (shudder) MSI’s and this is probably the best of all of them.

If you have any questions regarding this machine let me know and I will try to answer them.



Arn

Awesome review, bravo 👍

 

[Steve91]

I’ve had the 16” RTX4070 Ionico for a couple of weeks and here’s a mini review and a few thoughts on this machine.

Dimensions.

The actual dimensions are 360 x 272 x 22

Build quality.

The lid is made from alloy and feels strong with very little flex, the rest of the chassis is plastic but feels firm and well-engineered.

Weight; yes, it’s a little on the weighty side but I’d rather have a strongly-built laptop versus a slightly lighter one that falls apart after a couple of years.

The most critical engineering feature on slim laptops are the hinges. For some unfathomable reason manufacturers seem to always set the hinge preload too high resulting in a large bending moment on the lid, screen and bezel whenever it is opened/closed, resulting in early failure (my previous MSI GP66 hinges snapped TWICE in 3months and I used the refund to purchase this machine), I can happily confirm that the Ionico preload is about right; not too stiff, not to floppy with no alarming creaking.

Keyboard.

I’m not a fan of chiclet keyboards and this machine’s is no better/no worse than others I have used, Clevo have managed to fit in a numerical pad however which is very welcome.

The keyboard is RGB and I believe it is programable if you like that sort of thing.

The clamshell back is easily removed for upgrade with no stupid warranty stickers. Internally, the laptop is dominated by the large vapour chamber which covers most of the motherboard (see by previous post) The PCB assembly is pretty much industry-standard pick and place (although the eagle-eyed might notice the slightly wonky choke on my PCB). There is room for another M.2 SSD and a second SODIM.

Overall, this feels like a premium, well put together machine.

Performance.

The cooling system is audible at idle but not intrusive and at idle, the cpu runs about 35 degrees above ambient.

Under load, the fans ramp up pretty aggressively and are definitely audible but, if you buy what is essentially a monster GPU with a laptop attached you have to expect that all that waste heat has to go somewhere. With regards to the Optimus system, there is little audible difference whether you run on the integrated vs the discrete GPU at idle.

The software control centre allows some leeway on setting the fan profile to minimise fan noise although it could in my opinion be a little less conservative and allow for the CPU to run at a higher temperature.

The battery on these machines is pretty small and is probably ok for 2-3 hours of productivity as long as the GPU is switched off (this is in line with other machines with similar specs) A very welcome feature is the ability to set the battery charge state at less than full (I run mine at 50%) -this is a great feature if the machine is being run predominately from mains power and should result in the battery lasting for effectively the life of the machine.

With regards to game/GPU performance, there’s not a single current game that won’t run well with all the graphical bells and whistles turned up to 11, for example, Doom runs at 240fps on ultra at 2K, Halo infinite runs at >60fps at 4K.

I’d imagine that the lower-level RTX cards would perform just fine on modern graphical/GPU compute workloads. And yes, it will run Crysis.

The 3Dmark score for firestrike is >25K (and could probably be pushed even higher with some GPU undervolting)
View attachment 36149



With regard to the CPU performance, this is in line with the well-documented results published for this iteration and this processor can keep the GPU well-supplied with draw calls (which is all most people will care about) and should be more than capable of running most conceivable CPU workloads.

In summary, I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how good this machine is; in the past I’ve has Dells, Asus’ and (shudder) MSI’s and this is probably the best of all of them.

If you have any questions regarding this machine let me know and I will try to answer them.



Arn

Thanks so much for taking the time to post this review- extremely helpful!

I was thinking of ordering this with an RTX 4050, as the lower TDP may help with thermals... just wondering whether the 1600p screen would bottleneck me. What are your thoughts on the screen? Any backlight bleed? My main use would be guitar amp modelling and recording, hence why I want a decent CPU.

I was also looking at the new Elimina Pro, but I can't seem to find any information about the chassis, and I'm not sure whether DDR4 memory would seem like a step back.

 

[ArnPiz]

Hi Steve,

With regards to the 1600p screen, the most noticeable change from a 1080p unit is the aspect ratio.

Personally, I find the slightly ‘squarer’ desktop makes more sense in productivity-orientated use cases as screen objects tend to be grouped slightly more regularly within the desktop but, this is very much a personal preference.

Yes, the Ionico’s 4 megapixel panel will demand more from the GPU than a 1080p 3 megapixel panel but in the case of non-gaming workloads, the extra GPU overhead is negligible and will make no discernible difference to performance.

With regards to gaming, a 1600p screen is not so much of a bottleneck as it might appear as the Ionico panel can be driven at virtually any resolution and refresh rate a game can throw at it so you can pick the combination of refresh/resolution sweet spot that gives you the best performance.

To give an idea of what to expect from the 40 series GPUs, my Ionico has the 4070 GPU and is able drive a 4k TV at a solid120FPS with some well-optimised PC games (although the fans are very audible under this kind of load)

Arn

 

[ArnPiz]

Re. backlight blleed.

LCD panels will always have some backlight bleedthrough -its not a bug, its a feature...but seriously, the technology of blocking light with crossed polarisers will never approach the inky-blacks of OLED technology but, I can say that the 1600p 240Hz panel on the 16" Ionico is
among the best example of the technology that I've seen.
I created a black BMP file and viewed it with the panel brightness at 100% (see below) note-this is just a quick and dirty view with plenty of ambient light -to the eye, the panel is black (the irregular splotches are reflections off the rear wall.)
I could repeat this experiment in a totally dark room (with a camera that has a better dynamic range) and I'd predict that under those conditions we might be able to observe some light leakage around the points where the panel was under some stress (usually around the hinges) but, if present this would be negligible and invisible under normal viewing conditions

Arn

 

[SpyderTracks]

Hi Steve,

With regards to the 1600p screen, the most noticeable change from a 1080p unit is the aspect ratio.

Personally, I find the slightly ‘squarer’ desktop makes more sense in productivity-orientated use cases as screen objects tend to be grouped slightly more regularly within the desktop but, this is very much a personal preference.

Yes, the Ionico’s 4 megapixel panel will demand more from the GPU than a 1080p 3 megapixel panel but in the case of non-gaming workloads, the extra GPU overhead is negligible and will make no discernible difference to performance.

With regards to gaming, a 1600p screen is not so much of a bottleneck as it might appear as the Ionico panel can be driven at virtually any resolution and refresh rate a game can throw at it so you can pick the combination of refresh/resolution sweet spot that gives you the best performance.

To give an idea of what to expect from the 40 series GPUs, my Ionico has the 4070 GPU and is able drive a 4k TV at a solid120FPS with some well-optimised PC games (although the fans are very audible under this kind of load)

Arn

I'm not sure I fully agree with this, 1440p is 1.77 times the pixel count of 1080p, it's a substantial step up and requires higher tier GPU's to accomodate.

Also, on a laptop, GPU's are far less powerful than a desktop equivalent, so a mobile 4060 would be around a 3050 desktop card (as there isn't a 4000 series equivalent so low powered and would struggle at 1080p) It's roughly 2 tiers step down from a desktop card to a mobile one.

Furthermore, the first component on a laptop to become outdated will be the GPU, and you can't upgrade it, so with a laptop you always overspec the GPU as much as possible to increase longevity.

Basically, there's no such thing as going overboard with a laptop GPU, you get the highest one you possibly can afford.

 

[ArnPiz]

SpyderTracks comments are spot on; go for the highest spec machine that’s reasonably affordable.

I agree - it’s a shame that manufacturers use the same part numbers for desktop and laptop GPUs when they are clearly not in any way equivalent.

Just for lols I had a quick scan through the UserBench site (which compiles statistics gathered from GPUs ‘in the wild’ ) to see if I could match laptop GPUs to their desktop equivalents as closely as possible and it pans out like this (within a few percent)

Laptop GPU Desktop GPU

RTX 4050 ≈ RTX 2070

RTX 4060 ≈ RTX 2080

RTX 4070 ≈ RTX 3070-Ti

RTX 4080 ≈ RTX 3080-Ti

RTX 4090 ≈ RTX 4070-Ti

I also did some video bandwidth calculations (from kramerav dot com) based on a number of resolutions vs refresh rates to get more of a feeling for the how much data a GPU has to crunch through

Resolution(px) Refresh (fps) Bandwith (Gb/s)

1920 x 1080 60 4

1920 x 1080 120 8

1920 x 1080 240 15


2560 x 1600 60 7

2560 x 1600 120 15

2560 x 1600 240 30


3840 x 2160 60 15

3840 x 2160 120 30

3840 x 2160 240 60


The take away message from the bandwidth data is just as SpyderTracks implies; that high refresh/high resolution gaming is computationally expensive and to be honest; I’m surprised that my relatively underpowered 4070 is capable of chucking around 120fps at the screen in Doom

Arn

 

[SpyderTracks]

SpyderTracks comments are spot on; go for the highest spec machine that’s reasonably affordable.

I agree - it’s a shame that manufacturers use the same part numbers for desktop and laptop GPUs when they are clearly not in any way equivalent.

Just for lols I had a quick scan through the UserBench site (which compiles statistics gathered from GPUs ‘in the wild’ ) to see if I could match laptop GPUs to their desktop equivalents as closely as possible and it pans out like this (within a few percent)

Laptop GPU Desktop GPU

RTX 4050 ≈ RTX 2070

RTX 4060 ≈ RTX 2080

RTX 4070 ≈ RTX 3070-Ti

RTX 4080 ≈ RTX 3080-Ti

RTX 4090 ≈ RTX 4070-Ti

I also did some video bandwidth calculations (from kramerav dot com) based on a number of resolutions vs refresh rates to get more of a feeling for the how much data a GPU has to crunch through

Resolution(px) Refresh (fps) Bandwith (Gb/s)

1920 x 1080 60 4

1920 x 1080 120 8

1920 x 1080 240 15


2560 x 1600 60 7

2560 x 1600 120 15

2560 x 1600 240 30


3840 x 2160 60 15

3840 x 2160 120 30

3840 x 2160 240 60


The take away message from the bandwidth data is just as SpyderTracks implies; that high refresh/high resolution gaming is computationally expensive and to be honest; I’m surprised that my relatively underpowered 4070 is capable of chucking around 120fps at the screen in Doom

Arn

Doom is one of the best optimised games on the planet, it's so well done giving amazing graphics quality even on lower tier cards. But that's a major outlier. Amazing game though,wish more of them were that well done.

 

[Steveyg]

Just for lols I had a quick scan through the UserBench site (

If you mean the site Userbenchmark then that site is notoriously inaccurate and has been shown to show results in bad faith to purposely push certain narratives that are simply not true.

It's blacklisted by pretty much any reputable reviewer and not to be trusted on any of it's claims. Just fair warning

 

[SpyderTracks]

If you mean the site Userbenchmark then that site is notoriously inaccurate and has been shown to show results in bad faith to purposely push certain narratives that are simply not true.

It's blacklisted by pretty much any reputable reviewer and not to be trusted on any of it's claims. Just fair warning

Just further to this, most anti virus suites now mark the add on as a virus, because it's just pushing spurious information (lies)

UserBenchmark is now viewed as malware according to anti-viruses and Windows Security

UserBenchmark is now being flagged as malware by 23 anti-viruses as reported by users including Windows Security

windowsreport.com

UserBenchmark gets cancelled for biased component rating, drama

PC component rating website 'UserBenchmark' faces a near-universal backlash from multiple DIY PC subreddits and its moderators. This is due to its inaccurate benchmark and rating system which misguided many unsuspecting readers, therefore ending not

thinkcomputers.org

UserBenchmark Can't Be Trusted, Here's Why - Gizmosphere

For awhile, Userbenchmark was the go-to site for many tech enthusiasts, but it's clear that the site is biased, leading to inaccurate results.

www.gizmosphere.org

Userbenchmark is rated "Bad" with 1.2 / 5 on Trustpilot

Do you agree with Userbenchmark's TrustScore? Voice your opinion today and hear what 201 customers have already said.

uk.trustpilot.com

Also, UserBenchmark doesn't benchmark anything at all, it merely logs what hardware your system is and assigns metrics to physical parameters, like 4 core chip = 100 points per core. It's complete nonsense and doesn't relate to any actual performance, and in fact pushes outright lies in the main

Anyone who understands hardware won't go near them.

 

[ArnPiz]

Whoa!

Thank you for the heads up on that...I haven't run userbench on my new machine yet and I would certainly caution others not to download this based on the above intelligence.

Arn

 

[Steve91]

Thanks so much for the feedback guys, much appreciated. I've been doing some thinking about the laptop versus desktop situation, and I've concluded that I do not really need the portability of a laptop, not anymore. I also feel that a desktop would offer more incentive to sit in a "productive space", where I'm tethered and committed to whatever I'm doing i.e. guitar recording. It's all too tempting to disconnect the laptop from the desk and relax on the sofa- does this make sense?

Another reason why I was leaning towards a laptop now was because the mid-tier RTX 40 series are already released, whereas they aren't with a desktop- gaming will not be my priority though, as I mainly use my PS5. However, I'll probably play some PC exclusives at some point.

I think I'll post a new desktop spec for your consideration on a separate post, if you wouldn't mind having a look at some point!

 

[Steve91]

I've posted my spec on the Check This Spec page- any feedback is welcomed. Thanks!

 

[Heaven251182]

did your laptop support XMP 3.0 profile of memory? can you check it for me, because i wana buy one but not sure it's works with XMP.