Chassis & Display - Vortex Series: 17.3" Matte Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU) - Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-4700MQ (2.40GHz) 6MB
Memory (RAM) - 8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 (2 x 4GB)
Graphics Card - NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 770M - 3.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11
Hard Disk - 500GB SEAGATE HYBRID SSHD Drive, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (5400 rpm)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive - 8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)
Thermal Paste - ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Network Facilities - GIGABIT LAN & KILLER™ 1202 WIRELESS GAMING 802.11N + BLUETOOTH 4.0
Extras - 1 Year Pixel Guarentee and 5 day Quick Build
Price - £1198 all in
I will be writing my review of the service as I go, and will provide full benchmark details once I receive my laptop.
09/09/2013 - Just ordered my laptop. Sorry if I ramble on here, I just want to be thorough in my review so that others get a good understanding of my decision making process.
I've been looking at various laptops over the past month and have made my decision on the Vortex IV. I will be mainly using this laptop for gaming (primarily Lord of the Rings Online and Planetside 2) and programming (Visual Studio and MS SQL server, and Eclipse/Android tools). I opted for the Intel processor due to my programming requirements (the choice was between this or the AMD A10-5750, however the AMD chips aren't as good in most desktop tasks, and also the Crossfire technology can cause bottlenecks due to the way that the on-board GPU communicates with the CPU and dedicated graphics during games with a high dependency on CPU). For the afore mentioned reasons the decision to get an Nvidia + Intel combo was a pretty simple one. After comparing the various different "prebuilt" laptops I decided that the Clevo chassis offered the best value for money in terms of performance. Having reviewed the offerings from a number of UK based laptop suppliers I decided to go with PC Specialists. When buying something like this I try and read as many positive and negative reviews as I can. Most of the negative reviews I could find were in reference to the build time, however it is clearly stated that the build can take 11-13 working days, hence my decision for the quick build option. Additionally I chose to go with PC Specialists as I like the layout of their website, the sheer volume of configuration options, and the price (which was significantly lower than some of their competitors).
My budget was around the £1000 mark, but when I compared what I could get by spending the extra £200 I decided it was worth the investment. The chosen chassis will allow me to upgrade in the future should I require it. I noticed that most of the reviews on here are for higher spec systems such as the 780M and SSD+HDD so hopefully my review will give you a good comparison for what you can get for less money. I didn't feel that I would need to get the very top end card for my needs at the minute, and I can always upgrade this component in the future if needs-be (this chassis allows for 100w GPUs so I'm hoping it will be able to support the next generation also, not sure if any sort of specs have been published for these yet). I went for the 500GB SSHD rather than separate SSD+HDD as the SSHD provides near SSD speeds on tasks such as boot-up, loading levels in games, DB caching, etc.
Other key components that I went for are the Killer 1202 card, which gives lower latency by giving priority to gaming network traffic. And I went for the uprated thermal paste in the hope that improved thermal dynamics results in greater cooling, less heat, less fan noise. Also I went for the 1 year dead pixel guarantee, as £19 isn't a lot of money when you're spending £1200 on something and didn't want the frustration of ending up with a dead pixel right in the middle of the screen.
This will be my first 17" laptop, I currently use a 15.6" but decided to make the jump to a larger screen for the improved vision I will get in FPS games, and also when having multiple windows open in programming the smaller screen can be a bit limited. Now comes the wait!! I'm very excited about my purchase.
13/09/2013 - Got an email today stating that the item has been dispatched, so should be with me on either Monday or Tuesday. Am very pleased with the speed this has been processed and can confirm that the fast track service is well worth the money. The relevant dates are:
Processed Date - 09-09-2013 (please note that the order was placed at 23:58, so the first working day was 10/09/2013)
Pre-Production Date - 10-09-2013
Build Date - 12-09-2013
Test Date - 12-09-2013
Awaiting Dispatch Date - 13-09-2013
Dispatch Date - 13-09-2013
16/09/2013 - Laptop received. I found the DPD tracking service to be useful. I was able to check how many other deliveries there were before me and where the van was. I got a text message saying that my parcel will be with me at 9:34-10:34, it actually arrived at 9:40. Very impressed with the service from DPD.
The laptop arrived well packed, there are a number of unboxing videos you can watch on the website so not going to go into any detail on this. My initial impressions of the laptop were that it is a very well built machine. From the images on the website I was expecting it to be the dimensions of a paving slab, however I was very pleasantly surprised. It is a very solidly built laptop, whilst at the same time not being too chunky. The screen has a nice action when opening the lid (no creaking and very smooth); there is only a tiny (almost negligible) amount of flex when opening it with one hand from one corner. The keyboard feels very nice to type on. The small return key and space bar were a bit annoying at first, but after 1 days use I can say that this is not an issue at all. The backlight looks really nice too.
Installing Windows 7
I didn't opt for an OS with this laptop as I already have a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate I can use. I installed the OS without any problem but ran into some issues when trying to install the drivers. It looks like the disk included is for Windows 8. I was able to locate some of the drivers on the disk, however there were some other devices which I didn't have the drivers for. I looked on PCS and Clevo's website for them but was unable to find them. I messaged the tech support team pretty late in the day so didn't receive a response today. Luckily I was able to install the graphics, sound and network drivers so I was able to have a good play with my new lappy. Another point worth noting is that when using the Killer 1202 NIC on wireless I am getting poor signal when I'm only 5 metres away from the hub, I have done some research online and have found some people saying that they were getting similar issues when using the latest drivers. Hopefully this will be resolved when I receive my Windows 7 driver disk.
Sound and Video performance
Once I was able to get this up and running I am extremely satisfied with what this laptop has to offer. The 1920x1080 monitor looks fantastic, I'm really pleased I went for the 17" model over the 15". The colour reproduction is fantastic, the blacks are very black (rather than being greyish) and the colours are very bright and sharp (rather than being dull). The sound from the speakers is fairly tinny as you would expect from a laptop, the inbuilt subwoofer doesn't seem to do much to improve this. The speakers get LOUD without distorting if you crank them to max though (I would say more than double the volume of my HP laptop). On the whole I am very pleased with the inbuilt speakers in the laptop; I wasn't expecting anything amazing but they have exceeded my expectations so I am happy with this.
Processor (CPU) - Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-4700MQ (2.40GHz) 6MB
Memory (RAM) - 8GB KINGSTON HYPER-X GENESIS 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 (2 x 4GB)
Graphics Card - NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 770M - 3.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11
Hard Disk - 500GB SEAGATE HYBRID SSHD Drive, SATA 6 Gb/s, 64MB CACHE (5400 rpm)
DVD/BLU-RAY Drive - 8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW)
Thermal Paste - ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Network Facilities - GIGABIT LAN & KILLER™ 1202 WIRELESS GAMING 802.11N + BLUETOOTH 4.0
Extras - 1 Year Pixel Guarentee and 5 day Quick Build
Price - £1198 all in
I will be writing my review of the service as I go, and will provide full benchmark details once I receive my laptop.
09/09/2013 - Just ordered my laptop. Sorry if I ramble on here, I just want to be thorough in my review so that others get a good understanding of my decision making process.
I've been looking at various laptops over the past month and have made my decision on the Vortex IV. I will be mainly using this laptop for gaming (primarily Lord of the Rings Online and Planetside 2) and programming (Visual Studio and MS SQL server, and Eclipse/Android tools). I opted for the Intel processor due to my programming requirements (the choice was between this or the AMD A10-5750, however the AMD chips aren't as good in most desktop tasks, and also the Crossfire technology can cause bottlenecks due to the way that the on-board GPU communicates with the CPU and dedicated graphics during games with a high dependency on CPU). For the afore mentioned reasons the decision to get an Nvidia + Intel combo was a pretty simple one. After comparing the various different "prebuilt" laptops I decided that the Clevo chassis offered the best value for money in terms of performance. Having reviewed the offerings from a number of UK based laptop suppliers I decided to go with PC Specialists. When buying something like this I try and read as many positive and negative reviews as I can. Most of the negative reviews I could find were in reference to the build time, however it is clearly stated that the build can take 11-13 working days, hence my decision for the quick build option. Additionally I chose to go with PC Specialists as I like the layout of their website, the sheer volume of configuration options, and the price (which was significantly lower than some of their competitors).
My budget was around the £1000 mark, but when I compared what I could get by spending the extra £200 I decided it was worth the investment. The chosen chassis will allow me to upgrade in the future should I require it. I noticed that most of the reviews on here are for higher spec systems such as the 780M and SSD+HDD so hopefully my review will give you a good comparison for what you can get for less money. I didn't feel that I would need to get the very top end card for my needs at the minute, and I can always upgrade this component in the future if needs-be (this chassis allows for 100w GPUs so I'm hoping it will be able to support the next generation also, not sure if any sort of specs have been published for these yet). I went for the 500GB SSHD rather than separate SSD+HDD as the SSHD provides near SSD speeds on tasks such as boot-up, loading levels in games, DB caching, etc.
Other key components that I went for are the Killer 1202 card, which gives lower latency by giving priority to gaming network traffic. And I went for the uprated thermal paste in the hope that improved thermal dynamics results in greater cooling, less heat, less fan noise. Also I went for the 1 year dead pixel guarantee, as £19 isn't a lot of money when you're spending £1200 on something and didn't want the frustration of ending up with a dead pixel right in the middle of the screen.
This will be my first 17" laptop, I currently use a 15.6" but decided to make the jump to a larger screen for the improved vision I will get in FPS games, and also when having multiple windows open in programming the smaller screen can be a bit limited. Now comes the wait!! I'm very excited about my purchase.
13/09/2013 - Got an email today stating that the item has been dispatched, so should be with me on either Monday or Tuesday. Am very pleased with the speed this has been processed and can confirm that the fast track service is well worth the money. The relevant dates are:
Processed Date - 09-09-2013 (please note that the order was placed at 23:58, so the first working day was 10/09/2013)
Pre-Production Date - 10-09-2013
Build Date - 12-09-2013
Test Date - 12-09-2013
Awaiting Dispatch Date - 13-09-2013
Dispatch Date - 13-09-2013
16/09/2013 - Laptop received. I found the DPD tracking service to be useful. I was able to check how many other deliveries there were before me and where the van was. I got a text message saying that my parcel will be with me at 9:34-10:34, it actually arrived at 9:40. Very impressed with the service from DPD.
The laptop arrived well packed, there are a number of unboxing videos you can watch on the website so not going to go into any detail on this. My initial impressions of the laptop were that it is a very well built machine. From the images on the website I was expecting it to be the dimensions of a paving slab, however I was very pleasantly surprised. It is a very solidly built laptop, whilst at the same time not being too chunky. The screen has a nice action when opening the lid (no creaking and very smooth); there is only a tiny (almost negligible) amount of flex when opening it with one hand from one corner. The keyboard feels very nice to type on. The small return key and space bar were a bit annoying at first, but after 1 days use I can say that this is not an issue at all. The backlight looks really nice too.
Installing Windows 7
I didn't opt for an OS with this laptop as I already have a copy of Windows 7 Ultimate I can use. I installed the OS without any problem but ran into some issues when trying to install the drivers. It looks like the disk included is for Windows 8. I was able to locate some of the drivers on the disk, however there were some other devices which I didn't have the drivers for. I looked on PCS and Clevo's website for them but was unable to find them. I messaged the tech support team pretty late in the day so didn't receive a response today. Luckily I was able to install the graphics, sound and network drivers so I was able to have a good play with my new lappy. Another point worth noting is that when using the Killer 1202 NIC on wireless I am getting poor signal when I'm only 5 metres away from the hub, I have done some research online and have found some people saying that they were getting similar issues when using the latest drivers. Hopefully this will be resolved when I receive my Windows 7 driver disk.
Sound and Video performance
Once I was able to get this up and running I am extremely satisfied with what this laptop has to offer. The 1920x1080 monitor looks fantastic, I'm really pleased I went for the 17" model over the 15". The colour reproduction is fantastic, the blacks are very black (rather than being greyish) and the colours are very bright and sharp (rather than being dull). The sound from the speakers is fairly tinny as you would expect from a laptop, the inbuilt subwoofer doesn't seem to do much to improve this. The speakers get LOUD without distorting if you crank them to max though (I would say more than double the volume of my HP laptop). On the whole I am very pleased with the inbuilt speakers in the laptop; I wasn't expecting anything amazing but they have exceeded my expectations so I am happy with this.
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