Hi everyone,
I posted a few days with intended specs for a new laptop. I ended up ordering an Octane series laptop 15'6" screen.
I got it with a Clevo P751ZM Chassis, the display is 15.6" Matte Full HD IPS LED Widescreen (1920x1080) The 17 I thought was too big and heavy for my needs and the 15'6 came with the option of an IPS screen which sold me on it. Now I opted for the best processer available because I want this laptop to give me a few years before I even contemplate another. I got the Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Processor i7-4790S (3.2GHz) 8MB Cache which I debated because I worried about heat and cooling within the laptop. I was shown a picture of the laptops cooling layout and was very impressed. As for RAM and the Hard Disk I opted for the lowest available as I had only recently purchased a 500gb Samsung EVO 840 and 2x8GB DDR3 RAM. These I intended on installing when the laptop arrived. Now as for GPU I'd done lots of research and pricing before deciding on this laptop. I got the NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 970M - 6.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11. I know the 980 was available also but I had a budget and intended on sticking to it. The hard disk that came with the laptop was a 500GB SERIAL ATA II 2.5" HARD DRIVE WITH 8MB CACHE (5,400rpm). It came with an Integrated 6 in 1 Card Reader. I paid the small amount for the improved Thermal Paste ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME which I'd researched and was a well known brand and good reviews. The Sound Card is Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack which since I use headphone and a usb Cooling Pad with good built in speakers I wasn't worried about quality. The Wireless/Wired Networking GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-7265 M.2 (867Mbps, 802.11AC) + BLUETOOTH were fine for me. And the USB 4 x USB 3.0 PORTS (1 x POWERED) + 1 e-SATA/USB 3.0 PORT COMBINED were more than enough for my needs. The Battery I had seen had some poor reviews due to longevity and also problems with them failing but since I use the laptop plugged in 80% of the time it wasn't really and issue so the Octane Series 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (82WH) was enough for my needs. The power cable that isn't the standard small pin in a side port pleased me as I'm aware how often these break and can fail so the way the octane connects to its power source is perfect for what I wanted. The keyboard looked good in the pictures but on arrival I found it to be very nice I like a backlit keyboard and found the keys responsive and well setup. The INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE was not that important as I tend to use a usb mouse whenever possible but I think it works well and it looks good. I've not had time to test the INTEGRATED 2.0 MP FULL HD WEBCAM but as I rarely use it it wasn't a concern on my purchase. As for the Warranty the basic option seemed fine but for a mere £5 I could get a 3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) which I thought was really good value. I paid £5 on the day before for a dedicated Delivery time due to work but the delivery was great regardless it was dispatched the day it was completed and arrived the day after. Now I paid for FAST TRACK 3 WORKING DAY DISPATCH and it was slightly expensive but £69 seemed like a good option to decrease the wait time as I'm not very patient haha. The laptop came with a Promotional Item FREE DYING LIGHT DIGITAL VOUCHER with GTX 965M / 970M / 980M GRAPHICS! which I thought was a nice touch as Dying Light is a new game and £40 on steam.
Ok now for my review, The laptop chassis is good the hinges for the screen are strong and well made. I've not had any problems lifting the screen when opening the laptop and the movement itself is very smooth. The material used for the touchpad and keyboard however isn't great it shows all marks smudges and I'm sure will wear quickly with use. However it is cool to the touch even after prolonged gaming. The laptop came with windows 8.1 installed but not activated as I selected this option to save money as I already have a retail copy of Win8. However the OS on the hard disk supplied had issues with making a system image to copy onto the SSD and to switch over. Upon installing said SSD and the RAM I found the access to this laptop to be great. The back panels are well secured but require very little to remove them giving you fast access to your laptop (as seen in one of the images below) Removing the existing RAM I decided to keep the 500GB HDD as a second backup drive while my OS was on the SSD as well as my games. Installing these was fast and easy which I was very pleased with. However I did end up having to re-install windows with my SDD as primary. This was quick though upon the laptop restarting it didn't look as polished as their install, an example being the boot screen message. I was given a disk with the drivers etc. necessary and I converted it onto a usb as the octane has no dvd rom which I'd hoped would reduce weight and create more space inside the laptop however upon looking inside realised there simply isn't room for one. I installed all the drivers easily but one problem has been that in device manager I still have an unknown device in my lists despite installing everything from the disk given as well as logging into PCS itself to check against the drivers there. I also noticed that the biometric scanner must have had more software on to begin with than the driver on the disk supplied. This meaning I cannot use it for online login's however I can login to windows with it through the windows software in win8. Upon getting the laptop running and problem free which did not take long really I immediately ran intels XTU to check the processer RAM etc and then to both stress test them and benchmark them against intels stats. The stress tests went brilliantly, I ran the processor for over and hour and the temps never ran hotter than 70 degrees. The RAM performed well also. I then began the process of re-installing Steam and my a few of my games. The first being Arma 3 as I have known it to be a very poorly optimised game and very high demands for the GPU. The game runs at 40fps on ultra setting which I could not believe. The laptop heat didn't go above 70degrees the entire time I was playing and the fans were barely noticeable throughout (if you manually set the fans to maximum you can hear just how loud they can run) I could not believe the results for that so I decided to run Dying Light which I've also heard is very demanding on the GPU. This again on full settings ran perfectly 40+fps without a stutter I played for 2hrs without the laptop making the slightest complaint. I do intend to run some benchmarks today and I'll edit this post to include them.
Overall I am extremely happy with my laptop, it is exactly what I wanted. It is quite heavy and bulky in the base but that was not a problem to me. The battery doesn't last a long time but it will very rarely be used on battery. The screen is great, great definition the IPS makes a great difference and even more so as it came as standard. The processor and gpu are exactly what I wanted and have matched every expectation and exceeded them if I'm honest. I couldn't be happier the guys got it to me within a week which I think is great work considering I ordered late on a Friday and received the laptop the following Thursday. I would recommend both PCS and the Octane series to anyone who is after a powerful gaming laptop.
Thank you also to everyone in the forums who helped answer questions and give reviews and recommendations PCS are lucky to have such a good forum where people are friendly and giving solid advice and experience to people be they beginner or advanced user.
Thank You PCS
I posted a few days with intended specs for a new laptop. I ended up ordering an Octane series laptop 15'6" screen.
I got it with a Clevo P751ZM Chassis, the display is 15.6" Matte Full HD IPS LED Widescreen (1920x1080) The 17 I thought was too big and heavy for my needs and the 15'6 came with the option of an IPS screen which sold me on it. Now I opted for the best processer available because I want this laptop to give me a few years before I even contemplate another. I got the Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Processor i7-4790S (3.2GHz) 8MB Cache which I debated because I worried about heat and cooling within the laptop. I was shown a picture of the laptops cooling layout and was very impressed. As for RAM and the Hard Disk I opted for the lowest available as I had only recently purchased a 500gb Samsung EVO 840 and 2x8GB DDR3 RAM. These I intended on installing when the laptop arrived. Now as for GPU I'd done lots of research and pricing before deciding on this laptop. I got the NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 970M - 6.0GB DDR5 Video RAM - DirectX® 11. I know the 980 was available also but I had a budget and intended on sticking to it. The hard disk that came with the laptop was a 500GB SERIAL ATA II 2.5" HARD DRIVE WITH 8MB CACHE (5,400rpm). It came with an Integrated 6 in 1 Card Reader. I paid the small amount for the improved Thermal Paste ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME which I'd researched and was a well known brand and good reviews. The Sound Card is Intel 2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack which since I use headphone and a usb Cooling Pad with good built in speakers I wasn't worried about quality. The Wireless/Wired Networking GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® AC-7265 M.2 (867Mbps, 802.11AC) + BLUETOOTH were fine for me. And the USB 4 x USB 3.0 PORTS (1 x POWERED) + 1 e-SATA/USB 3.0 PORT COMBINED were more than enough for my needs. The Battery I had seen had some poor reviews due to longevity and also problems with them failing but since I use the laptop plugged in 80% of the time it wasn't really and issue so the Octane Series 8 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (82WH) was enough for my needs. The power cable that isn't the standard small pin in a side port pleased me as I'm aware how often these break and can fail so the way the octane connects to its power source is perfect for what I wanted. The keyboard looked good in the pictures but on arrival I found it to be very nice I like a backlit keyboard and found the keys responsive and well setup. The INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE was not that important as I tend to use a usb mouse whenever possible but I think it works well and it looks good. I've not had time to test the INTEGRATED 2.0 MP FULL HD WEBCAM but as I rarely use it it wasn't a concern on my purchase. As for the Warranty the basic option seemed fine but for a mere £5 I could get a 3 Year Silver Warranty (1 Year Collect & Return, 1 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour) which I thought was really good value. I paid £5 on the day before for a dedicated Delivery time due to work but the delivery was great regardless it was dispatched the day it was completed and arrived the day after. Now I paid for FAST TRACK 3 WORKING DAY DISPATCH and it was slightly expensive but £69 seemed like a good option to decrease the wait time as I'm not very patient haha. The laptop came with a Promotional Item FREE DYING LIGHT DIGITAL VOUCHER with GTX 965M / 970M / 980M GRAPHICS! which I thought was a nice touch as Dying Light is a new game and £40 on steam.
Ok now for my review, The laptop chassis is good the hinges for the screen are strong and well made. I've not had any problems lifting the screen when opening the laptop and the movement itself is very smooth. The material used for the touchpad and keyboard however isn't great it shows all marks smudges and I'm sure will wear quickly with use. However it is cool to the touch even after prolonged gaming. The laptop came with windows 8.1 installed but not activated as I selected this option to save money as I already have a retail copy of Win8. However the OS on the hard disk supplied had issues with making a system image to copy onto the SSD and to switch over. Upon installing said SSD and the RAM I found the access to this laptop to be great. The back panels are well secured but require very little to remove them giving you fast access to your laptop (as seen in one of the images below) Removing the existing RAM I decided to keep the 500GB HDD as a second backup drive while my OS was on the SSD as well as my games. Installing these was fast and easy which I was very pleased with. However I did end up having to re-install windows with my SDD as primary. This was quick though upon the laptop restarting it didn't look as polished as their install, an example being the boot screen message. I was given a disk with the drivers etc. necessary and I converted it onto a usb as the octane has no dvd rom which I'd hoped would reduce weight and create more space inside the laptop however upon looking inside realised there simply isn't room for one. I installed all the drivers easily but one problem has been that in device manager I still have an unknown device in my lists despite installing everything from the disk given as well as logging into PCS itself to check against the drivers there. I also noticed that the biometric scanner must have had more software on to begin with than the driver on the disk supplied. This meaning I cannot use it for online login's however I can login to windows with it through the windows software in win8. Upon getting the laptop running and problem free which did not take long really I immediately ran intels XTU to check the processer RAM etc and then to both stress test them and benchmark them against intels stats. The stress tests went brilliantly, I ran the processor for over and hour and the temps never ran hotter than 70 degrees. The RAM performed well also. I then began the process of re-installing Steam and my a few of my games. The first being Arma 3 as I have known it to be a very poorly optimised game and very high demands for the GPU. The game runs at 40fps on ultra setting which I could not believe. The laptop heat didn't go above 70degrees the entire time I was playing and the fans were barely noticeable throughout (if you manually set the fans to maximum you can hear just how loud they can run) I could not believe the results for that so I decided to run Dying Light which I've also heard is very demanding on the GPU. This again on full settings ran perfectly 40+fps without a stutter I played for 2hrs without the laptop making the slightest complaint. I do intend to run some benchmarks today and I'll edit this post to include them.
Overall I am extremely happy with my laptop, it is exactly what I wanted. It is quite heavy and bulky in the base but that was not a problem to me. The battery doesn't last a long time but it will very rarely be used on battery. The screen is great, great definition the IPS makes a great difference and even more so as it came as standard. The processor and gpu are exactly what I wanted and have matched every expectation and exceeded them if I'm honest. I couldn't be happier the guys got it to me within a week which I think is great work considering I ordered late on a Friday and received the laptop the following Thursday. I would recommend both PCS and the Octane series to anyone who is after a powerful gaming laptop.
Thank you also to everyone in the forums who helped answer questions and give reviews and recommendations PCS are lucky to have such a good forum where people are friendly and giving solid advice and experience to people be they beginner or advanced user.
Thank You PCS
