Full Desktop Gaming Performance in a Laptop
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
1,713 words · ~8 min read
0:00
huge laptops have never really been my
0:03
thing as many of you know my daily driver is a Razer Blade 14 but it's not
0:09
like I haven't noticed that as marvelous
0:12
as a thin and light with a GTX 970m still is it thermal throttles it's loud
0:17
and it still falls short of the True Performance of a desktop computer
0:22
something that many people desire in a mobile system so it is for those people
0:29
and the on who just like over-the-top Tech that I say stay tuned because the
0:34
Seer NP 9870 u2g is the fastest laptop I
0:38
have ever laid my hands
0:48
on Corsair's RMI series power supplies
0:51
feature premium components for great performance with very low noise check
0:55
out the link in the video description to learn more let's start with a look at
0:59
the outside of this Beast of a machine on the top of the shell is a chromed
1:03
plastic Sager logo and some software customizable lighting accents on the
1:08
bottom is W that is a lot of ventilation
1:12
holes there's one spot over here for the subwoofer but most of the rest of the
1:16
bottom of the unit and even some of the front is mesh kind of like my Halloween
1:21
costume that one year ioe I would describe as very good with dual killery
1:26
2400 GB land ports 3 USB 3.0 ports and
1:30
dedicated headphone mic Optical and line out audio jacks on the left SD more USB
1:35
3.0 Thunderbolt 3 with a type-c
1:38
connector yeah and a couple mini display ports on the right and finally HDMI and
1:43
yet another USB 3.0 port on the back
1:46
opening her up we find pretty much what we'd expect on a large all the bells and
1:52
whistles gaming laptop the wrist rest and keyboard area are plastic but
1:57
actually very sturdy the upward firing
2:00
speakers are loud and actually sound pretty darn good and while I wish the
2:04
touchpad was a little closer to the front edge the included fingerprint
2:07
scanner is a nice touch and it tracks really well finally the keyboard with
2:11
its software customizable RGB backlighting and macro functionality
2:15
gets a solid B there's a bit more keycap wobble than I'd personally like and the
2:20
travel action is a little mushy but it didn't affect my typing speed and it's
2:24
very very quiet which brings us to the
2:27
screen what can I say he nice this is a
2:31
17in 60 HZ IPS panel with NVIDIA g-sync
2:34
technology for a tear-free gaming experience and with a couple minutes of
2:39
tinkering I had it running at 100 htz on this sample unit that Sager sent to me
2:43
though your mileage may vary but if I'm going to say something outlandish like
2:48
this is the most powerful laptop I've ever laid my hands on then I'd better be
2:52
backing it up so let's crack her open and find out what treasures be inside
2:57
first things first that is a desk top LGA 1151 socket hidden away under all of
3:02
those heat pipes and connected to one of the three heat sink fin aays at the back
3:06
of the laptop's Chassy friends and it is full of none other than a full desktop
3:11
core i7 6700k Skylake quad core yep and
3:16
the Holy balls doesn't end there prying up the keyboard reveals two 16 gig
3:22
sticks of ddr4 memory giving this laptop a maximum capacity of 64 gigs portable
3:27
workstation anyone and while I'm not a huge fan of systems that are
3:31
preconfigured with the boot drives in raid zero that my friends is two of
3:36
Samsung's Fancy Pants new 256 gig nbme
3:40
950 Pro drives that are tearing up the benchmarks all over the Internet two of
3:44
them I mean using this thing is noticeably faster and more responsive
3:48
than even a standard SSD something that made more sense to me when I finally ran
3:53
Crystal dis Mark and realized that it was putting out sequential read and
3:57
write speeds of 2 to 3 gabt per second
4:00
holy actual flipping this puppy over things
4:04
get even better hiding away in this corner are a couple of 2 and 1 half inch
4:07
hard drivve slots that you can use to either configure the laptop with more
4:11
storage directly from Seager or upgrade later and yes finally the centerpiece
4:16
the desktop class GTX 988 gig that Luke
4:21
showed off back at NVIDIA's event has made its way finally to us this is a
4:27
really cool Unique Piece of hardware Ware first there's the fact that it's a
4:32
non-standard width which precludes any possibility of shipping an SLI
4:36
configuration in this chassi anyway even if Sager could figure out some way to
4:40
power and cool it and second is something that's not as obvious to the
4:44
naked eye the fact that it's really up to the individual notebook manufacturers
4:49
to determine how to tune the GPU for performance they can limit its power or
4:55
allow it to Thermal throttle a scenario that will still result in better
4:59
performance than a lesser GPU or they can throw six heat pipes at it like
5:04
Seager did in hopes of taming the Beast to the point where it runs exactly the
5:08
same as a desktop card so I ran it side
5:13
by side against a desktop test bench with the same Hardware to see just how
5:18
close they got and while it might be surprising to anyone who didn't see the
5:23
massive cooling solution inside this puppy I wasn't exactly floored to see it
5:27
perform literally exactly the same as my
5:30
desktop which doesn't take anything away from how impressive this kind of
5:34
performance is in what is certainly larger and heavier than a MacBook Air
5:40
but still a portable device but there's
5:43
more to a laptop too than its sheer FPS and I need to talk about the experience
5:48
as well in our standard Crisis 3 Skybox
5:51
thermal test sitting on the table at room temperature r980 hummed along at a
5:56
mere 70° while maintaining a rock solid boost clock of 1228 MHz I mean no wonder
6:02
this machine scores were so darn close to the desktop ones and on top of that
6:07
while the rear exhaust vents are quite toasty the keyboard and wrist rests stay
6:12
cool with the keyboard being the only part that's barely noticeably warm to
6:16
the touch sounds like a dream right I wouldn't know my ears are broken which
6:22
is a little unfair at least it's not the same high-pitched fan noise of the blade
6:26
14 but this is no g750 one either either
6:29
so if you were expecting the np98 7 u2g to be quiet! when it's under a 3D
6:34
workload then you'd be a little bit disappointed with your purchase but if
6:40
you were expecting a few hundred watts of thermal dissipation to sound like a
6:45
few watts of thermal dissipation and adjusted your expectations accordingly
6:50
would you be happy with this laptop I sure think so assuming you can
6:55
afford it as configured this machine costs well over 3,000 Us doll but even
7:01
if it's pricey what impresses me the most is that it's possible at all it was
7:06
only a couple of years ago that my team and I marveled at being able to take a
7:11
mini PC from shuttle with a core i7 3960x 16 gigs of RAM and a graphics card
7:17
with us to CES in a duffel bag with a 23in IPS monitor in someone's suitcase
7:22
so that we could edit our videos quickly and in high quality on the road and here
7:26
we are a mere few years later able to do the same thing or better with a laptop
7:32
holy crap right speaking of holy crap you know
7:36
what's amazing for $10 off your purchase of $50 or more you guys can go to
7:41
ifixit.com Linus and enter the code techtips at checkout hold on a second
7:46
line what's I fix it why would I want to buy anything there ah great question if
7:49
you've ever wanted to repair a tablet or a notebook computer or phone and you've
7:54
been like best guide for repairing device X the odds are excellent that you
7:59
ended up over on ifixit.com they've got all kinds of fantastic guides for
8:04
tearing down devices and repairing them replacing batteries to get the most out
8:08
of the stuff that you paid your good hard money for and the thing that most
8:12
people don't know and where the offer code comes in is that I fix it not only
8:16
has these guides but they've got all the tools you need suction cups prying tools
8:20
tweezers magnets hard to find screwdriver bits all that stuff
8:24
available on their site they' even got they even invented a tool to apply
8:28
consistent Heat directly to adhesive Laden case components so you can get
8:32
them apart it's called the eye opener ha cuz it's for opening eye devices anyway
8:37
um anyway don't worry about the jokes or the product names worry about heading
8:41
over to ifixit.com Linus and entering code techtips at the
8:45
checkout so thanks for watching guys if this video sucked you know where that
8:49
button is but if it was awesome get
8:52
subscribed if you're not already hit that like button or even consider
8:56
supporting us directly by using our affiliate code to shop at Amazon and
8:59
instructions are up there by buying a cool shirt like this one link up there
9:03
or with a direct monthly contribution through our community Forum which gets
9:06
you a little contributor badge now that you're done doing all that stuff you're probably wondering what to watch next so
9:11
check out that little button in the top right corner to see a video where I
9:15
build an 8 core desktop gaming rig with
9:18
a CPU motherboard and 16 gigs of RAM for under
9:22
$150 it's real