Sager

After the "reflow" of my P-7811FX I decided to start looking for its replacement. Initially I had debated building a desktop because of the cost but decided the portability outweighed the cost savings. Not being able to find a 17" laptop with a display comparable to my old laptop I stopped looking at the major laptop sellers and started looking at some of the boutique sellers. These tend to cost more due to their low volume, customization and services offered. During this search I came across an ODM (original design manufacturer) called Clevo who builds bare bones systems used by major companies such as Dell/Ailenware, Falcon Northwest, Hypersonic and VooDoo PC (HP). One of the lessor known companies that use Clevo bare bones systems is Sager.

Sager is known for building high end gaming laptops and while you can purchase one directly from them they are sold at the same price from multiple re-sellers who compete with each other by offering different customization features such as upgraded thermal compound, additional heat sinks, customized skins or even paint. Because laptops are so proprietary, and limited in upgradeability purchasing one is a fine line between what you need it to do and spending as much as you can afford. Adding the requirements for it to play games and the cost goes out of control.

The laptop that caught my eye and I ended up purchasing was the Sager NP 9370. I ordered mine built to the following specs:
• 17.3" Full HD LED 120Hz 72% NTSC Color Gamut Matte (1920 x 1080)
• Dual NVIDIA® GeForce™ GTX 680M's total 8GB GDDR5 in SLI
• 3rd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-3630QM Processor (6M Cache, up to 3.40 GHz)
• Genuine Microsoft Windows® 7 Professional 32/64-Bit Edition ( 64-Bit Preloaded )
• 16GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1600MHz - 2 X 8GB
• 750GB 7200rpm SATA 300 Hard Drive
• 6X BD-R Blu-ray Burner 8X DVD±R 2.4X +DL Super Drive
• Intel® Centrino™ Ultimate-N 6300 - 802.11A/B/G/N Wireless LAN Module
• Removable Smart Lithium-Ion battery pack (8 cell)
• Integrated Fingerprint Reader

This laptop on release last summer was the most powerful commercially made laptop available, since then it has been surpassed by at least one I am aware of and its even questionably a laptop. It is made by Clevo (9570), uses desktop components, needs two power bricks to power it, 2.5" thick and weighs in excess of 12lbs (not including the two huge power bricks).

After receiving my new laptop I installed another 8GB of DDR3 in the remaining two slots to bring the total up to 24GB. I also installed a 128GB Samsung SSD, both of which were from my old laptop.

Sager while being known for performance gaming laptops is not known for flashy looks and in some cases borderline fit and finish, this is reflected in the cost of their systems. I am fine with that because the performance of this system is incredible.

I could have purchased it with one GTX680 GPU and had a laptop capable of playing any current game at all but the most extreame settings. Instead I chose to spend the cash and get two of them in the system. This is overkill for anything but gaming but in my mind extends the useful life of the system.

The GPUS are under the fan/heatskink assemblies on the left and right sides of the laptop. They are the fastest currenly available mobile GPUs and are replaceable cards. The Quad Core i7 is cooled by the fan/heatsink assembly in the center.

The one glitzy feature that it does have is a programable backlit keyboard, which does everything from a standard color to disco lighting.



Up till now I have not been able to spend a lot of time with it, but I am very happy with what I have seen so far.