Illegear RX-17 1-month review

Foreword

A few words before we start. Like most other 17-18 inch desktop replacement laptops, the RX-17 is not something for the budget conscious. Lets face it, if you want something that delivers decent gaming performance at a reasonable price, you’d be looking at something like Lenovo’s ideapad Y500 sli model, Alienware’s M14x or MSI’s GX60.

The RX-17 is something you look at when you want the performance of a mid-range gaming desktop married to the portability of a laptop. I decided to pick one of these up because I travel frequently, and I needed the portability and I wanted the power.

Even a near bare-bones version of the RX-17 will run up to over RM7,500. It certainly isn’t cheap. Now with that in mind, lets move on to the review.


Tech Specs

Display: 17.3" Full HD LED-Backlit Display with Matte Finished Surface (1920 x 1080)
Processor: 3rd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-3630QM Processor
Graphics Card: Dual 4GB Nvidia Geforce GTX 680M in SLI
RAM: 16GB Dual Channel DDR3 SDRAM at 1600MHz - 2 X 8GB
Primary Hard Disk Drive: Western Digital Scorpio Black 500GB 7200rpm SATA2 Hard Drive
2nd Hard Disk Drive: None
mSATA SSD Drive: Crucial 128GB M4 Series mSATA SSD - Preconfigured as an OS Drive (Primary Drive C)
Optical Drive Bay: 8X DVD±R/RW/4X +DL Super-Multi Drive & Software
Wireless Network Card: Killer™ Wireless-N 1202 802.11 A/B/G/N Wireless LAN + Bluetooth 4.0 Combo Module
Operating System: Genuine MS Windows® 8 64-Bit Edition

Introduction

The RX-17 is basically a rebranded Clevo P370EM. It is built for dual GPU’s, much the the M17x R2 and the M18x. Illegear’s RX-17 comes in either 7970m crossfire or 680m sli flavours.

I will attempt to give an honest review and opinion on the machine. I will not however include photos. If you want photos of the RX-17 feel free to check out Illegear’s official page in Lowyat’s Mobile Computing forum


Box and packaging

Illegear double boxes its products, with the Illegear box outside and the original clevo box containing the laptop and other bundled items on the inside. You basically get the power brick, a plastic bag with windows 7 and windows 8 user manuals and CD’s with necessary drivers and the laptop of course. There is sufficient padding to keep the laptop safe through the shipping process.

I felt that it was reasonably well packaged and have no complaints.


Laptop build quality and hardware overview

On the whole, I’d say that the RX-17 has a pretty good build quality. The screen lid and wrist rests are covered in a nice rubberized finish, and is very pleasing to the touch. The bottom of the laptop case is a hard textured plastic, and the area around the keyboard is brushed metal. The heatsink covers have a nice chrome finish on the edges too.

My only complaint is that scratches on the rubberized surfaces are noticeable. Don’t run keys/sharp metal objects against the rubberized areas of the laptop or you’ll have a very annoying scratch mark.

The matte 1920x1080 FHD screen is pretty nice. Unlike the glossy displays boasted by Alienwares machines, the RX-17 is quite usable in brightly lit areas (My M17x R2 on the other hand is practically useless if exposed to bright light). The screens colors are nice and vivid, and are pretty good for a laptop screen.

Moving on to the speakers, when properly configured the laptops Onkyo speakers, subwoofer and Sound Blaster’s X-fi MB2 software deliver a solid sound experience. I felt that my music sounded pretty good and that games sounded rich, though songs with a deep booming bass can cause the subwoofer to distort.

Typing on the RX-17’s keyboard isn’t a horrible experience. The keys give decent tactile feedback and have a decent click noise when pressed. My only problem with the keyboard is the I find that the right shift button and backspace occasionally do not register.

The keyboards backlighting is divided into three sections and is quite pleasing to the eye. You can also set the keyboard to flash random colors, light up in a pattern and so on. You have a choice of 8 colours for the backlighting. All in all, I’d say the keyboard is pretty decent.

The touchpad has a slick glossy finish and is similar to the “buttonless” touchpads you see on macbooks. It is quite responsive and it isn’t really a chore to use.

The laptop’s powerbrick however is an absolute monster. On a positive note, if someone wants to rob you you can probably club them to death with it. On a negative note, its heavy as hell. Luckily for those of you who might want to pick up an RX-17 in the future, Illegear has recently released a new powerbrick which is slightly slimmer and quite a bit lighter.

Overall weight according to notebookcheck is 4.252 kg for the laptop and 1.544 kg for the power supply. Needless to say, you’ll need a good and comfortable backpack/carrying case to carry this beast around.

personally, I am satisfied with the laptops build quality. it is solid enough, and the hardware works well. I do however wish the build quality was abit better, but I think the anodized aluminium of the M17x R2 has spoiled me there

Battery Life

Firstly, you are unlikely to be playing much of anything on this laptop if it is not plugged in. Disconnecting the laptop utterly cripples the performance of both GPU’s.

If you are only surfing the net with the wifi on, the battery can roughly last you 2 and a half hours.

Watching a HD movie at 50% brightness, you can squeeze roughly 2 hours of power out of the battery.


Network connectivity

The Killer-Wireless-N 1202 is a very impressive bit of kit. On a unifi 4mbps wireless connection, I was able to maintain a 200ms ping in League of Legends NA and download torrents at the lines maximum speed while being 20-30 meters away through several walls.

The Killer Network Management software also allows you to monitor and control the bandwidth that each of your applications uses. While this doesn’t sound like much, if you are sick of your utorrent hogging 90% of your bandwidth while your Steam game download is crawling along only using 10%, you will find it to be quite useful.


Under the hood: Cooling and Layout

The RX-17 has a very accessible layout. Everything but 2 of the RAM slots are accessible by unscrewing the bottom panel.

This makes maintenance very easy. Just unscrew, spray compressed air into the fans and heatsinks to clear them and you are done.

Changing components is also quite straightforward as a result.

Cooling wise, the main GPU has its own fan, and the slave GPU and CPU share a fan together. As a result, the slave GPU and CPU tend to have higher temperatures. With the GTX 680m sli setup, I haven’t found heat to be a major issue. The highest temperature so far has been 85 celsius on the slave GPU while running Kombustor. Temperatures that high are very rare when running actual games. The main GPU runs super cool, with only low 70’s celsius when under heavy load. The 7970m however is another story, and I will cover it later on.

While I am told the M18x has a better cooling system, the RX-17’s cooling system is sufficient to keep the hardware at a reasonable temperature.


Red vs Green

One of the biggest decisions you will have to make when deciding whether to buy an RX-17 or not is what set of GPU’s you will get.

During the one month and 2 weeks I’ve had with this laptop, I’ve had the opportunity to use both the Radeon HD 7970m Crossfire as well as the Nvidia Geforce GTX 680m in SLI.

The RX-17 does not have either Enduro or Optimus enabled. Enduro is AMDs switchable graphics technology, and Optimus is Nvidia’s. In theory, switchable graphics technology allows the laptop to switch to the integrated GPU on the laptops CPU when unplugged, allowing for longer battery life and some low powered gaming activity.

Unfortunately, in practice this is not always the case. AMD’s Enduro in particular is notoriously buggy, and there are numerous reports of 7970m users experiencing poor gameplay even when plugged in because the GPU decided to run off the integrated CPU graphics instead of the discrete GPU.

While the lack of Enduro and Optimus means you can’t really game on the go with the RX-17, it also means that you won’t run into any switchable graphics issues.

After a month and 2 weeks worth of testing and research here are my conclusions:

Radeon HD 7970m Crossfire

Firstly, the Radeon HD 7970m is a very very cost effective card. For example, for the cost of a single Geforce GTX 680m you can almost buy 2 HD 7970’s. This makes it a very tempting option, as a 7970m Crossfire system is significantly cheaper than a 680M SLI system.

In addition, when it is working properly the 7970m is simply a powerhouse GPU. As of 13/02/2013, the 7970m can keep up with the 680m in most games with the 13.1 WHQL driver release. AMD’s 13.2 beta release also claims that it can fix the 7970m’s stuttering issues with directx9 games like Skyrim.

The 7970m has strengths outside gaming. For 3D rendering, bitcoin mining and synthetic benchmarking, the 7970m actually outperforms the 680m.

There are problems though. The 7970m can be a very temperamental card. During the month I was using them, I had the 7970m’s crash, bsod or lock up the system on certain applications and system monitoring tools.

Another huge problem for me was the heat. On graphics intensive games such as Metro 2033 on ultra settings or stress test tools like Furmark or Kombuster, the slave GPU could easily go up to 95 celsius in temperature within 15 minutes and stay there. At that point I would simply shut down the test and leave the laptop to cool off as I did not want to fry my GPU. While the GPU can handle temperatures up to 100 celsius I honestly would advise against it as the stress it puts on the GPU is significant.

While I could have turned down the graphics settings, what would be the point? That is like buying a Ferrari and having the salesman tell you not to drive it over 80 km an hour or it will explode. You don’t drop RM7.5k+ on a laptop and be forced to limit yourself.

The last problem I had with the 7970m’s is the fact that in terms of driver releases, AMD has alot of work to do. When running the latest drivers still doesn’t give me a stable performance, it is a very disappointing.


Geforce GTX 680m SLI

First things first, the Geforce GTX 680m is not a cheap GPU. AT ALL. It costs significantly more than the 7970m and honestly, in a situation where all things are equal, the 680m and 7970m are often neck in neck in terms of performance.

Yet if you were to ask me what card I’d pick, I’d honestly say the 680m every time.

Lets start with gaming performance. Nowadays you see alot more games with the “Nvidia: The Way it’s meant to be Played” program logo than the “AMD Gaming Evolved” program logo. More and more games are being optimized with Nvidia products in mind, and going with the 680m means you are future proofing yourself.

The 680m may lose to the 7970m in synthetic benchmarks, but in terms of actual game performance the 680m often performs better than the 7970m. Also, the 680m is amazingly stable. Games which used to crash or lockup with the 7970m were very stable with the 680m, Anno 2070 in particular.

you only need to take one look at any major tech site and you’ll see what I mean. There are always many threads discussing various 7970m issues, but almost none discussing the 680m.

Next up is software. Nvidia updates their drivers quickly, and most of the latest driver releases are quite stable. Nvidias Geforce Experience software also makes optimizing your game settings a breeze. Just press one button and your game will be optimized for your system.

In terms of stability in the week I’ve been using my set of 680m’s I have not suffered from a single crash, lockup or bsod. In the first week of 7970m usage on the other hand, I had to do a clean windows install three times and was constantly changing my drivers. And even the stable drivers occasionally suffered from a crash or lockup.

Lastly, heat. The slave gpu of my 7970’s could hit 95+ celsius within 5-10 minutes of running MSI Kombustor. My 680m slave GPU doesn’t go past 85 celsius even after 15 minutes of Kombustor. An 85 celsius heat ceiling when running high intensity applications is pretty safe.

Overall, the 680m’s are a solid buy if you value your peace of mind. They are stable, perform extremely well and Nvidia’s software support is top notch. The only drawback is their price, but I can honestly say they are well worth the money.


Illegear service review

After market reseller service is pretty important these days, especially for clevo laptops. I had an opportunity to interact will Illegear’s customer service when I sent my laptop back to them to look into the overheating issue with my 7970m’s.

It was a pleasure to interact with them and they were very patient even though I asked alot of questions

Service time was good. It took roughly a week to thoroughly stress test my laptop, fix the overheating issue and swap my 7970m’s for a pair of 680m’s. It would probably have taken faster but cash transfer times extended the process by 1 or 2 days.

The laptop was shipped back to me for free via airpak-express and arrived just 1 day after illegear emailed me the shipment number.

I personally found their service to be good and I’d happily deal with them again


Conclusion

The only thing I have to say in regards to Illegears Rx-17 is this : Go big or go home.

The RX-17 is an extremely powerful machine for gaming, but is probably overkill if you are looking for just a multimedia laptop.

With two high end GPU’s running in crossfire or sli, there is no game the RX-17 cannot run. You can simply set your settings to maximum on most modern games and enjoy the smooth frame rates and rich graphics.

Personally, the make or break deal for me was what GPU’s to use. The 7970m’s are amazing when they work, but I personally found them too much work. Having to constantly update and fiddle around with drivers and heat issues was too much of a pain in the ass for me.

The GTX 680m’s on the other hand are simply amazing to use. Just load up Nvidia’s Gefore Experience software and let it handle all the driver updates and game optimizations for you and you won’t need to worry about a thing.

However, the laptop is extremely expensive with the GTX 680m sli setup, running near RM 10,000. But if you want to absolute best from the laptop while not wanting to worry about drivers and heat, the 680m sli setup is hands down the way to go.

Illegear’s after sales service good, and they have lived up to the promises they made on their website in regards to service (at least for me ).

Personally I do not regret buying this laptop, as it is currently fulfilling my needs; extreme performance and portability. itt gets a from me


Pros

-Incredible gaming performance
-Laptop runs extremely fast
-Very easy to maintain
-Straightforward to upgrade
-Killer wireless card provides very good wireless connectivity
-Good after market service (So far!)
-No Enduro or Optimus performance issues


Cons

-With the power brick, it’s pretty heavy
-Very expensive. Might not be the most cost effective.
-7970m setup is crippled by heat issues
-680m setup is stupidly expensive
-Build quality could be a little better
-Its not very mobile and needs to be plugged in for best performance

This post has been edited by Catavatar: Feb 13 2013, 04:41 PM

Benchmarks

3DMark 11:

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/5899277


Unigine Heaven 3.0:



This post has been edited by Catavatar: Feb 13 2013, 04:37 PM


Attached thumbnail(s)

more like a desktop replacement duh

adding some picture would be a droool

TS should post some pictures to poison us

This post has been edited by tennytyy: Feb 13 2013, 06:30 PM

Here's the review with pictures of Eurocom Scorpius (rebranded Clevo P370EM)

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?...us+clevo+p370em

I didn't put pictures up because I have no camera lol

There are some RX-17 pictures here: http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/2613184/+220

Just scroll down a little

Very much thank you for your nice review

I think other forumers want to see how TS's RX-17 setup look like, the pics I pasted in the thread were taken by ILLEGEAR staff.

For others' convenience :











This post has been edited by Prince J: Feb 14 2013, 03:40 PM

That's one mean looking machine

Yea... Hope it includes Optimus... or else I would have got it..

I love the chrome touch around the ventilation vent. Very good review in overall.

Also you didn't cover regarding the sound produced during full stress. I am curious about that too; and since you have M17x-R2 previously, you can use sound generated from Alienware to compare with your current RX-17.

The ventilation vent looks cool

Sound is pretty loud with full fan load, but it will not overpower the laptops onboard speakers

RX-17's internal layout.







This post has been edited by Prince J: Mar 13 2013, 12:14 PM

RX-17 has got its new smaller and lighter adapter (2kg). The old adapter weighs 3kg! This pic shows the size different between the RX-17's old adapter (3kg) and new adapter (2kg).

awesome.. illegear is the best.. im using r-11 and i totally love it. may illegear success in future.

I hope ILLEGEAR has a BIG PROMOTION for RX-17! (looking to buy a new laptop .. 2 weeks to go and still deciding)

Hi jbudz1984, kindly drop me a pm and we can discuss further about this

Agree. Illegear laptops are amongst the most high quality laptops I have ever used.

Thank you

By the way, which ILLEGEAR model are you using?

I not yet buy yet, but my friend lent me his R-11 for a few months, and I was really impressed by the performance. Planning to get myself an R-11 soon.

This post has been edited by Cranky guy: May 22 2013, 05:13 PM

Hi,

would like to pay a visit on this babe physically. Can PM the shop address available in KL/PJ area? Thanks.

THANK YOU... for RX-17 review... this just add 35% on decision making towards Illegear RX-17

i thought you are happy with your dragon.
best spec out there than the overpriced alienware.

i am happy with dragon, but dual gpu, is DUAL GPU... cause at moment i am also looking at built my own Desktop rig..

i suggest you to use the money you used to buy RX-17, use it for build a desktop rather than a desktop replacement. the money use to buy a RX-17 can build a custom water cooled rig with best specs.