Did some research at Notebookreview awhile ago and I too purchased a NP8660 through Xotic PC and just got it shipped. While waiting, I wander around the net to see if any Malaysian bought it and got bump into your thread.

Its nice to see another Sager/Clevo user in Malaysia. My specifications are as the following;

15.4" WSXGA+, Intel® P9500, nVidia GeForce 9800M GTS 512MB, 4GB DDR3 RAM, 320GB 7200RPM HDD and normal DVD drive.

Paid for $1,980.74, picked the USPS shipping method without tracking number as it will cost me a good solid $2,093.26 with tracking number.

Thanks and yes I'm based in Malaysia, Labuan Federal Territory. About the arrival time, I don't know as its not here yet. Hope you get yours soon!

And Corad I just noticed you're also in Sarawak! I travel back and forth from Labuan to Miri to study, are you by any chances are oil platform workers or also a student?

Are you buying through XoticPC? I'm afraid there's only 2 options for international shipping which are the UPS and USPS. In both cases, they are expensive.

I personally would not recommend you if you're going after the NP2096 as you can get other brand with similar specification and most importantly, can buy it locally which save you from paying the huge amount of shipping fees.

I'm sure there's plenty of brand out there with the 9600M GT. A few that I remember are;

HP DV5T, Acer 5930G, MSI GX630 and BenQ Joybook S42.

I think there's more but i couldn't remember them all, try google them and be sure to look carefully at their specifications as there's various version of the same notebook which in some cases, doesn't come with 9600M GT

According to this, you can get it here. Else, your best bet is international vendor. Its pretty confusing for me but I believe its the chiliGREEN Mobilitas CU MH Serie but hey, I can be very wrong.

[EDIT]

Guess I'll update a little bit .


Shipping


It was shipped last Friday (19 December) and arrived this morning (26 December), took around 4 business days to arrive (Holiday @ 20,21,24 and 25 December). Pretty impressive I'll say as I live in Labuan ATM, an island that even not every Malaysian know . Thus I'm really risking the notebook to be stolen as it require plenty of transit in order to arrive at my place.


The Beast


Under construction!

Pretty much everything is the same with corad's 8660 so I'll not mention them but I'll add a few details that he didn't mention or I want to emphasize .

My Sager NP8660 came with the following specifications:

# Intel Core 2 Duo P9500 (2.53GHz/6MB L2 Cache/1066MHz FSB)

# Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit

# 15.4-inch WSXGA+ (1680x1050 Glossy Display)

# 4GB DDR3-1066 RAM

# Nvidia GeForce 9800M GTS

# 320GB 7200RPM SATA II hard drive

# Dual-layer 8X DVD burner

# 7-in-1 memory card reader (Standard)

# Intel Wireless WiFi Link 5300 + Bluetooth (Standard)

# 8-cell Li-ion battery (Standard)

The configuration's price came out to be $1,980.74. ATM of my purchase, the exchange rate was 3.59 thus I'm paying RM7110.86 in total (My dad told me he need to pay the charges of Pos Malaysia when the machine arrived but I'm not sure as ATM I'm too happy to remember lol, thought this will be helpful reference for anyone who need).

The reason I bought this notebook is because most of the gaming notebook out there exist in the form of 17" but I need a notebook that's able to satisfy my gaming needs with a relatively portable size. Hence, I came across the Alienware m15x and the Sager NP8660. In the end I got myself the Sager NP8660, I must say that this.notebook.is.rock.solid overall in term of built quality.

One thing that I'm disappointed is with the built quality of the lid. The inner lid is weak IMO, when pressure is applied, it will flex. Plus what ever the reason is, I can move my screen slightly around within the inner lid, that said the construction within is not tight. However, nothing is affecting the screen itself, its just that I've paid for 7k and there's such flaw but I can live with that.


The Beast - Silent Mode


There's a dedicated button on top of the keyboard to enable silent mode. When pressed, an icon will showed at the top left part of the screen to indicate its been turn on/off.

The name basically says it all, when Silent Mode is turned on, the fan will be stop spinning and create virtually no sound at all except of the sound the electronic parts give out (You need to pay real close attention to notice this). This mode especially help for people who constantly work in library as it will not disturb the people around. Note that you should never run any game or any resources intensive program under this mode.

Ok, after running my notebook on battery for an hour with silent mode turned on, I notice virtually no difference from the normal mode in term of battery life. This however, make sense as the fan doesn't need to kick in even when running on battery in normal mode.

The Design

Under construction!

The design is overall business-like, clean and professional feel with its brushed aluminum surface. The notebook itself is covered in black with silver trim, glossy part can be found at the outer edge of the inside lid and a thin strip surrounding the keyboard.

On top of the screen, there's the 2.0MP webcam.

On top of the keyboard, there 4 shortcut buttons which is the Default Email, Homepage, Silent Mode and Power Button.



And the bottom of the keyboard, is the keypad, fingerprint reader and mic.

The Screen

Under construction!

My NP8660 came with the WSXGA+ (1680x1050 Glossy Display) screen, different from corad's WUXGA (1920x1200 Matte Display).

The display is reflective but still viewable in office environment with lots of windows. I've yet to take it outdoor yet so I can't say anything about how the screen perform in outdoor environment.

The Heat

Under construction!

Note that Xotic PC's Sager NP8660 come pre-configured with Arctic Silver 5 thermal compound.

Below is the idle temperature with Notepal Infinite @ Max speed (Room temperature to be 29~30C).



And here's load temperature with Notepal Infinite @ Max speed (Room temperature to be 29~30C).



Although the HDD's temperature load at nearly 60c but its not that hot IMO when you touch the palm rest.

The cooling of the NP8660 is excellent as you can see from the pictures above it run cooler than my previous notebook with an 8600M GT (Topping at 80+) with only 5400RPM HDD (The palm rest of my previous notebook somehow feel hotter than my NP8660 although only topping at 50+).

Below is the inner component of the NP8660. I believe this picture is best posted under The Heat section for people to have better understanding of the cooling of the notebook itself. Note that the GPU is covered with a massive heatsink.

Picture source: www.xxodd.nl


The load temperatures show off the effectiveness of the single fan cooling solution and engineering skills of Clevo.

The Heat - Silent Mode

Under construction!

No more screen shot due to the image limitation... Orz

Anyway, after an hour running in silent mode, the temperature readings from HWMonitor are as the following;

ACPI Min @ 40C - Max @ 49C
CPU Min @ ~24.5 - Max @ ~38
GPU Min @ 35 - Max @ 44
HDD Min @ 34 - Max @ 54

ATM I'm doing internet surfing with my wireless turned on @ Balanced mode with brightness @ 40% and no other accessories are being plugged in.

The I/O Ports

Under construction!

Front Side: 1x Headphone-out, 1x microphone-in, 1x S/PDIF-out and 1x mini Firewire.



Back Side: 1x DVI-out, HDMI-out, 1x combined eSATA/USB, 1x USB, 1x power jack and 1x security lock slot.



Left Side: 1x Optical drive



Right Side: 1x 7-in-1 card reader, 1x ExpressCard/54 slot, 2x USB, 1x LAN jack and 1x phone jack.



The Performance

Under construction!

Please forgive me for not having any benchmarks as Streamyx is really slow ATM.

Different from corad's 9800M GT, my GTS perform 5~10% slower than his. In addition, its only 1~5 FPS lower in real world performance test.



You can check here if you want to find out more about the GT or GTS. Ranking at 10 and 11 respectively, losing only to the GTX, upcoming HD Radeon 4850 and all the other SLI/Xfire cards, it kicks all of the other ass out there .

One side note is that my P series CPU when compare to corad's T series CPU is it consume less voltage, run cooler, slightly longer battery life but slower in the same price range.


Conclusion


Under construction!

Pro(s):

# Unbeatable performance in the form of a 15.4" notebook.

# The touch pad surface is matte.

# IMO the right placement of the optical drive and hard drive in a notebook.

# No bloatware! (The Xotic PC version)

Con(s):

# No volume wheel or any multimedia shortcuts button (Play/Pause etc).

# The webcam is rubbish in low light environment (Or when it thinks its in low light environment).

# The speaker's sound is flat, mono-like and weak in volume.

# The size of the power brick can be troublesome.

# Relatively poor battery life, expect to be carrying the power brick around.

Subjective(s):

# No unnecessary flashy LED light(s).

# No touch sensitive button(s).

# The keyboard is pretty hard to press and feel cheap in plastic quality.

# The touch pad is relatively small.

To sum up, I'm happy with this machine , it deliver what I'm expecting from the 9800M GTS. At 7.1lbs/ 3.22kgs, it weight just as heavy as my previous 15.4" notebook but pack with a bigger punch. So no complaint carrying it around!

This post has been edited by N1-C: Feb 1 2009, 07:16 PM

Hahaha I can totally understand your feeling, as I mentioned earlier, it took 4 business days to arrive but its actually longer if I count the non-business day... the waiting really shorten my life span lol.

Don't worry I'm using the same shipping option as yours. After the machine arrived in Malaysia, USPS actually hand the goods to Pos Laju and they'll send it to you using EMS. My case though and no joking its really Express, pretty fast but I think my dad told me that he had to pay the EMS charges for me... Well... I'm still kind of over excited ATM so don't really remember lol, good luck!

@Corad

Lol I'm surprised we're in the same university. Good like in your next semester!

Or maybe not, just assuming as you use the same textbook I'm in Curtin... and I'm not Sarawakian lol.

Sure I'll glad to if I don't have other plan during that period of time.

[EDIT]

Just finish editing my review... for now . Will add more stuff and photo soon (So I hope). Thanks for linking my review, appreciate that.

This post has been edited by N1-C: Dec 31 2008, 03:43 PM

Not going to happen with the shipping fees sky high

The price is no more 6.1k as it require student discount to do so which only available during certain period of time. Not sure about the detail as I never come across such promotion.

However the US$400 discount will be over today, be fast.

Clevo made the barebone not Sager, they only put in the components.

You can see a official review here @ NotebookReview's forum.

That's pretty subjective and I'll stay away from it lol (Flame Wars FTW!).

Check out the chart @ page 11.

An estimated value will be 20% slower than 9800M GTX.

I've to apologize that I could not provide you with the settings that all the games that's running at. But generally it tells you the difference in performance between them. While yes, its odd enough for GT>GTS in the 9 series mobile cards.

[EDIT]

WTF @ Sorry, but you have posted more images than you are allowed to

WTF @ Unable to double post

These pictures are suppose to be inside my review but until I know how to get it fixed, its here. If anyone is interested, there's another 4 new pictures showing the I/O ports for the NP8660 but I've to apologize for the unprofessional pictures as I've only a digital camera with me.

The Size

Comparison of the size of my NP8660's and 5920G's power brick.





Comparison of the thickness of the NP8660 and with my 5920G stacking on top.







As you can see, the NP8660 is "longer" than typical 15.4" notebook but it will fit your 15.4" messenger bag/bag pack without any issue, at least with mine.

This post has been edited by N1-C: Jan 7 2009, 11:22 PM

Yes no doubt that SLI/Xfire is superior but the only concern is if they justify the price tag.

The Alienware M17/OCZ Whitebook would be a good deal if ATI's GPU is not CPU dependant. Throw in a mobile quad and yeah, its whole different story in price tag. If not they will win my money over the nVidia SLI if I'm searching for SLI/Xfire notebook in the market.

Sadly, my love is not enough for me to pay 3000~4000 USD for gaming.

This post has been edited by N1-C: Jan 7 2009, 11:29 PM

You should be able to get just around 6k with shipping if you choose the base configuration if you have an OS already. Just email them and request for a copy of driver disc for the version of your OS.

Its good enough for games, you can always upgrade your CPU/RAM/HDD later.

And further assistance is not possible as I'm on vacation for a week starting tomorrow, I'm very sorry about that.

However I do can give you a suggestion to look for Asus G50VT-X1 as an alternative, its will fit your budget while offering the weaker 9800M GS BUT still pwn 156s other GPU out there sitting at 13th place. However, as far as I'm concern, its not available in Malaysia yet, so you'll need to do some waiting but you gain the advantage of buying it locally.

One warning though, the Asus G50V comes with only 9700M GT which has big performance gaps between the 9800M series. Look carefully before you purchase, its G50VT not G50V.

This post has been edited by N1-C: Jan 7 2009, 11:56 PM

Go for the Asus and save you plenty of trouble... As much as my love to Sager, I would actually not recommend people here to buy it due to unavailability locally.

Check here if you're interested to know more about the Asus I'm mentioning.

My information about the availability is limited, try ask around in the forum there might be more knowledgeable people than me to answer your question.

Nevertheless, you're the guy who's making the decision, think properly but I remember the Xotic PC $400 discount will end today or tomorrow.

I'm back! From my exciting and lovely (read: boring and torturing) vacation!

Anyway, if anyone wish to purchase elsewhere or check local availability read here.

Fried motherboard? You might as well send the whole notebook back instead of buying the separate motherboard. Even if you found one, I doubt manufacturer willing to just "sell" you their motherboard and installing it yourself will require soldering in notebook case.

Yes of course they are different, 9800 GT =/= 9800M GT performance/size(?) wise. Its less likely to see the 9800M GT especially in NP8660 case to experience overheat provided you did not do some extreme overclocking/blocking the ventilation hole... I don't know, what other way can you think of torturing your notebook?

FYI, the 9800M GT (G92) desktop equivalent will be a faster 8800 GTS (G80) or an slower 8800 GT (G92) performance wise.

This post has been edited by N1-C: Jan 16 2009, 01:20 PM

Justin W was my sales representative during my order.