This crazy laptop can use the 16 core Ryzen 9 3950X processor! It’s a Clevo chassis
known as the THICC-15 from Eluktronics in the US, Apex 15 from XMG in Europe, or the
Prime-AI here in Australia from Metabox, and the performance on offer is on another level.
I’ve got two configurations for testing, both came with the 8 core Ryzen 7 3700X processor,
but you can select different ones when ordering, and I’ll be swapping this out with the Ryzen
9 3950X and Ryzen 5 3600 to see the differences.
My two units also have different GPUs and screens so we’ll be able to get some data
on the different options.
It’s got a brushed metal lid, while the interior and bottom panel seem to be a dark
plastic. The build quality is a solid average, nothing amazing but it gets the job done,
as is typically the case with many offerings from Clevo.
As you’d expect, a machine with this level of hardware inside is on the thicker side,
but at the same time it’s not too huge for a 15 inch laptop and is still somewhat portable.
My unit weighed in at 2.6kg or 5.8lb, and with the 230w power brick and cables for charging
this increases to under 3.5kg or 7.6lb.
The control center software lets you swap between different performance modes, which
from lowest to highest are quiet, entertainment, and performance. We’ve also got the option
of customizing the fan curve, or setting it to full speed.
Inside we’ve got those two fans and plenty of heat pipes.
For Processor upgrades, Metabox advised that this isn’t supported under their warranty
and is performed at your own risk, but they’re able to handle it for you.
In order to swap out the CPU, you’ve got to undo the 6 screws in the middle above the
CPU and GPU dies, then there are two phillips head screws on the left fan, and 3 on the
right fan, and the right fan should be taken out first. The left fan is attached to the
cooler, but both fans need to be unplugged from the motherboard before removing the cooler.
The cooler also has thermal pads covering VRM and GPU memory. All testing was done with
my own application of Noctua NT-H2 thermal paste for comparable results. Inside there’s
just a standard AM4 socket, so we’ll look at results with 3 different processors to
show you what’s possible.
Here’s how Cinebench performs with the three different processors that I’ve tested with,
unfortunately I don’t have the 12 core 3900X on hand for testing. The 3950X is really dominating
when it comes to multicore workloads, but what I found interesting was that the 8 core
3700X wasn’t that far ahead of the Ryzen 7 4800H in the Eluktronics RP-15. Meanwhile
the 6 core 3600 was doing better when compared to other good 6 core laptop chips.
Just for a bit of fun, I’ve also compared the difference between these processors running
in the laptop and in a desktop PC to give us some idea of how much performance is lost
in the laptop form factor. The 3600 multi core score wasn’t too different, but the
gap widens up the higher the core count. While the 3950X is a fair bit behind using the same
processor in the gaming PC, don’t forget as we just saw, this level of multicore performance
still destroys other laptops.
Here’s what temperatures look like with a CPU only workload running, the Blender benchmark.
Interestingly, things cool down the more cores we have, though the 3950X was a fair bit cooler,
presumably as it’s binned better. Although the 3950X has more cores, they also run at
lower clock speeds which would explain the difference in temperatures, as more power
is split over more cores. My 3950X didn’t seem to be running in the 60 watt ECO mode
in this test either, and when we look at the total power draw from the wall it’s only
using 5 watts extra than the same laptop but with the 3700X.
To put that into context, here’s how fast the blender render was actually completing.
The 3950X is much faster than the 3700X in this heavy multicore workload, despite only
drawing 5 watts more from the wall. Yeah the cores are clocked around 500MHz lower as we
just saw, but there’s twice as many cores, so in rendering tasks like this the extra
cores are still greatly beneficial.
If we instead look at a combined CPU plus GPU stress test, the processor temperatures
are of course hotter now, and the GPU temperature seems to rise with higher tier processors.
Clock speeds were similar on the RTX 2070, while CPU speeds were similar to what we saw
in the CPU only test. Here’s the package power reported for each, so no issue hitting
the 115 watt limit of the 2070 even with the 3950X.
Don’t forget that this machine just has one 230 watt power brick too, which is quite
impressive when you remember that others like the larger Alienware 51m has two 330 watt
ones or whatever, yeah it does have a higher wattage GPU and will do better in games, but
I think it’s still impressive.
When we look at how a game performs with the different performance modes in use, I wasn’t
seeing a difference between performance and entertainment in this game, while quiet mode
was a fair bit lower comparatively but still usable if you want a quieter system.
My BIOS doesn’t actually have all that many options, but XMG did tell me there was an
update by Clevo that unlocks a lot more settings, expect more control and customization.
In terms of future upgradeability, it hasn’t yet been confirmed if this machine will get
Zen3 support via a BIOS update. It uses the B450 chipset, so it would depend on if Clevo
does this, technically it’s possible, but yeah at the same time not confirmed so I wouldn’t
plan around that.
As for the external temperatures where you’ll actually be putting your hands, at idle it
was in the low 30s, pretty standard and cool. With the stress tests it’s low 40s in the
middle of the keyboard. Stepping up to entertainment mode is similar, just a bit warm in the center.
Performance mode is a little cooler now due to the faster fans, given the specs inside
and how hard they’re being hit this is quite impressive, but let’s have a listen to fan
noise.
The fans are audible at idle in quiet mode, but only just. It’s still relatively quiet
with the stress tests running, especially as we can still run games well enough in this
mode, as shown earlier. Things are much louder comparatively in entertainment mode, similar
to a lot of other laptops, then performance mode and max fan were the same in this workload,
it was now very loud.
Now let’s take a look at how this machine performs in some different games. I’ve tested
the 2070 model with all three processors, but only did the 2060 unit with the 3700X
that it shipped with.
In Battlefield 5 I’ve got all instances of this laptop highlighted in red. The three
bundled together are the same machine with the 2070, differences in average FPS are basically
within margin of error, though the Ryzen 5 3600 had a lower 1% low result compared to
the others with more cores. The 2060 system was getting about the same average FPS as
the MSI GL65 which also has the new 115 watt 2060, but the 1% low from the 3700X was a
fair bit higher than the 10750H.
These are the results from Far Cry 5 with ultra settings in the built in benchmark.
As more of a CPU heavy test the four results are closer together here. The average FPS
between the 2070 with 3950X and 2060 with 3700X is very close. The 3950X actually came
out worse in 1% low, which is something I’ve seen with this game before, it doesn’t seem
to know how to handle so many threads.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was also tested with the games benchmark tool. This test is
more GPU heavy, so the 2060 system is below the others, and again just a little ahead
of the GL65 with the same 115 watt 2060, presumably due to the desktop based processor. Again
the 3950X was performing a little lower than the others, though 1 FPS is margin of error
stuff, even if I am taking averages of three runs.
I’ve compared both of these laptops in about 15 different games if you want to see more
testing, just check the card in the top right or link in the description.
I’ve tested Adobe Premiere with the Puget Systems benchmark, and as expected the higher
tier processors are producing better scores, but even the lower options are still producing
great results relative to other laptops. The processor seems to matter more here, as the
3600 paired with 2070 is a fair bit below the 3700X with 2060, but again either way
the 3600 is still ahead of the other 6 core options.
I’ve also tested SPECviewperf which tests out various professional 3D workloads.
I’ve also got some results from 3DMark to further compare the 2060 and 2070 options.
You can either get the 15.6” screen in 1080p 144Hz for gaming, or a 4K 60Hz option with
better colours which would probably be the way to go for content creators. I did measure
the 4K panel with better colour gamut, but it wasn’t too far ahead, it was a bit brighter
and had better contrast ratio though. Neither screen had the option of G-Sync.
Response time of the 1080p 144Hz gaming panel was just under 8ms, so similar to a number
of others I’ve recently tested and not amazing but definitely not as bad as others either.
Backlight bleed was on the low side with either panel, but this will vary between laptops.
There was some screen flex when intentionally moving it despite the metal lid, the hinges
are out towards the far corners and felt sturdy.
There’s some chassis flex when pushing down hard, but this is a worst case and I never
had any problems during normal use. That said, this is the only laptop in recent memory where
I could feel the vibration of the fans with my hands resting on the keyboard, granted
this was only noticeable at higher fan speed.
Due to the heavier weight, there were no problems opening it up with one finger, and it felt
evenly distributed when sitting on my lap, if a bit weighty.
There’s a 720p camera above the screen in the center, no Windows Hello support though.
This is what the camera and microphone look and sound like, here’s what it sounds like
to type on the keyboard, and this is what it sounds like if we set the fan to max speed,
so the fan gets pretty loud but it does a good job of isolating my voice.
The keyboard seems the same as many others from Clevo, just one zone of RGB lighting
with minimal adjustments, though all keys and secondary key functions are illuminated,
and you can control brightness between 4 levels or turn it off through software or the shortcuts
on the numpad keys.
I liked typing with the keyboard, but the small right shift may annoy some. Here’s
how typing sounds to give you an idea of what to expect.
The precision touchpad doesn’t click down as it’s instead got dedicated left and right
click buttons. It’s smooth to the touch and works fine without issue.
Fingerprints show up easily, but as a smooth surface they’re easy to clean with a microfiber
cloth.
On the left from the back there’s a kensington lock, gigabit ethernet, two USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A
ports, and a micro SD card slot, bit strange it’s not full size given the larger machine.
On the right from the front we’ve got 3.5mm headphone and mic jacks, followed by a single
USB 2.0 Type-A port for some reason, and an air exhaust vent on this side.
There are a couple more air exhaust vents on the back at the corners, then from left
to right there’s a USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-C port with DisplayPort 1.4 support, no Thunderbolt
here, HDMI 2.0 and mini DisplayPort 1.4 outputs, and the power input.
As there’s no integrated graphics, all display outputs are connected directly to the Nvidia
GPU, and the Type-C port cannot be used to charge the laptop.
The front just has some status LEDs towards the left.
There’s some lighting on the sides of the lid, these holes are illuminated from the
screens backlight so cannot be controlled, but this will vary between regions as different
companies seem to have selected to sell theirs with different lids.
Underneath is clean, just some air vents towards the back, and a removable battery down the
front. You just need to take out two phillips head screws to take out the battery, otherwise
there are only 5 phillips head screws to remove in order to get inside. The bottom panel just
slides back after unscrewing, it’s very easy.
There are two M.2 slots on the left in the center, the WiFi card sits underneath one
of the SSDs, two memory slots towards the middle, and 2.5 inch drive bay on the right.
The speakers are under here too and sound ok, not bad, but not great, there’s some
bass. They didn’t get too loud maxed out, but I prefer quality over volume, and the
latencymon results weren’t looking great in either of my two units.
As Ryzen desktop processors don’t have integrated graphics, there’s no optimus equivalent
here, so we’re always using the power hungry Nvidia graphics. When combined with the desktop
tier processor, the battery life isn’t great, no surprise there, though as it is replaceable
technically you could have spares available.
I’ve used Crystal Disk Mark to test the storage, the 256gb SSD in my unit wasn’t
amazing, but this will of course vary based on the drive selection when ordering. The
MicroSD card slot wasn’t too bad, and the card sits most of the way into the machine.
For updated prices, check the links in the description, as prices will change over time.
At the time of recording, here in Australia we’re looking at a $2400 AUD starting price
for the 2060 model, which is around $1600 USD for my international viewers, but this
will of course vary based on the specific specs you select.
In the US, for the Eluktronics THICC-15, great name, we’re looking at around $2000 USD,
though they do offer it with more CPU options, less screen choice and no 2060 option though,
then from XMG in Europe there’s also decent CPU selection and you can pick either 2060
or 2070 like I’ve tested here. It’s worth noting that exterior panels may differ slightly
between regions, but the internals should all be the same.
Alright with everything tested let’s conclude by summarising the good and bad aspects of
this beast of a machine.
The processor performance is next level here, as we’ve got the option of sticking a desktop
grade processor inside. As a result, temperatures do get up there even with the beastly cooling,
but that’s pretty much always going to be the case with these sorts of desktop replacements,
it’s a trade off for the next level performance, and realistically when you compare it to some
others like say the Lenovo 7i the difference in thermals isn’t that much while the performance
difference is large.
This also results in it being on the heavier and thicker side, but honestly all things
considered I don’t think it’s that ridiculous, and it’s not as big as some of the 17”
9900K laptops I’ve used like the MSI GT76 or Alienware 51m. Seriously I could easily
see myself putting this thing in my camera bag and taking it on a trip, you know assuming
we’re ever able to travel again.
As you’d expect, high end specs result in poor battery life, look at it as more of a
built in UPS. The option of it being a removable battery is a unique aspect when compared to
most alternatives though.
In gaming the difference isn’t that big with the different processors I’ve tested,
as the Ryzen 5 3600 is already very capable, especially when compared to other laptop processors.
You could definitely start off with that and then you’ve at least got the option of upgrading
in future to more cores if you want, something most laptops don’t offer, and arguably what
makes this machine special and worth considering if you need processing power above all else.
A BIOS update for Zen3 support would be super impressive and I hope we see them do this
in future.
Let me know what you thought about this crazy laptop/desktop replacement down in the comments,
and if you’re new to the channel get subscribed for future laptop reviews and tech videos
like this one.