Review Eurocom Racer 3W (Clevo P151SM) Notebook

Case quality and design amongst Eurocom models are more or less very similar as the chassis are based on Clevo barebones. Surfaces are matte on all sides and slightly textured with a rigid feel that reflect the high-end status of the notebook. The rough texturing hides fingerprints and grease quite well at the cost of visual appeal; other workstations like the HP ZBook 15 or similarly sized DTRs employ brushed aluminum or glossy finishing to stand out from the crowd. Nonetheless, the manufacturer has managed to reduce the thickness of the chassis from 51 mm of the Racer 2.0 down to 43 mm.

In terms of weight, the Racer 3W is most similar to the Dell Precision M4800 (3.18 kg), lighter than an MSI GT60 (3.35 kg), and heavier than both the Precision M3800 (2.00 kg) and ZBook 15 (2.82 kg). Of course, the Racer is also more heavily equipped with stronger performance than these listed competitors as well.

Other physical aspects including hinge stiffness and base rigidity feel just right for a notebook this class. The lid, though still very good, could have been more rigid as we found it a bit on the easy side to twist back and forth. The right side of the notebook can also depress more easily than the left side due to the optical drive underneath and its hollow space. Beyond these minor complaints, we're generally pleased with the quality of the conservatively designed case.

Keyboard

Compared to the Racer 2.0, the Racer 3W has dropped the beveled layout in favor of the now more popular Chiclet setup (34 cm x 11 cm). This provides a cleaner look while increasing the distance between keys to reduce mistypes. Fortunately, travel has remained about the same if not a bit deeper than before for more satisfying feedback. Keystrokes are relatively quiet and the full-size arrow keys and numpad return from the previous Racer model.

On the downside, the wider spacing between keys has forced some rearrangements, specifically on the numpad. Whereas the older Clevo P150EM model has a numpad consisting of four columns, the Racer 3W has a numpad consisting of only three columns, so some keys like plus (+), star (*), and period (.) had to be shifted to different locations. Of course, users will quickly acclimate to the slight change after regular use of the keyboard.

Touchpad

The small size of the touchpad (8.5 cm x 4.5 cm) is a bit disappointing, though to be fair the Precision M4800 and MSI GT60 workstations have small touchpads not ideal for multi-touch use as well. Nonetheless, the competing ZBook 15 and Precision M3800 have touchpads with larger surface areas for easier mouse navigation.

Even so, the Racer 3W touchpad is responsive without any random jumps or noticeable lag. The hardware is powered by Synaptics V7.2 and the textured rough surface is identical to the surrounding palm rests and are separated only by the slight elevation change around the edges. Because of its diminutive size, it is a little too easy to bring up the Windows 8 right-column dock by accident during regular use.

The two mouse buttons immediately adjacent to the touchpad are also small and textured similarly, but the feedback and resulting audible click feel weak and lack the high quality tone that we expect from a workstation. The sound, for example, feels hollow and the buttons themselves feel thin. In terms of functionality, they are as responsive as the touchpad with few to no input errors.

Color space coverage is a measured 87.41 percent of AdobeRGB and 89.41 percent of sRGB with the X-Rite i1Pro Display 2, or close to the claimed 95 percent NTSC coverage. Results are similar to the display of the Eurocom Racer 2.0 as both models include panels appropriate for digital graphics work. This is compared to cheaper panels or workstations where 60 percent coverage or less is common.

Further display measurements were performed with an X-Rite i1Basic Pro 2 spectrophotometer. The display had a cool temperature and bluish tint before calibration as evident by the off RGB balance, which is common amongst many notebooks. This improved dramatically after calibration with a cleaner grayscale and better color accuracy across all saturation levels. Most colors remain around 5 DeltaE units or better from the ideal with green performing just a bit worse than others. Still, we recommend using the included calibration disc to further fine tune the display as needed.

Because of the limited number of consumer notebooks that carry an i7-4930MX option and the costs that such a configuration entail, we have few other notebooks with the same CPU in our database. In fact, the few that we do have are other Eurocom models including the Eurocom X3 and X7 with the Alienware 18 as our third.

The Racer 3W excels at multi-thread benchmarks with scores higher than the models mentioned above. For example, wPrime and CineBench 11.5 return scores of 217 seconds and 7.62 points, respectively, which essentially puts the notebook near the very top of our database with regards to these two benchmarks. Similarly, its high Fire Strike Physics score of 9824 points is matched by very few other notebooks.

Single-thread performance is a different story as the Racer 3W returns the slowest score of about 535 seconds in Super Pi 32M with respect to the notebooks above. Of course, "slowest" in this context is still faster than over 90 percent of consumer notebooks in the market, so this should not be a concern. Unsurprisingly, average scores all-around are roughly similar to the i7-3940XM.

PCMark 7 and PCMark 8 scores are some of the highest in our database yet again. With a final score of 6388 points in the former benchmark, this is very close to the maximum of 6624 points currently held by the Sony Vaio SV-Z13. The 13.1-inch Sony is able to edge out the Racer 3W with two SSDs in RAID 0 to balance out the lower i7-3612QM and HD 4000 specs. Similarly, PCMark 8 scores are close to those of the high-end Asus ROG G750JH and other notebooks with extreme hardware or RAID 0 configurations.

The standard Windows 8 Experience Index has been removed as of the Windows 8.1 update, but fortunately the scores are retrievable via PowerShell. The CPU, RAM and SSD share very similar scores implying a balanced system for heavy multi-tasking and workloads. The GPU is the bottleneck of the Racer 3W, though this can be seen as a compliment as the equipped K5100M is the fastest mobile Quadro card available as of this writing.

Only Nvidia Quadro options are available directly from Eurocom spanning the range of Kxx00M discrete cards. This includes the low-end K1000M, high-end K5100M and almost everything in between. Cards can be easily swapped and installed on the MXM 3.0b slot.

The K5100M in our configured model is a monster of a card with 8 GB GDDR5 VRAM, 771/900 MHz core/memory and a 100 W TDP. When idling or inactive, the K5100M will operate at only 135/162 MHz for power-saving purposes. Its massive amount of 1536 CUDA cores makes this GPU the workstation counterpart to the consumer GTX 780M. On paper, this makes the K5100M one of the fastest workstation cards.

Gaming-centric benchmarks like 3DMark 11 and 3DMark 2013 prove this statement despite the non-gaming focus of the Quadro card. The Racer 3W returns similar results as the Asus ROG G750JH, Maingear Nomad 15 and Alienware 17, all of which sport GTX 780M graphics and are the gaming crests of their respective manufacturers.

In real-world gaming scenarios, however, expect the K5100M to a notch slower than the dedicated GTX 780M gaming card due to unique optimizations of workstation cards and other software differences. The slower clock speeds of the K5100M compared to a standard GTX 780M (771/3600 MHz vs. 823/5000 MHz) are responsible for the lowered frame rates as well.

We stress the notebook with Prime95 and FurMark while running CPU-Z, GPU-Z and HWiNFO64 monitoring tools to observe any potential throttling or stability issues.

With only Prime95 active, the CPU was able to operate at a stable 3.4 - 3.5 GHz range. Compared to the base 3.0 GHz speed, the Racer 3W can maintain a stable Turbo Boost of about 400 - 500 MHz without issues under this condition. CPU temperature jumped quickly to about 90 degrees C.

With only FurMark active, the GPU was able to operate at a stable and consistent 770.8/900 MHz Core/Memory. While the memory on the K5100M is officially rated at 3600 MHz, GPU-Z normally reports half this effective value (if DDR) or even a quarter (if QDR). The reported 900 MHz suggests quad pumping per memory clock cycle of the GPU. In terms of temperature, the GPU rises more slowly and steadily before flat-lining at around 85 degrees C.

With both Prime95 and FurMark active simultaneously, the CPU was able to operate at a stable 3.3 - 3.5 GHz, but will infrequently drop to its base 3 GHz lasting for only a couple of seconds. Meanwhile, the GPU maintained its usual 770.8/900 MHz speeds and never dipped to slower numbers. Interestingly, GPU temperature dropped to about 78 degrees C down from >85 C, likely due to the overdrive GPU fan when both CPU and GPU processors are under high stress.

We experienced no instability issues during the stress test and a quick 3DMark 11 run immediately following the test returned no hints of throttling.

Running on batteries, however, will reduce 3DMark 11 scores from 7148 points to 3785 points (GPU) and 8763 points to 5136 points (Physics). This is due to the reduced maximum speeds of both the CPU and GPU to just 1.7 GHz and 405/400 MHz, respectively, if not on AC power. Not only is Turbo Boost disabled, but running on the High Performance profile will not lift the low operating ceilings of either processor.

The Eurocom model uses a 14.8 V removable Li-ion battery capable of outputting 76.96 Wh. The 8-cell module is the only size available with no denser or lighter options. This is compared to the 14.8 V 83 Wh battery of the ZBook 15 and 11.1 V, 61 Wh battery of the Precision M3800.

Our maximum battery life of almost 5.5 hours was recorded at minimum brightness with the integrated GPU and disabled wireless while running the Battery Eater Reader's Test. Similarly, our minimum battery life of about 1.5 hours was recorded at maximum brightness with the discrete GPU and active wireless while running the Battery Eater Classic Test. The more realistic WiFi test of about 3.5 hours puts the screen at 150 nits (setting 7/10) while looping our browser script to simulate typical browsing conditions under the Balanced battery profile.

Battery runtime is typical of workstations as it demonstrates the narrow range between the minimum and maximum - a stark contrast to the wide range of runtimes on Ultrabooks. Compared to the ZBook 15, Precision M3800 or GT60, the Racer 3W is about on par. Users can expect around 3 - 4 hours of continuous use for standard office work provided that the dGPU is inactive.