Schenker XMG Apex 15: A love-hate situation

While Intel was resting on its laurels for the past few years, its main competitor AMD has slowly managed to overtake its opponent in terms of processing power. The 65-Watt Ryzen 9 3900 that our test configuration of the Apex 15 was equipped with shows no mercy. Its performance advantage according to CPU benchmarks such as Cinebench is gigantic - at least when it comes to multi-core performance.

However, this excellent speed comes at a price: The 15-inch notebook is very loud at medium to high load. So loud, that even a headset cannot keep it out. Unless users set the device to quiet mode in the Control Center, the cooling fans are very present even while idling and occasionally turn up for no apparent reason. This comes at no surprise when you look at the CPU temperatures. According to our measurements, the AMD chip lacks good energy-saving mechanisms. Apart from the fact that the barebone manufacturer Clevo is generally known for their lax approach when it comes to fan control. 

Find out more advantages and disadvantages of the Apex 15 in our complete review. Review Clevo P170SM-A (One K73-4N) Barebones Notebook