Schenker XMG U727 (Clevo P870DM3-G) Notebook Review

At first glance, the case does not differ from the predecessor. Barebones manufacturer Clevo once again uses aluminum for the (not very sturdy) lid, while the very pressure-resistant base unit is made primarily of plastic. Looking closer, however, you can find some new aspects compared to the old model. While the fingerprint scanner was moved from the mouse buttons onto the touchpad (not very clever in our opinion), Clevo also improved the port selection and the internals – but we will cover these aspects later.

The desktop replacement was not designed to be carried around a lot. Weighing almost 5.5 kilograms (~12 lb) tends to limit you to the desk. But the 17-inch system is not only very heavy, it is also extremely big. With a height of 4.7 centimeters (~1.85 in), the XMG U727 is one of the thickest laptops you can buy. However, other gaming notebooks like the MSI GT73VR or the Asus G752VS are also close to 5 centimeters (~2 inches), and they are only equipped with one GPU.

The integrated card reader supports the standards SD, SD Mini, SDHC, SDXC, MMC, and RSMMC. We measured a very good performance with our reference card from Toshiba. Almost 200 MB/s sequential read and 158 MB/s for the transfer of a 1 GB picture folder show the competition what is possible. Even the 18-inch monster MSI GT80S 6QF cannot quite keep up. The majority of gaming notebooks (like the Asus G752VS) manage 100 MB/s at best.

Depending on the configuration, you get a WLAN module from either Intel or Qualcomm Atheros. Our device was equipped with the Killer Wireless-AC 1535, which costs 20 Euros (~$22) more and supports WLAN 802.11 b/g/n/ac as well as Bluetooth 4.1. The signal quality of 593 Mbps (send) is the best result we have measured so far. The receiving performance on the other hand is mediocre. The XMG U727 fluctuated between 60 and 600 Mbps in our server test and did not level off at a constant level. The 361 Mbps in the table below represent the highest average value from multiple attempts (best-case scenario).

In addition to the Kensington Lock and the fingerprint scanner, the XMG U727 is also equipped with a TPM 2.0 chip.

The accessories of our review unit (pre-production) should not be similar to the final product. Our box included an XMG sticker, a cleaning cloth, a recovery DVD, a driver DVD, thermal paste and two covers for the 2.5-inch drives.

Clevo deserves a lot of respect for the good end-user maintenance. You do have to remove the whole bottom panel and push it back from the front to the back (which requires some skill and force) before you can access the components, but it is worth the effort. Under the hood you will find the gigantic cooling system consisting of three fans, eight heat pipes and multiple metal plates covering the CPU, GPUs and the rear of the chassis. The cooling system is unfortunately so huge that replacing the processor (socket 1151) and the GPUs (MXM) would need a lot of time and probably be too challenging for inexperienced users.

The situation is better for the battery, the primary memory slots and the 2.5-inch trays. The latter are hidden underneath the Pascal chips, so you will have to trust the engaging sound and the position of the bracket when you upgrade them. If you want to use three or four memory modules or access the M.2 slots, you will have to remove the keyboard. There is one labeled screw (K/B) on the mainboard. After you have removed it, it is possible to push out the keyboard with a sharp object through the hole (watch out for cables!).

The base warranty period is 24 months including quick repair for 6 months. You can extend this all the way up to three years (+360 Euros/~$402) with quick repair for the whole period (+60 Euros/~$67).

Due to the relocation of the fingerprint scanner, the touchpad was slightly reworked. The surface with the dimensions 10.8 x 6.2 centimeters (~4.3 x 2.4 in) now has an indentation in the upper left corner, which occasionally annoyed us a bit in practice (not least by the visuals). Otherwise, the handling reminds us of the XMG U726. Thanks to the smooth finish, the gliding capabilities are decent and the precision is not bad, either.

Multi-touch gestures are obviously supported as well. You can comfortably zoom and scroll contents with two fingers. The latter was a bit tricky during our review. Gamers on the other hand should be happy about the slight shift of the touchpad to the right, so it is not directly aligned with the space bar. Thanks to the large palm rest and the location of the keyboard pretty far at the top, gaming sessions are very comfortable. The ergonomics would be even better with a slimmer chassis though.

We already know and love the 4K display from the predecessor. The AU Optronics B173ZAN01.0 is a 17.3-inch AHVA model, which – based on the Acer Predator 17 G9-793 – is also certified for Nvidia's G-Sync technology by now (avoids tearing and creates a smoother picture), but is not supported by the review unit.

You do not have to worry about the viewing angles, either. IPS displays are known for their wide viewing angles. There will only be deviations from angles from above or below. The panel refresh rate is 60 Hz.

No compromises would be a good summary for the performance concept. Schenker only uses components that can compete with full-fledged desktop PCs. This starts with the processor and continues with the graphics performance as well as the number of storage drives. Our test model was equipped with DDR4-2400 RAM from Apacer, which is designed for gamers and supposed to be good for overclocking in particular. The configurator does not list this option yet.

The Core i7-6700 is one of the more frugal models rated at 65 watts, while the top models Core i5-6600K and Core i7-6700K are specified at 91 watts, which is basically twice as high as your regular notebook quad-core from Intel (45 watts). Another issue is the enormous power consumption. The XMG U727 does not last very long without a socket.

Advantages for the desktop chip are the socket principle and the higher base clock. At 3.4 GHz, the Core i7-6700 can easily beat the Core i7-6700HQ (default: 2.6 GHz) and the Core i7-6820HK (base clock: 2.7 GHz). The differences are smaller when you look at the automatic overclocking via Turbo Boost. The Core i7-6820HK is 400 MHz and the Core i7-6700HQ 500 MHz slower than the 4.0 GHz of the desktop chip. All the comparison devices in the table are overclocked ex-works, so the advantage of the desktop CPU is gone.

The system performance was a bit weaker than expected. Despite high-end components and PCIe-SSD, PCMark 7 only determined an overall score of 6605 points. This is a great result, but some rivals manage more than 7000 points. The predecessor XMG U726 is also ahead by a couple of percent. We suspect the Solid State Drive or its firmware, because AS SSD determined very low write results. That the Samsung 950 Pro is a capable drive and among the fastest M.2 modules is confirmed by CrystalDiskMark.

In the past, you had to combine two Solid State Drives in a RAID 0 system to manage sequential transfer rates of more than 1000 MB/s. Thanks to PCI-Express, this is not necessary anymore. The 512 GB version of the Samsung 950 Pro even manages more than 2000 MB/s for sequential reads. The 4K performance of the NVMe model is not bad, either. Samsung's SM951 inside the XMG U726 is about 15% slower on general, and the Toshiba drive of the Asus G752VS cannot keep up in many tests, either. The RAID systems of the MSI GT73VR and GT80S on the other hand are between 20 and 30% faster.

You should still not notice any differences in practice. Boot times, loading times or application launches: The important aspect is having a somewhat modern Solid State Drive. Particularly fast solutions can still pay off for users with special requirements. To make sure we have sufficient storage space, Schenker also equipped the test model with two 2 TB hard drives in a RAID 0 system (Samsung Spinpoint M9T). Up to 270 MB/s are great for conventional hard drives.

You can certainly argue about such an investment. Except for the cost, such a dual-GPU configuration also affects the power consumption, heat and noise development and introduces other issues like micro stutters and driver dependency. If a title does not support a second graphics card or if there is no corresponding driver profile yet, the performance will be stuck on the level of a single GPU system. The frame rate could even be worse compared to a single GTX 1080. We only checked games with SLI support for our benchmarks.

Synthetic graphics tests like 3DMark 2013, which are specifically optimized for dual-GPU systems, show lower-than-expected results. The XMG U727 is about 130-140% faster than a notebook equipped with the GeForce GTX 1070 and more than 200% faster compared to a GeForce GTX 980 laptop. An SLI system of the old top model falls behind by 70-80%. These advantages are much smaller in practice when you play games, so you should think hard about such a setup.

Games that are too challenging for other devices are an easy task for the XMG U727: 3840x2160 usually run smoothly even at high details. Even really demanding titles like Rise of the Tomb Raider, The Division and Mirror's Edge Catalyst are accelerated to more than 60 fps by the SLI system. If you look at all the games (UHD setting), the advantage is +130% compared to a GeForce GTX 980, +100% compared to a GeForce GTX 1070 and +50% compared to the GeForce GTX 1080. Two GTX 980 chips fall behind by around 20%.

There are hardly any similarly powerful alternatives right now. Only the Asus GX800VH and the MSI GT83VR, which will be available with the GTX 1080 SLI as well, should be able to compete with the XMG U727. We installed the latest driver version 372.70 from Nvidia's homepage.

The fans are often completely deactivated while idling, so you will only hear the murmur of the HDD(s). Samsung's 2 TB Spinpoint M9T is unfortunately not the quietest model at around 33 dB(A). More annoying is the occasional and temporary pulsating (after boot, for example), which is unfortunately common for Clevo barebones. When the fans do not pulsate, they create somewhat acceptable 35 dB(A) while idling. The majority of gaming notebooks stay below 33 dB(A) on average. Note: Deactivating SLI requires a reboot (which will probably not be done very often), so the second GeForce GTX 1080 was active for all tests.

It is not easy to keep two high-end GPUs and a desktop CPU cool, even in a desktop computer. That the Pascal chips inside the XMG U727 reach up to 90 °C (194 °F) is therefore not a big surprise. One GTX 1080 utilized its Turbo (~1730 MHz) during our stress test with the tools FurMark and Prime95, while the clock of the other card dropped significantly (~860 MHz). The Core i7-6700 (up to 100 °C/212 °F) also throttled (~2.9 GHz). The benchmarks do not show any sign of throttling though, so this behavior should be limited to extreme scenarios.

The XMG U727 is not a good choice for environmentally friendly gamers. We can measure an idle consumption between 43 and 64 watts, so the 17-inch needs more power than all the other rivals.

The desktop replacement is not frugal under load, either. 185 watts on average in the first scene of 3DMark 06 and up to 490 watts in the stress test could also be the results of a regular desktop PC. Our desktop computer we use for our gaming articles (Core i7-6700K, GeForce GTX 980) actually only consumes 135 and 319 watts, respectively. The SLI rival MSI GT80S 6QF is also more frugal (163/411 watts), despite the less efficient Maxwell architecture. Single-GPU notebooks with mobile processors rarely consume more than 100-200 watts.

You cannot expect long battery runtimes from the XMG U727. Even when the notebook idles at the lowest display luminance, it will only last for about 2.5 hours. About 2 hours web browsing at an average brightness and one hour 3D load at the maximum luminance are disappointing. The 89-Wh battery capacity sits between the MSI GT73VR (75 Wh) and the Asus G752VS (90 Wh), but they manage much longer runtimes in some cases.