Eurocom Panther 5D Notebook Review: Faster Than Your Desktop

[danwat1234]

110 watts at idle? Jesus christ. Guess it doesn't have Nvidia Optimus does it? If the GPUs were shut off and the CPU underclocked, undervolted and portions shut down, power consumption should be under 45 watts the DC jack on the laptop for sure.

 

[danwat1234]

Does anybody know the model #s of those 4 fans? Forceon, Sunon, Delta, .... how many amps? 12V or 5V?

 

[warezme]

I like it but I just can't see me getting anything bigger and heavier than my M17R2 and dragging two power supplies around. The price is also out of this world but somebody will buy it.

 

[TeraMedia]

What happens if you yank out one of the two power supplies while it's under heavy load? Does it handle that gracefully, or does it shut down the AC connection and switch over to battery entirely? The power connector has at least four conductors, so they might have put some signaling into it to handle this scenario gracefully. Just curious.

 

[praze]

All that and I still don't know how big it is compared to a banana.

 

[TeraMedia]

They should have built the power-breakout dongle thing right into the laptop and had two power jacks, instead of a separate dongle thingy.

I guess this is a "I need to be able to do very complex data processing tasks with high interactivity and low latency - while not connected to a high-bandwidth network" device. If you can make do with something like Remote Desktop (join.me, GotoMeeting, LogMeIn, etc.) then you can get away with a Macbook Air and a remote workstation, rather than lugging the remote workstation around with you. Maybe a car or plane manufacturer that needs to modify and test part designs in the field with part vendors on-the-fly? If ultra-low latency is not a requirement and there's a decent network connection, this won't get you much more than you can do using remote viewing software and a powerful workstation as a backend for a light client laptop.

 

[Haravikk]

I dunno, I'd much rather spend a lot less money on a laptop that's properly portable but still decently powerful; lugging this kind of device around doesn't really constitute portable in my book, and it seems the only advantage really is that you get the screen and keyboard built-in, but at the same time everything is crammed into an overly small form factor, I shudder at the noise it must make even under relatively modest loads!

Unless you do a lot of work in hotels and other places where you need the screen and keyboard built in, you might as well just get a compact desktop. For this kind of money Apple's new Mac Pro looks almost reasonable, and is just as portable if you only need to get it to your workplace where you can hook it up.

What this laptop packs inside is impressive, but I just feel it has to make too many compromises, to the point that I wouldn't consider it a laptop at all anymore, as it looks barely portable, has pathetic battery life, and is likely far too heavy and hot to use comfortably on your lap.

 

[Abyssic]

i couldn't find anything about noise. i didn't read the whole article and i don't have time for that. why is there no sector about noise level?

 

[Chainzsaw]

I just had to lol at the size of this thing.

 

[therogerwilco]

Not faster than my desktop. 3x the price though.

 

[danwat1234]

It's not significantly faster in applications that can't take advantage of more than 4 cores because the clockspeed isn't significantly faster than Intel's Haswell Extreme mobile proccesor the 4930MX (3GHZ/3.9GHZ turbo). In most scenarios the 4930MX will be just as fast with a lot less power consumption(mobile part + less cores, less cache) and Intel may release another Extreme processor that's clocked a bit faster..
MSI Gt60/GT70 with the 4930MX is a win for me.

 

[mg3692]

Just a heads up: A lot of times these companies have terrible customer service down the line. This makes things like replacing a lap top battery incredibly annoying. I've had this experience with ibuypower, whose server crashes every few years and they conveniently lose all their data so they don't have to deal with you.

 

[_zxzxzx_]

People have said to me that you'll never have the power of a desktop in a portable form. I guess this proves them wrong.

 

[MadTux]

IMHO, these laptops build from desktop components are a joke. Few gamers have enough money to spend for a laptop like this and the professional users won't spend money for it, because the quality sucks

First ditch the internal battery, because it's pointless to supply a 450W system from battery. Use the space to put PSU into the portable PC, so that the resistive losses of the external PSU cable are eliminated and proper cooling is archived. Maybe add an external battery as kind of a docking station, so there is enough space for it.

Put everything in a metal (Al or Mg, maybe even titanium) casing, because noone is going to pay 6.5k$ for a piece of plastic crap.

Use a low clocked server CPU with a lot of cores and even more cache instead of fancy overclocked gaming CPU, because a constantly overheating system won't last long.

32GB non-ECC RAM are also a joke. No game is using that much mem. And a professional user will not use a non-ECC computer that crashes once in a while by background radiation, since his time costs far too much.

Add a decent screen. Even apple is using high resolution screens. So should they, if they want 6.5k$ for it.

 

[nforce4max]

why does everyone expect from a laptop workstation to be that easy to handle like a 11 inch Mac Air, while it can work as a powerful workstation as well?

Calling this a workstation isn't correct as it doesn't even have Quadro or Firepro specs cards installed and the build quality is far below that of what others provide. One little bump and a fall to the floor and this machine will be finished plus the customer support is crap. They should have done the lower body out of magnesium and the same for the screen assembly for strength. Thinkpads often have much higher build quality than this machine and can survive multiple falls without being destroyed plus they are far more mobile.

 

[nforce4max]

I've always wondered why people never went ahead and made a micro-atx case with a screen attached to it, along with desktop parts inside of it, and a keyboard and trackpad on the case. It would be a very thick, but powerful LAN gaming PC, great for the gamer that moves around a lot, and ALMOST as portable as a laptop.

That is a good idea. I would rather just carry the case that had all those parts neatly and compactly organized in it but not permanently stuck together. Slapping a monitor, keyboard and mouse onto a case would limit the places you could set it up to large tables or desks and not being able to move the keyboard around would just plain suck. What would be nice is if they made all those parts somehow snap or slide together into a single mass with a handle on top so that you can take them off and put them anywhere you want. My dad has this portable DJ system where the mixer clips into the back of one of the speakers and the two speakers slide together to form one (fairly large and bulky) mass with a handle. The rest of the equipment including stands go into a hollowed out compartment on the back of the other speaker. They could do something similar by making the mini ITX case slide into the back of the monitor and have another similar way to slide the keyboard onto the case. Then, have a compartment somewhere to store the mouse, cables and any other dongles needed.

Another feature I would like to see is for someone to bring back the power supply like the old IBM PC XT/AT that had a 2nd port to power the monitor so that all you have to do is plug in one power cord to the wall. This will not only be convenient for setup but also cut down on the size of the monitor as it won't need power supply circuitry.

Also, they could make the monitor to case power cord and the HDMI/Display Port cables (which would be the only things connecting the monitor and case) twisted (like an old phone receiver cable) like the old IBM PC XT/AT keyboard cable to help prevent tangling and also automatically shorten the cable when moving it.

They already make these with folding screens, they have no internal battery and are basically a lugable desktop with a handle. Everything inside is normal while keeping the weight to a minimum, up to three screens although small fold down onto each other.