Clevo P157SM-A

[DiveDr]

Hello to all,

Thinking of a Clevo P157SM-A barebone chassis for my next laptop. I usually do the assembly myself sourcing CPU, HD and memory at better prices than the usual resellers provide. A few questions for friends on the forum:

• Anyone have one of these jewels and if so what are your thoughts?
  
• I was considering a Clevo P150SM-A as an alternative, it is much cheaper can anybody elaborate as to the difference between these two chassis?
  
• Looking at the assembly depicted in the service manual (thank you Prema!) it's a bit involved, anyone worked on/assembled one of these?
  
• I am not sure about the reference in the service manual to the memory configurations. It states that the main two memory modules are used in a dual core situation and that the third and fourth memory modules located under the keyboard are only used in a quad core deployment. Does that mean if one were to go with a quad core CPU such as a core i7 and for arguments sake eight gigs of RAM the best memory configuration would be four 2 GB modules populating all of the slots or would two 4 GB modules suffice without incurring a performance that permit. I'm not sure how the memory controller works on this motherboard, how many channels the memory bus is arranged with respect to pipelines to the CPU. Anybody who could clarify,, clarification would be greatly appreciated.
  
• Last and probably most important question what kind of bios does this animal eat and how difficult is it to modify?
  

Thanks in advance for any information, help and suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Best regards to all

[quasar]

Hi DiveDr,

I have a P157SM. From what I heard the primary difference with the newer "-A" variant is the GPU.

The P150 is smaller, and some say, classier. I did a quick comparison previously - off the top of my head, the P150 chassis can support less drives - I think it can only support one 2.5" drive and 2 MSatas.

The P157SM (i.e. P15SM motherboard??) supports two 2.5"drives, 2 mSatas, and 1 optical drive, which can be replaced with a 2.5" HD caddy.

Best check a site such as metabox.com.au, or any other reseller - they will tell you the difference quite clearly.