Skylake is (almost) here

[UtwigMU]

Here is the comparison of screens.

Recommended is to buy B140HAN01.2 and B140HAN01.3 I'd go with .2 as it's mate.

http://www.panelook.com/modelcompare.php?ids=18918,18919,18920,23640,20494

I bought Screen for X61 and T60p on ebay before and in both cases received new unused spare screen. So I'll just use ebay for the screens.

If you want that upgrade kit, you can get it cheaper if you contact rmsmajestic on thinkpad forums which is what I have done.

Here is a thread:

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=45&t=118070&start=150

50€ kit 530€ T420s 75-80€ screen

Interesting how a lot of MURCers became Thinkpadders

The upgrade kit only works on T420s and T430s models not on vanilla T420 and T430! Otherwise you have to mod cable and/or mod BIOS.

[Umfriend]

Well, ARK shows some details. It seems the i7-6820HK is my CPU of choice for the replacement of my i7-2670QM laptop. A beer to the first one here that finds a lappy with that 6820HK. Two beers if that lappies' BIOS allows for changes to various clocks and volting.

I already undervolt (-100mV) and clock My i7-3770 and, according to CPUID HWMonitor:
2.8 Ghz -> 24.1W
2.9 Ghz -> 25.5W (+1.4)
3.0 Ghz -> 27.0W (+1.5)
3.1 Ghz -> 28.7W (+1.7)
3.2 Ghz -> 30.5W (+1.8)
3.3 Ghz -> 32.7W (+2.2)

So, Power Consumption rises more than linear in frequency. I have read that the relationship between frequency and power consumption is even more explicit with 22nm and 14nm CPUs. That implies that underclocking Skylake will, for the first few Mhzs, yield substantial heat reductions. Compared to my current setup I could go down with like 500Mhz and have the same frequency as I currently have. Meanwhile, I would have the benefit if faster IPC (substantial between i7-2x and i7-6x), memory and increased cache. I am getting excited and that has been a long time (wrt to hardware that is ).

[dZeus]

alternatively, you might want to look at notebook with the following CPUs:

http://ark.intel.com/products/series/89609/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E3-1500M-v5-Product-Family#@All

[Umfriend]

Oh yes, I might. But I fear increased cost and I can not remember ever having thought "Shit, had my memory been ECC then thisorthat problem would not have occured" and vPro, I would think, is far less interesting for lappies. But if they give me undervolting/clocking capabilities then sure, I would consider them as well.

[dZeus]

not sure how this works on modern Intel notebooks, but isn't underclocking supported by default on all Intel mobile CPUs?
The idea is just to force the CPU at a lower multiplier through the Intel Speedstep mechanism....

[Umfriend]

AFAIK, a user can not influence speedstep, i.e., set a max frequency. But I have no first-hand experience with mobile past 2nd gen. AFAICS, all it does is lower the frequency when it is not needing a lot of performance. I want to be able to cap the max. performance.

[dZeus]

can't you influence this in the Windows power plan definition? If I'm not mistaken, there's a way to throttle the CPU in there, that on Intel mobile CPUs effectively limits the working frequency.

On my old T43 with Pentium M, I can customise the exact Speedstep states (frequencies and voltages) using the RMClock utility. Although that specific utility probably no longer applies to modern Intel CPUs.

[Umfriend]

FCOL! Many thanks...

Now if I just could find a way to make making changes to it less convulated. I already have a shortcut to Power Options (http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials...ut-create.html) but I much rather have a shortcut (or two) that, possibly using powershell or somesuch, switch between 100% and 50% at the (double)press of a button...

What remains is undervolting but this goes a long way already.

[Umfriend]

FCOL again! As it turns out it is all very simple.

So it used to be that when the lappy ran Rosetta@Home with just one thread, it would run at about 2.8Ghz, 30W, and around 95C. The fan drove me crazy while surfing, erhm, working on reports in Word.

Now, with a simple batch file, I run eight threads at 1.1Ghz, 12.5W, around 77C and the fan is really acceptable. I am going to play with this a bit more but this is really great. THANK YOU!

And of course, need I do scenarios in VBA or run my T-SQL usps, I simply double click the other batch file and I am back to max performance.

I love life and I am still going to get me a new lappy once the i7-6xxx are available in a good package.

[dZeus]

you're welcome, glad it's working out for you!

a new notebook always is nice, especially since Intel Broadwell and newer supporting 16GB unregistered DIMM modules, allowing you go configure a laptop with 32 or 64 GB of RAM (depending the amount of DIMM slots in the laptop).

[Jammrock]

Wait, they have mobile Xeons now? That's awesome.

[Umfriend]

Yes it is. Likely to be combined with nvs gpus I think.

[Umfriend]

So I am eying either the MSI GS40 or GS60. These are gaming-laptops but I have, as of yet, not found better alternatives. The great thing about these is the weight (1.6Kg for GS40, 2.0Kg for GS60) combined with packing quite a bit of punch (i7-6700HQ). I am a bit worried that the GS40 may be quite a bit noisier as it needs to dissapte the same heat as the GS60 in a smaller package.

Otherwise, they are pretty expensive. More so in that I'll need to replace 2x8GB DDR4-2133 with 2x16GB, a 128/256GB m.2 PCIe with a 512GB and the 1TB HDD with a 1TB SATA SSD and hope I can sell off the replaced parts. I'd rather have a fully configured one.

I have looked at Clevo/Sager but these come in at 2.5Kg...And a GTX960M or GTX950M would be fine as well. Any other ideas?

[UtwigMU]

So I am eying either the MSI GS40 or GS60. These are gaming-laptops but I have, as of yet, not found better alternatives. The great thing about these is the weight (1.6Kg for GS40, 2.0Kg for GS60) combined with packing quite a bit of punch (i7-6700HQ). I am a bit worried that the GS40 may be quite a bit noisier as it needs to dissapte the same heat as the GS60 in a smaller package.

Otherwise, they are pretty expensive. More so in that I'll need to replace 2x8GB DDR4-2133 with 2x16GB, a 128/256GB m.2 PCIe with a 512GB and the 1TB HDD with a 1TB SATA SSD and hope I can sell off the replaced parts. I'd rather have a fully configured one.

I have looked at Clevo/Sager but these come in at 2.5Kg...And a GTX960M or GTX950M would be fine as well. Any other ideas?

How often do you plan on transporting this system. Seems like a lot of punch for a laptop. What do you do with it that takes so much power?

[dZeus]

How often do you plan on transporting this system. Seems like a lot of punch for a laptop. What do you do with it that takes so much power?

Umf, is the portable aspect important, but operation on battery not?
In that case, I'd suggest going for a compact mini-itx case and a nice motherboard with Xeon D SoC.

a compact mini-itx case: MS-Tech CI-70
a motherboard with Xeon D SoC: Supermicro Xeon D boards

that would give you a 8-core 16 thread hyperthreading CPU with up to 128 GB RAM in an enclosure that is easily transportable when you need to bring it to where-ever... and it's probably at a similar cost as a new fancy laptop (well, maybe not at 128GB but at 64GB it probably is).