VR On A Laptop? Sager’s NP9870-S Notebook has you covered.
Part of the fun of Virtual Reality right now is just how technologically impressive it is. To run the high-end tethered headsets, which far and away provide the best VR experiences, requires high-end graphics cards, processors, and just generally beefy PC-desktops that most users would consider less-than-portable to say the least.
But what about our VR users on the go? Will they be forever doomed to lug around unwieldy, 30+ pound desktop PCs? Or could their be a more elegant solution — like, say, Sager’s NP9870-S Notebook, which some have been calling one of the most powerful laptops ever created.
To answer that question, we went ahead and purchased a NP9870-S Notebook from Sager and the results were overwhelmingly positive:
We’ve run a number of tests with this system and have found that it works incredibly well for the HTC-Vive. It runs great for the Oculus Rift as well, if you’re lucky enough to have the tools to get it working (we’ll get into that in a bit).
So why is it that this laptop is so much more effective than most laptops on the scene today? Two primary reasons:
- The Sager NP9870-S sports a desktop level processor and graphics card. Using the same internal components as high-end PCs allows it to run like a typical high-end PC. Simple enough.
- The system is built with high-temperature performance in mind.
Thermal Throttling is a feature built into most modern computers that constantly monitors system temperature, watt usage, and performance. When the computer becomes too hot, the “thermal throttle” kicks in and lowers system performance levels so that your computer can more capably cool itself, thus preventing damage to your components. When it comes to computers with particularly small chassis, like laptops, the kick-in point for thermal throttling is decidedly lower than desktop PCs.
While Thermal Throttling is typically a great feature, it also means that most laptops cannot reach their maximum performance level before being “throttled” and lowered to operating within safer parameters.
This is where the focal point of Sager’s masterpiece shines brightest. The desktop-class Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 8GB Graphics processor has been tuned for ultimate performance. Whereas most manufacturers would use intense levels of thermal throttling to keep their high end components cool inside of a laptop sized chassis, Sager has instead opted to fight off the heat using the most direct means possible. Utilizing an almost entirely mesh bottom and significant ventilation throughout, as well as 3 heat sink fin arrays and (most importantly) 6 individual heat pipes extending from the GPU itself — this computer is made to breathe and keep your system running safely while guaranteeing desktop level performance.
While the NP9870-S is more than capable of dissipating all the heat generated from running its beastly components, the one downside is that ultimately, in the words of LinusTechTips, “a few hundred watts worth of thermal dissipation is going to sound like a few hundred watts of thermal dissipation” — i.e. its going to sound like a jet engine whenever it is running anything relatively intense, which includes all VR. However, as long as you’re wearing headphones during your VR sessions, this should be no big deal.
As stated earlier we had no problems running the HTC-Vive, but we did run into an issue getting the Oculus Rift up and running. We cannot say for certain, but it seems that the power-draw on the Oculus headset is too great for the power to come from from the laptop alone. It needs to be aided by an external source. When looking around our office for fixes to this problem, the most immediate answer was also the most ironic.
“Lets run it through the HTC-Vive link box!” we said. And just like that, aided by the external power of the HTC-Vive’s throughput box, the Oculus was up and running like a dream on the NP9870-S Notebook. Crisp visuals, no lag — all was swell.
Most Oculus owners, however, do not have an HTC-Vive link box lying around, and after searching around online for a one-piece “adapter” that could help facilitate the process of hooking an Oculus Rift up to Sager’s awesome product, I am sad to say that we came up short and were unable to find a suitable throughput box that could connect the Oculus Rift’s USB 3.0 to both an external power outlet and to the USB 3.0 slot on the NP9870-S Notebook.
Admittedly, the problems we encountered with the Oculus Rift are a massive bummer and we’re hoping to found a workaround to these issues soon. That said, on the whole Sager’s NP9870-S Notebook is an incredible product and dare I say an engineering marvel. The fact that we found a laptop capable of running modern VR so smoothly, at nearly the exact same frames per second as our in-house desktop computer says a lot. At over $3,000 ($2,599.00 right now with the deals they have going on), this laptop is certainly something that is only for the most niche users , but whether or not you’re interested in actually purchasing this beast of a machine is beside the point. This laptop is a massive step towards portable, high-end Virtual Reality, and it should be regarded as such. It is an important, impressive, and downright cool sneak peak into a future where VR is all around us.
**Authors Note: We would love to find a workaround for easily hooking up the Oculus Rift to Sager’s NP9870-S Notebook that does not involve the HTC-Vive’s linkbox. If anyone has any ideas on how to achieve this, please leave your thoughts in the comments below. Or, if you’d like us to continue researching this issue ourselves and post our findings in a future post, then comment and let us know as well. Thanks Everyone!
