System76 Begins Offering Serval WS Laptop With AMD Ryzen

[starshipeleven]

Can't they ask Clevo to make special builds for them? Or find another provider who can?

They don't sell enough so they can't afford it. If you ask to make a custom product and you are not selling a big quantity, the cost-per-unit rises A LOT, none would buy a normal laptop if it costs 10k euro (unless it's Apple).

Many HP and Dell product lines are just designed by HP/Dell and then manufactured by Clevo, so this is 100% possible, but these are not small batches, as HP or Dell will sell much more than a few thousands of laptops of each model they make.

Clevo sells the same model of laptops to hundreds of small companies (with minor changes like custom branding on the shell), so they have enough economies of scale for these laptops.

This allows them to make many hundreds of thousands of laptops of each model and therefore the cost of designing a laptop and setting up an assembly line is spread over tens of of thousands of products that come out of it.

[starshipeleven]

Depends on individual needs, to each their own. But yes, it would be nice to have a no dGPU option. If the CPU is upgradeable, then awesome!

Individual needs are more likely to be no dGPU as most people aren't using laptops as gaming machines and would prefer the mobility.

Upgrading the CPU is the less important part of a gaming system like this. You are 100% likely to need a GPU upgrade in a couple years on a gaming system.

(pressing F to pay respects to MXM form factor for upgradable laptop graphics cards)

[Guest]

Individual needs are more likely to be no dGPU as most people aren't using laptops as gaming machines and would prefer the mobility.

Upgrading the CPU is the less important part of a gaming system like this. You are 100% likely to need a GPU upgrade in a couple years on a gaming system.

(pressing F to pay respects to MXM form factor for upgradable laptop graphics cards)

For that area, no dGPU and AMD APU, there are already laptops provided by established brands, like Lenovo or HP, and these laptops come at better price (including unwanted windows license) and some of them (business tier) have got spill resistant keyboards.

[starshipeleven]

For that area, no dGPU and AMD APU, there are already laptops provided by established brands

There are already gaming laptops with AMD desktop CPUs too, so I don't see your point. These guys provide a cleaned board firmware (ACPI tables and such) that has no bugs on Linux which isn't really guaranteed on other laptops.

some of them (business tier) have got spill resistant keyboards.

There are no "businness tier" AMD APU laptops, Lenovo's "thinkpad for my son" laptops with AMD APUs are not anywhere near "businness tier". They are consumer laptops with different appearance, plastic cheap construction and more, as the price is really half of a true Thinkpad so they can't just magically make it as good.

[timrichardson]

Wake up, Almindor! And smell the coffee: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...0u-linux&num=1

Slick AMD-only laptops are a thing. You can go out and by a Lenovo at quite reasonable cost. And Michael did. Wanting System76 to compete with Lenovo on consumer-grade systems -- quite capable consumer-grade systems -- is a death wish for System76.

This Serval WS line is unique, and targets developer customers no one else does. A likely trade-off is relatively low battery life. Would you make that trade in your next laptop?

I have a UPS connected to my desktop, it's good for about ten minutes, and I'm not sure I'd expect much more here

[timrichardson]

They don't sell enough so they can't afford it. If you ask to make a custom product and you are not selling a big quantity, the cost-per-unit rises A LOT, none would buy a normal laptop if it costs 10k euro (unless it's Apple).

This allows them to make many hundreds of thousands of laptops of each model and therefore the cost of designing a laptop and setting up an assembly line is spread over tens of of thousands of products that come out of it.

The other problem is supply. The AMD4000 mobile CPUs are in massive demand right now (no wonder, after the reviews). I'm on a six week wait for the Ideapad 5 for instance, (although finally have a ship date, two more weeks to wait) and that's Lenovo. Good luck trying to get them if you are a second-tier OEM.

[Guest]

The other problem is supply. The AMD4000 mobile CPUs are in massive demand right now (no wonder, after the reviews). I'm on a six week wait for the Ideapad 5 for instance, (although finally have a ship date, two more weeks to wait) and that's Lenovo. Good luck trying to get them if you are a second-tier OEM.

Clevo's target aren't Linux users, but users wanting cheap laptops with great performance. Usually, these users are Windows-focused gamers. Given the historical reputation of AMD's GPU drivers on Windows, the Intel+NVIDIA combination sounds more cool, than AMD+AMD laptops.

Linux-oriented machines are just a niche part of Clevo's sales,... So, maybe if all Linux oriented Clevo resellers would join together, and order some good amount of the same AMD-oriented model, then it would came true. However,... I'm wondering, how many professionals would buy a laptop without spill resistant keyboard. And, Clevo doesn't seem to care about making spill resistant keyboards.

[fazalmajid]

I'd love a thin and light Ryzen9 4800H laptop, but realistically it's a 35W part vs. the 15W Intel ones that are used in most ultrabooks, so I doubt it will happen.

[Paradigm Shifter]

I'd love a thin and light Ryzen9 4800H laptop, but realistically it's a 35W part vs. the 15W Intel ones that are used in most ultrabooks, so I doubt it will happen.

Depends on what sort of improvements you could get from undervolting, changing the power target, etc. I'm sure a 15W Ryzen chip is possible, just that it'll likely suffer in clockspeed terms. Probably slow for all-core load, but single core boost might be quite high... similar to Intel mobile chips. The GPU might be a little more of a problem, I guess. The desktop Ryzens can frequently be undervolted and see improved performance, because the chips don't run quite so hot so spend more time at boost clocks.

[fazalmajid]

Apparently I can expect a 10% boost in single-thread performance over my 2019 LG Gram 17, and a very impressive 2x boost in multicore:

https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu...seline=1894092

The multicore is faster than my i7-9700K, a 95W chip:

https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/2846201?baseline=1826503

the single-core advantage disappears when running Clear Linux on the LG, I don't know where Manjaro fits between Ubuntu and Clear.

https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu...seline=1768991

I've found the 10th-generation Intel chips to be disappointing:

https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu...seline=1768991

The only machine I would consider a meaningful upgrade this year is the upcoming ThinkPad P1 G3 that will be fully supported for Linux by Lenovo (which is more than I can say about the X1C7).