Rock Xtreme 770

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Rating: 30%
Review Title: So NOISY you will never leave it on

Verdict: Double thumbs down on the constant stop-and-start fan noise that spoils this otherwise great laptop

Just to set the scene, I am sitting in a cool room browsing the internet. That's all. Every ten seconds or so this Notebook fires up one or both of its noisy fans and then goes silent again. The CPU fan always turns to full power then backs off a bit after a second of so. Very irritating. The GPU fan is something else. It’s bigger and, yes, louder. It only seems to have 2 speeds: 0 or full power. It also comes on and off all the time, regardless of whether you are pushing your video. This is what happens: Starts off with no fan. Temp builds up and reaches a threshold after about 10 seconds. The fan kicks in at full power and quickly cools things down and turns off where the whole cycle starts again. Honestly, if they made both fans run at 20% all the time, you wouldn't hear them and would rarely have to step up the speed. Bad design. I have to resort to constantly running my notebook in power saver mode so stop me from going crazy. I have to switch it back to High Performance mode to do anything simple like look at photos. Finally, I would like to say that this is indeed a fast laptop and most modern games are soothe. It's also a great portable tornado...

Rating: 90%
Review Title: A Joy To Own

Verdict: A great DTR with excellent support

This is my fourth notebook used primarily for gaming (I've had a couple of Acers and an Evesham Voyager C550 previously. I was intiially attracted to the Rock by the forums which are friendly and filled with posts by Rock staff (including the Managing Director). Some of these posts are of the "PM me and I'll look into this myself" type when trying to sort out any serious problems customers have had with their machines. I was impressed by this as all high end notebooks can have problems and it was reassuring to see a company a) being open enough to allow customers to complain in the company's own forums and b) being serious about sorting these out. I contrasted that to other well known manufacturers of high end notebooks and the frequent complaints in other forums about the poor quality of their customer support. However, you shouldn't take that to mean that problems with your Rock notebook are likely when ordering: most users are very happy with their machines. The x770 runs great. With the 8700m (which I'll be able to upgrade to a 8800m in the New Year) I can run Company of Heroes & Oblivion at slightly above medium settings at a resolution of 1920x1200. The speakers are the best I've come across in a notebook, but still not as good as a decent set of speakers. Sound through headphones is good though. The keyboard problem mentioned by SaraGara can be resoved with a bios update (made available by Rock's support through their forums). I don't find it all that noisy either. Initially I had some problems with my x770: with numerous crashes and 3 BSOD in it's first week with me. I contacted support who immediately advised me to arrange to have it returned for repair. The machine was with them exactly 7 days and since I got it back 2 weeks ago it has (touch wood!) been running absolutely flawlessly; the hard drive and RAM have been replaced. The support team were friendly and helpful throughout the process. Although I had problems with the machine in the first place, they were sorted out first time and that should give added confidence to anyone thinking of buying from Rock (contrast that with a motherboard failure in one of my previous machines that saw it away from me for a month and a series of very frustrating phone calls, before it was eventually replaced). I don't regret buying this machine for a minute, and would definitely recommend anyone looking for a high end notebook to have a look at Rock first.

Rating: 90%
Review Title: Rock, Rocks!

Verdict: All the performance without paying the price

Im a returning Rock customer, im on my 3rd laptop with the company now and this model doesnt disappoint. Rock utilize the same chassis as other competitors such as Sager (USA) and Alienware so dont expect corners to be cut when it comes to being cheaper. You also get a 3yr warrenty with all Rock products as standard, something which you will not find with any other leading laptop manufacturer. The x770 is a dream to own and play and it easily steps up to any task you throw at it without much fuss. My only gripe about the laptop would be it gets alittle noisey at times and the keyboard appears tempramental sometimes missing keystrokes. However for what you get these are easily overlooked compared with the overall package. Id recommend anyone whos serious about mobile gaming to try out an x770 before commiting to buy any other laptop.

Alienware Area-51 m15x	75%
Rock Xtreme 770-T9300-8800	82%
MSI GX600-029UK	67%
Rock Xtreme 770 T7800-8800	80%
Asus Eee PC 4G	76%
Dell XPS M1730	76%
MSI GX700Extreme	80%

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