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Quick question-
If pricing were similar, would you go G7 w/
2070MQ, 144Hz, 512, 16 GB ram, 90Whr (assume swapping out/adding ram to become dual channel),
OR
M15 w/ same specs except for
2060 instead?
I'll ask same question in M15 thread. Mods- I hope that's ok
If anyone has a G5 or G7 can you please try the 240W power adapter (if available) to verify if the power drain is still there? The lowered TDP on disconnected battery is quite concerning considering that after 3-4 years it may not be good to support the system (ie. provide additional power up until 20% remaining).
I'm looking for a laptop, and the G7 seems a bargain at that price point. But yeah having to use the battery to supplement these mid range specs is disturbing. After watching the Ownordisown vid several things seem clear to me. The thermal cooling looks poor, why would they only have relatively small bottom side vents (the G5s are even smaller), that makes no sense to me. Surely the easiest way to help cooling is to allow more airflow to the CPU and GPU, but the ones on the G-series look absurdly inadequate. The next is why would dell config a power supply that isn't sufficient for the hardware to reach its potential.
It seems the power supply is deliberate because the thermal cooling is terrible, and the high temps are causing power throttling even with the gimped power. Imagine what would happen with a 240W PSU, you would have to undervolt the CPU even more to play anything decent. So if you have to undervolt to lower the watt requirement to prevent throttling, Dell obviously thought why supply a 240W PSU if you have to reduce the watts below the supplied 180W one anyway. In that respect a 240W would be pointless. Maybe that is their logic.
I don't think that's the case since the battery supplements for decreased power adapter wattage. The Alienware m15 also had power drain and after switching to a 240W one it disappeared. Maybe they just have more of them in stock or slow battery drain is a way of keeping it from malfunctioning, but that's just speculations from my side. If I were to get one I would as for a bigger PSU or get one separately.
As for the cooling solution I think the air vents indeed should be bigger, but keep in mind that the G5, G7 and the Alienware m15 keep the turbo boost clock at maximum level almost all of the time. It's a different strategy than other laptop manufacturers, who limit it to safer levels (thermally). I do not know what will happen to them in a year or two of such usage as I plan on using them for at least 4 years (with warranty extended), but I do believe had they limited the CPU clocks, the temperatures would be a lot lower. It's a maximum performance approach, will it be good, only time will show.
Why is it a waste? That depends what games are going to be played, some won't go much over 60 while others (e-sports) will. I would look at the build quality and cooling solution first as well as the actual screen quality.
@OWNORDISOWN has uploaded his review of the Dell G7 w/ RTX 2070 Max Q. It seems his opinion of the system is above that of the Dell G5.
It seems the G7 does not drain the battery as the G5 did, temperatures are manageable after software tuning (undervolting, etc.) and fans aren't so loud.
I find the pricing for this version hard to justify still, though. It's in Gigabyte Aero 15 / MSI GS65 / Razer Blade 15 territory.
Those temps look bad... Even after undervolting and power throttling CPU reaches 84C. This is with -.190mV undervolt, which is never guaranteed (some people with same CPU could only undervolt to -.060mV). Dell's engineers are either too dumb or too lazy - take a look at the tiny heatsinks on the sides, I'm willing to bet $1000 that the total surface area of their fins is much smaller than same heatsinks on something like Lenovo Legion Y740, same goes for tiny side exhaust vents. Definitely not something I'd buy (unless it is priced at less than $1500).
You can also get as of today the
512 GB SSD / 32 GB RAM version of the MSI GS65 for $2399 (MSRP $2599).
Also, some channels have said Gigabyte has plans to ship all models with dual channel RAM.
I don't think Dell has a lot on their side when competing in this price range with the G7 15.
Got my new G7 17 a couple weeks ago and overall so far I'm loving it. I did actually originally have the one with the 2070MQ and 144Hz screen preordered but it was $400 more, and from what I saw on gaming benchmarks between the 2060 and 2070MQ the 2060 was just as fast and sometimes even faster in some games so it didn't seem worth the premium so cancelled that and got the RTX 2060 / 60Hz one. Instead I put that money into a 2nd stick of 16GB RAM, a Samung 970 Evo Plus NVME, and Crucial MX500 2TB SSD for game installs. I really would like to try a 144Hz panel so sometimes I wish I had done that but I haven't ever used anything over 60Hz so I don't know what I'm missing so guess that helps lol. I'm just happy that I can max out any game and run a solid 60fps so far I haven't ran into one that wouldn't. My CPU temp seems to stay at 80C or below when gaming, the fans get loud when gaming but when not it's really quiet. I've been running MSI Afterburner to watch my temps and stuff and it doesn't really seem like the CPU is throttling, seems to stay at 3.9Ghz while gaming so that's good? The keyboard is really cool looking and solid, I have no backlight bleed except a very tiny area in the very top right and can only be seen on a pitch black screen and no dead/stuck pixels that I've found so that's really awesome. Overall, very happy with this and with my drive/ram upgrades it still cost me less than $2k for the best PC I've ever owned specwise. I really liked the looks of that Lenovo Y740 but with upgraded storage and such it was just going to be way too much money for me.
Ya I watched that video, on the raytracing enabled benches that 2070MQ beats it by a good margin but still under 60fps so I probably wouldn't even be playing wiht that enabled anyway on a 2070MQ. On the normal very high settings they are mostly neck and neck. Also I don't think the Dell G7 144Hz has gsync enabled, from what I can tell it doesn't so if my thinking is right, if I couldn't have been playing games at 144Hz and had to turn on vsync, wouldn't it have halved my fps anyway or am I thinking wrong on that?
I was looking at G5 options here (AU) for 1650 and 1660 models and noticed there's two options for the 60hz displays, one marked as a higher option being a 300nit display.
Does anyone know more or have first hand experience with this? (knowing the panel model name, or how colour gamut compares) I did some searching but really just got lead to reviews at launch or spec sheets. No testing of individual panels and comparisons.
If the 1660 or 1650 (with an i5) versions keep their cool, it'd be nice to know if the other screen options are an improvement, colour wise.
I realize I am reviving an old thread here but I came across your post and wanted to get it out there that it appears that the G5 5590 has 4 lanes of PCIE support on the TB3. I confirmed this with HW Info on my 1660ti model. There are also a few other threads out there on different sites that mention external gpu support. Dell's support usually errs on the side of caution so I guess they didn't know and told you it was 2 lanes to be safe.
Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
