Gigabyte P34G

Mine clicks repeatedly, louder than ever, especially so when it's in use. I ran some of the shorter Seagate HDD tests and all was fine. I'm actually too scared to do the longer tests. I'm fed up of this laptop giving me so many problems.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

 

I've noticed that my usb ports sometimes don't connect. Probably because of all the plug and remove I've been doing for my mouse, still it worries me if this will get any worse.

 

After not having any Wifi issues described by other P34G owners for nearly two months, it finally happened this week, twice.

I left my PC idle overnight, with the lid down (I have it set to do nothing power-wise when the lid closes), and came back to find my Wifi disconnected and the network it had been connected to gone from the list of available networks. Cycling the Wifi radio off and on from within Windows 8.1 fixed the problem, but still a pain.

Also noteworthy is the PC was just idle, not in sleep or hibernation mode. I haven't made any changes to my power settings.

edit: Forgot to mention I have an Intel AC 7260, not the stock Wifi.

 

For the WiFi driver for the AC7260 I've taken to going into Device Manager and letting Windows Update take care of it instead of Intel Update. Haven't had any problems with that in months. Driver version is 16.6.2.1.

 

I've been describing this issue for the past month...I have to use proset or smartmanager to turn off then on the wireless even though it is off already. Also I only lost my profiles twice.

Actually b'midmar always chimes in haha

 

It depends on which hard drive you get, sometimes Gigabyte uses Toshiba drive and sometimes Western Digital.

The noise you hear is probably the drive not park it's heads to save power. Western Digital park it's heads when it's idle however, it creates more problems like this:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/643317-asus-k53sv-laptop-1-4-sec-freeze.html

You can test the drive by using the Seagate Seatools like darth_poopie did: SeaTools for Windows | Seagate

Run the long generic test see if it will pass.

 

Wow that totally sounds like my problem except I never heard the clicking. Then again I don't complain of fan noise either. I guess this is the fix until I get SSD.

 

Hi everyone,

I bought P34 this weekend (the version with 1To HDD only) and I want to know if I can change HDD with a 2,5" SSD I already have without breaking the 2yrs warranty ?

If it's ok with warranty, I also want to know if it possible to reuse the plastic HDD case ?

 

That WD drive issues was driving people crazy with click and lags in games. people can either use the fix I provide or install the game on a SSD. but if you got the P34G with the batch that cames with Toshiba drive you will just hear the noise at quiet environment, it's completely normal since it's a rotating drive and something is rotating inside all the time.

Yup, a SSD with no moving parts will fix it that's for sure.

It's okay to open your laptop and swap the hard drive without void your warranty. the only time the warranty is voided is when user damaged components and try to claim the warranty replacement, so do it carefully.

 

Thanks for your answer.

Anyone has tried to swap HDD in the plastic case ?

 

hi, just got a P34G from gentechpc, and i was wondering what temps you get when the cpu is in idle, mine seems to hover around the 50-55C mark, which i find to be a tad high, when my other laptop with sandy bridge quad-core hovers around 45C. is 50C normal for this laptop?

 

It's not a plastic case, it's an adhesive black plastic wraparound with foam rubber bumpers. Yes, I've upgraded to an SSD as have multiple other individuals within this thread.

 

With updated BIOS and ambient temperatures around 21 C, I see average core temps around 50 - 52 C on idle (using OpenHardware Monitor).

 

Thanks I'll try the evening to swap that.

One more question, there is an app to make a backup of the factory setup (smart usb backup). Can I use it if I swap for a smaller SSD (256Go instead of 1To) ?
In other word is it a full classic windows setup with partition manager ?

 

Windows is on the 128GB LiteOn mSATA. The 1TB HDD is blank coming out of the gate. The Windows install on the 128GB SSD and the version that gets laid down if you use the recovery tool is a full OEM version. If you ever move Windows be sure to get your license # off the OS first before beginning shuffling drives. I used Macrium Reflect to clone the drive and enlarge the partition when I went from the 128GB LiteOn to a 256GB one. The 1TB HDD > SSD swap was a less than ten minute exercise as I did it before putting any data on the drive so didn't need to copy or replicate anything.

 

does anybody have issue with bluetooth not functioning intermittently? i have 2 bluetooth mice paired and sometimes they just stop repsonding and i have to power off to have the bluetooth come back again

 

Yes, this was discussed previously and B'midbar and I both had some issues with it at some points.

Use the latest drivers from Intel and you should have a lot fewer issues.

The only issue I've had recently is my bluetooth mouse or keyboard will freeze sometimes and I've noticed what keys I put into the keyboard will come up a few seconds later (it's harder to see such an effect with the mouse). (Edit: To clarify the keyboard and touchpad of the computer work during that time, so it seems like it's just part of the bluetooth driver getting stuck - it's happened to me maybe three times for a few seconds during 100 hours of use)

By the way B'midbar, did the Power Gorilla behave through your testing or are you still having issues with it?

All the best,
Peter

 

I have the Western Digital Harddrive. I tried the quietHD fix from your link, but it did not fix the issue. If I am still under warrenty can I get a new harddrive from Gigabyte? Maybe a Toshiba drive instead of a Western Digital? Part of me wants to just buy a 256 gb SSD and replace the annoying WD drive, but I shouldn't have to pour money into my laptop to fix this. Fan issues, followed by wi-fi issues, and now hard drive noise issues... this laptop is a real headache.

 

It was a true statement per previous exchanges on the subject that it has to be fully charged before it will charge the P34G. No partial usage, battery discharge, then coming back and using it some more. As opposed to the first time I used it @ 16V, last test was the notebook on high performance, including 90% brightness on the LCD, and got 3.5 hrs out of the PowerGorilla at 19v. Next test, again with a fully charged PowerGorilla, is to put the notebook on Power Saver and see if the external battery will charge it and, if so, for how long and at what voltage.

 

Ah, are you saying the P34G must be fully charged or the Power Gorilla or both?

Ie. If the P34G is fully charged, it will not require any extra current to charge the battery at the same time as running the laptop.

If the PowerGorilla is fully charged, it has a higher available power output (which drops as the amperage drops as the battery goes through the usage cycle).

I'm thinking the first would be the biggest issue - if the P34G is trying to pull power to both charge itself and run, then it takes a lot more load from the battery than if the laptop is full charged and only needs power to run.

I had another power supply like that (albeit much smaller and less efficient since it didn't supply DC power direct but converted to AC inside itself) which exhibited the same behaviour on my netbook a few years back. (ie: Stuffopolis.net Resource Page for tag - Duracell-XPowerPowerSourceMobile100). In that case if the battery was not approximately 100% I could use the portable battery some more if I removed my netbook's own battery pack - however it would die fast enough that I'd have to pop it back in quickly to avoid losing data and that is of course not practical with our internal battery packs on the P34G)



Is that what you are also seeing here?

Thanks,
Peter

 

x

 

Just the PowerGorilla.

 

Sounds like Xoticpc need to help you not gigabyte

 

I understand that is what you were saying, but based on what I posted - well if you want to test it, go for it, otherwise I think you're missing a data point.

Peter

 

All test scenarios, use cases I plan, would use start with the P34G being fully charged.

 

Hi guys,

I am having a problem with my auto brightness.

I turned everything off but it still seems to be on.
Here is what I did:

1) Advanced power plan settings - turned off auto brightness
2) Sensor Monitoring Service (in services,msc) – disabled it
3) Intel HD Graphics Control Panel – turned off display power saving technology on battery

Anyone else having an issue? and/or know how i can resolve it?


thanks

 

My CPU temps are running very high for BF4 multiplayer...almost 98C. GPU temp stays around 70C. Any idea why? My P34G is stock, no upgrades.

Do you guys have any suggestions for a good, portable cooling pad?

 

so i have a dumb question coz this is my first haswell laptop

i was told from different sources that haswell doesnt support the older 1.5v ram sticks, and the ram to use with haswell is 1.35V DDR3L ram

not knowing that before, i put my previously used 1.5V DDR3 ram into the laptop and everything seems to boot and runs fine to this day? am i safe? will there be issues? does that mean the laptop supports 1.5V ram?

 

I don't see why the ram would be affected by the CPU. If anything, the type of ram you can put in is dependent on the mobo.

 

This is incorrect. Intel spec's give a tolerance for the maximum voltage between the DRAM and on-chip memory controller. As such, running DRAM in excess of 1.5v on Haswell technically voids your CPU warranty.

It's possible your 1.5v RAM is running at 1.35v...you could load up Open HWMonitor and see if it reads the DRAM voltage.

 

Running Titanfall at Max settings and it is looking great!

Beat bioshock 2 it definitely felt like a filler for 3. 3 is phenomenal...I am speechless so far.

 

no reading of dram voltage on hwmonitor....

i should also mention that i ran a memory stress test for 30 mins and everything seems ok....

ADD:
never mind, the 1.5V ram failed the windows memory diagnostics test on the P34G, switched back the default DDR3L and the test is fine...and the test ran fine for my 1.5V ram after i put them back into my sandy bridge laptop

 

How did you get Titanfall to run? I can't seem to find the right combination of settings to get this to run with the latest nVidia drivers.

Every time I fire it up I just get grey screen with some black polygons.

 

it's a common problem. you have to have it run it with your video card as default. try going to your nvidia control panel and select titanfall and force it to start with your graphics card (not integrated). try rebooting too.

 

Hi guys, I bought my p34g about six month ago, and was absolutely happy with it. All this time when I was picking my laptop from floor or table i was grabbing it from one of the angles and I guess this somehow slightly curved the laptop. You don't see the curve but when I hold my running laptop and angle it slightly I start to hear the clicking of one of the fans inside as if touches the frame of the laptop.

I want to point that I am not talking about usual loud fan, I am talking about additional problem – I guess somehow my frame curved a little bit and when it stand still everything is ok, but when one of the fans is running and I angle the laptop I can definitely hear that the fan is touching the frame and makes loud clicking noises.

Did anyone experienced this problem?

 

So I've been reading through the thread for an answer to the WiFi dropping issue.

I received my P34G a week ago and this is the only issue I'm having with it. I initially thought that the limited connectivity drops had to do with the oversaturated 2.4GHz spectrum in my area so I bought a dual band 7260-AC card and installed it but the issues still show up. I set up the card to only talk to the 5GHz SSID on my router.

The router it's connecting to is a 4th generation Apple Airport Extreme running the latest firmware from Apple. I tried the 16.8.0.6 drivers from Gigabyte, the beta 16.8.0.7 which were linked to on a Intel forum, the current official Intel 16.6.0.8 and I even uninstalled every Intel revision of the driver and used the MS driver provided with Windows 8.1.

 

Next time you lose connection, try to run an ethernet cable directly from your modem to your laptop. If you get internet, then the router may be the problem.

Edit: Actually, the ethernet cable is going to bypass the wifi card so it wont necessarily mean that the router is the problem. See if your other devices lose wifi at the same time.

 

I have a Macbook on the same 5GHz network that was running with no issues. Also, I have an Ooma Telo connected via WiFi and a WD TV Live that was streaming via WiFi non-stop during these disconnects. I also have a windows home server and a couple of desktops hardwired that experienced no disconnects. I'm 100% sure the issue is with either the drivers or the laptop.

 

I had WiFi drop issues in Ubuntu, but I have since reinstalled the OS and updated kernel and firmware via apt and the problem has not returned.

I also had WiFi not connecting on startup issues in Windows 8, but I noticed that happened after updating the wireless drivers via Smart Update so I then reinstalled Windows 8 from the recovery partition and made sure not to update the wireless drives and the problem has not returned. My current wireless driver version is 16.5.3.6

 

Oh, then yeah it would have to be the laptop. I have no idea how you would go about fixing it, though. Maybe one of intel's higher end non-ac cards? Cuz I think the 7260-ac is fairly new so stability could be a problem(although you did try a standard 7260 as well).

 

This or the Asus UX302LG? Please help.

 

Depends what you want to use it for. The Asus is lighter and smaller but has less room for memory expansion and a much, much worse graphics card. The 1080p resolution on a 13 inch screen may also be a bit too small as the same resolution on the P34G's 14inch screen is already bordering on hard to read. Also, the UX302LG is $500 more expensive.

 

you are comparing apples to oranges here. the asus is an light ultrabook with a much weaker and low-power CPU and GPU, versus the gigabyte which is a (ultraportable) gaming laptop with a full quad-core CPU and a better than average GPU. i had the previous gen variant to the UX302LG: UX32VD before, which was ivy bridge ULV with GT620M and the intel integrated graphics performs almost just as well, meaning the 620M was a total waste of money and resources in my opinion. i may be wrong, but i suspect that may be the case for the UX302LG. like tomsliwowski said, it's very hard to read full HD off a 13-inch screen; i have had headaches sometimes

so, if you need power and functionality, the gigabyte is the one to go, hands down

if you want something easy to carry (not to say that gigabyte is heavy at all) and don't game, take the asus. but if that's your case, you have much more (less expensive) options to choose from (by eliminating the need for a nvidia card altogether)

 

Hey all,

I just purchased a Gigabyte P34G as my main laptop. I just have a few questions before my rig arrives tomorrow:

-When the machine arrives, does anyone know which drive contains the OS / recovery image / any other programs? I have a spare 256GB mSATA drive I'd like to swap with the 128GB drive installed at the factory. If the OS is on the regular disk drive, it should be fairly simple to swap out, correct?

-If the OS is on the mSATA drive, what is the procedure to move the OS to the new mSATA drive? I believe this laptop only has one slot, correct? How would you clone the drive?

-Because this machine does not have a touchscreen, I see no reason why I shouldn't downgrade to windows 7. Has anyone experienced any issues with this, especially with finding drivers? If there is a walk through for this procedure, can anyone link to the page / thread?

-before I rip into the computer, is there any disassembly guide / video anywhere? I looked on the Gigabyte website and did not find anything.

I appreciate any help you guys can offer. Thank you.

 

unless its a custom build, the recovery image should be in the mSATA 128GB ssd. either way, gigabyte lets you do a USB recovery backup with a 20GB+ USB flash drive stick. just turn on the machine, do the USB backup, and then do the swapping as you please.

after you create the USB recovery flash drive, take out all the disks, the mSATA one included, and in put in your 256GB mSATA, and boot with your USB backup stick, and it will copy the new system, including recovery partition into your 256GB mSATA ssd

no need for disassembly guide really, its pretty easy to do; just unscrew all the screws at the bottom, open the cover and voila. just don't misplace the loose screws and note that some screws are a tad shorter than others so make sure you dont mix them up

 

You don't need a touchscreen to use windows 8/8.1...

I've had this laptop for several months now and there hasn't been a single time where I wished I had a touchscreen.

IIRC, there are a few games that actually have improved performance with 8/8.1.

 

Just to expand on this, this laptop has been the first time I've used windows 8.1 and actually found it a good upgrade from 7. I think the initial release of 8.0 has unfairly given a bad reputation to the 8.x product. If you're really into feeling like you are using windows 7, then enable boot to desktop and install classic shell. Personally I just do boot to desktop and use the Metro interface the same way I used Launchy in Windows 7 or Alfred in OSX.

 

Ok, I decided to keep windows 8. Installed my new SSD, set up the OS, and everything went just fine.

Then I put the 1TB HD back in, but windows cannot see the drive. I'm going to try and remove / format the drive using an external and another computer. Any suggestions in case that doesn't work?

 

Just to add to this, I've wiped the 1TB Hard drive using an external enclosure, formatted, and put back into my P34G. It does not recognize this. I'd welcome any suggestions, because this is a big problem. Thank you.

 

Fixed it, nvm.