Mods to get the max performance out of the Aero 15x v8

In order to max the performance of the Aero 15x v8, I've found several suggestions/improvements that I would like to collect here:

• CPU/GPU repaste with Grizzly Kyronaut

Question: how much of it is needed? Is 1g enough? Are thermal pads also needed? If yes, which one do you suggest?​

• XTU undervolt for core, cache and graphics.
  
• Intel 9260 instead of the stock one
  
• Change RAM

Question: which one do you suggest? Does it make sense to exceed the 2666Mhz?​

• Add a Samsung 970pro

Question: this one also needs a thermal pad, which one do you suggest? ​

Thank you in advance

 

Well you'd somehow need to mod your Cooling, EC and vBios in order to get max performance, which I don't really see happening.

 

Yes, maybe I was a little bit extreme with the title, but what about the mods I have suggested?

 

RAM doesnt do much, wifi card depends greatly on your situation (if you have bad connection due to thick walls etc.), pretty sure they dont have pads or cooling for m2. sata so no.

Undervolt and repaste is pretty much all you can do to get slighlty less gimped performance, still heavily gimped tho.

 

What do you mean?

 

There are some notebooks such as the GT 75 from MSI that have additional cooling for the M2 SSD's. I believe your notebook doesn't have that, aside from that I don't think there is any cooling pads etc. you would need to place/replace that would mean much.

 

Yes exactly,
which pads do you suggest?

 

As I said, since there is no cooling on them, putting on pads would be pointless, so none.

Just do the undervolt and repaste and be happy with what you got. If you're not happy then sell and buy something else. TIt's VERY limited what you can do with a thin and light.

 

Any suggestions? Alienware?

 

Desktop

 

But I need a laptop

 

If you don't mind weight, look no further than MSI GT series. If you're in a budget, GT 73 will do fine, if you're willing to pay a little more GT 75 is the way to go. They don't throttle and run extremely good:


stable clockspeeds even on demanding games.

 

I do mind the weight: I need to carry this thing all around every day. I'm just looking for the best trade-off between performance and mobility

 

I carry around my GT 72 as well I don't really notice its weight.

I guess the best compromise would be either the GE 73 or an alienware which has been repasted.

 

The GE73 has 7th gen CPU

 

https://www.notebookcheck.net/MSI-G...-GTX-1070-Full-HD-Laptop-Review.309006.0.html

 

I don't really love the design, but it can be an option.
Thank you

 

It does look a lot better irl than on pictures tbh. Other than that you could maybe look at Alienware even tho repaste is an absolute must.

 

Undervolt and thermal grease re-paste are the things most worthy I think
and THERE'S one thermal pad attached on SSD in every shipment of AERO 15

 

I am a little bit curious why you could be so sure it's useless to have additional thermal pad on SSD......
according to our test during DVT phase, having additional thermal pad will decrease about 10℃ on SSD surface
or you're saying 10℃ is not big deal on SSD?

 

@g85222456

I got this laptop from Newegg.com for work (and some entertainment) purposes. Unfortunately, it is going back. Nearly perfect for my needs until I need to use the speakers. Hopefully, the speakers are given more attention in the next revision.

Don't bother with Danish. He is set in his ways and it is clearly an MSI fanboy. @Julii Stay with the Aero 15X, if you don't mind the speakers, it is not bad at all.

 

Thank you for the suggestion - we're enthusiastically studying if there's qualified speaker module on next AERO
Well, I am totally fine if there's any fans of our competitor speaking for their brand on this board - but what I was concerned is that the information conveyed to the consumer like you guys needs to be CORRECT

 

I will be giving this laptop a Rage Set honest review soon. Very good notebook overall but the speakers need a bit more of a punch.

BTW, in my opinion, this "thin and light" notebook beats down the direct MSI competition. The battery life is sweet. Anyway, I'll let my review tell the story.

 

Thank you all for the replies, what about the RAM upgrade?

 

Thermal pad for what? You don't have a heatsink so what, you just smack a thermal pad on the SSD and magicially the temps drop??

Main issue with the notebook is its throttling which isn't fixable.

 

The bottom panel acts as a giant heatsink

 

Didn't know it would touch the bottom panel, I suppose you could take some c of it. Still doesn't fix the EC throttling tho :/

 

Exactly, the thermal pad will act like the thermal grease between bottom cover and NAND chip, spreading the heat to the bottom cover which is made by aluminum

 

Anyone has experience with repasting? In case I want to do it, should I also replace the thermal pads? What tickness should I use?

 

I just repasted mine and I think I'm going to do it again with IC Diamond next. Mine is still hitting 90C on the CPU, however, I have gained better performance on the CPU. Before the computer use to throttle to 3.5 (all core) during 3DMark benchmarks, now it stays at 3.9Ghz. The interesting thing is that Gigabyte does not put thermal pads on the GPU memory, instead they use some kind of thermal grease. I have some thermal pads incoming (1mm, 0.5mm) to add to the memory and along the heatsink.

 

The thickness of thermal pad is 2.5mm

 

for VRAM it should be covered by the thermal module?

 

No, my VRAM have an opaque grease applied. I was disappointed to discover that but I will order some thicker thermal pads outside of the 1.0/0.5mm I am getting.

 

Got it. why we have that is there's always some tolerance of gap between VRAM and thermal module so we just input the thermal pad between them to make the thermal module more solid and tightly attached to the VRAM

 

So, what is the thickness of the pads I need to buy? 0.5, 1 and 2.5? The one at 2.5 is for the SSD?

 

I ordered Fulipoly Ultra 0.5/1/1.5mm pads. I am not sure what @g85222456 is talking about, because there are no thermal pads between the heatsink and the VRAM, only thermal grease. Based off my experience, the VRAMs will likely need 1.0mm pads. I will let you know more on Thursday when they arrive. I will have a small writeup on my journey very soon.

 

yes the thickness of thermal pad for SSD is 2.5mm

 

let me check internally if the one exist between heatsink and VRAM is thermal grease or super-thin thermal pad

 

I would like to know this. My VRMs aren't extremely hot, however, they are hotter than I would like them to be.

 

should be 0.5~0.8 mm

 

Liquid metal

 

Awesome!!! thank you so much ....I added an extra WD Blue 1 Tb drive...didn't put any thermal pad on it ...definitely ordering one today...Also really appreciate all your replies on various threads..!

Just to confirm....it's 2.5 mm for M.2 & 0.5 mm for VRMs right?

 

Yes, 2.5mm for M.2 and 0.5mm for VRAM

 

Thank You!

 

Is one 60x50x0.5 mm pad enough for the VRAM or do I need to get more ?

 

I just took at a look at mine and the VRAM was thermal pasted, not pads. It was also a surprisingly good paste job / coverage compared to others I've seen. I'm trying Noctua NT-H1 at the moment but may switch depending on what feedback other owners here say. I just did this last night so I'll wait a few days to setup and report back.

 

Hi to all, been reading for the past few weeks but first time posting since getting the 15x.
In regards to heat, my best solution thus far (not doing anything internally) is to get the laptop off the ground and into a stand or cooling pad and cranking the fans to max (fn and esc). The cooling pad i have is is ok for the price, but gaming for about hr or 2 my cpu temps are 76-82 and gfx mid 60s. The cooling performance of the pad gives me 2-3c of reduction (ill take what i can get with these thin gaming devices), while leaving it on the desk normally everything gets max temps. So i guess the first thing to do is just to get the laptop off of the desk... youll see reduction almost immediately. Initially i used 3 hockey pucks (cdn thing to do lol) and then went for more of a classy look by adding a cooling pad.