NEW Aero 14 w/ GTX1060

thats impressive.. i think if you lower a bit GPU clock speed and limit game's FPS, you can get smooth 60fps on 1080 resolution and lower heat levels with same fan speed

not sure why you guys care so much about thunderbolt3, it seems useless right now. the only area where its applicable currently is eGPU, but you ll spend less credits if you buy more powerful laptop.
and btw, thunderbolt3 can be unlocked via bios update, so i will not be surprised when gigabyte will do it when they release their eGPU.

 

That's why the precision 5520 would be the ultimate laptop if only it's TB3 ran at full-speed rather than half

 

Please don't post outright falsehoods. You could potentially mislead someone into spending a lot of money on a mistake. No, no you can't "unlock" a TB3 port out of thin air. Jesus.

 

The other poster highlighted some of the things I did as well. Undervolting does help with power consumption directly but it also helps with heat management which helps power consumption indirectly. I think turning off the turbo is a big thing you can do with throttle stop too. The turbo causes a lot of heat and power draw in spikes. I don't really have a good reason to need to be at 35x (45-50w) vs 29x(40w) on the road. My battery setting is capped at 20x(30w) and which comes out to about a 10w difference from 29x. At any of these settings the CPU can idle really low if you have minimum processor state set to 5%.

Disabling emptyproject process is seriously 10-15watts. It's huge. My laptop with most of my power saving tweaks will play videos at 17-20watts(still plugged in, less unplugged but I can't measure) so having emptyproject almost doubles it. I disabled a lot of the animations/transparency in windows. I'm not sure if I notice any stuttering anymore but I'm not 100% sure what emptyprocess was supposed to fix.

I really wish this laptop had tb3 too but I don't honestly know what I'd use it for. I'm thinking about grabbing a plugable 3.1 dock. Anyone use that or any other USB 3.1 dock?

 

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2015/10/26/gigabyte-unlocks-thunderbolt-3/1

okay, I did not read till the end, it had tb2 support before bios unlock.
so it seems thunderbolt3 unlock out of usb-c 3.1 standard is not possible

 

I have read that the chips used for USB C from intel have thunderbolt capability but if not licensed (like in the aero) it is disabled via bios.

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Thunderbolt is a separate piece of hardware- the Alpine ridge controller. You have the same chance of a bios update turning a gtx 960m into a gtx 1080.

 

I can't find the post of course. But someone was saying that the chip used is actually intel's thunderbolt controller (which also does USB 3.1), and that thunderbolt is just disabled.

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In this case I would rather go with a notebook that has just an iGPU for maximum performance and portability and with a TB3 port to plug in GPU power when at home. You'll likely upgrade your eGPU more often than the notebook.

 

I've created a script to handle babysitting of the EmptyProject11 process for anyone that wants to maximize battery life. http://pastebin.com/QfNc3mnf

The script first checks power state when launched to see if it should initially kill the process or not. It then registers for power events so it can start/stop the process based on whether or not you are plugged in. And it registers for process creation events so it can kill EmptyProject11 automatically whenever smart manager tries to relaunch it.

I set this to run automatically at system startup via task manager and it's working well. You have to specify that it runs powershell,.exe and then the arguments as needed. I used the following:
-noexit -windowstyle hidden -file d:\scripts\poweventhandler.ps1

You also need to allow it to run whether or not you are logged in, and "run with highest privileges" or it won't be able to auto kill the process when it is relaunched by smart manager (or manually if you want to test it)

 

Is the idea to only have it run when plugged in? What benefit that it runs at all?

 

Yes, because it forces the Nvidia GPU to stay active all the time which causes more power draw. This gets rid of some weird 1-2sec hangs in windows that appear on optimus enabled systems when windows decides that it needs the nvidia GPU to wake up to render something on screen (like the battery status pop up).

If I'm on battery I'll put up with a little glithchy feel to windows to extend battery life drastically. But when plugged in I don't care if the nvidia renders everything and I want it to be smooth.

 

this one?
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/asus-gl502vsk-k-for-kaby-lake.799166/#post-10412959

also interesting reading:
https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?88837-GL502VM-and-Thunderbolt-3-confusion

how to check if Intel alpine ridge chip is present?

 

Could you do me a favor? It would be helpful if you could stress test by running OCCT and Unigine Heaven simultaneously for about 15 minutes and show us pictures of the CPU and GPU temperatures from HWInfo or HWMonitor. I think many of us are curious about the temperatures of a repasted Aero 14. I'm also interested in the repaste possibly reducing fan noise, although there's no way to measure that.

I'm debating on whether a repaste from GenTechPC is worth the extra shipping time when I desperately need a computer for college work (Alienware 15 R3 didn't work out for me because of ordering/customer support issues).

 

Neat, thanks for sharing. I took a much simpler approach, although it requires manual intervention. I replaced EmptyProject11 with a (mostly) noop exe, so nothing happens during startup or when SmartManager tries to launch it. Then I moved the real EmptyProject11 elsewhere and put a shortcut to it on the start screen (I gave the shortcut a nice NVidia icon and named it "Enable dGPU"). And I turned on the NVidia activity tray icon as a quick reference of whether the 1060 is on or not.

I spend most of my time on battery though, and the 1060 enables itself when I need it, so I don't want EmptyProject11 running the vast majority of the time.

 

Is the actual power draw of the awake but not used dGPU really that noticeable (15W)? What did you use to measure?
Scripting it with the battery profile in mind is really cool. Thanks for sharing.


Oh, for new readers: If you notice a flickering of your screen after some times of use, please tell me. You'll likely have a defective screen panel

 

I used a tool by nirsoft to see the current discharge an it only looks like dgpu adds 7 watts to the draw. But it is adding it to the base draw of 8 watts while running on battery.

I used the nvidia tray icon and noticed something weird though. Nvidia share said it was active on the dGPU, but the power draw didn't increase unless emptyproject11 was running.

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Hey, I don't plan on doing anymore stress test or benchmark because I think the laptop runs cool in my regular use and I was able to see that my laptop performance is in line with others which is what I wanted. I also do not play heavy games so stress testing is not very ideal for me... Anyways, I think if you need the laptop soon, you probably should not do the repaste option and I am certain yours will run just as cool even without. I did not undervolt but it sounds to me that there are a lot of good alternatives to cooling the laptop.
Also, keep in mind that the return policy once you "customize" it has 15% restocking fee but AFAIK the replacements for components are free of charge... Nonetheless, their service is very good and Ken was very helpful.

 

I do see why you wouldn't want to stress test - thanks for replying. I considered a repaste so that I could maybe use a quieter fan profile so that I don't bother people around me. I'm also not too worried about the 15% restocking fee for customized laptops, because it's a reasonably small increase from the 10% restocking fee for non-customized laptops.

 

I used a simple Belkin wall outlet power draw meter so all my measurements were while plugged in. Turning off the emptyproject process was anywhere from 10-15w. It seems to draw less while on battery which makes sense, even still, it's still a significant power draw.

Good info! I think I inadvertently killed the emptyproject process altogether when I uninstalled gigabytes smart manager app. Emptyproject only launches when I manually launch that app now.

 

Hey guys, I just received my Aero 14 V7 Kaby Lake Edition from Excaliberpc today and the packaging came with a seal sticker. This is going to sound really silly but it is okay to remove that correct? The sticker says to just check contents of package to make sure nothing is broken. I'll pay this thread back by providing benchmarks lol
Thanks!

 

Does removing smart manager remove functionality of the keys like fn+f11 etc? . Right now I only use it to set silent fan mode when on battery because it seems to override the windows power plan settings

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The repaste can help I think and when I did the benchmark, it was on normal fan settings. I don't think the normal setting would bother other people because I could easily drown out the noise with just 2~3 up from the speaker volume. (but I am living alone and when I am usually in the library with silent fan settings), if you are okay with the somewhat delayed shipping... I think the repaste and the display warranty won't hurt (I believe the repaste and warranty offer is still up). Anyways, I think the silent fan option is really good because the computer stays cool without heating up and fans don't kick in.

 

I haven't measured the actual power draw, but the difference in battery life is very noticeable and measurable. I went from 6 hours to 10 hours of normal (light) use on one charge after making some power saving adjustments, which included disabling EmptyProject11.

Yup, you can remove the sticker.

 

Those functions still work, they just use the universal windows graphics instead of gigabytes. You can manually launch emptyproject by opening smart manager. That process does smooth out the experience so I like to have it running when I'm plugged in.

 

You must be high or something. My 970 desktop was "future proof" when I built it 2 years ago and the 1060 is in some cases faster than that. I wanted eGPU at first but then I realized what's the point? I want the laptop to take with me. By the time this GPU becomes dated, the $500 I would have spent on an eGPU plus a graphics card would be much better spent on a new PC build.

Personally, eGPU also seems like it would be buggy. If I was buying for that, I'd get an Alienware hands down cause it's system seems better and cheaper

 

Thanks, I might remove it then to try things out. Is there an auto backlight control for the keyboard in Windows or is it manual?

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How is anything you just said a refutation that a 970/1060 is not going to last much longer? You're buying a laptop today. Not two years ago.

 

I'm not really sure? The manual controls work and I just keep the keyboard lit at dim all the time.

Re: eGPUs

My last laptop (Sager 7338 with 860m) lasted about 2 years under pretty harsh use. I expect to get about the same life from this one since I like to sell my laptops before they are completely worthless. We all think with a 1060 being so powerful that we are good for a while but there are some huge advances right around the corner. Cannonlake (10nm process), Volta (HDDR6), Ryzen (16 core) next year alone. I'm going to guess that today's eGPU technology will not be able to keep up with whatever is mainstream in 2019. I view eGPU tech as something that is nice for someone today. For example, if you need the form factor of an XPS13 and wanted to game at home, it would work great today. Don't count on todays tech being very relevant for high end users in 2 years in the computing industry.

 

From memory (because my Aero is with Gigabyte *sigh*), the function toggles with the Control Manager software uninstalled partially worked:
Volume, sleep, brightness, multi mon switch, numlock all worked.
Eject (if you have an external disc drive), wireless on/off, bluetooth on/off did not.

 

I started w/ a Skylake Alienware 13R3 and am much happier with the Aero 14 now. The OLED is great, but it sits behind a reflective glossy capacitive touch layer - even in very diffuse ambient light, any darker areas were like looking into a mirror - it drove me batty. The Aero's battery is over 2X longer - with a browsing/YouTube test, the 13R3 died after about 3h10m. After 3.5h, the Aero w/ a similar workload, the Aero's battery was at about 60%. The other big point is that the 13R3 is sort of a brick - it's about 0.6kg (1.3lb) heavier and a fair amount thicker to boot. The biggest negatives for me w/ the Aero 14 is that it only has a single M.2 SSD slot and it seems much slower sleeping/resuming (is it not S3'ing properly? I didn't see any BIOS settings). Also, while not necessarily quicker, Windows Hello was pretty sweet. (also, what's up w/ that emptyproject11.exe? It idles at like 30% CPU - still deciding whether I need any of the SmartManager features or not before I blow it away)

 

OK, finished reading the last 20 pages or so of comments... As I mentioned in my previous message I now have an Aero 14 V7 (Kaby Lake) after being unsatisfied with my Alienware 13R3 Skylake. I ordered it from Gentech PC last Sunday and received it on Thursday (I live not far from them in SoCal so UPS ground was lickety split) ordered with the free (promo) Liquid Ultra repaste.

Overall, I'm much happier with the Aero 14 - especially in regards to portability (the Aero is much lighter), battery life (over 2X battery life), and performance (Valley benched 20% higher, running the Division is a solid 60fps @ 1080p High while the13R3 would go between 45-55fps).

I did have some questions/issues that maybe some owners could help with (before I send questions to Gigabyte):

* Sleep/Resume takes longer than my previous laptops (13R3, Thinkpad X250) - it seems to be hibernating rather than resuming from RAM (S3) - is there a way to check or change this behavior? It seems like it should be way faster. I doubled checked Windows 10's advanced power settings and it's set to Sleep (and hibernate after something like 180 minutes) but going to sleep and immediately resuming is still slow.

* When the battery runs out, it just shuts down rather than hibernating - is this something that can be set or is there a utility? Again, this seems to be something that I don't recall being a problem w/ other Win 10 laptops.

* Is there a way to move the right-mouse button click-point in software? When I'm using this, it often right-clicks when I want to left click. Ideally, I'd want just the right third or even quarter of the trackpad to be right click? I did some searching but maybe my Google-fu isn't strong enough and there's a good utility out there for this.

* Did anyone have problems w/ popping from the speaker when certain sounds started playing (or maybe when the speaker first activates after a while?) I installed updated Realtek HD Audio drivers that I think got rid of the problem, but it seems like an odd problem to have out of the box.

* I paid Gentech PC an extra few bucks to get a pre-made USB recovery stick but couldn't boot from it in either UEFI Secure-mode off or Legacy BIOS mode. Anyone have ideas on what the issue might be? (I was swapping the included 512GB SSD for my own 1TB SSD and ended up booting into a Linux boot disk, doing a 'dd' to copy over the drive, and then resizing the Windows disk w/ Paragon Partition Manager Free Edition (even disabling the pagefile, I couldn't get the partition as small as I wanted w/ Windows' built in resizing))

* EmptyProject11.exe uses 20-30% CPU when I'm idling - I've renamed the exe which I hope fixes that (I've yet to see any Optimius stuttering in daily use the past couple days) - I'm tempted to remove SmartManager entirely - is there a good/simple app that take over the fan control options (really the only thing I can see that you'd use it for? I use AHK to swap my caps lock to ESC/CTRL so I don't need that OSD))

* Has anyone been running this with Linux? I have Arch installed and am slowly setting it up, but this is my first time w/ an Optimus laptop - honestly, I wouldn't mind running iGPU-only. Currently running powertop, it seems to idle at around 20W (!) which seems crazy (my X250 idled between 4-5W). Do I need to setup Bumblebee to control disabling the 1060? Also the 8260 wifi seems to be... very not happy.

 

Hi, thanks for the info! I have to decide if buy an Aero 14 or an AW13R3. What about the keyboard in the Aw13 R3 vs Aero14? I think that AW13 is much better when typing(key travel), am I wrong?
I have to use the laptop for college and I am used to the AW13R2 keyboard, so I do not know what to choose.

 

Can you please comment on the fan loudness while gaming? I'd at least expect the Alienware to make up for the extra weight with a more efficient cooling system?

 

From the looks, I suspect the 13R3 keyyboard is similar to the 13R2. Anyway, the 13R3 keyboard is good - decent travel, a traditional/old-school key shape, and a firm metal bed that didn't flex. That being said, I don't mind the Aero 14 keyboard - it has a chiclet style keyboard that is shallow but doesn't flex too much for my typing, and while not quite as comfy as the 13R3 is perfectly usable. It even has some macro keys that I haven't bothered to use on the left side, and has a full nav cluster (pause, ins, del, home, pgup, pgdn, end) along the right side. The only issues I really have with the Aero 14 keyboards are aesthetic - the keyboard font is ugly, and the keyboard lighting adequate, but somewhat uninspiring, but compared to the cons I had with the 13R3, those are more niggles than anything else.

Honestly, as a college student, if you are going to be carrying this around with you, I think you'd be much better off w/ the Aero 14. Seriously, the Alienware is like a brick (although I suppose if you have a 13R2, which was even heavier you already know this) and the battery life is IMO too short to use OTG. When docking it, I use a mechanical keyboard (one other issue I had with the 13R3 is that because the bottom is pointy in the center, it wasn't actually very friendly to use w/ my laptop stand, that was a somewhat unexpcted problem.).

 

Xotic and Gentech both have video reviews that measure the Aero and I'm sure there's videos on YouTube w/ measurements for the 13R3, but basically they both get pretty loud/aggressive when gaming (the Aero might be slightly higher pitched, but I think the Alienware is actually louder, but I don't have both side by side anymore). Either way it's not really a consideration for me I always have headphones or IEMs on when gaming (I suspect if you didn't, you'd be equally annoyed with both). During regular use the fan doesn't come on at all.

BTW, my apt is fairly loud I suspect compared to most people's residences, about 40dB ambient. I did a quick measurement from my head position w/ the fan on max on the Aero 14 and it's surprisingly only about 45-46dB (I say surprising because it's definitely noticeable fan noise).

 

Maybe the CL Liquid Ultra allows your Aero 14 to use a quieter fan curve?

To change what your Aero does when it's almost out of battery, right click on the battery icon in the bottom right icon bar, click "Power Options," click "Change plan settings" for the plan you want to change, click "Change advanced power settings," scroll down to "Battery," open its submenu, and change the critical battery action as you see fit.

 

Hmm, wrt to the fan curve, it's on the "gaming" fan profile w/ SettingManager and it does go from a lower fan level to a higher one (although interestingly, and this may be thanks to the Liquid Ultra, it does drop down sometimes even during gaming).

I checked the power options and interestingly, it is set to"hibernate" when at critical battery levels, but it didn't work when I ran down the battery. I guess I'll have to do another rundown test. Maybe it's just hit or miss.

 

This should be configureable in the power / battery settings of windows. There's some options such as what happens if the power key is pressed. I think hibernation is not defaulted cause of the amount it writes to the SSD. It's usually said that if a fresh boot needs as much time as returning from hibernation, the fresh boot is taken.

This is a bug. If you start the laptop and do nothing for like let's say a minute, emptyproject will have almost no CPU impact. It seems to bug out if you start programs while it is starting.

You will notice some stuttering after killing it, for example if you click on the battery icon the mouse will hang for about a second until the pop-up window shows. Nothing really serious but that's the time the GPU needs to wake up and render that stupid window.

 

Neither of these has caused me any trouble yet so why would I upgrade? Doesnt matter the game, on ultra at 1080p both push beyond 100fps, the Aero can handle 1440p in many situations. You want 4k? Well then why are you here? You need a GTX 1080, maybe even two. And two years is too old for you? Well then you can spend as much money as you want upgrading every year. This is the first time we've been able to buy laptops that can even compare to the previous years top end cards so I think it'll last plenty long. For you, I wouldn't waste any money on a laptop with a GPU, just get a model with a good professor and an eGPU. but I don't see the point of even that. You're turning a laptop into a desktop at that point, you might as well buy a desktop if having the best and being able to upgrade is so important. I've even seen how the Aeros CPU is weaker than the two year old 4790k I'm using so if it matters so much to you, you'd be behind right out of the gate

 

I would say overall this device has some weird behaviors under windows. My main hope is that if I just run Linux for my casual use and switch to only the cpu I won't have as much trouble. But none of these problems have been so bad that I've bothered installing Linux yet

 

Interesting, reading some threads, it also happens when you open "Display settings." What's curious is that the dGPU gets woken even if you go into System Properties and disable all the Visual Effects in the Performance settings.

Apparently there are some old versions of Nvidia's drivers (which undoubtedly don't support the 1060) and a recent BIOS released for a specific Gigabyte model laptop that may fix these problems, but otherwise there are very long threads on the Intel and Nvidia forums w/ no solution in sight.

 

Thanks for all the comments - I've just pulled the trigger on the i7-7700HQ version.

 

For the issue with emptyproject11 eating 30% cpu, I notice that from time to time as well and it seems to be a bug. Killing the process and starting it again seems to fix it.

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I'm looking at the Aero 14 as my next laptop. How is the build quality? Is it all aluminum? I've seen mention of an aluminum chassis, but I can't find anything really descriptive and definitive about it. How would the build quality compare to Aorus and Sager (I know Aorus is supposed to be nicer than Sager)? Thanks for the input!

 

I believe the panels are aluminum, but there are plastic bits (inside of the screen, the hinge cover, maybe some of the joining bits? just tapping around). It's not a unibody and build quality isn't anywhere near Apple level, but I have no problems w/ it, it seems pretty well-fitted, doesn't creak or anything. Also, the hinge doesn't wobble when typing, which was my main concern seeing reports from previous versions (it does wobble when you shake the computer - by comparison, the 13R3 hinge is a lot more solid).

Aorus is a Gigabyte sub-brand (and Sagers are all Clevos) - their build quality is probably model specific, but I doubt the differences are enough to override the bigger features differences (I was just at Guang Hua/Syntrend in at the beginning of the year and put my hands on dozens of MSI, Gigabyte, Razer, Asus, Acer, HP, Lenovo and Toshiba laptops so I feel like I have a decent basis for saying that.)

 

The major panels are aluminum. Top, bottom, screen bezel and palm rest. Sides are plastic around the screen and bottom edge.

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It's aluminum, At least the parts you usually touch. I'd say build quality is good but my screen started flickering after a few days of use on RMA / repair ......

 

I would call the outside high quality plastic. You seem to be implying that if it was metal on the outside it would be sturdier and I can unfortunately vouch that's not the case cause hinge on my aluminum Zenbook just blew apart today after only owning it one year. I don't really know what parts of the chassis are aluminum either.

I don't know if it's better than an Aorus but they don't exactly seem indestructible. It's probably better than a Sager cause those are made of off the shelf parts put into a chassis while something like this Aero is custom everything. I think a Sager would last a while if you don't plan on carrying it around.

All I can say is on the surface, handling it, I have a lot faith the Aero will last me a while. I've even seen a review where the guy dangled it by the screen without it breaking so it seems pretty strong. No one can really know exactly how sturdy it is cause it hasn't been out very long but no one has complained about the 970 version so it must be pretty good

 

Does anyone have a manual/guide or know how to disassemble the Aero 14 in order to replace the screen?

Haven't been able to find anything on this.