NEW Aero 14 w/ GTX1060

Thanks. I've renamed "emptyproject11.exe" so it doesn't load. Not seen any issues with stuttering. I guess the battery indicator problem has been fixed as it doesn't cause a pause for me.

 

It seems to be fixed in the latest insider build, so hopefully after the Creator´s Update in April, emptyproject won´t be needed anymore to remove the microstuttering.

 

How did the repaste go?
Did you manually distribute the thermal paste on CPU and vRAM or just let the heatsink pressure squeeze it all over? too less paste and too much paste are both bad

Oh, and in your first repaste, you didn't remove the viscous paste from the vRam and left them blank, right? Just put the heat sink back on with the old paste?

 

Hey,

I'm sorry that I just disappeared like that. I haven't actually repasted yet becauase I underestimated school and got whammed by . The new plan is to repaste as soon as I get home for spring break on March 12th.

It would be a really bad idea to leave the vram blank. I did remove the viscous paste, but I also dabbed on a large amount of Kryonaut.
It's true that too little paste and too much paste are both bad. However, 1. a test done by Linustechtips show that too much paste doesn't make a tangible difference on desktops ( ) and 2. pro repasters like iunlock have stated that laptops perform optimally with a bit more paste than would be optimal on a desktop. Therefore, during my repaste, I erred on the side of too much rather than too little.

I did not manually spread the paste because manual spreading increases the chance of uneven distribution and air bubbles. Natural heatsink pressure will make for the best distribution (unless you're using liquid metal, which we always manual spread).

By the way, I got a Firestrike score of ~10300 on this current repaste, where I haven't replaced the thermal pads and the vram still has Kryonaut.

 

It has done it since I first got it including twice during the initial Windows setup the first time I powered it on. I have updated all drivers and the firmware and still had the same problem so Gigabyte says send it in.

 

Stock speeds and no undervolting on mine. Did turning off XTU help you?

 

Hey guys. I received my Aero 14 v7 on friday and I was spending the whole weekend setting it up and removing unneeded stuff. I am extremely happy with the build quality. It is much better than I imagined. My screen has no noticeable backlight bleed and not a single dead pixel. I also received a NVME SSD with 2000+ mb/s reads.
My 7700hq is rock-stable with a 0,150 undervolt and stays extremely cool for a laptop cpu, with no thermal throttling at all.
The windows 10 battery prediction was till 90% at 11,5 hours with surfing and watching netflix, after that it was at 9,5 but I havent had the time yet to test a full battery cycle. BTW I replaced the emptyproject11.exe with dllhost.exe and Im using some other tweaks like the UV I mentioned before.

Now that I have everything set up I noticed some things and I do have some questions for you guys.
1. If the keyboard backlight is set to auto, on a fresh start in a dark room, the laptop boots with turned on backlight and as soon as the Smart Center is loaded the backlight turns off until light conditions change or you manually reenable auto-backlight. Is there a way to let autostart load a file which solves this issue? Have you guys experienced the same thing?
2. How do I check the battery load with the laptop shut down? I tried pressing the right mouspad click near the battery icon but it wont show.
3. I was able to remove the ugly Smart Center OSD by replacing the osd.exe also with dllhost.exe but I cant force the Smart Center to start after replacing that exe. I tried a bootup task and placing exes from the smart installation folder in autostart folder from windows but nothing worked. I want to keep using Smart Center because of the fan and other tweaks but without the ugly OSD.
Edit: Just to clear this up. Manually starting the Smart Center does still work. It takes a bit longer though because I think it is trying to start the OSD, but when its up there is no OSD and everything works.

Thanks in advance for any help. And if you guys have any questions please feel free to ask ;-)

 

I think it did. I am not getting any of the black screens.

 

Just out of curiousity, when you guys have the laptop unplugged in, have the laptop either powered off/sleep/hibernating, and right click on the touchpad. Do you get your light indicator for Bluetooth,wireless, cpu usage, charging, power, light up?
Supposedly, this is suppose to be a battery life indicator in which the number of lights indicate the amount of battery you have with increment of 20% per light.
It is in the Aero 14 manual but my laptop does not work. Black screen fixed tho following another user's suggestion with XTU.

Thanks guys

 

I can verify that it works here. Very cool feature that I never knew existed. They light up in sequence and then turn off after a second.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

 

Actually, I played around with it a bit and I think there's a separate button underneath that is providing the feature. If I lightly click the track pad on the bottom right corner it doesn't do anything. If I click a little harder the lights show up.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

 

Thanks, that worked for me!

 

Thanks that worked for me too.

Anyone else who may be helpful with the other two questions I posted?

 

Has anyone successfully used the USB 3.1 port (which is the USB C connector on this laptop). I had an ugly crash soon after plugging in a peripheral and the issue persisted even after rebooting. I had to do a full restore from my Acronis backup as the inbuilt restore didn't work either.

 

OK, so apparently my display is cracked

I was just carrying it around school in my backpack today, it was a full backpack, and this happened:

It's internal cracking since I can't feel anything on the outside of the screen. There's also lots of discoloration:


Let me reiterate that I was doing nothing reckless or accidental when this happened, I was just carrying it around in a slightly full backpack.

Can I get a free replacement (or free plus S/H) under warranty? I bought this in January (it's a Skylake/1060 model) from ExcaliberPC via Amazon.

 

This is why a stiff and protective slip case for your thin laptops are so important when putting the laptop in a backpack - heavy objects jostling around will eventually cause pressure / impact to crack the screen.

I doubt you will get a free replacement, unless they have included accidental damage coverage.

 

You had it in a case right?

 

It was in a sleeve of my backpack meant for laptops (so a bit of separation from everything else)

How much should I expect to pay for a repair?

 

I would recommend reaching out to Gigabyte or the seller of the computer to see what they can do for a repair, and how much it might cost you.

 

Thanks for responding. I think I'm going to try to contact GIGABYTE because ExcaliberPC doesn't look like they want to be involved outside of shipping damage.

How long do these things usually take to fix? I'm a student, and while I have other laptops I can use, it's definitely not optimal for me.

 

I think it is best that you talk with Gigabyte. It sucks that you may need to send it overseas for repair and I am also a student so I know the frustration. However, unless you live right next to the service center, you will be away from the laptop for some time... Good luck and find a good case for the laptop once fixed!

 

Tried other USB C devices (including another hub and a mouse) and all resulted in crashes - albeit it came back after a reboot this time. Problems resolved by installing a more recent driver than Gigabyte supply. Version I used was actually from Dell which is just the repackaged generic driver. All seems fine now.

http://www.dell.com/support/home/uk/en/ukbsdt1/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=CH1P1

 

At tha

If I were you, I'd find out what panel is used and source my own.

No point in sending it to Gigabyte where they'll probably quote you a good $100-200 for a screen replacement when you could easily do it yourself.

 

Looks like I'll have to send it to California...I live in Massachusetts so it's fairly far if we're talking about ground shipping, but at least it's not to Taiwan or something.

On screen replacement websites they sell 1080p matte and 1440p glossy, but no 1440p matte (which the original is).

 

re: black screens

I get those periodically when running throttlestop. I'm not really quite sure what is causing them as I've tried many different things to troubleshoot the issue. It has something to do with the low power states conflicting. Either way, using throttlestop I can get 9-11 good hours on battery which makes it worthwhile on flights, random blackscreens included. I just turn off TS when I'm actually writing/editing and use it for doing videos, reading, and gaming on the plane.

 

I'd suggest trying to undervolting a little less on the igpu to see if it stops the blackouts. To me it sounds like the component is crashing because of a power issue. My desktop used to do that sort of thing until I replaced the PSU even though it was testing out OK. It was a marginal voltage issue and the only reason I figured it out was because the motherboard warned about an undervoltage problem on around the 100th crash and forced reboot.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

 

I'd suggest trying to undervolting a little less on the igpu to see if it stops the blackouts. To me it sounds like the component is crashing because of a power issue. My desktop used to do that sort of thing until I replaced the PSU even though it was testing out OK. It was a marginal voltage issue and the only reason I figured it out was because the motherboard warned about an undervoltage problem on around the 100th crash and forced reboot.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

 

1. I can't seem to get the auto keyboard backlight to work or I am doing it wrong. A good workaround is Fn+Spacebar to cycle through the backlight.

 

Yeah auto-backlight is borked it seems. The mentioned advice is what Ive been using since I got the Laptop but thank you anyway ;-)
For Auto backlight to work follow these steps after each reboot:
open smart Manager and in the Keyboard backlight Option select Auto. If Auto was selected already just click on Auto again. This is the only way Ive found for auto-backlight to work after a restart or fresh boot.

BTW: my other Points have been solved already. But the auto-backlight Thing is Kind of annoying. If anyone else has some ideas Id really appreciate it.

 

I'd love to find a way to make this system change to quiet fan profile when on battery, but go to gaming or custom when plugged in automatically

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

 

Are there any common reoccurring defects that people are experiencing? The only one that I see is the spacebar not being responsive... Wanted to know if there is anything else I should be looking for..

 

Does anyone know how to make sure the dGPU stays "off" instead of "idle" as indicated by NvOptimusTestViewer64.exe?
I have noticed a clear correlation between the "idle" state and increased battery consumption.

Without doing anything or running anything in the background, I get somewhere around 7,000-8,000 mW discharge rate when the dGPU is on "off" state, whereas it increases to around 10,000 mW when the dGPU is on "idle" state.

For context, my CPU is undervolted by 85, and I have the latest driver for GTX1060 via NVidia website. I changed my global setting so that integrated graphics card is used by default, and the optimus test tool indicates that there are no applications using the dGPU.

Thanks for any help!

 

Duplicate post by error.

 

This is related to EmptyProject11.exe being started by Smart Manager to reduce lags from the optimus platform changing GPUs. Replace the exe in Smart Manger Folder with an empty one, like dllhost.exe, and give it the same Name.

 

Hey thanks for your response.
I should have mentioned in my original post, but I already did away with the emptyproject11.exe by replacing it with a blank exe.
The dGPU tends to stay "off" after I restart the computer, but it changes to "idle" after a while and stays that way.

 

When you notice it in idle state, instead of restarting the laptop just run emptyproject11.exe and then immediately kill it. This is what I do whenever I find the dgpu is staying on longer than it should be, especially after waking the laptop from sleep, albeit automated through a small program I created and the task scheduler. After killing emptyproject11.exe, the dgpu turns off for me instead of switching back to idle, allowing me to get a consistent 10 hours or so on a single charge.

 

I just replaced the emptyproject11.exe file with a null exe file (***Option 2***): https://superuser.com/a/393508

The dGPU stays inactive unless used by an application.

 

Same here. I've been looking at Notebook FanControl but havent been able to figure out which registers in the EC is used to control the fan.

 

I've found that the system doesn't really poll the light sensor as often / or hangs when returning from sleep. So what happens is that when opening the laptop, the screen stays on full brightness until I toggle the brightness using at the notification bar (hidden under the battery icon) or open SmartManager then toggle the screen brightness from Auto to Manual and back again. Has anyone found a workaround for this?

 

I just realised that there is a new beta BIOS FB04/F004 in the Smart Update app. Will try out and see if there are any differences.

 

if there isn't any problems with the laptop... I wouldn't update that bios. It won't affect any performance and could even make it worse.

 

I have not noticed the light sensor but have noticed what the wifi indicator will go dead after resuming from sleep at times and a full reboot fixes it.

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

 

no problems here. The light sensor/screen brightness/keyboard brightness are all a little whacky. no change after the update.

 

true, but i am having a little problem with the light sensor/screen brightness/keyboard brightness combo.

on a different note I have noticed that the under the new bios, in Throttlestop, under "Package C State Percent", C8 - C10 is constantly zero, while using the older BIOS, C8 was being used, and C9-10 were a constant zero. Anyone notice similar behaviour?

 

I'd like to use the Aero 14 with 965M GPU mostly for programming and battery life and performance is priority.

The newly released v7 model(discussed here in this thread) comes with upgraded processor i7 7700HQ and 1060 GPU but is 500EUR more expensive.

Are there any reasons to pay this much extra(programming, not much gaming)?
Are there any known(hardware or software) issues fixed only in newer v7 model not fixed in the (discontinued and probably not supported) old model with 965M GPU?
Btw is the old model still supported by Gigabyte, or will the updates of newer model work for the old one?

On paper for me the old model having less powerful GPU means better battery life and cooling. Is that true?
Can I use the updated bios on the newer model for the old model?

Thank you

 

So how did you fare with the beta bios? Just got this machine and am updating drivers.

 

As far as I know, you don't even need this much performance if all you're doing is programing. You'd be fine with an Intel only computer like an i5 and could probably find one with a better battery life. I usually see ThinkPads recommended for programming

 

Can I get some advice on improving my battery under Linux? I'm using KDE Neon (basically Kubuntu) right now. I usually use Manjaro but it won't boot and the Antergos installer kept crashing so I decided to try out Neon. I was only getting about 3 or 4 hours of battery and I thought it was because it was using the Nvidia GPU. Installing Bumblebee gave me a black screen so I decided to uninstall and blacklist Nouveau so force use the Intel graphics (I didn't need the Nvidia GPU under Linux) and seemed to give me an extra hour. Of course I read later it was using the Intel graphics and didn't need to do that but whatever. I also tried using
cpufrequtils to set the cpu to power save mode but it didn't seem to help. I'm still consuming about 20 Watts according to powertop. Advice? I've seen the guides for Arch Linux but I don't feel like learning how to install it from scratch. I'm mostly worried about messing up my partitions though I do have a backup

 

When programming in IntelliJ or other IDEs it's really really resource and time consuming if you don't use a fast computer. Especially if you develop using VMs.

 

I didn't know. Maybe I'm not the best person to ask then but I will say I think the 1060 is overkill for most uses other than demanding games