NEW Aero 14 w/ GTX1060

Mind helping me with that?

 

@HussainQ Sure, Will share it when I write it .
My GPU fan isn't spinning as fast as the CPU fan, so it heated up pretty quick. Thanks to Pascal and GPU Boost 3.0, it throttles itself down visibly right from 70C. While the replacement fans are on their way , I tried a few things.
- Undervolted CPU Core and Cache to -0.125v and iGPU to -0.077v . Now the processor hovers at 0.924V @ 3.4 Ghz comfortably
- Undervolted the 1060 with After burner , now it runs at a constant 1735Mhz at a much lower 0.862V, under 75C. Earlier it used to shoot upto 84C due to my faulty fan with itself throttling down to as low as 1500 Mhz.
- Set the Smart Manager fan to a fixed 80% when the laptop is at full load. BIOS has set the fan curve to keep the fans as quiet as possible , but all I want is a cooler laptop.
I have also ordered kryonaut from thermal grizzly, its the safest and the best TIM in the market. With a proper re-paste, new fan and with above undervolts , I think there would be a difference of 10-15C between the stock and mine.

 

Heads up, after reseating my wifi card it worked for a few weeks great and issues have returned. Event viewer is spammed with nic/driver failure messages whenever I wake the machine from sleep and sometimes I have to reboot to get wifi even listed in device manager.

I ordered a 9260ngw M.2 card on ebay and will report here if it works or doesn't etc. It's basically the updated version of the 8260 that came in my skylake unit, except it has BT5 and mu-mimo. Only issue is that I have to wait for it to get here from China because it's literally the only place I could find them.

 

Disabling the GPU from the device manager does not shut it down entirely unless I shut it down from the bios. I have battery bar installed and have done some testing:

GPU disabled in device manager: ~2.5hrs battery life/ 20,000mW discharge rate idle, laptop runs about 60c idle
GPU disabled in bios: ~7hrs battery life/ 10,000mW discharge rate idle, laptop runs about 35c idle

Is it required for me to disable the gpu entirely in the bios in order for me to get > 3hrs battery life? I have a fresh copy of windows installed on my laptop with updated drivers and smart manager enabled. I barely get over 2 hours with the gpu enabled and my battery discharge rate is well north of 25kmW idle. It seems like my gpu is in an always running state

 

I've not had to disable my GPU to get long run times. I've been able to squeeze 9 hours of work out of my skylake unit by using throttlestop to undervolt and keep clock speeds low + run in silent fan mode.

 

I do have a kabylake unit, but I doubt that is the issue - I suspect I may have a faulty unit then. The battery life i'm getting is nowhere near advertised. I'll be RMA'ing this unit shortly

What kind of cpu temps are you seeing ?

Do you mind sharing the steps on how you set up throttlestop for undervolting/clocking? I'd like to give that a try also

 

We have different CPUs so not sure if mine would be helpful but I undervolt by 150mv on cpu and chipset.

The only other thing I did was to kill the process that keeps the GPU active. There's as nvidia tool that will show you if any processes are keeping the GPU alive so you can stop them. Early on gigabyte included an app that automatically kept the GPU active constantly to get rid of the small pauses than happen when you do things in windows like right click your desktop.

 

Hi Guys!

I see you have troubles with your battery life. So I wanna try to help you with that.
First of all, check with Nvidia GPU activity monitor if something is running it. There you can see as well, why your Nvidia is active or deactivate. If you only do casual office work without programming, video/picture editing or gaming, your should be able to reach around 7 - 10 hours of battery life.

Here are some tips how to increase your battery life:

1. Windows Power Management:
Go to the CPU setting and set for "Power saver" mode your max CPU speed around 40-60% (depends on you, how much battery you need). At first I had mine at 50%, 3 months later i set it on 60% because I never drained the battery lower than 20% per day, so I wanted to have a little bit more performance.
Whenever you want long battery life, use "Power saver" mode. If you want a decent performance laptop, then use "Balanced" where I can recommend 100% max CPU speed.



2. Nvidia GPU activity monitor:
As I already mentioned, look if something is running your Nvidia GPU. There was an old version of SmartManager who run all the time the Nvidia GPU and drained a lot of battery. Another program who likes to use it is "Microsoft Windows Photo.exe". You can end it via Task Manager, then your Nvidia GPU should shut down again.



So get the Nvidia GPU activity monitor icon in your task bar, right click on your desktop and open Nvidia systems. Then click on the top-down menu "desktop" and check mark it. There you go, now you can see every time your Nvidia GPU is active and which program is using it.



3. Disabling keyboard light
At daylight, just disable keyboard light. It consumes around 1-2 Wh. Just use it, when daylight is not reachable for you.

4. Dimm your screen brightness
Using my screen brightness at 100% costs around 3-4 Wh more energy than 50% screen brightness. I recommend 50%, only at very bright days you should use more than 50% screen brightness.

5. Check your background apps.
Use Task manager and check which apps are running. Do you need them? Do you need them to be active when starting your Laptop? There is a very high potential to reduce your energy consumption.



That's it. I hope I could help you with your battery life.

 

Hi Ranrick,

Thanks for the reply. I've already implemented most of the suggestions, yet my battery life was still not so great.

The solution for my battery life solution was to undo my stock windows 10 refresh and go back to the Aero 14 recovery image! Since doing this my battery life has improved drastically and I no longer need to disable the 1060 GPU from the bios to get > 6hrs of battery life with moderate use(after killing emptyproject1.exe and doing some optimizations). Maybe its just my imagination but it also seems like the keyboard is more responsive and so is the touch pad.

Whats also interesting is that I see LESS battery discharge with the GPU ENABLED in device manager that I do with it disabled (9mW vs 20mW)

As you said, keeping an eye out to make sure there are no rogue processes using the gpu when you don't need them running also helps a lot with battery life

For anyone who has done a fresh stock install of windows 10 and seeing issues, I would recommend trying to restore to the stock Aero 14 image using the GIGABYTE Smart Recovery tool, disable the emptyproject exe, optimize your battery settings and actually keep the gpu enabled. This seems to have fixed most of the problems I've had and I'm glad I did not have to RMA to get a much improved battery life performance

 

Hello, everyone. I've got this laptop recently, but I ran into many issues with it.

1) First of all, it dropped wifi connection every 5 minutes (the temporary solution I found is to restrict windows from switching the adapter off for power saving, but I don't know how does it affect the battery life). I read that some people experienced the same issue, but is it persistent in all units?

2) It had a lot of complete freezes and BSOD's, I probably solved it by completely resetting windows from the system menu (in particular, wiping all the preinstalled bloatware).

3) The keyboard, the most frustrating part for me. Many people write that it doesn't register many presses if they are not right in the center of the keys, but this I can somehow live with, also "\" key squeaks loudly when pressed and registers even less and left shift being annoying, because even though it's big, it's press-zone is pretty small.

But the main issue - is double key registering aka chattering. It happens with more then half of the keys randomly with total percentage about 1-5% when typing (I checked statistics with some app). It also happens on linux, meaning it's a hardware problem. Does anyone experience the same thing? Is there workaround, or should I return my unit as defective? Also, there are no such problems with an external keyboard.

Also it seems that there is an issue with external monitors, but I don't have access to one of them to check. What is the status of the problem now?

Did you experience some other long-term problems with it? Now I'm think of returning it (because of the keyboard, at least), but I'm not sure whether I should replace it with the same model. I really like how powerful and portable it is.

 

I have a skylake unit and have no problems with the keyboard. I am having issues with wifi not working after the laptop goes to sleep.

 

If the dGPU stays on , see the % usage in HW monitor and use Nvidia Optimus state tool to see what is using the dGPU. As simple as that . Why go through the pain of a Windows re-install .

Also a fresh lightweight windows 10 install is always better than the bloated Gigabyte's install.

 

Has the brightness issue been solved? I'm interested in this laptop but having brightness stuck at max could be a deal breaker.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

The solution is to simply stick with the drivers supplied through Gigabyte Smart Update.

 

I haven't had the issue return since I blocked driver updates via group policy.

 

Thanks for the info guys! Any other problems that I should look out for?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

Mine has been rock solid, I have a 1st gen aero 14 with skylake cpu. Wifi has been dropping but I suspect it's a hardware issue with the card. I'll know for sure and post here after replace the card on Friday.

 

Oh, I thought you managed to get that fixed.

 

Re-seating resolved it for around a month, now the issue seems worse than ever.

 

Just following up on my wifi issues. New adapter has been rock solid. Installed 2 days ago without even needing to update drivers (they're universal) and I've had no connectivity issues since.

 

I signed up for Windows Insider Previews a while back and now my laptop is a bit unstable. Not a Gigabyte issue, but I am going to just blow it away and start over. I ran the fix to get the Recovery back working and I verified I can get into the F9 recovery on boot. I should just be able to use the Gigabyte recovery to get back to stock and set everything back up. I did make a USB when I got it but have moved since then and I have no idea where that is. anyone have an gotchas on using the F9 recovery. My Windows is updated pretty far past the stock build, but I assume it doesn't really matter. I will have to just download lots of updates.

Just an FYI. The Insider Builds were largely useless to me. I didn't really see any benefit and I didn't really care that I had those features ahead of public release. It totally broke VirtualBox which is a big reason I am trying to get back to stock.

Edit : Well that failed. Went into F9 and picked the Smart Recovery or whatever. It popped up a console window and did stuff and was done quick. Went back to screen that had Turn Off or Troubleshoot. Thought it was done, and turned off. Turned back on and nothing, boots to BIOS. So now doing a clean install from Windows 10 media. Hope it works.

 

Just replying to those with the battery life issues: I'm not getting great battery life on Windows, but that's because I set all of the performance settings to "high performance" since I really only use Windows for gaming. I never disable the GPU in the BIOS, and use Arch Linux with TLP and Bumblebee while I'm working - this gets between 7-8hr of battery life (keyboard brightness off and screen brightness ~50-60%).

 

I get about the same on Windows on Balanced.

EDIT: I thought this was the Aero 15 thread. I guess it's still comparable.

 

I just purchased an Aero 14 and should receive it in a few days.

I am going to install Windows 10 Pro on it.

Does this Aero 15 guide apply to the Aero 14 as well? Or is there some other method I should be doing to install drivers from the Gigabyte website?

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/gigabyte-aero-15-windows-10-setup-and-tweeks-guide.813241/

Thanks.

 

I would install windows, then install the gigabyte smart update tool and only upgrade drivers that are missing or older if needed.

I get nvidia drivers directly from them, and for intel wifi/Bluetooth I get the network admin bundles so it doesn't load the proset software.

I do have blocked intel graphics updates from windows update using group policy because the latest drivers on windows update as of around 6 mos ago do not allow brightness control to work once installed.

 

Thanks for the response, do you happen to have a link to the network admin bundles (or are they the ones on the gigabyte website? I don't use the preloaded network software either).

Also, is it simple to block windows update from updating the graphics driver?

 

Not really simple to block the driver update. I haven't tested the latest Intel updates either so you might find that the windows update delivered versions work.

Search intel wifi (and Bluetooth) network admin
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/27618

You probably want WiFi_20.40.0_Driver64_Win10.zip

 

I appreciate the help, one last question: Does this laptop come with a hidden recovery partition to restore to factory default?

Just want to confirm so when I install Win 10 Pro I will not overwrite the hidden partition.

Thanks again.

 

I can't remember

 

Yes it does. I think you can back it up using Gigabyte's USB Backup tool.

 

Finally got the laptop all set up today. Went ahead and did a clean install of Win 10 Pro, updated drivers as recommended and am happy to say that everything is working well (including brightness controls on the keyboard).

I also:
Undervolted -.125 for both processor, iGPU, and cache
Installed precision drivers for the touchpad

Everything seems to be working fine and I went ahead and ran stress tests using Prime95 and benchmarked using both 3dmark 11 and 12 with scores that were in the optimal range.

I have not tested the battery life yet as I've been home. I have been looking through the thread regarding whether or not I should undervolt the dedicated gpu as well, any suggestions?

Thanks for the help.

 

Which graphics driver version do you have? Maybe I'll let mine update too

 

Intel: 23.20.16.4982
NVIDIA: 23.21.13.9135

 

Is there a way to disable the "G" key light if I am only using one set of macros in macrohub?

 

There is a new BIOS available from Gigabyte.
For Windows 10 it updates to BIOS FB0C & EC F007.
Link to the page: https://www.gigabyte.com/Laptop/AERO-14--i7-7700HQ#support-dl
As usual, they don't give any changelog but my fps in PUBG seem to be more stable / consistent - placebo or not, I like the update so far

 

I've got a skylake aero 14 with Intel 530.

On driver 21.20.16.4526 dated 9/23/2016 brightness controls work.

I used windows update to go to driver version 22.20.16.4836 dated 10/17/2017 and brightness controls no longer work.

Installed the latest driver from the Intel site win64_15.65.5.4982 shows 23.20.16.4982 in device manager dated 3/8/2018 brightness controls do not work.

 

To revert to working drivers I uninstalled the intel driver for add/remove programs, and let windows install its default driver after reboot.

I'm now back on the version I started on with working brightness.

When brightness doesn't work there is no ability to change it in windows settings, and the auto adjustment option doesn't work. As well, you can move a slider in windows mobility center but it does nothing.

 

I bought this laptop in November and now the battery died. It only works while plugged in. Yesterday the battery showed 95%. Now I see it is showing 81%. And it had been plugged in all this time. Seems like the battery has some kind of bad defect.
Also, I have 2 keys on my keyboard that works 50% of the times. I have to press them various times in order to see them typed on screen.

Am I having bad luck with this laptop, or is this happening to other users?

Also, do you know how the technical support works? Are they fast at solving this kind of issues?
I remember I had a Dell laptop few years ago, and when I had a problem they sent a technician to me and I had everything solved in an hour. This is my work laptop, so I wouldn't like to stay without it for a week, while being fixed

Thank you.

 

I'm not sure what to tell ya, I just reinstalled Windows again due to a Windows Update issue and I still have working brightness with the same driver versions.

I used Windows Update to install all updates first and then I used the Intel update utility to update onboard graphics.

 

Do you have the skylake or kabylake?

 

Kaby Lake

 

The auto brightness issue pertains to the skylake version afaik

 

We haven't seen any bios updates in awhile. I suppose that is likely the cause. I'm worried the new win10 will update and screw my battery life because I'm stuck at max brightness

 

Did you force it to Gigabyte's version?

 

No, the default windows driver in build 1703 work and are a newer version than the gigabyte release .

 

Has anyone installed the Win 10 Spring update?

I am having an issue with the settings app freezing the system, the desktop is frozen but I can move and see the mouse cursor. I can also put the computer to sleep and bring it back and it works fine.

Drivers are all up to date, not sure what is causing it.

 

I installed it on my skylake, it didn't update the graphics driver so brightness still works. I've also noticed that the freezes that used to happen seem gone (the ones you'd get when right clicking or when clicking the battery icon in the tray)

Edit: Premature, micro stutters seem to be back today

No issues with freezing etc here.

 

Help.. so i have an aero 14 with kaby lake and 1060, and have a rather annoying issue.

When i run the lap top off mains power the CPU wants to boost constantly to its max mhz, meaing it runs hot and the fans are on constantly. I have undervolted it using Intel Extreme Utility and have dropped the CPU in power management to about 5% but it still maxes out.

Any ideas? Anyone else having the same issue??

 

Switch your power profile to balanced through smart manager.

 

Has anyone put a skin on the laptop around the touchpad?