NEW Gigabyte P34 V2

Been lurking in this thread, and I have to throw my 2 cents in. I was extremely excited for this laptop until I saw the CPU temps. 90+ degrees when gaming is unacceptable, IMO. Being less than 10 degrees away from the CPU throttling is too hot out of the box. I am curious as to what a GOOD thermal paste (like IC diamond) can do, but out of the box I am completely uncomfortable with the CPU operating at over 90 degrees when gaming.

 

Not sure what you mean by TIM, but if its thermal pasting you are referring too, then no I did not. I was actually going to put some Arctic silver 5(and make a how-to video) on it today, bu I can't find my paste I will just buy some IC diamond 7 and when it gets here I'll do the video

 

I agree that it is high, but keep in mind the palm rest area actually stays COOL to the touch. I'll let you know the temps with IC diamond 7 as soon as I apply it. For reference, my old dell gaming laptop CPU went up to 94 degrees and it was just fine for years

 

My bad. TIM is Thermal Interface Material.

It would be awesome if you could run some benchmarks with the stock paste and then put on the IC diamond 7 and run the same benchmarks. Thanks for the videos!

 

I'm not worried about the palm rest. I'm worried about temperatures creeping up over time. I owned my previous gaming laptop for 2 1/2 years, and even with high quality thermal paste reapplied at the two year mark, I observed GPU temps to be up a solid 5 degrees over when I first bought it.

If the p34g is getting 91-92 degrees brand new it's just too high IMO. I don't want to have to worry about potential throttling 12-18 months later. If the I diamond can drop it a solid 5 degrees, then I'll be pleasantly surprised. Are you worried about voiding the warranty since there are warranty stickers on the heatsink screws?

 

The razer gets the same CPU temps. Even the 2013 Razer I had ran great and hit low 90s. I dont think any thin/light or small form factor system is going to get better cpu temps.

Even the 15" Ghost Pro is getting 89+.

I dont think thousands of systems are defective, and my razer 13 ran for a year with no issues hitting 90s.

 

Don't all high end core i7's get up to about 90c? If I recall they inherently run very hot.

 

That seems to be normal from most reviews I've seen recently unless its a 17" behemoth with massive cooling.

 

I ended up boxing mine back up today to go back to amazon. The backlight bleed at the top bugged me too much, and the razer I ordered from MS on Sunday came in. I'm going with the razer, but the P34Gv2 for the price comes really close and better in some areas than the more expensive razer.

 

I don't think Sebi wanted to criticize harshly your measures, but rather explain the big differences between his video and yours.
Just to clear things up: I personally (and i'm sure many others as well) like your videoreviews very much!! Thanks for them!

I know it's quite hard to measure things like noise, as a few cm or inches back and forth immidiately make a difference in dB as well as different measurement devices do. In addition to that, as you wrote, it's quite hard to figure out the right volume setting on your device which you are watching/hearing the video review on.

Just as suggestion: At the review site "notebookcheck" the fan noise is measured with the measurement device 15 cm in front of the laptop.
Our Test Criteria - NotebookCheck.net Tech (Point "Emissions")

 

I finally got my MSATA adapter part for the additional MSATA SSD.

I merged all partitions of the drive, formatted it, plugged it in, secured it, turned it on, no go.

It works well with a USB > MSATA adapter, but on the SATA port inside the machine it's random. 99% of the time it doesn't work. It just hangs when it tries to boot into Windows.

I updated the BIOS. Reseated it around 1,000,000 times. ONCE I booted into Windows, restarted, then it'd hang again and couldn't be detected in the boot menu/bios. When it did work it was fine, fast.

I'm going to chalk it up to these MSATA parts being cheap pieces of crap as I had previously stated, I guess I'll have to try again and again as predicted.

 

have you tried to run the two drives in raid 0, too?
Let us know when you find an adapter that actually works.

thx

 

I can't set it up in any special configuration when it's only detected 1 out of 10 times

Even if I do make a change, it's wiped when the drive isn't picked up on the next boot

Really starting to regret having the bigger battery version

 

I'll trade you my battery and 1TB hard drive for it

 

@Coflash Which msata converter did you get?

 

Can anyone with the laptop comment on the boot time with the default msata

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Noise will decrease by ~6 dB every time you double the distance. The main problem I have with XoticPC's noise test isn't the mic location. It's the fact that you can't determine a reference distance. You've got what looks like two mics at different distances from the fan (and presumably they're directional with different sensitivity depending on which way they're pointed). You can't tell which one is picking up the fan noise, and they're close enough that one is significantly further (as a % distance) from the fan than the other. So you can't use the 6 dB rule to estimate what the noise reading would be if the mic were placed closer to where your head is while using the laptop.

At the beginning of the video, the narrator speaks and the volume spikes up to ~70 dB. But because he's off-camera, you can't tell how far he is from the mic. Which also eliminates another crucial piece of info you could use to determine how loud the noise is. About the only thing the video is good for is evaluating the pitch and speed characteristic of the fan noise, not the volume (which is what most people are interested in).

dB readings by themselves are useless. They always have to be coupled with a distance before they tell you how loud something is. If you know the dB reading and distance, you can convert it into dB at any distance from the noise source. The rule-of-thumb method is to decrease it by ~6 dB every time you double the distance. The exact method is dB = dBref + 20 log (dref / d). So if Notebookcheck measures 40 dB @ 0.15m or 0.3m from the fans, and you're sitting with your ears 0.5m from the fan, that means the noise you'll experience is 40 + 20 log (0.3 / 0.5) = 40 - 4.4 = 35.6 dB.

You don't need to translate real world fan noise to the person watching the video. You just need to give an absolute dB measurement. A person who is sensitive to noise would know what they can tolerate in absolute terms. NotebookCheck achieves this by consistently measuring from 15 cm in front of the notebook. Since all their reviewed units are measured this way, someone can look up their current notebook, see its noise dB levels, and compare it to the laptop they're shopping for.

I understand the mic needs to be closer to the fan than you'd actually put your ear in order to pick up the noise at low levels. But it:

(1) Needs to be placed on a line between your head and the fans. i.e. in front of the laptop. The noise to the side of the laptop isn't going to be what your ears pick up when using it, so you don't want to put the mic on the side. Ideal location would be exactly where your ears are, but that's probably not practical. So a fixed, consistent distance in front of the laptop is probably a good compromise. Tell us the distance too, so we can use the math or the 6 dB rule I mentioned above.

(2) Preferably would be an omnidirectional mic, not a directional one like is usually used for recording voice. Directional mics change their sensitivity depending on which direction the sound is coming from, so will just introduce an unwanted and unnecessary variable into the testing. If you have to use a directional mic, it should always be oriented the exact same way (e.g. pointed directly at the bottom center of the screen, though the noise from narrow laptop will be amplified more by a directional mic than a wider laptop).

If you do these two things consistently, your noise dB readings can accurately be converted into meaningful numbers. The next best thing is to provide a second reference sound source coming from the same location (e.g. laptop speakers playing music or video), which is what Sebi97 did. Simply measuring the noise at an arbitrary and inconsistent distance with a directional mic angled at an unknown angle does not yield reproducible nor useful results.

If the laptop can be turned on with the bottom cover off, I'd suggest you try plugging a regular 2.5" HDD into the extra SATA port. If the HDD works, then you know the problem is the mSATA adaoter. If the HDD doesn't work, then you know the problem is the SATA port (maybe they didn't bother testing it because it wasn't supposed to be used; or maybe they did test it and it failed, which is why this particular board was turned into a P34G with a larger battery).

 

So both the 4gb and the 2gb gtx860m in p34g v2 is maxwell? Am i right?

 

There is no 2gb in this laptop only 4gb, and yes it is maxwell

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Thank you for all the information, you definitely know more then I when it comes to audio and how dB work. I'll take all this into account when shooting our next video review.

 

Thank you for all the information, you definitely know more then I when it comes to audio and how dB work. I'll take all this into account when shooting our next video review, hopefully it will help people get a more accurate feel of the fan sounds.

 

Guess I'll chime in now. I've had mine for two days now and just been trying to get it configured the way I want. I'm coming from a 15" MacBook Pro which burned out and then a week of trying a MacBook Retina 13.

Main impressions.. yes, its light. That was one of my primary concerns. I was worried it would feel cheap as a result after being so used to Mac unibodies since 2009, but I'm happy with it. The trackpad gets on my nerves since I'm hitting it far too often with my palm, but its much more accurate than my work laptop. The games I play (Diablo 3, WoW, SWTOR, Guild Wars 2) all look good on there.

Fan noise hasn't been bothersome to me and I primarily play games on the sofa while watching TV. I didn't opt for the upgraded thermal paste since I wanted to get it fast and wasn't sure if I'd keep it or send it back (and didn't want to deal with a re-stock fee).

I do have the light bleeding on the upper part of the screen. its very noticeable during boot when the screen is black and its just the Gigabyte start up logo. I haven't noticed it while I'm playing games or doing anything else which is when it would really matter to me.

 

Oo yes they have 2 gb version. Look at the description
GIGABYTE - Notebook & Netbook - Notebook & Netbook - P series - P34G v2
They dont offer the 2gb in most of the country i guess, but they do sell for them for a much cheaper price, thats why im confused go choose between both of them

 

Alright, so I was doing some random testing and was surprised with results.
Heres what I did:
Dirt 3 on ultra connected to my TV and played at it's native resolution (1366*768)
Then, I noticed the GPU was only at about half load the entire time and about 70 degrees.
This was all with fan on auto (and thus fairly quiet; couldn't hear the fan over the TV sound)
Then, I set the fan speed to turbo. Holy. Crap. GPU temperature 51 degrees... 51 degrees.... let that sink in a little. Dirt 3 on ultra on 42 inch TV and 21mm thin while GPU is 51 degrees.
God, I love this thing. To anyone hesitating: don't, I guarantee you will not be disappointed.

In other news, I bought some IC Diamond 7 and its on the way; I will be doing a "how-to" re-paste video as soon as it arrives. In addition, I will be re-posting gameplay videos with my now OC'd GTX 860m

 

Excellent work Sebi97.

I am picking mine up when I go home to the States on Vacation next month. I can't wait to get this machine and finally have a usable computer again.

I am really interested to see your results to see if the IC diamond 7 makes a difference.

 

Could you link to where they are selling a 2gb version?

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Yeah the GPU temps can't be beaten. Its the CPU I'm worried about. Also, is your oc 860m just stock oc or did you get a modded vbios? Also, what is the boot time from the stock msata?

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It is actually very smart to play in 1366x768 with maximum graphics settings, the laptop consumes significantly less energy and produce less heat noise. I actually coupled with capping FPS at 40 with Bandicam and fan noise almost gone. Further good thing what you can do with CPU is underclocking, undervolting and disabling two cores with ThrottleStop. As I see half the CPU speed is already plenty enough for all the games . Your CPU stays cool even with lowest fan speed. And of course IC Diamond...

 

Currently im living in china and they sell it here ill send u the link later. As far as i know they also sell it in australia i found that ,before www.affordablelaptops.au sold the 2gb version.

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Ah, never mind don't bother. I live in the U.S, and there don't seem to be any 2gb versions here

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Since u are from the us, is there any cheap way to send laptop to china?i found that it is much cheaper in the us. I would like to buy from xoticpc but its so expensive to send it here. Any idea?

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Are you sure the 2GB version wasn't the v1?

 

No its v2 sir with gtx860m

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I'd like a cheaper V2 with 2GB Video Memory, without HDD and SSD for cheaper price. Is that possible anytime soon? Actually how low can the prices go down?

 

AS far as price is concerned, they (will) offer a version in Germany that is pretty basic in its configuration. Thus only has HDD (without ssd) and no OS preinstalled. That will be sold for 1200 euros. I doubt that a downgrade to 2gb GPU ram would make that big of a difference. If I remember correctly last years models also existed with smaller CPU configs, I.e. i5 CPUs. That would probably make it, together with less GPU ram, significantly cheaper. But that kind of config can't be expected any time soon I believe

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To give u an idea, currently right now in china they sell the v2 (i7 4700hq, 2gb gtx860m, 8gb ram ,and 1tb 5400) for 8300 yuan and for the other v2 ( i7 4710hq, 4gb gtx860m, 16gb ram, 128gb ssd+1tb 5400) for 11000 yuan. Just recalculate that to ur currency and ull see that there is quite a big difference. Any opinion for this?is it worth the upgrade for that much?

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I'm surprised we aren't seeing any professional reviews yet. I can only seem to find one.

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You mean the one from PC pro?

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Can some one take an up close photo of the A/C adapter? I'm interested in the model as well as stats, I'm assuming its 19volt @ 6 or 7amps

 

ThrottleStop does not have any feature to let you disable two cores.

 

Thats the one

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Finished editing my video review, took a long time too make I will be uploading it overnight
Also my first time using Vegas Pro Excellent program

 

Video Review is up
Hope you guys like it. Took a really long time to make/edit. Let me know if you have any suggestions

 

1200EUR is like 1700USD, so not a good deal, I rather buy the full version for $1500. Any chance this laptop coming with an i5 CPU in USA for cheaper?

 

@Sebi97 thanks for the videos man, think you've pretty much sold me on this!

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Actually since all prices in Europe are inclusive of local tax (i.e. 19% for Germany if I am not mistaken) this escalates to 1,008 EUR (or approx. 1,380 USD) when compared to US prices

 

Can someone with this laptop please tell me if they can easily read the text in this picture

imgur: the simple image sharer

And also which blacks boxes they can't see on this page, if any.

Black level - Lagom LCD test

thanks!

 

Does anyone know if the version with the bigger battery has already been released anywhere? I'd also be interested in an i5 version and I wonder if maybe the version with the bigger battery will have some different configurations.

 

That is actually a pretty interesting piece of information. Although I've studied a fair bit of taxation, I wasn't aware that VAT in the US is different across the country.
So whenever you guys see prices on the internet, you have to calculate the local tax on top of that? I.e. the 1500 dollars is not the total amount you end up paying for this machine?

If that is the case, my initial thought that prices of this model are significantly cheaper in the US would be wrong. If you compare your 1500USD model with our 1400euro model, you end up with 1176euros excl. Tax, hence 1611 USD. Still more expensive here but much less than I thought (1500USD compared to 1400euro=1900USD).

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TEST in the first image pretty easily

The whole top row is pretty much invisible to me (max brightness) + the first one on the second row, but the room has natural light coming in. At night it might be different.