NEW Gigabyte P34 V2

I have checked everywhere, this is a hot little sleeper that not many companies know about except the main gaming online sites. It is hot overseas and seems like they are getting more than us. for some reason amazon says that it has not been released yet but I know a lot of gaming third party sites have them for sale. I am not sure if they are buying them overseas or getting them directly from Gigabyte.

I would just buy it and return it if you don't like it. Pay return shipping is not that bad verse being stuck with a laptop you hate.

Trust me you can't find anything else like the v2. period. i have done extensive research. If you want the coolest best video card with the most ram in the smallest form factor this is your laptop.

 

Does anyone have any more insight in the CF2 vs CF4 gigabyte version only? Is there any battery issues with this voltage stuff or is it exact same laptop with same voltage just with better battery?

 

Also someone mentioned earlier that they would add more ram and a evo hard drive and make it primary.

I understand the ram.

But is a evo hard drive that much better than the stock 128 crucial msata drive that comes with it?

I was thinking of just replacing the ram and keeping that set up for a while. But if its a huge difference ill replace the hard drive as well.

 

Also how do some places have the CF4 in stock and can sell it before others say pre order here in the US? Are they selling over seas models or did they just get it sooner?

 

Hello? Anyone?

 

You'd have to contact the individual sellers to get individual answers. I can only speak for us in saying that ours come from our distributor who gets them straight from Gigabyte. As far as I'm aware the machine is not pre-order anywhere.

 

Hi
Is your Samsung mSATA SSD you swaped instead of factory installed EVO 840 one?
I am waiting for my P34G V2 CF3 version which is no msata ssd only 1 TB HDD.
Want to put Samsung EVO 840 350 Gb msata SSD to empty msata bay.
Uk Gigabyte support team I contacted were not sure about compatibility of that Samsung msata ssd and send me list of compatible brands which they recommend.Its only Liteon 128 and 256 GB and Phison o their list.
Is your Samsung msata ssd working well or haven't had any issues?

Cheers if you can give some comments.

 

Pre-order can mean they ran out of stock too.

 

Is your Samsung mSATA SSD you swaped instead of factory installed EVO 840 one?
I am waiting for my P34G V2 CF3 version which is no msata ssd only 1 TB HDD.
Want to put Samsung EVO 840 350 Gb msata SSD to empty msata bay.
Uk Gigabyte support team I contacted were not sure about compatibility of that Samsung msata ssd and send me list of compatible brands which they recommend.Its only Liteon 128 and 256 GB and Phison o their list.
Is your Samsung msata ssd working well or haven't had any issues?

Cheers if you can give some comments.

 

I installed a mSata Samsung 840 EVO 250gb and it runs well. I also have 16gb of ram. No issues with my machine.

 

Good news ....go for it then.
Thanks for comment.

 

I installed a Crucial M550 512GB mSATA drive, and left the 1GB hard drive in (for data), and it works fine.

 

My P34G V2 was originally sold with a 128 GB LiteOn msata ssd and a 1 TB hdd, but I asked GenTechPC to take out the 1 TB hdd because I did not needed it. I have my own 1 TB Samsung EVO 840 msata ssd and 1 TB Samsung EVO 840 ssd which I planned to put in the P34G V2. So I took out the 128 GB LiteOn msata ssd and replaced it with the 1 TB msata ssd, and I also put the 1 TB ssd in the empty bay. However I found that the right palmrest area was a bit warm when the 1 TB ssd was installed, so I took out the 1 TB ssd again. And the palmrest area is always cool now.

All samsung msata ssd I have (I have several samsung msata ssds) work well without any issues.

 

Which is faster to run the operating system on?

The samsung msata or the samsung evo pro?

And if its the evo pro how to do you get the operating system on the evo pro and use the msata as the extra drive?

 

Both should be pretty much the same speed. The mSATA might slight edge out the SATA SSD due to the density being a smaller drive.

 

Sorry, I cannot answer which is faster. I only installed Win8.1 on the samsung msata. I did a clean install of Win8.1 using an USB stick, that's how I got the OS on the msata.

 

Good to know its even 1TB msata ssd working fine.(Gigabyte advert I noticed, was only up to 512 GB for msata ssd) My CF3 came just today from Uk reseller.
Considering upgrade soon.Helpfull information from you.
Thanks

 

Anyone been able to get a unlocked bios. Im trying to enable VT-x

 

Why would it to that?

 

Is the CF3 with the bigger battery? I got a CF4 and I am not impressed with the so called extended battery.

I wonder if there is truth to that review a few pages ago in this forum. I wonder if the newer models take more voltage from the battery?

 

I did the bios upgrade and it seamed to help a bit. I am just wondering if I should return the CF4 and get the CF1 and hope that I can get the bigger battery with a low volt mother board.

Does anyone know if you can get the bigger battery from Gigabyte or somewhere else and put it in the CF1?

 

Also what do you think about an extreme modded bios for saving battery life?

I just want to switch a button and get super extreme battery life with little to no need for power for like taking notes at school and then when I am on break kick it into high gear and plug it in and have fun. Then switch back to ultra low settings for taking notes.

The stock smart system doesn't seem enough ...

Any ideas?

 

Wait a minute. Does the lower voltage that they are talking about pertake to the the P34G CF1 which is not a V2. I do not think they made a P34G CF1. The CF1 is the original P34G and the V2 is the CF2. Am I correct. If this is the case. Then no wonder they voltage is going to be a littler higher with a slighter higher chip clock and a an 860m vs an 765m. I mean these two laptops are night and day.

 

In the notebookcheck review they are talking about the P34G V2 (with the regular battery) and Schenker C404 which is the P34G v2 with the 61WH battery. They were supposed to update the review once they had the occasion to run additional tests but I haven't seen anything so far.

Yesterday I received the C404. I get around 4h30mn of battery life with the screen luminosity at 35. I was hoping the notebookcheck review was wrong but this is more or less what they've described in the review. It seems like the extended battery does not provided additional runtime... unfortunately.

 

So what is the point of the extended battery?

Do you think if you some how could still find a P34G V2-CF1 with the smaller battery and then find a Gigabyte reseller to sell you the extended battery that would be the perfect combo?

 

It's very hard to say. Is the battery really delivering the power it's supposed to ? Or does the exta power drain comes from an unoptimized BIOS ? I'm definitely not a specialist, but there could be many reasons for that fact that the larger battery does not improve the compiuter overall runtime. I'm just hoping someone will figure this out and come up with a solution.

 

What do you think about something like this until they get everything figured out?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FF3MCTE/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ABBHZP61MZ1PX

Super ultra thin high capacity mah battery pack would be nice just in case.

 

NOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooOO. I was hoping C404 would have a good battery life

 

I have not tested just note taking. I will do that Tuesday at school. But downloading and installing programs I got around 5 and half hours I think roughly. I hope I can get 6-7 just taking notes but will shall see.

If this has crummy battery life I am not sure if I will be keeping it or not.

 

Don't get me wrong, the battery runtime on the C404 is pretty good (well over 4h). It simply isn't has high as we could expect > comparaison between the P34G v2 with the small battery and the C404 (P34G v2 with the 61wh battery).

Overall the C404 is a great laptop. It has very good screen and it's a quick computer in a very small format. Othet than the larger battery that does not actually deliver more runtime than the smaller one used to, I really have nothing to complain about.

 

Now I wonder if someone pulled a marketing trick on the whole battery issue. Wouldn't be funny seeing how many people lost countless hours with it.
In the beginning I was very surprised to see almost 30% increase in battery capacity with no change of size - almost unheard of. Someone should measure the actual capacity. Maybe they just labelled it that way and it has nothing to do with real life.

 

I'm pretty sure this is not a marketing trick. Have a look at the C404 review: Schenker C404 Notebook Review - NotebookCheck.net Reviews

They clearly say that the computer has a larger battery, but that in pretty much all aspects, it uses more power than the the P34G v2 with the small battery. Which is in fact nulling the benefits of the larger battery.

Both computer are nearly identical and there really isn't any meaningful reason as to why one would consume more power than the other. It most likely is something related to BIOS settings and/or power profile. What we need to figure out is what can be done to switch between one and another.

 

A power bank/external battery could be great. However, so far my search haven't been leading me to a tried and proven solution. If someone has any experience with this, I'm sure we could all benefit from it.

 

You can move the OS using the windows backup feature. I created a full system image to an external drive and then booted off a recovery disk (external). I then just recovered the image back to the new SSD. No issues. No need to do a full reinstall if you dont want too, and its free.

 

It is possible to get a power bank for that charges the P34G v2, but not the one listed by Astrongtower. That powerbank can output at max 66W of power, which isn't enough to power and charge the battery for P34G V2. What will happen is that the powerbank will work for a few minutes, but eventually shutdown as the laptop draw more power than it can support. I had a laptop powerbank that support upto 60w and that's what happens. You can still charge the laptop 5-10 minutes at a time but it gets really annoying having to plug and unplug the powerbank from the laptop.

You will need a powerbank that supports output at 90w to ensure continuous operation. This powerbank can support 90w @ 20v, 4.5A Amazon.com: Poweradd™ Pilot Pro 32000mAh Monster Capacity Multi-Voltage (5V 9V 12V 16V 19V 20V) Portable Charger External Battery Backup Power Bank with Smart LCD Digital Display for Tablet PC, Netbooks, Notebooks, Laptops, Smart Phones -- Compatible that should provide enough juice to charge the laptop during normal, Intel GPU only environment.

 

I think you are right. What laptop at this price and features can you buy other than this laptop. There is none. If you want extreme graphics and latest intel processors this is it and the battery is respectable.

I think like that too sometimes, but gigabyte is a pretty respectable company especially with their motherboards so I don't think they would do that.

Do you think its a BIOS issues or a hardware issue? Think it is fixable. I did notice when I updated my bios that the idle drain was much lower.

I would like to replace both drives probably on my CF4. What do you guys think the two best are. 1TB ones are to expensive. I am thinking Samsung EVO 256 mstata and not sure for the larger drive. I could go like 512 EVO PRO regular sata and 256 msata on my D: drive

Amazing call thanks. I think I am going to pick that up. Check out this amazing review of it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VP8bhySxn40

 

@ Astrongtower

I really do not know what causes the version with the larger battery to use more power. I was hoping Schenker would be looking into this as I'm sure this is lowering their sale of C404. In their place I would investigate this and/or send another C404 to notebookcheck and ask them to update their review. Hopefully someone will be able to figure this out as I would have no idea what to start with in order to figure this out on my own. But the question could be asked to Gigabyte as well, as the P34G v2 with the larger battery has exactly the same problem as the C404 (which is normal since they are the exact same machine).

1TB drives still are expensive if you are looking at SSD. Personnally I've got a 250GB mSATA SSD Samsung EVO and a 512GB SATA-III SSD Crucial MX100 which should be enough for my use as I've got another desk computer at home.

 

Check out this crucial mx100 http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00KFAGCUM?pc_redir=1409143647&robot_redir=1 I just installed it last week on an old Asus, and I got to say it really is the best bang for your buck.

Thanks to sebi for the original heads up on this drive.

 

That's a killer deal. I will look at that one for sure.

Which do you think is faster for OS drive... Windows...

Amazon.com: Samsung Electronics 840 EVO mSATA 0.85-Inch Solid State Drive MZ-MTE250BW: Computers & Accessories

or

Amazon.com: Samsung Electronics 840 Pro Series 2.5-Inch 256 GB SATA 6GB/s Solid State Drive MZ-7PD256BW: Computers & Accessories

 

Whoops there is a newer version.

Which of these two are faster for OS Windows as the main drive:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00LF10KNA/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

or

Amazon.com: Samsung Electronics 840 EVO mSATA 0.85-Inch Solid State Drive MZ-MTE250BW: Computers & Accessories

Can you get the Pro Series in mSata?

 

CF3 is with 47.73 Wh battery so smaller version

 

Was the battery life on the CF3 Horrid compared to CF4?

 

Haven't tested yet.Have the laptop third day.Busy in my job.when I check it ,let you know then.
How many hours is batter life on CF4?

 

For anyone still worried about the c404 having worse battery life than the p34gv2 despite the bigger battery. I just noticed that the c404 battery is 15.2v, where the Gigabyte's is 11.1v. By dividing the Wh by the voltage you get the Ah difference of the two laptops by 7%, which is exactly the difference of battery life in the tests of the c404 review. Coincidence? I think not. Luckily the cf4 version that has the 61.25Wh is still only 11.1v, so it should still get the nice battery boost.

 

Looking only at Gigabyte P34G-V2 spec page, looks like the 61.25Wh battery is 15.2v also!
GIGABYTE - Laptop - Laptop - P series - P34G v2
I always distrust the Gigabyte specs page, however, because sometimes I think there are errors and other things that cause general confusion.

 

There is one Powerbank out there, which is really interesting. It's called xtorm 18000 and it functions as a regular Wall plug at 120V. So you still use your notebooks charging chord. I just couldn't find it for a decent price.

 

What do you think about the next comment? Does the bigger battery have higher voltage? Or is Gigabyte an exception.

Ok can you please clarify this. Are you saying higher battery has higher voltage needs? Does this have anything to do with the actual laptop or the motherboard or is it just simply the battery. Like for example ...

Could you get a 61 W battery with 11 watt out put?

or the larger the battery the larger the energy drain?

So maybe you get a little more battery time but it does drain a little quicker ...

I am trying to investigate this one as well. You find a site with more pictures?

Does it have a plug where you plug it in? Or do you need an Adapter?

 

Well guys I am at college today so I will be letting you know how the CF4 with 61w battery stacks up ...

I am in class right now on battery and I have a battery program installed.

Windows battery system says life is about 6 to 7 something hours but just using it for about 15-25 minutes I can see a notch drop of the battery. Making me kind of nervous.

I am just hoping that I can get from class to class taking notes and just using the laptop professionally.

Just seems like I dropped 10 percent like nothing .... I mean I could of sworn that in like 30 minutes I lose 10 percent.

I do have it on battery saver mode. But maybe I should use a stop watch or something to know for sure.

In any case I will let you know if it survives till 7 o clock satisfactory or not.

 

If you can find a better deal on this, these are always an option ...

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00I0RIFES/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Amazon.com: Goal Zero (25001) 110V Sherpa AC Inverter: Automotive

 

Can you look at the back of the battery and see what voltage it is?