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    Refurbished Skylake GS63VR - What upgrades should I make?

    Discussion in 'Hardware Components and Aftermarket Upgrades' started by zovc, Jul 18, 2017.

  1. zovc

    zovc Notebook Enthusiast

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    Hey friends,

    I've been shopping for a 'thin-and-light gaming laptop' for a while now. I'm starting to have to travel more for work and by the end of the year, I'm hoping to leave the country (the US) for two weeks. I'd like to be able to bring a capable computer with me in the event I want or need to sit down in a hotel or cafe and unwind for a bit.

    I was looking at getting a Gigabyte Aero 15 before Computex and was advised I should hold off. I'm glad I did, because a lot of cool machines got announced... nevertheless, I've got a trip coming up for work soon and if I want to have a machine with me on it I should probably settle for a more responsible ~$1,000 laptop. The biggest score I've found that suits most of my interests is a refurbished GS63VR in that price range. It's a Skylake model (which doesn't seem much worse than Kaby Lake from what I can tell), still has the 1060 and it's got 16GB of RAM in it. It's the -001 model which I think has a crappy display but worst case scenario I can upgrade that down the line. (Can I upgrade to a 120+Hz display?)

    Besides that, it's got a 128GB SSD (not sure if PCIe or not) and a 1TB HDD which will definitely tide me over for this upcoming trip, but I wouldn't mind blinging out both of those drives in the future.

    I'm interested in getting under the hood and upgrading the laptop's thermal performance if I can via reapplying thermal paste or even using 'liquid metal' if that's feasible in laptops. (Is flex a concern?) Are there any other tweaks I could make, perhaps like upgrading the fans? (They look pretty hard to access.)

    This one is a shot in the dark--the main reason the Aero 15 won out over the GS63VR in my pre-Computex assessment was the size of the battery. Is it at all possible I could find a larger replacement battery for the laptop? I know it's a stretch, considering physics and density and whatnot are limitations but I'm still holding out hope! Is there any worthwhile tuning I can do with undervolting and underclocking and Optimus to help stretch out my battery life? I've seen piecemeal tips here and there, but I'm wondering if anyone's seen particularly good results with any specific tweaks.

    Thanks!
     
    zovc, Jul 18, 2017
    #1