Lenovo Legion 5/5 Pro/7 2021 Discussion

..this sounds like an evening filled with benchmarking

 

That disables CPU turbo boost, which is fine for AMD systems but not a good idea for Intel because the base clock frequency is much lower. There is also a better way to disable boost through a registry edit. I don’t have the link but if you go to the Zephyrus G14 subreddit the instructions are in the top post.


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Aaaaaa it disables turbo boost! My first amd cpu thanks for the info!

 

Someone on Reddit posted pics of their 7i with vapor chamber removed when they repasted if you want to see them. https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLaptops/comments/ovsqwq/legion_7i_teardownrepaste/

 

Sorry Atma, you’re just the most frequent poster here, so I’ll be quoting you a fair bit

Has that also been the case for the L5P? RAID has its uses but I’d rather keep recovery easy. It’s not like I’m doing heavy 8k editing.

My (admittedly poor) understanding of the RAM issue is that the RAM modules were capable of better timings using XMP, but this was not beneficial for a Ryzen processsor (given XMP is an Intel thing). I can’t tell what the JEDEC timing is from that screenshot (which as far as I understand is the nominal timing scheme that it will use with Ryzen)

Single rank too. Again, not gonna act like I really know what’s happening. I’m coming from an old machine, so any single (or low double) digit loss of performance won’t be something that stands out.

That’s very weird. Someone please tell me this is still going on, I can’t check now. This is what I get for relaxing and not checking the thread every other day

I think someone suggested it could be a regional thing as well as a supply thing. Single rank again. No clue how much difference that makes in the real world.

Finally, something I can speak about properly. AFAIK cooling pads like this can end up not being ideal since they often block off critical vents and things like that. I have an old cooler master mesh one that I recently took out of storage because it’s heatpipe is completely screwed. I should probably order a replacement (should have 2 years ago) but shipping to my country is so abysmal that I can totally see the Legion shipping (and it being brought here by friend/courier) by then. Still, if it works for you, good enough.

While the Apple build quality and reliability is nice, they’ve gotten extremely anti-repair lately. You say the bottom panel is annoying but the newest MacBooks are aggressive about it. They went from standard parts to proprietary connectors to soldered everything within a few short generations. I get your grievances though.

Unfortunately that’s still how things work on Windows. I know Windows Update tries to cover more of these things but the update schedule is still very spotty. The ultra consolidated Apple model doesn’t fill me with confidence for everything though.

Razer has some horrible system where plugging in any of their hardware fires up the command prompt to download the installer for their bloated software. Got a good deal on a used keyboard and I spent a bit of time researching the issue. Apparently this is noticed by system admins seeing weird accesses to Razer’s servers from an otherwise unsuspecting machine because someone plugged a mouse in.

Not cool.

For a while I was scoping out Clevos and something that stood out was how much the actual software lags behind the third party stuff. A Portuguese reseller makes custom software and I think the norm is to swap out the BIOS. There’s a custom BIOS out there for my current machine but I never really considered using it, figured the stability would be better on the official BIOS update channel.


Sorry about the mammoth post

EDIT 5 hours later: Looks like the Lenovo coupon is gone, and not just that, but you can't even go into the customization pages right now. Fun times all around.

 

i haven't used this in a long time and forgot about it.





As best as I can tell from people more knowledgeable than me, XMP is not available in the bios. It would be in the advanced bios but it is locked by Lenovo. Enough people are upset about it there may be a new bios update that at includes that.

 

So I picked up my L7i from the depot yesterday. Shame on Lenovo for simply slapping a UPS label on the laptop box itself. Antonline shipped my L5 Pro with the modest exterior protection of a secondary container. I opened the outer seal to check for damage inside. It looked fine so I slept on it with the intention to set it up today. Woke up this morning with a massive case of buyer's remorse, and with my wife also informing me of her plan to quit her job by the end of the month, I'll be submitting a refund request as soon as I'm done typing this post. Were I not otherwise satisfied with my 5 Pro, I would have been more likely to give the 7i a shake, but I can't really justify the significantly higher expense.

 

Sorry to hear that, but at least the L5P is no slouch.

 

Sorry you have to return. I understand remorse and needing money. Mine was shipped in 2 boxes, the same as MSI does theirs. At least you have the 5 Pro. If I could have ever found one at Walmart I would too. I've never been able to buy a top of the line laptop. This time I decided I was going to and hope it serves me well 3 or 4 years.

 

My clevo p370sm-a served me for 7 years. That was money well spent. Hoping for a similar streak btw the difference in their physical sizes is astounding. And Legion punches about 100% more performance.. don't mind that cpu and gpu aren't upgradeable because although clevo had the option I didn't even consider it in all these years.

 

Yeah the 5 pro is a beast too..

 

Maybe I'll uninstall the whole iCue. Don't need the rainbow anyway.. too much fuss. Anyone tried tobii? It's a new thing for me and don't know if it is worth keeping

 

The way things go now days the L7 could be obsolete in a year.

 

I uninstalled iCUE. Its too cumbersome for me. I just wish there was a way to turn off the lights around the bottom and fans with the legion light plan. I haven't even look at tobii yet.

 

Hope not!!

 

I have not looked closely at the service manual but I am guessing you can physically unplug the LED and Tobii ribbon cables from the motherboard without consequence if you do not need them.

It would be a fun project to reverse engineer the iCue protocol Lenovo is using, to make some simpler, lower power consumption open source control software. It benefits the Linux community too where iCue does not even exist.

 

OpenRGB supports many Corsair devices. It might be worth seeing if it will work on the Legion as well.

 

Thanks! Downloaded. I'll try it out later.

 

Please do let us know how it goes with OpenRGB and the Lenovo 7

 

Unfortunately it doesn't look like the Legion is supported. At least yet.

"If you know C++, you can add your own device with our flexible RGB hardware abstraction layer."

 

I have uninstalled iCUE and are using the Lenovo solid blue light at minimum light strength. It's ok, but I would like to be able to disable the bottom lights.

Since I don't really run on battery at all, I guess I could just use iCUE, but I don't like buggy bloated apps. :-/

 

Do the lights stay off if you configure it that way with iCUE then disable the service? That may be the best thing you can do for now if you do not want to try and physically unplug the RGB cables.

 

I don't think so, but I haven't tried. The lights always defaults to Lenovos hardcoded settings when Windows is not loaded (boot/shutdown). If iCUE is installed it takes priority when you log into windows and the service is loaded.

The hardcoded Lenovo settings are remembered even after shutdown, so that's nice at least.

 

Hmm well if it does not stick then personally what I would do is physically unplug the RGB cables from the laptop, similar to what this guy did for last years model:

https://www.reddit.com/r/LenovoLegi.../?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

I did the same thing on the Alienware 51m and Clevo X170KM without any issue.

 

New Legion 5 Pro BIOS update GKCN40WW was released on August 2. According to the changelog, it looks like there are some fixes for Windows 11 and USB-C charging.

 

New BIOS for the Legion 7i as well.

 

I hope this adds an advanced bios.

nothing new I can see.

 

I tried iCUE and uninstalled it right away. My gawd what a crappy app. :-(

 

Has anyone figured out how to change the default behavior of the F/Fn keys after a restart?

Mine default to F keys and I’d rather they function as Fn. I see you can flip the behavior in the Lenovo Vantage software but I can’t make it stick.


Thanks in advance

Same question for the battery conservation mode.

 

Look on page 20 and see if it has anything to do with what you are talking about. https://download.lenovo.com/consumer/mobiles_pub/lenovo_legion_7_16_6_userguide_en.pdf

The battery conservation mode, I saw someone say you need to drain your battery down to under 60% and it will start charging up to 60% with conservation mode on. I haven't tried that yet.

 

Legion 7i is the real deal. 25C ambient temp, gpu +110, mem +300, performance mode, -50 undervolt. GPU max 76C @sustained (not burst) 165w load. CPU 75C during GPU tests, max 93C during CPU test on two cores (with 80w load), avg 74-75C. This is no repaste, out of the box. I haven't pushed the undervolt or GPU clock to max so it'll easily break 13k. Fans even on max are not annoying. Slightly high pitched but not irritating. Under normal gaming max fans do not occur and it is fairly quiet for gaming laptop compared to my old omen 17 and AW M17R4. Also- the prebuilt one from Lenovo comes with 2x1TB samsung PM9A1 drives (gen 4) in raid 0- pretty awesome. Not cheaping out like Dell, etc on components. Very impressive for 5.5lb laptop and great display. I think a superior choice to Clevo this cycle due to poor screen choices on Clevo and another $1k in cost, yes BGA but all the non-BGA choices have not really offered much upgrade path... Never had a Lenovo before but this is a vastly superior design to the idiots at ASUS leaving out MUX switch (SCAR), capping the GPU to 125w (S17), most competitors skipping G sync and hoping people won't notice but still pay the high prices.

 

It really does have great thermals.

 

The Legion 7i isn't offered with RTX3080 in my country, so that was never an option, sad to say.

 

Nice review! Coming from clevo, this really is an update. I agree with you on every point you made.

I got to 12k in time spy with slight undervolt on gpu, no overclock. But even with performance mode on tdp topped at 155W. Same with cpu tdp (amd5800h) only few spikes at 65w. Was your gpu tdp at 165W all the time?

 

Seems like amd got new bios as well..

 

Does the conservation mode switch stick, though? Or does it reset on reboot? Mine sticks through reboot

 

I just noticed mine was off. May have been due to bios update? I turned it back on and will check it shortly.

 

Yeah during a significant portion of timespy it was between 162-165.4W constant as measured in RTSS, CPU at that time with 30-35W load. This is +100/300 OC. I'm not sure how much undervolt the GPU will tolerate with the clock pushed higher. I'm pretty sure with a little OC you'll get close in score.

Question for everyone- the drives in the prebuilt are PM9A1 1tb in raid 0. Crystal disk mark hits 7gb/s read and 7gb/s write. Are these effectively hitting the gen 3 cap due to the raid array or slots set to gen 3 speeds? Technically 12gb/s sequential read should be possible with these drives in raid 0.

 

BIOS updates seem to reset most settings, including conservation mode, keyboard and lid lighting, always-on USB, and Optimus. I had to change all that stuff back the way I had it through the Vantage software.

 

That may be what turned my conservation mode off too. I noticed the MUX switch in the BIOS was reset too.

 

Does anyone know of a picture of the ram in the 2021 7i that proves that 16 GB of the ram isn’t soldered, like some of Lenovo’s sales site claims?

I’m trying to win a friend over to the 7i.

 

If you are getting 7 that is great. I get 5 read and 6 write, which is twice as good as I use to get with raid 0.

 

I don't remember any but I know some people that have repasted. If one stick was soldered we would definable know about it. There is nothing that says one stick is soldered. What was on lenovo's site was an error and they have fixed it. I just ordered a set of HyperX ram. If I thought it was soldered I wouldn't have done that. I'll probably put it in Saturday and I'll take a pic.

Here are some pics someone took when they repasted but you can't see the ram. https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLaptops/comments/ovsqwq/legion_7i_teardownrepaste/ if it was soldered they would have said I'm sure.

 

Thank you

He’s spooked and I think a picture would be best to set him straight.

 

This is what I’m getting on my 7i with the stripped raid. Not quite 7 GB/s, but close.

 

This is mine the day after it was delivered


This one I just did. Don't know why the difference but I really like gen 4.

 

Skip to 7:37.

 

Not going to do the trick. That video is the AMD version which never said anything about soldered RAM, AFAIK, on Lenovo’s site.

The 7i did.

 

It doesn't now so it was clearly a typo.

Legion 7i Gen 6 16” Gaming Laptop with Intel | Lenovo US

 

Yeah, I understand that. I bought the laptop without a worry. However, I’m still looking for a picture for a friend. That’s all.