New LG Gram 17

I didn't see a thread for the new LG Gram 17 (17Z990-R.AAS8U1). It looks very compelling. LG published the user guide on their website and it looks like it supports USB-C charging at a minimum 10W (5V/2A) or higher, so you should be able to use a regular phone charger to charge it (albeit slowly).

 

I thought this was one of the better laptops announced as of late. The large 72W battery (which we don't see for U series chips often), under 3 pounds, plus the 16:10 17" 2K display in a subjectively not that much bigger than a typical 15" laptops form factor is impressive. I wish more laptops were 3:2 but I'll take 16:10 as a interim step until (hopefully) the market gets there and adopts 3:2.

What bums me a bit based on the Q&A section on Best Buy's website for the laptop is that LG states the display brightness is 300 nits max. I have a 6th gen carbon x1 with a 2K 500 nit HDR display and it's spoiled me...

For reference, the Q&A also states that the contrast ratio is 1000:1 and the screen is glossy.

 

The 16:10 ratio also gives the screen a bit more space than a regular 17" - about 6.5 more square inches of total screen area. Disappointing that it's glossy but LG displays are almost always flicker-free so that's good.

 

I wonder if they set the TDP on this to 15W or 25W. Hopefully the latter.

I saw a tear down of it on youtube and captured this screenshot. It seems like it has the same extremely anemic heat management solution that the 2018 15" LG Gram had. There's probably going to be a reapplication of TIM in order to try to keep it from throttling. There's so much room in there, why they didn't put a better heat management solution in there I don't know. it wouldn't have taken up that much more weight to just add a little extra. The fins on the heat sink are.. sub-optimal..

 

They're at 2.95 pounds so I'm sure they wanted to keep it under 3. Probably the same reason there's no MX150.

 

Anyone have an LG gram 17?

1. How is the experience of typing/using the touchpad your lap (say while kicking back on a couch)? Evidently the keyboard is not centered but the touchpad is centered, which leads to some awkwardness

The use case I'm thinking of: typing code while kicking back on a couch or something

2. Do you think there is a better 17 inch device for what I'm trying to do? Lg gram 17 seems light enough it shouldn't dig into one's legs too much but I don't know if the keyboard/touchpad placement damns it

3. What was using the device connected to an eGPU like? Can it handle, say, a few youtube 4k videos well without stutter?

 

That is odd, but the touch pad looks about twice as big as my HP. I wish it had a stick. I don't like using the touch pad with a FHD. I wouldn't think a WQXGA would be better.

 

This would be great for code, reason I'm seriously considering it. That 16:10 aspect ratio is super tempting, especially at 3lb with no fan vents on the bottom to obstruct anything when on a lap.

You bring up a good point about the touchpad placement, that's the one thing that was being complained about in the review I read. I would imagine you could get used to it though given time. Obviously just dealing with it for a day or some hours to review it isn't enough time for that. I guess that's personal preference. I currently switch back and forth between an MSI 16L13 and a MacBook Pro 15. The MSI has an off center keyboard and it doesn't bother me that much.

It doesn't seem that way. I can't find anything this good for 17" at this form factor and weight. The closest thing I can find is the MSI GS75 that's 5lb and slightly larger footprint. That also has intake vents on the bottom. I mean they aren't even close to the same class really, but they are only $400 apart in price. Oh, and the GS75 is 16:9, not 16:10.

eGPU should work just fine. The thing I worry about is that it appears that the heat management solution (heat pipe and sink) is the exact same one that's on the LG Gram 15 from last year. It had some throttling issues unless you replaced the junk TIM they used. I'm planning on using it with an eGPU and I don't see why it would be a problem.

The i7 8565 should be able to handle 4K video with zero issues, it's much more powerful than weaker CPUs and SoCs that can handle 4K with no issues. You said "a few", you mean multiple 4K streams simultaneously?

If you search youtube you can find all sorts of Korean reviews, just switch the closed captioning to translate to English on the fly. I think there's also a couple people doing English reviews as well.

Personally I'm waiting for a better selection of trusted reviews before I make any decisions.

 

Got mine about a week ago. Finally had some time to play with it. Swapped in a 970 EVO drive and did a clean install of the latest Win 10 LTSC. So far no complaints.

 

Can anyone say if the screen is RGB stripe or PenTile?

 

If it's your birthday month, Best Buy offers an extra 10% off if you sign up for Best Buy Rewards, making it about $1,600 out the door here, but that will depend on your local sales tax rate.

 

To answer my own question. The screen seems to be full RGB. Also, measured the brightness to around 450 nits, which is 10% more than I measure my Matebook X to. Usable outdoors in the shade but very reflective.

 

Could someone that has one of these run LatencyMon on it and take a screenshot of the results?

https://www.resplendence.com/latencymon

 

1. How is the experience of typing/using the touchpad your lap (say while kicking back on a couch)? Evidently the keyboard is not centered but the touchpad is centered, which I wonder if it could lead some awkwardness

The use case I'm thinking of: typing code while kicking back on a couch or something

2. What's the most negative complaint you'd have about the device?

 

Here's my fresh bunch of complaints:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/lg-gram-17-warnings.827892/

I was expecting to be a super convert and evangelist for this device...I cannot in good conscience recommend it to anyone in its present state.

 

I picked one up yesterday, liking it so far. I'll see if I have the same issue with adding a 2nd SSD when I get around to doing that. So far it's been great.

I do plan on getting some Kryonaut and reapplying TIM at some point to make sure the cooling is optimal.

 

The LG LW70 had a 1.86GHz Dothan Pentium M, which easily outpaced the shipping Desktop Pentium 4 processors of its time, certainly blowing my 2.4GHz Pentium 4 Desktop out of the water, and probably outperforming even the snappiest 3.06GHz Pentium 4 - with Hyperthreading, WOW! - as well (although I never got to test that).

The LG GRAM 17 ships with i7-8565U. Contrast this with the i7-8650U CPU in the 1 TB Surface Pro 6, and you understand my disappointment. The small 12" Surface Pro tablet is even 100 MHz faster in baseline clock speed. This is BEFORE any real world experience with the respective devices.

Considering the thermals of the miniscule 12" Surface Pro, and what should be massively increased thermal headroom in the 17" LG GRAM 17...it just doesn't make any sense that the LG GRAM 17 throttles down to 390 MHz, far far below what the 12" Surface Pro ever throttles down to; ALSO taking into account that the LG processor is the WEAKER one (which choice doesn't make sense either).

Also the LG GRAM 17 has a very high pitched irritating fan that is way more annoying than the 12" Surface Pro fan when the system is under load - not even necessarily heavy load, just regular work.

IMHO LG had a golden opportunity to capitalize on the weaknesses of the Surface Pro line here, and they MISSED it, which is my BIGGEST disappointment with this device. Really very sad.

 

New issue: Battery drain while plugged in!

 

If anyone is planning on using this for audio, seems DPC Latency is OK.

 

Were you using USB-C power or the adapter that came with the unit? This definitely sounds like a defect.

 

I was using the power adapter that came with the unit. A dock was plugged-in to the USB-C port for gigabit LAN. A 2,5" HDD was plugged in to the USB 3 port on the laptop itself and was receiving data from the laptop.

I have seen a similar type of "plugged in but not charging" situation with Surface Pro devices. I think I may have even seen them drain, but not this fast, and not under such little load.

I doubt my device is defective.

 

I just ran cinebench r15 while watching CPUid, the core speed was pretty much 2.2-2.4GHz the entire test.. I think it dipped to 2.0 for a small period.. not bad for stock TIM, I was expecting worse.

 

Here is a better view of cinebench CPU performance, the CPU was at 2.8GHz on all 4 cores for a decent little part of the beginning, but settled down to 2.3GHz as it heated up. I marked off the area of the graph on top where cinebench was running it's test. I think definitely replacing the TIM with Kryonaut will improve the sustainability of higher clocks on all 4 cores under load. I was hoping to get up to around 600 in cinebench 15, that MIGHT be possible. I'll order some and see what the before/after results are.

I might add the fan was SUPER quiet during this whole test, I had to lift the laptop to my ear to make sure it was spinning and i could hear a very gentle whoosh as the test ran to completion, this thing is nearly silent. I'm really liking this notebook the more I use it. It's so nice to use on the lap due to the weight, and this display is god-like with it's 16:10 aspect ratio. I can fit so much on the screen in Reaper.

 

Could you please upload pictures of the rear of your laptop, both with the display closed and open?

I wonder if I have suffocated the grills at the back by tightening a screw too much - would hopefully resolve some of my intermittent heating issues.

Also, would you be able to test for the battery drain issue on your device?

Just connect a 2.5" HDD via a USB/SATA adapter, and also plug in a NIC or similar adapter to the USB C connector (both separately).

Then start copying a real big file (say 50-100 GB) and see if the power drain occurs...

 

There's about a 1/4-1/8" gap in the back where you can see the intake and exhaust vents, it does close off a bit if you lightly press on the middle where the foot is. I keep it on my lap all the time so maybe there's less stress on the middle foot. The gap is still open when the laptop is closed, I never run it closed though. There definitely isn't much room there, but from what I can tell when the fan is spinning if the laptop is under stress I can feel a little air coming out. The bottom of the laptop also gets pretty warm when it's under extended load.

I don't have a USB-C Ethernet adapter as I threw the one I had down in storage in the basement of our building, I never use it. I probably can't help there. I can say that I don't use the power adapter that came with it as I also have a MacBook Pro 15 with 4 thunderbolt ports and I just grab that adapter and plug it into the USB-C so I don't need two adapter lying around.

You might benefit from one of these powered Thunderbolt docks. It would even supply up to 85W to the laptop. I think that's same wattage output of the MacBook USB-C power adpater that comes with the MBP 15 that I'm using with the LG. https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/doc...f8Kxsn286_lYNNQXCa4aAoMqEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

I don't see myself ever using the LG supplied adapter as my next move is getting an eGPU, and the one i'm eyeing, the Sonnet Breakaway 650, also supplies 85W power delivery. Not sure how a longer active TB3 cable would change that, but it remains to be seen. I'm planning on dumping the eGPU on the floor next to the recliner.. I never sit at a desk.

 

Well, that explains the power drain I'm seeing then. Again LG support is off the mark, as they suggested the laptop is defective based on my report.

I'll try with a new 85W dock as you suggested - my USB-C dock consumes power driving a 2560x1600 display over mini display port (further converted to dual link DPI using the powered Mac adapter for that), in addition to the gigabit lan, and mouse; and doesn't actually supply any power at all.

So probably when combined with a further power drain owing to a USB to SATA connection for the external 2.5" HDD, the results are within design specs, if disappointing due to the flimsy default power adapter that ships with the device.

I'll also loosen the center screw to see if that helps. It'd be great if you might be able to snap a picture of how yours looks.

The 390MHz issue is really intermittent but impossibly annoying when it hits. Its unpredictable mostly. I have noticed the GPU is shown as being utilized in the Task Manager by at least 50% when it hits. I have no games or similar software running at that time. Just browsers (which may use hardware acceleration though).

Usually it happens after a warm reboot. A cold shutdown and then booting back up sometimes alleviates the issue. Booting into the Windows Recovery Environment and then coming right back into Windows without doing anything in the console also almost always fixes the issue, at least temporarily.

I do wonder if its an Intel driver bug or similar. Makes the machine impossible to use until it goes away and speed suddenly returns to the neighborhood of 3GHz. It would be interesting to try it with an eGPU and see what happens too. I don't know if I can get the company to buy one though. Do you know if they support the new 2000 series RTX cards?

 

Here are some shots of the back, the gap isn't that large really
OPEN


CLOSED


The gap looks larger if I angle the laptop from the bottom a little due to the angle of the opening in relation to the hinge, so this MIGHT be deceiving. There's definitely daylight there but not a huge amount. It seems like it's enough to get some air through.

It could be that the CPU is power throttling if the dock + usb hard drive are consuming too much power to be used while you're doing something strenuous. Just sitting on this chrome browser I see my CPU hovering in the 1GHz range mostly. It does waver up and down though. Admittedly this particular site has always had some CPU usage due to ads etc I do see GPU usage from chrome and the Win 10 windows manager fluctuating right now, I only have this tab open in chrome and the task manager running. I've never seen your particular issue though with the CPU staying at a low speed.

You can download something like ThrottleStop and it can perhaps tell you if you're power throttling / thermal throttling. I tried to install XTU on this laptop, but the U series CPUs aren't supported by it so I won't even install.

eGPU docks can use up to a 2080Ti as long as the power supply is up to the task and the card you choose fits in the enclosure. Two units that I know can do this are the Razer Core X and the Sonnet Breakaway 650. Obviously the lower power the GPU the lower you can go in the Sonnet line, the 650 is kind of expensive. I'm going to get the Sonnet 650 just because it's known to be super quiet and it's large enough it seems to take a huge and quiet card like the Asus Strix line.

 

Yeah, looks just like mine. Thank you for that.

I'll try ThrottleStop the next time the slowdown hits. Hopefully would reveal more on the issue.

Many thanks again,

 

Also make sure your power settings aren't set for max battery (click the battery in the tray)

Edit: based on the specs on the included LG power adapter it looks like it's 48W, perhaps that's not enough to power the hub, USB drive, and the rest of the components in the system at once as well as keep the battery topped. Seems like it should be though..

Edit 2: something I forgot to mention, when I plugged my Logitech wireless mouse receiver into the USB port closest the headphone jack on the right side, a little window popped up suggesting I plug it into the one closest to the back. Not sure if that had to go with compatibility or maybe saving the other port for things that required more power. I can't find anything in the manual specifically about the difference between the ports.

 

Oh the battery doesn't help at all, I'm afraid. Whatever setting its on has utterly no effect.

Are you using the OEM installation image, or did you install your own Windows 10?

I've also heard bad things about the latest 1809 build. Maybe would be worthwhile to try the 1803 build.

Disabling connected standby also doesn't work on this laptop. I can change the registry key, but it seems to have no effect.

That used to help with the Surface Pro devices in some cases. Not in others...

 

I'm just using the OEM install.

 

Same here.

 

I'm interested in using an eGPU (sonnet breakaway puck) with this laptop but I haven't seen any info on the PCIE lanes allocated to the thunderbolt port. Does anyone know if it's 4 lanes or 2?

 

4 lanes

 

I'm considering buying this model, but msintle's observations about nvme slots/battery/cpu throttling are worrisome. I once experienced a problem with a different laptop where one of two nvme slots wasn't working properly due to firmware/uefi issues and using that slot made the entire system act unpredictable and unstable. Have you tried running your one SSD in the other slot?

 

I didn't try that, because the other slot is a 2X and not a 4X.

Sounds like it is overall the same or similar issue as to the one you were having.

I think it works fine in the LG Gram 17 if both SSDs are the same brand and model.

The issue probably arises when there's two different types of SSDs and the UEFI/BIOS fails to auto-negotiate speed rates/modes.

That's just my hunch based on manufacturer descriptions and experience.

What is disappointing is that support is horrid and there's no escalation path to fix these issues.

A product sold in the US market needs better representation.

A product as promising as the LG Gram 17 deserves much better representation.

 

All the SSD's I have laying around are 512GB SATA m.2's (I have like 5 or 6 of them lol), I don't have any NVMe's or I'd try it out. Sorry.

 

I should probably clarify that when using two identical SSDs in the slot (ex: two Samsung 1 TB PRO SSDs released immediately prior to the 960 PRO generation), it always worked for me - even if one of those SSDs was later rejected when used in combination with another SSD in the slot (ex: one Samsung 1 TB 960 PRO SSD). So definitely looks like a very annoying UEFI BIOS bug to me...costing me 1 TB of disk space for no reason other than someone's sloppy work right now!

 

I took a look at the BIOS over the weekend to see what kind of options were present, it's not very extensive at all.

Perhaps if you report your findings to support they can consider a BIOS update for compatibility.

I also installed Throttlestop to see if I could change the turbo power configuration as well as do some undervolting to see if I could get a higher Cinebench score. It's thermal throttling pretty heavily. I'm going to order some kryonaut so I can reapply TIM. I'll probably install a 2nd SATA SSD while I'm in there since I have a spare one. Unfortunately one of them went belly up over the weekend in a different notebook but I have quite a few lying around. I honestly don't see the difference much between SATA vs NVMe in normal usage, I don't usually copy extremely large amounts of data around quickly.

OH, I also did hook up one of my SSD's to a USB cable and copied some data back and forth as well as did an entire disk health scan for bad sectors on two different m.2 SSD's .. I did this while using the included LG adapter. I didn't see any battery drain issues. I did not however have a USB ethernet adapter hooked up draining power. So might not be a valid test.

@msintle did you ever end up picking up a thunderbolt dock that has power delivery?

 

So yeah, their support is absolutely useless - they promised to escalate the UEFI BIOS issue, and I've never heard back. I reported the issue weeks ago already. Buyer beware! This product is NOT professionally supported.

I'm not surprised you were able to confirm the thermal throttle. At my end, thankfully, I haven't seen 390MHz incidences recently. Today I did a software build which maxes out all CPU cores, and performance was a smooth 2 GHz, almost always above it actually. But I know it will come back randomly and at the most frustrating time possible, that's usually how it goes. This is based on my experience with the Surface Pro 2017 (Pro "5") which exhibited a similar issue. Maybe its an Intel CPU problem, I honestly don't know. Summer is coming...which never helps with these things, does it?

Do you have an adapter you might recommend to connect M2 SSDs via USB? I could use one of those.

I still see the battery drain every time, but it may be simply because my hub is also attached, and consuming power. On a high note, its great to be able to connect the LG GRAM 17 to 2560x1600 via my hub which sports a mini display port that I further convert into a dual link dvi signal using the powered Apple adapter. I'm sure they also drain a low of power, resulting in or contributing to my scenario. Still, no excuse for not shipping a proper power adapter with the device. The devil is in the details.

I haven't yet picked up a thunderbolt dock with power delivery. I checked a few and they were about twice to thrice as expensive as my current dock, which the company may not pay for. The eGPU option is very interesting too. If I had more confidence in the device, it might have even proposed replacing some of our bulky and costly build machines with the LG GRAM 17 and eGPU combinations. Unfortunately I cannot make such a recommendation on good conscience at this time. Maybe if LG fixes their issues? Keeping fingers crossed! Like I wrote earlier, I was fully ready to fall head over heels in love with this device, and its never too late - provided, of course, they actually fix the stuff they need to!

 

That's a shame. I fully expected it to throttle since I saw a shot of the internals well before I bought it and it has the same exact meager heat management solution that the 15" unit had last year. It's really a shame because there's SO MUCH room in there to just add a small amount more metal surface area to the heatsink and fins and maybe a longer/better heat pipe. It really wouldn't add much weight at all to just put a bit more in there. It wouldn't take much. But I read that applying a good TIM (i'm going to order some kryonaut) fixes it to a decent extent. We'll see.

The m.2 SATA SSD adapter I have is a combination of this (unfortunately not available anymore I bought it 4 years ago):
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00FKCSMYY/ref=oh_aui_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

And one of these to hook up to it:
https://www.amazon.com/Apricorn-Not...=apricorn&qid=1553050717&s=electronics&sr=1-6

Works well, I only use it intermittently though when I have to restore a backup or copy files around or similar.

I had tried this at first but it was overheating all the time and causing problems, so don't get this piece of junk :
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KQ4LNJC/ref=oh_aui_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

These are all SATA only, I think recently some company finally released an NVMe USB enclosure, not sure of the quality though.

I'm still loving the laptop. I haven't had anything to complain about yet, and I'm pretty much getting used to the keyboard at this point. The weight is awesome, the display is magnificent, and it seems to be working really well with audio production software (cubase and reaper).

 

My own recommendations for LG would be, assuming someone in charge gets to this -

1) Fix the UEFI BIOS bugs. This is just crap firmware holding down your existing hardware.

2) Fix the thermals. Your 17" device runs slower than a 12" Surface Pro, despite having a WEAKER CPU.

3) Add a touchscreen, preferably with pen support. Lots of devices doing this. Maybe your issue was your 2560x1600 aspect? If so, I'd rather KEEP this aspect than have the touchscreen/pen support, FWIW.

4) Improve support. Just make sure your escalation paths actually get to someone in charge. There's hardly anything more frustrating than a device with issues AND no support.

5) You weren't even allowed to sell LG LW70 in the US market a decade and half ago due to your LCD panel licensing deals. You have a chance now - DON'T BLOW IT!

Good luck, LG - we are rooting for you, despite all your shortcomings...

 

I ordered the Kryonaut, should arrive sometime next week. I'll do a before and after cinebench and load test to see if it can sustain some higher boost clocks afterward. I'm not expecting a miracle, but maybe if I can get some iterative improvement it would be worth it.

 

Quick question - would there be any point to the application, given there's no heatsink? I thought the point of the substance was to increase conductivity, but for that, there has to be a heat recipient...am I not getting something?

 

There are small fins at the end of the heat pipe that the fan moves air across. They are rather meager but they are there. What I'm hoping is that it's not fully saturated and increasing thermal conductivity for heat transfer will help something. It's definitely not going to make it worse, so I'll let you know what happens. Estimated delivery of the kryonaut is Saturday

 

I applied the Kryonaut. Idle temps dropped a little, but under load not much has changed. It seems to run a tad more stable in repeating slightly higher Cinebench scores if I run them back-to-back consecutively, but it's not any type of drastic improvement at all. The heat pipe/sink assembly in the unit is VERY lightweight. They really need to consider beefing it up just a little for the next iteration of this laptop, it would add NEARLY no weight. I would be able to hold those higher boost clocks a little longer with less saturation of the very weak heat management. I'll try it again in 48-74 hours as temps do tend to drop a couple-few more C after a few days, I don't care what TG says about Kryonaut needing "zero cure" time. I don't expect it to change much though. So, tl;dr doesn't seem to be worth it to bother reapplying the TIM judging by the first hour after application. I'll post again sometime next week after it's had some cure time.

A couple pictures I took for anyone interested, I forgot to take a shot of the Kryonaut application to the dies after the cleanup, sorry. I used the included spatula to spread it.

Tools, not shown the secondary slightly larger micro flathead I switched to for prying the cover off and the guitar pick to work my way around:


Full internals:


Closeup of the heat management:


Factory TIM application:


Closeup of heatpipe and heatsink fins:


Fan model number:


Cleaned up:


Sorry totally forgot to take a shot of the Kryonaut applied.. it's spread onto the dies evenly..

 

Hi all. After reading some reviews and following this thread I bought myself a LG Gram 17. As I live in Europe where it is not available and auctioneers want a hefty premium to get it shipped from the US I decided to instead import one from Korea. As I read about the overheating issues I decided to save a few bucks and got the i5-8265U model in white: 17ZD990-VX50K. This comes without windows and with only 8 gigs of ram and a 256 gb ssd. Fortunately the 8gbs turned out to be single slot on board, so I can easily upgrade to 16 gb. The sata ssd also had to go anyways and was replaced by a samsung evo plus 970 nvme drive.

I see none of the big problems msintle had, but I'm only using the x4 nvme slot. It took me a while to figure out how to get LGs drivers on my model (turns out it requires LG DnA Centre instead of LG Update Centre), but in the process I saw there was a recent BIOS update that might have solved a few issues already.

I did some stress tests and that's where things get interesting. I used the AIDA64 stress test and thermal throttling happens a lot! Almost immediately I got 43% throttling. The problem seems to be caused by multiple issues unfortunately, but I'm sure some improvements can be achieved.

First I did some undervolting using Throttlestop. I'm happy to report that my cpu/cache/system agent run stable at -110 mv and this reduces throttling quite a bit. During the stress test on all cores, the cpu now runs at almost 3.0 GHz instead of 2.5 GHz before.

Definitely mediocre is the fan control. The fan just doesn't spin up soon enough.. once heavy load starts, the 90 degree limit (which is quite low) is hit in like 3 seconds and the fan takes about 5 secs to finally spin up. We definitely need a way to control this fan to improve performance. The LG Control Center I found only has the option to shut the fan down completely, which is absolutely useless. Did any of you find a tool that can control the fan? I will attempt to find a Notebook Fan Control config at some point, but maybe there is a tool buried somewhere in a Korean forum? Unfortunately I don't understand the language.

 

This is great news! I tried undervolting with throttlestop with -80mv on both core and cache and it didn't seem to change anything at all for me for sustaining boost clocks, this is even with a better quality TIM. In fact I think I might have been experiencing some slight instability with those settings so I disabled the task scheduler startup I had created for it. Maybe I'll try again only uv'ing the core and leave the cache alone and see if that changes anything. But again, it didn't really seem to help the throttling. It seemed like it was more power limit throttling than thermal throttling. I tried adjusting the TPL settings as well to let it boost longer at a higher wattage but it didn't seem to make any difference it still slowly worked it's way back down to consuming 15W.

What is this LG DnA Centre? I can't even seem to find it on their site, but it seems much like LG Update Center for the US model. This page seems to have a warning that DNA Center is only for certain models: https://www.lg.com/uk/support/product-help/CT30007240-20150925983430-others.

I have not noticed any BIOS update for my unit being downloaded by their software, it did install quite a few updates when I first was setting it up and it did install brand new audio drivers with a new control panel for that the other day. So it seems to be working as expected.

Here's a shot of my HWiNFO reported BIOS date and version:


I'm intrigued by you being able to sustain some higher boost clocks, as well I wish the white unit was available here in the US it looks pretty nice. Congrats on getting a good one!

EDIT:
I went from -80mv on core/cache to -125mv on the core and no offset on cache and it seemed to sustain boost longer, but it still eventually got back to 15W. Repeated runs still give the same result as before.

It would be nice to have a fan control option to just force it to full if you wanted, honestly I can't even hear it over ambient noise when it is running full bore anyway.

 

The LG DnA Centre is probably for those korean models that don't ship with Windows. It's just a little tool which downloads updates. I found it on the korean site using google translate. It installed things like LG control center for me. The problem was that I could not install LG update center because the installer told me "this model is not supported". I will look up the precise bios version tomorrow, but mine for sure is newer than yours, it is from Jan 2019 and my unit was manufactured in march 2019.

I tried undervolting to -120 mv and it seemed stable for a while, but then I got a blue screen and after that, I went back to -110 mv which is fine up to now.

I do think we absolutely need to get fan control somehow as the behavior in stock form is ridiculous. The fan reacts so sluggishly that heavy throttling occurs before the fan even starts spinning . We need to be able to make it start earlier and faster to improve performance. It looks like they got a little bit too much inspiration from apple when it comes to setting the temp threshold for the fan.

I will probably apply liquid metal tim at some point and will also install an additional heatpipe on top of the built-in one. I'll share pictures in case this helps (it's reversible and I had good results on other laptops before).

I also see power throttling, but I do see thermal throttling as well (especially when using prime95). On a huawei matebook x pro it's possible to work around power throttling by disabling the intel thermal framework, but I won't even attempt this on the gram as long as temps are this high.