New LG Gram 17

Strange. The only thing I can think of is that the thunderbolt->display port cable is making the laptop think it should be getting PD over the cable, but it's not. I can't test any of these theories as my only thunderbolt device is an eGPU that supplies 87W of power delivery.

One thing to try would be updating the BIOS. You can see if you are running the latest one by right-clicking `LGE System Firmware` under the Firmware category in device manager and doing an update. Maybe there's a fix for that in the latest BIOS.

EDIT: you also might want to try a different cable, I see a decent number of reviews for that cable saying it's faulty. That might not mean much but 11% seems high.

 

Has anyone purchased an external battery pack for the gram 17? I read a few reviews of people having problems with the USB-C charging, so am looking for the make/model of a USB-C external battery which works to charge the laptop.

 

USB-C charging. In order to operate properly you have to go to LG Control Panel and enable it. I just found that a couple of days ago. Now I have no prob charging when laptop is off, including using a battery pack. I have a Lenovo external battery, but I see no reason to use any that could provide a decent output.

 

It's strange cause the cable has very good reviews in Amazon, so is strange it's only me who is having these problems... I've already updated BIOS and the problem remains...

 

My youngest is going off to college next year so for Christmas he's getting a LG Gram 17 (Z990). I didn't even turn it on til I installed a 1TB Mushkin Pilot-E nvme drive and swapped the stock Samsung SSD to secondary.

Formatted the stock drive, installed Win10 Pro fresh. Wrote down the original Home numbers first tho before I did that, in case. Setup Thermalstop thanks to you all, not sure how low it can go but so far -90mv for CPU stuff and -50mv for other things seems to be quite stable. Don't need crashing when he's out. Got it setup to auto-load on startup.

But this is my kid and he's gonna wanna game, so I bought a Razer Core X and stuck a GeForce 1070 in there. It powers the Gram just fine, even while gaming. No need for stock power brick.

So he can take it on the go during college and have it not die on him, and when he returns to where he's staying he can hook it into the Razer eGPU and charge it up at the same time that way. An extreme at both ends, win/win!

Thing is FAST. It does throttle, yes. Throttlestop almost completes its built-in bench until it starts trying to throttle around 85% completion.

It appears to play, mind you with the 1070, all the Darksiders games at native resolution with all settings on ultra very smoothly. I'm going to install and try Witcher 3 before he gets it, since I know much about that game with the PS4 version and my Ryzen 1700 setup, and see if it stutters like crap or is very enjoyable with not all the settings on low.

Anyway I've never personally owned a laptop in my entire life, always been desktops. The Gram 17 is probably the first laptop I've ever messed around with that made me actually want one for myself. I love it, so far!

 

I also want to drive an external (4k 60Hz) display and charge at the same time. I don't know what's causing the issue you are facing, but I found a solution that works for me. I got a usb-c to mini dp/usb A/pd adapter from equip (model 133463 https://www.equip-info.net/USB-C/133463/p-1157.htm). It allows to connect an usb-c charger to the pd port, supports 4k 60Hz over displayport and even let's me plug in an usb hub on the usb-a port. Therefore I can now plug in just the one usb-c cable and have everything hooked up + get full charging. The adapter had some bad reviews and doesn't seem to work on some laptops, but I had zero issues with a lg gram and an lg 4k monitor.

 

I expect you'll probably get pretty good results with the 1070 with some mediumish-to-high settings. I love my setup as well, I'll probably never buy another laptop unless it's 17" 16:10 ~3lb. If they stop creating and updating these year-over-year and no one copies them I'm going to be sad.

 

Yeah here's also hoping for more generations of gram17's. Other laptops seem to be made of concrete and have screen that are tiny

 

Someone said the Gram doesn't get warm, it definitely gets warm. The case, etc. Mind you, it's not molten metal hot.

Anyway, granted this is with a 1070, I'm very impressed. Shadow of Mordor has a built in bench, at 5K resolution it gets low 20 FPS (average) with everything on ultra. Granted nobody I think needs 5K and to have it down-sampled, I was entertained. At 2K or as close as I can get the wonky resolutions it allows me to choose (don't remember it being strange) with everything on ultra I get 52FPS average. Drop a couple settings to High and it's around 58 (average), like lowering detail of things far off in the distance that you're not going to notice anyway.

Witcher 3 unfortunately I don't know how to bench. It's a beautiful game with stunning visuals. At native resolution with Hairworks disabled with everything on ultra I can assure you it has more FPS than the PS4 version. I cannot tell a discernible difference from my Ryzen 1700 box I have mounted on the wall of my office with the same video card, and it's fluid on that. With an external monitor at 1080p there'd be virtually no issues whatsoever I can imagine.

I really like this combination. On the go with enough oomph to get whatever done with good battery life, bring it home and turn it into a makeshift gaming rig with an eGPU. Brilliant stuff! Unfortunately, yes, it does cost more. But, awesome usually does. So, there's that. And I really love the screen ... it's a great screen. Not plasma or OLED, but it'll work.

 

What make/model?

The glossy screen is the only reason I didn't like the LG Gram 17 when I checked one out at CostCo. Honestly I'd spend $100 to solve this issue. Maybe there is a company I can send it to in order to get a proper AR coating?

 

I've also noticed that the speakers are kinda crap, but that there is also plenty of room for bigger ones. Has anyone considered replacing the speakers with something less pitiful?

 

The speakers are indeed very bad and I have thought about replacing them. However a big part of the problem is that they are facing downwards and while it seems like there would be a lot of space on the sides of the keyboard, it's not possible to fit speakers there because of the way the motherboard is placed inside the chassis. So I just use headphones now.

 

That could be fixed, too.

Another solution, for me anyway, is to get some external speakers with an AUX in and glue it to a laptop stand.

 

The motherboard placement cannot be changed as all the connectors sit on the motherboard on one side and on a daughterboard on the other side.

 

I'm lucky in that I just don't really care how good the speakers are. I wish they would find a way to put them on top for those that do though. I always use headphones.

 

Huh? They're just wires. Who cares about the connectors?

 

What are wires? By connectors I mean the outside ports such as usb/hdmi etc... As they are soldered onto pcb boards, you cannot get any space next to the keyboard to place upward facing speakers although there seems to be a lot a space when viewing the unit from above. When they extended the Gram15 to 17 inches, they didn't add space on both sides, but added space near the fan between the two pcbs.

 

I honestly don't know what you're going on about. The speakers exist in a sea of nothing.

Are we living under the myth that to have upward facing speakers they have to be in the same location as in the MacBook Pro?

Edit: You could even do it sideways like the Logitech Z305. Anything would be better.

 

No, but if they were flipped in place, you'd cover them with your hands/arms. And it would be so much trouble that I wouldn't want to set for anything less than an ideal position if I were to make the extensive modifications necessary.

 

Not if how I use my MacBook 17 is any indication. I hardly ever touch that part of the laptop.

How are you using your laptop? Are you doing push-ups on it? Weird.

 

Ha, I think I found out why LG is using the i7 in these laptops:

Code:

https://youtu.be/KIVpgsCAHZk?t=484

(This site doesn't preserve options to skip ahead so I can't embed or link)
Sorry if this isn't news to you, but it is to me. Maybe they will offer an i5 version soon.

 

Hello, I'm novice here, but have spend almost 7 years in read-only here.
I was going to buy LG Gram 17, though it's not present in my country.
For those who are from Europe you can buy in Italy (have seen comments about Italy), Poland and Spain.

Also I was hoping for new version. And it's out, but only in South Korea an with intel 10th i5, 256GB ssd (now only NWMe). Also there will be version with i7 and build-in Intel G7 GPU.

The most disappointing news: COOLING IS SAME!! Can't add images but check this
video:

.

 

Thanks for finding this video! The cooling does look slightly improved. The CPU bracket now has 4 screws (3 before) which probably helps with the die contact. The fan has the same basic shape, but it does look different and the fins on the heat pipe exhaust assembly are now angled which also means they are longer.

Overall this does look to me like it's going to be able to handle 15W or more - as it should for the specs of the CPU. The old construction was only able to handle about 14W in my tests.

 

Since the latest windows 10 update (1909) I have issues with my card reader. Windows refuses to load the driver and I tried many versions of the Realtek 5227 card reader driver, but none seem to work. Is the micro-SD reader working for any of you using the latest version of windows?

In other news.. when I use my razer core X thunderbolt 3 EGPU enclosure, I get crashes if the laptop is closed and opened again. Has anyone managed to make this work or do you eject your EGPUs every time the machine goes to sleep?

 

I just closed and opened it and they both seem to be working, I don't have an SDCard to test with but the driver is loaded...

 

Thanks! Mine magically fixed itself in the meantime, however now the fingerprint reader stopped working .

 

This happened to me, I'm trying to remember what I did to get it to work again. I think I turned off fast startup and it cleared up a lot of issues.

 

Thanks @hfm. I'll give that a go as I indeed see the occasional problem that is solved when doing a real shutdown and startup. With my fingerprint reader what finally made it work again was re-entering all my fingerprints for windows hello.

 

Oh, my issue was different. Windows was reporting in device manager that the hardware was installed properly but the driver continuously failed to load, was seeing errors in the event log. Reinstalling drivers, even different versions, didn't work. Was also having weird startup issues randomly even on cold boot. I'm pretty sure disabling that fixed it all. I did reenter my prints after it finally loaded properly.

 

Holy crap, thank you. Could not figure out for the life of me why "System Interrupts" was the only thing on my Details tab that showed "Enabled" under the Power Throttling column. Should've never installed Intel's stupid drivers from their site.

Really wish LG gave more actual drivers on their site though.

 

I'm the new owner of a Gram 17 and have a couple of questions. As with others, I discovered the anemic performance of the network Ethernet dongle (while transferring data from a large desktop that was about to crash).

First: Will a 1 GB rated speed dongle improve the performance, or is there some other slow performing item in the chain to the motherboard?
Second: Can someone recommend a good dock for this (USB3/Thunderbolt). Preferably it should support a VBA monitor.

Thanks in advance.

mjclifford

 

If I recall correctly the included one is a 100Mbit adapter. You might get better performance from a 1Gbit adapter, not sure.

 

< If I recall correctly the included one is a 100Mbit adapter. You might get better performance from a 1Gbit adapter, not sure. >

That's just it - I want to be sure. Anybody tried another dongle/dock with this laptop?

 

I have my own answer. I found a very old USB 2.0 to ethernet converter in the junk box. Internet speed with the LG dongle was 93 through the Thunderbolt port. My old adapter clocked 215. Therefore, all one needs is an adapter fit for a more modern port.

That's a lousy way to introduce a customer to their otherwise fine machine.

 

215 what?

 

215 what?

Mps while internet streaming. However, I've since found that the old adapter drops the connection partway through a transfer of a large file on my network and there's a clear history of this for the adapter's chipset (ASIX AX88179). So hours have been invested since LG saved a couple of bucks on a 100Mbs adapter and I still don't have a way to back up over the network.

Can anyone recommend a working Thunderbolt 3 doc for this computer? Thanks.

 

I'm finding that the range of the wifi in my LG Gram 17 is not that great compared to other laptops I have used. Anyone else see this as well? Running linux iwlwifi, maybe I should see if the range is better in win10.

 

Another update. I've found that this TB3 adapter works well: https://tinyurl.com/qmujvug . It runs about the same speed as a desktop with a add-in specialty network card.

 

Not sure where they get that 3mbps wireless connection from, that's a little exagerada. But glad you found something.

 

Interesting to read the PC World January 2020 PDF edition is only now reviewing the LG Gram 17 and giving it kudos. There's actually an online review from November 2019 that is the same article at https://www.pcworld.com/article/3454840/lg-gram-17-review.html.

Got my LG Gram 17 in May 2019 and still very happy with it.

 

Agreed, I got mine in April, still very happy.

 

Not exactly. Has to be a charger rated for pd charging. None of my phone chargers worked. But I bought one on Amazon and it will charge my LG gram 17 and my phone too. Problem solved.

 

Thanks for all the useful infos here, I'm a new owner of the LG gram 2019 i7 (previously a macbook pro user) and so far so good I like this laptop!

As a developer I was a bit afraid of leaving the macOs/unix ecosystem but there is Windows-Sub-Linux (wls), where I installed an unbuntu shell that 100% fit my needs!

I have a few newbie questions:

1) Do you guys advise to have throttleStop with undervolting running all the time or only for gaming? do you see by example lower cpu temperature on browsing / light productivity? been using it for 2h and I'm not sure of seeing any difference.

2) when doing light productivity without charging, the fan don't turn on. but if i'm charging the laptop (with default charger), the fan will always be turned on, Is it normal? It's medium fan speed so it's still pretty quiet, but wondering if there is something I can do to have the fan turned off when charging.

3) when I boot the laptop, for 1/2 seconds the fan will turn on maximum, then for the first 2 minutes, the fan will be turned on medium speed, then eventually it will be turned off. is it normal? (On macbook I didn't have this small issue, I don't know if it's normal )

 

Anyone know if the hdmi output on the gram 17 supports 1440p? I have a Dell U2711 which supports 1440p over hdmi, and I am trying to decide if my cable is the problem. I am on linux and xrandr is only reporting 1920x1080 as the max resolution.

 

It supports 4K over hdmi.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Someone in this or the 2020 thread mentioned LG did a hardware refresh of the 2018/2019 model and upgraded the SSD from SATA to NVMe.
I just bought an old model (factory refurbished) and it has indeed a 512GB NVMe drive, a Samsung PM981. Not sure how you can spot this before buying the laptop though.

Edit: manufacturing date on mine is 2019.10 so I'm assuming at least from this date they installed the faster NVMe SSD.

 

As some others in this thread I upgraded my memory using a 32 GB stick to get 40 GB in total. During the last few months I am getting the occasional blue-screen on waking the machine up. Especially after deep sleeps I get a Kernel Page In Error which points to memory or SSD, but it could also be BIOS related or caused by any of the many mods I did or by using Throttlestop to undervolt. Is anyone else getting these? I did run a memory check which took about one hour and it did not find any problems. My suspicion is that the problem would go away if I went back to the 2x8GB memory config, but it is just a hunch.

 

Sounds like a classic undervolt issue

 

Not a problem I've had with mine. Sounds like the fault may be with something else on the system...

 

One of the latest windows updates was also giving some people random BSODs. I guess changing one thing at a time and running for a while with 2x8GB to see if it happens again would be good.