Gateway Creators Series 15.6" RTX 2060 i5-10300H

I agree, I will find the exact Tongfang model but it seems from this thread and other sources that the most equivalent model is the RP-15 from Eluktronics. Although that has the AMD CPU. Also there's this model, but it's got an i7. MAINGEAR VECTOR 2 (VECTOR 2020) - Drivers and BIOS Downloads for Model MG-VCTR002-2060 (i7 10750H and RTX 2060) - MAINGEAR Knowledge Base. Until I can find the precise Tongfang model, I will at least put "Tongfang" in the tag. This is a work in progress as some Redditors came to me asking for a "home" to have place to talk about this without compromising the integrity of the thread by having too many models to reference that have so many variations.

 

The equivalent model is the Eluktronics MB-15, which is the same whitebook as the Vector you linked.

 

Thank you. I will add a link to the drivers for that model in the OP.

 

Decided to mess the BIOS & EC, unfortunately, GatewayUSA does not provide their own files. The system came stock with N1.02. I decided to install the BIOS & EC from XMG's Intel Core 15 which has an i7 over an i5. But the same chassis. The BIOS is N1.03 and actually enabled some additional features. The boot logo of course changed, but the only issue I am now experiencing is that I didn't realize (my fault) that the XMG model has a different Media/FN key layout, so the EC update remapped the FN keys. So f11 which is normally Brightness Down on the Gateway is Airplane mode on the XMG. This is slightly annoying, but liveable, so hopefully, I can revert back to the Gateway EC (Can't find a copy of it) to restore the proper mappings.

Also, the Performance profile button next to the power button has been remapped to a fan boost button. Everything else is working great with no issues.

These were the files I used:
Bios-XMG_CORE_XCO15E20_XCO17E20_RTX2060_BIOS_N1.03
Bios-CORE-15_XCO15E20_GK5MR0O_RTX2060_EC_11.630

 

That's kind of an odd decision tbh, the bios should be fine especially with a laptop that would have an average life of 3 years. The only thing I could think would be a benfit is if they were able to actually offer the Thunderbolt support mentioned on the sales page which we don't get, assuming they can do that with software/bios. Or I guess the new resizable bar and other babble language boosts in the marketing.

A business class laptop designed to last 5+ years like my old 2013 m6700, it makes sense for bios updating for new features but I never noticed much difference over several dell bios.

 

I actually gained some additional undervolting options that are helpful, so dealing with remapped keys I don't use all that often isn't a huge deal.

 

I was able to get the Factory BIOS/EC for the Gateway. I'll be keeping the XMG BIOS and reverting to the Gateway EC to get my Media Keys back.
3BK_intel_CML_10L_GK5MR0O_ESI_BIOS_N.1.02_EC_1.16.20_20200810.zip (dropbox.com)

 

Hm thanks for the link. Anyways a couple of things, looks like this is now sold out. I wouldn't be surprised if the new holiday models are being specced out and ordered now, whether gateway, evoo or some other tongfang/walmart brand. With low end 3060 laptops around 1000-1200 I'd expect that to be the target with the lower cost i7 11th gen quads or if really lucky amd's. If the 3050's are available they would be the replacement for the 1650 lines but with rtx/dlss capability.

I've also started backing up some blurays that I want to be able to watch away from my cheap external bluray reader drive(they are a ripoff nowadays so look for a used deal) and I have to say I'm impressed with the Nvenc 264 and 265 results which utilize both the cpu and the gpu hardware. It cuts the processing time in half or more and the file size is variable, it does not hold that it's always bigger as I've read elsewhere. Also the quality loss is not bad at all. I'm using makemkv to decrypt and put the uncompressed .m2ts bluray files on my hard drive then using handbrake to encode to an mkv file. I've also encoded just using regular cpu x264 and x265 10 and 12 bit. You can tell the color gamut is richer/deeper with 10/12 bit but not enough to me for the extra time hit. There are devices that won't play higher than 8bit either, usually older phones and laptops.

For the same file x264 takes about 3hrs of compute time for 1hr of native 1080p bluray file of 16gb, bringing it down to 7.6gb, cq20, slower. I rearranged the audio channels and just did passthrough on auto. Previously I did standard settings for x264 and an hour of video took an hour to encode. Same settings nvenc 265 took 30mins.

For the nvenc x265 I cut one audio channel cq20, passthrough ac3, no surround included, slower, and it was 3.96gb for the same file and did it in about 30mins. That's pretty nice considering I have about 20hrs of bluray to rip/reencode. Side by side it's hard to tell between the cpu 264 and gpu/cpu nvenc 264/265 at least to me. The time isn't bad either way because I just do it at night and you can qeue up several files at a time. Nvenc is really for streaming but I think most people would not notice the difference on small to medium sized tv screens between software cpu encoded and turing+ nvenc gpu encoded video. I honestly don't think that the old exclusion triangle of small file size, good quality and fast processing time applies universally at least for non-videophiles.

 

Got this stupid bug when restarting that Nvidia Control Panel disappears and the Eluktronics contol center will start but just hangs in the loading screen. I noticed when gaming, after the restart, that the fans were WAY too high which this does with the default fan control this came with. It doesn't benefit temps and will most likely end up burning out the fans prematurely. Really bad move by the factory, just try finding new/used fans for this when that happens if the catastrophic failure doesn't kill your cpu/gpu in the process. I noticed the huge difference when playing a game that I had played before recently with the office low setting in the EluktronicsCC and the factory default fan control this comes with, jet engine for an old light game, ridiculous.

So I had to dig up some saved nvidia drivers, 460.79 I think, because it's faster than downloading those huge packages with my crappy internet. I used NVCleaninstall instead of NVslimmer this time to install. NVCleaninstall has a lot more info to help you decide what NOT to install as part of the Nvidia driver package. It's a bloated gasbag spybot default, probably still is but this cuts it down a bit. Note that NCP came back after driver reinstall but there was no option to install it in the driver install package, strange. Same thing has happened previously. Anyways had to reinstall EluktronicsCC v0.49, and finally will have to restart again because I lose the keyboard shortcuts for screen brightness settings. I'm still wanting to just put LTSC on here but just too lazy, I think it would make it a much more clean and efficient machine overall.

I've continued recoding an older series on bluray that's oop and it's going well. Started using regular x264 cpu encoder in some of them for compatibility's sake with some of my older phones/tablets.

 

Sir,

Where did the additional unervolting setting appear?

 

I was actually just going to put this here along with the official thread. Some people have had luck reflashing the vbios on the 90w 1f15 2060 to get the full 1560 boost 115w version. It's apparently the tongfang version which should be compatible. You may lose some ports etc, ymmv. I pulled this vbios from the first link. Please read through that whole linked thread. If anyone tries this please report back. @Jimbo Mahoney

Note that I got up to 1850mhz boost in game with no ocing on this. With a light MSIAB OC +160core+500mem it goes up to 2000mhz so not sure if it's worth the flash. Although all those numbers with a higher max boost at higher wattage would be a huge improvement with only temps to be considered.

here's the details from ncp for the gw 2060 90w

Video BIOS version: 90.06.5C.00.07
Device Id: 10DE 1F15 10971D05

https://www.win-raid.com/t5087f16-Requesting-a-modded-vbios-for-Rtx-max-Q.html

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...f-eluktronics-max-2060-115w-tdp.831742/page-4

techpowerup 2060m database
https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/?architecture=Uploads&model=RTX+2060+Mobile&page=1

only one I see with the 1560 boost
https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/228540/228540

FYI
https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/threads/how-to-recover-from-a-bad-video-bios-flash.265939/

 

Was just reporting back on my 20hrs of video ripping and reencoding, completely done now. I opted to switch exclusively to the cpu software x264 encoding at very slow, cq 21 in handbrake quality because it gives more time to every frame and produces a smaller file size at good quality. MKV container. Just load it up and start it before bed then done in the morning. NVENC 264 and 265 go a lot faster and produce good quality as well but obviously spend much less time per frame with the benefit of offloading part of it to the gpu. I'd use it for old TV and other old stuff to save time where the source quality is dvd or below so the extra frame processing times would be wasted anyways. cpu x264 and nvenc x264 is compatible with pretty much everything whereas x265 with old phones and things like netbooks/tablets will either not play or be a slideshow, way too high decoding demands. Less adoption also means in the future x265 won't be as supported.

This is the old oop pbs series Visions of Europe/Visions of Britain/Ireland box sets btw always loved it but dvd 480p was just not cutting it even lossless. And they still sell a few of the episodes, not the whole box set with all of it, but only on DVD for more per disc than the whole series on blu ray used, ugh. I couldn't imagine buying dvds of last 20 years or so of filmed shows any more, blurays are 6x the resolution of dvds and have lossless audio.

I'm rarely going to use the discs any more so the encoding quality is important, discs are so inconvenient, you can't just select a whole series and put it into VLC for playback with a disc that only has 2-4 titles on it, discs are a pain to lug around, no playing discs on your phone or other portable device easily, messing with disc menus rather than just playing the files, BD annoying DRM issues for something I bought and own legally etc etc etc The only thing they'd be good for is if I ever get a 4k+ upscaling tv, rip the discs lossless which is 400+gb for this series. I got this all down to a little over 100gb with almost no noticeable quality loss. Rearranged the default player audio stream to my choice, no commentary, just soothing chillout and classical music, and kept the commentary stream as a 2nd selectible one. Workflow is makemkv for ripping lossless and decrypting, then handbrake for reencoding. Another great free program, if not particularly good GUI, is MKVtoolnix for ripping just audio streams, changing container to mkv etc So I can definitely recommend this laptop for this kind of work for home use, pros are going to want much better cpu's, more ram etc I would think 4k+ source content would be a pain on this.

Anyways I'm also just attaching a default vbios for the 2060 as a backup if anyone needs it, gpuz will do that easily.

 

I was researching the 115w vbios issue and the 115w msi tongfang vbios is here as well:
https://www.techpowerup.com/vgabios/232273/232273

From some of the gpuz screenshots in the win-raid thread this should be an exact match. The 90w vbios is the exact same as we have 90.06.5C.00.07 and the post flash 115w is the msi one 90.06.59.00.48, note it may be necessary to use the -6 override in nvflash but shouldn't because of the same id 1f15. This is mentioned in post #28. Lonelywolf in the win-raid thread post #25 has before and after gpuz screenshots.

https://www.win-raid.com/file.php?url=http://files.homepagemodules.de/b602300/f16t5087p121945n3_NYXjCRvk.png&r=&content=RE:_Requesting_a_modded_vbios_for_Rtx_2070_max_Q

https://www.win-raid.com/file.php?url=http://files.homepagemodules.de/b602300/f16t5087p121945n2_WDmavYhg.png&r=&content=RE:_Requesting_a_modded_vbios_for_Rtx_2070_max_Q

The ports,if any, that will most likely be lost are the DP's, pretty much every laptop has HDMI ports so it's not an issue if you can live without the DP's. Also make sure that the optimus hybrid is active for the flash because if it's a no go you will still have a screen and can just reflash back to the default vbios, which I attached above or dump yours with gpuz beforehand.

From what I can find googling the 115w msi vbios it is for a 15.6" GL65 Leopard 10SER, which newegg wants 1300$ for right now.

https://community.intel.com/t5/Graphics/Hardware-acceleration-problem-Office-2019/td-p/1214125

These are the I/O's for that model:
1x Type-C USB3.2 Gen2
3x Type-A USB3.2 Gen1
1x RJ45
1x SD (XC/HC)
1x (4K @ 30Hz) HDMI
1x Mini-DisplayPort

https://www.msi.com/Laptop/GL65-Leopard-10SX/Specification

So from this the gpu related items would be the 1xDP, which this GW has 2x so I'm not sure if you will lose 1 or if it will just self duplicate for both. I don't think the non-gpu i/o's will be affected. Only thing I can see that way is that GW made the dumb decision to have 1xUSB2 on the left hand side and not just have all of them be usb3's.

Anyways food for thought for you that have experience using nvflash and flashing in general. I have flashed before to unlock OCing for my old k4000m in my m6700 and was able to get 60% more perf via MSIAB. I would do this on the GW if I was dissatisfied with the performance or in a more secure life situation than I currently am in. Again if anyone does this report back here or the official thread.

 

did u actually find a vbios that would make this GPU run at 115W?

 

This should work but no way to know until someone tries it. From the win-raid posts it's all tongfang with the same 1f15 id.

 

gl65 115w 2060 benchmarks

https://techplanet.today/post/new-rtx-2060-115w-gaming-benchmarks-msi-gl65-20-game-test

"The gaming performance of the GL65 is decent, and about what I expected, in general falling in between the 115 watt RTX 2070 and the 90 watt 2060, which was the highest power limit previously. Hardware Unboxed found the 115 watt 2060 about 13% faster than the 80 watt 2060, or 8% faster than the 90 watt 2060."

 

HP omen 15 with 115w 2060 info, if you use the hp vbios mentioned in the other thread I'm not thinking it's a full unlocked 115w from these various sources. A gpuz screenshot showing max board power draw would be necessary to prove it's full 115w vbios regardless of boosts.

A big limit for the gw seems to be the 180w power adapter for getting a full 115w as well, HP omen 15, with a 200w power brick, vbios seems to have limited it to ~100-110w for that reason. Don't see too much of a way around that in the gw unless you have a compatible 200w+ adapter. The MSI GL65 mentioned above has a 230w adapter, so it should be a full unlocked vbios. Power budget seems to be limited stock in this gw to 97w gpu with a 45w cpu that probably spikes in boost by a few watts, connectors, screen, fans etc so around 165-170w total draw maxed my guess, so theoretically it seems possible to get +10-15w on the gpu without draining the battery while plugged in but may not be stable, idk all a guess really. A compatible 230w power brick and a full unlocked vbios would be necessary imo.

https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLapt...esting_the_2020_hp_omen_15_rtx_2060_for_115w/


https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLapt...s_there_a_big_difference_between_the_80w_and/

https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Gamin...e-rtx-2060-in-omen-15-2020-model/td-p/7855846

https://www.reddit.com/r/AMDLaptops...hing_115w_rtx_2060_vbios_on_the_100w_version/\\

-------------------------------
I think eluktronics makes a lot off of tongfang power adaptors bc even their latest 3060 laptops, which they claim can go from 90w-130w lol, only come with 180w. This 230w should work.


https://www.eluktronics.com/MAG-15-AC-Adapter/#product-description

https://www.ebay.com/itm/183986536847?hash=item2ad673c18f:g:bEUAAOSwyDFdm738

 

PS while I was going through the eluktronics site I noticed that they updated the thx and audio drivers, I use the control center from this page so would think the rest of it is fine too, just the amd cpu stuff won't be useful. I've not heard of any updates by gateway.

https://www.eluktronics.com/rp-15-rp-17-with-2060-drivers/

 

Saw this over at vipoutlet, you only get a 90 day warranty on a refurb though.

https://vipoutlet.com/product/gatew...2060-6gb-8gb-ram-256gb-ssd-win-10-home-black/

 

Just a personal update, among many here lol, completed first trip with this and no problems. I was worried, this being a much lighter laptop than my old m6700 tank, that it wouldn't handle a trip being thrown around in a bag in the car etc but it's doing fine. I usually overpack my laptop bag with all sorts of stuff I never end up using so it's pretty cramped. My other laptop the m4600 smaller tank never had any worries about but that's a 200$ easily replaced road warrior.

Still doing everything I need as is with 8gb ram and the light msiab oc. I'm still too lazy to wipe this win10 and put LTSC on here maybe when it becomes a backup to my next computer and isn't my main one. As a note both my wireless mouses seemed to have died after using this, they won't work on my m4600 either. I've heard it may be a realtek audio driver interference but I'm unsure what other audio driver to use, maybe try the eluktronics one linked above though. It can't be a coincidence with two wireless mice.

 

So I have the GTX 1650 Ryzen 5 4600H version of this laptop, was wondering how do I change the fn key setting so that the f keys act as the special keys by default and not the other way around? There is no setting in the bios, nor the control panel to my knowledge.

 

I've not tried to do that but this has some info:
https://windowsreport.com/function-key-lock-windows-10/?amp

Maybe the escape key will do that even if it's not marked to do so idk(edit: no go). Looks like an external keyboard if you get the right one will have that function as well. I'd search for tongfang fn key lock because that's really what these are so pretty much any tongfang of 2020 regardless of brand name like eluktronics, xmg etc is going to all do it the same way if it's possible.

https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=lock+fn+key+"tongfang"&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi1meq3nNLwAhXVFjQIHV25Cm8Q5t4CMAx6BAgfEA4&biw=1121&bih=517&dpr=1.67

You may want to ask this in the other tongfang threads here because if it can be done someone has done it among the owners of tongfang chassis laptops.

 

Just a couple of games numbers to report. Days Gone 1080p med/high/ultra mix I was getting 100fps I'd say average was 90fps overall with drops here and there and when first starting in game it is choppy but goes away. 1440p was 67fps so around 60fps average. At the 1080p I definitely noticed ghosting of the moving bike tires the whole game, like gears 5 you seem to notice ghosting at around 90-100fps in high contrast situations or high motion.
Yakuza 7 LAD I get a locked 60fps at 1440p/2k DSR which is what I play it at to push more onto the GPU, 1080p/1k should be a locked 120fps but will use more cpu so might be prone to stutter. 4k dsr I was getting like 25-30fps at least when it loaded up as it chose 4k for my resolution. I quickly dialed down the resolution.

Otherwise no problems I've noticed with both software or hardware for a while.

 

gotta love those flash sales. @JRE84 reshipper?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/133684103735?hash=item1f20318a37:g:nAgAAOSwZH5gQtE3

 

I picked one up on vipoutlet.com earlier this week and got an extra 10% off the $594 price. It was $535 plus tax. Got it yesterday...Impressed so far. It looks brand new. Got extra memory coming...They keep coming in and out of stock so keep checking if you want one.

 

Today I noticed that the battery stopped charging at 95%, it doesn't have a "charging" it just says plugged in available, it has always gone up to 100% before. It's always plugged in.

 

update: just have been unplugging in the morning and letting it run down to 10% or so then plug back in it goes up to full. I was reading that in the BIOS there are more settings and info on the battery so I'll check that out next restart. Not too worried since I almost never use this without being plugged in, for basic essential browsing I have several devices capable and preferrable on the go and at home. So even if the battery eventually goes before I get something else totally fine just running it off wall power. BTW we're getting fairly close to the dreaded "holiday" season so be checking the walmart site out for this years model.

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/384336046835?epid=8042472092&hash=item597c36aaf3:g:EgsAAOSwi9RhCKJZ

 

Hi all.
Just wanted to post that I picked up one of these from VIPOutlet for $550. Great laptop and planning on replacing my desktop with this In the next few weeks.

I’m not sure if it’s been discussed but you can successfully unlock XMP profiles on this laptop using XTU. This allows my Crucial Ballistix 3200 Ram to run at 2933Mhz CL15.

I can post a quick guide if anyone is interested.

 

Wow great price, I was 699 brand new but that was almost 10 months ago so I got the usage. What are xmp profiles?

 

XMP (Extreme Memory Profiles) are memory (Ram) profiles which allow your ram to run much faster than stocks (If the RAM & motherboard supports XMP).
Since by default the laptop does not support XMP, even if you use ram that has XMP, it will clock down to lower speeds (In my case, my Ballistix ram only ran at 2666Mhz, CL19 IIR). with XMP enabled the RAM now runs at 2933Mhz at CL15 so it is significantly faster.

 

Oh thx, have to look that up. Another small but free performance upgrade is welcome.

 

I bought a used nvme m2 model MZNLN128C, https://www.amazon.com/SAMSUNG-MZ-NLN128C-128GB-SOLID-MZNLN128HAHQ-000H1/dp/B07T2FJM1B, inserted it and booted up, it's not shown or detected even in disk management. I have not gone into the bios to see if it's there yet though. Any ideas? Picture attached.


The primary boot nvme this came with is a Phison PS5013 PM8256GPTCB4B8TF
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Phison-PS5013-PM8256GPTCB4B8TF-SSD-Benchmarks.496384.0.html

Edit: not recognized in BIOS either. Bios only has nvme connection. This was described as an m2 nvme msata. It has 2 notches on the card as per the picture so I'm not sure if it's not compatible with my board? Looks like the phison only has the one notch in the card.

 

I thi

I think the second slot is for nvme pci-e drive only not msata drives.

 

Yeah I think so too at this point, I also asked this in the hardware section and essentially got the same feedback. Seller accepted return so I just need to drop in the mail tomorrow. I'll search for nvme pci single notch only.

 

Just checking in since it's getting to be that time again, holiday season. I was looking at walmarts website and didn't see any new tongfang variants either evoo or gateway so looks like this season isn't going to see any really good deals. Lowest RTX laptop I saw was an asus Tuf rtx 3050 for 900 which is terrible, 3050ti's for a bit more which seems to be the approximate equivalent of the 2060 depending on the wattage, which could gimp it considerably. Those are much less likely to be heavily discounted than walmart in house brands. At those prices better off going with a 3060 laptop for +100 bucks imo.

From games benches I've seen, sometimes the 2060 is slightly ahead of or tied with the 3050ti and in games like Legion it's a decent margin for the 3050ti. Looked to be about +5fps in RDR2 at 1080p high. They didn't give wattages of either and I'm not sure of the cpu which can effect FPS considerably in CPU games, usually AC series. 3050ti has only 4gb vram though. GOOD LUCK finding what wattage it's at either. Most major brands don't have mux switches either so you're stuck with hybrid or optimus gimping.

This mobile 2060 OC'd and going forward flashed to the 115w looks good for another year and will be just fine for 1080p and in a lot of games 2k/60 for the whole 3 years of anticipated primary use for me. Too bad that so far looks like those amazing walmart tongfang deals are gone for this year at least. On another note I contacted "gateway" USA about any bios updates for the mobo and never got a response, this thing is abandoned if it ever did have any real support.

 

Just updating, after 13 months of ownership no major problems to speak of. I have not upgraded anything that goes inside like ram or another nvme haven't had the need. I have a lot of external storage for games which are by far the largest sized software. The battery on the mux switch not plugged in is atrocious to be expected. I would say less than 90 mins when browsing, streaming/dling and playing video from hdd at the same time. As from before sometimes the battery charge tops out at 95% and if not unplugged and allowed to discharge, will go down to 94% etc. Once it's unplugged, used and then replugged in it does go back to 100%.

Games
Games have been totally fine. I'm always on the mux switch 2060 for a long time now. I don't play online or record/stream gameplay so can't comment on those however. I do a light OC using MSIAF of 163 core 515 memory and have had no problems, max of around 2000mhz. On appropriate big budget games I run at 2k DSR with no problems at or near 60 locked. Witcher 3 can do 2k 80-90 at my settings which are a mix of settings, overall high but I lock it to 60 for rock solid smoothness. All those amazing games from 2015 like TW3, Dying Light, MGSV, FO4, Dirt Rally and at least one more I can't remember are easily handled. Modern games are also not too bad with appropriate settings. I don't feel there's really been many better games improvement in a meaningful way in the AAA big budget genre since then tbh. I've been enjoying rogue-likes, pixel games, metroidvanias, simple emulations and the like which don't require much horsepower. Thehunter COW also looks amazing and works well, the yakuza series isn't too demanding either. WRC series.

Keyboard
I don't use the keyboard for gaming to preserve it and so far it's just fine.

Support
This is where this had no real service from what I've read around the web user reviews. They send out a dl link for the original driver package if you ask them but that's it. I asked for a bios update last month and got no response. The warranty seemed to be largely just an empty promise, thankfully I had no problems over the year. This version of Gateway seems to be focusing on cheap netbook like things and still has a largely useless website. The one good thing is that this is pretty much a tongfang so almost any other tongfang drivers that are compatible with the specs will work. As well as standard tongfang chargers and probably screens. So you can pickup an eluktronics or other tongfang user component.

Noise/Heat
Noise is a real problem if you use the default control software, it's set way too high and results in very overkill fan speeds. As I've mentioned above I use the Eluctronics version of fan/lighting software and set it to quiet office mode all the time and it's worked well. As per the latest intels the cpu gets into the 80s regularly in games and the gpu is usually about 70-78c when heavy gaming. I've not repasted etc just blow out and clean the bottom etc here and there.

I/O
I've noticed the need at times for more USB's esp 3.0 and it was an annoying mistake to have one 2.0 on the left side. Sometimes I plug in an external drive to play games off of and if I have another HDD in the other 3.0 I have a gamepad in the 2.0 but at times I need to keep both the 3.0 with hdds/ssds and have no way to plug in another ssd/hdd with the game on it and the gamepad so I've investigated a USB 3 hub, not got one yet but may. The card slot is fine if really useless because it's locked to about 25mb/s way slow. I use a usbc-usb adaptor to plug in my mouse in the rear. Sound is fine for me I'm no aficionado. Not a fan of the THX spatial so I installed a realtek version to bring it back to normal. I did have 2 separate wireless mice burned out using this and I've heard the realtek audio drivers might be the cause. I have to plug in the receiver for wimouse anyways so a wired works the same. The nosecam is a big turnoff, I had to use it for an interview and it was a total pain, who knows what these guys saw when I was moving around etc thankfully that was the only case I ever used it, default it's disabled and covered with electrical tape lol I was able to use the bluetooth for my gamepad when I was thinking of going that route and it worked fine, the batteries dying once a week were the end of that though. Hdmi to external has been fine, I have no need for the dp's and the usbc is just for my mouse connection works fine.

Screen
The screen is a bit disappointing with its desaturated color gamut and low accuracy. If you have an external screen with normal, not high, gamut and drag video or games from one to the other you can see how bland the colors are on this. The 120fps is nice but for games is not too feasible and for low needs games isn't really wanted if you're watching something on the external screen at the same time for cpu/fan noise/heat. I lock it to 60 in that case. In between games like Gears 5 which is really well optimized it does 90 locked at 1k or 2k can't remember. Otherwise it's been fine. Remember that in NCP you can limit any games max FPS if the game doesn't have the option or the right option. Gears 5 has a 90fps lock option. Smaller indies mostly just have 30/60/unlocked or not at all so I use NCP to lock it to 60 usually for minimal fan noise.

General
I've done video reencoding and ripping from disks and hdds with no problems. Took an old series on BD and ripped/reencoded with makemkv/handbrake with no problems just run it overnight and it worked out fine. Wifi hasn't been a problem, speeds are fine with me.

Summary
All in all I'm pleased with this, the 699 I got it for is a steal for the price/perf. The 3050ti is roughly equivalent and they still want around 900 for that now, and has only 4gb vram, the 3060 is 25-30% improvement but is a minimum of $1000 now. That 25-30 is largely meaningless in most cases though, the updated cpu etc would be the best thing for more fps. Depends on your usage profile however. If you take 60 as a baseline 30% would be +18fps which is nice but not groundbreaking, especially if you want it at standard fps like 60 locked rather than it moving around. Most games are still on the console standards at this point. I could get ~10fps just getting another ram stick and most likely get 5-10 from the OC. I've seen this used on eb for 750+ BIN but it goes usually for around 600 in auctions usually with an upgraded or second NVME and another ram stick. I estimate another ram stick would cost about 40$ and another 256gb nvme would be about 25-30$ so about 70$ to boost it a bit. See no need for it right now though. CPU is good for normal usage and gaming, from DSOG testing the vast majority of games only marginally benefit from more cores. The large benefit would be while streaming or other concurrent processing which I don't do at all. This is a good 1k/60+/2k/60 machine for gaming. So the next one will be a nice upgrade at a budget price hopefully, can see 5xxx cards being the target if I'm still into AAA max big budget games at that point.

 

I'm not able to bring down my CPU temps... I did a repaste but I still see throttling inb HWInfo64 despite only hitting 92C during gaming (Borderlands 3). I realize that 92C is still high, though... I did a small line which should have covered the entire CPU.

GPU is ice cold, relatively. Only hitting like 76C in FurMark. No idea why CPU is stubbornly high. I used the Noctua H1 tube which came with my desktop cooler, it should be decent enough.

Anyone else see this on the CPU? The CPU heat spreader is so much smaller than GPU yet it's much higher temps...

Weird thing I see is that when I run FurMark and CineBench r23 together, CPU only goes to like 88C and never throttles, but in games and cinebench only, I can see higher temps...

 

I used liquid metal and the -.50 undervolt in the BIOS to get really decent CPU temps. I am idling in the mid 30's and the max I have seen is around 86-88 after a Cinebench run.

 

I also did 0.050V undervolt but that didn't help much unfortunately...

 

With the news about the site closing anyone who wants any of the info from this and the official thread should make copies before jan 31.