Intel-TongFang QC7 (Element/Fusion 15/MAG-15/Vapor 15 Pro)

This just in: we have released BIOS 0054 and Control Center 2.1.0.17 today.

Bios-XMG_FUSION15_XFU15L19_BIOS_QCFL357.0054.zip

• Adding BIOS Setup HDD Security.
• Implement AMI PSIRT issue patch.
• fitc with locked BIOS/ME/Gbe/EC access regions setting.

Driver-12_ControlCenter_2.1.0.17_XMG.zip

• [Fix] GPU status cannot off during benchmark testing(GPUMon + HWiNFO64), when the System Power Mode is changed.
• [Fix] The dGPU is always ON, it causes the power consumption never drop down in idle.

Source: https://download.schenker-tech.de/package/xmg-fusion-15-xfu15l19/


// Tom

 

I'll soon be spending my time equally between the US and the UK and I'm about to buy a MAG-15 from Eluktronics in the US.

I'm wondering whether the MAG-15 power adapter will work with UK plugs without a converter, simply by using an adapter or swapping out the power lead for one with a UK connection?

I'm assuming this would be the case, but thought I'd check. Thanks!

 

You got it right there. This applies to every laptop and such devices with external power adaptors. That's why they are called "full range power switching adaptor" - they can take in the whole global AC-outlet range from 100V to 240V.

// Tom

 

At the end of one of your reviews you stated the people more geared towards gaming should look at the Mech-15/17. The Mech 17 is available now for limited time with RTX 2080 Max-q. What makes you reference the Mech line of Eluktronics for more of gaming platform? Thermals, components power consumption, chassis build, etc?

The results on the MAG are great, even understanding its not necessarily a "gaming laptop". I'm just trying to figure out the pro's of moving into the Mech line and how that will impact my personal gaming profile rather than mobility and battery life.

 

I think it has to do with the fact the mechs have 2 mini display ports for example, the thermal limit on the GPU is higher than the mag 15, has numpad and I think there are more modified and open bios readily available for the mech 15 vs mag 15 (which might have a more closed bios from Intel)

Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk

 

Perfectly said eddi3x3x3! The MAG is more than a gaming laptop in fact i'd place that second to it being a nicely portable laptop that is light, looks subtle with high-end battery run time.

Just like the Aero 15 I've been using for 9 months, big battery thin and light machines compromise that balls to the wall gaming capability in order to achieve a few of those other things.

2019 tech is about capped out here

 

@XMG In previous posts you said that keys on this laptop are using infrared sensor to register key actuation. Yet Razer just announced keyboard with similar function and they claim it is a "world's first":
https://www.techpowerup.com/260145/razer-introduces-the-worlds-first-optical-laptop-keyboard

Is their claim false? Or their keyboard is using different way of registering?

 

@B0B Hi Bob! I wanted to ask you, as you have and use the Aero 15 (2070mq?), did you perform the same tweaks on it as you did on the MAG-15? If so, does it throttle as the MAG, or does it throttle more despite the tweaks? (and is hotter at the mean time, although I read that you wrote it's a tie in thermals). I am going to buy one of these and still considering.
Thank you!

p.s. is one of the screens prettier than the other? in addition to the specs on paper

 

Its a false claim

 

If their claim is false - why aren't XMG or Eluktronics advertise their keyboards in same way? I mean this is a good feature to know for fans of mechanical keyboards or for people who just curious how stuff works, like how exactly the keyboard senses the key actuation.

 

Probably because it's not exactly "special" and so it's not really worth advertising.

Think of it as like advertising that a laptop has discrete left and right buttons on its trackpad. It's not a exactly a main point to advertise.

Also:


So their claim of being "first" is false.

 

I just got my new MAG-15 and I'm very happy with it! But there are two things about it that are getting on my nerves.

1. The trackpad is very responsive but it feels a little loose, so it makes a lot of racket even when lightly tapping (like there's a slight gap between it and the physical button underneath).
2. I'm experiencing faint but audible coil whine at all times (even when it's asleep).

Did anybody else encounter these issues? Is it worth asking for a replacement or are they just broadly present? Thanks!

 

2 is a very good question, I forgot about the coil whine phenomenon in general (I think many Razer RTX laptops have it, maybe according to reviews on Amazon anyway), it is one of the considerations in buying a laptop. Sorry I don't have an answer for you though.

 

@enzofv, this posts shares a similar story about the trackpad: http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...-15-vapor-15-pro.830272/page-40#post-10956742

Do you think you have the same problem?

 

Razer's claim appears to be false. And with only 1mm travel distance they are lagging behind our 2mm travel distance.

We do advertise it in all press releases and on the product page:

Example:
https://www.xmg.gg/en/xmg-fusion-15

Optomechanical precision keyboard
Thanks to optomechanical silent switches with tactile feedback, the precise keyboard meets the demands of gamers as well as heavy writers. A clearly defined, crisp pressure point and N-key rollover make it the ideal input tool. Slightly concave keycaps further increase accuracy.

About the clickpad, we have a nice little thread going on here.
About coil whine: we've so far only heard 1 other report about it. Normally, you can hear a little bit if you put your ear directly on the keyboard. But from a normal seating position, you should not be able to hear anything except the fans. I would suggest to wait a little bit because sometimes it goes away by itself over time - but you might better check with your official rep at Eluktronics.

// Tom

 

The new Razer keyboard has 1.7 mm of travel supposedly. I honestly think the mag 15/xmg fusion 15 beats Razer in
1. More travel
2. Better keyboard layout (that horrendous right shift placement couldn't be any worse)

But I do commend Razer for their very robust chroma key lighting SDK that literally integrates with everything under the sun. If only Intel would allow an API to control the keyboard lighting on the mag 15 the integration with peripherals, games, etc could all be created by the community themselves and really give the big companies a run for their money.

Can you believe the newer razerblade 15s all run the 80w gpu variant for 2070 and 2080 Max q vs 90w earlier this year?

.

Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk

 

Is this something present in all the Intel collab laptops or is this something unique to XMG?

 

Just to chime in about Razer and false advertising... the entire hoohah behind their "First Gaming Ultrabook" claim on the new Stealth is kinda dubious as well lol, considering the 1050MQ MSI PS42 8RC was already a thing a year back. Despite MSI wisely never claiming it to be any sort of "Gaming Ultrabook", it pretty much was.

But eyyy its Razer. And the Stealth IS smaller at 13-inches. I guess "Tiniest Gaming Ultrabook" didn't have quite the same impact to it lol.

As an aside, I gotta wonder if the prev gen TongFang keyboards (like my brown switch aka "Gen 2" GK5CN keyboard) are early type optomech as well... or just plain "mech" mech.

EDIT: Ah saw the answer above (yes it is opto). No wonder it had that peculiar light stroke "chatter" thing then, maybe light strokes were inadvertently triggering the infrared beam switch due to the wobbliness of the caps themselves.

Also explains why the less wobbly Gen 2 switches and caps were far less susceptible to the chatter thing compared to the really shaky (and LOUD) Gen 1s.

 

Thanks so much for this! Yeah I've been waiting for an email reply from @Eluktronics for two days now. I think I'm going to call tomorrow.

 

Good point. To nobody's surprise, the first response from Intel on Keyboard API was cold and bureaucratic, but my contact is still pushing some channels.

Not unique to XMG. And for TongFang, these switches are present in all laptop models that end in "Z" and "S". In XMG, those have been:

GK5CN6Z
GK5CP0Z
GK5CP6Z
GK5CQ7Z
GK7CP0S
GK7CP6S
GK7CP7S
GK7CQ8S

Switching from CFL-H (i7-8750H) to CFL-H Refresh (i7-9750H) did not change the barebone model number. They still use the same mainboard and the same BIOS ROM between this minor CPU refresh.

What's the system behind those model names, you ask?

Example: GK7CP7S

GK = Category/Segment, let's say " Gaming King"
7 = Display Size, here: 1 7.3"
CP = Platform, here: Coffee Lake and Max- P
7 = RTX 20 70 (see table below)
S = Chassis ID of this 17.3" Gaming Laptop, as in GK7CP7 S

The last digit (Chassis ID) is the main differentiator between laptop families in TongFang.
Things like design, chassis material, LCD, Touchpad, Keyboards, I/O port layout are all attached to this Chassis ID.

Very often, those Chassi (plural?) share the same mainboard.
For example ID-S and ID-Z use the same mainboard and the same BIOS ROM if you configure the same CPU and GPU.

So far we have launched ID-Z, ID-S, ID-V and ID-R.

ID-Z = XMG NEO 15
ID-S = XMG NEO 17
ID-V = XMG CORE 15 and SCHENKER MEDIA 15
ID-R = XMG CORE 17 and SCHENKER MEDIA 17

If you take a very close look inside on some chassis parts or on the battery, you will also find out the chassis ID of XMG FUSION 15.

The GPU numbering scheme is a bit more wild because NVIDIA's GPU naming scheme is sometimes inconsistent. Here is the current reference table:

ID-Z and ID-S have been using the same optical-mechanical switches from day 1. In our case, this is April 2018.

Light stroke "chatter"? Have not heard about this yet. Source please.

Cheers,
XMG|Tom

 

Source is my own experiences with both the Gen 1 and 2 keyboards with the GK5CNxZ chassis, in particular my own Pascal Illegear Onyx unit.

"Light Stoke Chatter" is just sort of an arbitrary name I gave the phenomenon, as it's kinda like the better known normal mech keyboard "chattering" where unintentional keypresses are registered. It probably doesn't even happen the same way (especially considering the opto nature of the TF key switches), but eyyy...

Specifically, it involves any particular key registering upon the lightest of touches even before the mechanical part of the switch even starts its initial stroke. This actually happens more often than not due to the relative proximity of the TF layout (especially on the numpadded GK5CNxZ) versus more conventional chiclet style keyboards, leading to increased "brushing against" of unintended keys.

But, as mentioned, while this phenomenon happens quite often with the TongFang Gen 1 "blue" switches and flat caps, it doesn't happen as much with the Gen 2 "brown" (aka "silent") switches and concave caps - possibly owing to the increased actuation stiffness (and thus, better resistance) of the Gen 2 switches, and further enhanced by the relative stability of the concave caps (vs the wobbly flat ones) + the fact that the concave ones are actually spaced better.

And yes, "getting used" to the rather peculiar stroke action/actuation of the switches themselves (which I never did could understand the reason behind until AFTER knowing that they are optomech in nature) do help, to a lesser degree.

HOWEVER, considering XMG started out with the concave caps to begin with, you might not have had as much reports of this phenomenon due to the more stable, better spaced caps. Not to mention back then a lot more focus was given on just how LOUD the Gen 1 switches were.

Also, having heard you (or one of the other XMG reps) mention before that the MAG/Fusion keyboard are now Gen 3, I'd expect the issue to manifest even LESS on the MAG/Fusion - though it's still something to keep in mind.

Spoiler

BTW, I actually still have the Gen 1 keyboard around, and actually gone and mix-matched both concave and flat caps on my current Gen 2 board on my Onyx, just for the fun of it.

And while we're on this subject (and sorry if it's a bit OT), are there any real mainboard differences between the CFL/Pascal and CFL/Turing GK5CNxZ units? I was just wondering, considering I personally have a Pascal board... thinking of switching it over to a 2060 if that is at all possible (and if I can find a 2060 board to begin with lol).

 

I'm sorry to hear about that. I know just from seeing reviews and videos that this is a really good product. I really hope your contact pulls through because although per key lighting is a gimmick in itself, as soon as you provide some sort of programmability on a user level it becomes a lot more useful.

Thanks for all your replies and solutions, I appreciate seeing this level of help from a laptop brand.

Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk

 

@XMG is there any chance we will be able to customize the fan curve, even through unsupported channels?

Like directly configuring WMI like the custom FanManager for the previous TongFang model does?

The default one is unfortunately too noisy for my taste
With a cpu-only load and 35W PL limit the noise is still ok, but as you increase the PL to 45W the fans are already too noisy even with the gpu off.
Let alone 65W in Enthusiast mode.
Things get even worse while gaming, as expected.

I'd be happy to trade 10degrees (or slightly more aggressive freqs throttling) for lower fan noise, especially for cpu-only loads but also for gaming...
From what I read in one of your posts using the lowest fan profile without crippling the GPU is not possible with Intel's allowed combinations, so I'm looking for an alternative...

 

@XMG is it true the secondary functions of the f1-f12 keys are not lit?

Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk

 

Played around with Aftershock Vapor 15 Pro just now and found something interesting.

CPU PROCHOT is 85C instead of 90C according to Throttlestop, but GPU temp limit is 87C (Nvidia default) not 75C according to GPU-Z. The 1660Ti inside can exceed 75C and boost 1680MHz average in Aida64 FPU+Unigine Heaven combined load - max GPU temp is 78C (ambient around 26C).

BIOS version is 0038, with broken balanced mode that sets GPU to 645MHz.

 

Yah @XMG what would be really nice for that is to be supplied / include an entire spare set of the function row keys. That can be swapped out by the user - but with that 2nd set having the markings on the 2 rows switched over. So then the media keys would be ontop where the backlight is. This would be a great solution, if you have in manufacturing / supply chain plenty of the spare extra keycaps.

 

Difficult to say. I saw some TongFang fan editor floating around somewhere. I would not be surprised if that tool could be updated to work with Intel QC as well.

No, this is not true.

We have our own keyboard layout for all languages. In our layout, all secondary functions are very well lit. Less than primary, but still absolutely fine.

Please have a look at this picture.

• Taken with full keyboard backlight brightness
• In totally dark room
• Edited in Lightroom (reduced highlights) to reflect the way it really looks to the human eye
• F10 seems to have a slightly different color temperature than F8/F9 in this picture. This is due to the angle, open aperature and chromatic abberation of my camera. In real-life, all per-key LEDs behave identically to one another.

This was with Beta layout. In the final layout, the secondary functions moved even slightly higher and are even more lit now. Any owner (btw Where are you guys? I need user reviews on Reddit and Notebookcheck!) can confirm this.

Thank you and the same back to you! // Tom

 

Any idea how many watts the 1660ti uses during gaming? Is a 180 watt adapter enough to power it? The acer helios 300 only comes with a 180 watt brick and its enough to power that. Just trying to see what the smallest brick to carry would be that would still charge the laptop.

 

Up to 80W for the 1660ti

 

According to our software monitor yes

Boosted in these chassis’s pull more but it’s not shown.

I don’t want to give out the details in this as I do not have permission to do so.

 

Both GPU models have a 115W limit in Boost mode.

 

pardon for stalking upon you like so, but perhaps you can find moment to answer my PM?

Best regards

 

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Schen...sign-challenges-the-competition.435952.0.html

Looks like Notebookcheck finally fixed the display contrast in their XMG review

 

What was it before?

Nvm just saw that it was 690:1

 

So I'm about to pull the trigger on the mag-15 but i'm having trouble choosing between the 1660 and the 2070. Any opinions one way or another?

 

Personally I'd go for the 2070.

The performance difference between the Eluktroboosted 1660ti and 2070 isn't too big (~15%) but couple that with actually playable ray tracing performance I'd say its worth the 300 bucks.

 

Don't get the 2070 max q unless:
1.You want to use some light ray titles (think maybe minecraft)
2. Want to use DLSS on some titles @ 1080p or higher resolutions on external monitor
3. Want to use some machine learning capabilities using the tensor cores (like nvidia greenscreen)

Otherwise the 1660ti is really good value for the money, the 2070 max q will power limit throttle more unless you undervolt OR use electroboost with the enthusiast profile. 2070 max q is a little more future proof if you plan on using external monitors I think.

 

Yeah, it's honestly a huge waste if you're not using Eluktroboost. That's the main appeal since it boosts performance so much.

 

Sadly it's hindered by that low thermal limit. I wonder how low we have to cap the CPU (undervolted of course) before we actually give the gpu enough headroom for electroboost.

Has someone tried to cap 3.0 GHz on all cores and see if the gpu thermal throttles in a 30 minute game session? Maybe 3.2 GHz... I think there might be a perma bios coming out in the future but I don't think it'll unlock the thermal limit sadly

Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk

 

Also the 2070 is more value from eluktronics than shenker in europe. It's a massive 465 euros more from shenker ($520 usd roughly).

 

The Vapor 15 Pro I tried has no 75C GPU limit.

Also one of the reason to get 2070MQ is the extra 2GB VRAM, though 6GB in the 1660Ti is mostly sufficient.

 

Can someone please explain if 180W adapter would be sufficient to power up the 1660ti configuration at full load? I am bit concerned about the original adapter which is around 600 grams and quite bulky.

 

Very efficient this little thing! After some fine-tuning it is capable of beating the current record holder, the giant A51M by using lower clocks:

https://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/20749121/fs/20739313#

 

You think it's comparable to a 2080 90w? That I don't really know firestrike extreme scores all that well off the top of my head

Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk

 

Currently best 2080 Max-Q FSE result:

https://www.3dmark.com/fs/20285387

 

Did you use your own bios to get this performance? What paste? That is amazing for a $1900 device

Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk

 

Yep. It's pasted with Mastergel Maker.

 

Yep on the perma bios too? Wow those ARE some impressive numbers. Did you have to use Max fans for that? I wonder how well it handles heat after a 30 minute heat soak

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That's what it means.
Also yes on the benchmark mode (full FAN).
The heat will satturate the heatsink and it won't be able to hold those clocks over a longer period.

 

Damn that sucks, I wish there was a way to overcome that. Is it because of the gpu thermal limit set to 76C? Or is it despite having it set to 87C using the Asus utility?

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