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

Yeah probably hardware errors there, like when using faulty harddisk you can't tell until it slows your windows the crap down and you go crazy waiting for windows to boot. Good luck to you, hope aftershock fixes all your problems. If it was only a faulty RAM or NVME, but if it gets on any other hardware then that would have to be replaced. I also hate shipping stuff because it takes so long and we dont know if it gets faulty again when you get it.

 

Do you guys have experience with different TIMs? I've heard that repeatedly taking off the heatsink can cause it to slightly warp and make bad contact, so I'm heavily considering slapping some carbonaut in there and never touching it again. According to Bob, this stuff is only about 1-3C worse than mastergel and is basically in line with the stock paste, except you never have to replace it. Seems pretty enticing considering liquid metal only drops 5 degrees off of stock, and will give me anxiety every time I travel with my laptop (frequently). Still, I'm trying to get some second opinions on TIM. Maybe some of the thicker traditional stuff like phobya nanogrease or the newly hyped up thermalright tfx would last long and give me better temps than carbonaut.

 

Received my CyberpowerPC Tracer III today, which was much earlier than expected. From the pictures in the storefront, I was expecting a "CYBERPOWERPC" etching on the keyboard deck, but instead of that there was a giant plastic decal with the logo that was probably 2mm thick just glued on top of the lid. What an eyesore. Not sure how to get rid of it without damaging the lid, I'm just going to have to be very careful and precise with a thin razor blade most likely.

As for the actual laptop itself, it makes a great first impression. The only thing I could wish for is maybe less seams, because there are some plastic panels (which Dave2D pointed out) on the sides which does make the laptop look less premium. But overall it is a night-and-day difference from my heavier, larger, plastic, and flimsier Dell G3. The footprint is surprisingly small, as the chin is narrower than I originally appreciated. I also like the slightly-roughened texture of the body which ensures no fingerprints are left behind.

Other than that, I have no complaints about the build quality aside from the touchpad. It has a nice gliding surface and good size, but I find it a little odd that it's not perfectly centered with the chassis. And whenever I tap it, there's a little bit of play to the surface as if it's loose. Functionally it's been fine though.

I've seen a lot of mixed sentiments about the keyboard, and it does take getting some used to. It definitely has more key-travel than other thin and light laptops, and the pressure point is nice and crisp. But the actuation force seems a little high for how shallow the key travel still is. I almost find it fatiguing to type for an extended period of time, although it does feel great.

The CyberpowerPC software, as expected, is trash. The drivers page for it looks like it could have been formatted 15 years ago, and the grammar on the control center is fairly shaky. I'm thinking about ditching it and downloading the BIOS and control center for Eluktronics or XMG instead.

I'm going to start benchmarking after my 2nd 8GB stick comes in tomorrow, I configured for single-channel just to save on cost a bit. I've always been squeamish about opening up laptops because I worry about defraying the screws and breaking the tabs, so here's hoping it all goes well.

Another interesting aspect was while the laptop seemed brand new, the sticker on the bottom panel stated the manufacturing date to be November 2019, and the BIOS was version 0048. So I wonder whether CyberpowerPC just got their hands on some old stock and tried to clear it.

Overall, not too shabby for around ~$1050 after tax and shipping.

 

Finally removed the plastic logo from the lid. Not with a razor blade, but with teeth floss. Worked like a charm, and now the laptop has zero branding anywhere, which I absolutely love for a minimalist style.

I ended up going through with downloading the Eluktronics BIOS and drivers, and after some issues with Sound Blaster everything seems to be working fine. I do wish that the Realtek driver would differentiate between headphones and speakers in the audio source selection the way my Dell does. As is, if I have the speakers at 100% and plug in my headphones, my eardrums get blasted because the volume remains at 100%.

I did do some preliminary benchmarks on 3D Mark on Time Spy and Fire Strike, and it seems like the 1660Ti is performing up to snuff but the 9750H is not. I haven't undervolted any further than the default, and I also wonder whether running in single-channel impacted the results too.

 

Wow, that's actually pretty amazing. I guess CyberpowerPC is just dumping old stock. $1050 for an equivalent to the base model mag is nothing to sneeze at. It absolutely destroys those new ryzen laptops people are getting hype for the value

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so the question to ask is, why the old stock is being dumped... what new thing is coming up?

 

Well it's probably the new ryzen laptops, and the new generation of Nvidia stuff, which looks pretty damn good from the leaks and announcements

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Yes, a part of me wanted to hold off on buying the Tracer III because the new 10th gen CPUs and Renoir were coming out with Ampere looking to be released in several months as well. But ultimately I figured that even then, we might not see Ampere mobile GPUs until next year. And the price was just too good to turn down especially since my G3 needs to be sent in for repair.

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In all honesty I don't think the 10th gen is worth it even with ampere. Wait until they release 11th gen on 10nm or new Ryzen cpus with ampere. 10th gen can't be undervolted on many laptops because of plundervolt exploit and laptop manufacturers JUST started putting vapor chambers in all laptops.

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Yeah, same thing for me with the mag 15, but I figured that even though the upcoming hardware was good, it might be some time before someone designed a chassis with good form factor, good battery life, but also gave me close to desktop performance plugged in. And the new ampere hardware sounds powerful, but when it's neutered to 80w and stuck in a laptop cooling solution, the difference between it and the current stuff may not be so big anymore. Also, quarantine seemed to be a good time to transfer all my data over and get used to a new laptop.

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Hmmm, this is a really good post. Would really appreciate a picture or two for your fix.

 

For those whose speaker and microphone suddenly can't work, it's due to windows update. I had the same issue and could only resolve it by going back to previous windows restore point. https://www.reddit.com/r/XMG_gg/comments/gjknhl/xmg_fusion_15_speakers_gone/

 

Had this happen as well fixed it by; windows key + x -> device manager and scroll down Intel Smart Sound Technology (Intel SST) Audio Controller -> properties and roll back Intel Smart Sound Technology (Intel SST) Audio Controller to the previous version and leave Intel Smart Sound Technology (Intel SST) OED alone(even though it's got the error symbol).
Looks like the windows update has the Intel SST driver version 10.25.0.3488 which seems to leave Intel Smart Sound Technology (Intel SST) OED at 10.23.0.2672

1800Mhz Which GPU have you got?

 

So after adding a 2nd 8GB stick and a -0.125V undervolt, my CPU performance nudged up to around 45th percentile of the range for 9750Hs. Kind of underwhelming, but still an improvement on last night. Playing about an hour of RDR2, I saw the 1660Ti hover around 1800-1900MHz at the thermal throttle limit of 74C, while the CPU was generally around 70-74C.

I was running in benchmark mode with a laptop cooler, so this is probably as stretched as it'll go.

 

Bro out of what? Any other 9750h thin and light laptops can't match this laptop's CPU performance. Any other laptop that does has to be bulky or have a huge heat sink. This is one of few laptops that can pull 100w on the CPU, most laptops are limited to 45w. Try lowering the undervolt, sometimes even if you don't blue screen, you lose performance. Also in past experience, throttlestop actually hindered performance on the laptop

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Per RTSS it seems like it rarely goes beyond 25-30W, which could explain why the temps seem abnormally low. Strangely this was true even while playing BFV, which is a much more CPU intensive game than RDR2. Could be the case that I need to play for longer to see the sustained temps.

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That's really strange, my 9750H is in the 95th percentile on user benchmark. I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be drawing 65W.

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The 1660Ti, I didn't think a 2070 max q was worth it

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I've noticed that the mic audio quality seems really poor. It works, but is a dramatic downgrade from the Dell. Anyone notice the same?

 

Not sure, I use a small external lav mic. Do you have the soundblaster thing installed?

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Yes.

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Weird, I just tested mine and they sound ok. What about them is poor?

 

I'm just being told it just sounds very fuzzy and low bitrate. It's not that big a deal though.

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Alright, that might just be the quality of the mics.

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Alright, picture time. This is the lid's original appearance:



Nothing some teeth floss couldn't fix:



Cleaned up and super stealthy:

 

MSI laptops would like to have a word with you


On msi laptops you can bypass the cpu power limit entirely as well as overclock ram and change loadlines.
Check my sig for scores with links

 

Very nicely done!

If I weren't on the other side of the planet I wouldn't mind picking one up, would not mind having a spare machine at all

 

Does anyone know when that speaker driver problem will be fixed? My machine decided to be helpful and install the update without my realising it - fortunately I'd encountered forum posts etc. about it so I knew what the problem was (would've driven me crazy otherwise). I did a Windows rollback to fix it and promptly discovered I'd apparently installed quite a lot of software lately, sigh.

Speaking of drivers, the sleep-crash failures I'd been having previously are gone now after I updated my Nvidia drivers (thanks again to Tom from XMG). If not for the speaker problem I'd be thinking "update your drivers ASAP, all the time!"

 

It can be done on this laptop too, you can even overclock the ram.... It's just perma won't release the bios since it doesn't have Intel's blessing...
The power limit on the CPU can be raised, the only issue is the way they gimped the damn GPU and the obnoxiously high pitched fans in benchmark mode.

As lovely as the MSI are, the stealth series from last gen was not easy to upgrade. Current gen are more expensive than the mag 15 for almost little no none improvement to performance vs the mag. I already saw someone with 2080 super Max q pull only marginally 800 points more on gpu firestrike score vs this stock on benchmark mode.

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The mech 17 holds the record for fastest 2080 MAX-Q, even my shunt modded 2080 MAX-Q cant compete, granted i'm limited by the total system power draw.

And yes, these tongfang laptops are price-performance champs.

 

What's the firestrike score on it for GPU? Does it have gsync? Is the webcam at the top?

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Firestrike:
His: https://www.3dmark.com/fs/21653660
Mine: https://www.3dmark.com/fs/22642443

Timespy:
His: https://www.3dmark.com/spy/11319266
Mine: https://www.3dmark.com/spy/12027767

My timespy overall is higher but his graphics score is still higher

 

My only reply to your scores are the ones I saw from Perma a while back....

Mag 15 vs Alienware 51m with 2070
https://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/20551530/fs/20749121

Perma was able to overclock the stock ram to 3000 Mhz somehow
https://valid.x86.fr/3sh58f

Perma Firestrike extreme scores vs monster 2070 notebook with desktop CPU
https://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/20749121/fs/20739313#

Perma sent this firestrike extreme score to compare vs
https://www.3dmark.com/fs/20285387

I really wish perma did release that bios he made for this machine... looks like it would have really "unleashed" one hell of a beast... feels bad man.

 

I'm not surprised in the least, it's Prema.

He is also doing some bclk overclocking on the 9750h.

The scores i posted are matching a desktop 2070 super.

 

I mean that unleashed potential would only be useable in super short tasks. Anything longer than 5 minutes is gonna heatsoak and throttle. Thin and lights are not meant to be balls to the wall gaming machines

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That is fine but I'm looking at a bigger picture. I only want this extra performance while it's docked to my TB3 dock and connected to the external monitor. I'm researching either making a water loop to assist in cooling the laptop while docked or a custom cooling pad or even 3D printing a bottom panel to allow for more air flow from the cooling pad to reach the heat sink.

Currently I'm just saving some money for the mods so I can get to experimenting. I believe this laptop is good but it could be great!

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That's true, but out of those options, water-cooling is the only thing that has potential, and even then it may not work. You'd have to put the waterblock on top of the existing heatsink and heatpipes, so you're losing a lot of thermal efficiency. Those kinds of super overclocked machines are only good for benchmarking; crazy cooling solutions and lack of stability are not things you'll enjoy in daily use, even if you get a 10-20% performance bump. If you really want to go down that path, you could always make your own modded BIOS, at least Prema showed that it was possible.

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With a good enough cooling solution I believe thin and lights can handle a 90w cpu and 150w gpu. There's still a lot of potential for improvement in heatsink design.

Imagine a thin and light with exhausts lining the entire rear of the chassis.

 

That'd be a lot of copper, and copper isn't light. I just don't think it's possible with current hardware to keep something in a mag 15 form factor but cool more than 115/65 without external assistance.

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Or a vapor chamber and some liquid metal

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If you want to explore the 3D printed bottom cover route I can assist with that. I run an additive manufacturing lab and have access to many different options, both metal and plastic. For this, I think our HP 3D Jet Fusion 4200 would work nicely. If you want, shoot me a PM and we can discuss.

 

Oh man that would be great, I'll shoot you a pm later today.

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Hey I actually picked one up too back in early May. I haven't received it yet, but I am excited for it to come in. I saw from an earlier post that you thought about flashing the BIOS from the MAG-15, I was thinking about doing the same thing but I cant find any information on it.
Do you have any more thoughts or ideas on how to do it?
Ill keep in touch.

 

If you download the BIOS and follow the directions on this page it should work

https://www.eluktronics.com/mag-15-drivers/

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I asked this question on Reddit too but what do you guys think?

I'm a bit confused by Chrome, how bad is Chrome from a battery and energy saving perspective? Many people these days have many Chrome tabs opened at the same time taking a lot of RAM. I assume it will vary a lot how much CPU power all these open Chrome tabs will steal but it could be substantial? I'm also confused about hardware acceleration in Chrome. If I want to consume less energy (for saving some battery or keeping fans disabled) should I disable hardware acceleration in Chrome? Will Chrome work poorly without hardware acceleration or it's not a big difference? Also I guess it's good double checking Nvidia Control settings, making sure the computer isn't using the dGPU for Chrome. Which web browser is best from an energy saving perspective? My daughter has a Khameleon P9 laptop (a Tongfang QC7). She is liking the laptop so far but telling me her fans are on almost all the time when doing school work. Not sure if there is much I can do about this except recommending her trying the silent mode more? She is mostly using Chrome, Spotify, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Office 365. If I understand her correctly she has been pushing the RAM pretty hard though, almost filling all 16 GB ram. ;-) (probably because of way too many Chrome tabs). I do know she has some Chrome plugins as well...

 

To my understanding, large memory usage does not directly cause loss of battery life. What does is CPU usage, which also causes fans to spin up. The fans on this laptop are kind of loud, so you'll have to accept that, but definitely be using power saving mode with quiet fan profiles when all you're doing is being on chrome.

So yes, Chrome does use lots of memory, but no it will not negatively affect battery life


By default, hardware acceleration will use your integrated GPU, which should be more efficient than the CPU at doing graphics things, so keeping it on should improve battery life.

Some little known things you can do to save battery
Undervolt with throttlestop
Don't use peripherals

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Thanks for your reply.

What about Chrome and CPU usage if having many tabs opened at the same time? Usually not an issue but it could be in worst case? I guess it may depend on the actual websites visited but it's definitely much more RAM intensive comparing to CPU intensive (in general)?

About the laptop, we bought it on a generous return policy but I think we will keep it. Yes, the fans on this laptop are kind of loud but the entire package, what you get, the size, the low weight, the battery and the performance is not easy to beat for the price (we bought the 1660Ti option). Hopefully we will be able to get more sophisticated software for controlling the fans in the future or maybe if they could raise the temp bar for enabling the fans? (then the laptop should be quiet more often)

 

What I'm saying is RAM intensive does not equal CPU intensive. So you could have 50 tabs open but if they are all just basic websites then there is no extra battery drain. But if you have 50 youtube tabs in the background that are all playing, your CPU will work harder and use more battery.

 

Ok, yes, I get you and she is using Youtube extensively, that's for sure. It's not like we are having a battery issue (yet) though (perhaps in autumn when/if joining University), it's more minor complaints about the fans and noise. She is telling me the fans are running almost all the time (I believe she only has been using the balanced mode these days since getting it). I assume the laptop will be more quiet on battery and on silent mode in general but I think she has been using the power adaptor most of the time so far.

Well, with Spotify, Office 365, OneDrive, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft Mail app, Microsoft ToDo app and Chrome (possibly including Youtube tabs) I guess the laptop will become hotter than 45 or 50 degrees thus enabling the fans. Also I will try to help her disabling apps being started automatically right now, most of them probably not necessary.

This is looking like a good thread about improving battery life, I will investigate.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...e-on-windows-enabling-deeper-c-states.815602/

 

Yeah, that thread is good.

I think for normal tasks battery saver mode works, although it doesn't feel as responsive as balanced mode.

Also, in the Eluktronics control center (idk about others) you can run balanced mode with quiet fans, which may help. Although the best thing to counter fan noise is battery saver mode + quiet because the CPU draws less power and stays cooler, thus the fans stay off more often.

Or she could do what I do, and just listen to music through headphones and tune out the fan noise

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