TONGFANG GK5CN5Z / GK5CN6Z / GK5CQ7Z / GK5CP0Z

I was looking at several of the model, and see a number on amazon. But they have the smaller battery. I was looking at the origin version, but am having trouble justifying the additional 1k. Is the part number or order link available for the larger battery. That removes the use of the 2.5" drive. Thanks in advance.

 

I took the Cooler master Mastergel maker from PCS with my recoil II.
Should I change the thermal paste or not ?

 

As the Cooler master Mastergel is one of the best thermal pastes here on earth (apparently even better than the Noctua NTH1), no you should not change it.
By saying that I assume that PCS guys know their job and know how to correctly apply paste.
And of course you should change the thermal paste after several years of use, when your laptop begins to become more and more hot and dusty and noisy.

 

Mmm i see , but i don't know what temperature should i get. My config is just as the same as yours.
I'm not sure if PCS guys are really good , they didn't fix my power supply problem.

 

Anyone know what Bios Eluktronics uses? From experience I think they say its Mechrevo.

 

Hi there. It seems that the youtuber: BobOfAllTrades, will be getting a Mech G2 review sample unit from Eluktronics. Sometime in the next few months. (He announced in his video today).

 

IIRC it's the Mechrevo BIOS, I poked around in there for battery settings (didn't find any, wasn't looking too hard though).

Finally finished my Titanfall 2 download, everything maxed out at 1080p is 40-50 fps (no Vsync). Turning down a couple settings from maxed to high and disabling ambient occlusion I'm at 70-85 fps, which I'm comfortable with. Completely stock, just driver updates from Nvidia, Eluktronics and Windows.

Edit: Framerate is pretty variable, I settled on using Triple Buffering for Vsync and I'm getting steady 70 fps with short spikes up to 110, with the almost-maxed settings noted above.

 

Sounds good.

Has anyone done any overclock with a 1060? Seeing what kinda numbers one could get and if the GK5CN6Z model could handle it.

 

Oh yeah, and those numbers are with CPU undervolted -125 as that seems to be stable according to others here. Out of firefights I'd say my average is a constantly fluctuating 80-120 fps, firefights is when it dips to the stable 70 with spikes. Temps without undervolt hit max CPU package temp of 95C, with undervolt I hit 86C. Wasn't checking CPU clock speed, but I'll check when playing a more CPU-heavy game.

 

I have a good new for everyone!
I found the 62.32Wh battery. It is a getac gk5cn-00-13-4s1p-0 (I'm not so sure. The image is really low quality)

https://www.xuehua.us/2018/06/29/轻薄便携，商务全面屏游戏本影刃z4散热实测/

 

Hi everyone, does anybody knows how to change the keyboard colors on Linux? I know that there are some software for Windows that do that but didn't find one for Linux.

Thanks in advance!

 

Well you can use this software on windows, it will allow you to change the keyboard default color.
(the one after the startup color , by default i think its blue), because on linux the keyboard stays in default color.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tRQmdEBfyq_3opQ_bcQMnh9k09znJimE/view

 

Quick update on temps and clocks, Titanfall 2 I played for about 10-15 mins just to check performance. Same -125 undervolt on CPU and cache, 70-120 fps (base in firefights, top standing still, rest in between).

Max CPU package temp: 91 (2 of 6 cores hit that, rest maxed at 77, 79, 84, and 88)
Max GPU temp: 80
Max CPU clock: 3.991-3.993 Ghz

 

And it didn't choke itself out hitting that near 4Ghz mark nice.

Did you get the liquid metal upgrade?

 

The problem is I don't have dual boot here, so that wouldn't work :/

 

No Liquid Metal, was too scared of the possibility of shorts or it getting out during transport (student, so this will be sideways in a backpack a lot), but the paste is Arctic Silver 5.

And the fps counts are really variable - firefights are pretty steady 70-80 but I popped in to check clock speeds again, and I realized that I'm going to have to cap framerate at 144 since out of combat just running around, my average fps is like 110 and I spike to 150+. I do have some tweaks in Geforce experience and nvidia control panel, which could affect that, in-game stuff is just high-ultra settings.

 

I get that. I've got them doing it since long discussion with them shows they know what they are doing and I'm getting the three year warranty option for increased safety.

I'll see how it goes and post my findings when I get my order through.

 

Wine

 

Have you found any reseller of that battery by chance? The increased battery life would be great.

 

@Fastidious Reader
I checked the bios again, here's the home screen in text form:

[top of screen]
Apatio Setup Utility - Copyright (C) 2018 American Megatrends, Inc.

System Information

System Time (time here)
System Date (date here)


BIOS Version N.1.03
EC Version: 1.23.09
Build Date and Time (build date and time here)
Manufacturer Name Eluktronics Inc
Product Name Mech-15 G2
Serial Number Standard
Asset Tag Standard
UUID Number (uuid number here)
Ethernet MAC Address(ethernet mac address here)


Processor
Processor Type Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-8750H CPU @ 2.20 GHz
Processor Speed 2200 MHz


ME Information
ME FW Version 12.0.0.1069
ME Firmware SKU Consumer SKU


[bottom of screen]
Version 2.20.1271. Copyright (C) 2018 American Megatrends, Inc.

 

i wrote to Getac and other 4-5 battery shops. Only itbatteria.it (a deutesch reseller) replied to me telling they will ask to their supplier. My suggestion is to write to battery store shops asking for this battery. More we write and more are the chance they will add to the store (money are money).

UPDATE: No reseller has this battery F*CK

 

Hi Guys,

Recently we have had a lot of people unsure as to normal behaviour for the i7-8750H, i7-8850H and i9-8950HK, which has been mentioned in this forum a few times. Our research manager has been working tirelessly testing several different models of laptop from different manufacturers in order to clear this up and absolutely confirm the expected behaviour of these chips.

With current laptop trends meaning chassis are getting thinner but core count and clock speed are increasing meaning it is becoming more the case of balancing power usage (and thermals) and performance. While this struggle is also present in desktop machines, the extra real estate available for cooling options here makes this much less noticeable.

For this reason, inherently, mobile chips do throttle and this is as per design and this is even more so when using battery. The “rated” turbo is for 1 core under certain criteria this then drops for 2 core load and again for 3,4,5,6 core loads.

I will include a small sample of real world game testing that our research team did with the I7-8750H in case anyone is interested.

Final Fantasy XV
3.92 CPU frequency peak
3.09 CPU frequency average
92 Peak temperature
84 Average temperature
2 Average core load
Current Limit throttling during level load but not during game play

Project Cars 2
3.97 CPU frequency peak
3.85 CPU frequency average
79 Peak temperature
73 Average temperatre
1 Average core load
Current Limit Throttling operates during gameplay intermittently, no slow down seen

FarCry5
3.85 CPU frequency peak
3.62 CPU frequency average
93 Peak temperature
85 Average temperatre
4 Average core load
Current Limit Throttling operates during gameplay intermittently, no slow down seen

RealBench – synthetic load comparison
2.6 CPU frequency peak
2.1 CPU frequency average
95 Peak temperature
84 Average temperatre
6 Average core load
Current Limit and Power Limit Throttling Active for the whole time during the stress test.

From what we have observed here we do believe that any of the excessive throttling observed seems to be linked to applications utilising AVX instructions for instance AIDA64 and the intel XTU software.

For clarification, there are 2 main types of throttling. Power limit throttling and Thermal throttling. Power limit throttling is put in place to balance power usage, generally between the GPU and CPU especially when under intensive use. This isn’t really an issue so much as a feature. Regarding thermal throttling, this does not always mean that the chip is performing outside of specification but rather that clock speeds are being limited in order to perform within the chips thermal specification. Excessive thermal throttling IS an issue but a little thermal throttling won’t generally make too much difference with regards to real world performance.

Of course if anyone does want any further clarification or if you have any questions we are happy to help.

 

I see PCS has a choice of a 180W adapter on the config page. I've emailed them to ask them to make sure my Recoil ii comes with one.

 

Nice to see a review of that one.

For some sellers it's included if you get the 144hz panel option.

 

My Eluktronics one (w/ 144hz) appears to have the 180W one, I never thought to check.

 

Yea its standard for their 144hz panel

 

Hey guys, is the general consensus that the 1060 model requires a 180W PSU? Or will I get by with the stock 150W without any issues?

 

Hi @XMG! No news about that 62wh battery for your Neo 15?

 

We only offer this chassis ( XMG Neo 15 ) with the 180W PSU. On Furmark and Prime load it pulls 160W from the wall with GTX 1060 and i7-8750H.

Complicated. It's TF's decision. We hoped to test a sample, but there's no update on this and we have no real idea if it will make it into MP options with the next gen. Too many people want a 2.5" option in these chassis, so it's a decision based on costing, tooling and so on.

 

Check OriginPC website. They offer a 62wh battery

 

Ah - interesting! The consumer demand may still be a lot that way for the time being. However I believe it will be shifting more towards ssd only. And not in the far distand future either because:

The price of 3D nand is still dropping. And will continue to drop even further over the next 12 months. This should translate into more people will be able to get by without any HDD.

Also in regards to tooling - clearly there are already batteries being made at this point. For 1 reseller. (who are they? Origin PC?). So perhaps that is a reason to believe tooling was already done, by this point, for such products to be on sale?

 

PCS were waiting for stock of the 180W adapters to arrive so this option has only been on the website since yesterday.

 

Ok, slight miss-communication internally here. We have a sample 62Wh unit on order, but it's not here yet. The demand from our customers is mainly for the 2.5" option actually, although there would be customers who would take the higher capacity battery the bias is on the 2.5 over the battery.

The most common option is still something like 256GB SSD / M.2 and a 500GB or 1TB HDD in this product sector. The difficult part is the chip availability itself (or the production line availability when they get tied up with huge orders from mobile manufacturers) - you've seen the reports of new Apple products comming out and it's the same with the other phone manufacturers - but particularly Samsung and Apple at the moment. When they are on their production run for their newly released phones the availability of chips gets bad and pricing goes up due to this - you see the same in SSDs and RAM.

Understood - the 180W was available fromt he start but maybe they only just decided to offer the 180W version. It's a little more expensive, but ultimately it's down to each company's individual choice - when there's more than one PSU available that is. You can say the same for the P950 - most of us offered the 150W option because the chassis itself (MAX-Q) is pretty much limited to this. Some companies offered a 180W instead, but it couldn't be utilised because of the hard limit on the chassis. Thus there's also a marketing decision in there as well as cost.

 

Obviously you are aware of the BIOS/firmware discussion here regarding performance. Is there something in the XMG BIOS/firmware that allows use of more power?

There was a very technical discussion of TDP/PL1/PL2 limits for CPUs on PCS's own forum, has XMG made some specific changed to PL2 to allow it to draw more power under extreme conditions as I'm sure Furmark would put it under?

 

I just checked on the Intel website and there is an option to limit the TDP to 35W.

"Configurable TDP-down is a processor operating mode where the processor behavior and performance is modified by lowering TDP and the processor frequency to fixed points. The use of Configurable TDP-down is typically executed by the system manufacturer to optimize power and performance. Configurable TDP-down is the average power, in watts, that the processor dissipates when operating at the Configurable TDP-down frequency under an Intel-defined, high-complexity workload."



Nice info here.

Once mine arrives I will be able to run my own tests.

 

This is a MAX-Q 1070 chassis, to be completely honest the only discussions I have been involved with on nbr are regarding the GPU performance. The chassis has to meet Nvidia MAX-Q limits, mainly in terms of system noise. In a chassis like this, the cooling of the chassis itself (as it's a slim form factor) will affect both the GPU and likewise the CPU performance when compared to a non-MAX-Q chassis that has more space/potential for better cooling.

Furmark really shouldn't be used as a performance benchmark - it's not intended for this and shouldn't be a replacement for real world performance indications. Prime95 is much more CPU intensive anyway if we're talking about PL2 limits. In an extended Prime run we're seeing around 2.9GHz, however I think these figures were made before the investigations into CCC were started here. As you will be aware, this was a limiting factor and the systems do (like many other laptops) purposefully limit perofrmance in order to possible 1/ meet MAX-Q specifications 2/ limit potential harwdare damage (as is the case with Furmark in particular) 3/ whatever other factors you can throw in.

For the GK5C, I haven't seen any internal figures which drop the CPU down to 2.2GHz - not in Prime, Furmark or the combination of both. But they will be limited and as above it's gameplay and real world performance that should be looked at rather than the clock speeds in severe stress testing. The Kinus forum discussions are strange - for Cinebench to run at 2.2GHz and only at 60C is, as the guys and gals on there have stated, it's not thermally throttling according to Intel specs so the manufacturers have firmware limited the performance. On full stress multi-thread testing, 75C would bring the CPU down to around 2.8GHz, 85C you should be seeing around 2.4GHz - as they say, in that thread discussion something is rotten in Denmark/Denver.

 

Are you saying they have essentially put a regular GTX1060 in a MAX-Q 1070 chassis?

 

Nope ;-) We were talking about power limitations and PSU options - I used the Clevo P950 as another example. I didn't mean to suggest that the TF GK5 was a MAX-Q chassis.

 

Though to ask has there been discussions about putting a Max Q 1070 in the TF GK5?

Eluktronics mentioned something about that possibility in my recent emails with them.

 

They may well have mentioned it, maybe they think it is a possibility - I wouldn't put too much weight on the possibility though. Other point is, would you really want a MQ option in this chassis?

 

Don't know really. What would be the trade off of such a thing?

 

But there are few shops selling the laptop with 62Wh battery (origin pc and eleuktronics ). I also wrote the M/N of the battery

It is a getac gk5cn-00-13-4s1p-0, but it looks impossible to find from any battery reseller

​

 

@XMG

Does the 62wh battery fit into this Tongfang chassis with an (empty) 2.5" slot or does it require its own special chassis version, or removing the 2.5 inch bay entirely and disconnecting from the mobo for the space?

 

The 62Wh battery fit on a normal tongfang chassis. You have just to remove the metal frame used for containing the hdd

 

Sounds great, if I get the chance I'll just put something in the empty M.2 slot and take out my HDD+housing to put in the battery, the battery life is probably the only thing I'm not 10/10 with on this laptop.

 

Paying a premium for a MQ 1070 with cooling designed for a 1060. I wouldn't want to speculate further as it could be seen that I'm suggesting TF aren't capable of doing this. But you can gauge the implimentation of MQ graphics in a number of different chassis from multiple manufacturers.

That's why posted this ;-)

The battery was manufactured by GETAC for TF, you won't be able to buy it anywhere else - that's completely normal.

 

Ah okay I understand. Overall it looks to do a much better job at cooling the CPU than other models of similar size.

Guess it is better not to push it since what they have works.[

 

Hi here,
I would like to focus on the USB 3.1 type C port available on this computer.

Short version : Do you know how much power the motherboard can deliver through this port ? Is it a regular up-to-20V-5A (information I found about USB 3.1 - maybe I misunderstood something) or is it internally limited ?

Long version (maybe I should post it in the Accessories topic) : I plan to use this laptop for audio production, and I need more than 3 USB ports. So I though "why not buying a USB-C dock that gives me the ability to plug everything on my desk in (including a HDMI screen, synths and midi controlers) and keep the 3 regular USB ports free for audio interface and external HDD ?". The thing is that many USB type-A hubs/docks come with an exetrnal power supply, and most of the type-C ones don't (or above 250$). So I'm wondering if I can get enough power from the type-C port of the laptop, or if I should go for type-A dock with external power supply.

EDIT: Do you also know how the video output of the USB C port is handled by the motherboard ? Is it iGPU or dGPU only, or does it profit of auto-switch like the built-in screen ?