TONGFANG GK5CN5Z / GK5CN6Z / GK5CQ7Z / GK5CP0Z

Probably you will brick your notebook to kingdom come....

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* Uniwill OEM Service Application - Version 00.01 *
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=>Help : Print all command sets.
=>RWBlock0 : Reada/Write Block 0 data.
=>MeUnlock : UnLock Intel ME region.
=>RgbLb : RGB LightBar Configurations.
=>AdpType : Adapter Type configuration.
=>NbType : Notebook Type selection.
=>HiddenPage : Enable/Disable the Hidden Page in BIOS Setup.
=>LOGO : Dump/Load Logo data.
=>SubWoofer : SubWoofer configuration.
=>SetApCtrl : Set AP support control.
=>RgbKb : RGB Keyboard configuration.
=>OCValue : Nvidia OverClocking configuration.
=>SWBID : SW Board ID configuration.
=>KBLBID : Set KB Board ID configuration.
=>OemTdr : OEM TDR configuration.
=>LEDKB : LED Keyboard configuration

 

ooooooh, that unlock intel ME region and enable hidden page sounds very tempting... tapping thumbs...

I wonder if that unlock hidden page in bios gives the same options as the MSI GP63, because that imon tweak brought the GP63 Lightroom Export test from 2:35sec ish to 2:20sec ish...

 

gotcha, so in case i do keep the Y7000, no bios update like the doctor ordered!

 

Ah man! I wish I would have known! That was a great price when comparing with everyone else on ebay right now wanting $105+ for theirs. If only I wasn't on lunch break when you had posted that!

 

Not going to post publicly but it went for way more than $105 on an offer.

 

Wow so the one I listed earlier was also a bid item and it was supposed to end in a few days! It is now GONE! I'll bet someone messaged them an offer too! The market is crazy right now with people getting these laptops and wanting to get dual channel!

 

No, the guy that had his listed decided to buy mine and cancel his sale. He now has 32gb of ram!!!!

 

Stock SSD is to blame.

 

is there any performance issue with the op 15+ stock SATA SSD?

the numbers seem ok to me as an SATA SSD, no?

 

Wow so Newegg went up $15 on this dual ram kit. I'm confident this is because of this OP laptop. I'm really curious how many people just bought this crazy deal. When it first went to $800 I thought it was going to sell out in a few hours.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820232166&ignorebbr=1

Even the kingston some folks here bought is out of stock.
https://www.pcnation.com/web/detail...Memory-Module-HX426S15IB2K2-16-00740617265415

 

I would be curious to know if anyone has used 2400 speed RAM in these systems. I am receiving an OP 15+ and was originally planning to double up the original 16GB 2666 Gold Key stick, but this morning came across a 16GB dual channel 2400mhz CL17 kit that I couldn't pass up at $35 (two sticks of this RAM: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=0RM-006F-00004 ). I understand that the 2666 would be preferable, but is there a significant problem with using 2400?

As a side note, I keep seeing trailing letters attached to the RAM speeds. For instance, the included RAM is 2666 V, and the ones I purchased are 2400 T . Are these letters meaningful? Both seem to be 1.2 volts. Thanks for the help, this is my first laptop after a decade or two of building and using desktops.

 

Numbers are alright, but I say buy a Samsung 970 Evo and never look back! (or any good NVME stick)

 

I doubt you'll have an issue running the 2400mhz kit. The T just refers to the timing which is the CL17 you referred to (T=17).

 

Anyone have some recommendations on getting a 2nd PSU? I have the GTX1050 version so only came with a 120w PSU... when googling the model# (a15-120p1a) looks like I can just buy the one here (although just appears to have different labeling being "branded" Asus): https://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod...PmPxTtcCedal5SJiRMhoCK1kQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

Or are there better routes to take?

 

SSD performance is very difficult to measure in any concise way. Firmware, cache method, recovery, overprovisioning, etc all have impacts on how they behave in the short and long run. Pretty much all SATA SSDs have roughly similar performance when reading OR writing a single contiguous file for a short period of time. Doing mixed reads and writes on many files simultaneously tends to grind lesser drives down to a crawl. The included drive seems to show very poor performance, which is disappointing, but unsurprising. At least it's easy to fix, and you can even put the existing drive into an external USB case. It will still be much faster than 99 percent of USB sticks, and is well suited to moving/storing files.

 

LOL looks like this chassis has really stirred the pot across many outlets.

I got a big video, should be up in a few hours. Just keep your eye out if you’re interested

 

FYI frys has these on sale with free shipping and no sales tax for most - for 99 after rebate 1x16 @ 2666 - same as the amazon ones earlier:

https://www.frys.com/product/9293669?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

 

Seems like my touchpad is a little over sensitive maybe, it can go a little crazy if I just rest my 2 fingers on it after scrolling... Not sure if there are better drivers I can install for it? Tried to have windows look for updated drivers but of course it came up with nothing. Considering the touchpad just shows up as a compliant mouse in Device Manager, there may be some drivers I should use?

 

Touchpad is a i2c HID device. Basically, they didn't use a full blown touchpad such as one from Synaptics or Alps. It's one of the things they cheaped out on, not that anyone would be using the touchpad for gaming anyway. It's part of the default chipset drivers afaik and so those settings are the best you're going to get.

 

Ah ok, thanks for the info. It's nothing major, just thought I'd do some searching in case there was something I could try out. Thanks!

 

These dudes selling their gold key sticks on ebay are huffing glue if they think people will pay retail price for a stick of RAM with no warranty and no returns. One dude listed his stick for $179 and another for $119. Do not pay these prices for RAM of dubious quality.

Edit: Apparently the buyers are huffing too, some one actually paid $119 for it LOL.

 

Lol wow! Maybe $80

 

Can anyone tell me what kind/type/size screw driver head I would need to tighten down the trackpad in the OP 15+? I saw Bob mention that he had to tighten his down some in his video on the OP 15+ because it was loose and mine seems loose as well. I would like to make sure I have a screw driver that will work for it before I tear it apart to replace the ram. Thanks in advance.

 

Hoping the Viper 1x16 2666 chip works well. I am reluctant to sell my chip in case warranty work is needed. I realize the law is on our side regarding the warranty sticker/upgrades but I would rather not have to deal with them on it. Besides, my warranty sticker came off so nicely!

 

It’s a Phillips head screwdriver but it’s small and has a lot of depth to it.

 

People are bidding up the gold key ram and this one is not even 2666....I figured $85 tops.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/16GB-RAM-D...h=item33fcf56cda:g:~CEAAOSwC85cFqE6:rk:3:pf:0

 

I guess these guys don't know how to search amazon or newegg...? Matching brands on sticks of RAM shouldn't matter in the slightest. And not being able to return or RMA the stick seems like a bad idea to me.

 

I got more than that for mine!

 

Yeah I'm not quite sure why people are spending that kind of money for no-name sticks with no warranty.

On another note, if I'm using this for charging when not gaming do you think something like this will work? https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00YP823NA

Trying to find a stop gap until the bigger battery gets manufactured.

 

I'm might just skip to one of these and use my lawn mower/leaf blower batteries: https://www.homedepot.com/p/EGO-Nexus-Escape-150-Watt-Power-Inverter-PAD1500/305092938

 

Usually they don't but some laptops like the Aero 15x can be finicky on which ram they will work with.

 

Dude holy **** maybe I just need to sell stick. Some idiot spent $179 DOLLARS on a stick of RAM. What the actual ****.

 

Looks like he took it off the market. It's listed out of stock no winning bid.

 

Lol, I'm the one that sold it for $120. I bought a 16GB G.Skill kit to replace it. $95 on Newegg.

 

Not having much luck with Ubuntu. 18.04 LTS and 18.10 will lock up within 20 seconds or so of trying to install.

 

Ok linux mint 19.1 working. Touchpad is not but it looks like there is a workaround.

 

Bob, I just watched the video thank you for taking the time to really try to clear things up. I did have a question about undervolting though: you only talk about undervolting the CPU Core and Cache but never the System Agent, Intel GPU, or iGPU Unslice. I've read conflicting reports online that undervolting those other components might help as well but I'm just not sure. Is there a reason you only do the cache and core? Do you not recommend undervolting anything else in ThrottleStop?

Also, do you need to hit Turn On in ThrottleStop for the changes to take effect? The tutorials I've read online seem to indicate this is necessary but you don't mention that in the tutorial and messing around with Speed Shift EPP values it seems to be taking effect without hitting Turn On.

Lastly, you recommend setting Speed Shift EPP to 0 or 1 but that seems to just make the CPU idle at the max frequency of 3.9GHz just like setting the Performance Mode to High Performance or Gaming Mode which in the video you says does not really help. When I try this on the OP laptop in Battlefield V I immediately see the CPU jump up to 3.9GHz and it starts pulling 40 - 50W just like setting Performance Mode to Game Mode in Control Center. Like you said in the video I'm not seeing any better FPS but it looks like my system is performing better since the frequency is higher and so are the watts. Am I misunderstanding something or should we be using a Speed Shift value that is a little higher to better match the default Equilibrium mode settings? When I set Speed Shift to something like 32 to 64 it seems to perform similar to the stock Equilibrium mode without Speed Shift enabled.

 

Ok take that back. Linux Mint is unstable... Going to try some other bios to see if that makes a difference.

 

Not entirely true - seen this laptop hold 3.9Ghz throughout on a few games and synthetic benches. I guess it depends on your thermals (paste, undervolt, fanspeed) and what type of load the CPU is under.

 

It also depends on the laptop and its bios. I’ve seen the same chassis change this behavior with a single bios update.

Doesn’t change the fact that an 8750h will pull way more than 45w if allowed and that’s what makes it hard to lock down anything solid and consistent across everyone’s experience.

 

I'll give you a rundown later of how to get Linux working reliably on this plus what's not working. I use it daily for work so I'd say I know my way around pretty well.

 

Prolly games that either dont use more than 4 threads or GPU is limiting the CPU stress otherwise I assure you it will downclock because of power limits on any machine.

And synthetic benches are not a good way to test CPU clocks on laptops! Bob shown that on his last video aswell. You can go on Aida64 for 5 hours sustaining 3,9ghz, then you launch black ops 4 or battlefield V and your clocks go as low as 3ghz, excluding any temp issues.

 

Ok so here's the deal ...

How to get Linux Mint 19.1 working reliably on this (you can use any distro you want, but I'm used to Ubuntu repos so I use Mint):

Prerequisites:
BIOS: 1.05
EC: 1.35.09
(I'm sure it works with the older ones, but it's what I have)
Also, turn secure boot OFF (may have to delete associated keys first)

Setup:
On another system, burn the Mint x64 ISO (I recommend the Cinnamon edition, the new 4.0 is very nice) using Etcher ( https://www.balena.io/etcher/) and boot it up on the OP (F7 for boot menu, and pick whatever drive you have it on). Once it boots up, and you will need to use a mouse as the touchpad will likely be broken out of the box, run Gparted to partition the drive as I did below or whatever way you wish. This is also a good time to set up Windows from scratch, so I usually nuke everything and start over. I won't go through the entire set up procedure, but just make sure you have WiFi enabled so it can pull some packages down during the install.

Partitioning / Install:
You have to decide how you want to install Linux on your OP. If you're not experienced, then it's easier to dedicate one drive to Windows, one to Linux. I personally have a dual boot setup on my NVMe (for fastest OS loads) and separate M2 SATA data drive for Linux. See gparted output below of how this looks:


https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B8r57agxXMtGdlgwQWhaSHJLZk1PUmdhWjFnT003cUMtYjBR/view?usp=sharing (site is not letting me insert this as a pic, sorry)

Partition sizes may vary, I use a 1 TB 960 M2 NVMe (OS and /home) and a 2 TB M2 SATA (data). Yes, it's costly, but I plan to do the larger battery mod so I've already sacrificed the 2.5" drive slot.

Whatever route you take, I highly suggest you install Mint first, and then Windows. You can always run update-grub thereafter to get the os-prober script to detect Windows and add it to your GRUB menu.
Or just use GRUB customizer:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:danielrichter2007/grub-customizer
sudo apt update
sudo apt install grub-customizer​

First boot up:
First time you boot up, my recommendation would be to update all the packages if they're not already: sudo apt update && sudo apt dist-upgrade ... reboot.
You'll notice some things are broken, most you can fix:

Fixes:
Touchpad:
This is fixed in a patched 4.15 kernel, OR easier way is to install Ukuu and just bump up to 4.19.x series. It only requires adding a PPA.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:teejee2008/ppa
sudo apt update
sudo apt install ukuu​

Graphics:
Out of the box, Mint uses the open source X nouveau drivers for the Nvidia card, which are bleh when you have a full 1060 with Optimus support. To get that to work, you have to add another PPA and install the latest drivers:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:graphics-drivers/ppa
sudo apt update
sudo apt install nvidia-driver-415 (this is the latest at the time of this posting)​

This also installs PRIME switch for you that lets you switch between the two GPUs! I use the Intel one to save on battery, I have no need for the Nvidia one in *nix unless I'm doing something graphics intensive (e.g. 3d modeling). There should be no need to explicitly do modesetting or anything as this driver should take care of it.

Undervolt:
There's a nifty tool that will write to Intel's msrs and let you undervolt this chip. Since it runs so hot, I recommend doing it and finding values that work for you. Repo is here: https://github.com/georgewhewell/undervolt .. yes I've tested it and it works.
To install it, use the infamous python pip installer:
sudo apt install python3-pip
sudo pip3 install undervolt (you will have to get some dependency packages before this, the names of which I forgot, but install them the same way)

Then it's just something like "sudo undervolt --core -140 --cache -140" to UV both of them 0.140 V.

Broken:
Keyboard light:
I've found no way for this to work yet, the system does not even detect it in /sys/class ... so you can either just turn it off in the BIOS completely, or let it be always on at full brightness. Problem with always on is when you suspend the laptop, the light will stay on, so I would suggest getting hibernation set up following this tutorial: https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=273202

Resume from suspend/hibernate:
I've also ran into the case a few times where the laptop does not properly come out of suspend / hibernation mode, maybe due to Linux's bad support in handling power states. Either the kb/mouse will be non responsive, I will get a black screen, or something else. I rarely see this, but it does happen, and it's random, so just get in the habit of saving your work.

Packages:
Obviously we don't have anything like XTU or Aida or GC on here for stress tests and temp/freq monitoring. I found some neat utilities though:

Use s-tui for stress tests and temp monitoring:
sudo pip3 install s-tui

Use glances as a top/htop replacement:
sudo pip3 install glances

Tons of other good packages out there, install whatever you need.

I will add to this post as the day goes on ... but hopefully this quick write up helps fellow Linux users get started. Good luck.

 

Got my laptop yesterday evening so just initial impressions based on a few minutes of usage.

1. Laptop feels solid and has pretty good build quality considering the price with very little flex.
2. Screen looks great with slight light bleed on the right bottom corner but I guess i can live with that.
3. Keyboard layout seems a little cramped. I wish they had done away with the number keypad and thus made it much roomier to space out the keys.
4. Trackpad even though smooth feels slightly laggy.
5. The laptop has sharp edges which kinda dig into your arms when resting on the palm rest.
6. Fan noise on turbo mode is pretty loud and I wouldn't think i would want to game at that noise level (even with headphones since I use open back ones)

@B0B , were you running it in turbo mode in your latest video when you said maximum fan speed in your Bf 5 gaming clip?

 

Yes turbo mode is maximum fan speed

 

I don't know how anyone runs this at full fan speed, sounds like an airplane getting ready for take off ... lol, but I guess if you want to properly cool this kind of CPU, there's really no other option. Nice video @B0B!

 

Wear a headset when you game?

A power throttled, thermal throttled quieter laptop is always worse than what we have here. At least we can scale things back.

12 threads in this tiny laptop and I think it’s doing quite nice.

One of the most common complaints I get every day is thermal throttling on various gaming laptops. No fan control and terrible intake ventilation really sucks. Anyone of those people would happily take a max fan speed button right about now.

 

Headed to pick up my 15+ right now! Check in soon. Thanks for getting the vid up Bob.

 

Thanks but it is completely locking up on both of the Overpowered systems I have.

 

Anyone complaining about this keyboard has never used an Apple Macbook with its horrible new keyboard that has zero travel (they're basically super thin and only a few cm off the body) and zero feedback. Smushy keys are never a good thing ... while the OP's layout is indeed a bit cramped, I would take this any day. Like Bob said, after a week's period of getting used to and some break in, it works great. I own 5 external mechanical keyboards (with blue switches, cherry browns, gateron browns, halo clears, and zealios purples) and while it's obviously not even at the basic cherry/gateron level, it's more than adequate.