TONGFANG GK7CN6S / GK7CP0S / GK7CP7S

TONGFANG GK7CN5S
i7-8750h+gtx1050ti




TONGFANG GK7CN6S
i7-8750h+gtx1060


VideoReviews








Tongfang GK7CP0S
i7-8750h+rtx2060

Tongfang GK7CP7S
i7-8750h+rtx2070

videoreviews



Resellers
https://laptopparts4less.frl/TongFang-GK7CN6S-GTX-1060-6Gb-Coffee-Lake-game-laptop-samenstellen
http://www.raiontech.com/prodotto/raionbook/gaming/raionbook-gs5/
https://www.walmart.com/ip/OVERPOWE...256-SSD-2TB-HDD-32GB-RAM-Windows-10/887474519
https://www.pcw.fr/portables-inote/1809-inote-n70z-gtx-1050ti-1060.html
https://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Tracer-III-17-Xtreme-100
https://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Tracer-III-17-Xtreme-VR-300
https://www.eluktronics.com/MECH-17
https://www.aftershockpc.com/welcome/Productinner/apex17
https://www.tongfangpc.com/index.php/product-748.html
https://www.pcspecialist.co.uk/notebooks/recoil-II-17/
https://store.illegear.com/slim-and-powerful-gaming-laptops/180-illegear-selenite.html
https://clevocenter.com/nextcore-gk7cn6s-cfg.html

 

Also there
https://www.pcw.fr/portables-inote/1809-inote-n70z-gtx-1050ti-1060.html

 

Hi, longtime lurker here. Love the forum! I wanted to report my findings on this interesting 17.3" Tongfang notebook. Packing a lot of features in a sleek build, this chassis could potentially take America by storm this holiday season with several distributors beginning to ship them out this week.

Most models come with an i7-8750H and GTX 1060 (non Max-Q). All models come with an IPS type 144Hz panel, thin bezel, and proprietary mechanical keyboard.

Available: (United States)
Walmart OVERPOWERED 17+
Cyberpowerpc TRACER III 17 XTREME (1050Ti)
Cyberpowerpc TRACER III 17 XTREME VR (also with i9-8950HK)
Eluktronics MECH-17 (also available on Amazon)


Available: (International)
Aftershock Apex-17 (Singapore)
Tongfang Mechrevo X8Ti-plus (China)
PC Specialist 17.3" Recoil II (Europe)
Illegear Selenite (also with i9-8950HK) (Malaysia)
Clevocenter Nextcore (Portugal)

Info:

(English review)
(Malaysian review)
(Malaysian review)


I am not advertising or endorsing any product. E-commerce links can be removed if necessary.

 

https://liveatpc.com/full-review-illegear-selenite/

The first English review I have found.

 

Anything on the i9-8950HK variant of this laptop?

Does it still have the thermal throttling issues other laptops have had with this i9?

 

@Fastidious Reader I have found nothing about the i9, but it is currently available in the US at Cyberpowerpc. Buy it and review one for us... [EDIT: obviously referring to the i9-8950HK in this laptop specifically]

Evidently the stock at Eluktronics is low, so they can’t send out test units until the first of the year.

 

I've found a little about them. This i9 being Intel shot at Desktop replacement type laptop since it has specs that run very similar to a Desktop i7-8700k including heat so it'll thermal throttle quite a bit without adjustment.

My big question is does this chassis really have enough breathing room to really help.

I maybe just tempted enough to find out.

But yea I've talked with Eluktronics and their numbers for what they were able to get in these were quite low

 

At .86” thick, it’s just more than likely the thermals will not be adequate to keep the i9 cool. [EDIT: Dimension may be incorrect]

For me, I am considering this model for my business laptop but do not like any of the logos being pasted on the lid. PC Specialist has the clean lid but won’t ship to the US. I’m not going to deal with non-English-speaking companies either.

 

yea the Eluktronics logo is pretty subtle logo designs especially on the blacked out aluminium.

Still thinking on the i9 as I am not looking to overclock Just have something that can run consistently at say 4.1 if undervolt and core limited.

And doesn't weigh ten pounds.

 

https://www.cyberpowerpc.com/system/Tracer-III-17-Xtreme-VR-300

For some reason the price on this is equal to the 1050 Ti version now! Add some extra RAM and SSD storage to get 5% off of $1299. ($50 Amex card today also).

 

English review on Youtube:


Update from Eluktronics, they now have brown mechanical switches on this and the MECH-15 in “very limited availability until the end of the year” according to a sales rep. The switch type is an option on their website.

According to the same Eluktronics sales rep, thermal performance is on par with or better than the MECH-15 (i.e. Tongfang GK5CN5Z/GK5CN6Z).

In other news, the Walmart “OP” version is sold out.

 

Really liking that keyboard. I think this chassis should get a 1070 Max-Q variant.

 

That's something up to nVidia something about it fulfilling certain specs.

I've heard it being discussed possibly.

 

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Only wishful thinking! I see that it's not offered in the 1070... several of these models have run together in my mind.

The MSI GS73 Stealth for example is .77" thick, and contains a 8750H and 1070 Max-Q. The Tongfang GK7 is just over 1" thick so it should be able to handle it. I realize the GS73 runs hot, understandably so.

Display 17.3 "
395.7 x 260.8 x 26.75 mm
(W x D x H)

I took the dimensions from here. Eluktronics dimensions are incorrect since the MECH-15 and MECH-17 have the same measurements! I do not know if these figures include the sizeable rear rubber feet. Something curious about this notebook also is that the back is thicker than the front, causing it to sit at a slight angle. I suspect this will enhance the typing experience.

I think the 1060 6GB w/ 8th generation i7 hits that sweet spot of price to performance for a "primarily workstation plus gaming on the side" laptop. To add a 1070 Max-Q would likely spike the price $200-300 and you would only get ~5% to 11% better performance in games. (source)

~26% average gain of the 1070 Max-Q vs. the 1060 6GB in a variety of benchmarks is not insignificant, but in real-world application the gains are diminishing.

 

Anyone know if this model can have a bigger battery like the 15 inch counterpart?

I’m deliberating between this and the clevo pa71ES.

The clevo unit doesn’t have the bezel-less display but it does have a full 1070 in it, and the price difference is only £100 for me.

I’m just scared of going for a clevo or tongfang laptop and getting nothing for it when I come to sell it as it isn’t really branded like dell or hp, MSI, asus etc...

 

I have a cyberpower tracer III 17 if anyone has questions. For the low $1189 USD I got as well as 5% coupon it's good for the price. Surprised that it wasn't cheaply built despite it being a no name tongfang. Since I got basically the base model, cyberpower didn't really touch the laptop. There were no thermal paste options or vrm pad upgrades either.

The main negative is you lose out on support as there are zero drivers on the cyberpower website. It also comes with an outdated gamecenter for controlling the fans and rgb. Everything is easily downloaded or updated to from windows or the internet though, as they are all common components anyway like the intel wifi, nvidia gpu, etc. You can go to eluktronics website and under support you will find the mech 17 which is the same laptop and can download all the drivers there, including the newer gamecenter.

The only thing i really want is a bios update that fixes the fan behavior. It can boot dead silent and never turn on or it can boot and have the fans going at a medium spin and take ten minutes to turn off, then randomly turn back on five minutes later. These are with 35c temps on idle to 45c just browsing the internet. Really low for a laptop. The fan settings in the gamecenter do work somewhat, but I cannot tell if the lowest setting is for off or not because the thing still has a mind of its own. There's some conflicting fan curve, probably in the BIOS, that fights with the gamecenter. Usually no matter what settings you set, the system will override them at around 80c and turn the fans on at full blast. However, there was this one time I was messing with the settings and set it to the lowest continuous speed. The fan was low throughout but after 20 minutes of the witcher 3 the temps climbed to 83c and the fans just shut off completely. Then it kept climbing a degree every 15 seconds and hit 90c with the fans still completely off. I turned the game off to prevent it from going further.

The gaming mode, which is the default automatic fan setting, hasn't given me any cooling or fan shut off issues. But it's sporadic during light loads and overzealous for high loads. Basically loud and temps that never exceed 70c. The laptop would be even better if these fan issues were resolved. The hardware is all there.

Display : it's the same panel as the high end asus g7xx or the hp omen x 17. Really good viewing angles for an ips. Low ips glow. Zero backlight bleed. Good colors. 144hz looks smooth.

Speakers: they are full sounding but sometimes voices get distorted. Not the clearest speakers. They are about average for gaming laptop speakers. Better than the msi gs63/gs73 and gigabyte laptops but slightly worse than asus gl series.

Keyboard: I don't really like it but it works. There is zero resistance or activation force and no cushion on the bottom. It's so easy to press keys and so little feedback I tend to mash keys or type them out of order. They are better than some of the really low travel ultrabook keyboards though. The spacing is cramped and I mistype if I try to go fast. There is no click when typing. I assume these are the brown switches some people want. They still clatter when the caps hit the bottom though. It doesn't feel like a mechanical keyboard. The omen x 17 was way better.

Touchpad: surprisingly has some of the lowest input lag around. I'm not talking about the 144hz screen either although that does help. It tracks well and feels 1:1 and instant. The problem is for subtle movements, the drag from the touchpad surface can make it jerky. It is getting better though the more greasy it gets. Another issue is it will occasionally stop responding for some reason. Nothing new for windows laptops.

Build quality: pretty decent actually. It looks really bland and the soft touch finish on the palm rest feels rather cheap, but otherwise it is surprisingly rigid with no flex or creaks. Much better than msi laptops and a little better than asus gl series for rigidity.

Battery: the laptop has a small 46wh battery but has optimus. I was expecting around 4hrs of light use but one 2hr Netflix movie kills 70% already on battery saver. So less than 3. That's like g-sync on dedicated gpu numbers with integrated disabled. It was also rather slow and non responsive. Slower than an ulttabook on battery saver. I think gamecenter might be the culprit as it applies its own power plans.

Performance: don't know what comparable numbers would be to other gtx 1060 laptops but around 60fps on ultra 1080p in witcher 3. I can even do 4k at 30fps on medium.

 

Great review! @silverwolf0

+1 for non-clicky keys, I wonder how soft they are in grams of actuation force - do they compare to MX-Cherry Red switches? Lighter or heavier than say a standard Mac chiclet keyboard? I get tired of low-travel laptop keyboards quickly and I had high hopes for this one.

Without the clicking action, I wonder what really differentiates these from regular scissor switches. I am disappointed to hear that the keyboard spacing is closer than standard, as the tight spacing on the 15-inch models was a negative for me (or did you mean the keycaps just sit closely to eachother?). Surely there was no good reason to cramp the keyboard on a 17” chassis.

It’s nice that Eluktronics has newer Gamecenter drivers available. Hopefully the fan abnormalities will get worked out... please keep us updated.

 

These don't feel mechanical to me. They feel cheap with no cushion. Really no force at all. Hollow feeling when the key clacks down onto the bottom. It's like an hp spectre or dell xps keyboard but with more travel, zero cushion zero resistance, wiggly keys, and annoying clack when it bottoms. I wouldn't game on these as just leaving your fingers on the caps might cause inadvertent depressions. I have no experience with buying specific key switches so can't comment. I'm making it sound worse than it is. The keyboard is usable if underwhelming and cheap feeling. At least the keys are not bendy like on really budget laptops. It is a bit cramped but since I'm more used to chiclet keys that have a defined bezel space in between, maybe I just need to get used to the layout.

edit: forgot to mention in the initial impressions that I was surprised the laptop came with windows hello IR camera and offered to scan my face during setup. The actual webcam is probably the worst I've seen on a laptop, but the face login from the IR sensor seems to work decently. These larger gaming laptops usually have zero forms of authentication.

 

Miscalculated the battery numbers. Can get about 5 hours on battery saver watching Netflix. Pretty decent considering the 46wh size and 17" screen. Would be tempted to find and place the bigger battery in, which seems to be pretty plug and play, if I was actually more mobile with the laptop.

 

May I ask how you miscalculated the battery numbers ? Also, what settings (britghtness, underclocking etc) did you use to get 5 hours of battery life? Thanks a lot!

 

I now have the Cyberpower Tracer III in hand!

I think it is an all around great laptop and the benchmarks and thermals have been good so far. Keep in mind I am not a laptop expert, though I have played around with my fair share of hardware. There are a lot of good things I could say about this laptop, and maybe I'll take the time to do so at a later date, but there are a couple things I want to make the prospective buyer aware of that may not have been self-evident.

1. While the lid is metallic, the rest of the machine is entirely plastic. The palm rest is made of that softish rubber/plastic material. Given the construction of the GK5CN6Z, I sort of had anticipated a better finish.

2. The keyboard is awesome. The keyboard is also horrendous! Will it matter to you? It depends.

I like the key travel distance, the keycap feel and style, the lighting (though it's basic), even the font, but THE SPACING IS NARROW. Yes, they must have taken the same substandard-sized keyboard from the Tongfang GK5CN6Z. To me, typing comfort and accuracy is way down, even after several hours of use.​

On 10Fastfingers.com I scored only a 131wpm average over three 60 second tests, 13wpm lower than my last 50 test average (taken on a variety of keyboards). On Typeracer.com I was at best getting 30wpm slower than my fastest speeds on identical texts (175wpm vs. 205wpm), but typing at an average pace is much less affected.​

So would this keyboard work for the average user? Most likely! I just don't know if my muscle memory will allow me to change to this smaller footprint keyboard. Also consider we are talking about just a 3% difference horizontally as measured, and the vertical distance is still standard.​

3. Fan behavior is... unpredictable. The OEM Tongfang Gaming Center seems to be functional, but not fluid. On one stress test I noticed my fans were still barely running while the cpu was climbing up to the high 80's celcius! I will do more testing.

4. And yes, everything is black. A pro for some, and con for others.

The only dealbreaker for me could potentially be the keyboard, as much as it hurts me to say. Overall the action and feel is superior to other laptop keyboards, if only my fingers didn't feel so daggone cramped...

p.s. Battery life.... ouch, I've got only 15 mins left after using it in office mode to browse the web for less than 90 minutes.

 

@silverwolf0 Could you tell me what settings (brightness, undervolting) you used to get 5 hours of battery life? Also, how did you miscalculate the battery times at first?

@Installed64 Did you use the battery saver mode? (reduce brightness) Also, did you try undervolting the CPU for better battery times?

 

@Alexandru Duna Brightness was set to 80% but power saver was not properly engaged. Also, I did not change the power setting in Windows. Let me do a more accurate test with power saver mode engaged when I'm able.

 

@Installed64 I'd love that, thanks a lot! 80% brightness seems quite a lot (I remember watching some reviews which were mentioning battery life for 40% brightness) Maybe this could be of help (it's a review of the Mech 15 G2, the 15 inch brother of your laptop, by @B0B ):
,
It gives some points about fan settings, undervolting (points to another one of his videos).

 

Ok I will probably do the battery test tomorrow.

By the way this is probably the same computer as the 15". The mobo looks the same.

The memory used by Cyberpowerpc is ADATA ad4s266638G19-B.

https://imgur.com/JWad1A6

 

Edge was acting up with Netflix and I used some old numbers. It did run only two and a half hours on my first go around with default drivers but after I installed a new ssd with fresh windows and used fresh new drivers and newer game center it went up to 5 hours .

Forgot to mention it is at least 75% brightness. The screen doesn't get that bright. Also -125mV undervolt.

 

I read in the other thread you were having 35w power limit issues? I can get over 45w if I really drop the resolution in some games ,increasing the framerate and cpu load. My turbo is 65w and short turbo is 80w. These were default values. Never touched them I am also using the 1.16 game center from the eluktronics site. Gaming mode for fans and the balanced power profile. If I encode something in handbrake , it will start off 80w for a minute with very loud fans but then drop fanspeed quickly and stay 65w for the entire encode which is 30 minutes.

Also want to see what bios you have. Mine is N.1.01 EC version 1.01.09

 

Only hit power limit throttling doing one of the benchmarks, can’t remember which one. I haven’t had much time to do further testing but will try some games today and see.

 

@silverwolf0 @Alexandru Duna

So the battery on my CyberpowerPC Tracer III 17 lasted 3 hours and 53 minutes until the failsafe shutdown. Better than expected, but I'll tell you how I tested it and you can adjust the result accordingly!

- Power Saving Mode engaged in Control Center
- MyPowerSaving Windows power mode (as set by Control Center)
- 30-40% brightness as set by Window Battery saver
- Keyboard backlighting off
- Bluetooth disabled
- Three Chrome tabs open
- Playing a Youtube music playlist at 100% player volume and 40% system volume, streaming in 1080p

This simulated streaming movies at a listenable volume, but with an absolute minimum of interaction such as loading pages or typing. So this is nearly a best-case scenario for battery life, as if you were to sit back and watch a feature-length movie.

Since, as I stated before, the internals of this computer appear identical to the GK5CN6Z, the only difference here in practice is the increased amount of power needed to run the larger screen. So, as B0b said in his Mech G2 review, you should probably expect no more than two hours of usage with light web browsing and multitasking.

Also worth noting that the Power Saving Mode lowers CPU clock speed to 800MHz, so it definitely feels slow, as would any laptop set on a low power mode.

Extra thoughts: if you don't mind the 15.6" screen, right now the OP 15+ laptop from Walmart is a hugely better value, at $400 less than I paid for a near identical system (plus better chassis quality).

 

That's too extreme for me. I have it set to balanced in game center and have the slider on the battery meter icon set to the left which is battery saver. It stays low chocked but boosts when it needs to. With that I got five hours in edge streaming Netflix 75% brightness. I know it's some weird software issue as my initial results like I mentioned before was only half that.

 

5 hours is very impressive, considering. Did you test Netflix for 5 hours or was it just the estimate battery life remaining? I also will say I forced the integrated graphics, for what it's worth. I don't think it would utilize a dedicated GPU for browsing, but I wanted to be safe.

 

@Installed64 Thanks a lot for the feedback! It should be noted that, as far as he mentioned in a previous post, @silverwolf0 also used a -125mV underclock on the CPU, which increases battery life. I'd be really grateful if you, at some point, had the time to do a similar test with the CPU undervolted, since I'm currently considering buying this laptop myself (the Recoil II from PCSpecialist, since I live in Romania) (though, I'm kind of considering the 1050Ti version since it's cheaper). These are some tutorials on the topic from @B0B

Address that HOT i7 8750H - this one shows how to use the software Throttlestop to do things like undervolting and other settings
Mech G2 Review! (15.6" little brother of the TONGFANG GK7CN6S) - the link jumps to 15:00 where (after ~15 seconds) he mentions using the above tututorial but setting just one thing differently

 

I may do a more real-time test with the undervolt applied. I have been using it undervolted but I purposefully turned it off for the last test, to keep everything as "stock" as possible.

I have been experimenting with undervolting the GPU now, but I see no performance difference in-game so far... though I have not tried any AAA titles yet.

 

Undervolting doesn't make much difference in battery tests from my experience. I mostly do it for thermals The five hours was just extrapolated from watching a 2hr movie drop my battery by 40%.

 

I freaking HATE battery testing lol. I literally drain these 5-10 times with my yellow stopwatch while doing this and that. It gets really time consuming with big battery machines too.

Some things have very little return on investment regards to battery life. Such as Undervolting and screen frequency.

Big ticket items however include software running as that is the most important. Are you watching YT, Netflix or Adobe rendering. Setting CPU power plan to it's minimum and lower brightness to the lowest tolerable setting. 25-40% for me. FHD is better than UHD too for battery savings. RGB should be OFF but I actually run mine at their minimum brightness if needed.

 

I'm not sure how I got 80w short turbo and 65w turbo when I initially used handbrake. I installed the 1.2.28 game center and I saw no improvement other than some minor OP branding. Fans are still very unpredictable. But now I can only get 65w/45w. Yeah I know you can set those values in xtu or throttlestop but I am just wondering how the 80/65w got there in the first place. Might be the really old version of game center that was on there before I formatted everything. It ran perfectly fine at those high wattages though.

The thermals on here are pretty amazing but the fans don't want to behave with all that headroom. I reinstalled the eluktronics 1.1.16 game center but now the office mode seems to be broken. Have to do further testing .
Just wanted to make it clear that even though I complain about the fan alot, the actual fan noise isn't very loud and I've heard much worse.

 

1809 Windows build! Eluktronics control center doesn’t like it if that’s what you’re on.

I just installed 1809 1hr ago and will test it this weekend along with a few other things before I start the performance video.

 

So the Walmart version of the 17 inch is down to $999 from $1299.

 

That’s absurdly low! If I didn’t hate the OP logo with a passion I would be regretting my Cyberpower Tracer III.

 

Apple stickers solve everything.

 

Can anyone sway me to the 17 over the 15? Trying to choose and it will be used for school.

 

I asked the same thing following Hyperspacegowoo's post too, here are some questions I have:

I'd like to get some pro tip on this too, as I will be using this laptop mainly for photo editing, is the $200 difference between the 15+ ($799) and 17+ ($999) justified going with the 17+?
1. LCD, do we know if the 17+ screen is of the same manufacturer and of comparable quality?
2. COOLING, would the 17+ offer better cooling due to bigger chassis? (15+ seems to have pretty cool cooling already, no pun intended!) But of course better cooling means less noisy fan right, so if under same load, the 17+ runs quieter than the 15+, this is a plus fo sho.
3. BIOS and EC, can 17+ use 15+ BIOS and EC? if not, are there other 17 inch bios and ec out there?

TIA

 

Mine is coming Wednesday. It's lighter than my msi gp73 and I use that for work (I move around a lot).

 

Has anyone found a battery replacement like for the 15 inch?

 

@Hyperspacegowoo So the battery for the 15" does not work for the 17" version?

 

Screen is AUO and same as the asus g703. It's a high end panel. Actually, I think it's the only 17" 144hz panel.

The cooling is better in the 17". More heat pipes. Runs 35c on idle with low fans. I have it turned off completely for light productivity.

You don't have to worry about the BIOS unless there's an outstanding issue...

 

you received your 17+ already?!

could you please confirm if it has one stick of 32GB RAM, or 2x16GB RAM?

this review from tomshardware says their 17+ has room for another stick, at first i read it, i thought the 17+ has 3 ram slots, but someone on slickdeals interpreted that as one stick of 32GB

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/walmart-overpowered-gaming-laptop-17-plus,5555.html

 

I wouldn't trust any of the early reviews from the verge or tomshardware. I don't have the overpowered model. Mine is from cyberpower. However if it's 32gb, it's guaranteed to be two sticks.

Also forgot to mention the 17" has low frequency PWM. Can easily see the flickering on a 30fps recording.

 

If anyone is interested I made a cat infused review

 

Seems temps is a 5 degree difference or sas far as it being the same battery I am unsure.