TONGFANG GK7CN6S / GK7CP0S / GK7CP7S

Why you want to flash it? Yes 2070 doesn't have GPU boost since the TDP is adequate for high clocks

 

because you can't easily get bios and ec firmware from illegear but for xmg, it's readily available on their website. and also for reasons like some brand updates their bios more often than other brands etc.

 

You can PM their staff for those files

 

I have a non rebranded Tongfang (GK7CP7S) without GPU boost, the boot logo of the bios is the standard one.
I have the bios and EC of XMG but I doubting if I would install it. Can I break something? That the boot logo becomes that of XMG is not that important for me. I want to see if the keyboard misregistration is fixed (not registering some inputs if you type fast).

 

I update my bios from OP site but it updated it to some 0.08 american megatrends version Can somebody guide me to the latest BIOS for Overpowered 17

I don't know if this will help but I have a similar issue in games where WASD keys use to stop registering when playing games for that, I reduced the repeat delay time from the registry and its fine now

 

They don't stop, but I miss letters in my sentence.

 

i think this is common issue for this laptop mechanical keyboard? i've tried one in a showroom and i missed letters too when i typed a bit faster

 

I've been looking for a new gaming laptop after having to get a full refund on my Alienware R4 which had several MoB replacements over 1.5 years. After owning one Clevo and two Alienwares I've reached the conclusion that for laptop longevity that decent thermals are essential, which seems to be getting harder to accomplish since Intel insist on putting increasingly hotter CPUs in gaming laptops (unnecessarily imo as most games don't need that extra CPU power or 6 cores).

Alienware despite its other good qualities just doesn't have decent cooling, or Dell just doesn't know how to design them (including their G5 and G7 series). I would be interested in Clevos again but I had numerous build issues including the hinges literally crumbling away, audio jack housing also cracked and crumbed, and I had to replace the LCD cable and eventually the LCD display itself. Clevos have been known for build quality, so I found this an unpleasant surprise. However that was a number of years ago now. Currently I don't really like any of their current offers (especially the ones which still have the same hinge design or are relatively heavy).

So after some research I settled on the Lenovo y740, but for some reason I can't fathom nor any reps I've contacted, the whole new Legion series has barely been on the UK Lenovo website since they came out around March. When they do appear you would literally get 1 or 2 configurations at the top end that could not be altered unlike the US site, which has 6-8 configurable options.

After more research I found the Tongfang chassis in particular the 17" GK7CP7S. I think this may be the one.

I have several questions after reading all the excellent feedback in this thread and looking at several Youtube reviews. I'd appreciate it anyone could answer the following questions:

(1) Is the PWM flicker really noticeable to the user?

I always thought this only showed up if you took took video or pictures of a display.

(2) Is the screen type glossy or matt?

Some reviews have said it isn't great in sunlight, but not sure why that is. This isn't a big one for me, but in some specific situations it could be annoying.

(3) A lot has been said on poor speaker quality (even for laptops), to do with how low the max volume is. Is it as bad as some Youtuber reviewers say?

(4) I'm a bit torn between the RTX 2060 and RTX 2070. Both seem very good and can play the best titles at high FPS.Is the 2070 increase in FPS over the 2060 worth (I'm guessing) the higher temps if you want to keep the thermals in check?

(5) The trackpad looks quite far to the left, more than normal. Is it awkward using keyboard and track pad when gaming?

Therefore does your left hand overlap with the touchpad too much.

Thanks for any help given.

 

First of all, I don't own this machine, but I've reviewed it and tried several times.

1. It depends on which panel you get. The BOE panel is more common from what I've seen so far. It has PWM but I couldn't feel any eye strain using it
2. Matte
3. Just need some tuning via Sound Blaster software. Though post-tuned audio is nothing special so don't expect superior audio (use headphones)
4. It can 2070 well. Runs even cooler with 2060
5. Who uses trackpad while gaming lol. It doesn't affect typing of course, however using the trackpad in cases like web browsing could be a bit awkward especially for right hand. No idea why they don't shift the touchpad slightly to right since you can disable touchpad if you need to use the keyboard

 

Cheers, really helpful

I think the 2060 would be enough for me, but the enthusiast in me wants the 2070.

Lol, I've been gaming with laptop trackpads for a long time. So used to it now, but have been thinking of making a switch to try it out.

 

The 2060 should perform ahead of every 2060 laptops out there without GPU Boost

 

But a 2060 with GPU boost consumes the same as the 2070, so heat and noise are the same, no?
I have the 2070, but downtuned to now 105W. It runs cool and quiet.

 

Haven't tested this side by side so can't tell

 

I recently owned a GK7CP7S illegear Selenite variant. The specs are in my SIG. Here are my comments about the laptop.

1. RTX in general is extremely power limited. Basically the 2070 in my laptop is constantly hitting 115W power limit. You can forget about high overclocking headroom like in pascal. Getting 100MHz+- on the GPU core is pretty much what you can do. playing with frequency voltage curve is also pretty much useless for overclock. GPU operates at around 1650MHz @ 0.85V +- when it hits the 115W under heavy gaming load. There's no GPU boost for 2070 so i'm pretty much stuck at 115W. Is it true that eluktronics 2070 has GPU boost that can boost the 2070 to 125W?

2. The speakers on the laptop will randomly have popping and crackling sound. I have tried several driver revisions and non of them works perfectly. I'm not sure if other rebrands suffer the same issue but apparently many selenite owners experienced the same. The sound issue happened to both out of the box and updated drivers. The only way to get rid of it is to remove realtek driver and use windows built in driver but soundblaster cinema will not work that way. Also, the speaker sound quality is just quite poor even for laptop standard.

3. the latest BIOS for selenite has limited CPU undervolt to -50mV max. I was told this is Tong Fang's direction, but either way -50mV is way too little and will hit CPU thermal throttling if you push it hard enough. The only way is to depend on software undervolt again.

4. Ports selection sucks. No USB C 3.1 Gen 2, no thunderbolt and one USB 2. Why even bother with USB 2?

5. Battery is tiny and even with optimus expect poor battery life. There is a larger battery but you need to sacrifice 2.5" storage space.

Now the good stuff

1. The cooling on this laptop is quite good. My 115W RTX 2070 has never seen thermal throttle limit. Under benchmark the GPU temperature is under 80C, which is way below the 87C thermal throttle limit. GPU is considered plenty fast for 2070 standard. firestrike GPU score 21k on stock clocks. 22k on overclock.

2. Display is quite good. Good brightness, high refresh, IPS with good color accuracy. I have the CMN175D panel which apparently supports G-Sync but the laptop is not G-Sync capable. sad...

3. Did i mention it has a small footprint? yes, i'm still trying to get used to it. i kept thinking this is a 15" laptop coming from a huge alienware. Build quality, it's not alienware standard, not even close, but it's ok. reasonable. display wobble is very apparent, cheap plastic material all over the body. fit and finish is good though. nothing much to complain about at this price point.

4. Lots of storage options. 2 NVME SSD, 1 2.5" 7mm HDD/SSD SATA. Even has a built in "heatsink" for the nvme storage though not very effective. Better than nothing.

Overall, really happy with the laptop at this price point.

 

I also had a Alienware 15R3 in the past and that build quality is excellent. Nothing compared to TongFang.
I have the same as @alexnvidia , but the standard ODM version.

I can agree on all his points, only I have an AUO screen.
I'm happy with the laptop, price/prestation/quality it is very good. Only I have locked my GPU frequency to 1440MHz which is max boost according spec.
Standard it will boost to 1950MHz but drops when heavily used anyway.

 

To be honest, the laptop gpu runs soooo cool i would refer it to run as fast as possible. also the noise level is not too bad to begin with, it's no where near the max fans volume. what's your BIOS version? how low can you undervolt?

 

I haven't thermal paste on my CPU/GPU but Graphit pads. Maybe that is different. Bu currently, both stays under 70 degrees with almost no sound. CPU is limited till 3.2GHz with -100mV undervolt, GPU is limited till 1440MHz.

My bios:
EC 2.04.09
N. 1.53

I think standard is also -50mV on the CPU in the BIOS.

 

Will be getting a 2060 Selenite when it comes back in stock at the end of the year. I'll be coming from an Aorus X7v6 that somehow managed to not go through QC at Gigabyte.

1) I've been talking to one of their reps and they said that the speaker issue has been fixed as of my chat with them this morning. No way to confirm that now apart from asking owners on the lowyat forum.

2) It seems that there is a panel lottery. I would assume there is no way to guarentee a CMN panel rather than the other one? It seems that the CMN panel has a much higher PWM frequency when compared to the BOE one.

3) Have there been any issues with the keyboard? I've heard of some people getting misclicks and keycap wobble. This is a major point of concern for me as my last laptop had several messed up keys and Gigabyte's local support was absolute trash. Never replied to my emails about getting replacement parts

4) Is the screen build quality okay? Hinges can be tightened and i'm concerned about the bezel popping out as it did on my X7...

 

1. i can assure u the sound issue is still there and i only received my laptop last week. this issue was already there out of the box.

2. i was expecting BOE panel but end up getting CMN which is an upgrade.

3. keyboard is not exactly great for a mechanical keyboard. needs a bit of getting use to. quite noisy also

4. the hinge is not really high quality also and there's quite a bit of screen wobble. but on the upside, u can open the lid with one hand. the inner frame i believe is magnesium allow and the hinge is secured tightly to the chasis. dont think it will pop out anytime soon. there's nothing you can do about the screen wobble.

hope this helps

 

Thanks a ton for your input. In this case, the Rogue seems to be the better choice. Also comes with a 2060 albeit with no boost. And no mechanical keyboard to deal with.

What do you think? I haven't gotten my invoice from them yet so i can still make changes

 

I would still go for Selenite. The GPU boost for their 2060 is able to slightly beat a 2070 Max Q which is very impressive. the mechanical keyboard is alright, it's by no means a turn off factor.

 

Not too concerned about that gpu boost as it'll mostly be used for some light to moderate games when on the go. Also where im at in Australia, Aftershock pc sells the Apex 17 lite which is basically the same as the Rogue with less options available. So there is a chance i can get spare parts if needed.

I'm also a bit concerned about the durability of the keyboard and possibly how loud it is. I'll be taking it out to do work most of the time. Is it much louder than a standard laptop one or just annoying to some people?

 

The keyboard of the TongFang is a tad louder then that of my Dell ultrabook from work, but not annoying. It is pretty silent, the first versions had louder blue switches, but now they have the brown ones.

 

1. Undervolting is the only option since 16/20 series mobile GPUs are quite power limited. There's no GPU boost for the 2070 model.
2. Seems like an issue with Windows 1903
3. Instability might happen, even though it doesn't do much. Clevo did the same fyi
4. The soft plastic doesn't feel 'cheap' to me, although you might not agree with me

1. There is always panel lottery
2. Build quality is ok, hinge tuning depends on some luck I would say - from my testing the hinges in Selenite are alright. Wouldn't say it's low quality

Selenite has slightly better build quality. From what I know Aftershock doesn't offer GPU boost feature but I'm not 100% sure. I prefer the membrane kb more

Well it's a ordinary membrane keyboard - technically mech kb does have higher durability. Need to get used to the brown switch keyboard though if you prefer mech kb. I wouldn't say it's loud tbh

 

I noticed the CPU thermal throttling point for BIOS N1.53 is not very high. It's around 92C? even with a 115mV undervolt you can hit 92C also with enough time.

 

I've just asked Illegear about this. Was asking about my invoice when i saw your question so i thought i'd ask them

 

thanks to intel out of date and obsolete 14nm process, 92C on a 9750H is easy to reach. even 99C is common for intel cpu in laptops these days.

What did illegear said about this?

 

This is taken directly from their reply to my email:

"Since we have improved our cooling system and performance of all of our laptops and hence the throttle point of the CPU and GPU will be around 91 to 93 degree. However, it only occur when there is full load [100% utilization of both CPU and GPU]. And also, don’t worry on that issue as quite rare that customer will feedback this issue to us once we have improved our laptop’s cooling system."

 

I made a remarkable discovery recently while playing with Intel XTU on my Selenite 9750H. While the multiplier cannot be controlled, I found out that power limit PL1 and PL2 in the BIOS can be "overwritten" by XTU. i can simply set 100W for both and the power increase is reflected in HWinfo. and this setting is fixed until the next restart when the BIOS tried to overwrite the power limit back to PL1 70W PL2 85W. as soon as your laptop boots up with hw info loaded, you can actually see it was 100W for PL1 & PL2 just before the BIOS overwrite the power limit back to what it should be. Even so, using XTU you can overwrite it again.

Also, the undervolt you set in XTU also overwrite the laptop's BIOS undervolt and this setting is also permanent regardless of how long you power off, what you set in BIOS or you uninstall XTU.

I noticed that this laptop does not wake up from sleep automatically when you open the laptop lid. It does however go to sleep properly when you close the lid, but doesn't wake up when u open it. you have to press the power button in order to wake it up. can someone please check if this is a normal behavior on your laptop? Thanks

 

I usually limit CPU and GPU performance and only reach 70 degrees celcius on both.
when running standard (-50mV), I reach 80-85 degrees on both CPU and GPU whlie playing Far Cry 5.
I have graphite pads on CPU and GPU, liquid metal or a very good thermal paste could be even better.

All in all very good temps for a laptop.

 

85C on the GPU is getting pretty close to the thermal throttle limit (87C). Also graphite pad doesn’t work well on laptop at all due to mounting pressure, you should see significantly better results with a good paste or LM.

 

I believe this is with fans locked on low settings. I have to retest again to be sure.
I'm just not using it enough...

 

the real issue with this laptop is the cooling performance of the CPU. under gaming load, the GPU will stay cool at under 80C, typically around 76-78C. The CPU however will thermal throttle at around 93C and during gaming load it's easy to hit this temperature. The GPU will never reach 87C, not even close based on what i'm experiencing and i never limit the GPU power or speed. If anything the GPU 115W is the limiting factor. They should have added GPU boost for 2070 too. This laptop can handle the GPU heat easily. It's the CPU temperature that's highly problematic but that's to be expected given the rubbish 14nm intel cpu are manufactured in.

 

Unfortunately it seems that Intel just ditched any node smaller than 14nm. They're gonna be on this process for quite a while longer it seems.

Hope my 2060 Selenite doesn't get too hot. Kryonaut is already the one of the better pastes easily accessible in Malaysia. If core differentials are too much then i'll have to order something thicker like Phobya Nanogrease Extreme. LM voids Illegear's warranty as well sadly

 

I never saw temperatures higher than 90 degrees on CPU...
With an undervolt of -100mV, temperatures stay around 80 degrees, limiting speed to 3.2-3.4GHz and the CPU is not getting hot at all.
Keep in mind that every MHz above the rated spec (Which is 2.6GHz) is an extra. The CPU doesn't need to be capable of running on 4.0GHz. It can but only if heat dissipation and power limit can handle this.

This laptop is quite good at cooling, there is no cheaper option that performs better in this. Otherwise a small desktop is a better option.

 

7nm Intel is apprently coming late 2021 / 2022 but we all know how Intel is with deadlines...

 

I've put everything standard, except the CPU is -100mV undervolted (setting in bios).
I played ghost recon: wildlands and noted these values:
- CPU pulls around 45-50W with amax of 60W, CPU temp around 80-82 degrees celcius with 87 as a max (also hottest core measured is 87)
- GPU pulls up to 120W, Max temp 82 degrees celcius.

I think these are pretty good values for a CPU and GPU with graphite pads.
When Iuse my regular settings (limit CPU till 3.2GHz and GPU till 1440MHz) I reached just 70 degrees on CPU/GPU and the laptop is almost silent without notabele FPS loss.

 

can u go lower than -100mV undervolt for your 9750h cpu and what's your lowest?

 

In the bios? I can go till -500mV there.

 

no. what i meant was what's your lowest stable undervolt? in bios i can only go -50mV. but i can use throttlestop to undervolt further to -120mV before my CPU gets unstable.

 

The same, -120mV. Otherwise I get random crashes. So I leave it at -100mV.

 

I found just limiting the boost on mine with the 8750h worked great, I limited it to 3.6 boost and -.50mv never goes above 85 now even playing civ 6

 

I do the same, i limit even on 3.2GHz.
On CPU intensive games, the fps drops a bit, but I don’t care. I love the laptop being near silent .

 

i agree with all your findings. i had to "frequency throttle" my 9750H manually to 3.7GHz on a -119mV undervolt during gaming to ensure the CPU stay under 86C. This is really dumb considering 2019 9th gen intel cpu is supposed to be the latest and greatest we had to slow it down to 2015 speed in order to contain it. Thanks intel.

 

Bwa, 2 extra cores and more cache. So there is still a speed bump.
But that the end for 14Nm is there is clear.

 

I didn't do anything on software side on my tongfang, but my keyboard starts typing better and better.
I don't know why, maybe because Iuse it more and get used to it.

I can type quite fast without missing letters .

 

Most people need time to get used to a new keyboard. Especially on laptops. I remember it took me a couple of months to start typing at a decent speed when i first got my X7. The macro keys on the side and the extra space between the keys threw me off coming from a standard desktop mech keybaord and my older clevo laptop.

Hopefully once i get my unit in, i wont type as loudly as i do on my main setup

 

Had the Tongfang GK7CP7S 17" with RTX 2070 +I7-9750H for almost 2 weeks now. It's a great machine, so light compared to my previous 8lb+ Alienware.

The only weird thing I've noticed is when playing one game in particular it starts drawing some power from the battery while plugged into the mains which indicates that it is not getting enough power which makes no sense since it has a 230W power brick which should be plenty for the RTX 2070. The game appears to be primarily using the GPU up to 95% and isn't one of the most demanding games out there. The GPU and CPU has not been overclocked. Any idea what is going on?

 

I would wonder if the power brick is not keeping up when the video card starts pulling a high load.

I would try first hook up a watt meter in-line between the wall jack and the power brick, then load up that particular game and see if the current draw climbs or if it stays steady. It should climb. If not, then there is your battery drain. The brick may be faulty.

 

I'm not 100% able to confirm this is true but based on the following the photos (source NOTEBOOKCHECK reviews), here is the 17" old gen chassis with the small 3 cell battery, https://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/_processed_/2/1/csm_neo17_24_fa6f5598f5.jpg Now here's the next gen 15" TF chassic https://www.notebookcheck.net/filea...MG_Fusion_15_XFU15L19/SchenkerFusion15_19.jpg

The next 15" gen is at 20mm as thickest point, the 17" is at 27.5mm. Battery connector is the same, save 14.4V.
New possible upgrade? Maybe...