Razer Blade (2014) Owner's Lounge

Hey everyone my blade should be arriving tomorrow and I was wondering if anyone new how to get improved battery life. Of course when gaming the battery will be horrible but I would like to know how to get much more than the 4 and a half hours that people appear to be getting when im only using the blade for working in word or surfing the web.

 

That's great news! The lack of DisplayPort was pushing me to the Ghost Pro / P35W v2, thinking I couldn't get high res output to an external screen.

 

Games I have installed:
Titanfall: 50gb
Thief (2014): 24.5gb
Elder scrolls online (30.8gb)
Electronci Super joy (negligible gb)

 

Games I have installed:
Titanfall: 50gb
Thief (2014): 24.5gb
Elder scrolls online (30.8gb)
Electronic Super joy (negligible gb)

 

Does anyone else that has the Blade notice their keyboard backlight sometime turn off and then back on every now and then during use? Wonder if it's just me.

 

Has anyone installed a separate SSD into the Razer Blade? I want a large SSD, but I don't want to pay Razer's insane price jump of $500 going from 128GB to 512GB. Any recommendations on a SSD?

 

I just noticed that Windows is smarter than I thought. When you change your power settings to "Power Saving", Windows shuts down dGPU and runs on iGPU automatically. And turns dGPU on when you put it back on "Balanced". Can anyone confirm too? That EASILY gave me 1 hour extra battery life. (Brightness MAX, keyboard light mid, volume at 50)

 

I"ve seen this quiet a few times now.

 

Had this problem a few times. Since disabling the auto-shutoff time feature in Synapse, it has never happened again.

 

That's interesting. I assumed that the computer had Nvidia Optimus technology to do the switching based on what was needed automatically, like last year's model was, is that not the case?

 

In case anyone is looking for a more affordable spare AC adapter for the blade 14, I bought this one and it works well with the Blade 14.

Genuine 19 5V 7 7A 150W AC Power Cord Adapter Charger Asus ADP 150NB D Laptop | eBay

It's an Asus branded 150W - its not tiny like the Razer but its not super gigantic like some I've tried. I use it for my home office where size is irrelevant and keep the tiny one in my computer bag.

N

 

Okay, so does anyone know if I would be able to install games from steam on this thing and run them off of it?
Amazon.com: MyDigitalSSD OTG (On The Go) mSATA Based SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Portable External Solid State Storage Drive SSD (256GB): Computers & Accessories

Thanks.

 

So my Blade came in today and here are a couple of my first impressions.

Its as beautiful as i expected but I noticed a major grip with the laptop after only an hour and a half of use. So far, I have downloaded a couple programs including steam and chrome and am currently downloading Fallout New Vegas. However, the laptop is VERY hot right now pretty much throughout the entire device. The top area below the screen is too hot to even touch and the area where my palms rest is very hot as well. Interestingly the fans are completely inaudible unless I hold them right next to my ear where I can here them just a little as I wanted to make sure that they were even on. Has anyone else experienced this heat issue? Also any ideas on how to remedy this by possible making the fans put in more work? I understand that it should get hot when playing games but I never thought just downloading a game would make it extremely hot to the touch.

 

If I had to guess something has your 870m turned on. Could be steam. That area should not be hot while just in windows and not gaming unless you're running some other program on purpose that uses the 870m GPU.

 

Are you sure you don't notice the fans sound while playing intensive games? Because mine gets hot, but not that hot and my fans are really loud while playing Battlefield 4 everything on ultra @ 1080p. Temps are around 85-88.

Also depends on the temperature of the room. The cooler air that RB sucks in, the less hot the laptop might be.

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

 

Is there a way to check what programs are using the GPU and make it instead use the integrated graphics? Its very odd how hot it is particular below the keyboard. Also how can I check the internal temps inside of the machine?

 

There is an indicator you can have on the task bar, usually in the hidden area with most of the other icons. I can't remember if its enabled by default, if not you can go to the NVidia control panel, and up in the menus at the very top there is one that has "enable GPU activity icon on taskbar" or something similar to that.

If a program is using the 870m GPU the icon will be green and red colored in, and you can click on it and see what is using it. If it's grey, nothing is using it.

There are lots of ways to check temps, but personally I use the portable (no install needed) version of HWInfo64 (you can google that to find it).

 

That should work fine. I went a similar route with a Samsung 840 EVO and Kingwin enclosure because I wanted to make sure I was getting a quality SSD. While it's not quite as fast as the Blade's internal SSD, it is plenty fast. See benchmarks below.

 

That is definitely not normal. Under "Control Panel: Power Options: Change plan settings: Change advanced power settings: Processor power management: System cooling policy," if it is set to passive, changing it to active may help. Regardless, there is no reason your laptop should be that hot. I've played Metro: LL for 2-3 hours and the palm rest area was never hot to the touch.

 

That's great news, I've added those to my wishlist in case my external HD idea annoys me with load times. You should write a super quick review on that Kingwin device, there is only one review now and he says it is slow. I wonder if that reviewer is getting MB/s mixed up with Mb/s.

 

I loaded steam and noticed that it was set to use the nvidia gpu by default so you will need to set it to use the internal gpu via the nvidia control panel. A bit silly to use the nvidia gpu for the steam client by default, it's going to cause a lot of drained batteries I would think.

 

I fired up Diablo III ROS at 3200x1800 last night and didn't notice that I had Firefox and Opera open. After exiting D3 I was greeted by a lovely Windows message informing me that there was no RAM left and that it would soon shut down programs to free up RAM.

Also, perhaps it is a reporting error...but Task Manager reports only half of the RAM slots are populated?!

 

That's strange. Mine is set to "auto-select" by default, and the system correctly runs on the iGPU when I open Steam.

 

So, HIDEvolution finally got back to me:

"We received more Razer Blades this week. We removed the motherboard and there is no 2nd SSD slot as suspected. The PCIe SSD (Samsung XP904) did fit physically but was not detected by the system."

So, there is definitely no second slot. As for PCIe, I'd say we can close the file on that one. I know, I know, Samsung XP904 is not bootable. But I don't really know where to go from there.

 

I measured the contrast ratio of the screen to be 390:1. Not that great... If you want your display to have more of a color pop like the MBP, you can up your Saturation by 20 points or so in Intel HD Graphics Control Panel.

 

If you don't mind crushing your contrast ratio further, you can lower your Gamma, brightness and contrast to drastically improve your viewing angles. Might be worth investigating to see if there's a sweet spot in the settings.

 

Hey all. Got this email from Razer when I was inquiring about my mouse coupon. Hope everything works out and Razer's offices and staff are ok:

Hello,

The Razer office in Carlsbad , California has been affected by the recent brush fires in the area.
All Razer staff was forced to evacuate our office and at this time we do not know when we will be able to return to the office.

We anticipate this problem to be short lived and hope to be back in our office very soon.
The good news is all Razer Staff and others in the area appear to be safe and out of harm’s way.

Due to this evacuation our reply to your email will be delayed.
Our staff will work remotely whenever possible and we will do all we can to quickly get back to your inquiry.

Thanks for your patience and understanding in this matter.

Best regards,
The Razer Support Team.

 

I've gotten this "low memory" message many time too, it appears to be a Windows 8 bug (although I'm pretty sure I've seen it on Win 7 systems too). You can google it and find many others having the same problem, and the only solution is to find ways to turn of the message. I've have this on 16GB systems too just running a single game that's using 1-2GB, it's really annoying and can't believe they haven't fixed it yet.

 

Really? You get it that often? The only times I've ever received such 'low memory' messages is when I jack up X-Plane 10's rendering settings to near maximum and it lags to 10 FPS. Otherwise, I've never ever seen such a message, either on Win7 or 8.

Sent from my One M8 using Tapatalk

 

Got the same email today, while I was inquiring for my defective mouse exchange.

 

I'm a wallpaper collector, and try to keep an organized set of all the wallpapers I've ever used or received on any computers I've ever owned. I've got all the wallpapers from every version of Windows starting with Windows 3.0, and every version of OSX from 10.0.

Having said that, I noticed that Razer included a honeycomb-type wallpaper as the default for this new machine. I'm kind of a fan of minimalistic wallpapers, but I think the pattern on the one Razer shipped is too large. I was fooling around on their website, and noticed that their css used a similar wallpaper with a much smaller pattern. It looks great when set as a tiled background on my new Razer. Here is the url to razer's background jpeg:

http://www.razerzone.com//images/common/honeycomb-bg.jpg

I also have noticed that, on the Razer, I am tending towards green-themed wallpapers, since the keyboard backlight has such a pronounced green color. I edited my copy of the linked graphic above to have a pleasant green tint. Here is a link to that version:

http://i.imgur.com/yGnc32p.png

This one looks nice on Windows 8.1 if you change the "windows border and taskbar" color in the "Color and Appearance" selector to the green color on the second row, instead of using the "Automatic" color choice.

 

Got my Blade yesterday and it looks amazing loaded up Bioshock 2 on ULTRA and it was beutiful to look at and ran perfect only thing I'm a little worried about are the high CPU temps that were in the low 90's and the fans were much louder than I thought they would be.

 

Just a thought on resolution. I set my desktop to 1920x1080 and in some games like fallout new vegas, it can still change to native. Thats pretty neat, keeps my desktop and browser easier to see lol, and I still get the higher res benefit in games that can handle it.

The screen at 1920x1080 looks great, no jagged anything or problems.

 

Although I wish you could choose 2560x1440 (or whatever the standard 16:9 ratio resolution is near that) I sometimes pick the 2048x1152 (again I don't have the exact number but that's close) since it's higher than 1080 (barely) and will basically have almost the same frame rates at 1080. Neither are native or an even multiple of native so they should look any worse or better than each other in that respect.

 

For those wanting to boot Ubuntu, Gparted and other legacy(non-UEFI) operating systems from USB, you need to follow these steps:

-Boot into UEFI bios
-Under security tab open secure boot menu
-disable secure boot
-Save and exit
-restart back into UEFI bios
-Check the Boot tab. CSM Parameters should now be at the bottom. Go there.
-Change Launch CSM to enabled
-Change Boot Option Filter to UEFI and Legacy
-Change Launch Video opROM policy to Legacy.

You should now be able to boot any legacy USB drives. If you plan to hackintosh, you'll probably have to do this. Your computer will still boot like normal, except the startup graphic will be low res and secure boot will be off(I personally disable this on all my computers but you might feel differently on what's right). The last option changes the graphic to low res and there is no way around it that I could find so far. Most can probably just do all this only when they need to and then change it back when they are done.

 

I can't figure out why 2560x1440 isn't on the list. I tried to add a custom resolution through Intel and it says that res exceeds my bandwidth. Even at 30Hz? Makes no sense. I haven't tried CRU yet - not even sure if CRU works with Optimus.

 

Have any of you noticed that under heavy gaming load (Say D3 at resolutions 1080 or above) that when looking down (with hands on) at the keyboard the left fan underneath runs louder than the right fan? If I put my ear about 3-4 inches from the left fan it has a noticeable 'purr' noise, while the right fan (seemingly spinning at the same speed?) sounds whisper quiet. I have had a prior laptop with two fans eventually have one fan totally die, and it started with this kind of 'purr' noise. Do I have a clunky fan?

 

I have the same thing. Maybe because the GPU needs more cooling than the CPU?

Sent from my HTC One using Tapatalk

 

Got mine today! I've had the '13 version, and playing my game (Final Fantasy XIV: ARR) the system gets significantly hotter @1800p then the '13 version at the same settings I've clocked 100s of hours on. Nothing to get worried about, but you may be able to cook bacon near the power button after a good 3+ hrs of MMO'n. The visual improvement from 900p to 1800p is simply amazing!

If another FFXIVer finds this post, you'll need to change UI settings to 140% (max) and chat log to 20 font (max again). Looks damn great @1800p then!!!

 

I'll give Razer tech support some credit - they sure are quick to answer questions. They said 2560x1440 should be in the next update and to keep an eye out for it.

 

Just ordered a 512 GB from Microsoft store. Free overnight shipping and i got like 200 bucks off with student savings. Thank You Microsoft!!!!

 

Would do the same thing - but will be studying in Europe next year and with Microsoft when you leave the country it voids the warranty - which is stupid. Razer said that I would have to ship it on my own to their HQ in Germany and then they would ship it here and back to me. The trouble of international students

 

FFXIV:ARR is my choice of game and I really want to play it on this laptop.

My only concern is the heat on the machine. Can you give me a little insight on it? Does the bottom of the laptop or keys get hot? Or just the area above the keyboard? Thanks a lot for input. Really glad to find a FFXIV player. I'm on Behemoth btw.

 

Hey! Someone did show up =)
I've clocked 100's of hours on the '13 blade. She gets hot yes, but it stabilizes, meaning it does not just keep getting hotter and hotter each hour.
Just got the '14 yesterday and only ran one expert roulette so far. Heat wise, it's similar to the '13 model, but a bit warmer in the hot spot above keyboard. The keyboard itself, or anywhere else really, does not get that hot, even after hours on hours on hours of atma grinding^^

There's nothing to worry about playing FFXIV. You'll want a laptop stand of some type if you're going to play on your lap. It gets warm enough to be annoying. I don't recommend anything with a fan, that just blows dust around. A simple flat surface mat will be more than enough.

 

Other games may make it hotter. I played Diablo III ROS on a full battery charge until it died and man it got really hot. Soo hot that you could not comfortably rest your wrists on the front. You could seriously fry an egg on the top portion near the power button. They keys on the keyboard were hottest near the power button and cooler toward the space bar, but even there they were noticeably hot. I was not using a laptop cooler, just the laptop directly on a steel table. I was playing at 1080 on high settings.

Long story short, if you plan to game on this thing for an extended period of time and you have the space and means...hook up a keyboard and a mouse. It sounds to be not terribly different from Apple's solid aluminum body under heavy loads.

 

Anyone else finding what we are finding? I was concerned that perhaps I have a bunk fan and was going to exchange.

 

It's been my experience with the blade the bottleneck is not its processing power, but how hot parts of the case get. I've found that after many hours of gaming if it's too much, lower your settings a bit. I personally lock the FPS to 40 at times.

With my new '14 model, it's QHD or NOTHING, so I gladly sacrifice AA, AF, etc.

 

When you say QHD do you mean full res or are you able to get 1440p somehow?

 

Sorry, you're right. I mean 1800p, native res. you can get it to display w/e you want though.
I'm at work right now, posting from an iphone (nice new mobile layout btw) but it's something like:
Right click desktop -> screen resolution
Click Advanced settings
Ensure the Adapter tab is selected -> List All Modes.

Anyone /w their blade see 2560x1440 in there?

 

It is not in there, that is the "middle" resolution I was hoping to use a lot. Easier to run than 1800p but still higher than 1440. I only have a single 16:9 resolution between the two, and its something like 2048x1152.