Razer Blade (2014) Owner's Lounge

I just got mine from the Microsoft Store 2 days ago, and I didn't notice any tampering. I even opened the box in the store to look over the laptop in case I wasn't happy with it. I couldn't be happier with the purchase. I just hope it holds up over time. The heat it generates while gaming is rediculous. I have a newfound respect for the cooling design of the M17x R3 it replaces.

 

Thanks. Can you check your seals and compare with the image in my post?

 

Haha.. The m17 isn't even in the ballpark I would hope a 9+ lb monster could find a way to push air and have a ridiculous heat sink. I still have a 9lb Samsung gamer 7 with a 100w 675M and a 47w CPU and it was extremely quiet and cool, just way too big and heavy. I'm much happier with the Blade. Of course that's just me I would imagine there's a ton of people that would disagree with that opinion and have their own.

 

I have mine on a laptop cooler and it doesn't get nearly as hot while gaming as it does flush on the desk.

Also I have been using it on battery on the couch and bed on power saver mode and it does not get hot at all...hwmonitor reads 30-36 degrees Celsius on all 4 cores. I have achieved 6+ hours of battery life while web browsing, checking email, etc.

 

Hey, what settings?, in power saver, cpu limited to 60% and gpu, wifi, etc set to max power save, min brightness, batterylife is like 4.5-5 hours for me, thanks.

 

@jashu I already tossed the box so I couldn't tell you...sorry

 

I just have it in power saver in windows. i never messed with it. i have the latest nvidia drivers and intel drivers installed. min brightness, etc.

 

I tested two I got from ebay, same specs, temps when working with heavy rendering or gaming in 1920 x 1080p, is too high, 95c, and I have a huge cooler running. When browsing in google chrome canary, it fluectuates from 40 to 50c. This laptops cant last that long if the temps are that high.

 

ya i was thinking of just getting the squaretrade warranty. if it fails within 2 years I will at least get the 1200$ i paid for it back.

 

do you guys find the 14 screen too small for gaming, as opposed to the razer blade pro?

 

Razer Blade 2014 review after two months of use.

 

For those who report varying degrees of battery life: I think I found the culprit. Google Chrome eats up a lot more power than you think. However, Google announced that they are going to fix the "bug" recently (6 days ago), and hopefully should extend the battery life of the blade for users who use chrome.

Source: Google will fix the battery-eating 'bug' in its Chrome browser | ZDNet

 

I still have a Samsung Gamer 7 with a FANTASTIC 17" panel that I wiped to factory and it's sitting in a drawer. I do not miss than panel.

Maybe once in a GREAT while when something just doesn't play nice at all with HiDPI, but it's somewhat rare.

 

i am just concerned everything will be so small on a 14 inch, like compared to a 17 inch. Especially playing WoW which has a ton of stuff on the screen that you need to see. Makes me want the razer blade pro

 

just installed my skin for the blade. no more finger prints and looks pretty sleek. just a PIA to put on near perfectly. worth the 30$ imho.

 

Mind posting a pic or two? I feel like it'll look a little weird since the keyboard isn't covered. What is the material of the skin?

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

I think the laptop looks a lot cleaner with the skins on. No more fingerprints and it has a really nice premium textured feel to it.

 

That's the one I chose, lol. I like the metallic look rather than plain black. If you have greasy hand like mine, it will show grease marks on the left of mouse due to my left hand.

 

ya im very happy with it. I removed the one from around the screen and trashed it.

 

Well I was ready and all to repaste when I find out that razer uses torx screws... And I don't seem to own a torx screwdriver . Anyone know what size the screws are? Some google searches have said they are t5 but wanna make sure...

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Yep, it's a T5.

 

Is it true that the majority of the razer blade defects people are experiencing are from the 512gb versions made in May? Cause I have a 512gb version and I checked my Bios and my laptop was manufactured in May and now I'm worried I've owned it for a little over a month now and I haven't noticed any major issues. I don't use my laptop all the time but still haven't encountered any issues.

 

ive had mine for a while. my panel has a single dead pixel and that is the only problem with the whole unit.

 

Has anyone actually replaced the SSD in their blade yet? Thinking of going from 256 to 512

 

I have. Replaced with crucial m550 512gb.

 

That's exactly what I am thinking of doing. If I may ask, any issues post upgrade? I've never seen the inside of this thing, how hard is it to get to the SSD, and are any special tools required?

 

No issues at all post upgrade. It's quite easy to get to the SSD. You need a Torx T5 screwdriver to open the bottom case, and a Philips size 1 screwdriver to remove the old SSD. And also you need to disconnect a cable located above the SSD before you can get to the SSD. There's a black plastic lever/latch that you have to lift.

 

Can you link to the exact SSD? It must be m.2 PCIe so m.2 SATA doesnt work? Aren't there multiple lengths of this format? What are the choices for SSD drives?

 

I thought it had to be M.2 Sata. Crucial.com says this one works: Crucial M550 512GB mSATA Internal SSD | Crucial USA

 

Anyone else noticing speaker distortion on high volumes on the right speaker, it's pissing me off that a $2400 laptop would do this... I don't expect perfect sound but there should at least be no popping or crackling noises

 

Would this work as well?

Amazon.com: Transcend 512 GB SATA III 6Gb/s MTS600 60 mm M.2 SSD (Up to 560MB/s read and 310MB/s write) TS512GMTS600: Computers & Accessories

 

I have both a crucial and transcend SSD. The transcend had issues at one point I'd trust crucial more in my nonscientific study.

 

Ah but the transcend is so much cheaper.

If I wait a year, I bet I could get 1 512GB m.2 SATA for $150. What do ya think?

 

You need to get an M.2-2280 SSD (80 mm long) for the 2014 Blade. That Transcend will not work because it is 60 mm long. AFAIK only Crucial is available with 80 mm now.

This will work:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00ITFZTHC?pc_redir=1406610850&robot_redir=1

 

Why wouldn't something shorter work?

 

Because the screw's position is different. The 60 mm cannot be fastened in the Blade I think.

 

I bought the 512.. I'm waiting a while to see how 1TB prices.. That'll be a while till I need that..

 

Just returned and bought another blade, and this one doesnt have the speaker distortion issues. However, this one has the heat pipe ticking noise... Razer seriously needs to do something about their qc.

Edit: After another day of use the speaker distortion has come back, this time on BOTH speakers. Fan ticking noise still present, and made worse when the laptop is tilted at different angles. There also now seems to be some sort of electrical bios beeping sound coming from under the keyboard. Maybe the entire microsoft store batch is messed up or something, but definitely not going to rebuy the blade.

 

Has the adaptive display brightness stopped working for anyone? I could've sworn it was working when I first got the laptop, and now I'm wondering if the last Intel driver update via windows update or the last Nvidia driver update has broken it.

 

There is an 80mm one: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00KLTPUYG

 

What issues if you don't mind me asking?

 

Some "sectors" went bad, windows started crashing, so I bought an m4 to replace it. Been a little while. I reformatted it and it's fine, just those few are marked bad now, it's in my MacBook 2011 working fine. (SSD720)

 

My 512 gb razer blade recently started encountering a few issues since slightly undervolting the cpu with intel xtu. After undervolting the cpu by about 50mv and running a successful 20 minute stress test, my laptop has begun randomly shutting down and has even blue screened a few times over the last week. This issue seems to persist even after returning to a default voltage though the laptop doesn't blue screen enough for the problem to be a major inconvenience. Additionally, right after I undervolted the cpu, razer synapse started malfunctioning with the laptop keyboard constantly returning to max brightness no matter how many times I changed the settings. Any input on how to fix these issues would be greatly appreciated.

 

How would you go about installing a new SSD, after installing it how can you copy the contents of the old one to it and how do you reinstall windows?

thanks!

 

I would get M.2 to USB cable and clone it then install the new one.

 

You can also request an official USB recovery key from Razer (there is a thread in this forum on how to do that) or you can create a recovery drive off the recovery partition that ships with the blade. In Windows 8.1 search, type Recovery and look for the "Create a Recovery Drive"

 

You would have to reinstall everything if you use recovery, try the USB cable and cloning software first. I've bought this apricorn cable and used the ez gig IV software before and it worked great. New drive booted right up. This was a couple years ago now though.

http://www.apricorn.com/products/software/ezgig.html

Here's an enclosure that might work, do some research on drive connector type first though..

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00LPH4OJK/ref=pd_aw_sbs_4?pi=SL500_SS115&simLd=1

 

Try Macrium Reflect Free Edition. Great and easy to use cloning/imaging software: Macrium Reflect FREE Edition - Information and download

Also I have the mSATA version of the MyDigitalSSD enclosure and it works great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTUGSajND2g

 

Where can I download the driver for the razer blade 2014?

 

Driver for what?