Razer Blade 14" (1060 GPU/late 2016) Owner's Lounge

So, held together by duct tape and sheer force of will?

On a side note, it's sad that even after 5 years of proven issues - some of the circuitry remains unchanged.

 

They make it look nice on the outside and skimp on quality on the inside. Hopefully, most of the issues with the cheap mosfet and such only show up if gaming everyday with high temperatures, which is not my case and pray it will last a few years with no issues.

 

Considering returning the 1080p version I just got to grab this one when it's available, does anyone know how long it usually takes for new versions to reach the Microsoft Store? No way I'm buying one of these without the extended warranty lol.

 

Might take a while.

 

new nvidia driver available... 378.66

 

Shame on me for buying into the 1060 blade and they refresh it 3 months after it was released. Kind of a joke.

 

I know it sucks, but Razer is just following what all the other manufactures do, except for Apple, which updates once a year only (usually). It would be kind of hard for Razer to sell more blades now if all the other brands have Kabylake. The real refresh is when Nvidia comes out with the new models. The intel updates haven´t been that dramatic performance wise, I mean kabylake is the third generation on 14nm node....and Coffee Lake and Canon Lake will be on the same node still.
I think the main upgrade here with Kaby Blade is the 4k option for those that want higher resolution, definately a better option than QHD because of the scaling when gaming on 1080p. I personally prefer FHD.

 

From what I understand Kabylake is supposed to offer in theory better battery life. I just don't understand why you even release a new model refresh when kaby was coming out in what, a month? They announced the stealth with kaby lake when they announced the 1060 Blade. I just don't understand it. I know performance wise it is not going to make a huge difference, it's just the principal of doing something like this and releasing the 1060 refresh when they know new processors are out or about to come out and you will be refreshing it again in 3 months. Then again it's Razer so why should deception and or lack of transparency and respect to their customers surprise me.

 

I totally understand...but the pressure last year was to release a laptop with the GTX1060...that was the big deal...kabylake cpu was about to come out....but nobody could wait that long. I mean all the brands did that...release GTX1060 with skylake...and then refreshed. Even Apple couldn´t wait for Kabylake for their new Macbook Pro because they were following there own timeline....I mean it has always been like this with MSI, Asus, etc....ok Razer in the past would release 1 a year...but times are changing and they have to keep up. How many new Razer Blade buyers would have second thoughts buying one a couple weeks ago when the competition already had Kaby on theirs. I think the focus should be on the graphics updates...the ones in between with the cpu update don´t matter as much...but of course if the new chip is out....better wait for the refresh to not get frustrated soon after.
Unless Nvidia and Intel time their new releases together....this is going to be recurring issue.
Nvidia should come out with the GTX1160 at the end of the year...but Intel will probably release Coffee Lake months later. So we will get a Kaby Lake with the 1160 and then the Coffee Lake with the same GPU, which by then I plan on updating (probably).

 

Seems like Razer is working on the fan issue....hopefully they will put out a fix soon.
https://insider.razerzone.com/index...e-2016-gtx-1060-fan.17617/page-27#post-321005

 

That's a stock copy-paste response - they never do anything.

 

Yeah I know it is wishful thinking....one can always hope...haha.

 

Anyone want to buy a Blade? =D

 

What did you opt for? Clevo?

 

Still weighing my options. Currently heavily debating between a Clevo P750DM2-G and a MSI Barebones/Tornado F5. I know these completely go away from and defeat the purpose of portability that I was looking for when I bought my Blade however I love the idea of socketable/replaceable parts in my machines in case something were to ever fail or go wrong. Trying to find ways to justify the purchase to myself and that it will not be THAT thick or heavy, or at least it will not be compared to my Alienware 17 in terms of thickness or weight (even though it's a bit closer than I had originally intended.

If I do not go with one of those then I will be going with a Clevo P650HS-G This will be fairly close to what I had wanted from my Blade. Really not all that thick in terms of the power you are getting out of it and very light compared to other gaming laptops. Can still get a 1070 and i7 7820HK in it and have socketable ram I can replace or upgrade instead of being hindered by 16GB soldered to my motherboard. Ontop of that the price will be cheaper than what my blade cost me and significantly more powerful, plus a 120hz screen on it. After selling the Blade I would still probably come close to breaking even on this model rather than having to invest more money into a computer.

I listed my Blade on eBay as I have never really sold anything online and figured most users on here are not looking for used Blades anyway (plus I'm iffy about selling something that expensive and sending it out and worried about getting screwed despite buying things from people on here before and knowing most people are legit on here) so my listing will end Saturday or Sunday afternoon, it will probably take a little while for the money to come over to me anyway so I have a little bit of time but really leaning towards a Tornado F5 or P750DM if not, or worst case a P650HS if I really need something a little thinner and lighter.

And for what it's worth, my laptop did not have anything wrong with it. Out of the box I was getting firestrike scores only maybe 100 points less than equal spec other brand laptops and game performance was everything I needed from a mobile machine. I just could not deal with the temps while gaming (CS was not very bad but Overwatch would get the thing hot) or the fans at idle. They were not overly loud at idle but they were audible, a lot more than a normal laptop should be (imo) when idling on a desktop with nothing open. I would pull it out at work and have it sitting on a desk and open up dropbox to access some documentation and I would hear the fans running. Even sitting at a desk in our room where our server is located, I could hear my fans running on my laptop next to me even with the server running 5 feet to my left. The microstuttering is annoying as well which I know is not a Blade issue but whether it is optimus or what, I hope on a laptop that does not have optimus or it can be disabled (P650HS) will prevent me from getting the microstuttering in Windows 10. It was also pretty embarassing to explain to anyone what brand laptop mine was if someone saw it and asked. I can say Clevo and no one knows, if I say Razer and they look into it you see a gimmicky xbox 1337 gaming headset company. I'm also not a fan of Razer in general and typically would not buy anything from them. I needed (wanted) a new laptop asap and was going to buy a Yoga as I wanted something very portable to use for work and my own personal laptop but realized the integrated graphics would not handle CS:GO how I would want it to, the MSI GS43VR was thicker and way more gamery than a laptop I would want to use at work and I saw the Blade coming out with a new 1060 model and rushed into it guns ablazing and wish I just thought a little more about it or looked around a little more before I did, or even waited a month or 2 for more options to come out.

Ah well, you live and you learn. I would love for there to one day be a laptop in a similar form factor that is just more reliable and from a company that offers a bit better support and treats its customers a little bit better and be able to handle thermals or fan volume a little bit better but this particular model is not for me. However I am fully confident that if I took care of it how I take care of my electronics I easily could have gotten 3-4 years out of it without it failing but I would have had to baby it and take even more special care and Microsofts warranty is only up to 2 years. Hopefully whoever buys it from me is happy with it and enjoys it as it was overall not a horrible machine (especially compared to what I have heard about older models) but its far from optimal or "the best".

 

I am also considering the P650HS....one of the nicer looking clevos.

 

I recently helped a friend of mine find a new PC for school that would also have some power to get into playing some games and he/we went with the NP5855 (don't know the exact Clevo model number) but it is a similar chasis/style to the P650HS and I have to say, I was very impressed by the look and feel of it when he got it and brought it over and I got my hands on it. Felt and looked much slimmer in person than I had anticipated from the pictures (and the P650HS is not very much thicker than it) so that is what made me start looking into that model then I realized for about the same price the P750 has desktop CPU support in it so despite the thickness of those models I think I will ultimately end up with 1 of the 2 even though I ended up in this whole situation because I wanted a thinner laptop to carry around capable of gaming, oh the irony.

Keyboard felt great on my friends NP5855 as well. I know there are some mixed reviews and a big thread on the Clevo keyboards and his is still new and have not had the time to test and get a good idea of the experience on it but it feels very similar to my AW keyboard and I hate chiclet keys like the Blade and the MSI barebones have, even though the MSI tends to have a lot better reviews as far as the keyboard is concerned. I think I will end up with that one still despite the chiclet keys. So hard to make a decision on this especially since I already "messed up" once and am losing some money so I want to make sure I do it right this time and end up happy for the next 4+ years.

 

On reddit, Volicarebear suggested to disable ASPM in Bios to get better performance out of the GTX1060, and amazingly enough my firestrike score went up from 9270 to 9560 with no OC. I have no idea what ASPM does, but it definitely made a big difference in the firestrike score.
After a OC +150/200 I got 10122. Graphics Score 12232. Before I got 9861.
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/18453009?

Max Cpu temp 76 C and max Nvidia temp 71 C. Also disabling ASPM hasn´t affected my battery ife, so far.

Curious if everbody gets this performance boost, at least in Firestrike, haven´t tried gaming yet...and if anybody knows what this ASPM actually does or notices any ohter differences in the machine.

 

The Windows Creators update should fix the optimus/microstuttering issue, since the Insider Build did. So now with the gtx1060 performing as it should, no more microstuttering with the next windows update....I am happier with the machine. Who knows, maybe Razer will even fix the fan on idle issue.....but it is most likely wishful thinking.
Also I hope I don´t ever need to deal with support and nothing in the machine just craps out in the next 2 years....hehe.

 

Wow, finally! How is that insider build btw, is it stable?

 

Actually I haven´t tried the insider build but others have....I think it is the 15042 or something that solved the issue...I am just holding out till next month for the official release, hopefully it will solve this particular issue with my machine.

 

As i believe it'd be a mistake to open up a new thread for a similar model, I'm posting some benchmarks from the new 2017 model in here for everyone to know stuff about it; CPU is downvolted -120 mV Core and Canche, -80 mV iGPU, nothing else has been touched as I don't plan to overclock it.

IDLE temperatures are hella dependant on ambient ones, going from 35° as of now to 50ish in hot rooms, this happens mostly due to the fact that fans do not kick in untill 65° C, at which point they start spinning depending on your plan (Razer has finally introduced 3 profile: auto, low, high).

FS score:

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/18507726?

Max GPU temp has been 72° C, max CPU one was 67° C.


As this was really good, I tried launching Unigine Heaven and letting it run for like 10+ minutes till GPU temp "finally" reached 75 °C, at which point I launched the benchmark (free version, preset Extreme):

Spoiler

Coming from a 2015 model, this is day and night; palmrest is absolutely colder, power button area is hot, but nothing to worry about, fans are loud under heavy load (I'm all the time under High fan curve) but they spin down as soon as the PC goes back to the treshold.

Having been almost a hater of the company during the past year as I've gone through 4 RMAs with my 2015, ending up being given the chance to upgrade to this unit, I gotta admit I'm really satisfied now; this unit is, in my opinion, great.

Hope I won't regret these words soon.

 

Great news - finally some relief for you!

It's really sad that the QA/QC/CS at Razer are so damn bad that a lot of users have to go through the same painful process before they finally get a working one, that is, IF they get a working one.

 

Well, apart from the screen bleed thing, it looks like the 2017 model's experiencing way less problems, they've maybe started learning from their own mistakes, who knows.
That's the reason why I pushed for a reimbursment and in the end I accepted this model; users reviews are way less painful than earlier models ones, one can only hope

 

It is your 5th unit though

Give it time, it just came out.

 

It'd the 4th as I said and it's the only 2017.

Common troubles were usually out already at this point BTW.

No reasons yet to hate on it tbh.

 

Not hating, just advising caution - the last 6 laptops that Razer released under the Blade 14 name have had issues, let's just say I'm skeptical.

 

Think the 2016 v1 was problemsless, the 6700+970m one; at least I can't recall partcular problems!

 

Didn't that have the BIOS chip under the heatsink as well? And the 2 legendarily bad mosfets?

I do also remember quite a few of those having throttling due to the horrible paste job and rugged pipes.

 

Nope, what you are referring to is the 870m one, 2014 version which has been their biggest fail probably.

2015 had the AC chip behind the heatsink and the bad paste job thing, the hottest one.

2016 was the first one with a normal heatsink design, reworked MB and the first cool device, thanks to 970m + 6700 and the decent heatsink.

2016 v2 was a fail due to the firmware bugs which are still there (fan noise, spiking FPS, low performance in general).
They've been working on it with a BIOS update (mostly for the coil whine noise) and 3 or 4 EC FW updates which partially fixed problems.

 

Nope - I just went back and checked. In a Sager review in which Linus compares it to his Blade 14 2016v1, he says "It's hot, loud and thermal throttles". And the amount of problem reports is still high on the internet.

 

SSD ain't bad either, PM961:

 

I got the skylake 256gb model and I replaced the ssd, which was the PM951 with a SM961 1TB. It is not that much faster than the PM961 or the 960 Evo. Performance wise the 960 Evo is a great value, since it performs just as well as the SM961 in most cases and not to far from the 960 pro but costing much much less.

 

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/18584962

+135 +380 OC on GPU, just for testing purposes, temps under 80 C all the time, no random peaks.

 

Eventually they might include the ASPM disable option in Bios on the Kabylake as well, this way the GTX1060 will perform a little better. I am getting 11400 graphics score in firestrike with no overclock, and with overclock 12200. The Kabylake physics scores are consistently around 1000 points highter than skylake, so when the GTX1060 is unleashed, the graphics scores, and thus the overall score, will go up.
+150/200 on skylake.
10122
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/18453009?

stock...no UV and no OC....but with ASPM off.
9608
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/18480670?

Some people are getting a little better graphics score on Kabylake if disabling in the power options, the PCI Express, Link State power management, although under high perfomance this should be disabled already.

 

That's very respectable! Great job!

 

Finally a Razer released an update to fix the excessive fan noise on idle for the RB 2016 GTX1060. The update is here...
http://dl.razerzone.com/support/Blade142016B5/Razer_Blade_2016_GTX1060_Fan_Curve_FWU.zip
Back up your data.
Make sure the machine is plugged in.
Make sure to close synapse and all other applications, including anti-virus.
Update at your own risk.
For me, it did help, not silent on idle like the Kabylake, but definitely better than before the update.
Read the PDF file and make sure your model is included before installing the update.
Model numbers supported:
RZ09-01952E31-xxxx
RZ09-01952E32-xxxx
RZ09-01952E33-xxxx
RZ09-01952E71-xxxx
RZ09-01952E72-xxxx
RZ09-01952E73-xxxx

 

Thank god, its pretty much silent now unless you're gaming.

It also looks like it might have fixed my stuttering issue??? I no longer get stuttering opening the battery icon, or selecting next wallpaper on either battery or plugged in. Both of those caused caused stuttering 100% of the time before the update.

It survived a reboot so hopefully this means that it's fixed.

 

I sitll get stuttering,unfortunately, but that will hopefully be fixed by the creators update next month.

 

Ah yeah, it was not meant to last... Hopefully the creators update helps then.

I'm curious, was something in one of the Insider Preview patch notes that mentions Nvidia Optimus support or flickering?

 

do you guys now if we can somehow redo a bios update ? mine shows N/A under serial number after the coil whine update .,.. now i cant start the new update cause it keeps saying my device could not be identified .. lol

 

Nothing in the patch notes, but those that have tried the insider build 15042 onwards said the micro stutters are gone.

 

Creators Update ISO can now be downloaded via media creation tools
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10

It somewhat fixes the optimus related micro-stuttering issue. I still get some micro-stuttering when the laptop restarts, but after it happens once, it is gone....also it happens when installing a program sometimes... definitely a lot smoother and a lot less annoying than before.
Edit: I noticed that I still get a slight freeze in windows Gui, when the laptop wakes from sleep, it happens once and then it is gone....but still get the slight freeze when installing programs.
Needless to say, I am disappointed that the update didn´t resolve the issue completely, but at least it is better than nothing.

 

So I've successfully undervolted my 6700HQ on my RB late 2016 w/GTX 1060 to -0.125V. I use XTU personally but I've heard good things about throttle stop too. Honesty, I didn't know if undercoating would make a huge difference but boy was I wrong.

Using AIDA64 (CPU stress test only) plus a gaming load (Forge: Halo 5 Guardians edition) I was throttling back by 8% and hitting thermal limits with some overheating. At the stock voltage I hit 100 degrees C with a CPU and GPU load. Now after the undervolt of -0.125V, no more throttling and max temps of about 89 degrees.

I also stress tested the heck out of this thing, AIDA64 combined with 4 games open at the same time with CPU, GPU and RAM pinned at 100% for about 12 hours. No issues

Anyone else who has successfully undervolted with substantial results?

TLDR: I undervolted by 125mV and got a 10 degree C reduction in temps.

 

Indeed, undervolting is key in laptops like this, I undervolted mine 150mv a couple of months ago and it has been stable, even after long prime95 tests. Each CPU batch is different, so the undervolting potential is dependent on the batch.

 

Very true, -150mV was stable only with CPU stress test for me. As soon as a GPU load/stress test was tossed into the mix my blade said heck no and rebooted, kept doing this till about -135 with -130 resulting in a blue screen after 2 hours. -125 I'm happy with the thorough tests but I do wonder, should I pull back on the undervolt to -120mV just to make sure since -125 is the first stable one and could be a little edgy? Thoughts?

 

As long is it stable, it is fine....if you do get a crash, then go back 10mv.
Mine was unstable at 160mv...and at 150 it has been fine so far, also I undervolted the iGpu -60mv.

 

Sweet, thanks man! I'll drop it down to -120 just to be safe and honestly, just peace of mind. Thermals should be very similar so I'm probably not going test. Thanks again

 

Update: I disabled UAC so that I won´t get the slight freezes from the optimus glitch when installing a program, and indeed it is gone. Also, with the Creators Update I don´t get the slight freezes when changing the background picture using slideshow anymore.

 

Oh damn, you've got the preview of creators? How is it so far other than fixing the Optimus glitches? Any big changes?

Also what kind of Optimus lag were you getting? Personally when I got it, it was every 30 seconds during light usage being extra distracting when watching movies.

On another note, has anyone experienced crashing of their razer blade? I've had it for 3 months and minusing the undervolting, it blue screened 3 times each with a different error code and each occurring while under light load (desktop or equivalent). Anyone else with this problem?