Razer Blade 15.6" (GTX 1060/1070, 2018 edition) Owner's Lounge

This was me pushing the OC higher and higher (earliest run on the bottom). No degradation of score

 

Must have the magic Blade I have reports from about 10 others that all share same degradation. I haven’t tested below a -.140 undervolt however because games crash. So really no reason other than science to see if my scores hold. You running balanced or high performance windows power mode?

 

High performance under windows and Synapse gaming mode. Also using throttlestop with SpeedShift set to 0

 

Ok all synapse gaming mode does it give you a 100/300 OC that you are overriding anyways. I didn't mess with TS too much so maybe that's where you're getting some gains.

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Hello guys.

Can please any one who have this machine now say, its possible to play Overwatch and Dota 2 on max settings without FPS drops (throttling) or no? With 1070? Or go for 1060? What to do?

Tomorrow I want to buy it but scare of problems that I have with Alienware R3 and that I have with Razer blade 17

upd: Read all 46 pages, it seems no one play games on this notebook at all DD only 3d marks and how to do it more cooler where is fps temps ))

 

The i7-8750H has a base clock of 2.2ghz. Anything above 2.2ghz is essentially automated overclocking aka TurboBoost. So, imo, we shouldn't expect to be able to maintain 3.5ghz with 6 cores active long term. Also, note that 2.2ghz is lower than last gen's i7-7700hq's 2.8ghz base clock.

The Razer Blade and other thin and light notebooks aren't going to sustain max TurboBoost for very long with 6 cores active. Some folks may call this throttling but as long as it is at or above 2.2ghz then it is meeting Intel's specifications for normal usage. I have seen some XPS users with CPUs getting max clocks of 800mhz under sustained load...now that's throttling.

 

Mine finally shipped today, arrives Thursday along with a 2TB evo 970.

 

Duuuuude how expensive is that drive

 

like 900.00

 

double post..

 

What's the swap process? Do you need a separate m.2 usb enclosure then use a cloning software?

 

I will use a 3.8TB 2.5 ssd external case and Macrium reflect/ clone the 512 and install the 2tb and clone back/ easy peasy.

 

Does Razer have a boot recovery flash creator to backup and create a bootable Flash installer from the recovery partition? What's it called?

 

Hi HM, Long time.

I have not got mine yet so I can't answer that question. I am pretty diehard fan of MR though.

 

Hey there.

This new Razer model season seems to be shipping good product this time, hopefully you get a good one.

I use both, double coverage is a good thing.

I keep the vendor backup taped inside the box for emergencies and it's something I can use to restore to out of the box configuration directly should I need to RMA and for eventual resale.

MR works great for ongoing image backups

 

Great Idea! Rep+

 

MR is life

 

Got mine for 800 well worth it especially for someone like me that gets every Blade refresh.

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I have a 970 coming as well. Does anyone know if I can just back up the existing 256gb drive on a usb 64gb thumb drive and just install the new SSD then plug in the thumb drive? Or do I need something that’s at least 256gb as well? I have an external 1tb usb 3.0 hard drive if necessary

 

Is this last laptop compatible with M.2 SATA SSDs? That would be a great cost-effective alternative to having to get a 970 EVO.

@Donald@HIDevolution any info about M.2 SATA compatibility?


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ELUTENG M.2 SATA SSD Housing to USB C 2230 2242 2260 2280 USB3 Adapter Support UASP 6Gbps Enclosure for Samsung M.2 NGFF SSD B+M Key USB-to-SATA Adapter https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07BDF8J93?ref=yo_pop_ma_swf
This worked for me. Its a simple enclosure for an M.2 drive (not an NVME, though) for doing a direct cloning from the previous 256gb drive to an 860 Evo (my choice). There are different models if you were using a 970, as that's an NVME drive and the pins are different c/w the older M.2

 

Yes, it IS compatible. Ive personally used a Samsung 860 EVO 2TB with no issues.

 

Great! @Donald@HIDevolution could you please update your configuration page with m.2 SATA options?


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So what would I get if it’s the nvme version here https://www.amazon.com/Samsung-970-...ng+970+evo&dpPl=1&dpID=41uPNDzpMnL&ref=plSrch

 

That's a great price for an NVME 500GB drive, and great speeds too, but it will still run hotter than a M.2 SATA and perhaps throttle as well, you'd need to do some large transfers between 2 of those drives to see how a 300GB+ (100 sec) transfer would go - whether it would get hot and throttle at some point.

The M.2 SATA drives are still tracking just about 1/2 the cost for the same size, and for most operations even the 560MB/sec Read and 530MB/sec Writes will be fast enough - transfers so short for most activities that you wouldn't notice the difference.

Crucial MX500 500GB 3D NAND SATA M.2 Type 2280SS Internal SSD - CT500MX500SSD4 - $109.95
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077SQ8J1V

Or get a 1TB size for a little more:

WD Blue 3D NAND 1TB PC SSD - SATA III 6 Gb/s M.2 2280 Solid State Drive - WDS100T2B0B - $229.99
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B073SB2MXT

The 2TB M.2 SATA is $449.99, about 1/2 the $900 NVME SSD.

 

Thanks for all the suggestions! I’m definitely going with the crucial instead for my new blade 15! Is the 256 that comes with it an m.2 as well? Why do I see everyone going for the 970 when the crucial runs cooler and fast enough as well!? How would I go about copying the 256ssd over when I get the crucial?
Thanks hmscott!

 

It's not so much that NVME isn't faster and hotter, it's that it's still so darned expensive when you can either get 2x the storage for the same price, or save around 50% or more if you can find a good sale weekend discount to drop the price even further.

As mentioned in posts earlier today, you can use Macrium Reflect Free to do an image backup of all the partitions on the original SSD and then you and Macrium Reflect Free can resize the partitions on the new drive.

If there aren't 2 M.2 slots, you'll need an external case that will host an M.2 SATA drive - btw I still haven't seen an external USB case that hosts an M.2 NVME drive, unless someone else has seen one.

Macrium Reflect Free can also create a bootable USB flash drive that you can use to boot up to restore to a blank M.2 SSD if there is only M.2 slot and you can host the Macrium Reflect Free backup image on a regular USB drive or flash drive and restore to the new drive that way.

Lots of options.

Macrium Reflect Free
https://www.macrium.com/reflectfree

You can also buy their full product to say thanks and help support them.

 

Awesome gotcha!! Ok so I can use an external hard drive with macrium reflect! Then using that program I can copy the original 256 ssd on the external HD. Then install my new crucial 500gb and boot with the external hard drive for the clone transfer. Meaning I only use the original 256ssd for the initial cloning obviously then following the guide you sent and correcting the partition after installing the new 500gb

 

Yeah, as long as you have an image of the original drive, copy into at least 2 places ( ) to be safe, then you can experiment with how to restore. I use a large flash drive that holds the Macrium boot and has enough room to host the small initial original OS image, so I don't need a 2nd external drive to restore, I can just use the single flash drive, but you could use a small 2GB-4GB boot flash with a larger USB HDD external drive instead, I've done that too.

As far as the vendor tool available from Razer to backup the recovery volume and create a bootable flash restore, I haven't used it, but here are a couple of considerations from using the MSI BurnRecovery tool.

When using the MSI BurnRecovery creator tool to make a bootable restore of the original recovery image - not the OS partitions just the image stored on the recovery volume, you need to be careful when restoring back to the laptop...specifically:

1) Booting on that BurnRecovery flash drive has everything contained on it, so it needs to be 32GB as last I used it it took up 19GB of space, which is too large for a 16GB flash drive.

2) You want it to be USB 3.0 and fast, as the creation and restore time is directly related to how fast the USB drive can write/read. This is the same for Macrium Reflect too.

3) The MSI BurnRecovery restore flash drive doesn't leave room to put anything else, so don't bother using a larger than 32GB drive, the spare space isn't available. I did futz around with trying to partition it to use the extra space, but it was a waste of time. Macrium Reflect isn't like that and you can use the file system how you like.

4) And, this is the most important item. When restoring from MSI BurnRecovery you must only have the single boot SSD installed, take out any other SSD's that have data and the same goes for the HDD as well as all external USB drives. The MSI restore tool reformats and erases the boot drive and HDD, and may erase other internal drives it finds - as well as external USB drives other that the restore flash drive before it tries to restore the recovery image.

This can be a serious disaster if you try to restore to the original SSD / HDD, as if the restore fails - some flash drives will say they wrote everything ok but fail the recovery read, which means your original drives are now blank reformatted and you have lost the ability to try to recreate the recovery flash drive with another flash drive make / model. Very depressing situation should it happen, you are SOL.

So only restore to a new SSD, have your original SSD / HDD pulled out and set on the shelf for safe keeping.

Which is how I recommend keeping the original 256GB drive. Don't repurpose it, don't sell it, and don't erase it, use it as a backup should you misplace your Macrium / Vendor recovery image.

I also recommend making at least 2 Flash recovery copies and store them in different places. I tape one to the inside of the box and have the other on my desk should the need arise to do a restore. That way I have a spare flash drive, the original SSD, and an image on at least 2 storage devices.

It's really depressing to have to RMA your laptop to get it reimaged should some catastrophe happen. Like 1 of the 2 RAID0 SSD's dies 2 weeks into ownership - which happened to me - fortunately I already had this system of backup's in place. I made the MSI BurnRecovery image at the retail store as I was checking out the laptop before walking out the door - I had already paid for it, but I could turn around and return it that same visit if needs be.

Anyway, I hope that all helps. I'm sure you'll have good luck long term with your laptop OS and data, if you follow good backup procedures from the start, and keep it up on a weekly / monthly basis.

 

RMA update -

Shipped it in last Tuesday (5/29) and they had it by Thursday (5/31). Received my shipment notice yesterday (6/5) for an overnight shipment but it was sent to UPS after the deadline so I will have my replacement tomorrow. So that's only one week from the day that they received it that I will have a new laptop. To me that's very reasonable. There was a little confusion and some impatience on my behalf, but overall a very smooth process.

 

Glad it’s taken care of, and honestly half the time I though it would take! Pray the new blade has thermal superpowers!

 

I’ll have my Blade repasted and with new pads by either tomorrow or fri. In the meantime I can upload my temp results I took prior to doing the mods if anyone is interested.

 

#interested

 

Just a heads up, you will never see an NVMe USB enclosure. NVMe runs native over PCIe which the USB bus cannot carry. There are no USB>PCIe bridge chips that I know of, SATA on the other hand is often sent over USB with a bridge chip such as those from ASmedia.

This is the fun of carrying radically differently protocols over the same M.2 connector About as much fun as educating someone on USB C running at USB 2.0/3.0/3.1 Type 1/2 which is all separate from Thunderbolt 3 but not to be confused with Thunderbolt 2.

lol

 

Perfect! Thank you very actually explaining the process in great detail I’ll give it a shot! I will make sure and keep the original ssd around!

 

Asus had a custom pure PCIE x4 connector(s) on a development laptop not that long ago, in the early days of external GPU's to avoid the overhead of Thunderbolt, and they got much better throughput, just like it was connected to an internal PCIE connector - but so far nothing has standardized on that idea. Many have done this on their own using an internal storage PCIE connector with a long cable, but it was nice to see external connectors brought out by Asus to the case edge, just like eSATA.

That would give us an external ePCIE kinda like eSata.

The lack of that and the high cost of Thunderbolt accessories really reduces the ability for local external storage as fast as fastest internal storage, which makes backup's less fun and more time consuming.

Anyway, yeah, it's not something solved yet, and it's been a few years already where something could have been done as a better solution.

 

Yes please

Also include them for side by side comparison when you get the modded run's results.

Thanks for reporting the detailed before and after info!

 

@Firebat246 care to take some pics of taking the heatsink off? Also unplugging the power from the motherboard, I looked and I think it I found the right connector appears to just snap on and off but I did not want to take a chance.

 

The Alienware Graphics Amplifier works in exactly this way today but as you noted, proprietary connector and due to the way the BIOS handles it, can only be used for a GPU. The Alienware actually has a really good PCIe layout though - x8 dGPU x4 TB3 x4 AGA. It is odd though because they actually disable the dGPU when AGA is in use - a PCIe switch or some sort of relay/MUX there could have kept options open for other things vs just tossing x8 out the window when AGA is in use. But also, ya, AGA is $160 vs $500 for the Razer Core V2. I did test both with my Alienware and could just not get the Core V2 to be both reliable and stable. The AGA consistently outperformed it in both synthetic and game benchmarks. I do not have ideal BIOS support (pretty sure Razer adds some special sauce to make it work well on the Blade) but it WAS working somewhat with my laptop.

Back to the original thought though, external PCIe is not PCIe over USB which was what I was commenting on. TB3 is essentially external PCIe and most likely the closest we will ever get to that for multiple reasons:

a) it already exists and is available somewhat widely (no custom and costly engineering required to implement)
b) it uses a serialized high frequency connection which will be much more reliable and is more easily shielded against noise vs a highly paralellized connector like multi lane PCIe (most likely why the AGA is ONLY x4 and still has a THICK cable with many conductors bundled together and a very unwieldy connector)
c) TB3 is hot pluggable, raw PCIe is not - this comes with a lot of convenience benefits

That is just what I came up with off the top of my head

 

Wait so what external housing unit would I use for the m.2 SATA hmscott recommended https://www.amazon.com/dp/B077SQ8J1V
I’m planning on just using macrium for cloning

 

I use one of these:

https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-M-2-SATA-SSD-Enclosure/dp/B00T8F298Y/

Has been fine so far. Should work with any M.2 SATA drive

 

Sweet thank you!

 

Anyone know possibly why my CPU seems to clock down to 3ghz while in Fortnite? Cant seem to change it no matter what i try. I was getting every bit of 144hz for a game or two (and temps around almost 90) then it just dropped and i cant seem to understand why.

 

@Assault probably because ForkKnife doesn't need more performance from the CPU? Or maybe PowerSettings are on balance?

 

I tried both Better and Best performance in power settings, both Razer game mode and balanced, and cant seem to find whats limiting it. Like i said it was running better earlier then just started misbehaving. Dropped my FPS a lot.

 

Nice, but the prices just keep going up, I recall you could get a number around $10-$15, now they all seem to be upwards of $30.

I like the dual M.2 unit, but probably overkill for just backups.

They also have a newer model for a couple of bucks more with a USB 3.1 Gen 2 connection, probably not gonna improve throughput, but it's a way to use the port, and free up a USB 3.0 port.
https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-M-2-SATA-SSD-Enclosure/dp/B01C7G8W86

The dual M.2 unit has USB 3.1 gen 2:
https://www.amazon.com/StarTech-com-M-2-SATA-SSD-Enclosure/dp/B06W9L34YC?th=1

 

What is your charge level on your battery? Sounds a bit like the symptom where the battery boost stops due to the battery level dropping below a predetermined level. If you leave it sit for a while, let it recharge, does the performance return?

 

it was at 100% the entire time. It would actually show my set clocks, even alt-tab, until i hop into the game again where it would return to 3ghz

Its getting late ill keep testing it tomorrow... This is going to bother me lol.

 

There have been comments in other threads about the newest Nvidia drivers dropping scores, did a Windows Update happen today, between games? - check Windows Updates completed.