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

If you have an assorted screw set, step up a screw size as a last effort.

500pcs Laptop Notebook Computer Screw Kit https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01FTI8TM8?ref=yo_pop_ma_swf

 

Not a bad idea either... I am going to try and find some sort of adhesive, loctite, and also order those. I hope one avenue works. I DO NOT want to have to exchange my laptop because of this. Side note... any really good warranties I can get? Since I bought direct from Razer and can't get MS/Best Buy warranty.

 

I bought from razer direct, so I purchased an Upsie warranty. The CEO seems legit and actually spoke with me on the phone. The only alternative I know of is Squaretrade but it was 200 more for same coverage

 

I actually got a replacement blade yesterday from MS because of the crackling power supply (another story - turns out I tested 4 Blades and they all crackled), and in the new one I did a 1.5mm and 0.5mm layer on the SSD controller. It doesn’t run quite as cool as the 3mm double, but it’s still well cool enough to stay out of the red.

 

Just make sure you use the blue 242.. http://www.loctiteproducts.com/p/10/15/t_lkr_blue/overview/Loctite-Threadlocker-Blue-242.htm

 

Did you find one that didn't crackle?

 

If you are still within the return period, you can request a RMA first from Razer, then you can wait to purchase a new one. Ship back the old one when new one delivered, so you do not lose you laptop for the entire RMA process. You do not even need to reinstall Windwos, just put the 970 to the new Blade, it would work properly.

 

I was thinking about RMA but I really don't want to have to go through repasting and putting new thermal pads all over. At the end of the day if the loctite doesn't work I probably will have to RMA. I also want to try the adhesive as Lisa suggested.... but a whole new machine may also not be the worst thing ever. No big deal swapping out my 970 and being right back where I left off.

 

anyone know what that 60hz panel is and whatever it can be OCed?

I just returned by blade cause my power adapter broke. And the MS store was out of blades.

 

The little tab in the middle of the back on the bottom cover was such a nuisance to me. Seems like a stupid design made to complicate the reassembly.

 

Nope! They all did. Mine, two new power supplies they tried and the display one.

 

Guess I might avoid RMAing mine.

 

Hey there guys for the ssd cooling mod, what do you guys think of this product https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B077VJ4N8C/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A18X6Y2NQD9HV1&th=1
will it fit? will it work without air flow? is it better than just the pads?

 

I'd have to think that would be less effective than the pads. The pads connect to the chassis making the heat transfer to the case. There is no airflow in that area and I don't see how just a sink would work without it. The pads make the chassis dissipate the heat.

 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts....
I was thinking it would touch the chassis also and being it a copper sink would transfer heat faster.... price wize it is almost the same so I dont know about quality..... cheers

 

Could be dangerous if it touches as it's rigid. The pads have some give so they don't necessarily crush anything.

 

Thanks, that makes sense... How much flex there is to the m.2 slot if any?

 

Just enough where 3mm of thermal pad is adequate to get the proper contact to the chassis needed, without putting too much pressure on the SSD. I gamed on it last night for like 4 hours with no issues. I don't think the BSOD I had was related to having too much pressure on the SSD.

 

Pretty good comprehensive review: https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/21/17485494/razer-blade-15-review-gaming-laptop

Still a great laptop though and for most users I do believe that it meets alot of those needs/wants.

 

Cool review. You know, we're some picky punks and we sure do expect a lot of our blade. I've seen a lot of complaints on this forum, some legitimate and most just nitpicks. In reality, the blade is highly refined and IMO exactly what I want in a computer. I just picked up an HP Spectre off Craigslist yesterday (the super thin 13", paid $300) and it' nice. But after messing with the TouchPad and updates, I couldn't wait to get back over to my Blade. It really helps you appreciate a good machine when you use something inferior too lol.

Point is I like the blade, it's what I've imagined a laptop to be for years, now it's finally becoming reality.

 

Seems so, all we need to do now is find a way to defy physics and thermal dynamics and we're set.

 

Couple of new notes on my Blade experience.

1 - reinstalling Windows clean on my 1TB drive resulted in an appreciable increase in hard disk performance. I also was able to eliminate the silly recovery partitions. I'd originally used Acronis to create an image on an external to assist in the swap.

2 - I found that my fans made a bit of a high pitched noise whenever running and if you lift up the back of the laptop just a TINY bit the fan noise pitch changes from slightly high pitched to just a soft woosh. I think that the fans are actually a bit air starved by default. Currently I'm using a bar of mini hotel soap, but will see about a more permanent solution.

3 - Either a few days of curing for the kryonaut thermal paste or perhaps the clean windows install have brought my temps down a couple of degrees.

4 - for the clean install I only installed the following:
- nvidia drivers
- intel graphics/wifi/bluetooth
- razer synapse and intel serial IO (touchpad)

I didn't mess with intel ME or anything like that.

 

Update on stripped threads... Using the Loctite seemed to do the trick. They screws seem to be pretty much glued in and holding the back on. Obviously with the right force it will break the loctite but that's the idea. Now I'm not sure exactly how tight they are in there only that that back seems snug now. I have yet to decide on still proceeding with the RMA, but either way I know the Loctite 242 is a fail safe for the future.

 

I thought the touchpad was using Microsoft precision?

Might seem a bit ..er.. trashy, but might want to throw a small piece of electrical tape or something over them so you don't lose them.. not sure it matters..

 

Whatever it's using it required the intel serial IO drivers from Razer's website to work. Perhaps that's just the controller it's hooked up to?

 

Yeah it does, I meant to remove that part of my post because I remembered that, forgot.

 

I've been reading different posts lately and wanted some input, does Kryonaut require any time to cure or anything special? Also does applying a thin amount Vs thick affect temps in a positive or negative way?

 

Did anyone get the codes for the free games that are supposed to be included?
I haven't seen anything about it yet.

 

No, and I asked Razer support about it and they said they'd check on it. Still no dice

 

Nothing yet either
I actually forgot about it, TBH... thanks for the reminder!

 

Today, I did a re-repaste with Kryonaut, and did fujipoly pads everywhere. I'm sustaining higher clocks now at similar temps (3.6ghz up to 85/86C peaks) and 77/78c GPU while gaming hard.. I had a feeling my first repaste didn't go well due to how unusually hard it was to spread, I think it dried up in the tip of the applicator. Did fresh paste this time. Still contemplating using Conductonaut though, this is still a laptop and I have it vertical in backpacks often.

I also applied fujipoly pads to the SSD, but what are everyone's temps after their pad? I'm at 66c, but I had to manage cutting the strips short.

 

55 after SSD strips on a 970 PRO 1TB. The controller (chip closest the connector) is the most important part of the equation. Doubled up 1.5mm strips on it caused contact with the chassis for me.

 

I think I may need to reposition the pad. Where is the controller? Slot side or screw side?

 

Slot side on the 970 pro at least. It's also metallic instead of being a DRAM chip.

 

Did you remove the sticker?

 

Since mine is retail and Samsung's website indicates that will void the warranty I did not. I've also seen at least some anecdotal evidence of retail stickers being thermally conductive. My understanding is the OEM drives have a plastic sticker than should be carefully removed.

 

Got it. Thanks bud!

 

The controller will pretty much always be slot side. It is the interface between PCIe and the NAND chips, therefore it is both logically and physically in between the two.

 

Fixed your post.

 

While you are right, the Samsung layout is logically laid out, I want to be * that* person. There is at least one high performance M.2 SSD that has it in the middle.

https://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/wd-black-nvme-ssd-review,5530.html

 

It's interesting to note that when I had several sets of 4x M.2 SATA drives to test in my GT80, one brand / model got so hot that the labels slid off when I went in to swap them.

Rather than reposition them on the SSD, I preserved them by sticking them to another surface - the inside of the protective plastic case they arrived in.

Spoiler: Details...

It was a set of Micron M600 - they ran hotter and benchmarked faster than the similar looking Crucial MX200.

I also later tried the Crucial BX200, and returned those quickly as they were slower. When the MX300 arrived they weren't any faster or cheaper than the Samsung 850 Evo and ran as hot as the Micro M600 so I returned those as well.

The GT80 like most laptops has a poorly thought out M.2 drive containment. 3 of the M.2 drives overlapped when all were installed - and there wasn't any airflow around them, with the 4th off on it's own - that label was solid, but I still peeled it off.

Without the label the M.2's had about the same performance and thermals, within the tolerance of timing of weather / ambient temperature - humidity. But, I think that was down to the lack of airflow over the recessed M.2 bays.

Even if the labels are thermally transparent, they still block airflow to the chips underneath them to a large degree (no pun intended), and in the right containment that could change the thermal transfer rate to surrounding moving air, removing them could provide better thermal transfer to the moving air around them.

As I mentioned I ended up returning the Crucial MX200 / MX300 / BX200 due to speed / cost vs Samsung 850 Evo, and the Micron M600 drives due to heat.

Across the board faster speed = more heat generation. I kept the Samsung 850 Evo 500GB M.2 SATA x4 as it was running "fast enough" and cooler - the labels didn't slide off when hot.

The Samsung 850 was plentiful - being sold everywhere at the time - likely easier to find a replacement should one die down the road, while the M600 was very hard to find in single quantity let alone 4x - part of that was because it was so popular for being 30MB-50MB/sec faster than the Samsung 850.

The same goes for SATA vs PCIE x4 NvME - higher speed = higher heat generation + higher cost (about 2x) and as long as my applications don't notice wall time improvements of a useful nature and generate far more heat, the SATA M.2's make more sense at purchase and in the long run.

Until laptop makers put in active directed M.2 cooling, I don't think they are worth spend 2x as much if they are going to thermal throttle - or the firmware preemptively reduces performance to avoid thermal throttling.

It's going to prove interesting in the near future (1-2 years) as density requires even more cooling and larger size to fit the larger parts, will a new > 4x PCIE connector arrive - and if so will that finally push vendors to make active cooling solutions integrated with laptops / desktops, or will the SSD's carry their own active cooling fitting new dimensions accomodating the new size / form factor.

The new Samsung NF1 isn't that new device, apparently. It's just got larger physical dimensions with the same PCIE x4 NvME speeds and perhaps even the same connector.

I leave the labels on for now myself as I don't think there is enough air flow to make a difference, but try it - your situation might be different

Also, I understand why you doubled up the thermal pad over the controller to reach the metal to transfer heat, but why not do it for the whole M.2 area so all of it can transfer to the metal? I know the RAM puts out much less heat, but across the board they are all physically connected and over time they will absorb heat - giving them area to transfer to the metal - it would seem a good idea to double up all across the M.2 board to reach the metal case - at least it's worth trying.

 

I don't think anyone asked for this, but when I did my teardown today, I recorded it in case anyone wanted to see how to take off the heatsink. If you liked the video or found it helpful, leave me a like on youtube, please.


edit: looks like I'm being blocked for music copyrights, I'll fix that tomorrow.

 

Curious, what were your sustained clock speeds before any repast? Mine seems to average 3.1-3.2 while gaming.

 

I was sitting at like 3.3ghz more and less while using Synapse Balanced Mode. While using Performance Mode, I did not have any power throttling and will run whatever clock I set.

 

Video Fixed! Here's my teardown. Like the video if you enjoyed it!

 

Performance/gaming mode in synapse right? What was your sustained average under performance without throttlestop just stock?

 

So I have the new Razer Blade 15, can someone tell me how to have all chrome colors on keyboard but have it remain static (not moving in different sequence) within snapse

 

You can change every keys colors static as you want on chroma Studio, on lightning->effects ->chroma studio

 

I'm wondering if anyone has the 1060 Max-Q version and how it compares to the 1070 in benchmarks and thermals.

 

I only had enough to double up on the controller. Fujipoly ultra extreme is expensive! Took more than anticipated to cover up all of the chips under the VAPORCHAMBER.