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

Oh spotted, 8750 1060 laptops 3Dmark 1st place candidate

 

Keep us posted! For some reason plugging display directly to blade gives me hell. I'm sure USB C eGPU is fine by now.

 

It’s quite weird, I’m literally using directly mini DP to 4K monitor mostly on Media consumption, paperwork, editing etc things, only 4K gaming I’m using cores hdmi directly to monitor (from TB3 port). On directly Blade mini DP connection to external monitor, I don’t have jittering and flickering issues like you experienced, on all displaying mode, extend, duplicate and only seconds screen. On core it was laggy on first time connection since somehow it lowered refresh rate to 25Hz, I changed it manually to 60Hz and it stay always so.

 

Question, have you done a fresh install of Windows?

 

Buddy selling me his blade 15/256/1070 for 1850. Good deal? Only a month old.

 

I think if you want a blade, you'd be stupid not to buy it. Can you still buy a warranty for it?

 

He didn’t register it yet so I assume I can? Squaretrade ok?

 

Doing this daily, no issues. I've used two different kinds of Lenovo USB-C docks, and had no such issues with either. The one I'm using right now is this one: https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/solutions/pd500180

Connected to it is a Display Port based monitor, Ethernet, USB devices, etc and it works like a champ.

 

So, Gamers Nexus just ran a video showing the effects of LM on Aluminium, Nickel Plated Copper and Copper IHS's. Long story short don't use aluminium (but we all already knew that), and the others were fine after a year. Just a little staining from the gallium in the LM, but no measurable reduction in performance or damage to speak of.

 

Very cool, thank you for that. Does that dock support 144hz?

Awesome, yes that or Upsie. I bought Upsie personally because it was cheaper

 

Razer does not register warranties, or keep track of serial numbers. To prove you are entitled to warranty service, you have to show them your invoice, so if you buy it, be sure to get a copy of the invoice.

 

Only 60hz at resolutions of FHD and above.

 

Yes it was on my new SSD, the original one not. I returned it because both made somehow gpu performance slower on benchmark, i think I didn’t test it with external monitor since after checking like benchmark and temperature I put back in package. On original SSD I didn’t do fresh install, I don’t have need for that.

Yes it was on my new SSD, the original one not. I returned it because both made somehow gpu performance slower on benchmark, i think I didn’t test it with external monitor since after checking like benchmark and temperature I put back in package. On original SSD I didn’t do fresh install, since I don’t have a need for that.

Yes it’s, but what is the reason? If it’s working fine I’d buy it, it’ll be even better if you can put additional warranty.

 

So I've put some thinking into what would most improve the airflow and performance of the Blade with the intake and exhaust design they used. Regular laptop coolers suck IMO because the Blade's exhaust blows downward and gets recirculated, which I believe my Notepal X3 is doing, so I've noticed crappy temps using it. I built a prototype / proof of concept base using a front blower fan, and a ramp to direct air into the intake while leaving room underneath to push the rear exhaust away. This stupid thing is dropping temps easily 4-6C during gaming, I can hardly believe the results while gaming 2 hours yesterday. I'll try to do a few benchmarks for solid evidence but wow, this is going to be crazy.

 

There’s still room on the middle, you can put ice packs there to keep it cooler, I think it fits 2 of them lol

 

For record setting that would work!

 

Some laptops try to weakly separate the airflow by using a big rubber monofoot inbetween the intake and exhaust (a la XPS13/15).

 

So regarding Fresh Install for the RAzer Blade 15. So as you may have seen in previous posts I purchased a "refusbished" Blade 512gb 1070 GTX for 2100 dollars. When I got the laptop 2 days ago the HDD was literally empty. I was actually glad because I was hoping that the only issue this blade had was it's Missing Data etc. and that's why it was refurbished. Further testing is being conducted, even as we speak here, but anyways I had to reinstall windows.

It's actually a fairly easy process you just downoad windows10 from Microsoft directly, choose Home Edition, and the Key is generated automatically through the motherboard of the system. overall the whole process took about 40 minutes and I was up and running in no time. I think so far I still prefer my 1060 with Core, as it runs cooler while both have the same Throttle Stop settings there is like a 10 degree difference between the two.

 

I ordered 2 different versions of laptop wide stands to lift the back of the thing further off the desk, yet separate the intake from the outflow. I will investigate further when my laptop actually gets here (Pre-Production started today)

The Razer 15 already has a monofoot in this location, I am hoping that just improving the airflow a bit is worth carrying the elevator. Time will tell.

 

Wow I highly recommend the Razer Core I've attached my Razer Core to my Razer Blade 15 and the temp drops are incredible. Of course the core gets pretty hot but I'm pretty happy with the results. I'll be keeping my 1060 version for sure and giving my brother the 1070 I don't need it anymore and would prefer the battery life.

 

So I got the machine from my buddy. Was not registered so I will go ahead and do that, have the invoice so that I can add some extra warranty. The Unit is on EC 1.00, should I update it to 1.02? Also for bios it is on 1.03, should I update that to 1.05?

 

Yes do the updates. They fixed issues such as not charging while powered off

 

I would imagine with the GPU not being used the entire vapor chamber can work for the CPU. How's the fan noise during gaming with egpu?

 

I find the redundancy of the dGPU using the eGPU too hard to swallow.

Maybe a non-dGPU hex core laptop which can use the extra space to add more CPU cooling, battery and other niceties and bundle it with some e-GPU setup would be one of the best things ever. A lot of people who buy laptops for gaming are probably ones who want to use it for productivity or at school too. Not having an integrated dGPU would help with both cooling , noise and battery life when not gaming. And when it’s time to game, just hook up to the TB3.

Stealth is an option to do this with but it uses a 15w CPU vs the 45w CPU on laptops like Razer Blade 15, XPS 9570, Aero 15x etc. Also it seems to not have enough battery life nor the thinnest profile when compared to something like the XPS 13 (which I’d rather get than the stealth ad a result).

 

Wow, great brother, I wish my brother just like you Yes it’s way lower on gaming laptops playing on eGPU maybe the cpu is powerful enough to handle gpu data transfer unlike ultrabook cpu which is hardly to keep under 80ish on demanding games. Just played Battlefield V damn it’s beautiful on 4K ultra setting 40~45 FPS though, I feel I really want RTX after playing Rotterdam map.

Yes that makes a sense. Laptops Fans noise isn’t loud at all like on dGPU usage, but core v1, v2 downside is they use are using PSU that isn’t quite and quite hard to moding unlike core x, so the only fans you’ll notice is that PSU on core fans, though I think it’s still quiter than Blade max load, but maybe it’ll disturbing user who want quite environment on editing that need gpu power, since on idle usage core is louder than idle Blade.

 

I've looked around I haven't really found anything without a dGPU that has an i5-8300H or i7-8750H seems to fit the bill. Either they are cheaper looking fatbooks that weight more than they should or they have a more expensive dGPU that you have to end up shelling out for. The best one I've found in the 15" category is the Samsung Notebook 9 15" with an i7-8550U+MX150. 2.8lb. The LG Gram 15 looks good but the cooling solution in that thing is poor, which is a shame because it actually has room inside the chassis to expand it. At least the Samsung has two fans and a beefier sink due to the dGPU and can probably hold some good boost clocks when only stressing the CPU with a repaste as long as power delivery holds up. The stealth seems like a good option but I want a panel larger than 13.3". All the Lenovo/Dell are a little heavier and also seem to have a bridge for the 4-lane TB3 that robs a slight bit of speed (maybe I'm wrong about that..).

Anyway, I digress, I would consider the Blade w/1060 and just leave the dGPU largely unused when planted at home (I would imagine a 1080ti eGPU would run circles around the 1060 Max-Q) but that's honestly not really much more attractive than what I have now. I think the sweet spot for me would be a super light 15 that I can dual-boot win/linux and a 1080ti GPU so I can try to approach my existing 1080 for gaming needs. It doesn't have to beat it, just get within spitting distance. Plus, the eGPU I could make extremely quiet, and the ultrabooks with an i7-8550U are already quiet... well.. way quieter than stressing any gaming laptop's dGPU is going to be..,

 

Hi Guys,

First message to this forum, nice to meet you all.

So after reading this forum and watching almost every video from youtube that there is about the Razer Blade 15, I decided to buy one for myself straight from Razer.
Bought myself the 1080p 144hz/16gb/256gb variant, and I'm very happy with what I got. Of course the plan was from the start to upgrade the SSD to a 1tb Samsung 970 evo, So the storage capacity wont run out.

And here starts THE WHY I had to write about my experiences here.

When I got the machine of course the only sane thing to do is to see how much Horse Power I got in the deal. So I installed 3Dmark and ran The famous Firestrike Bench. Got pretty good numbers out of it too after alittle fiddling with settings, Afterburner and Throttlestop.

So here's my results with the ¨stock¨ Blade 15 with following changes -130mv to core/cache, -40mv to iGPU, Speedshift enabled at 64, +150mhz to GPU and +400mhz to memory.
https://www.3dmark.com/fs/16303548

I'd say they are decent. So to my surprise after upgrading the Blade with the larger and faster Samsung SSD and installing fresh windows, all the drivers and software I had earlier, this is the 3dmark I had after with the same settings.
https://www.3dmark.com/fs/16316629

So now after some fiddling again I got it JUST above 15k, but with these changes to earlier ones: Speedshift enabled at 0, + 230mhz to GPU and +650mhz to memory. Gaming mode was on in every attempt.

This is the final one I did this morning,
https://www.3dmark.com/fs/16319548

So my question to you is, how is this possible? SSD or a fresh windows install should not matter in 3dmark that much. After all the windows the Blade came with was ¨Fresh install¨
How come with same clock speeds the score is so much lower and I have to pump clock to the limit to even reach 15k this time?

Don't get it.. Well here's my story, Hope someone can shed a little light to this. And to be clear, Temps are staying under 85 on cpu and gpu so those cant be the reason, can it?..

Thanks guys, Waiting to hear from you.

-Villehaseo

 

Yes I never see also H/HQ/HK CPU without dgpu, so those laptops with low end like xps15 with 1050 is actually best host for egpu but I think the new one with 1050ti has PCIe3x4 lanes, not quite sure. And yes 8550U has almost similar performance with 7700HQ so it’s the best atm ultrabook as eGPU host, but it depends on how cooling systems work on that laptop, I noticed some ultrabo
Maybe another things to note when I played open beta BFV that when I use gaming mode yes cpu bumped to high 90ish even with core setting so I used Balanced mode with auto Fans that avoid CPU hits even 80ish, FPS stay similar anyway 40~ish (4K Ultra with 1080ti) and I didn’t also disable turbo and core capping max 3,9 even maybe not often as gaming mode.

Yes I have similar experience, only once I hit 15K with two different nvme and fresh install windows, I’ll try next time cloning to see the difference, since lower gpu score is a downgrade to me, i returned both. If you can keep that 15K I think it’s good because you get an advantage with more storage, second that’s already good compared to other maxq 1070, and different FPS between high 14K and 15,2K isn’t big maybe max 2 or 3 FPS depends the game.

 

Guys, is is better to purchase direct from razor or is amazon perfectly fine?

The price is the same

 

Amazon has better returns policy, I think it’s 28 days (amazon.de) without reason compared to Razer store 14 days, so you can test it longer. And if they have stock and you found something or issues on your unit they can send replacement immediately without waiting your machine to be delivered to their return point unlike Razer store. I bought from Razer store because of gifts and student discount (I’m not student anymore though )

 

thanks. amazon it is then. Just ordered the 1060 144mhz version..

 

Man this weekend has been fun, So I get that alot of people want to bench mark etc, but I just want to play my games. After getting the Razer Coreon Friday and playing my games on my low temp Blade 15 I am ecstatic with how well this performs. it's not loud at all and my temps are always very low. The blade 15 with the 1060 and 144 screen is the best laptop to get with a Razer Core for me.

I realize this **** isn't cheap but I have a job so it's not really all that expensive and I like the ability to move my laptop around and be mobile while having this kind of power. It's going to be insane when I put in the RDX in there as it's already good enough with a 1080. I mean I'm only gaming on a 1080p default screen and I don't foresee myslef changing that anytime soon...

This past month has been my first experience with Razer and I'm glad I waiting for as long as i waited. I'm a fan for life now, lol....

My brother received the 1070 blade in the mail and he's ecstatic about it.And I have my core and I could care less that he has the better version, I'm quite happy with a 1060 Variation and a Core..

Setup for now:


Metal Gear V on highest Settings temps never go above 50..: this game alone is why I got the core it's can really get your system hot if you play with high settings on this game, uncomfortably hot. But the core has made it much more manageable

 

Nice! That's awesome. If you wouldn't mind could you run firestrike on the 1060, and then again using the core on the blade's internal display?

 

Hi,

Yes difference in performance isnt huge with high 14k or 15+k points I can accept it, But I just want to find out what makes the score lower on reinstall.

Looking at my 3Dmark bench runs I can see that even to the score on the latest run is lower at 15003 all clock speeds are higher.

on the 15003 points run: GPU 1734mhz, memory 2329mhz
on the 15178 points run: GPU 1671 mhz, memory 2202mhz
Lower one is made with the stock SSD drive and windows.
Both runs on same driver versions and so on.

And another thing is that the lower scored run has a bigger combined score, but lower physics and graphics run score... Weird? Individually CPU and GPU are slower but together faster.

So I gather that reason must be in the software?

I'll continue to try to find the reason.. Drivers maybe?

Anyways thank you for your input,

-Villehaseo

 

Try cloning the original SSD, that’s the one I didn’t try. I’ve tried everything, nvidia/intel drivers from original Razer, intel and nvidia, from old i think x88x to latest x99x nvidia. In my case I could keep physical 16~K but graphics hardly to achieve 17K. I’m guessing there’s something they do with original pm961.

 

Yes, have to try cloning the original SSD.. See if it makes any difference.. Also tried the drivers on razers site, no luck same as you.

I'll keep you posted if I find anything.

-Villehaseo

 

Anybody else have this behavior where the laptop chassis around the hinge / screen area makes "pop" noise couple times when you stress the machine and its heating up?

It makes the same noise when cooling down.

Popping noise stops whenever the temperature stabilizes for sustained period (whether that be burning hot or ice cold).

I can only imagine this is due to heat expansion & contraction of the chassis.

 

Yep, my Razer Blade Pro does this, doesn't really bother me.

 

I dont get any "popping" but My charger whines

 

I don't post much but I just bought a Razer Blade 15 w/ the 4K screen today. I'm looking to replace my Macbook Pro 15" (2017) so last week I bought Blade Stealth then the Blade 15 w/ a 1060 from Best Buy and took them both back since I missed the screen size and resolution of my MBP. I've been using a Core v2 with a 1080ti on my MBP but after using the Razer laptops, I won't miss OS X as much as I thought. I'm looking forward to seeing the higher res on the Razer.

 

This was my biggest concern moving over to the Razer Blade 15... I've had high-res screens for a while now and was worried I would miss the super-sharp fonts.

Reality is, I have not missed them at all.

The FHD screen is definitely sharp enough for me, and I thought I was a high-res snob. Kinda surprised me really.

I also realised how much I like 1080p gaming. I've been using my Blade more than my 27" WQHD 144hz G-Sync setup. I'm more accurate on my Blade. Again, another thing that surprised me.

I wouldn't change anything about this form factor or resolution, especially for FPS, I've found for me that's it's bloody perfect.

 

Heh, back in the day, the experts said that 1080p was no better than 720p if your TV was under 40 inches or so. Some of this is clearly just market driven marketing promoting the new, better, toys.

I have tried >1K laptop display (ASUS Zenbook, I think it’s 13 inch 4K, well different aspect ratio, so probably not true 4K) and absolutely hate messing with the scaling business. In particular LOTRO log in window is fixed scaling, and I have to kind of squint to see the tiny thing when putting in my passwords.

I went with 1K this order, the 144 panel. Gaming and general use / productivity I think will be better for my preferences.

Creative use - photo / video would be a different animal.

 

Hmm now you guys have me making me question my decision but I can always send it back if the 4K screen doesn't work and go back to the 1060/1080p version Best Buy sells. I won't really be gaming on the internal monitor much anyway outside of when I travel and I think I may be on my last big trip for the year but who knows. I only had the 1080p Blade for a couple of days so maybe I just needed more time to get used to it.

 

The panel on the 15 is one of the best on the market and I Purchased the 15, the 17" pro 4k and the asus Zephyrus gx501 and GM501 and I decided on keeping the Razer. Its a really good panel. the only think I really wish it had G-Sync... At this price point I think every gaming laptop should either be G-Sync or be like the Zephyrus M that allow you to switch between G-Sync and Optimus.

 

Yea ditch the 4k panel and go with the 1080p model. Unless you plan on using it more as a desktop and connected to the core than get the 1070m model as te 1060m is really not a good card its slower than a 1050 TI 4gb so if you are using it on the go its not going to turn in very good results. If you dont game on the go then yea the 1060m model will be just fine

 

Only thing I would worry about is the top of the keyboard area. I have never seen a laptop get so hot to touch before. You can fry bacon. Long term I don’t know what issues this will cause. I love the form and factor and the screen is amazing and clear.

 

Heat is an issue with all “thin” gaming laptops with these levels of CPU and GPU. I ordered mine from HIDEvolution for several reasons, one of which is to get a quality repaste job done with LM. I also think that undervolting can lower temps, and I will be experimenting with that. I hope to achieve a low enough temp to be tolerable when I game. (say <80) but time will tell. These efforts should increase battery time for general use as well. This machine will be for general use most the time, and some light gaming when traveling. I would choose (and lug around) something bigger as a mainly gaming laptop.

In the case of this thin, all aluminum chassis, I feel it is serving as some of the heat sink. I am sure the engineers worked to prevent the hot part of the top to be where your palms are, and minimize heat on the keyboard. It probably gets warm anyways, as its right over the action.

In addition, I paid for the option for them to select a screen with minimal light bleeding, and paid for additional warranty from them, a couple of the other concerns people have about the Razer laptops here.

 

That is area where fresh hot air directly going out from hottest laptops parts, vapor chamber. So it may be hot to touch, it’s similar with previous Blade 2017, it was fine in my 14 months gaming usage, I don’t put my wrist on that areas anyway I don’t think you can fry anything there, my specs sticker still stick on that area since 2 months ago and doesn’t melt yet

 

Take those darn stickers off! lol I actually just ordered a skin that goes on the palm rests and above keyboard, Im curious if it'll help dissipate heat or trap it tbh.

 

I have seen lid, bottom, and trackpad skins, who has the palmrest skins?

I am hesitant to apply a skin to the bottom, but I’m sure a lid skin will be fine. If the palm rests are not too hot, I doubt a skin there will be a problem, but I have no evidence.