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

I am indeed enjoying uploading videos for the 4K model, I think I was one of the very first to have one and no issues what so ever. Surprised to hear anyone having issues with coil whine etc after I bought mine.
Anyways for those interested here is my latest upload for my RB15 on NVidia GPU Boost 3.0

At last count I have 19 Razer Blade 15 uploads!

 

My fan was making the same noise. I sent it in, got it back 2 weeks later and the other fan makes the same noise but louder than before. They replaced both fans, but one new one is defective too. Getting tired of this crap, may go Acer Triton 500 through Amazon when available.

 

Typical (non-existent) razer quality control

 

I didn’t even notice that short video, I saw rattle or weird sounds from fans on other brands in subreddit and YouTube, this one of them video 1, video 2.

So you say that brand on videos above “typical (brands name) quality control” .
Yeah on thin light categories there’s more QC issues possible and especially when users doing tweaking this and there for better this and that, I think most poeple that mentioned how reliable Blade on this thread is users who didn’t do hardware tweaks like repasting, mine is still default paste as well, only ssd upgrade and dusting.

 

Let's face it, Razer has been competing with Apple in terms of build quality and style, there is no secret about that. However, they clearly lack the QC and service that Apple provides, and also Dell, who I can objectively say has been much, much better about dealing with problems and improving their computers based on user input vs Razer, and always steps up above and beyond in terms of service/replacement. If Razer wants to charge a premium price, that is fine, but they need to also offer premium QC and premium CS.

 

Yes that’s true and I can confirm on Blade 15 and stealth 2019 are mix also to xps than before to 100% Apple in term design and style. In US maybe Dell is better on service but not here in EU, you can get local store service and extended guarantee with Razer laptops now in Germany now, idk exactly about Dell but I have hard time getting their Alienware before and now even 51m last time I checked isn’t available on store page unlike in US, and support (chat) can’t answer that. Now with Razer care essentials program for Razer laptop and phone they seem try to improve that. I’m quite often seeing Razer forum and I saw not few users that became Dell hater after experienced their cs. For Apple mostly complain and reason move to Razer are price and performance, including me.
In EU due law we’re mostly getting 2 years warranty from Razer store and Amazon and with Blade laptops are starting show on physical store windows display now we can get extra up to 4 years hardware protection on that. As you know till now my Razer Systems are fine, stealth 2016 2 years and Blade 15 almost 8 months gaming usage no repasting only software tweaks. I did reject though late 14 2016 due possibility issues on 2 weeks owning it, and it seemly that model has high failure rate, unlike my old Blade 2015 that still works fine. On 2015 model, i didn’t do anything crazy only undervolting it was also after knowing undervolting, over a year gaming on maybe high temperature , idk about new owner setting though but he said it’s fine, I’ll definitely know issue because he can’t send it for RMA without my Razer ID.
Edit: Only for you to ground my statement above, take a look my previous system late 2016 there but only 2 weeks I rejected it and got upgrade from EU CS to 2017.

 

Not sure everyone having issues performed DIY hardware tweeks (other than SSD and RAM) on their systems, repasted or performed undervolting, etc. Other than changing the m.2 SSD, 1TB HDD and memory I have not done a thing to my RB15. It has performed perfectly and I am not having any kind of fan issue, whatsoever.

From the sounds of it I am pleased I have not had to go through Razer CS.

 

Not everyone's had issues, and typically the ones that dont never end up on forums asking questions either.

So far I've done repastes, thermal pads, and have no throttling...
Have fixed the broken plastic screw mount...
Glued part of the speaker grill..
Had fans replaced under warranty once, needs another right off the bat, 2 weeks wasted...
And that's all so far.

These are nice computers, but I wish there was a faster, easier way to have them fixed/maintained that puts less stress and headache on the consumer. Dell can send techs to your home if you pay for that warranty, and I'd gladly pay it for razer if they would do it.

 

Going to test the waters selling my blade. The warranty is transferable so rest assured you'll have the Upsie extended warranty to match. 2x new fans are in the mail for good measure, I can send them directly to anyone who buys the laptop once they get delivered to me. For anyone on the forum I can take PayPal (goods and services) and take $1900 +shipping. Pass it along if you don't mind. Can make an eBay listing for it suits your fancy.

https://houston.craigslist.org/sys/d/spring-2018-razer-bladeyr-warranty/6799806558.html

 

^^^
*US only plz*

 

Make sure to create a thread in the NBR Marketplace and good luck!

 

Good luck man. Also, how did you get Razer to send you replacement fans? Especially without sending your blade back.

 

I didn't, a seller on ebay showed up with 1070 model fans so I just bought it. Razer won't send parts out, and if I call again my blood will boil so I just paid...

 

Probably a good call. I don’t know how they’ve survived this long.

 

I am getting a MSI P65 creator 1070 OR the Razer Blade 15 144hz 1070.

Any issues I should be aware of? S3 sleep, build quality, cracking fans or something?

My XPS 9570 is just crap and sending it back, no sleep and no fan curve, insane coil whine and so on. I don't want any of that

 

As you see above there’s user with cracklings fans, ac adapter buzzing etc but I don’t have those issues so far though and I use it mostly for gaming. S3 sleep, I’m guessing it’s consuming a lot wattage on sleep mode, never check that since I don’t use throttlestop anymore, well rarely, but overnight sleep mode I loose maybe around 3 to 4 percent, never goes under 90% after full charge (unplugging after gaming) on night before. There was not charging issues apparently on turned off condition, but it was addressed with BIOS Update.
Build quality, I find this is like a tank in small form factor.

 

I'd echo that! Doesn't creak or flex for me (other than where it should like the screen!). Its an amazing amount of power in a perfect form factor!

 

While everyone are waiting for RTX laptops on 29 January, is this
PINK RAZER BLADE

 

Just ordered a RB15 with the RTX 2080. Super excited. Now here's what i'm wondering: I installed a samsung 860 evo ssd in my 1070 RB15, will I be able to take that out and install it in the new RB and it'll be just like my old one with all my settings and files?

 

You'll need another opinion besides mine buy I'd say Nay, it's going to give you issues. The graphics driver may not work or display the screen, as well as idk how it reads the serial number.

 

If anyone orders from Razer's website, let me know and you can get my 5% discount code You get the RTX 2060 + 512GB SSD for 2736 EURO (144 discount)
Or 15% on peripherals

Send me a pm if interested

 

Yes, just remove the graphics driver beforehand using Display Driver Uninstaller. I doubt that there will be a need for entirely new drivers.

 

I was you a couple of months ago. Aging macbook but not willing to pay all that money for basically the same underpowered machine of a couple of years ago. I took the plunge and bought the razer maxed out. It's had one issue with the headphone jack not picking up that you plugged something in without a reboot. My headphones are bluetooth so it doesn't bother me. It does get hot when gaming, but it's a laptop that will game! I've had 6 Oracle database VMs running on this thing while running a benchmark and it handles the load without breaking a sweat. I love this machine. That said I haven't had to deal with customer support bought mine from HIDevolution.

 

2019 Razer Blade, RTX 2080 Max-Q Firestrike score, 1080p, stock settings, 16,546

 

just for fun comparison

 

Got my 2080 blade today and it makes this sound. What is this? What would you guys do? My 2018 1070 blade didn't make this noise. Listen close in this video: https://photos.app.goo.gl/P5jYetQ99a3mWySy5

 

This can stand in as a fine example for why overclocking and undervolting is absolutely viable and shouldn't be dismissed, even for a thin & light laptop such as the Blade 15. Your score is not validated for whatever reason, let's say it were perfectly valid: My stable overclock (and some other users' on here) yields around 15500 +/- 100 points. Even though the Fire Strike score is heavily GPU dependent, it's still quite a significant uplift: https://www.3dmark.com/fs/16998351

And even in case you "lost" the silicon lottery, it's still worth it to play around a bit, even if it's just an undervolt in case you can't get more out of it than stock.

 

That’s great silicons you have I cannot get such high anymore on latest windows and nvidia drivers version, still can easily pass 15K.
There’s new Synapse Version on Blade 2019,did you try to update. I’m not with Blade 15 so can’t confirm but here’s new looks, there’s new creator mode beside traditional balanced and gaming and fans rpm max 5300 now. From the look probably now can 0rpm.

 

Should not the old Blade 15 get the same firmware to run fans at 0 rpm? Otherwise its really bad of Razer

 

Not manually. I’m curious as well, it may Software update or maybe hardware limitation due max rpm because Turing card need more cooling because hotter tensor core. When I’m not wrong cassis is mentioned in CES slightly thicker.

 

Ok so I've had my 2080 blade for about 24 hours now and its great except for a couple things. First, the whine noise it makes that I posted about above. Still not sure what it is but my 1070 blade didn't make that noise. Second is the touch pad, it has like a delay from when i move my finger to when the cursor actually moves. My 1070 blade touch pad is very precise and I'm pretty sure its the same one on the 2080 but for some reason there's a slight delay. I don't know if its something with software that can be fixed easily or if its something hardware related. If anybody has any ideas of how I can fix this I would really appreciate it.

 

Sadly coil-whine noise and lightbleed are really random from one unit to another but it doesn't affect the hardware integrity of the laptop.

Regarding the touch pad,, it's supposed to be a microsoft precision touchpad, I read somewhere that since the windows 10 creator update some touch pad had delay problems, maybe google this and you might find a workaround, I really doubt it's related to the hardware.

 

Benchmarks are great guys but can some of you who have the 2080 max q variant please post temps, base gpu clock speeds and boost speeds.

 

By the way, find BIOS 1.07 here: https://dl.razer.com/drivers/BladeC1/RazerUpdater_v1.1.1.0_C1-BIOSv0107.exe

They didn't change the updater version from 1.06, so just replacing the number of the known 1.06 BIOS link helped. I don't know whether there's a 1.08 and I have no idea what they did in 1.07. There's also no EC 1.04.

 

How do you know when there are updates available, it doesn't show under razer downloads under support for latest bios

 

We have a 1.06 link a number of pages back that @HAMSTERS received from support. I simply tried it knowing from posts on Reddit and the Razer Insider forum that there are machines with BIOS 1.07 out there.

 

1.07 and 1.06 are bios may come on new unit, I think around last year and unit that come from repair. Not officially one. If you don’t have issues and don’t know what is new improvement on it it’ll be better stay on 1.05, I don’t notice issues on this, battery life great, charging fine, performance okay, gaming thermal tolerated .
I’m only jealous of new look of rtx Blade Synapse, There’re new creator mode and higher fans rpm.

 

Here's another upload from my Razer Blade 15 4K 1070
MSI Afterburner Voltage Curve. Enjoy.

 

Can we get a Razer Blade RTX Owners Lounge Please???

 

Well, I believe that BIOS 1.06 helped to lower the CPU power consumption when using battery. However, the 1.06 has one major issue to me. It causes camera image to be tearing and stuttering when using internal webcam. I always using it for skype, so I am upset.

1.07 fixed this issue for me.

 

Hi,

Saw your question. I posted these notes on the Razer reddit thread.

Shadow of Tomb Raider's internal benchmark tool results. This is a mainstay for most GPU reviews making it easy to compare.


3440x1440 - All max settings with SMAAx4 - 36fps


3440x1440 - All max setting with SMAA (lowest AA) - 51fps


2560x1440 - All max settings with SMAAx4 - 51fps (not a typo)


2560x1440 - All max settings with SMAA (lowest AA) - 65fps


3440x1440 - 2nd highest preset - SMAA (lowest AA) - hairworks low - 60fps (how I play).


2560x1440 - 2nd highest preset - SMAA (lowest AA) - hairworks low - 76fps


Notes:


* I do not have Synapse 3 installed yet (I think it is Spyware). I am adding it later today with the appropriate firewalls. I will run a couple of benchmarks and if there are changes I will post. I ended up adding S3 with the appropriate firewalls. No change in performance or temps but I do like being able to control the fans and lights.

* CPU temps hovering low 80s with no spikes above 90 (undervolt -120 and power max at 99%) - clock speeds all over the place. Successful with -140. Temps are the same. Probably going to repaste.

* GPU temps low 70s - clock speeds steady between 1350mhz and 1450mhz

* The GPU will hit 1850 in spikes possibly meaning there could be higher stabilized clock speeds with lower temps. This turned out to not be accurate for mine. Fans set at 100% with the laptop completely unabstructed drive both the cpu and GPU below 70 in this benchmark but the GPU will not stay above 1450 for any extended period of time. This card would only take a small 50 MHz clock increase for OC.

* Cortana and other useless MS apps are deleted and "update helpers" from google, origin and others are turned off in Services, I have gone back through and removed another batch of apps to help with battery life.

Battery life is pacing towards 4 hours for regular office use. Not ideal. I’m working with it mobile this week and will be tweaking more until I find the sweet spot. Need to get this thing to 6 hours.

The new Blade RTX 2080m will easily replace my Stealth EGPU Setup with Titan XP. Keep in mind this is the benchmark tool and in game FPS typically are higher for me.

Question for the group. Will 3000mhz or 32gb make a difference in gaming/streaming?

 

Yeah, I've looked into the newest Synapse version and sadly the button isn't there. I'd love to only lift the power limit without touching the GPU, because Nvidia Inspector does that for me already.

That's great to hear! For now I've rolled back to 1.05 because in 1.06 and 1.07 the CPU wouldn't honor the SpeedShift EPP value in ThrottleStop. So I couldn't force it to stay at 900MHz when the value was set to 255. I'd like the machine to act predictably, so I went back.

 

For those who have seen issues with excessive heat on their RB15s I have a suggestion. Game in a 35 to 38 degree cooler and your heat will be a lot lower.

I have been working in a dairy this week in the automated packing area of the dairy. While this may keep thermals under control, working in a cooler just above freezing really isn't my cup of tea.

 

Hey, I know repasting has been discussed a lot previously in this thread, but just wanted to throw in my 2 cents (especially as there have been folks commenting that there's no point in repasting unless you use liquid metal as razer uses 'quality' stuff). I had noted some bad, odd thermals in my razer blade 15 with 1070 max Q recently (even in non-gaming mode hitting 100c in most titles in sustained sessions despite fan at max, -120 mV undervolt, etc).

I repasted today using thermal grizzly kryonaut (also changed the thermal pads) and saw a 15C reduction- went from that 100C cap to 85 max in non-gaming mode. Previously, thermal throttling had made gaming mode irrelevant, now I see 95C in sustained sessions in gaming mode with the CPU clocks holding at 3.9ghz in games (previously down to 2.9 max or even 2.2 often).

So, if your temps are bad, there can still most definitely be gains from repasting (even without using liquid metal).

 

Which pads did you use?

 

Can once and for all someone please confirm me that the conductonaut is not corrosive on the RB15 ?

I can't stop reading contradictory statements. I believe that HIDEvolution is offering a repaste with conductonaut, they wouldn't do it if the heatsink would be corroded, right ? (Plus the 2019 model clearly has a full copper heatsink)

thanks.

 

The vapor chamber is made of copper. Thin copper obviously, as it's hollow. You will of course face pitting and roughening of the surface and the inherent loss of performance after some time, because the copper is not nickel-plated. In extreme cases the thin wall of the vapor chamber may become porous and holes will form that will render the vapor chamber useless. This scenario is very unlikely with a coldplate with welded on heatpipes like in the base model RB15 and Stealth, because the coldplate would be a lot thicker than the vapor chamber's wall.

However you may decide, I wouldn't recommend using liquid metal on a part that has the potential of being in a vertical position while warmed up. Liquid metal doesn't have a lot of surface tension, so you have to be careful to apply just enough and isolate the die(s) with some barriers that will stop it from getting on to components on the motherboard, or apply nail polish or other protective layer.

 

I already repasted my AW15 with liquid metal : I use 105°C thermal resistant electric isolation tape, and yes of course never put too much or it will spill, however the conductonaut has some way of staying on the die (viscosity ?) Not too worried.

the only thing that was worrying me was the corrosion (but full copper is great still). It's a shame that they don't use nickel plating, it's something standard !

 

Well, realistically speaking, I mean with a good application and enough mounting pressure you can get into the range of 3-6°C from Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut with Kryonaut or Phobya NanoGrease Extreme, at least in this laptop. I personally have the last year's model with the 1070 Max-Q and with my Kryonaut application the temperatures are acceptable at all times. Could certainly go a few degrees lower with liquid metal, but I don't feel that it's worth it considering both the CPU and GPU are running within manufacturer specifications and my own expectations.

The problem here is that while the vapor chamber is really good at conducting heat away from the dies themselves, the transfer of that heat outside of the chassis is pretty limited because the heatsinks on the two sides of the vapor chamber are pretty small. That is to be expected of a thin&light machine such as the RB15, but you hit diminishing returns relatively soon in terms of how well the chips can sink their heat, since the vapor chamber itself will heat up enough to be a considerable factor in achieving better core temperatures.

I noticed this when I replaced the factory thermal paste (my RB15 is from an early batch which came with garbage thermal paste). After applying Kryonaut both the CPU and GPU can sink their heat much more effectively, but the CPU saw a huge improvement. This has negatively impacted GPU temperatures even compared to the garbage factory thermal paste (by 4-5°C under full load), because of course both components are sinking their heat into the same heatsink. But at least the fan speeds came way down simultaneously.

Of course, if you want to get the absolute maximum out of it, there's no way around liquid metal yet. Just be aware that you're hitting diminishing returns quickly because the heatsink is just so small. I'm personally keeping liquid metal to my desktop components for the time being.

By the way, congrats to a thousand posts!

 

I'm planning on LM for the CPU and Kryonaut for the GPU. I prefer to use conformal costing over electrical tape and those little pins on the GPU freak me out.