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

Retested on flat surface and looks like the temps are going back to normal. Maxing out at 75 degrees for Superimpose and 85 for Timespy. Need to see how it goes with playing Metro Exodus again

Hopefully hitting 100 degrees that one time didn't do any damage.

Thanks for the inputs guys.

 

Other thing to note on gaming manual Fans would be better than auto, i set on 4800 but yes Metro Exodus is quite demanding title hit low 90ish in cpu on 2 hours gaming session maybe should increase the rpm like to max 5000 but louder fans noise as trade off.

 

Cool thanks, I might give manual fans a go, maybe at 4500rpm to start off with to see if there's any improvement in temps.
Speaking of raising the laptop and thermals, is anyone using a laptop cooler for gaming? If so, which coolers are y'all using?

Also, are there any other good GPU benchmark/stress tests that are good to run? I've done 3dmark timespy and firestrike, as well as all the free ones from unigine.

 

I wish there were more gaming benchmarks that you could run continuously without issue. My favorite one to run for general testing is Unigine Valley but it's so out dated and doesn't work the CPU hardly at all. Something that really works the GPU and CPU hard, like a never ending Assassin's Creed Benchmark would be great lol.

 

3DMark with its stress test feature comes to mind. Not infinitely continuous and doesn't give you a 3DMark score at the end, but it's something.

Also you're using Unigine Valley, but don't forget that there's also Unigine Superposition. With its heavy shaders on the 1080p Extreme preset it's a pretty good GPU workout.

If you really want to give the machine hell, run Prime95 and a GPU-focused stress test at the same time. Run FurMark if you're in for toasty GPU VRMs.

 

Prime95 + "GPU Intensive benchmark" has never sat well with me because it's not a typical use case. Like every game is different, but there are no games that use 100% of the CPU 100% of the time. Games with high CPU usage that come to mind are basically all the Assassin's Creed games, Anthem ... The rest don't use nearly as much CPU juice.

I should run superposition, i do own it. Have to find my key. Even as a newer benchmark, I can't remember it hammering the CPU too much either though.

 

well, as a reminder for all of you here be happy with your devices treat them well and never give them away after i refunded my blade 15 to amazon, and the same device wasnt available and still isnt, i couldnt afford the newer model wich is available .. (poor student) so i bought a triton 500 cause same thickness, metal body ( although not unibody but still sturdy ) screen a bit flimsy ..
well .. that one ended up back at acer aswell .. turned off during gaming multiple times .. not even high cpu temps ( 77c and gpu at 69c ) -.- razer seriously is the only company making such thin and lights with good quality feel, and issues that arent game killing .. like some coilwhine ( wich btw the triton had way more ) now since i have already spend the 300 i had leftover from the triton purchase and the stuff i got back .. ( for a good wd black ssd for my pc and a new keyboard ) i only have 1699 left ... i ended up with a xps 15 2 in 1 with 8 gigs ram and vega m gl ( vega m gl so i can atleast play some games .. it seems to be around 1050ti ish but better than a 1050 ) transforming myself into a proper student with a pen supported device lul .. i hope that razer gives their next devices a fingerprint reader in addition to windows hello, and a touchscreen that is not bound to a 4k display that costs you 1k more .. -.-

 

Wow hard luck dude. Sorry to hear that. Yeah I love my RB15, gonna be super sad if anything ever happens to it.

Not sure if it's possible, but Microcenter has a pretty good deal on most 2018 RB15s ... i got mine super cheap, my local Microcenter also has an Advanced model for like 1700 bucks. Might be worth checking on if there is a microcenter within driving distance of you, even if its like, 4 hours, i'd still do it haha.

Oh yeah p.s. if you dont mind refurbished or used, ebay has great deals on 2018 RB15's too!

 

well that would be like several thousand kilometers LUL i live in germany .. there is no 1060 advanced model that is about 1699 ( thats what i have left cause i needed a new keyboard and ssd for my pc ) we had one for 1699 on amazon but i t had 3 weeks wait time .. i cant wait that long i need it for studying thats what you get when you study computerscience ..

 

Oh yeah that won't work haha.

Well what about something like this?

I am not sure if you have second hand insurance companies like they do in the US but might be worth it if so!

https://www.ebay.de/itm/Razer-BLADE...739287?hash=item261b5b8297:g:YBgAAOSwqaRcxFm7

 

thats the base model , a nogo for me since to thick , .. im spoiled by the advanced and its thinnness .. and .. i wont buy a razer from ebay or any other site other than amazon since warranty is easier .. i mean they refunded the full 1999 i payed for my blade advanced back when i bought it .. and it was 2 months away from being out of warranty

 

Ohh right. Can't argue with that i guess. Well maybe a graduation gift to yourself or something hahah

 

That’s base model not advanced.

I live also in Germany thinking about selling my 1070maxq Advanced for Blade Oled or Pro 17, I think I can give you that price, all still like day one specs sticker etc and still have rest guarantee a year, original box as well and Razer stickers if you need . I’ll give you my contact if you need support lol. But I’m still thinking though, feel like I don’t need to upgrade I’ve razer Corev2 housing rtx2080 setting which I like.

 

Hello comrades. Checking in with you the RTX blade owners, everyone good with their machine? Having issues? Even if all is well, please post your experience, as I constantly read the negatives of the internet and would like to hear the positives as well.

In my case, my 2070 model has been a dream so far. The QC on my machine is near perfect, small amount of light bleed, excellent thermals, overall a breath of fresh air after dealing with a ridiculously problematic 1070 model. If I could nitpick, I'd raise the gaming power limit throttling up from 35w, and fix the 2 second loss of track pad function after boot and wake.

Anyone else?

 

I havent tested it without TS yet. But my max powerusage is 45w in standard mode. But I manually selected max 45watt in TS. Not sure if it overrides everything.

 

If you still have thermal headroom you can try this. After boot and wake loos trackpad probably because Synapse isn’t loaded yet.

 

I'm pretty livid now.. As of yesterday my camera was cutting in and out like it would run for like a minute or 2 in skype then die. So I'd manually restart it (Via Software enable within SKype or Viber) and then now it's COMPLETELY DEAD... A restart won't fix it or anything. If you recall I complained about this a few months back got a new system and now it's back.

Just so frustrating.... I hope the new systems with the RTX don't have these issues as it appears that many blades do in fact suffer from this problem.

https://www.reddit.com/r/razer/comments/9xzg7j/razer_blade_15_camera_issue/

 

still under warranty?

 

Every Razer generation has some built in flaw that never gets addressed, and Razer refuses to fix it/address the underlying problem. This will be my first and last Razer machine

 

Yes it's still under warranty I think. I'm not even sure at this point what warranty i have. Let me clarify, I purchased a laptop in August of 2018 and that system had Camera issues around Christmas Time. Finally in late February of 2019 I decided to send it in for repairs, and I assumed the repair should be easy I mean it's just a Camera I want to get working, a laptop that has Camera issues should be easy to fix I though to myself, I mean the cell phones have cameras that are even better then my laptop and they always work fine...

Three weeks go by nothing happens, I inquire and they give in and send me a "refurbished" unit of the same specs to me. Fine whatever I'll take it I just want a working laptop so I can talk to my girlfriend as I'm in a Long Distance Relationship I don't really game anymore but I like gamer systems. Kind of like I enjoy Sport Cars but I don't track any of my cars I just commute to work.

Anyways, the Camera didn't work too well so I updated the bios it worked. Finally I thought my system was good, well my girlfriend came over and stayed with me for 2 months before she starts her new job. And well she left early this week so i need my laptop to work again for the SkypeViber etc... And Poof laptop camera no longer works, no longer is detected.

2 months short of August 2019.

This is crazy...

 

RB15 with the 10 series GPU's really have a problematic flex cable which seem to be folded quite sharply twice during the routing to the display. But the display cable+webcam cable are glued together and the whole cable harness directly has the webcam soldered onto it as well. The display lid is all glued down. So they could just have replaced the whole screen assembly instead of going for a refurb (i hate that companies give out refurbs).

A bigge rproblem is that thy havent made a revision of the first years models. THe cables on the RB15 2019's are all different and have no folded cables.

 

Didn’t know you’ve also Blade 15, after 14 and Pro? You’re really Razer fans lol

Yeah that’s crazy after what you experienced. I know Blade 15 webcam have issue even rtx one, Windows hallo is apparently not working well on some condition as well, I would buy some amazon webcam if you’re often using it. My only complaint is that the mike doesn’t take good sound from Blade once I recorded my guitar play with music background from it, only take well my voice and guitar, it’s amateur hobby project though.

 

I’ve sold all my other Razer’s, only RBP remains. Luckily my razer peripherals have been more reliable but my friends razer blackwidow keyboard and naga mouse just died

 

Just send it back in one more time. Make them replace it, then sell it after you confirm everything looks good. if you don't care about games any more, you shouldn't have any issue getting a fast enough laptop that also has a decent webcam for less than half what you can sell a RB15 for.

 

Just used my headphone jack for the first time today

It asked me what i had plugged in, swapped to audio out on the jack. Then when I unplugged it, audio went away completely until a restart haha.


Update:

Contacted Razer Support. It's probably Windows 10 1903. Went well. Problem solved. Hooray.

 

Did anybody succeed to overclock blade's RAM any further than 2666MHz?

 

Went to bestbuy reproduced my Receipt and submitted it over then sent my laptop out for repairs or replacement yesterday. Hopefully they resolve my laptop as it's on it's final legs in terms of warranty period. I was so certain that Razer got it right with the Blade 15 and it was officially my first Razer Laptop and based on how things went for me it might be my last.

 

What happened?


edit: never mind, delete this ... I'm reading back now... xD

 

Sucks that you have to deal with that. Hopefully the gen 2 Blade 15's with RTX GPU's last longer. Imo they shoul djust give you a newer revision. Just like Dell does when after a couple repairs they could not fix it.

 

First issue with my 2018 Blade base model. I am attempting to run some business software and when importing a file in the system cannot read or gain access to its registry file, or that's what I am interpreting. I have had no issues at all running anything else, including the offline robot programming graphics software. I had no issues whatsoever with the blade before I installed Duet software to connect my iPad as a second monitor. Now the system is sluggish, applications take several seconds to open up, and every once in a blue moon I am experiencing a blue screen. Prior to the installation of Duet apps opened up very, very quickly, everything performed fast, start up was fast, not a single blue screen. I ran the blade about 2 whole months before I loaded Duet. While this is not a Razer issue and is a Windows issue, I am not pleased. I could do a complete rebuild of my m.2 SATA drive or I could just get a m.2 NVMe drive. I have upgraded the m.2 from the 128gb to 2tb (both SATA). Of course I will write this off against my consulting business but geesh!!!

Sorry, had to vent a little while I contemplate what I am going to do next. Regardless there is going to be a hard drive Win

 

@RobotDoctor, is your SSD full by any chance? If it is, that might be factoring in for everything being sluggish. But as I'm reading around, Duet's Windows driver seems not to be the cream of the crop. Especially with Nvidia Optimus enabled systems like the Razer Blade. And it seems to influence a whole bunch of seemingly unrelated things. Scary.

 

For ****s and giggles, decided to run this thing

First run was a middling 1027, so i set the fans to 100% ... and ... this seems pretty alright.

Had HWMON on for it. Hottest core was 88c except for the last like second, which spiked to 91c, rest were mid-80s ... It's about 24c ambient too, so not exactly cool. All six cores stayed at 3.9 Ghz for the entirety of the test

Also jumped up to a whopping 55w of power consumption. Which is basically nothing compared to what my old alienware 15 r4 would pull. Pretty sure I saw the 8750h in that thing spike to ****ing 80w at one point.

This is FACTORY paste btw. I still have not removed the heatsink on this thing.

https://i.imgur.com/cSch5kv.png

 

No, not even close. Here is my current drive usage summary.

 

Huh. Well, that was just a random guess. The only other thing that comes to mind is monitor CPU usage when the sluggishness sets in. The Sysinternals Process Monitor can give you a lot more info on what is putting a load on the system than the Task Manager.

If and when you decide to upgrade, keep in mind that you won't get vastly better performance with an NVMe SSD with things like Windows bootup for example, because the access latency will be in the same ballpark. It's only once a file has been accessed do you see high speeds with NVMe vs. SATA, so only with larger files. You'd need to get an Intel Optane NVMe drive to get a significant measurable difference in latency and speed.

But as it sounds, you're being bottlenecked by something other than your SSD, a rogue driver or something.

EDIT: By the way, forgot to mention that, in your situation, buying an NVMe SSD or even an M.2 Optane SSD is likely a waste of money if you're happy with the performance your current drive was giving you in your use case. I mean before the system went haywire. So if you don't have a total garbo SSD, it's very likely you're good.

 

Did you ever sort this out mate? Mines been doing this for months now. It usually freezes up first then after a minute or two blue screens

 

How's Watch Dogs 2 and The Division 2 running for people without UV? I haven't applied an UV on this machine yet but I seem to be getting some heavy throttling from the moment I play either game (running on medium or high settings at 1920x1080) FPS is unstably bouncing between 40-50.

I'll probably start experiment with some settings later tonight. Im not so much worried about noise I just want a stable FPS >_<

 

There's no reason not to. Just take the time once and find your stable settings and leave it at that.

 

Yeah I spent nearly two hours reading this entire thread and found something useful from the user
cjoshuav which might be a good place to start. I've done it before on previous Blades so hopefully it'll stop this issue with The Division 2

Thanks again for sharing this cjoshuav

 

Well this is worrying. This is running The Division 2 with Mod 2 settings from the table above.

I can only assume bad settings in game if I'm getting these temperatures? Anyone play/have Division 2 care to share your setting for TS & in-game please?

 

Depending on what the GPU temperatures, and especially the CPU core frequency, were like throughout the session, I'd say it's either normal, or you'd be advised to replace the thermal compound.

The CPU does get very warm for me, but it doesn't drop down from the turbo clock speed a lot. In most game workloads it's fluctuating around 3.9GHz +/- 200MHz for me, but I've replaced the thermal compound quite a while ago. Before that the CPU performance was really gimped.

 

I definitely agree that there is a bottleneck going on. I appreciate the suggestions and will look into the Sysinternals Process Monitor. With regards to the NVMe vs SATA, I am certain any time gained would be minimal but since I have upgraded my system to nearly the limits I thought I would go to the NVMe. Sounds like a great excuse to do so. Besides, I can and will write that off as a business cost so that eases the cost a bit (after taxes, that is). I'll try finding the probably rogue driver first. Thanks for the suggestions! I definitely appreciate that.

 

So this is interesting, as it's very similar to what I've experienced. I purchased my RB 15 / GTX-1070 from the Microsoft Store, with the 2-year warranty, in July of 2018. On-board microphone hasn't worked since I can't remember when, and just in June, the webcam "disappeared" on me. Called up Razer, went through the trouble-shooting process, they agreed it was faulty, and arranged shipping & an RMA number. Since their repair centre in Canada is 20 mins away from me, I thought maybe I might get my laptop back in a few days, and I could work off my iPad Pro in the interim.

Then they tell me that they'll need to replace the whole LCD panel, since the Webcam and microphone cable is all integrated into the LCD panel structure, and they don't have any parts. They offered me two choices: wait an indefinite period for spare parts, or accept a replacement refurbished unit of the same model. I'll admit I was reluctant to accept a replacement refurb'd model, as the serial number would change, and this would likely invalidate my 2-year warranty with AMT through Microsoft. In the interim, I needed a new laptop for work, so I went back to the Microsoft store to check out the 2019 RB 15 with the RTX-2070s. In the store, I see a guy who is replacing his 2018 RB15 due to physical damage (looks like someone drove over it), and Microsoft apparently swaps them with the in-stock, 2019 model. Since my laptop was already in the hands of Razer awaiting repairs, I purchased a 2019 RB15 / 2070 model, again with the AMT extended warranty, and asked the question "What happens if I need to have my laptop repaired or replaced?" They answered "bring it into the store and we'll swap it for a new one if we have the same model in stock, or a newer model if we no longer carry the old one." DOH!!

So now my refurb'd 2018 RB15 is on a UPS truck heading back to me, and I've been working off this 2019 RB15 / 2070 model. Had I known up-front that Microsoft would replace the 2018 with a 2019, I would have done that straight away, and been happier than all heck.

Because my 2019 RB15 / 2070 / 240Hz unit has been spectacular thus far. Playing Battlefield-V, Doom, and anything else I can throw at it lately, I have had zero thermal throttling issues at all, with no changes to default settings (beyond setting the Custom Performance parameters to MAX in Synapse 3.0). Highest temps I've seen is 92C on any core / package. No dead / stuck pixels, minimal backlight bleed, Windows Hello camera works well.

I'm curious about one thing...did Razer give you any documentation with your refurb'd unit to indicate that your original Serial Number was swapped for a new one? In case my webcam fails on the replacement unit, I can take it back to Microsoft with the documentation, and arrange for a new RB15 / 2019 model instead.



Patrick

 

You can check on your Razer ID pages, it’ll show your Blade model and guarantee period once you registered it, I didn’t registered but I had new system registered once I exchanged late 2016 to 2017 one.

I think it’s pretty low for 1070? Have both games I’ll try it later, I yg Division 2 1080p was over 60fps max, maybe try use other dx, like dx11 instead dx12 on game setting.

 

BIOS v1.08 is out. Has the long overdue fix for the Zombieload vulnerability. Who knows what else might have changed. No new EC firmware.

https://dl.razer.com/drivers/Razer ... Model/RazerUpdater_v1.1.1.1_C1-BIOSv0108.exe

It's now in a different subfolder of the drivers folder. Older files are still in the previous "BladeC1" subfolder.

 

Anyone tried the new bios? I hope it doesn't have any detrimental impact on performance?

 

Has anyone done a fresh installation with Windows 10 Pro? I am attempting to do this with a new m.2 primary ssd and cannot get the Nvidia GTX 1060 driver to load. The error states that this is the wrong version of Windows. Could it be the version of Win10Pro I loaded is earlier than when the 1060 MaxQ GPU came out.

 

Depends. There are Windows 10 builds that Nvidia dropped support for, or never had support for to begin with. But usually the driver installs anyway and works fine. What you're getting happens usually when you try to install a 32 bit driver on a 64 bit OS, or try to install a Windows 7 driver on Windows 10 for example.

If you haven't updated Windows 10, I'd recommend you to do so and then get the appropriate driver: https://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/431.60/431.60-notebook-win10-64bit-international-whql.exe
This one's for Windows 10 64 bit and with Nvidia Optimus support.

I've also encountered the Nvidia driver not wanting to install on my desktop after a clean install when I haven't installed the Intel Management Engine driver yet. But it could just as well be that Windows needs a restart after a clean install, because by no later than after a reboot the installer always worked for me.

 

Thanks for the link. I'll make sure my version of Win10Pro is the latest. I will also try the Intel Management Engine driver and see how that goes.

 

@RobotDoctor, I personally don't really trust Windows with installing all the correct drivers (and the latest versions of those drivers) automatically, so driver installing is the first thing I'll do after a clean install. But Windows Update probably installed a version of the Management Engine driver for you already. Would be weird if it didn't, since it's a pretty central part in Intel CPUs.

 

I updated the version of Win10Pro to the latest version. The version I had was a bit older (maybe a couple of years old but unused). That did the trick and NVidia and Intel Integrated Graphics 630 was able to install. I also had a device that I couldn't figure out (labled "Base System Device"). I played around with this and installed and modified a handful of drivers and that device became satisfied with the driver. Now I have no devices without the latest drivers. The NVMe drive does boot up much faster than my SATA drive. That said, before I installed software to make my iPad a second monitor the SATA drive was working much better than after. I just need to get used to creating Restore points. Now for the task of installing and migrating software licenses over to the NVMe drive. Also, I am going to have to replace a few of the screws on the bottom of the case as they are not holding up to well. Thanks NoOB for your feedback. I appreciate it.