Razer Blade Owner's Lounge

So, what exactly does the recover partition contain? Is it just a copy of Windows 7 on it? Can I just delete it and reinstall windows with a disc or USB?

 

ill have to try that. as far as my recovery partition, its there, but for whatever reason it just stops at 1% if its anything like the first, you get that little graphical window saying razer recovery, then it has a little bullet thing that says recover or whatever it says, and two choices, cancel/exit and start recovery (i dont have the blade in front of me atm so its off memory) it then has a progress bar and it says creating system, then it says copying files 0%, it gets to 1% and then tells me its finished and gets ready to reboot.

which brings me to the wonderful windows boot manager error.

so it works up to that point and thats that.

for what ever reason, i cant mount it from my desktop but i can browse it via the command prompt on the windows restore portion of its disk. there an exe named imagex.exe which i understand is kind of a clone disk type of deal that takes windows images *.wim and extracts them to the target disk. theres also some random folders which had some files here and there, and then two images one was boot.wim, and the other was win7mlk.wim or something like that. that one was 7.4 gb and i assume is the image file of my os.

 

Anyone have advice on removing the warning sticker above the Switchblade UI?

 

Ill likely just be leaving mine on, as I am scared to see what might be under it for sticky crap.

Sticker remover would probably do the trick though.

 

Note... if anyone wants any higher resolution pictures to read writing or see a component more clearly than the ones I have posted, let me know.

So, I CAN confirm that you can indeed upgrade the RAM on the Razer Blade R2. I just installed 16GB of Corsair Vengeance RAM.


The first picture is just a general picture once you remove the bottom cover. Like a previous poster had mentioned, the middle two screw covers at the front of the laptop did not have to be removed, as no screws are under them.
Picture 1: General picture once cover is removed






After removing the small screws around the edge and the battery (I removed 15 screws and unplugged the battery from the motherboard, although be careful not to pull on the wires, but rather the plug itself.), I removed this little ribbon cable, since I know these kind are fragile. You simply push the little lever up and carefully pull out the cable.
Picture 2: Ribbon cable with lever DOWN



Picture 3: Ribbon cable with lever UP






Not sure what this component is in picture 4.... it was on the top side when I opened the cover. I thought I would take a picture of it and see if anyone knew... maybe the wireless chip?
Picture 4: Wireless chip???






And now.... the picture you all have been waiting for.... the underside. I simply just tilted the motherboard back, as there were still cables and such attached toward the backside. I tried to not have to unplug as much as I could. I think all I ended up unplugging was the battery, that little ribbon cable I showed previously, the hard drive, and another small cable that just came out when I was lifting the motherboard near one of the heat pipes.
Picture 5: Underside of the motherboard


Picture 6: Another shot of the underside






You can see the 2 memory slots toward the back. They are not soldered in RAM, but rather removable RAM. The Razer Blade R2 comes with Transcend branded RAM.

Picture 7: Shot of one of the sticks of original RAM that comes with the computer



Picture 8: RAM removed, Vengeance awaiting to be placed in....


Picture 9: New Corsair Vengeance RAM installed






Now, this was kind of interesting... there are these little squares of sponge like material on these two little chips (there is a 3rd chip with the same sponge stuff, except gray sponge, that is more toward the center of the board). I suspect they are some kind of thermal sponge. And if you notice, they line up with those 2 small heatsinks underneath them. I am not sure what these chips are... maybe the North or South bridge? I just thought I would point them out.

Picture 10: North or South bridge chips???






And now... for just a couple of other random pictures I took while I had the laptop apart. Here is what the switchblade component looks like when the motherboard is picked up. Note, that I did NOT unscrew anything or even touch anything on the switchblade component to do any of the work I performed.
Picture 11: Switchblade component under the motherboard







I don't know if anyone is interesting in finding more information out about the battery, but I took a picture of the underside so if anyone wants to look up any information, they have a picture of the label now.
Picture 12: Photo of the underside of the battery







And finally, a picture of the underside of the USB plugs, HDMI port, audio port, etc.
Picture 13: Underside of ports component

 

I just removed my windows sticker on the bottom of the laptop using "Un-du Adhesive Remover." It is a product meant for pictures and scrapbooking that allows you to removed the sticker, while keeping a lot of the stickiness on the sticker so you can reuse it. I did have some residue left on the bottom of the case, so I simply used a "Magic Eraser" that you can get at Home Depot, and it took the residue right off. I assume you can do something similarly to the sticker on the top, although I have not yet tried.

 

Thanks! Good to know that adhesive remover won't mar the machine. I'll be removing both stickers in the near future.

 

I am working through a problem with my razer blade, as i cannot mail it back tonight anyway. If anyone with one could tell me what is installed on the 64 gb sata III harddrive, if someone could also look at the partitions and tell me how those are setup it would save a ton of time. Thanks and happy gaming! ^.^

 

The one that looks like it's plugged into the motherboard? That's the wireless module. Your later pictures show the antenna wiring connected to it from the other side.

Those two later chips with the spongy material on them are probably the memory chips for the GPU.

Thanks for the pictures. I mean, it's a little nutty to pull it apart while under warranty, but it's good to know what's in there.

There should be nothing installed on the 64GB mSATA SSD. It's only used for caching.

On the 500GB HDD, there's a 10GB partition for recovery. The rest is the C: drive.

 

Razer is now including an Orochi and Headphones with the Blade 1...How big a graphical difference are you seeing in the 2?

I have an M17x w/7970m right now...So either will be a big graphical downgrade, but I love the Razer's form factor and small power brick for portability...

For users who have had both, what are your thoughts??

 

For the fan noise alone, get an R2.

 

You will definitely see a major difference between a 555m and a 660m. The difference is so major, thats the reason why razor has to bribe people to buy the R1.

Just look at these benchmarks between the two cards.

GT 555m:
NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M - Notebookcheck.net Tech


GTX 660m:
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660M - Notebookcheck.net Tech

 

well, after creating a bootable flash with win7 on it as mentioned above, ive pretty much finished getting my blade into a workable condition, with the startup sound, and blade log in screen and wallpaper. however now i have a new dillema. the wallpaper on my touchpad refuses to show. ive set it and reset it, and uninstalled synapse, and reinstalled synapse....the screen works, it displays other modes, however i cannot for the life of me to get it to change from anything but a black screen. i just want the default blade wallpaper with the 4 green corners and the razer logo. any thoughts?

 

Awesome to see that it can be upgraded.

Thanks for the pictures!

 

very good news indeed.

 

I looked at the benches, just wanted some real world experience with both...I'm coming from a 7970m, so anything other than a 680m is a going to be a big drop off.

The info on the fan noise is helpful, thanks for the info guys.

 

the improved cooling/fan noise reduction is wonderful, and certainly so is being able to run all my games not at 1080p

 

I'm having the same issue with my touch pad.. Sometimes it works, sometimes it just goes straight to a black screen and I can figure out why for the life of me.. Any suggestions anyone?

 

my switchblade is glitchy as well, my saved profiles are being partially deleted as well, and i keep having to re-create them. razer needs a software update asap, to help squash these bugs. they updated the switchblade every month, so hopefully a fix will come soon.

 

I read somewhere (could've been in this thread) that downloading the actual Synapse software and re-installing it clears some of those issues and it seems to have worked for me.

Had intermittent crashes at the beginning and it hasn't crashed since i re-installed that.

 

i reinstalled and it helped for a while, but its not a permanent fix

 

The only glitch I seem to be having is that the custom keys don't load their graphics when coming out of hibernation. I used to just switch profiles, but that isn't working. Now I just hit the Razer key. That fixes it.

 

my custom keys that i created as shortcuts to switch to different profiles keep on deleting for some reason. its very annoying.

 

My problem is even worse. While playing some games, I head the distinctive windows sound of a device being unplugged from the computer, and then my keyboard stops working completely. I have to make the computer sleep, wake up, and then wait 5 minutes for the keyboard to start responding. When looking though the windows alerts archive, the synaptic pointing device was failing and suggested to update to the latest drives from synaptic. I followed their instructions to uninstall the old pointing device and then install the new ones.... well when I launch the installer, it tells me to uninstall the old point device before updating... I have done this and restated the computer several times but I get the same message over and over. I don't have too much time right now to troubleshoot much further, but I will this evening. I was wondering if anyone else has encountered this particular annoying ( and return worthy :'( ) issue.

 

So what types of frame rates are you guys getting on games like BF3, Max Payne 3, and Skyrim. On high settings at 1080p?

I'm not worried about ultra settings as much, but would like to see 45+ frames per second on high.

Anyone?? There are very few resources out there for info on the Blade, I'm hoping to lean on you guys before I take the $2500 plunge.

Thanks in advance.

 

Dl bf3 from origin atm, dunno about max Payne 3 but ill try this and skyrim and let you know

 

Awesome, thanks man!

BTW, Max Payne 3 is incredible, not sure if you played it yet, but game of the year so far IMO. Hopefully it plays decent on the 660m.

 

BF3 runs very well @ a mix of high and ultra settings @1080p on the GTX660M, you could overclock it to get even better performance... People told me there was no way it would run on high to ultra settings @ 1080p on this card but obviously not, see this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TjRa2zCr6c&feature=youtube_gdata_player

 

i picked it up, bestbuy had a twitter deal for any version of it last week for 19.99 for one day only, but i havnt installed it yet. (in fact i havnt even taken off the shrink wrap yet)

i didnt check the fps, but i tried the first level of bf3, on ultra high and its pretty playable, i noticed a little slowdown here and there, but i want to try again at ultrahigh with aa off, (it was set to 4x) its definately playable and looks stunning though.

if i find something that can show fps, or if bf3 has something built in to do so ill let you know more. im at work though so i kind of cant really play too often, just when i take a quick break here or there.

ok, with ultra settings on at 1920x1080 with x4 aa, i was getting between 18-22, with aa off it was steady at between 30-32fps

and on skyrim, with everything set to ultra with aa and antistropic at 16 i was getting between 40 -50fps with some 60s, this was in the starting area where you follow that guy after getting your sword and stuff.

 

Awesome, thanks for the info man...I'm not an FPS snob, so as long as it's playable with a little tweaking, that's awesome to know.

Great deal on Max Payne 3! Enjoy!

Dude, nice! Guess I'm buying a BladeR2!!

 

Razer Blade GTX 660m - Unboxin', SSD'in, Switchbladin' - YouTube

My little video I made with my experience with the Blade.

 

anyone else having internet connection issues with theor blade?

 

Yes. Major wifi connection issues. I barely get a signal 2-3 feet away from router, and nothing if I'm more than 10 feet away.

 

None that I've encountered so far, I've tried my router at home (2.4 and 5ghz - linksys e4200) and the one at work (some buffalo brand 2.4ghz abg router) and its been fine either place. I'm gonna try it at Starbucks next time I've got it with me but do far so good.

 

playing X-Com like crazy on this thing... great game. also downloaded Dishonored and it runs at highest settings too.

 

If your having wifi problems and your gaming on a Razer blade.. I assume you might be using steam.



If so, go into settings and set it to 768k so solve the problem. (depending on...)






If not... then I dunno lol.

 

I have only been having wifi issues on my router since there's a broken wire outside my house and my isp needs to fix it, on my friends wifi I had 0 issues,

 

Don't suppose anyone has seen a side-by-side pyhsical comparison photo of the Razer Blade R2 and something like a Dell XPS 15inch?
I'm trying to gauge how big it is in relation to my old Dell Studio XPS 16.

 

Here:

 

I own an XPS 15 gen 1 and both of the Blades. That Sizeasy thing is about right. I have the extended 9 cell pack for the XP 15. That adds a handle to the bottom edge.

 

I have found my wireless to be very slow. I have put the Razer next to a Dell, both on the same wireless connection. The dell transfers a file off my home server at 10 MB/s, whereas my Razer struggles to get to 1.5 MB/s.

I am not sure if this is a driver issue that needs to be updated, or if simply buying a new wireless card to install would solve anything.

 

Thanks, I'm just trying to work out if I could live with the Razer Blade as a portable notebook due to it being a 17" laptop rather than a 15" like I'm used to.
(that is ofcourse assuming that the Razer Blade R2 will actually come to the uk and it will not be insanely priced here)

I think I read somewhere there is a driver update for the wireless on Razer's website so might be worth a look/try.

 

Here is the link to their Razer R2 driver page..... ALL drivers have the date of October 3, 2012.... so, doesnt look like there is a driver update.

Razer Support

 

Having a really frustrating issue, waiting for support to get back to me but posting here too in case anyone knows the issue: (hi btw, just registered, cool thread!)
When I plug in any normal headphones through the analog jack, whether it's with a mic+speaker jack or a normal headphone jack (tried different headphones and cables), the Blade's speakers do not mute, they keep playing along all the sound that I'm hearing through my headphones. Also in the audio devices list it only shows 'Speakers' (even when listing disabled and disconnected devices), not sure if this is normal though it does mean I have no way of manually muting the speakers without also muting headphones since it treats it as one and the same device.

Rolling back to older drivers makes the issue worse because then headphones simply do not work at all any more no matter what I do (though speakers continue to work fine).

Any way that I can mute the speakers when using headphones? Even if I have to do this manually, it would still be a solution for me.

 

I haven't seen any benchmarks has anyone run 3DMark11? Also is there anybody overclocking the 660M using MSI afterburner (or is there even any thermal headroom to overclock it?)

Thanks.

 

2643 score on 3dmark11 at default settings
2888 overclocked some, haven't maxed out oc, don't really want to

 

Hey everyone, I am about to make the plunge and buy this laptop. I just returned my Retina Macbook Pro because I was having the IR burn in that everyone is getting and decided to check this laptop out before I ordered another Mac. I quickly began to think this is what I wanted instead of the Macbook but have a few questions. How would the Razer Blade stand up next to a retina Mac using windows? I read somewhere that the video card on the Mac had a faster clock speed than the Blade and wanted to know what you guys might know about that?

The second question and probably the more important one is about the hinges. Are they sturdy? Does the screen wobble at all while typing or anything like that? Does it have the very strong feel to it?

Final question is with Razer customer service. How is it if anyone here has dealt with them. Thank you very much!

 

the blade absolutely runs windows better than the Macbook Retina. 3dmark scores about 200 points higher when running stock, 400+ with an overclock.

Hinges are very sturdy, though I never had problems with the original blade hinges either. no worrying about wobble while gaming and typing (and I type hard).

Customer service: top notch, great tech support, be far superior to dell and hp. this might be partly b/c they are a smaller company and don't have such a high caller volume. still, they helped me resolve any issues i had with my blade one and did follow up courtesy calls and emails to boot.

the only thing i'm jealous about the MBR is the retina display. the blade is superior in my opinion in every other respect. hope this helps.

 

Dont be jealous of the display, it is one of the main flaws with the device. All of the LGs have a display burn in and the Samsungs have light leaking issues and yellow tint.

How are the screens on the RB2's in person? And how are the viewing angles?

 

Hi everyone, new here. I read about ten pages back that people were swapping out the drives in this so I was excited to see what people were doing because I've just bought a 256Gb Lite-On M3M (the larger version of the drive currently in the blade) for a measly $210 (which is nothing in Australia, as they go for about $360 generally) and was wanting to double check that my plan of action would work.

Currently I plan on keeping the 500gb hdd but will reformat it and delete the extra partition and keep this as my storage drive. First of all I will remove the current mSATA. then on boot I'll open the bios and switch the storage config from raid to (name escapes me, but the one that means single drive ) so it's not caching the mSATA. Then I'm going to do a clean install of windows 7 onto the new SSD and, once installed, run all the driver installers (I've already downloaded all necessary drivers) and hopefully all should be good.

Can anyone tell me if there are any flaws in this idea, I don't want to ruin the system, so if there's anything I've missed or any reason why this won't work, let me know

Also if I do have to do it another way, is there a step by step guide on what I have to do anywhere?

Cheers Guy

Tazor