Razer Blade Owner's Lounge

Hi everyone,i just bought razer blade r2 with windows 8, and i decide to replace the hhd with intel 520 ssd and install a fresh windows 7 with that.
So i install all the driver from razer, but i fail to install razer synapse 2.0, and the razer blade keyboard was not working anymore,anyone can help?
Thanks
And sorry about my bad english

 

For those of you in the UK.

Overclockers.co.uk are importing some Razer Blade R2's to sell from Razer.
Downsides are:
They are the US model, so have US Keyboard layout (so big left shift key, backslash over beside the enter key etc etc) and, the price is: £2,399 inc VAT.

So taking UK VAT (20%) off that price, it's costing over £400 more in the UK than US, and that's for the exact same US model.

Unfortunately, Razer haven't responded on twitter about if they are even thinking about a UK model.

 

Theyre 2 seperate physical drives yes, but you're only going to see the 1 HDD drive on your my computer screen due to the SSD being a cache drive

"with NVELO" means it's using NVELO's propietary cacheing software from what I've gathered, and I'm assuming it's better than just DIY'ing your own cache drive without the software with how much they advertise it...

 

Same thing happened to me, you need to install razer Synapse 2.0, there's also a seperate keybaord stuff on the support site, just plug in an external USB keyboard to your laptop so you can work on installing those.

edit: OH okay, nevermind, I thought you meant you failed to install it yourself. Okay, well uhm..yeah you'll need to just still plug in a USB keyboard and try to find the approriate .NET stuff on microsofts site so it will allow you to install the new SSD.

Good luck with that too, I think someone else here recently got theres and had problems trying to get the laptop recognize the new drive in theirs. Let us know how you get it to work

 

There's a difference between US and UK model keyboards?

 

Is the first Razer Blade worth the $1500 deal from Cyber Monday? All the reviews seem to indicate yes, though it is mostly for the case design and display, the vid card and CPU are only adequate. What do you guys think? Thanks!

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 2

 

Eh... for 1500 you can get an Asus G75 with a 660/670 card, a real quad core I7, a larger hard drive, more ram, and a really good case design. I really wouldn't go for the first gen blade unless it was at a thousand...

The first gen blade won't be able to play any newer games on ultra, or even high in most cases, and in 3 years it will probably struggle to play anything new on even the lowest settings. that GTX555 graphics card really holds it back.

 

The Asus G75 is over 2 inches thick and weighs nearly 10 freaking pounds, for me that completely defeats the purpose of buying a laptop. I don't call that good case design, I call it a giant burden to haul around.

If you are considering the 1st gen blade because you need something relatively portable that can still run games at 1920x1080, you might also want to consider something along the lines of

- Lenovo Y580 with 660m, 1920x1080 display and i7-3630QM - 1.40" thick, 6.15lbs (around $1,000)
- hp dv6-7200 Quad with 650m, 1920x1080 display and i7-3630QM - 1.16" thick, 5.66lbs ($1,100) or
- hp dv6-7200 Quad with 650m, 1920x1080 display and i7-3820QM - 1.16" thick, 5.66lbs (around $1,300)

 

Has anybody upgrade the HDD to a SSD drive?

Is it an easy task, and does it void warranty?

Also whats a good 512 GB Drive? Might consider the new OCZ Vector 512GB SSD.

 

The Samsung 840 Pro is around the top of the line these days with 540MB/s seq. read and 520MB/s seq. write

 

This is entirely true, I'm looking at it as something relatively portable and can game adequately. I previously had an Alienware M14x and really liked it. I'm debating getting a newer one or the Blade. I also went mildly insane and bought a retina MacBook Pro though returned it as it was more than I really wanted to spend.

I actually ordered the Blade, I just need to decide whether to keep it or go with something else. I am not a fan of HP, but I'll check them out.

Thanks for the replies.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

They're also dying for no apparent reason. Better to wait for them to fix the firmware before buying one.

 

Really? I hadn't heard about that issue, thanks for the heads up!

 

Anand's review mentions it in an Update on the Final Words page. Seems they may have fixed it, but I see no firmware update on Samsung's site.

 

What this man said. I think it's funny when people try to say Oh don't get a Blade, get this, and it's the Yang to the Blade's Yin...Asus ans AW are heavier, thicker, they're the opposite of everything the blade is trying to be.

I'd go with the Lenovo personally, try to buy it through a reseller that sells them, I think xotic pc might, that way you can spend $500 to meet your budget on upgrades, like SSD, etc...Or just pocket the $500

 

I personally wouldn't get the Gen 1 Blade. Switchblade UI and form factor aren't worth sacrificing for a last gen (and underpowered one at that) GPU, and a dual core processor. Refuse delivery and get the lenovo, or check out XoticPC and look at MSI or Sager, they have laptops at ~6lbs (a littlle less on some of them) and they're about 1.6 thick, so yeah, twice the blades thickness, but you're still getting a light weight sleek looking PC, with a 660M in it and a quad core i7 at 1,100 price point, and from there you can upgrade it to a 670m I'm sure if you want, or add an SSD, etc and still meet your original $1500 spent on the Gen 1 Blade.

 

That sounds like the plan. I hadn't looked at Lenovo, I was thinking the new M14x with the 650 would be good, but the Lenovo sounds better. I'm going to read a review, and go check it out at Microcenter since my local one has one in stock. I'd also look into an SSD, but we'll see how it performs first.

The Blade is sitting at the local FedEx office, so I'll call them to refuse delivery.

Thanks for the recommendations!

 

You're welcome! If you're wanting to mod it out a bit and dont' mind sac'ing some thickness and getting the MSI or Sager brand, check out XoticPC. They're a great company to work with, and they'll do all the mods for you.

 

And the Blade is on its way back to Razer.

I've checked out XoticPC before, I've not ordered from them before though. I'm not sure I want something too thick though, that was one of the upsides to the Razer. Really though, I'd prefer a 15" or small laptop for portability as well. So thinner and lighter is good, though I'm willing to look at larger laptops to get better performance. I just don't want a beast of a 17" laptop that weighs 10 lbs.

Anyway, thanks again, I'll check out the Lenovo and XoticPC to see what they have in the mid-size or smaller categories. I've also looked at Origin and Malibal before, I guess I'll just have to look around. Though that Lenovo sounds like a great deal at its price and specs.

 

Yeah the lenovo is at a great price point right now. It'll be nice to someday see the Blade at a good price point once they are able to recoup more of the manufactuering costs by selling more and more units.

 

Can I remove, or move apps on the Switchblade UI? I never will use the Twitter or Facebook apps. I'd rather have the screen-capture app on the main page.

 

Opened up my laptop and this is what it looks like:

imgur: the simple image sharer

Swapped out the hitachi 500GB HDD for a Vertex 4 512GB SSD:

http://imgur.com/Q8Y3v


What sucks is the SSD isn't recognized. I even tried using a usb connector and laptop still failed to see the ssd connected to it.

http://imgur.com/ITbMb

Here's a screenshot:

imgur: the simple image sharer

It's a real head scratcher as to what I need to do to get a different drive recognized by this laptop.
imgur: the simple image sharer

 

All your images were thumbnail size except the first, so hard to read.

 

I'm just curious, but why would my GPU performance be decreasing when I'm playing games? For example, if I'm playing Skyrim it'll be flawlessly play 60fps+ for a short while then throttle down to the 40's then down to 30, then below 20... I'm just not sure why this is happening, does the computer throttle back the GPU as it gets hotter? It does this in all games I've tried. Battlefield, Planetside 2. Why is this happening? Is there an easy fix?

 

First time attempting to post pics on the web.

Re-uploaded them, these might be better quality.

imgur: the simple image sharer
imgur: the simple image sharer
imgur: the simple image sharer

 

Might be worth, running some kind of CPU and GPU temperature monitoring software/utility to find out what's going on. I don't think anyone else has mentioned any throttling issues with this laptop, which is quite impressive for something this slim.

 

Haven't played BF3 or Planetside before, but Skyrim has a kind of variable frame rate. Also it is more optimized than some other games to make use of the CPU, so you want to make sure your power settings are not throttling your CPU.

It is a little higher in third person and interiors, slows down significantly in Markarth and Windhelm, with a bit of stuttering or sudden frame rate drops and increases. Also some mods can reduce your frame rate. You may want to try turning off the anti-aliasing and using FXAA instead. I get an average around 40-60fps with my old hp envy laptop at 1920x1080, using FXAA and all the other settings maxed.

 

I had replaced my drive with a samsung 830 512gb and it was detected correctly. does the bios just not detect yours?

 

Oh wow, that looks very easy to swap out! Thanks Geedub! GL with your hard drive =( Hopefully it's not a DoA - such rotten luck! First your power supp and now your SSD!

 

Just received my blade tonight. UPS was as annoying as ever (seriously FedEx is so much easier to use but I digress here) and boy am I happy with my purchase. So far everything is working flawlessly (including wifi) so I am quite pleased. As anyone around here coded anything for their switchblade? Especially, anything work or powerpoint related?

 

I haven't even dreamed of coding anything for it, I heard it's a real PITA. Has anyone seriously done this??

What would the increase in speeds be for changing out the 500 HDD for an SSD anyway?

 

It doesn't come with pre-installed software for customizing the buttons?

 

SSD's are workng perfectly, the Vertex 4 I had in another laptop and the 2 x Samsung 840 Pro 512GB are working nicely in Raid 0 inside the Mythlogic. I played around with a bunch of bios settings and the laptop does a Stevie Wonder and can't see the SSD. Just keeps rebooting back to bios. So I've left the OEM drive in it and will use it as is.

 

You installed 2 x Samsung 840s in Raid0 in a drive caddy inside your Blade?

Can you provide more info about the caddy and where to buy it?

 

You can make your own buttons buy you have to toss it into trackpad mode (Most upper left button on the "home" menu) to get to them. What he's talking about is acutally coding apps for switchblade.

I think you're talking about customizing profiles for the 10 buttons for games which we can do, but in a very ghetto way. What he's talking about is developing dedicated apps (non ghetto way) which we can't do unless we tell razer we know C++ and they give us their development software (it's free) that they released to the public in august (you still have to qualify for it by saying you know C++, etc). Like, if I really really really wanted too, I can't just make a profile for wow and assign random buttons to it and just access that from the home menu by launching the WoW app.

If I want to do that, I have to make a profile under the track pad app, and then in wow I can keybind the 10 buttons (IIRC) and from the synapse screen I can then update the buttons with art, and then I can bind those buttons in wow and honestly I'm not even sure if off the bat those buttons are bindable or not, if they bind using trackpad #'s then I can't use them since I"m already mapping those on my naga. Problem with that is I'd then have to switch profiles anytime I want to launch a program because I currently use a profile 1 to launch my games and chrome and stuff I think you can 3 finger swipe through your trackpad profiles but I'm not 100% on this. Otherwise you have to go to the synapse menu and change your profile there . So it's kind of annoying. I'd rather just have dedicated apps for each game or profile, but you can't do that. You have 1 app, and keep switching profiles from within it for each game (Unless the game you're playing is one Razer already developed an app for..BF3, SWTOR, etc etc)

What I'd like to do is have a dedicated wow app on the "home" menu for the switchblade that opens up to this stuff.

But my gripe is more than just button configuration/customizaiton, if WoW had an actual app you could do all kinds of things from within that app that you can't do from the trackpad app...all that does is the buttons.

What I think he's talking about is acutal development for the software, using C++ etc...
Like SW:TOR for example, that is an actual app on switchblade, and with it, you can run dps meters on your track pad.

Where in WoW, there is no dedicated app, so I have to switch profiles on a different app to "ghetto rig" an app for wow, and all it is is buttons, I can't run something like a DPS meter on the trackpad area, or maybe have a live mini map of the current zone I'm in ont he track pad (a friend asked if I had this), stuff like that.

Hoepfully it'll be there soon, but without enough demand for it, it's likely that video game developers won't spend resources making this for their subscribers so it's up to us to make it. If I knew anything about C++ I would be so down to start work to make cool things for wow and sc2, but I'm not, so I can't

Anyone with Windows 8 on their blade having issue with synapse booting super super late after you get logged into windows? On 7 it was loaded almost instantly, with 8 it takes it a minute before it comes up =(

 

I really want to! I am an avid android programmer and would love to make some cool switchblade apps for the UI.... but Razer has yet to approve my request to be given access to the SDK. I have some cool ideas, but would love to work on other apps for the switchblade as well

I have read your post on the ideas you have to the switchblade. A simple WoW app would be like the SWTOR one... just a simple app that would read the logs (not to sure here, never played would have to do some more research). SC2 is in the same boat.

As for other games... if they are mod-able (e.g. Skyrim, Civ5) would have the best chance of a more integrated switchblade UI app.

But like I said, I need to do some more research on it (when I have the time, finals are coming + every class and their mother has a project due this week). I also would like other apps like a task app that syncs with google tasks... or music control app for local/internet radio playback... etc. Let me know if you guys have any other ideas

 

I have widows 8 loaded on my blade and my synapse is usually active ~5-10 secs after opening my desktop. Are you sure that you get a good internet connection? That seems to be the biggest issue for starting the switchblade.

 

I am surprise that Razer does not help people coding for the switchblade. This is one of the biggest differentiating factor with other laptop / keyboard so one would hope that they would capitalize on it. The game apps described in the last few posts are great but I was thinking of different things for my own needs.

For instance, I would love to be able to get a outlook app where I can get all my mail previewed on switchblade so that I don't have to address my email all the time. What about having a simple calculator app that you can use when doing something else. These are the type of things that I would really like but it seems that I will have to live without them for a while.

 

Rocking a 30x2 meg connection with ~10ms ping when I do speed tests, so its defeinitely not my HSI speed. I've noticed when I tether my phone it takes longer, but it's still really slow at home on wifi. I think it just might be that other programs are prioritized at startup and I can't figure out a way to make windows 8 open synapse above all others first

 

I bet we could get a pot going and raise some money to "motivate" you to work on some apps for us

 

Has anybody successfully installed a linux distro on their blade?

 

Think you should look at my sig, I never said I did raid 0 in the RB... Reading comprehension has become a lost art.

 

Apologies, never heard of Mythologic before and didn't recall seeing that in your sig. Mistakenly thought you were talking about your Blade. I suppose I was too eager as in the event I purchase a Blade I'd like to attempt to install my dual 1.8" SSD caddy in lieu of the HDD

 

Thanks for the info, borrowed a Samsung 830 256GB SSD from a friend and it partially booted up the linux distro he had on it. So I guess I'll go to Newegg and grab a 512GB Samsung and see if it works.

 

If you saw the photos I posted earlier, thee's no way in hell to put raid on the razer blade. There's no room for another drive or bay, caddy tray...

 

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Hi all.

This my first time being here. Today I bought a brand-new 1st gen Razor Blade from a winner of a draw for US$1700 only, with bonus of a Razor Electra. I know the 1st gen is kinda under-powered but this is an extremely good bargain, not to mention that i live in Singapore so the price is roughly US$250 higher relative to the price in US. I also have no intention to be a hardcore player who must play everything at its finest so I decided to buy it. The system is amazingly catchy and I'm happy with it.

I have gone through several pages of this topic. The major problem to me so far is the wi-if unstableness. It is becoming quite irritating because it keeps losing the signal, and the speed is somehow worse than usual. Is there no other way for me to fix it apart from changing my router? If I move the router closer to my room, would the problem become less serious?

Sorry for writing too long but I'm really a novice in IT sector. And forgive me my bad English as well. Thank you for guiding me.

 

I attempted to install Linux Mint 14 but it hanged on the configuring hardware portion of the install. Was able to play around with it as a virtual install booting off of a usb thumb drive. Webcam and audio are supported, I was able to play some music via Pandora. Might look around for another distro that might work better, not knowledgeable enough to know a work around for ubuntu based distros hanging on hardware config during installation.

 

The Raid caddy that came with my envy fits inside any standard internal laptop HDD bay, I think it's 2.5" (each of the two SSDs is 1.8" form factor). My question is would I be able to replace the Blade's factory HDD with my caddy?

 

How simple or hard would it be to remove the GPU and CPU heatsink and apply some ICD thermal paste to it?