***Aorus X7 DT V6 owner's lounge***

Hi there!

I just start of: I ordered a Aorus X7 DT V6. I am going to share my first impressions. Perhaps some of you want to share their expreience:

The O.K.:
- First of must say that I was surprised that the chassis is pretty solid.
- The overall build quality can not be compared with Razer or Alienware I guess but is fine
- and while I could live without the eagle on lid and trackpad as well as the agressive design of the rear exhausts,
- it still looks kinda decent if compared with most other (bling, bling, I am 13 year old) gaming notebooks.

The Good...
- The specs are awesome: Processor comes with up to 4.0 Ghz out of the box.
- One can open the notebook up by removing the base plate and reach all important parts
- If you like to repaste, it seems possilbe without a hassle (like latest Alienware for Example)
- I did not repaste yet but could up it to wPrime stable 4.1 Ghz allcore after resolving the throtteling issue.*
- Some testing allowed to run the CPU with 4 Ghz CPU and cache on all cores while undervolting th CPU about 65mV and the Cache about 15mV. Nice!


- the 1080 is fantastic: With Afterburner I coud apply +180mhz on CORE (while undervolting) and 250mhz on RAM
- this gives me ~1800 mhz in The Witcher 3 (WQHD all maxed out) and other games.


- the cooling solution solution is well designed and can cope with CPU and GPU (at a prize of course); I especially love the upper intakes of the fans that allow for better cooling.
- the Aorus Command Center comes along with nice features (including "auto flash" and Updatecenter)
- the NVMe is really fast:


- the keyboard is well lit with a crisp pressure point.
- the screen has almost no screen bleeding (especially if compared to the Clevos I owned).


...the Bad & the Ugly:
- As one should expect, the notebook is rather loud under load (but still o.k. if you use a headset).
- The screen shows some faint interlace on light grey and blue (the issues has ben reported).
- The System does not seem to have flexicharge (intelligent battery charging while connected via PSU), so the battery is constantly charged to the max.
- The Bezel on the left upper corner is not completely plane with the LDC. Still the screen has no other issues (bleeding or dead pixel) which held me back from turning the NB in.
- Without manual adjustments Aorus X7 DT V6 provides a massive throtteling experience*
- Unfortunately you have to work around** the throtteling out on your own, as the support Aorus support does not seem to care to much/at all (http://forum.aorus.com/forum/gaming...9-aorus-x7-v6-dt-losing-power-even-plugged-in).

So that`s it for the first impressions.

Best regards

phila

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

*The throtteling experience...
...is caused by the combination of a underdimensioned PSU (230W) and problems with XTU and/or Bios settings.
The symptoms are the following: After a gaming a while with heavy load users (including me) experienced
draining of the battery and/or massive downclocking of the CPU to the base clock only:

Here is why: Allready heavy Load on 4 Cores (not 8 Threads) with decent brithgtnes of the secreen (+mouse and headset)
will draw about 93 Watts. This dose not leave sufficient Pwer for the graphics card. Which as mobile version has around 160 Watts.

Now imagine, you have somewhat higher load over time (Ghost Recon Wildlands for example, will constantly demand ~70% CPU usage and 99% load on the GPU):
To illustrate this I posted the following picture. It shows the result of a small test:


1.) I unplugged all extra devices like mouse, headset and external SSD, set the screen brightnes to50%.
2.) I fired up a game with demanding graphics.

As you can see, with The GPU under heavy load and the cores only utilized to 52% the X7 DT V6 allready draws 220W.
And this with the volgate of the GPU alleready heavily limited (in the picture you can see that the card runs with only 875mV).

Now imagine extra load on the CPU (Windows Defender, background Task), + a regularly volted GPU + some stuff plugged in...
You will clearly be above 230 watts. And this is where battery starts to give what it has got until at some point the CPU will throttle
to 2.7 Ghz to compensate - all because of the insufficient PSU.

As a matter of fact your FPS will severely drop on games that rely on CPU usage. And as a topping XTU does the rest and - after stopping
the heavy load on GPU and CPU the CPU clock - will keep the CPU at 2.7 Ghz until you restart the computer!

**The workaroud:
In short: Undervolt CPU and GPU, to save Power until you are within the limitations of the PSU to prevent battery drain and throtteling:

Undervolting the GPU is eays using afterburner. Pressing CTR+F will enable the clock/mV screen, that will let you adjust the maximum Voltage.
This requires some tuning, but it`s worth while (even on systems that do not face the said problem) as you can undrvolt and oveclock at the same time.
I can reach constant 1800 mhz GPU clock with only 875mV (which will leave the card cooler while still blazing fast.)

Undervolting the CPU is not that easy as you have to use Thropttlestop, which does not work well while you have XTU
up and running (which is integrated into the Aorus Contorl Center). Meaning: To use throttlestop to undervolt the CPU you have to disable XTU,
which in turn, will disable Aorus Control Center. I wrote two scripts on this behalve: One will disable XTU and enable TS
the other will disable TS and enable XTU again. You can download them here: https://classic.hidrive.com/share/8kwt3pdnv6

 

Nice. What are your temps on gaming Witcher 3?

 

Hi there!

Thx for your interest:


Temps after 10 minutes in game. Sorry, I can`t avoid the menue screen - as soon as I print the screen the game will switch to the menus.

Best regards

phila

 

Is there a thunderbolt 3 on this laptop? Also isn't a newer version of this laptop out soon?

 

The X7 DT V6 has USB C 3.1 but does NOT suppert Tunderbolt in this version

I`ll guess, there will be a version with 7820HK...

Best regards

phila

 

Very nice phila. Not much I could add from my experience. I had my X7 DT V6 customized, so details are a little different. I have no screen or build issues at all. I had it repasted with Coollaboratory Liquid Ultra. Took a while for the temps to settle down, but they are about 4-5 degrees cooler. I removed the overclock on my GPU, since I was already blowing away all of the games I regularly play, and it allowed me to turn the fans down to "annoy the neighbors" from "stand beside a jet engine." Seriously, this laptop can get loud and hot in extended gaming sessions. You will want to wear headphones, and use the optional feet included with the Aorus to elevate the back end (made a difference for me at least). When not gaming the laptop is very quiet, even when I'm running heavy duty statistical analysis software. I consider the keyboard excellent; keys are large enough and spaced to be comfortable. The screen resolution is perfect for me - I've always run into some "tiny text" problems on 4K screens, but never here. Overall, I'm very pleased with this purchase. The X7 DT V7 has been announced, and I believe includes Thunderbolt 3, but I haven't seen much about it recently.

 

Hey! Thank you! Was hoping there is someone out there who also ownes on as well ;-) Customisation was not available for me here in Germany. Anyhow, I did some repasting myself and the notebook looks like it will be fairly easy to repaste. I experimented with the OCing and undervolting (CPU and GPU) as the PSU is the real handicap and the powerdram oft the GPU will cause the CPU to throttle beyond a certain point.

Right now I am stable at 4.1 Ghz allcore and could even reduce the offset on core and cache a little. Likewise I overclocked and undervolted the GPU as well (locked at 875mV @1835mhz) this leaves the GPU quite calm, especially as I have my framerate locked at 60FPS.

So year - I am really satisfied with this notebook. I thought about waiting for the V7 but as far as I guess the most important changes will be Thunderpolt 3 and i7 7820 both of which don`t borther me to much - especially as it is not clear when the V7 will arrive and I wanted on now.*

Best regards

phila

*One can allways wait a little longer, I know - but in about 24 month from now we will have the Aours with "Whaterver Lake" oder "Ryzen 2" and "Volta" - so right now was the right time for me

 

Great stuff.

What did you use to undervolt the GPU?

 

Under C:\Program Files\AORUS\SmartManagerV3\StepFan i have the custom fan control. While Aours Control "on" you can change settings there.

I do not think they persist with AOC or XTU uninstalled, but you could use the scripts to change fans and then switch to the TS Profile.

Best regards

phila

 

What about the noise bro?

 

The system is nearly silent while doing desktop stuff like writing. I did a protocol in a meeting yesterday (Quiet Mode). The fans did not spin up once.

Under Load the system is pretty loud, as one would expect, but i find it bareable.

Best regards

phila

 

Wow! You are so close to the answers I need. I've had my x5 v6 a little longer than you but it took me much longer to figure any of that stuff out ( cntrl +f on afterburner etc)

I did find the stepfan App in the smartmanager folder when I updated command and control. I spent hours trying to get it to work. No curves I changed ever registered. I assumed it was meant for the x7 v6 machines and that was why?
If there was some way to trick it to think I was a x7 v6?
Do you mean that the profiles you set up on throttle and xtu can change the fan curve?

Sorry for confusion, I sure wish I could change that auto curve.

(The x5 v6 thread is pretty dead so I hope it's ok to talk here)

 

I am sorry if I can not answer your questions very well:

- With stepfan I as well can not change the fan behavoir on my machine. I can not save the profile I set but that`s it I do not know how to apply the custom profile.
- There must be parameters that tell "stepfan" how to behave -> I guess the fan profiles just start stepfan with different parameters (unfortunately I am the opposite of a pro here)
- Good news is. Neither XTU nor Throttlestop seem to change the fan profiles: If I, for example, set "Quiet Mode" and exit XTU to start TS -> The profile will remain the same.

Best regards

phila

EDIT: Just found out: you can use the macro keys to change fan profile. This will even work with XTU disabled!

 

Ok, I'll download the updated fusion software. Sweet!

 

I am buying my cousin some new RAM for his X7 V6. According to gentechpc and xoticpc upgrades are available for DDR4-3000. But according to hidevolution this model is only upgradable to DDR4-2666.

Is DDR4-3000 actually supported without down-clocking? I am looking for RAM with the fastest speed timings supported by the BIOS.

(Note: Pls don't say RAM speed is not important and all that. I know.)

 

Aorus Support is completely laughable!

On May 11th I submitted a ticket due to the throtteling CPU throtteling issues that are related to the PSU that can not sustain the power for CPU and GPU at a time:


My ticket read:
"Dear Sirs! I was aking for help in your forums, but no one seems to care. I talked about the throtteling issues here: http://forum.aorus.com/forum/gaming...osing-power-even-plugged-in?p=42725#post42725 The power supply unit for the notebook is just to weak. You can not run it on the specs you set it to, without massive throtteling - onli undervolting GPU and CPU will prevent this. PLEASE - give us a stronger PSU! Best regards Philipp"


Today (six weeks later) I recived the following copy paste reply:
Update 6/21/2017
Sorry for the waiting.
Thank you for choosing X7 DT - Greatest Slim design Gaming Solution. We are honored to receive your feedback.
According the information you provided. We found the processor is not throttling, 2.7GHz is the stable working frequency designed for the processor. The frequency range between 2.7Ghz to 3.6GHz is designed as Turbo Boost Max Technology(2.0). The maximal frequency will be affected by following reasons:
Type of workload
Number of active cores
Estimated current consumption
Estimated power consumption
Processor temperature
Drive support
You can find more information from Intel's website: https://www.intel.com/content/www/u...ology/turbo-boost/turbo-boost-technology.html
However, Intel defined a limited boost duration to protect processor. The processor can only work in Turbo Boost status for 28Sec., then back to stable working frequency to prevent processor damage. Cause Turbo Boost is actually designed as short time overloading mode.
Hope the information can solve your doubts. == Original 5/11/2017 ===

I do not know what you guys think, but saying that downclocking to the base clock is not throtteling might be technically right. Still this is not the point as the downlocking can easily be solved by undervolting the GPU. Noone at Aorus ever cared to read what I posted or what info I did provide.

So yeah! Great job!

Best regards

phila

 

There will be a fix for their next model revision. The brand new 1080Max-Q. But I'm not sure Aorus will keep the 230W psu. Maybe Aorus will *upgrade* to 180w psu

 

Haha! Yea! The thing is. The X7 DT V6 is still a nice machine. Adjusted with Throttlestop and Afterburner I can run my machine with 1798 mhz on GPU and 4 Ghz all Core and the 230W will suffice.

Still: It is a pitty that you buy such an expensive thing and have to figure out your things all by yourself.

Best regards

phila

 

I was wondering if DT v6 could use v7's 250w adaper, would that help the throttling issuse?

when I play cs go there is hardly any throttling since it only max out cpu. in DOOM however throttling happened once a while..

 

I bought a 330w Dell PSU. The problem is the Aorus X7 DT V6 seems not to be allowed to dram more than 230w BIOS-side.

Best way to avoid is to diabale XTU and use Thropttlestop/Afterburner to undervolt and overcklock:

I use 4 Ghz CPU allcore @ -65mV and 4 Gzh Cache @ -15,6mV + GTX 1080 with 1798Mhz at 875mV.

In this combination I do not expreience any throtteling.

Best reagards

phila

 

Can you link the 330w Dell ac adapter you got? It works with the Aorus?

 

Yes it works. I picked some 330w Dell/Alienware PSU. I checked out multiple of them, they all got the same connector. The correct number of my model is DA330PM111.

BUT: I´d not bother buy one and try undervolting instead. The Aorus will throttle anyhow as the notebook will not be allowed to draw more than 230w from the PSU.

Best regards

phila

 

Now when I start to play playerunknown's battlegrounds I also experience throttling...Even when I do no OC in the command center it will throttle eventually.

I plan to replicate what you did here. The throttleStop setup seems straight forward. How do you do Afterburner for GTX 1080? I feel it is not really intuitive. The voltage graph editing thing seems so easy to **** up something terribly.

 

Hi there! You do not have to be afraid of the voltage graph. It IS really simple. You open the graph up and try to find te right balance between Mhz and mV. The following are my actual settings ( green line in picture: 1911Mhz @ 900mV).



To achive those you drag every point above a certain mV Setting to a flat line (try ctrl or shift while draging one point -> you will not have to set one point individually). This means that above this point the card will not use no mor higher voltage.

I`recommend to start with 1750 Mhz at 875mv (blue line in my picture) and try to see if this value is stable. Be sure that your line is completely flat and do not forget to save your settigns to a certain profile.

This setting should drastically reduce the Power used by the GPU and help the CPU hold their boost. From there you can work on the finetuning.

You can record the usage of your CPU by loging it via throttlestop or some other program. This will help you to find out how your CPU behaves under load.

 

So I have spent sometime to figure something out.

Initially I think my temperature is a bit outragious. Running 3dmark make GTX 1080 go beyond 90C. I compared my 3dmark temperature graph with others' that I can find and the conclusion is I probably need to do a repast. so I opened up and repasted ICD7 I bought years ago and instantly temp went down. However, player unknowns' battleground is still throttling.

After trying a number of combinations, without any undervoltage, it seems right now using command center CPU OC @4GHZ (this makes 4 core at 3.8Ghz simultaneously) and using afterburner to limit GTX 1080 @ default 1721mhz/912mv point (basically flat out after this point), makes the game run without any throttling. The load is around 90% for GPU and 50-90% for CPU (cpu seems really depends on how many people is around). The game using geforce experience suggested settings(1080p all ultra except 2 settings) can get consistently above 80 fps and max at ~120fps. This is already a huge improvements comparing to what I had a couple of days ago. so thank you for pointing out all these..

I think this is a baseline I can start with for my machine. I tried your 1750mhz/875mv but it was too unstable, I guess probably due to GPU load being close to 100% all the time..I am trying to slowly increase the gpu clock using current 912mv voltage and find the best spot. For cpu I probably leave it for now as the game seems not pushing cpu that hard right now.

Top two lines are cpu and gpu frequency, middle is temp, bottom blue is gpu load, green is cpu load..

 

Stability also depends on the game. I found the Witcher 3 and Crysis 3 beeing relatively sensitive to OC but PUBG might be just more interesting in this regard...

After all there is no throtteling for you right now while your clock is still above average! Nice!

You could also work on your CPU via Throttlestop. I can run 4.0 Ghz stable on all cores with -65mV on Core and -10mV on Cache.

This might help you with the temps, as the Aorus OC Center will apply +30mV on Core in the highes Settings (4.0 Ghz / 3.8 all core).

Best regards

phila

 

Took a heart and liquid metal repasted today. Temps are awesome now. Barely hitting 80°C overclocked and under heavy gaming load.

Best regards

phila

 

Has anyone created a hardware mode for the exhaust on the right side? I hate having all that hot air blow into my hand since that's where I use my mouse most often.

 

Sorry to say that I did not even felt the need to do so. I guess it is because my hand (right handed also) is placed more in the first two thirds alongside the chassis.

Still I`d be interested in any mods that you guys invented.

Best regards

phila

 

Consider getting a laptop cooler like this one, i have two (one at my place, my girlfriends), I don't notice the heat on the right side when using a mouse and I game a lot w/o any issues.

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ED3WMTC/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1

 

Hi there!

The Aorus Forum is still ****ed up. Spam Bots have taken control and Aorus/Gigabyte are not able to do anything agianst... So I am posting here:

After connecting an external monitor to my notebook via mini DPI I get random bluescreen crashes.

To make things clear: I reinstalled W10 from Scratch. tested RAM and CPU extensively. NOtebook runs flawless without external monitor. Yesterday I connected the external monitor again -> today I had the first crash.

I reinstalled the od dirvers for now - as I did not experience eny problem pre 388.00.

Has anyone of you had the same issue?!

Best reagrds

phila

P.S.: I`ll be crossposting this over at nvidia drivers forum... Just in case...

 

I know this is an old thread but I recently had a similar issue, displays would not have the right refresh rate on both native panel or external monitor, then it wouldn't display at all, sent it in and ended up having to replace the motherboard, fml.

On an unrelated note, how are you able to OC to 4.1 GHz all cores with only -65mv without throttling? I get thermal throttle with -120mv undervolt when I have it to just 3.6 GHz all cores are those results after your liquid metal repaste or just with normal thermal paste?

 

Sorry to reply after such a long time -> the temps are after my liquid metal repaste.

Best regards

phila