Aorus X7v6 PC3D review (ish)

Ay guys so this is my review (sorta??) of the Aorus X7v6 PC3D.


Specs:

Intel i7-6820HK

GTX 1070 8GB

17.3'' 1920x1080 IPS Panel (LGD046C) (EDP)

16GB (8GBx2) 2400mhz SO-DIMM

256 GBSamsung SM951 PCIe NVME M.2 SSD for boot

1TB HGST Travelstar 7K1000 7200rpm mass storage

Killer AC1535 wifi

E2200 LAN

94whr battery pack

3.2kg carry weight w/o power brick

230w power brick

I’ll be referring to my previous system, a Clevo P-150SMA barebones (4710MQ, 970M 6GB) as a comparison unit. This is completely my own opinion so feel free to add your own experiences in or help me correct any mistakes

Also, undervolt with Throttlestop was set at -50.8mv with only GPU overclocks used in the C&C utility

P.S: Sorry for the lack of pictures. I'm writing this review on the laptop at my campus. My phones camera isnt doing too well and i dont have my DSLR with me sooo.......yea


Casing:

It is impressive. For a laptop which has the thickness of an Ethernet jack, this thing is rock solid. Typing this review, the keyboard deck barely flexes at all. Holding it by the bottom panel also produces no flex. Screen wobble is not an issue either. My campus tables are wobbly but with people putting and taking things off the table top, it hardly wobbles unless I purposely shake the table. Opening with one hand is a breeze too, granted with the central hinge design, lifting it in the center of the display is the best way of doing the one hand lid lift. The soft touch matte finish is lovely to lay hands on. Smudges are very hard to discern on the surface, but granted, sweaty or greasy hands will stain it. Overall, it is a joy to carry around. The overall stiffness of the whole chassis is reassuringly excellent.


Storage:

The boot drive on my unit was a 256GB SM951 NVMe PCIe M.2 SSD and mass storage was a HGST Travelstar 7K1000 1TB 7200rpm HDD at 9.5mm in height. IMO, this is the ideal configuration for laptops that support both these drives. There is plenty of space on the SSD to stuff in extras like Steam, Spotify, Origin, Battle net and the like. AS SSD reported the SM951 reading around 1900 to 2000mbps with the HDD doing around 120 to 130mbps for both. Excellent results. Personally I’ll be changing the HDD to a 2TB 5400rpm Seagate Firecuda down the line as im already running out of space on the HDD and I prioritize space over load times.

General usage:

With the SM951 SSD, this system is nothing short of blazing fast. Accessing apps and files stored on it was done in mere seconds. Browsing the internet while tabbing in and out of apps like Spotify, Whatsapp, Steam and several Word documents was nothing to an SSD and system of this caliber. 16GB of RAM should satisfy your Chrome tab abuse needs as well .To put it simply, very snappy and responsive.


Keyboard:

The keyboard is somewhat subjective to me as I use a Razer Blackwidow Mechanical keyboard to do most of my typing. But it’s a pretty solid keyboard. There is an adjustment period due to Aorus stuffing the macro keys much closer to the main typing area when compared to their pervious iterations of their laptops. Keystrokes are very sharp and the tactile feedback is pretty amazing. Noise wise, its relatively quiet but then it is also dependent on how hard one types on their keyboard. I do miss the deep travel offered by my Clevo though. But is it understandable given how thin this chassis is. The per key RGB backlighting is pretty nifty to play with. Personally I would just leave it on a static color or use the wave preset. Most of the keys are evenly lit with the exception of bigger keys like backspace, tab, caps lock etc. Its not something that you’ll pay attention to but once you see it, its pretty hard to ignore. It is definitely not a reason to put off purchasing this notebook though. Its not everyday that a laptop manufacturer decides to stick per key illumination in their laptops. The G keys are a very nice touch, although I found them to be placed a bit too close to the main typing area. They can be programmed to perform a lot of actions like on mine where they are binded to be media controls, or you can set up your own macro actions. Its all up to you.


Touchpad:

Forewarning: This is my first time using an ELAN trackpad so these are purely my raw impressions. Lets begin. This thing is a savior coming from my Clevo. The rubberized touchpad on that thing was horrendous to the point where it was just disabled most if not all the time, only being used for the occasional times I forget to bring my G900 mouse out of the house. And having tried their trackpads on their laptops that still had the glossy trackpad, this is a joy to use. The frosted/matte surface makes gliding very smooth. Single handed use is very easy. Drag and drops simple to do. Zoom, scrolling and rotation? Easy. You definitely won’t be using this to play games but it will be an excellent substitute for your mouse if you forget to pack one along.


Screen:

The screen is an LG 17.3in with monitor id : LGD046C. 1920x1080p resolution, 75hz with G Sync. Nothing much to say other than it’s a beauty. My old Clevo had an AUO TN panel so this LG IPS is better in most if not all respects. And it comes with Nvidia G Sync @ 75hz. And I don’t think I’ll be getting another laptop with a c=screen smaller than 17in. There is so much real estate


Gaming Performance:

The GTX1070 is pure overkill for 1080p gaming. GPU overclock Lvl4 in Aorus C&C utility. I ran Unengine Heaven at the Ultra preset with 8xAA and it blew the frame counter away. Over 100fps consistently in all scenes and it hummed along at exactly 1999mhz after a 20 min loop. 3DMark Firestrike was a bit of an odd one. Yesterdays first run without an overclock netted me 13.4k. With the overclock, on its first attempt, it crashed before the first scene loaded. The second time, it crashed at the second scene. Third time round, it ran perfectly but netted me 11.3k. I will repeat the test when I get back home, but I suspect an overtaxed power adapter on the max overclock preset.

For games, Overwatch on Ultra (forgot to switch it to Epic), running on my external Asus MG279Q, did well over 90 fps consistently AT 2560x1440 @144hz. Somehow G Sync didn’t apply there. I wanted to scale it down to 1080p but it gave me weird UI issues so I left it as it is. Call of Duty Black Ops 3 ran flawlessly at max settings at 1080p. 75fps across the board thanks to G Sync. My 970M is a potato compared to this.


Wifi

The laptop uses Rivet Networks Killer AC1535 paired with Killer E2200 Gigabit LAN. I game on Wifi most if not all the time so LAN testing will not be included. So my home uses an Asus RT56U Wireless N router capable of both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz signals. On the 5G beam, it was quite stable initially. Steam was giving me 5.6 to 5.9mbps download speeds for BO3 which was very good in my household. After around 10 mins or so, speeds started to go down slowly, eventually hitting the point where Windows said that it was connected to the network but there was no internet. The only way I found around this was to disable and re-enable my wireless card constantly but the issue kept popping up. So I switched to the 2.4Ghz band and resumed the download. Speeds were pretty low at first but eventually it picked up to full speed. Even in Overwatch, on the 5Ghz network, I kept getting disconnected from the servers (I live in Malaysia and connect to NA servers. It netted me pings around 15 to 25ms on my old Clevo’s AC7260 on the 5Ghz band). On the 2.4Ghz band, pings were in the mid 100s which to me isn’t bad, as I used to play at close to 300ms quite often. God knows why.


Temperatures:

I think Aorus did an excellent job with the cooling in this machine. My idle temps are in the high 20s to low 30s and under load with a 50.8mv undervolt in Throttlestop, CPU temps never went above the low 70s. On the lvl4 overlock preset for the GPU, temps never got above the mid to high 70s. The inclusion of the added air intakes above the keyboard deck is proving to an excellent addition to their design of this laptop. Surface temps were excellent as well. The palm rest stayed cool to the touch and the keyboard deck never got above lukewarm. Sweaty hands while gaming? I don’t think so. The only hotspot I found on the topside of the laptop was the area around the power bottom directly opposite the CPU, GPU and the heatpipe array. The side exhausts did not affect me at all during gaming although if you use a large thick mousepad like my Steelseries QcK mass, be sure to not put it to close to the side vent. Mine was thick enough to cover a portion of the bottom area of the vent.


Noise:

For such a powerful laptop it is pretty muted when under load. I used the gaming present for my fan control in the C&C utility. I could definitely hear the fans but they weren’t annoying or obtrusive. It was just a steady whoosh of air coming out the sides and back of the laptop. It didn’t manage to overpower the built in speakers so that’s a big plus from me. Much higher pitched coming from the Clevo especially with how thin the fans are compared to the Clevo’s. But if that’s the price that I have to pay for lower component temperatures, I am completely fine with it. Max fan speed is basically putting a hairdryer next to your ear, so really recommended unless you’re gonna be pushing the system to it max.


Speakers:

I did not expect much going to such a thin laptop. My test song was All We Know by the Chainsmokers. Bass is very lacking even with the 2 subs underneath doing their best. Mids and highs were very clear though. Max volume was pretty good and more than enough to fill up a decent sized classroom. Obviously much thicker laptops with nearly double or even triple the thickness will almost always have the advantage. But for a thin and light, this is as good as it can get. MSI’s Stealth lineup has nothing on this.


Battery life:

The X7 is rocking a massive 94whr battery. Using the -50.8mv undervolt on the CPU, power saver profile (max CPU usage capped at 10%), battery saver enabled, no keyboard backlight and with screen brightness at 25%, I was getting around just over 4 hours of battery life according to windows browsing and watching Youtube on Opera browser. Pretty damn good for a laptop with no Optimus support I would think.


Overall:

I have absolutely no regrets purchasing this laptop. To me it is the perfect balance of portability, power and cooling. Excellent build quality all round. Great input devices for productivity and the 17.3in screen is a joy to watch videos or movies on. Plenty of display outputs if you decide to run extra monitors. The USB 3.1 Type C port adds that bit of expandability if you need it. The only downsides I can see to this laptop would be finding a bag for this beast, the speakers and possibly the inclusion of only 3 USB 3.0 ports. But none of this should deter you from purchasing this laptop if you have the budget for it. It is truly a marvel from a engineering standpoint and a pure joy to use. An easy 10/10 from me. If Aorus keeps this up in the future, my next laptop would definitely be from them.