***Gigabyte P34W v3 "Phantasus" owner's lounge***

The quality control issues for such an expensive laptop are still a bit puzzling to me. I haven't bought a laptop before my p34w since 2007 when I bought a macbook pro. Is this just sort of the norm with laptops these days, do MSI and Asus have these issues? I mean its a non issue once you are able to score one that isn't messed up, but it's sort of unbelievable how much trouble it is to do so.

 

well to some people my issue isnt really an issue for some. but its fundamental because with out it you cant function the laptop properly. one shouldnt need a external mouse to solve this. but of course if you do use one that will not bother you. but it shouldnt be over looked.
if i was a notebook maker. although my product might not be apple quality. i would be proud to sell it so i would ensure for the price its selling that quality is ensured. but its not cheap so theres every reason to complain. although i was somewhat pleased as a preference that the p34w came with dedicated buttons. it seems to me like they should of gone the same route as the larger version as they did that with the x3 and made it one large pad with integrated clicks. and just chane the panel in the lcd because its prone to bleeding.

should ever get a perfect unit id rate the machine 9/10 missing ot on the 6gb vram and no trackstick like thinkpads.

 

The unfortunate thing is that there isn't a 970m in the 14inch chasis to go with besides the razer which is just way too expensive for a similiar specs.

 

@RebelGator
Yes I agree, that's what it boils down to. I wanted a small thin laptop with killer gaming potential and their ain't much to choose from in this category other than what you mentioned. But the Razor's has issues with storage or lack there of. Msata only... Yeah that free's lots of space up, but it limits your options. The P34w v3 is a laptop you can modify the Msata and the hard drive very easily. The repaste I did on mine was quite easy to do. Notebookcheck comented that it is unusual for a small and light notebook to be that accessible and I would have to agree. Read notebookcheck's review on the new Razor, allmost nothing is accessible.

 

yea i would buy that too but its twice the cost or the same specs. i think i can save half of that cost and fund for a refresh. sell the old one and have "change" plus ive already got my matching ram and 1TB msata ssd waiting to go in the right machine.

 

I was in the same exact boat as you as far as the aorus goes....I figured I'd settle on the X3 but the palm rest wear just completely turned me off on the purchase.... It's kinda bad on my w230ss and was rather disappointed when they re-released it with the same material... Giving it some hard thought since the only game I really wanna play is Star Citizen...It's always nice to buy things we don't really need though..

 

I experienced the above on my brand new P35W v3 plus the slight chassis bend where the ODD is, which affects to different degrees to all P35 laptops. Still not corrected in V3.

Mine is under RMA.

 

Hey all -- I just received my P37W and was looking to see if I could borrow some of the insights you all have here for its sister, the P35W. I was looking for a good place to start in terms of GPU core clock, memory clock, and voltage that people have been getting good, stable results with. Does anyone have a good starting place for me to try (and then test my margins)?

 

I seem to have no luck with this laptop. WHen I arrived at my office this morning. I ofcourse pulled my laptop out of my laptop bag. First thing then fell out was the memoryslot cover.......

Not sure if something is wrong with the screw hole but I never had anything like this with all laptops that I owned. Maybe it needs some locktite. Hopefully the screw hole is not bad or anything like that.

 

I've been using my P34Wv3 for several weeks now and thought I would update. I am quite pleased. The HD for SSD swap has been great. Played all the way through Far Cry 4 at full resolution ultra setting and turned AA down to 2X. I undervolt -.75mv and turned the clock down to 2.6GHz and the thing runs perfect. Temps hover around the 83-87C range with those settings.

At work, having an actual VGA and LAN port has been a blessing. I travel and it seems quite a few places still require those to fully connect to all the old stuff. The SD card reader have come in handy for throwing files at high speed onto the MicroSD card I use in my Note10.1. Much faster than a cable.

I still haven't gotten the fan to be totally silent when doing basic office stuff (email, web, Word, etc...) which is my only wish at this point. I would be happy if I could set the fan profile up a bit. It appears to kick on at 55C when in stealthfan and kick off at 50C. I would like to see where the temp would stabilize if the fan was always off and be able to adjust the turn on point just above that. Not sure if that would be an option, but that would make this perfect for me.

Overall, I'm quite happy. I love being able to play AAA games when on the road and not have to break my back carrying a brick!

 

@Divot762 Do you apply those changes through XTU ? or another software ?
If possible could you give a screenshot of how you change those values... I am still waiting for a good explanation/exemple to try myself.

Thanks in Advance !

Also I think that by lowering those values (and maybe others) we might keep the fans unused for normal/low usage

 

Yes, I did this with the Intel XTU software. It seems the bios won't allow me to keep the settings all the time as it resets to stock when I reboot, but I made a profile and saved it so I can quickly switch. One thing I read is that you need to set the Dynamic CPU, Processor Cache, and Processor Graphics voltages all to the same setting. Make sure you go "up" in the settings to get negative values or you will push more voltage rather than less.

 

Thank you very much, I just applied those setting and will try it until a problem occur ! Also can you close XTU after applying those changes ? did you do any other changes ?

 

I also turned the multiplier for core 3 and 4 (linked together and used in games) down to 26.

You can close UTX and it should keep the settings until your reboot. At least that's what I've seen.

 

Hey guys, just been reading through this thread and loads of useful information on here so thanks for that. Been looking into buying this laptop as I've found it brand new for £11750 with a 128GB SSD. Originally I planned to purchase the P34G V2 for £900 with a 128GB SSD but obviously the 970m is a far superior card.

The more I read though the less sure I am about what to do. Currently I'm a first year university student and need this laptop to work until I finish my degree, another three years. I don't expect the GPU to be smashing out games on ultra in that time, but it would be nice if it could still play them.

I've built a PC from scratch before but I've never done any undervolting or anything like that and wonder if getting the P34K V3 to run smoothly is going to be a little difficult for me.

I'm quite worried about the temperatures I'm seeing here, currently I use an acer with a DDR3 630m GPU and it rarely ever goes above 80 degrees, same for my CPU. I know this is because I have a crappy specs, but seeing such high numbers just makes me worry after a year or two the CPU or GPU will die

 

@LeviSJ The P34W V3 definitely runs hot and throttles because of the thermal constraints introduced by fitting such powerful components into a thin and light package. The fan noise is also quite loud under intensive gaming. That being said, you won't find anything as powerful or portable as the P34W except maybe the more expensive Razer Blade. As far as tweaking the laptop to get it to run cooler, it's quite an easy process to undervolt if you don't want to re-paste or do anything technical. The performance you will be getting out of will still be truly exceptional and I have no doubt of its ability to run games well 3 years from now.

I will mention that since you plan on using the laptop for university, you will probably be moving it around constantly. Now I can't say whether or not Gigabyte laptops can last such a long time with moderate, daily wear and tear. I would like to think so, but since Gigabyte laptops haven't been around for too long I can't say with confidence. So factor this into the system that you are thinking about buying, a laptop that is carried around daily needs to be robust and have a brand history of being so.

 

Thanks for the reply. I realise that this thing throttled will still play games beautifully, it's more the temperatures which worry me. I think I could manage a repaste, after all they aren't too difficult. I use to repaste Xbox 360's for people who suffered from the red ring of death and I did it on the previous PC I built, it's just undervolting that I have no idea how to do. If I'm honest I've never even heard of it before.

I'm looking more and more towards buying this thing now, even though I told myself my budget couldn't push past £900 Argh screw you Witcher 3 for making me want this laptop so bad

 

Undervolting is very easy using the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility, you just have to test to make sure it's stable when undervolted by a certain amount. Usually I'll undervolt in -10mV increments and play BF4 for an hour or two. If it doesn't crash (although there could be other reasons) then I'll continue lowering it. -60mV with the multipliers set to x28 (2.8GHz) seems to work well around here for keeping temperatures below 96c.

 

Hi guys,

I'm thinking about getting the XMG c405 which uses the same body as the P34W v3.

I've read quite a bit that the build quality isnt fantastic? How have the owners felt so far on how the laptop looks / feels?

I'm not overly concerned about throttling because I probably wont be playing super intensive games on it and will add the thermal paste etc.

Thanks!

 

I've seen mine vary from 7% to 3%. Yes, battery went down from 7% when I first got it to 3% a couple days later, then 5% next time I checked. I just checked right now and it's reporting 2.7% wear level.

I've also seen it not charge with the battery dropped to 95%. So there seem to be some battery wear protections built into this. Just no way to explicitly control them.

 

If anyone's curious, I made a small update to my detailing of the exchange process with XoticPC. Here's the thread. http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/xoticpc-and-gigabyte-p34w-is-this-normal-service.773538/

I received my original defective laptop one month ago, on March 20th, 2015. As of today, still waiting for the laptop to be restocked. As I state in my first post in that thread, "I'm a little miffed that they didn't keep one in stock for me while my laptop was being returned and instead shipped out all their remaining stock for orders placed after mine even though they already had my payment, but what can you do?"

Don't get me wrong all the customer service reps I've spoken to have been polite, but for future service of my P34W I'm going to contact Gigabyte and for future laptops I'm buying from another retailer.

 

I'll give you my laptop experience as something to think about, but I do understand the hard situation you're considering. Over the years I've owned or been given for work, Dell, IBM (back before Lenovo), Toshiba, Asus UL30, Toshiba Qosmio, Asus N56, Surface 3 Pro, and now this Gigabyte P34WV3. Every time I've gone for a brick (pretty much required for video card) I have hated it. I travel a lot, and by the time you put a 6-8lb laptop and all of your gear in a bag it just ads up to no fun. On the other side, every time I've went light and "cool" (Surface 3 Pro...), I've been totally disappointed with the power and ability to do graphics.

I have tried all the combinations possible and for my work/travel requirements I feel the p34Wv3 is about the best compromise I've come across in all my years (the ASUS UL30 being a close second for its day). It's light, it can play anything I throw at it, Solidworks and Photoshop run like a champ, and it's pretty quiet when just doing office work. I've gotten about 5 hours out of the battery, but that isn't a huge concern in my working environment.

As for your other concerns, I would say try to get something with the 970m in it if you can. I believe this processor has enough power that you'll see it's life go as long as Xbox One and PS4 are the kings of consoles. This will take any games designed for those two consoles and run them even better. So I suspect you're going to see that as the level of graphical demand for the next few years.

Undervolting on this or any other laptop is super easy. You really just install the Intel XTU, and then click on the voltages and turn them down by .05mv until you have an issue. You also just click to turn down the CPU. I ended up at -75. on the 3 voltages and at 26X on the core 3 and 4 multipliers and I never see the temps go above 90C and the thermal throttling stays at 0%. I believe this also lets the GPU run at full speed which seem to be more important than CPU in most games.

Taking the bottom off and re-pasting is pretty easy too. If you've ever built a desktop it's pretty similar in difficulty. Just remember that the front two screws are covered with decals which you have to push the screwdriver though to get out (not rivets or pop type things) and then you'll be good to go.

This unit can get fairly loud when gaming, but I don't notice it too much with the sound turned up.

 

Has anyone else had issues with the mouse Pointer Speed?
I set the Pointer Speed to 6/11 and everytime I reboot it goes back to 11/11. I've tried uninstalling the Touchpad driver (ELAN) which is what I suspect could be causing it. Have also tried uninstalling my mouse software (Razer Synapse) also but nothing seems to help.
I checked the registry and in HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Mouse there's a setting "Mouse Sensitivity" which is set to 20 (translates to 11/11). I changed this to 10 (6/11) and close, but when I reboot this also goes back to 20.

GIGABYTE support told me to update the ELAN drivers which are already the latest, and then after that have told me to update Smart Manager - trying that now but Smart Update is insanely slow and I can't imagine updating Smart Manager is going to fix anything to do with the mouse settings anyway.

 

Hi everyone, also a new owner of the p34w v3 here.
I post to share two 3dmark 2011 results.
one with "stealth" fan profile:
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/9729893

and the other with "auto" fan profile and the cpu capped to 1.7 multi on all cores:
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/9729931

with this i haven't reach 80 °c but it was only for the short duration of the 3dmark benchmark.

also, a quick question, do you have a fn symbol on the esc key? i've got one, it looks like an eject icon,but it's not in my manual and i wonder what it does.
here's a picture:


edit: it's just an eject fonction for the odd, found it in the p35w v3 manual. obviously less useful on the p34.

 

@elfric
It's great that you have the temps down below 80c, but those scores are low for this laptop. When mine first arrived I did bechmarking and on auto fan got in the 8800 range (with throttling). After repasting, I brought it to the 9500 range with no throttling at all. My temps were around 92c to 93c range though. So what you're doing bringing all cores down to 1.7ghz is great for temps at the cost of a good deal of performance. But for many owners, this may be a good option.
Thanks for sharing.

 

What ver of the laptop you have, European ? Looks different and why do you have 2 x 2 keys.

 

it's a french version and the leftmost 2 is a mathematical "square".

 

here's some furmark test with different scenarios:

first stealth mode:

26 fps 66°c

now "auto" fan mode, cpu capped to 1.7 multi:

63 fps 85°c

cpu capped further to 0.8:


not much differences with the cpu capped at 1.7 so no need to go this low cpu wise.

"auto" fan mode, cpu capped to 1.7 multi and targeted max temperature of 75°c in nvidia inspector:

not much differences with stealth mode, the max fps of 67 was during the first few seconds before it reach 75°c, then it went back and forth between 26 and 31 fps.

"auto" fan mode, cpu capped to 1.7 and targeted fps of 40 in nvidia inpector:

81-83 °c, so ....

 

i just did a repaste with som arctic silver 5 lying around, nothing changed.
i'm not an expert in repasting so maybe i did it wrong. at least i'm happy it's still working, haha.

 

I fixed mine by disabling the automatic startup of the ELAN trackpad utility ( called Elan Service in Control Panel > Admin Tools > Services). Not an ideal solution, but I barely use the trackpad anyways and it still works, just without any extra functionality.

I just got a new job so I haven't had much time for updating or benchmarking, but I've mostly been using 3DMark Firestrike (the basic one) to run benchmarks since 3DMark11 is rather outdated and provides the best comparison against other benchmarks since most people use it.

EDIT: This was done with Auto - High Speed Fan and CPU undervolted by -60mV and locked at x28 (2.8Ghz multi):
P650SE's get around 7000-7500 points but it's a bigger system with more cooling and no throttling. With the P34W, the whole point of undervolting/underclocking the CPU is to allow more power and cooling for the GPU so it can maintain higher clock speeds since its performance more directly affects game than the CPU.

 

Thanks but I actually found a solution I thought I'd share for anyone else who happens to be Googling the problem. It's pretty stupid actually all I had to do was set the mouse sensitivity in the Smart Manager software that comes with Gigabyte laptops. It seems this overrides anything else including registry changes/control panel.

The sensitivity on that is 1-20 unlike the windows one, so if you are aiming for default windows sens you will need to set it to 10

Windows | Smart Manager
1/11 = 1
2/11 = 2
3/11 = 4
4/11 = 6
5/11 = 8
6/11 = 10
7/11 = 12
8/11 = 14
9/11 = 16
10/11 = 18
11/11 = 20

 

For everyone wondering about the battery cycles I read the manual with the laptop and mine states the battery is rated to last somewhere between 300-500 cycles or 2-3 years, whichever comes first. Cycle count is a little lower than i'd hoped for :/

 

Thats indeed not the best. Just standard, I will see how long it will hold out. Already found replacement batteries.

Too bad, My now 2 year old Samsung Ativ Book 8 is rated for 2000 cycles. I wish those 2 laptops would just make a baby laptop. The raw power of the Gigabyte and the extremely longevity of the Samsung laptop.

edit: I dont see it in the manual by the way. But I do see a remark before storing the laptop for a longer time, that the battery needs to be removed. Which is not possible and seems to be an old generic text for older laptops.

 

I've just received a p34w CF1 - fit and finish seems fine apart from the trackpad buttons - left click is depressed lower than the right click, and there is a nasty edge when sliding your finger up onto the trackpad.

Also all four feet don't sit flat on a flat surface - two opposite corners are raised in the air so it rocks back and forth.

Should I send it back and get another one? (thinking yes at the moment)

 

I had this problem with the first P34 i received. The replacement also had a slight rocking base. But after opening the bottom to add a SSD, repaste the CPU/GPU and assemble it again, it disappeared. The left button is slightly lower on mine but not that much. The first one was much worse and the right part really was higher than the palm rest itself. Yeah the assembly quality is a bit iffy. I only took it because of the size and solid specs.

 

Our chassis is a thin aluminum clamshell with little in regards to internal supports etc. Its going to flex quite a bit which is the reason for the sometimes rocking back and forth. If you want to fix that pick the laptop up by the offending corner and it'll flex itself back into place. If that doesn't fix it give the notebook chassis a slight pull (with the screen open) and you'll solve the problem.

 

I guess you work with gigabyte. If so I'm glad you are here. What do you suggest about the trackpad with the left click side usually lower than the right resulting in the in something that looks like this





Not nice for something at £1200-£1300. On the refresh will the buttons be like the p35 v3 models so that this can be avoided?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Hmm, I'll try that - I was afraid of damaging something but I'll give it a bit of a pull and see if it straightens out.

Also I have pretty much exactly the same issue as in sisqo_uk's picture, although a little more pronounced/bent than that. Seems a shame on a £1300 machine for that kind of issue. What's the chance of receiving flush trackpad buttons? Is it worth trying again on the off chance I may get one with flush buttons, or is the chance too low so I should simply put up with it?

 

Yea I had them deeper than that too. Only that one I had to send a pic to retailer. And infact I bought two so I could hope either one was good but was both like that. I even bought a p34 v2 with a 970m inside called c405 by xmg. I bought two there. One came up like this




I never bought gigabyte before. I was like ok at least the got seperate buttons unlike the all in one on the p35 models...how wrong. It seems a way better choice even though I will always prefer dedicated buttons. In this case cos of the reoccurring problem I spanned over 12 tries of the same laptop only 2 came up good and they had screen bleeding instead . I think they need to change it


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LOL Sorry guys, I don't work for, represent or speak for Gigabyte at all. I've just opened mine up for repasting and an SSD install so I'm voicing my solution.

As for the track pad I'm not sure how you'd solve that without dismantling the thing.

 

Anyone know where to get a spare AC adapter for this? I checked the stock one and its a Delta 19.5v, 7.7a, 150w. There are some 19.5v 7.7a generic brand ones on eBay but I don't know how safe they would be to use.

 

Dunno if this was discussed, but I am having an odd and a bit annoying problem windows (too bad, since all the other problems I seemed to have with this laptop have disappeared!). How to explain this...See the computer icon on your desktop (with your user name) that opens a window were you can access all of your folders, hard drives, etc? (Sorry, I totally forgot how you call that icon). Well, sometimes when I open it, windows explorer freezes and my only option is to reboot the laptop. No idea what could be causing this :/

 

I have the same issue with my trackpad. You're not alone

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Hey everyone, did a thermal repaste this morning using Liquid Pro and since I'm kinda worried about my temperatures. My CPU temps seem to fluctuate a lot more than they previously did. Not sure if I used too much or too little paste on the CPU, I used a little less on the CPU than I did on the GPU I think and now I'm a little worried to say the least.

I just did a 3D mark Firestrike test and got a score of 6252. Is this low?

EDIT: Ok my CPU temperatures just shot up to 80s while charging with no programs running. I take it I need to repaste my CPU again? Kinda worried now I've done it wrong and won't be able to fix this, one very expensive mistake

 

That fire strike score is in the range you should be getting. Mine was in the 6600 range. Did you watch any of the repaste videos? You can find some earlier in this thread. Personally I used a pea sized amount of ic7 in the center of the GPU and a line of ic7 on the CPU (just like the video) and I've had good results wth that.

 

I did watch some videos and with liquid pro apparently your supposed to spread it. My GPU tempa seem to be about 85 so I think I did an OK job there just not on the CPU. Gonna try use a little more and hope that helps

 

Do they even check those machines........ridiculous. Mine is luckily nowhere near that bad

 

Mine has this flaw too, but yeah nothing like this.

 

I don't get it. The worse part was it was a custom build too LOL all I can think of is that they pushed it down and thought that did the trick. But little did they know. Was after 2 minutes it was back up again. The other machine was perfect of the two I bought. But it was noisier than gigabytes version and lagged on stealth mode where as I remember that on the same game it didn't. Even with the same drivers I used at the time since they supplied it with gigabytes driver disc...that it wouldn't run by default LOL


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After reading all your posts about defects I'm feeling lucky. I Have no defect on the power button or the mouse pad and only a small amount of screen bleed. I Bought mine on Amazon.