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

It depends on what you're using the computer for. If you're doing any type of video editing or 3d modeling then I would not suggest disabling hyperthreading. The performance to heat hit would be pretty strong in terms of the tradeoff. For gaming, I don't see it being an issue at all since most games don't even utilize 4 cores. As far as how much heat it would save you, I can't speak to that since I haven't done it. My suggestion would be to disable the hyperthreading and then stress test it for a couple of hours to compare to the old thermals.

 

Hyperthreading can net up to a 20c temp difference on my hexacore i7 desktop machine. I'm assuming it'd be around the 10c mark on this.

 

Bit OT but is there a way to change posts per page? Annoying having so few posts on one page.

 

Hello P34W v3 owners, I've got a question about the fans but NOT regarding noise!
Is the cooling system dependant on the lid beeing open? I've got a GS60 myself that sucks in air just above the keyboard so if i close the lid when using an external monitor it gets hot. Is it the same solution on this one?

 

No, you can run it lid closed all day.

 

I'm an idiot and didn't realize the HT setting was in a bios sub menu. Looks like shutting it off will net you 12-15c cooler temps at stock settings and it allows for more undervolting netting even larger gains. This is an excellent way to drop the temps while playing more modern games like GTA V.

 

Is it worth keeping off though? Compare disabling HT with limiting the clocks at x25

edit: also, how low did you UV safely without HT?

edit 2: ughhhh my laptop is in Bangkok but it's stuck in customs.

 

Does anyone know if it's possible to have two finger tap for right click and three finger tap for middle click? I tried messing around with the elan software in the registry but no luck.

 

The best way to check if a particular configuration gives you higher or lower temps and the associated thermal throttling (or not) is to stress test your P34W and monitor what happens. Personally, I find that with hyperthreading disabled, multipliers at x28, undervolting by -60mV, and gelid thermal paste I am able to run at a consistent 2.8GHz on all cores with the GPU core clock around 1000MHz.

 

140 USD import duties

 

so i've waited 5 days, with the battery disconnected from the mainboard and it lost 1.5 %.
less than the 5% while it stayed connected.
oh well, it seems the perfect product is elusive as ever.

 

That is really normal for any battery in a laptop. Current day laptops aren't really off. I put it in hibernate mode after a day of work always. Hardly noticed those percents to be honest.

 

Quick question: do you guys get different CPU temps depending on the game you are playing? For instance, my CPU is undervolted by -60mv. With a game like Grim Dawn, I can play it with the CPU underclocked to 2.9Ghz (max temp would be around 89°C).
With GTA 5, I need to lower it to 2.5ghz to avoid going over 90°C and throttling.
With the Witcher 3...Depends. I only played it twice. On the first day I was able to play at 2.5Ghz, on the next day even at 2.0Ghz I was getting 94°C and lot of throttling: had to lower it to 1.4Ghz! (almost no impact on performances though). It's like I have to create a different profile on XTU depending on the game.

 

Different games stress the CPU differently which can definitely account for differences in temperature and ultimately clock speeds. If your ambient temperature or playing surface is changing, those could also affect max temps as well especially in a very thermally constrained laptop like the P34W.

 

It's the GPU which creates more heat. Remember that they're sharing the same cooling system, so the heat from one affects the other. More graphically challenging games will cause the GPU to max out and generate more heat

 

Thanks for the answers, that's what I thought as well (the GPU), even though my 970m didn't seem to heat up that much when I received the machine: guess I should run some other tests to recheck all of that!

 

Got mine today! Looks great, makes my old 14" look obese. Spent the morning swapping the hdd (that's a lot of screws) and installing/copying stuff. Can't wait to start tweaking with XTU and benchmarking.

 

Ah yes, I forgot about that! Thanks for correcting me, so of course a GPU that's running hotter will add to the overall thermal constraints of this system. Below are my speeds and temps after playing bf4 for 1.5hours on 64 player servers.

 

Welp. I played a couple games, then I opened EVGA (not for the first time) and suddenly, BSOD.

Boot loop.

nvlddmkm.sys

clean installed. Still happens.

Minidump:

SYMBOL_STACK_INDEX: 0

SYMBOL_NAME: nvlddmkm+45b574

FOLLOWUP_NAME: MachineOwner

MODULE_NAME: nvlddmkm

IMAGE_NAME: nvlddmkm.sys

DEBUG_FLR_IMAGE_TIMESTAMP: 55515e64

STACK_COMMAND: .cxr 0xffffd00023223840 ; kb

FAILURE_BUCKET_ID: AV_nvlddmkm+45b574

BUCKET_ID: AV_nvlddmkm+45b574

ANALYSIS_SOURCE: KM

FAILURE_ID_HASH_STRING: km:av_nvlddmkm+45b574

FAILURE_ID_HASH: {3a884b94-17c2-1bc6-ecef-e47a99ce1a99}

Followup: MachineOwner



****.

 

EVGA what?

 

Precision. I did not overclock (though I did underclock the CPU by -60mv)

 

Ok. I've confirmed it's the GPU which is DOA. This is terrible.

Be careful. I don't know if XTU and undervolting core/graphics/cache had anything to do with my GPU dying, but I'll think twice about using XTU when I get this back.

 

Care to tell us how you found out? It's possible the EVGA Precision software was causing the BSOD itself because of some sort of incompatibility or bug. Undervolting should NEVER harm anything at all, if anything it might introduce instability if you've given your CPU/GPU too little voltage which could translate to crashes or BSOD's but is easily remedied by undervolting less or setting it back to stock volts.

I use Intel XTU to undervolt and no third-party GPU clocking software on my P34W and have had zero issues with crashing or BSOD's.

Anyways, I wanted to give you a rundown of the cooling solutions I use on my P34W.

1. Havit F-2056 Notebook Cooler. It has three fans that blow air up to the bottom casing. It also has a mesh service which doesn't impede airflow. I'm not sure how much it helps, but it certainly seems to keep temps cooler overall.

2. Gelid Extreme Thermal Compound. I put it on the GPU/CPU. I definitely thinks it helps to keep things a little cooler, but I don't have any testing to confirm this.

3. USB Fan. I plan on buying this to blow some air over the top intakes/vents near the power button. This area seems to get pretty hot during intensive use.

4. Undervolting CPU by -60mV and locking the multipliers at x28 (2.8GHz) using Intel XTU.

Overall, I believe I am able to avoid GPU throttling with these settings. Keeping the GPU at stock clocks is more important than CPU speed with regards to performance. I am happy with my setup and the performance I'm getting out of it! Sometimes I will set the fan speed to "Max Fan" to keep things even cooler.

 

I had HIDEvolution apply diamond cooling, other than that I used XTU to uv core,cache, and graphics by -60mv and limited the clocks to x26-24. CPU temps were peaking at 80c in games generally. Did you only UV the core or did you UV the cache/graphics also in XTU?

Honestly I have no idea what caused it, and that is what worries me. What if I get it replaced and it happens again?

Anyway, I narrowed it down to the GPU by swapping the RAM, the HDD, the SSD, clean installing Windows 8.1, Windows 10, EVERYTHING. Tried all drivers. Same thing every time.

 

I only undervolted the core. Have you tried running your P34W without installing EVGA Precision software? When does the BSOD happen? When playing a particular game or whenever you do anything 3D intensive?

 

Seems to be a manufacturings error maybe? Running EVGA software for monitoring as well in combination with XTU. Didnt encounter any issues related to the GPU yet.

 

It happens whenever the Nvidia driver is installed. During the install process the graphics card does not respond, leading to the BSOD. I've tried to install the drivers on fresh win 8.1 and win 10 installs- bsods.

 

Went to their office today. They'll have to mail it to Taiwan to get it fixed. Looking at a 2-week turnaround time. :h

 

Ouch, that seems rather scary :/ I didn't have a BSOD today, but the laptop totally froze while in game (Witcher 3) and rebooted. I have no idea what could have caused it. I checked the GPU temperatures, but they seemed fine.

In fact, I have noticed something rather odd (but positive): the laptop no longer heats up as much as before, I can play the Witcher 3 with the CPU multipliers set to x28 on XTU and I barely go above 87°C (before, even at x25 it would throttle like crazy and reach 93°C, I would need to lower it to x20 to have "descent" temperatures).

Did I do anything to change that? No...Except that I came back to France, and I am testing the laptop in here for the first time. I would be very surprised if the difference of voltage had anything to do with it. I will still need to run some tests: so far I haven't plugged everything else I was using while in the US (external hard drive, a third 1080p screen through VGA), maybe there was something that was more demanding on the GPU. Too bad I am moving again in a few days, that doesn't give me a lot of time to test all of this.

In the meantime, I won't complain about that massive drop in temperatures.

 

Well, were the temperatures of your room the same? An change in ambient temp will directly affect the CPU/GPU temperatures.

RE: the voltage -- it crossed my mind that I used the laptop with a charger sent from the USA. I plugged it into the power bank here in Thailand. I didn't consider it before, but it is possible that the AC converter (100-240v) might have caused my GPU to fry? There were no other problems running on it that I noticed. The wall plug is rated for 125v but the converter says 100-240. It shouldn't cause any problems, right?

 

So I was looking to buy this laptop (and hopefully be able to get some decent money for my old Vaio one). In any case, if I were to undervolt/clock the CPU but not re-apply the thermal paste, does anyone know what the noise/heat would be like?

Not too bothered about noise whilst gaming as that's par for the course for laptop gaming, but I'm more concerned about noise/heat whilst browsing and also watching HD videos etc.

Does anyone have any experience of the above before I take the plunge and buy this laptop?

 

In balanced mode mine would get pretty hot while just doing everday tasks, cpu up to 70C. The back of the laptop gets quite hot, you wouldn't use it on your lap unless it was in stealth mode.

 

Temperatures might be a bit different, but I have never noticed these drastic differences on other laptops.

RE: the voltage -- it crossed my mind that I used the laptop with a charger sent from the USA. I plugged it into the power bank here in Thailand. I didn't consider it before, but it is possible that the AC converter (100-240v) might have caused my GPU to fry? There were no other problems running on it that I noticed. The wall plug is rated for 125v but the converter says 100-240. It shouldn't cause any problems, right?[/QUOTE]

Temperatures might be a bit different, but I have never noticed these drastic differences on other laptops.

Hm, do you mean you bought the laptop in Thailand and used a US charger, which might be the cause of the issue? I am no expert, but sounds like it shouldn't be a problem: the wall plug is 125v, the converter for the laptop 100-240 (and 50-60v), my guess is it should work anywhere...I guess...
I bought mine in the US, and I am going to Vietnam for a few weeks...I don't think I would need extra precautions apart from using an outlet adapter. I just checked online: for Vietnam it is 220 V 50 Hz, in France it is 230 V 50 Hz (and in the US: 120 V 60 Hz). I have been using laptops bought in France in the US for years, with no problems. So far the P34W (bought in the US) is working fine in France...It will be the first time I test a US laptop in Vietnam though (my father never had any issues with French laptops in Vietnam).

 

I used mine the past 4 weeks in Japanwithout any issues. Just as all other modern laptops adapters. They can be used pretty much anywhere.

 

Yah that's what I thought. Just trying to find an explanation other than I have really bad luck (the surface 3 I bought recently had a broken sound card and had to be replaced)

 

970M GTX running constantly at boost speeds while playing BF4. No throttling. CPU is undervolted by -60mV and locked at 2.8GHz. It's just great.

 

I'm sad that I paid about 100 USD extra for IC diamond repasting + rush service from HID only to have it undone while gigabyte replaces my mobo. Max fans btw?

 

Hi there, I am now an owner of a P34W v3 as well and so far I am amazed by this piece of technology. More performance crammed into this 14" formfactor than my tower with relatively recent AMD cards in Crossfire has got in a big case, and all of that while looking extremely nice and professional (and not like a 13 year old script kiddie's toy)!

I just wanted to report which of the 'typical' problems of the P34W v3 series are on my sample:

[ ] Screen bleeding: Haven't found any. Guess I am lucky
[ ] Speakers leaking/faulty : All fine on mine. Speakers are also not that bad as Linus said they were in his review (in comparison to my MacBookPro 2012 and with that Dolby stuff set up and enabled)
[ ] Ghost Gtx 970m : Thankfully not for now. I am keeping my fingers crossed
[ ] Keyboard flex : Could not detect any besides the keys being really low-grade plastic and thin (have to get used to that after a MacBook). And the Space key bends slightly like the Touchpad "keybar" does (Seems to be a generell problem with thin plastic here).
[X] "Wobbling laptop" : The bottom shell is uneven just like shown before, but maybe not as severe. I can live with it.
[ ] Screen/Bezel clicking on bottom right
[X] Touchpad clickers uneven and don't click properly: This seems to be caused by the "bar" being out of thin plastic and mounted in the middle
[ ] Bending/scraping near hinges when closing/opening lid
[X] 7260 Wifi Issues (more to do with the card): Although it is not WiFi but Bluetooth that suddenly hides away and enjoys a cup of tea sometimes during a gaming session.

3 out of 8 seems not a bad result to me

Furthermore, being aware of the heat issues I immediately throttled the CPU in Windows energy settings to 85% and it seems to refrain from throttling right now. The fans did not go on full speed either and are not necessarily louder than those in my MacBook Pro 2012 under load (they seem to use a very similar cooling system).
Also ordered some IC diamond, we will see if that helps shutting up those fans more often...

@TheNightWolf
Things to add to your list:
- RAM: It has a Transcend 8GB stock one in it with the part number being TS1GSK64W6H .
- RAID 0: Will try it just for the lulz when my additional SSD arrives, but should work without a hitch as it is even described in the manual.

Have a nice one!

 

lol that should be the first post in the thread. I found the bezel clicks where the sticker used to be. Other than that my ****ing graphics card exploded, only 2 isn't bad?

Next computer I will buy will probably be a razor, or something with bulletproof design/QA.

 

I'm in vietnam now and I tried playing a bit with the P34W on my lap: no notebook cooler, and it's easily 10°C more in here than in my place in the US. I can confirm that my P34W is running cooler, so something was heating up the laptop way too much when I was using it in the US...
So I'll try testing it a bit more once I am back in France, plugging in EVERYTHING I normally used in the US. Hopefully I'll figure out what it is, otherwise I'll have to test it some more once I'll be back across the Atlantic.

 

I noticed suddenly after some time that my laptop started to wobble. Reseated the bottom panel and screwed it a bit more tightly and used loctite. Now it's as it should again. The laptop has maybe a bit too much flex which can cause the wobbling.

The noise levels after some tuning and repasting are more than acceptable for me. Its not that much louder than an Alienware 15 which is a far bigger and thicker laptop. It is indeed similar to a Macbook pro under real full load.

 

Do you use "auto-high" or "max fans" when you game?

 

I use auto low. Sufficient enough for me to keep the temps around 80c even in the warmer Japan weather.

 

I just got this email from gigabyte:

"Our service center just finished repairing this laptop today and it's ready to be returned to you soon. When they examined the laptop, they found the laptop had been opened before. The mSATA SSD is not the original mSATA SSD from the factory. The laptop seemed to be damaged while opening the chassis and replacing the mSATA SSD. If this mSATA SSD was not installed by you, we suggest you to contact the shop where you bought this laptop to check this problem. Thank you.

Regards,
GIGABYTE"

So, it sounds like HID damaged the GPU/mobo when they opened the laptop to repaste it or something. I'm not sure why the SSD would be replaced.

The Thailand service centre rep emailed me as well confirming that the motherboard had been replaced and the laptop was on it's way back to Thailand from Taiwan.

I would say I'm very happy with the service that I've received from Gigabyte. I would buy from them in the future. I am extremely displeased with the lack of service from HIDEvolution. I would not buy from them again.

 

That's unfortunate. It's not too difficult to redo yourself though. I usually use Auto High fan mode, Max Fan occasionally. Auto High seems to do fine with the CPU locked at 3.0GHz with -60mV undervolt and HT off. GPU doesn't throttle with these settings.

 

Repasting means opening it all up and voiding the warranty, though. Considering I just had to have my mobo replaced, I don't think it's worth the risk.

 

-60mv giving me restarts while playing GTA5 for a couple hours. I'm pretty sure it was that because when I went to -65mv it restarted after like 5 minutes. Trying -50mv now at x28 (no HT) and seeing how the temps hold.

edit: -50mv, x30 multiplier, 91C CPU max w/ 79C GPU max. I'm wondering if it's worth OCing the GPU and dropping the clocks on the CPU on this machine.

 

I've been playing around with different programs and I think I've got a near optimal setup:
Bios: HT Off
XTU: -50mv. No other changes. Profile set to steam.exe so it sticks.
Throttlestop: profile 1 is x30, profile 2 is x26. Options: set DTS 10 and GPU temp 90C trigger profile 2. This means that as long as my GPU temp is below 90 and the CPU is at least 10C below it's thermal limit, I will be running at x30. If I hit the thermal limit, the CPU drops to x26. My CPU temp maxes at 88 while the GPU maxes at 76-- which leads me to the next point
MSI Afterburner: The GPU has a much lower temp than the CPU, so I think it's relatively harmless to do a mild oc of +50 core and +100 memory.

This gives me 3dmark2011 P8500

 

62°C on the Witcher 3 with -65mv and x20 multiplier? Geez, how do you guys do it? With the same settings I get at least 20°C more (at the very best, I sometimes hit the 92°C mark and get some throttling).
And I did a repaste.
And I normally use a cooling tablet.
Granted, not all P34W are supposed to be identical, there might be some differences here and there that will increase/decrease the temps, but still '.'

 

Mine is around 80c with all cores on 26x. This is the average temperature I have in almost every game by the way. I hae all my settings on high and no nvidia hairworks on.