NEW Aero 14 W/ 1050 ti AND Thunderbolt 3

http://www.gigabyte.us/Laptop/AERO-14--GTX-1050-Ti#kf

• 3 Colors Available: Green, Orange, and Black*
• Stunning Graphics with NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1050 Ti GDDR5 4GB
• 7th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-7700HQ processor
• 94 Wh Huge Battery Capacity for Full-Day Productivity
• X-Rite™ Pantone® Color Calibration Certified
• Only 1.9cm slim, 1.89Kg Lightweight
• 2x Blazing-fast M.2 PCIe Gen.3 X4 SSDs (Optional)
• Thunderbolt™ 3: Up to 40Gbps
• HDMI 2.0 + mini DP + Thunderbolt™ 3: 4k Output Made Easy
• QHD IPS Display with Wide Viewing Angle
• Unique Aesthetics with All Aluminum Robust Body
• Slim and Light Adapter with USB Charging Port
• DDR4 2400MHz –Up to 32GB
• Dolby Digital Plus Home Theater

* There are 2 black color options: black and pure black.

 

Regarding TB3, check out the Aero 15 owners lounge. Seems to be that users are reporting the TB3 is only PCIE 2.0 x4, which is roughly 3.0 x 2. That is not the full TB3 speed spec.

I'd be cautious with any Gigabyte or Aorus offering currently that advertises TB3; at least wait until it has been tested.

With that said, I would love it if Gigabyte could do an Aero 14 with thin bezels like the 15. The Aorus X3 has thinner bezels than the 14, but it is thicker, so I'm wondering if there simply isn't any more space for that cooling solution to shrink the bezels.

 

Keeping an eye out on this one... the form factor, new X-Rite Pantone certified screen, TWO M.2 slots, nice battery life, and a GPU that is good enough for my purposes looks promising! Did wish they move to thinner bezels though

 

@Tanner@XoticPC

this is a really good news

 

This one looks like it could be a winner in its category for sure.

 

Do you have infos about release date?

 

If I did, I don't think those dates have been accurate for a few releases.

 

Any idea what price range we could expect this at because this laptop would be perfect for my college laptop if it fits into my budget of 1200 usd.

 

it is in pre-order in Australia for 2299 AUD=1814 USD
http://www.affordablelaptops.com.au/contents/en-us/p3383.html

https://www.scorptec.com.au/product/Notebooks/Gaming-Notebooks/69561-Aero14-1050Ti-BK7

We need to consider that prices are really high in Australia
for example 2699 AUD=2130 USD for a gl502vm (in USA it costs 1300 USD https://www.amazon.com/GL502VM-G-SY...e=UTF8&qid=1502540385&sr=1-3&keywords=gl502vm)
https://www.scorptec.com.au/product/Notebooks/Gaming-Notebooks/67289-GL502VM-FY165T

 

Hopefully it will be much lower in the US because at that price we can get a 1070 laptop or the 1060 aero. Anyways comparing the price of the 1060 aero on that site, it's 300 aud more. In the US the 1060 aero retails for 1700 usd in amazon so the 1050 ti should be at least 250 usd less which places it at 1450 usd which is still much above the competition that too for a 1050 ti so hopefully they drop it further. Lots of hopes. Don't let me down gigabyte.

 

I hope theres a 1080p option like the 15, otherwise the gpu bottleneck would be a deal breaker for me.

 

Hopefully, I think it would sell better that way.

 

My thought in regards to that is the display easily drops to 1080p as its a 16:9 display but by having the higher res unit it makes the desktop experience a bit better as its more a multimedia device than necessarily straight gaming.

Now if you were to tell me that 1080p display was 120hz...1440p can fall off a cliff I'd jump on that so quick.

 

Can't get confirmation at the moment, but if I find out that's the case I'll post here first.

 

What's the attraction for this laptop over the older Aero 14 with the 1060? Lower price? Seems like a downgrade to me TBH.
Seems to me they're just trying to split their product line not to steal sales from the Aero 15 model?

 

For me the 1060 is way overkill since the most demanding game I play is league, and with reduced price and power draw for a even longer battery is a big plus. Obviously theres also a tb3 port, but there is also an extra m.2 slot for more storage compared to the 1060 aero 14.

 

These are good points for sure. However, for me the unique selling point of the Aero 14 was the 1060 in a tiny package. There are many laptops in this price/weight category with a 1050, most notably the Dell XPS 15. The main purpose that I'm using the GPU for, research, the 1060 is a massive difference to the 1050. So it seems like this new Aero 14 is more mainstream, it will cater to more people.

 

Exactly. The price range 1000-1400 for a gaming laptop does not have any good choice atm and this might just be enough to shake things up.

 

The main reason I think the 1050ti model would do well is it's more accessible, you honestly lose alot of features from the Aero that the GS43VR has namely TB3 and the extra storage space. While the gpu may be a downgrade its an upgrade in the EGPU department due to the thunderbolt (hopefully this doesn't have the issue the 15's currently do). With that said it has to be cheaper than the Current 1060 Aero and thus is a bang for your buck winner providing all solid features in a small laptop that is both efficient and has a huge battery.

I'll take that any day.

 

For me, it's the fact that with a viable eGPU solution, a 1060 isn't necessary - especially with all the heat and fan noise that comes from it in a small package.

Add on the improved battery life, and this machine is both portable AND powerful enough for gaming away from your eGPU and then can be a much more powerful machine at home.

It's also expandable and the Aero 14 has a better keyboard layout than the 15 for my uses (I don't need the full size).

The lack of a portable machine using a 1050 Ti has been a huge bummer until now. Something along the price/weight category of a Dell XPS 15 but with a GPU more powerful than the 1050 and less costly than a Razer

 

Got a reply from GB support, there will only be a 1440p option for the screen.

 

Has a release date been published?

 

Haven't heard anything on a release date either. Hoping to hear more soon, especially if any other hardware changes have happened (Aero 15's improved trackpad, please?)

 

Just got off the phone with Gigabyte and the sales lady said 8/31 or 9/01. This is a NewEgg exclusive.

 

I think 1440p is not a very good idea for a 14-inch device, especially if the device is powered by a 1050ti. They could give the option to choose a 1440p for an Aero 15 for those who wish so (I'm aware that a 4k version is on the way) and 1080p for Aero 14. Also a good 8th gen ulv with a TDP-up/1050/4k option would be great in the same chassis for less performance oriented people imho.

With that said, I hope this laptop will be much better than the Aero 14/1060 temperature-wise. Do you think temps will be at least (or at most, you choose ) like Aero 15's?

 

@KML

With lower graphics card, it will probably have better temperatures.

 

Yeah, that's a given because not much else is changed that produce heat. But will cooling be enough to avoid thermal throttling or will it run cooler than all in its class? It seems we have to wait until someone review it, if a review is ever done.

 

So is this proven to not be true as of today?

*Edit - Stand corrected just checked its available for $1549.99 here forgive me for my disbelieve haha.*

With that said that price is really a little too high for my taste, should be closer to $1400 to really be an instant purchase for me at only $150 cheaper than the 1060 model it doesn't really make sense value wise. Also only in black wut?

 

I noticed it in stock last night after having looked during the day to no avail. I also should've put the price in as I found that out with my initial call. I agree but if there's any hope the battery life is better it might be worth it. The only problem I see is the disparity between Newegg and Gigabyte's description on the USB-C, Newegg says 10Gbps whereas Gigabyte's says it's Thunderbolt 3, 40Gbps.

 

Oh nice haha, yea I would lean more towards the manufacturers specs than Neweggs as they're using the connection pages between the 1050 Ti model and the 1060 so that would make sense not to put "thunderbolt 3 enabled". Also you lose 256 gb of ssd space again in that $150. I honestly don't know what they're thinking on this pricing as that's a bit ridiculous to me lose 60% performance and half the storage for $150 is a poor price indeed.

 

So Against probably my better judgement I jumped on the Aero 14 1050 Ti train to see if its worth its salt as an upgrade. Just got it in today and will be putting it through its paces this weekend and next week once my E-GPU box gets in. I've also got a Dell Latitude 5480 on the way to compare against in the EGPU department and to see if the extra 2MB in L3 between the 7700HQ and 7820HQ are worth the investment. I'll keep everyone posted as it goes

 

what egpu?

 

Went with the Mantiz Venus setup and will be testing with a 1080/1080Ti in it once it gets here. They just seemed to have the more full featured unit and the ability possibly to modify the chassis is too tempting to pass up.

 

do you know egpu.io?

 

Yea I've been on there for a little while, I was originally in the 50 group buy for these but due to getting hit by a car back in march it pulled my chances of getting one til now. Been following along on their progress since then though.

 

@RobonHood I think its worth the price. It has TB3, extra ssd slot, and calibrated screen in exchange for lower graphics card. I cannot think of any thin lightweight laptops with GTX 1050ti, TB3, and a long battery life. This laptop will appeal to people who cannot afford Dell 15 inch XPS or Macbook Pro.

 

Do you know that thunderbolt3 could be a bottleneck for those gtx1080/1080ti?

 

If I order from Newegg, will I get the fully black version of the laptop?

 

I'm aware of the loss in performance over the x4 vs x16 lanes but haven't followed too closely of any other issues. I'm mainly just testing more than anything, I really just want to make sure the thunderbolt port is the full x4 instead of the x4 PCIE 2 issue that's apparently being fixed on the Aero 15 now.

Currently that's the only model they have available it is the carbon fiber and black model not the all black model though. Has an orange accent stripe between the carbon and matte black.

I definitely having handled the device agree that yes, its a very good machine I still think at the price point though it's a little high. If it still carried the 512gb ssd I think there would be room to argue but as I see it it's essentially a P34G v7 (Which never existed but should have) with aluminum build. It really needs to be about $150 cheaper to be a Guaranteed Recommendation in my eyes or come with the larger ssd.

 

Do you know when the fully black model will be available?

 

How is the trackpad? Is it still Elan drivers? I know the Aero 15 was Elan but seemed to be better than the Aero 14 1060's

Also, any throttling/heat problems so far?

 

I honestly have no idea just giving you my experience so far. Best bet would be to submit a ticket to newegg support chat and ask them.

As far as the trackpad is concerned surface feels similar to the Aero 15 (I had one and returned it awhile back) about as precise, I'd be curious if the precision driver fix that the Aero 15 could use would apply to this model but I'm unsure atm. Thermal throttling I haven't really experienced so far, but I haven't done much atm except play a few hours of Fallout 4. With that said I was pleasantly surprised when I was able to play Fallout 4 1080p Medium on the battery for over an hour with a usage of 35-40% of the battery.

I just got my Mantiz Venus in and will be trying to get that to function properly now so I can get some good benchmarks.

 

Just got one of these.

Hooked it up to an Akitio Node with a 1080ti in it. Played overwatch at 1440p, on ultra settings for a few hours, lid closed. Was getting 100-144 fps, CPU stayed in the mid 60c range, spiked once up to 68c. For reference, a desktop 7700k at reference speeds keeps overwatch at a steady 144fps with the same settings. I'm also getting an occasional stutter, maybe once every other game. Not sure why this is happening. It was REALLY bad until I turned off windows optimizations for full screen games.

I under-volted the CPU by -130mV. I got instability at -160mV, but it lasted through a 5 min stress test at -150mV, so I just backed it down to -130mV and calling it a day, it generally stays under 1v.

There is slight flex under pressure by the right palm rest and keyboard, but no where near as bad as 95% of the laptops I messed with at Best Buy. Only the Alienware and MacBooks had less keyboard flex... Even the Razer Blade had about the same.

Track pad is elan drivers. Feels about as good as a xps13 track pad, maybe a tad worse.

Playing on the 1050ti got me high graphics settings on overwatch at 60fps, but I can't handle playing that game at less than 100fps so I didn't play it long.

Thermals are fine. It makes noise but isn't loud. Overall, very happy with this laptop except for how large the chin area under the monitor is. Besides that, it succeeds where the xps15 doesn't - a better GPU, an additional m.2 drive, and basically the same battery, but you do lose out on the xps15's amazing display.

Gigabyte customer service told me the Thunderbolt 3 port is 4x PCIe 3.0. I'm losing a lot of performance compared to desktop though. Any way I can check to be absolutely sure it's 4x 3.0

Oh, and funny story. The chassis doesn't label the usb-c port as thunderbolt. But it comes with a sticker pointing to the port with the thunderbolt logo, and the specs sticker also says it's thunderbolt 3.

 

Haven't experienced the flex on mine but I will double check when I get home, I think the guys over at EGPU.io use Cuda-Z to test throughput on the port and HWinfo64 to verify the bus is x4 pcie.

This has a decent walkthrough on the test steps you need to take to verify it though for sure.

 

According to HWinfo64, it's 4x pcie 3.0 to the thunderbolt 3 port.

I'm getting 2000-2200 MiB/s Host to Device in CUDA-Z. Shouldn't it be more like 2800 MiB/s?

Also, had to disable the intel 630 and 1050ti in device manager when connecting an egpu, as it was causing a lot of choppy animations in windows





Also, realized I was getting less than 144 fps on ultra in Overwatch partially because my other GPUs were on, and partially because my laptop's monitor was "on", it was closed but the desktop extended to it. When I made it just output to the external monitor through the eGPU, I'm now getting 144fps on epic settings.

 

@Koshinn - Could you please do a 15 minute run of Prime95 and tell us your temperatures? Please also mention whether you are using stock paste or have repasted (if repasted, please mention paste). Thanks in advance.

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

 

I can do that tomorrow, both normal cpu voltage and under-volted. I haven't repasted, so this will be a good time to test as repasting is on my list of things to do.

 

aida64 extreme stability test (cpu+gpu) for 30 minutes is better and more safe

furmark can kill gpus sometimes

 

I think you mean CPUs. IIRC the very learned @hmscott says P95 is an OK test in limited time periods. Never test with FurMark on GPUs anyway.

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

 

My bad! you are right indeed because Furmark is a gpu killer