NEW Aero 14 w/ GTX1060

According to the official spec sheet from Gigabyte, http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=6135#sp it looks like there is only 1 m2 slot and no 2.5". In other words you should only have room for 1 drive. The video review posted above by GenTech states there is a 2nd drive slot but you can see in the video itself there isn't a 2nd.

 

Thanks for the assist bruor. And both gigabyte and other sellers have semi mislead text on their websites how they say it is an nvme based system but in the specs most sites say it ships with just an 512 m.2 ssd. From people that have received them and video review it will most likely come with a LiteOn CV1 ssd.

So just curiously I looked at scan and overclockers sites and they do totally look misleading. I would hold their feet to the fire and see if you dont get nvme get a discount or something. I would call overclockers to confirm.

But then again sometimes other regions have different builds. But i highly doubt it especially for the price.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

Has anyone ran some temp tests that they can post here? IE. Occt for 30mins etc

Thanks

 

I played overwatch for 2 hours and temp maxed out at 75 (I'm assuming GPU). the machine was still cool feeling on the keyboard and palm rests.

 

What's your ssd model?

I've just looked at Overclockers (uk retailer) who advertise it as nvme and as they have a forum a user posted it does actually come with nvme ssd. Model LITEON CX2-8B512 which was confirmed by U.K. gigabyte rep too.

I've decided to order, should arrive Saturday

 

Mine has a CV1-8B512

 

I just checked that site and can see why it probably has NVME. It's almost 500USD more when you do the exchange.

 

Yea i was kinda upset the uk model is nvme and has win10 pro. But the price difference i will take the us model lol.

1,729.99 Pounds is 2177.21 US Dollar

Im still thinking of getting the old version also just sad i didn't buy it on the last new egg sale.

 

I'll be reclaiming 20% sales tax back but yes most people won't be able to. It's about $1750 w/ nvme & w10 pro after for me. What's this going for in US?

 

1699

 

Oddly enough, BIOS seems to be detecting a second M.2 slot with unknown properties. Interesting. Nothing physical to prove that unfortunately.

 

Well guys, since we are talking about lack of additional storage. I was able to find a Korean review of a previous model Aero 14 970m. This picture shows the internal and we have the m.2 slot on the right and on the left. For some reason.... looking at GentechPC's review around 14:14 where they show the internals. It looks like they just ripped off the m.2 slot and nothing else added to it's place.
What is the reasoning for this? I don't need a huge storage... but I thought that lack of additional m.2 was due to cooling solution for gtx 1060. Looking at it closely... They just decided that aero 14 v6 does not need an additional storage and cooling solution is still the same.

http://imgur.com/a/qxpBG

 

I am not very knowledgeable regarding specific details of computers but is it that costly for Gigabyte to add the extra storage?

Edit: For those curious about 970m review of aero 14...
http://playwares.com/mobilereview/50322732#

the table of contents
1. About Aero 14
2. Package and Chasis
3. Normal Use Performance benchmarks
4. Gaming Performance benchmark
5. Storage benchmark
6. Heat and Noise
7. Battery performance and Watt Usage
8. Display
9. Luminance/ CR
10. Gamma/ Color Temperature
11. Viewing Angle and Color Reproduction Rangle

-I can read Korean

 

Look at the picture in this post. They put in extra power delivery(silver caps/mosfetts) for the 1060 and the MB PCB has no free room at all.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/attachments/new-aero14-1060-jpg.140486/

 

I am not sure which silver caps you are referring to. However, I trust your word because I am not too knowledgeable about computer parts.
I initially thought that nothing else was added because it looked like a void space where m.2 originally was. But it sounds like they had to make some compromise with limited space they had.

 

So mine just shipped here, looking forward to it hopefully tomorrow.

 

that's just normal US to UK conversion, the price is actually the same when you take the sales tax and the ****e fx they use into account. it just seems like gigabyte spec it higher for the UK/europe for some reason?

 

Well I have mine here, will post back later today with my test results. If there's anything to be run let me know!

 

Occt 30 mins with hwinfo64 running plz

And the usual firestrike stock and overclocked

Thanks

 

Build/General Comments
First love the design (black colour), I only wish the orange arrow on the lid was just some grey or something. It is a fingerprint magnet. Not much bloat ware, I don't think you'll need to reinstall with clean OS. Just remove gigabyte apps like smart update/usb backup if you don't need it and the cam apps.

Display
Light bleed is nominal, there is some near the logo on left side but isn't terrible and not noticeable at all unless you look close on a complete black page. Nothing like my AW15 which had a big corner of bleeding. Display in QHD looks great, yet to test games.

Keyboard & Trackpad
I love the keyboard maybe due to the spacing between the keys being nearly the same as my old laptop. It's probably better if you either set backlight on or off as "auto mode" is quite annoying as it turns on even if theres few seconds of darkness and then back off. Still need to get used to the touchpad as it keeps making me do random scrolls.

OCCT: Quite respectable out the box for this form factor and better than the AW15 I had. I've bought Kryonaut to eventually replace the default paste but i'd like to see a pic/youtube guide before doing this myself.

30 Min Test (Out the box - Default drivers/no updates)
http://imgur.com/a/cBNmD (hwinfo64 at the bottom of page)

Firestrike (Stock)
http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/16596828
Temps: http://imgur.com/a/C1miy

CrystalDiskMark: (It is the NVMe LiteOn CX2-8B512)
http://imgur.com/a/u4DeD

It looks like a keeper to me

 

+rep

those temps look tight! only 2c difference on all cores on FS and 6c on occt that's as good as it gets mate.

Should be able to get some more on the firestrike though early days thanks for doing this btw

It would seem initial results indicate cooling is under control, this is going to make the choice between this and a blade difficult, I would say your about 600 points short of what FS should be ?, but for casual gaming its on point

 

Reran, removed nvidia experience completely and set nvidia control panel settings to all default.

http://www.3dmark.com/3dm/16600200

 

This is interesting. Does anyone know why those changes account for such a large change in score?

 

It's usually v-sync being set to on That kills a fire strike score as it restricts the card to 60fps , and GeForce experience can cause issues as monitors frame rate and some times it's running "replay" as well all taking up resources

 

That's faster than a lot of Razor blades out of the box, same as my AW 15

 

Ah nice, was a little curious why the firestrike score would be so low compared to the other 1060 laptops, but that last score seems right in line. Looks pretty good! Have you experienced any stuttering at all? I just found out that Gigabyte won't be offering the Aero 14 in Canada until "somewhere around Feb", so I'm thinking of just ordering from Gentech.

 

I couldn't wait either. I'm in Niagara, hopefully you con pick it up in the US like I did to avoid huge taxes bringing it in.

 

I don't have any demanding games to try this on yet, I'll give csgo on the highest res ago to see how it handles that tomorrow but display with things like streaming services has been fine. No issues with photoshop and high res editing either.

I'll also open it up and see internals, might give repaste ago if it doesn't require taking everything/mobo out.

 

What is battery life like? For heavy usage and light usage?

Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

 

Cool, I'm actually thinking of ordering it to a spot just across the border and going to pick it up.. you didn't have to pay taxes at the border crossing? Did you leave the box/packaging in the US or did they just not check you?

 

I picked up multiple packages and claimed the others. Took my empty laptop bag over with me. Had lunch with a friend and set up all my software and accounts at the restaurant on their wifi.

Then I hit the UPS store and shipped the empty boxes to family that is coming up for the holidays anyway.

They decided not to charge me tax on the $200 worth of stuff that I claimed.

 

Ah so your family will bring up the empty boxes? Interesting.. yeah I'm tempted to leave the boxes w/ some friends nearby.. I'd still like to have them eventually though so I'm not sure how to get them over the border as well.. doubt they'd bring them over for me..

 

Ups wanted 35 to send the boxes to St Catharines. USPS might be cheaper

 

Dave2D's review of the GTX1060 Aero 14 is up on YouTube:
His CPU and GPU temps were around 70 C. The only cons he mentioned for the laptop were
1. The not-quite-accurate 94% sRGB screen
2. The slightly nonfriendly touchpad
3. The loud fans.

This is superbly promising. I'm torn between this laptop and an Alienware 15 R3 with the 1070, as both should have similar battery life and a similar price. The Aero 14 has less weight and smaller dimensions, but it's also less powerful, louder, and harder to disassemble than the 15 R3.

 

Thunderbolt on the AW15 is a plus for me personally. I am in the market for a laptop too and Dave's review pretty much took the Aero off my list due to the things he mentioned as well, poor screen, touchpad and loud fans. On top of that my small gripe of the lacking TB3.

 

Those 60db numbers for the fan compare to 50-ish db of his Blade review, and since his methodology is the same, we can pretty much guarantee that this Aero is a beast noise-wise.

I wish he had commented on the sound profile.

 

Honestly, you could bring down the fan noise level under load by using the built-in quiet mode, though that would mean slightly higher temps. By default the laptop's fans stay on the "Gaming" option, which gets really loud. However the "normal" mode would work well enough to maintain those temps, while the quiet mode would be a lot quieter, but would also cause performance drops.

 

Mine arrives in a couple hours, took some noise tests on my outgoing AW15 before I packed it up. So will compare them later.

I was getting 83db from the Alienware under full gamin load, my test methods not as good a Dave's though I just use an iPhone with db app placed at rear next to vents

Be interesting to see how the aero stacks up though

 

RE: Dave2d youtube

Personally I didn't find the fans too loud at all even on Gaming mode with background noise and sound it won't be too noticeable. Quiet/Normal mode works a treat for most anyways.

He did mention touchpad which was quite annoying but maybe fixed in a later driver update. I adjusted some settings now doesn't do random **** too much. Coming from MacBook the touchpad itself is perfect with the left/right 'invisible buttons'.

Also from what I've read razer throttles and this appears not to. At least from CPU benches it's fine, gpu is probably same and with qhd/512gb ssd still considerably cheaper. It doesn't feel plasticy to me, but fingerprints are everywhere from my palm but not a biggy just keep a microfibre cloth handy

 

Mine has just landed

from a pure unboxing perspective the build quality is way better than expected a really solid little laptop metal top and bottom, really nice keyboard

backlight bleed is minimal, pretty much non existent

I think the screen looks way better than the FHD on my AW15

Going see how it runs now....

 

curious why would you say it's harder to disassemble than AW15?

I've Re pasted and completely stripped down and rebuilt an 15r3 and this looks much easier to me?

and in my opinion its not as loud as my r3

These are just my initial thoughts, I've yet to give a thorough work out so i may be totally wrong.....

 

I've seen a couple posts on Reddit noting that the 15R3 was easier for them to strip down than other laptops, and I haven't seen anyone complain about the 15R3 being difficult to strip down. On the other hand, for the previous generation Aero 14, I've seen one post on this forum somewhere which laments that the Aero 14 requires you to unscrew a large number of very tiny screws. Furthermore, the screws don't sit in their holes, which means they are very hard to screw back in and they can easily fall into the laptop, requiring you to unscrew everything you've already screwed in just to get to that fallen screw. I just assumed that the new Aero 14 disassembles similarly to the old one because the internal layout looks identical, but it would be a treat if Gigabyte improved disassembly.

About the noise: Dave2D's review of the Aero 14 found around 60dB of fan noise under load, while his review of the Alienware 15 R3 found around 50dB of fan noise under load. It's awesome to hear from Pow3r that the 14's fans aren't too bothersome, though.

 

Agreed the 15 was very easy to do, what really peeved me with it was that i needed to do it or go through another lengthy return.

I Just ran the OCCT burn test 30 mins it didnt even hit 80c thats bang on in my book. with only 4c difference across the cores my AW had 20c difference before re paste and 10c after.

And with mine there was 3! screws that had been cross threaded rendering them useless when i unscrewed them really poor QC for a solid laptop.

Proper tests later, need to walk my dogs first
This is a good start doubt i will need to re paste

 

I noticed the fan settings under the Gigabyte app puts maximum fan mode to 80%. If I click on custom and set fans to 100% the max temp from OCCT was 74 degrees but the fans are really loud. I did open this up to do a quick check, there are quite a few tiny screws to get around to lift it up. Wonder if anyone has tried to repaste and comments on on this.

 

Just a heads up if there was anyone else like me waiting for Newegg to have the New Aero 14 in stock. They started selling them last night. Bought mine this morning, now just cant wait to get it this week.

They do have them mis-catorgized as "Aorus" and because of that they do not have the mousepad or game promotions that the other Gigabyte laptops have right now. I am waiting to chat with @Newegg_Support to see if they can honor the promotion.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...TMATCH&Description=Aero+14Wv6&N=-1&isNodeId=1

 

I would definitely love to see repaste performance. These temperatures that we're seeing actually look surprising when compared with just about every other 14 inch model temps.

Have you tried putting the GPU and CPU under dual synthetic load and seeing what you peak at?

Also, have you tried undervolting?

Lastly, sorry to bombard you with questions, but can you comment on the fan noise sound profile? Is it whiney? Clickey? Whooshey? etc.

 

I run the fans on a custom profile while running overwatch that lets them go to 100% speed. I'd say the noise from the fans is the sound of so much air being pushed through the cooling system. You can hear the fan motors slightly.

Without the system being at full volume you can hear the game well over the fans.

This is the first gaming capable laptop I've owned so I'm maybe not the most reliable opinion out there. This machine is basically twice as powerful as my current desktop and its mobile. I expect there to be fan noise ️

One thing I did notice is a process than runs which seems to be a custom patch from gigabyte to make windows graphics not glitch. It's called emptyproject11 (IIRC, not near it at the moment to check) and if I kill it the windows UI seems to have some delays/hangs when opening up things like the battery panel or start menu.

Searching other forums it appears to pin the nvidia GPU active full time as there's some glitches with Optimus or something. If anyone knows for sure what this is doing I'd really like to know. I believe it's included with the gigabyte settings tool.

 

haha no problem still working out the kinks with mine, lots of testing to do.



tried various overclocks on the GPU but it seemed the higher end of OC the FS scores drop off slightly so with an OC of 175/250 im getting 9868 on firestrike.

9464 stock out the box on mine

I saw some very high temps playing call of duty modern warfare (Remastered)

93 cpu max after an hour of gaming, applied -0.100 under volt and max i hit was 83 cpu and 80 gpu, so yeah quite high but ok, for me i like it under 90

http://www.3dmark.com/fs/11055965

Seems to handle native res 2560x1440 gaming ok as well, I mean not perfect 60fps at ultra but does a great job though in quite a few titles.

terrible player but....

 

I placed an order for one last week, hasn't shipped yet though. It's going to replace my 2013 Razer Blade.

I've had a few issues with the Blade, but most amazing is the difference in price. I spent some $700 more on my Blade than what the Aero 14 cost me. Same drive size, but obviously better hardware everywhere else.

 

I've noticed this, it was using quite a bit of CPU too. The "emptyproject11" itself is provided by Gigabyte SmartManager.

So here was my OCCT test out the box:


Undervolt core -115, cache -65 using throttlestop