*** OFFICIAL GIGABYTE AERO 15 OWNERS LOUNGE ***

Your continued assertion that there's "no benefit" to NVMe is bordering on fake news (as is the "2x" claim). At least 4 of the 5 tasks above are representative of workloads that most purchasers of an Aero 15 class notebook will encounter. The 5th, Premiere, may also be a good match for this machine's target market. There are other tasks that may be common for this machine's audience, such as software development, not included.

Looking at it from another angle - virtually every aspect of the Aero 15 is a nicer / better performing / better form factor component that can be found elsewhere at less cost. Many if not most tasks that are performable on an Aero 15 could be performed on another unit costing hundreds of dollars of less, although often with less performance, portability, or pleasure. I am not sure why you are OK with all those improvements in other areas -- totaling hundreds of dollars of "extra" costs -- yet are so convinced that this particular $90 on storage is useless. To me it is right in line with the other components of this nice quality notebook.

 

Hello, I am researching for a laptop. I was wonder what the performance is with this laptop when playing games akin to Total War Rome 2 or Atilla. Is the CPU capable of playing the large and intensive battles in these games? If anyone has some experience with this the information would be appreciated.

Sent from my SM-G900T using Tapatalk

 

Actually all the pricing for 1060, 1070, 1080 laptops are hovering around the same costs - differences are usually due to bundling of more premium components with some models - which is my point.

Reduce the cost of the bundled components, tossing out the high priced NVME drives, and make your purchase more affordable. Cut out the fat, trim the costs here and there, and it all adds up.

You can find all the storage IO heavy benchmarks that can show a difference you like, but if you don't actually *need* to save that much time - it's not going to "save your life", it's not going to "save you money", and it's going to eat into your "taking time to make coffee" time anyway.

Making the case for NVME isn't something you need to do for me, you need to do it for yourself, and so does everyone else need to do it for themselves.

In your example the case for 99% of the people trying to buy the best laptop they can afford, they can skip the pricey components ($100 more for the M.2 PCIE NVME including tax) to get what they really need, a great GPU, CPU, screen, and a pretty case.

Instead of the 512GB 960 Evo for only $40 more you can double your storage size and get a 1TB Crucial MX300.

You want to use the highest density storage device per socket, cause if you want more storage you can't grow more sockets, you have to replace what you've already bought - that drives costs way up.

Buy the highest density device you can afford the first time, and always shop for the best current pricing, and watch what "class" drive you are getting "Pro" vs "Evo", etc:

Crucial 1TB MX300 SATA M.2 - $289 (B&H)

Samsung 1TB 960 EVO NVMe M.2 - $479 => $190 more!! (B&H)

Crucial MX300 1TB M.2 - $297 (newegg)

SAMSUNG 960 PRO M.2 1TB - $629 (newegg)
=> 2.1x as much @ $322 more!!

And, some additional advice, using that lame "fake news" cry make's what people say sound desperate and ignorant, Mr. Trump

 

Has anyone had the issue of not being able to update the firmware for the keyboard? The fusion app just closes each time and nothing happens. I'm on 1.1.2 firmware with the 4.1.5 fusion app.

 

I remember the first time I got an SSD, and it was still SATA II at the time, it was amazing...a Wow feeling...since then I get the fastest available, and honestly....can´t notice a difference even with my 960 at the moment. So yes I agree, if one wants to save some money, the SATAIII is more than enough over the fastest NVME. But the same goes for the choice of laptop....I really want one of these, when I go to the US in a couple of months, but to save some money I could just as well opt for something a lot cheaper with similar performance, such as the Acer Helios 300 for 700 dollars less, or even the Asus FX502VM for almost half the cost, although it has the 3gb GTX1060 instead of the 6GB version.

 

Thanks for this insight hmscott. I'm glad I didn't go with my original plan and buy the 512gb 960 PRO but then I was looking at the 500GB 960 EVO too cause of price and they were both are on a little sale. Just went to check prices as I'm typing this and it's back to regular price now the PRO was $299.99 and EVO was at $219.99. Going to do more homework now and wait for my Aero 15 to come.

 

Yup, the numbers keep changing, but the ratio has stayed about the same for the last year or more, from solid low end M.2 SATA to top end Pro model, about 2x+.

There was a time you could get the M.2 SATA models for *much* cheaper, as everyone was hot for the new pricey M.2 PCIE NVME drives, the ratio was as high as 2.5x-3x depending on release date vs price.

The demand and therefore the price for M.2 SATA drives went up after people realized the M.2 PCIE x4 NVME drives weren't offering any perceivable improvement in speed for day to day use.

Dropping the ratio down to a steady 2x over quite a while now.

 

Apples to apples, the 960 Evo 500GB is $225 right now (249 before promo) at Newegg. The 850 Evo 500GB is $174, so roughly a 30% or 40% premium for NVME. Both are considered by many to be among the best high end consumer NVME and SATA drives. Is the premium worth it? As others have said, it depends on what you are doing. You can see some comparisons between the 500GB models and others here-

http://www.techspot.com/review/1281-samsung-ssd-960-evo/

 

We aren't comparing Apples

We are comparing the fastest M.2 PCIE x4 NVME SSD that can get you the fastest storage speeds available, vs a solid brand name M.2 SSD running at the fastest speed the SATA III interface can run, 500MB/s-550MB/s.

If you are all in for performance, then the Samsung EVO model isn't the right buy, you want the Samsung Pro version, much *faster*.

That's the 2x price difference, from a solid brand name M.2 SATA vs an M.2 PCIE x4 NVME Samsung Pro top performance.

If you are setting your sights below the fastest Samsung Pro for the lower performance EVO M.2 PCIE x4 NVME SSD, you'd be optimal in saving far more $$$, or getting a 2x sized M.2 SATA SSD instead.

You aren't going to feel the speed difference day to day, it's not going to "change your life", but saving $200-$300 or getting 2x the storage for the same money actually will

 

I seem to be the sole defender here of "seconds faster response feels nicer and is a good investment in your quality of life" but even I would hesitate to recommend the PRO over the EVO for almost any single user application.

The laptop I replaced with the Aero was years old. The GPU was ancient although there's a few older games I still enjoy and it could play those OK. The CPU was slow too although even in my development work it was relatively infrequently that I pegged all 4 cores at 100%. But what pushed me over the edge to upgrade was general desktop responsiveness, where the bottleneck was basically storage.

It had an old SATA SSD, but it would still regularly have periods where ordinary tasks like opening a browser window would take forever to execute. Open up resmon and you could see the cause - not a spiked cpu, not out of memory, but seemingly endless background processes (often Microsoft's and Chrome) generating disk I/O. This is a workload that lots of people have and its the one that was most maddening to me. Granted it would often calm down after the first 15 minutes or so, but the trouble there is that the niche the notebook fills in my life is exactly that - infrequent and short duration use, where the "every app wants to update at once" problem is exacerbated.

Anyway, I've got no disagreement with the notion that people have limited funds and they should spend them on what they value most. What got me going in this thread was what I felt was too flat of an assertion that storage responsiveness was or should be a low priority for most users. By the time you're buying an $1,800 notebook, you want high quality and to me storage performance is just as essential a factor as any other. On a percentage basis, it's actually a much bigger difference, (i.e., compare the percentages in my table above to what most users would see from say a less expensive core i5 vs the Aero's i7.)

 

I don't think you can actually "feel" the difference between the fastest M.2 PCIE x4 NVME , I think it's a placebo effect - additionally because you've just upgraded from a much slower machine.

In most usage you are going to be thinking about many things and the speed difference is going to be so tiny that it won't break through to impress you any more than a full speed SATA III SSD would.

It's just not worth $200-$300 more per M.2 slot. If you have 2 - 4 slots to fill, that's $400-$1200 more, if you get the 2GB 960 NVME it would be gobs more.

I can notice a faster CPU, and a faster GPU, and I can notice the difference between an HDD and an SSD, but the time savings (wall time) just isn't enough to be noticeable going to a PCIE x4 NVME SSD.

Here's how I think about it.

The Speed difference between and HDD and an SSD is 40MB/sec to 550MB/sec, or almost 14x faster.

The Speed difference between 550MB/sec and 2500MB/sec - 5x with a EVO, or 3250MB/sec with a Pro - 6x, comes out to be 1/3-1/2 the speed up as between an HDD and an SSD.

And, more importantly, the amount of time saved is an order of magnitude smaller now than it was with the HDD to SSD - much more perceptible when the wall time was 14x reduced.

When a task took 28 seconds with an HDD, and 2 seconds with an SSD that was a hugely noticeable "perceivable" difference.

Now reducing that 2 second task down to a .5 second task saves 1.5 seconds, that's hardly noticeable from the time you click it to start and you look up to see it finish.

And, that's for a *long* task.

For normal stuff, that took 1 second with the HDD, and 1/14th of a second with the SSD, the further reduction in time isn't perceivable.

Do you get what I am saying?

The scale of savings has changed down below the level of human perception.

So unless you are really running long jobs that can save you real time - time that lets you get more paying work done, the extra hundred's of $ in cost isn't worth it.

 

Fair enough, but if I was spending the money on a notebook, which I am, the 960 EVO and 850 EVO consumer drives would be my SSD of choice comparing SATA to NVME at the same size. And looking at the techspot numbers, the 960EVO gives you nearly the performance of the PRO, and significantly better than the 850 EVO in almost every regard for $50-$75 more at the 500GB size.

I completely agree. And I think you get that with 960 EVO over 850 EVO. I don't regret a penny of my Intel 750 PCIE card in my desktop. It certainly wasn't worth it on a value basis, but it's nice shaving those seconds off installs, game level loading, file moving, etc.

 

Bingo, that's all I am saying, it's not worth it.

That's a lot of money for marginally improving the run time of infrequent events.

Compared to 2 hours of game play, a few seconds additional load time isn't even in the round off error in overall time.

For me PCIE x4 NVME is a waste of $ in a consumer device.

 

Right, from a purely fiscal viewpoint, save your money and get a solid consumer grade SATA. But there are real benefits if you have an extra $50. Just look at the comparisons of 960 vs 850 EVO in the techspot testing I linked. It's not just a second or two in many cases. I find an hourglass annoying beyond a few seconds if I have a high end computer otherwise, so for me, the $50 is a no-brainer. As it turns out, this notebook is a gift for college and I don't know what sort of scientific software, databases, compiling or other stuff that will be used in addition to gaming, Office and youtube. So for that reason, it's also $50 of future-proofing.

 

If you say the responsiveness differences aren't significant to you, and the cost increases are, then I believe you. And if that's true for you then it's true for others as well.

I wish you'd be a little more open minded with me when I say that the responsiveness increases are valued by me, and that the cost increases, viewed over the life of an important piece of business equipment (or even just a valued personal possession), are not significant. And probably to others as well.

All's fair in personal preferences and that's why I'm happy to be part of a free market that includes us both.

As to your assertions of "hardly noticeable" and "below the level of human perception" - I feel you must know on some level that's just not true. Differences of just 100ms (0.1 seconds) in interactive response can have easily measurable impacts on consumer satisfaction if you've got the lab to test that sort of thing, which as it happens a previous employer of mine did. Differences of say 11 vs. 24 seconds in level loading just aren't even subtle at all. 11 is still too slow. 24 is worse.

 

Yeah, I know it is true, as I am talking about work flow, clicking and saving and editing and browsing and watching video's, you know 80% of the work most people do, probably 95% when it comes down to it, and during that experience, you won't notice small incremental increases in the tiny percentage of time it takes to do an IO.

I have measured it, and experienced it writing device drivers, for decades.

Shaving off seconds is part of my job, optimizing architecture in large server environments, doing long batch jobs and interactive response.

Your example of 11 seconds increase for a load time is silly, have you played consoles? What most people are used to for load times isn't on the same scale as for PC's.

Again, 11 seconds against hours of game play is nothing, it's not worth 1 red cent in additional cost.

Doesn't it make a lick of difference over years of use, no - of course not. It's not a life changing difference.

I am trying to provide perspective, to get you to think, to not have that knee jerk reaction that everyone has being trained to have when something is faster, "faster is better" is not true.

It's what is used to sell people stuff, to "trick" them into parting with their hard earned dollars for nothing. That's all it's about.

Learn not to fall victim to such manipulations, and make it a habit to reject such "no-brainer" thinking, instead replace it with critical thinking, and you will save a lot more than a few hundred dollars.

It'll change your life

 

What your parents can do with $50:

1) Buy a book for their kid in college...

Give your parents a break, get something that you'd get if you had to pay for it out of your earnings.

It makes a big difference when you are paying for it from your own pile of cash. The justifications become much different.

That $50 will pay for a bill, like water or electricity (well part of it anyway), or buy you a weeks worth of food - yes that's right you need to pay for your own food some day

Honestly, when it comes down to it, a $1 is a lot of money. 50x a lot of money is a hell of a lot of money.

When that day comes, when $50 is a lot of money to you, remember that you have that PCIE x4 NVME drive you can sell and replace it with a nice SATA drive to free up some cash for food.

 

I agree- and while the vast majority of typical users and even gamers won't appreciate the difference except on paper, there are also many enthusiasts who will actually appreciate the substantial performance gains of a 960 EVO NVME over an 850 EVO SATA and won't mind paying another 30-40% for it. And certainly a few who frequently use high performance applications who would value the smaller improvements offered by the 960 PRO for even more money.

 

Same as any product. Some people feel a car is simply basic transportation and buy the least expensive used vehicle that gets the job done. Others want the best safety features and reliability of a newer vehicle. Some will definitely appreciate the creature comforts and performance of a luxury model or sports car. Depends a lot on how much you use the vehicle and what you use it for. And it also depends how much spare cash you have, of course. If $50 is what you make in a fraction of an hour, it doesn't hurt as much as if it's what you make in the better part of a day.

 

But as a college age kid you are a penniless dependent in your parents care, you don't need luxuries, you need to do well in school.

All this discussion on wasting their money on stuff you don't need, trying to justify it is silly.

I've said enough, enjoy your new laptop, and please be appreciative to your parents - say thank you - and "I've saved you $50 on the storage, isn't that great!!"

 

It's a good thing my kid is getting one as a graduation gift, and exactly why I'm the one speccing it out...

As for trying to justify an expense, it might seem silly to you or me when a friend wants to spend big bucks on a gas wasting monster SUV, when a basic Civic would work just fine for the daily commute. But some people actually need that Suburban because they have a 10,000 pound boat to tow offroad and a family of 5 plus water skiing gear they use every weekend in the summer. That expensive options package with all the active crash avoidance stuff maybe not the best investment for a safe, retired driver who only puts a few thousand miles a year, but is worth every penny for working parents if there are a couple teen drivers in the house. Or maybe that friend earns a million bucks a year and it's no big deal regardless.

 

Hello, again. Between this and the Aorus x5 which is the better for its price? I like the small and thin, and light, style of this. As well as the battery life. However the Aorus is more powerful, and expensive. Obviously as you guys have likely already bought this you may be a little biased, but that's fine haha.

Sent from my SM-G900T using Tapatalk

 

If you don't mind the somewhat larger footprint and a pound of extra weight, the GTX1070 driving the QHD G-sync is the way to go if gaming while plugged in on a desk is a frequent use.

The Aero 15 is more of a portable multimedia machine. Decent gaming on an FHD display along with decent portability and expandability for its size.

You could always do an ultrabook with TB3 and slap a 1070 in an eGPU box and get the best of both worlds if that suits your purpose and your wallet.

 

Well, then if money is no object it's hardly worth discussing then is it, just check all the expensive option boxes, order it, and be done with it.

For those of us earning under a $M a year, we need to be more careful with our choices. I am assuming that would cover 99% of the people interacting here.

So we discuss the pro's and con's of costs and value, and try to justify the expense on a value back for money spent basis.

Which is how I assume most people on here want to be advised, on what's worth getting - what makes a useful difference, and what's worth saving money on so they can have it for something else worth while.

I wanted to instill the same value of critical thinking in my child as well, and blowing a bunch of $ on something they don't even know what they need isn't the message I want them to get from me.

So at 12 years old, building their first computer we went through the parts choices together, and that process helped them understand the value of each choice, giving them a chance to learn from the experience of building their own desktop PC.

After that experience they did their own research for phones, laptops, and follow on desktops, they knew what they wanted and I didn't question their choices.

The school's need to play to the average student and the average hardware they have, so there won't be any school work requiring an M.2 NVME SSD, an M.2 SATA drive will work just fine.

If there is any heavy number crunching or database work requiring high speed server level performance, they will have servers or access to cloud services that can provide that level of performance.

Maybe ask your kid what he wants? At college age he's probably got a good idea what the school is offering and can help you pick from the laptops supported on campus.

 

So many [incorrect] assumptions about my personal situation, and all because I ordered a faster SSD for $50 more than a mainstream one? I mean, if I was being a dick about it, I could have said there's no time for my kid to be playing computer games in college and then spent half as much on a basic productivity rig from Costco or from the Macbooks and entry level Dells and HPs at the college's IT store. Instead, knowing his college choice and scholarships and savings, I had a lot more flexibility with budget and we discussed some options and I ordered something he liked and then I specced it out within budget. If you want to spend more or less on yours, I have no issue with that at all. You can rationalize your choices however you want and that's just fine with me.

But for anyone considering SATA or NVME, I'm only suggesting to look at the testing results from Techspot or Storage Review or wherever, then look at your usage and budget, and then decide if an extra 30-40% is worth the difference. Or you can decide for them all, if you wish.

 

Thanks! Secure boot is indeed active. However, its greyed out and I cant seem to be able to edit this value in the bios.
I see my permission level is set to administrator. How can I modify this setting?

Thanks

 

I'm providing a counterpoint on the reality of the value for money spent, you aren't doing that - you are saying a few seconds faster quoted from a review is worth spending real money for nothing of value in return.

I gave you more reviews that showed you for most gamers / users doing normal every day work it's not worth it.

I gave you an engineers experience in explaining that the fractional improvement in day to day operations won't be felt, it's below the threshold of awareness. Any perceived improvement is going to be from the "I spent a lot of money" placebo effect, nothing more.

I'll add that I wrote device drivers for SATA I, II and III and know the timings of IO vs the whole process time, and know that storage transfer time works out to be a very small percentage of the total elapsed wall time for 99% of process transactions.

The NVME speed is only helpful in a small subset of high % IO operations, which are seldom - as a percentage of overall usage - going to happen.

Looking up spec's and seeing someones sponsored article showing something they are reviewing has value is indeed a "no-brainer", but critically thinking about how that really benefits "me" as a buyer in day to day use tells you that although it's "better" it's not enough better to justify a purchase.

If the result of critical thinking gives a "best" answer for 99% of the people asking that I have already been recommending for a long time doesn't mean I am deciding for them what to do, it's just that I worked out the result before they did.

If you had told me you were working on large datasets, that didn't fit in memory, and you were running long tasks that required fast storage IO, then I would have recommended the 1% solution, but you didn't so the answer is the same.

An M.2 SATA SSD is the best value for function choice for 99% of the people asking if they should spend 2x as much for the fastest M.2 PCIE x4 NVME SSD. Spending the same $ on 2x the storage is a much better use of their money.

They can still buy whatever they want, I'm not deciding for them, I am recommending the best solution I have in answer to their question.

 

No, you said that, not me. I'm saying people should look at the actual test results and determine themselves if it's worth the extra money based on their own situation.

Which is great, provided you don't make any incorrect assumptions about their usage requirements or budget.

 

The Aero 15 is still fairly new, and there are recent BIOS updates for it, 5/22 for Windows 7 and 5/2 for Windows 10. Quite often a BIOS update helps for recognizing PCIE NVME SSD's that aren't part of the normal build.

http://www.gigabyte.com/Laptop/AERO-15#support-dl

OS: Windows 7
6.41 MB
2017/05/22
Asia China America Europe
BIOS FA05FC05 & EC F003
FB05 FD05

OS: Windows 10
6.41 MB
2017/05/02
Asia China America Europe
BIOS FB05FD05 & EC F003

If noone with an Aero 15 can help you here, you'll probably get more focused help here:

http://forum.gigabyte.us/board/8/general

 

Thanks, I'm not sure how I feel about the eGPU just yet. I may consider it though.

Sent from my SM-G900T using Tapatalk

 

Both your comments are incorrect.

I provided actual test results in the form of those reviews, and people can look for other reviews as well. I try to find and provide the most recent reviews I can, but the previous reviews I have provided from previous times say the same thing.

All had similar results and the same suggestions, unless your workload requires heavy IO you'll be just fine with a SATA SSD.

When you are responding to a stranger you have nothing to go on except from what they say, and as they describe themselves and their situation with more detail and specificity I can provide better feedback.

In your case the answer and recommendation hasn't changed, even given knowing more about your situation. It didn't make any difference

 

This is most directly what I'd like to debate. I agree there are combinations of older drives, slower systems, other bottlenecks, improper configuration, lack of PCIe lanes, etc etc. that can result in literally no extra performance delivered. The public service I would like to provide in this thread is to contain the spread of "that can happen in some cases" from being exaggerated into "PCIe is a myth with no consumer benefits."

Nothing you have said debunks the hard numbers in the table I provided, which are large both in an absolute and percentage basis. Four of them are for task categories that virtually every owner of an Aero 15 will perform. They are well above the human threshold of perception which in a healthy adult is seldom above 100ms. They don't even include basic desktop responsiveness, which I believe for many is a behind the scenes "killer app" of being satisfied or not with their laptop.

What you have said, that I agree with, is that the value is not in total task completion time. I am not recommending these drives because completing a presentation in 89.2 vs. 89.3 minutes is a bottom line justification of extra cost. I am recommending them because humans do not enjoy perceptible delays and they do enjoy smoothness. At a bare minimum extra smoothness is a small luxury I can easily afford that I enjoy. The value may be far greater than that though, because a smoother flow where I continuously feel I am driving the computer vs. a broken flow where I sometimes feel it is driving me, could have real impact on my overall creative results. Same with the difference say between a compile long enough for my brain to lose focus and do a context switch vs. a shorter one that keeps me focused and on task. It's not about the billable rate of a 6 second difference, it's about the impact that difference has on me and my work.

Since I've been focused on where we disagree, I did want to take a moment to appreciate your overall helpfulness here. I agree with you that a SATA drive will be perfectly acceptable for handling a large variety of tasks, that it is a vast improvement over HDD for most of them, and that the cost savings could be important especially if they prevent sacrifices in other core parts of the system. If you need to build a budget system, this is one of the places you can cut.

 

I removed the original Lite On drive from its slot (the one not in line with the battery), and added my 960 EVO into the other slot (the one that is in line with the battery - I wanted a battery stop ;-)). My stock BIOS (day 1 purchase, no updates, no configuration changes) recognized it immediately on power up.

I'm sorry I don't have much to suggest. If you played with your BIOS settings, try resetting them to factory. Make sure the drive is firmly socketed. Try the other socket. It may be a bad drive?

 

It's not an exaggeration to say that the additional cost of an M.2 PCIE x4 NVME drive isn't of value to most consumers. That's not a myth, that's a fact.

There isn't a reason to pay $600 for $300 worth of 1TB storage. What kind of magic would it take to make that worthwhile?

Certainly not saving seconds on a game load, nor saving seconds on a boot up, those are fleeting events within the context of many hours of usage.

Will there be game lag from loads like are prevalent with HDD's with an M.2 SATA SSD? No there won't. So an M.2 PCIE x4 NVME SSD won't provide additional benefit here.

I haven't disputed that a Copy, Duplicate, or other high IO intensive operation can be faster using an M.2 PCIE NVME SSD, I've said that's of no consequence unless that is the predominance of what you do all day long.

Unless your computer use is Copying files back and forth all day, your actual computer tasks will only have a very small percentage of IO involved in their running, and you won't notice or gain benefit from having an M.2 PCIE x4 NVME SSD in 99% of your daily use.

Sorry man, I have to say it's all in your head if you feel the M.2 PCIE NVME SSD is making a difference in normal usage, it's just not enough of a reduction in wall time for IO transactions as a % of overall process execution to be able to notice.

It's not just budget systems, it's the top performance systems where it will also not make a difference.

I see people spending $6000+ on 4x 2TB M.2 PCIE NVME SSD's, it's really painful how much of a waste of money that is. You could buy a whole 2nd laptop for the price. Wild.

Scaling down to the 1x M.2 configurations it's still a big difference, but the high end systems wasting 4x the money are very sad.

You keep going back to talking about saving money like you only do it if you "need" to do it. Saving money matters to everyone, especially when you have a lot of it, if you don't watch how you spend your money you may soon not have any.

"A fool and his money are soon parted"

That's how I perceive this situation. There are very few situations where an M.2 PCIE x4 NVME SSD is *required* over an M.2 SATA drive.

When it's not required, it's a luxury, and as a luxury M.2 PCIE NVME SSD's perform very poorly. They aren't blingy, they're hidden under the skin of the laptop, just looking at a laptop you can't tell they are there. There's no overt expression of wealth, no pampering result from use, no unusual flavor or color.

As a luxury item, M.2 PCIE NVME SSD's are a complete bust

 

I won't quibble over "luxury." It fits in a lot of cases. What I don't understand is why you reserve storage for "needless luxury that only fools spend money on" while apparently sparing every other element of the Aero 15. If the criteria is absolutely required, then how do these other items make the cut in your eyes?

CPU: A core i5 would be fine for most tasks. Heck the CPU is idle most of the day for most users. The tasks that benefit from that i7 aren't everyday tasks for everyday users. If something takes a few seconds longer it's no big deal anyway. Wasteful!

GPU: The GTX 1060 is rendering more than the 60 frames its screen can display for many games at 1080p. 1050ti would be acceptable for many games especially with settings turned down. The gamer wouldn't clear the level any slower or score any less points. Wasteful!

High Quality Display with Thin Bezel: A cheaper display is legible for reading websites just fine. That brucek2 guy isn't going to make any more sense just because it's a nicer display. And large bezels never hurt anyone. More waste!

Smaller size and weight: You can get the same specs for a lot less in a unit that's only a little heavier and a little bigger. Most users can carry that weight no problem. More waste to make it smaller than needed!

RGB Keyboard: LOL

Come to think of it, shouldn't everyone who doesn't have income-generating tasks running 24x7 be buying a used laptop from a few years ago? Great deals on those and they do all the same basic tasks.

You say 12 seconds faster to load the level has no value. I say I'll notice that a lot more often than I'll notice FPS above 60 or super far draw distance for 3 blades of grass in the shade.

 

While your counter point is helpful, I do think you need to understand perspectives.
If you would stop stating your opinion as fact then I think your posts would be more helpful and more well received.

The value argument is a perfectly valid point to raise but you need to understand that your definition of value can and will differ from other people's definition of value.

You also keep insisting that NVME drives are $600 to help your argument but I personally wouldn't even consider buying the 960 Pro for $600. After a quick search today, I saw the 1TB PM961(OEM 960 EVO) for $380.

Which actually brings us to an example of opinions and perspective, the OEM drives do not have as good of a warranty as the retail drives. *IN MY OPINION,* it is not worth paying extra for the retail with a longer warranty. I formed this opinion based on the number of drives I've had fail and the money I have saved by not spending money for warranties. If the drive happens to fail I can easily afford a replacement. However, I would not try to force that opinion on others. I am cognizant that others may enjoy the feeling of being covered by the warranty or perhaps could not easily afford to replace the drive if it fails in the next 3 years.

It is almost comical that you're spending all this time defining what is and what isn't a luxury item for other people, on a nearly $2000 laptop. I really think you could do yourself a service to state your opinion on the pertinent matter, give justification for your opinion and let others come to their own decision. Some people are just not going to quibble over $50-100 on a nearly $2000 purchase, there's really no point in trying to convince them that your world view is the only valid world view.

 

Guys, it's been fun, but we are starting to go round and round to no additional benefit.

Besides, I'm watching this now...

Live - Webcast has begun!!

COMPUTEX 2017 NVIDIA AI Forum - AI Talks
http://www.ustream.tv/NVIDIA?utm_so...dium=visit-channel&utm_campaign=notifications

Check out this thread for more Computex 2017 stuff:

Computex 2017 - Events, Announcements, Video, Articles...

 

If they announce the Aero 15v2 with Volta don't tell me
Enjoy!

 

Curious if anyone has confirmation that GentechPC is building/shipping any of the preorders yet (earlier in the thread somebody indicated May 30th, so hopefully that is still on track)

 

The main drawback for me is that none of the ultrabooks have a quad-core i7 in them. If you may need compute power for scientific or other applications, or even future games, that could be a drawback even if you have the TB3 port for desktop 1070/1080 graphics.

The new Max-Q "ultrabooks" look like a nice compromise. Not sure they will have a footprint like the Aero 15, but the MSI and Clevo appear be a bit thinner and lighter with 1070 graphics. You'd have to wait at least a month, and unless they make other changes, the MSI appears to be the same GS63VR chassis so you'd have mediocre battery life and display. Always something better coming soon!

http://www.geforce.com/whats-new/articles/nvidia-geforce-gtx-max-q-laptops

 

I was also told their shipment was due to arrive today. Hopefully that means some are being built today or tomorrow and may ship by the end of the week if there are no delays.

 

On this, we agree, because you were comparing apples to oranges and made incorrect assumptions about my personal situation when you had incomplete information. So, indeed, you failed to make any difference and my decision hasn't changed.

For my situation, it was simple enough to look at reviews of 500GB SSDs like http://www.techspot.com/review/1281-samsung-ssd-960-evo/ and see performance differences much greater than you claimed, and also to see much smaller price differentials of 1.3x or 1.4x that applied to my actual choices of 850 EVO vs. 960 EVO, rather than 2x for whatever you were comparing.

I can spend all week lamenting the million dollar house across the street. They don't even have kids and it's clearly 2x more space than they actually need. But why? If they are happy, great, it sure isn't affecting my decision of where to live. At least if Techspot and others are flat out wrong and there really is no significant difference between a 500GB 850 EVO and 960 EVO, I'm only out $50 for bragging rights. And even that has some value, given the entertainment derived from this discussion.

 

Do you think we can upgrade the screen to the 4K screen ?

 

Just received a new Aero 15 (and put lovely 960pro SSD in) but the RHS fan is making clicking noises - quiet but intensely irritating. Sounds a little like loose bearings. Standard or needs sending back?

 

Also guys do you think we can replace keys of the keyboard? ie put Q in place of A etc or the keys will break?

 

They're supposed to come out with 4K version probably in a month or so.

 

Yes I know but like can we buy the 4k screen in ebay or something then replace the 1080p manually to 4k?

 

I am not a modder so I can not tell you what is possible or not. What I can tell you as an owner of an Aero 15 is that nothing in the included documentation suggests that these mods are intended user functionality or supported by the manufacturer.

I do think the included macro software would allow you to reprogram the Q and A keys so that they each had the functional effect of being the other (although I haven't tested that myself so if it's critical to you, verify with another source), but I realize that's not quite the same as having moved them. I'm also not sure how well that work if one or more of the keys you wanted to move was a modifier key (shift / ctrl / alt / etc) vs a normal key.

 

I haven't noticed anything like that on mine.

 

That might be possible I'm not experienced in changing screens on laptop so I couldn't tell you. With such a small bezel I wonder if its hard to change the screen.