Purchasing P35W V3 from GenTechPc. So far not bad, not good, just normal.

QUICK EDIT : Things finally came out to a rather good end, so I might recommend GenTecPC to others finally. I will update this edit with more details when I'll have the time.

I hope I am posting this on the right section: I couldn't find any sub forum about "experiences with gigabyte resellers"...If this topic is in the wrong place, my apologies, feel free to take it down.
I will be updating this post from time to time to keep you updated on the purchase and product.

So after many months of indecisions, I decided to purchase a P35W V3 from GenTechPC, simply based on what I read on this forum and on resellerratings, and also because I am currently in the US (if not, I'm in France, so I go with European resellers). Since then, I heard of someone who had a bad experience with them, so I am crossing my fingers so everything went smoothly. Can't be worst than with Invasion Labs (who almost yell at you on the phone when you return a product, almost accusing you of trying to bankrupt them...).

I have been in contact with them by email so far. They do answer to questions rather fast, but with not many details, it's always a one or two sentence answer. Nothing rude, but nothing warm either, just average (contrary to Mythlogic or XoticPC, the few times I contacted them). I haven't spoken with that Ken person everybody talks about when mentioning GenTechPC, but with Joyce.

The payment was sent by wire last Friday and was received yesterday (Thursday). The laptop went into production and I should received it in two or three weeks I believe, depending on the building/shipping time. Building time should be of 2-5 days: personally, I am not against waiting for 5 days if that allows them to test the product more thoughtfully!

I'll keep you guys informed.

EDIT 03/04 Laptop has just been shipped, should arrive in two business days.

 

I have a problem or can't understand why resellers insist on giving the customer a "build time" on a pre assembled notebook. Unless you changed something on the original config I don't see a reason for there to be such a long wait time to package and ship off a completely stock config notebook. That's just my gripe though.

 

Didnt read all,but no news is good news☺

Sent from my 306SH

 

Actually, I did ask them to do a repaste, plus I believe the should test the product to make sure they are not sending a faulty one: last thing you want is a blue screen as soon as you turn it on. :/

 

I've bought laptops from them in the past and they do a great job, you should have no worries.
I'd be more worried about the fan noise the P35X models suffer from under load
Man do I wish this laptop had quieter fans!
* end mini rant *

 

Well, my W110er can be quite noisy sometimes...And I use a cooling tablet, which makes some noise as well...Some good headphones and problem solved! ^^

 

I also have W110 and compared to the P35 it's almost silent.
But overall the P35 is a pretty good laptop. Enjoy!

 

Really? Geez, I wasn't expecting the P35 to be that noisy. Oh well, we'll see, thanks for the feedback.

 

P35W received. I will do a review in a few days after I'll have had the time to test the machine. So far, not thrilled about it: it's out of the box, with the factory settings, and already the 970m is disconnected and doesn't appear anywhere under the device manager.
I uninstalled the factory pilots and tried to install the latest ones, obviously it is impossible since the GPU is nowhere to be found.
I asked GenTechPC to install the latest drivers, which they didn't: if they had, they would have realized the GPU is not detected.
In the meantime I am going to restore the factory settings (with little hope since it is already using the factory settings, hahaha...).
I-am-not-happy.

EDIT : of course, it didn't do anything. Hm...Is there any way to make sure the GPU is activated in the Bios? (so far, the Bios says something among the lines of "advanced graphics : enabled", I'll have to double check.

 

Little update: After sending them an angry email, I have just been on the phone with Ken for the past 47 minutes. He tried everything with teamviewer and the Bios and finally sent me the RMA since nothing could be done.
I am really debating between getting a refund or just waiting for the next P35W, hoping the problem will not happen again. It is such a shame though, the P35W might be the best option for me: the P35X is out of my league in terms of prices, the P34W heats too much, the new slim clevos are heavier (and I am unsure about a 970m with "only" 3gb of ram), the MSI are a pain to dismantle for a simple repasting.
And the only reason I don't go for the W230sd is simply because it doesn't come with a 970m. Why, oh why?...

 

Any update on your RMA?

 

I am switching to a P34W, still from Gentech (I was too impatient to wait for a total refund and buy elsewhere), it should arrive on Monday, so we will see how it goes. The P34W ending up costing a bit less than the P35W, around $4...I wonder how they are planing on refunding me that (to be fair, I was hopping for some commercial gesture on their behalf, like extra ram offered or something after the P35W mess).

 

From my experience I don't think they'll offer you anything LOL hopefully this time works better

 

Did you get the replacement yet? I saw lots of open box P35W on newegg with quite a good price, one that has a real good price I think is the P25x with 880m 8GB, it sells for $1499

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&IsNodeId=1&N=100025325 50001314

If that's still an option for you, just FYI

 

Oops, sorry for the lack of updates! Now I am posting all the time on the other P34W forum. Yes, I received it, and it is working! I'll probably update this topic in a few days. So far so good, apart from the temps that I can't lower.

 

glad you finally got a working notebook did they refund you the $4?
Did you repaste it yet by the way?

 

Okay, quick update:
I am having a lot of problems that I am mainly blaming on Windows 8.1 (what a piece of %#@€?!).
No, they didn't refund me the $4, but I will mention that when I will email them about the repaste they haven't done (because if they did, shame on them for such a poor job: at least they didn't charge me for that with the P34W).

Word of advise: don't take the repaste option from GentechPC: they WILL NOT do it, LIE to you, but KEEP your money.

 

What problems are you having?
In my case as well I believe they forgot to repaste (or they did a bad job) since the temps were no different from the stock paste

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/gigabyte-p34w-v3-phantasus-owners-lounge.772517/page-10
Some BSOD, freezes, crashes, black screen of death at the startup (a very known problem of windows apparently). And I don't think they forgot, they literally told me by email that they did the repaste :/...What I had was very similar to the stock paste according to some people on another forum.

 

Same here when I asked on the phone I was told that it was repasted but somehow the temps were not any better

 

That sounds quite bad, did you try running prime95? prime usually ferrets out lots of potential problems

 

Thanks, I'll see if I have time to check that. I sadly don't have much time at the moment to check all of this, and I am not that good at fixing computers: I am getting a lot of recommendations about stuff, programs and other things I have never heard about, so finding tutorials and info on how they work and how to interpret the results sometimes takes a bit of time ^^"

 

Sorry to confuse you, you should just stick with memtest then, blue screens are usually memory problems

 

It was indeed repasted. Don't forget one thing, IC Diamond helps cool down the temperature but it's not a fridge. It also depends on the cooling design and the thickness of the chassis, the length of heatpipe, the airflow ect,. there are many factors involve. We've seen IC Diamond doesn't help improve temperatures of CPU and GPU on many laptops such as MSI GS60 with GTX860 and the 18" MSI GT80 Titan (18.4") read here:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/the-official-msi-gt80-titan-owners-lounge.769092/unread

P34W is a thin light weight 14" laptop with GTX970M, with such limitation on the size of heatsink, fan and airflow and it will suffer higher temperature.

 

Thank you for taking the time to answer. As I mentioned on my email, I noticed lower temperatures after I did my repaste: I will try the 3Dmark benchmark as soon as I'll have some time.
I also received an email about the refund, I will let you know when I'll receive the funds. Thank you.

 

It should help though within this laptop. I had a huge drop after repasting, almost zero throttling and overall just a more quiet laptop in general usage.

 

It's not a fridge of course, we are not expecting a 20/30 degree drop but as a seller I hope you understand that the only way a customer knows a repaste has been done properly is that temperatures are improved.

I hope resellers test whether a repaste has been applied effectively and not just whether it's been done. Otherwise it defeats the purpose of getting a repaste in the first place.

And if you already know that a repaste doesn't help like you mentioned, I hope you let the customer know and advise him/her not to do a repaste, I think that's the ethical thing to do.

 

I have just received a refund check from GenTechPC, but not of $4, more like $19! If it is on purpose, as a commercial gesture, I really appreciate it and I will regard them more highly. I will double-check with Ken though, I don't feel like taking $19 if it was a mistake from their bank.

 

Sorry for the double-post, quick update: dunno if it's because I yelled a bit around here, but GenTechPC is indeed refunding me $19 instead of $4. I am rather happy about how it all ended, so I think I will recommend them despite a few bumps along the road!

 

Hello

Xss, maybe you should edit yours posts with something like : it is ok now, or something like that

If someone starts to read and stop in the middle, they will think gentec isnt a good place to buy high end notebooks when they are good at that!

Some things like : "They dididnt repast" and later "They repasted it".

 

Indeed, you are right. I will as soon as I'll have some time, thanks!