The Gigabyte Aero 15x (2018) Improvement Guide

Let me start by stating this is not a complete tutorial on the disassembly of the Gigabyte Aero 15x. There may be guides on the disassembly of the Aero 15x online that you can find. I cannot be held responsible if you attempt anything I have done in this guide and break your computer. Do so at your own risk.

Introduction​

I am Rage Set. Some of you may know me and my past overclocking endeavors with the Clevo P870DM-G, P870DM3, P775DM2 and MSI 16L13 aka Tornado F5. Now I have moved onto a BGA laptop I will be using for work, with some play in my spare time (Please note, I will be getting another Clevo when the next gen GPU’s are available).

I will be adding more benchmarks and stress tests over time to this thread. If you have a particular benchmark you want me to do, please ask and I might be able to add it.

Why the Gigabyte Aero 15x?​

The Gigabyte Aero 15x has a lot to offer to professionals like myself. It has a good amount of compute power tucked into a small, lightweight chassis. My previous workstation laptop (Tornado F5) was great but it had poor battery life. The Gigabyte Aero 15x promises a battery life of 6 to 8 hours depending on the workloads and that fits within my work schedule/stacks.

Thermal Throttling​

The goal of this guide is to improve the thermals. Out of the box thermals are poor. The Intel i7 8750H CPU can easily hit 91C, throttling downwards to 3.2 to 3.4GHz on all cores with sustained loads. I do not expect the cooling solution inside of the Aero 15x to compete with the likes of Clevo’s or MSI’s DTR cooling solutions, however, I do seek to fully maximize the utilization of the cooler’s thermal capacity.

I may be changing out the thermal paste twice (three times if I count replacing the stock TIM to GC Extreme). I am starting with IC Diamond TIM and if that does not offer a sufficient decrease in thermals, I will go the extreme route with liquid metal.

Please note, for whatever reason, Gigabyte does not use thermal pads on the GPU’s VRAM (at least not on my Aero 15x). If you look at the photo below, you will see they use some kind of thermal grease.

In addition to changing out the TIM and adding thermal pads, I've installed two 16GB sticks of DDR4 RAM and the Intel Wireless 9260 card.

Spoiler: Photos

I replaced the stock VRAM grease with 0.5mm thermal pads.

Results​

I used Firestrike as my benchmark and the results from those benchmarks are provided below.


Stock TIM – Max Fans – CPU -100mV undervolt – GPU Core +100/Memory +200: EDIT: For the Stock TIM benchmark, I had installed the latest Nvidia drivers for the benchmark but the other benchmark results below have the latest Gigabyte Nvidia display drivers installed.



GC Extreme TIM – Normal Fans – CPU -100mV undervolt – GPU Stock



IC Diamond TIM – Normal Fans – CPU -100mV undervolt – GPU Stock



IC Diamond TIM – Max Fans – CPU -100mV undervolt – GPU Stock



Update: Firestrike 13,910 - GPU: +100 core/+200 memory

Update: Firestrike 14,410 - GPU: +150 core/+250 memory

Update: Firestrike 14,644



CBR15: CPU: 1163cb - Single Core: 169cb



If you look at the results, you will find the stock TIM and IC Diamond TIM results are nearly identical. It appears there was no change. That is until you realize that the stock TIM benchmark result includes a +100 core/+200 memory overclock to the GPU and the IC Diamond TIM result was stock.

With the stock TIM and normal fans, the cooler fans were audible at idle. The CPU temp at idle fluctuated between 49 to 53C, ambient temps being 28C. Having IC Diamond applied, the CPU temp idles at 34 to 38C and the fans are completely quiet, even with the ambient temps being at 30C.

At load, the max temps are nearly the same. Stock TIM, the CPU easily hits 91C and throttles. IC Diamond, the CPU hits 88C but does not throttle, keeping itself at 3.9Ghz.

Over the up and coming weeks, I will add new benchmarks and stress tests to this thread.

 

Hey I wanted to replace the tharmal past on my unit too but had a little hesitation on how to disconnect the batteries it felt like it was glued to the case any suggestions ???

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

 

You don't need to disconnect the battery to remove the heatsink on this laptop. The heatsink is held in place by 11 screws, three holding the fans in place and eight holding the heatsink plate to the CPU/GPU. When I removed the heatsink, I didn't even disconnect the pigtails from the fans. Make sure your computer is turned completely off.

 

I had one last thing to ask what do you make of Innovation Cooling Graphite Thermal Pad-Alternative To
Thermal Paste ???

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

 

I have heard/read about the product, but I have no hands-on experience with it. Based off my experience with good traditional thermal pastes, I don't know why the Innovation Cooling Graphite Thermal Pad exists. A good thermal paste can last for years and are easily applied. I need to see more data on how long it can last before I make a final decision on it but the initial reports I've seen are not totally positive.

 

Thanks for posting this. Looking forward to hearing what you can do with this machine.

I've got conductonaut/fujipoly from HID and a 0.160 undervolt but I'm still easily hitting 90C+ in destiny 2 and overwatch. Using a cooling pad as well, but thats more for the clearance and less about the fans.

 

I have Conductonaut (self applied) and pads on the vrm. Try downloading Aida 64 and running the system stability test with only the Stress CPU box ticked.

Ambient temp for me is ~26 Celcius.

On the normal fan curve I get 68-72 Celsius for the temp with no throttling the CPU pegged at ~3.9ghz.

If I then click the stress GPU box (loading both the CPU and GPU) then the temps move into the mid to high 80's with the fans ramping up materially but the clocks still pegged at 3.5-3.9ghz (i.e. very limited throttling).

If you have Far Cry 5 when I run the built in benchmark the GPU is 70-80 Celcius and the GPU sits in the low 80's.

 

Thanks. I will be pushing this machine as far as I can, as I have with other laptops I had in the past. I have yet to deploy any of my external cooling tools. I want to see how far I can push this machine with its own heatsink. I really like my results with the IC Diamond, but I may apply LM soon. More benchmarks are incoming.

 

On the CPU only benchmark I got identical results. My temps leveled out pretty quickly so I only ran it for 5min. For the CPU/GPU test the temps just kept climbing. By 10min my CPU was pegged at 90C with near constant throttling. Aida was showing 27% throttling at the highest, but typically it was 10-15%.

 

What are your guys views on applying LM on a laptop that is going to be doing a lot of travelling? Is careful application enough to avoid the dangers of shorting? I'm looking to do a repaste (my first ever) so would you recommend starting off with non conductive like IC Diamond before diving into LM or is it mostly scaremongering hype? I'm hitting 90-92 on CPU playing Fallout 4 with intermittent throttling. Just using Intels XTU to undervolt the CPU by .100v, I'm very new to this so if anyone has any recommendations on better tuning software please let me know!

 

I always advise against using LM on a laptop unless you take extreme precautions. On some applications, LM won't do much if the cooler/heatsink doesn't sit properly on the die or the cooler/heatsink has limited heat transfer capacity. In the majority of cases for the "thin and light" laptop category, the computer maker cheaps out on the TIM. Repasting with a high quality TIM can help a lot.

With all of that said, LM can be dangerous if you do not prepare for it. A lot of new LM users don't prepare their laptop's for LM application and that is where the trouble comes from. If you take the proper precautions, you can travel safely with your laptop (as I have with all of my laptops I've applied LM to, in the past) with no worries.

EDIT: Forgot to add, I use Throttlestop (I don't like XTU). You can create four profiles in TS. So, for example, when you are browsing the web and you don't need a lot of power, you can have a profile that limits the CPU to 3.7 or 3.5. There are many benefits to use TS.

 

Exactly, real work stacks that use both the CPU/GPU will cause the throttling of the CPU in this laptop. Currently if I stress the CPU only, with only IC DIamond applied, my temps sit at 85C. I am still working on getting the full CPU/GPU load down to the mid 80's.

 

Posted a new Firestrike score of over 14,400 points. Trying to get to 15k or higher.

 

Thanks man! I did a lot of tinkering today including my first ever repaste with Arctic Silver Ceramique 2, I followed their application guide including 'breaking in' the heatsink. I didn't get any pads for the VRAM so I just applied a small amount of paste to each after cleaning off that weird grease stuff. Then undervolted at -.100v using Throttlestop and then +100MHz on the voltage frequency curve editor in Afterburner up to around 1000mV and from then flat at around 1900MHz.

What a difference, I played FO4 on ultra for around three hours today and my CPU topped out at 71C with the GPU hitting 67C. That's about a 20C drop in what I was experiencing a few days ago. Will continue to monitor temps over the next few days as I was really expecting to get higher temps until I'd broken in the thermal compound. I don't have any 3D benchmarking tools yet to post up any solid results but either way this is a promising step in the right direction!

 

I am happy to see your repaste went well. When you have time, post some Cinebench R15 (free) scores. As for my 15X, I believe I am nearing the maximum heat transfer capacity of the IC Diamond. I may experiment with LM next week to see if I can push this machine further.

 

[EDIT] Sorry thats a horrible picture.. Cinebench scores are:
OpenGL: 86.31fps
CPU: 1195cb
Single Core: 173cb [/EDIT]

TIM: Arctic Silver Ceramique 2
CPU undervolt -.123v
GPU Core +100MHz, Clock +200MHz

Strange themal behaviour today, it seems early on under load the CPU jumps up to 90-91C then drops back down and maintains at around 80. Exactly the same conditions as my low themals yesterday. I'm also getting what seems to be some odd cpu behaviour. At idle the cores will sit between 0%-10% but at random one will jump up to 80%+. Signs of cpu instability?

 

To test the stability of the CPU, do three to four Cinebench benches back to back or better yet, AIDA64 CPU stress test (free edition).

 

Rage Set, Thank you for presenting this detailed information. I am looking at the 15x for daily work (business,cad & rendering) I love the features & design (& battery life) but am also concerned about the temps & long term reliability so will be eagerly watching your results. Given your background with Clevo, can I ask why not the P955?

 

Liquid metal is the way to go .

 

My Aero 15X has the best battery life compared to any gaming (and even most not gaming) laptop I've researched or tested. Couple the battery life with the performance this laptop delivers, there is not much going against it. Lastly, I've learned my lesson about certain Clevo's and will only get the P870 series.

 

P870 are too tough to carry compared to the A15X; mine is on its way, hope to get RAM and Thermal Grizzy Hydronaut (do not need so high Kyronaut) and some of TG's thermal pads also, will check temps with testing

 

I have not used Hydronaut (only Kyronaut or better) but if it is anything like GC Extreme, it will not make a huge difference over stock thermal paste. I am still currently using the IC Diamond paste I've applied a couple of weeks ago. I am debating whether to use LM or not. I don't know if the LM paste will offer a greater delta over IC Diamond due to the heatsink.

 

It seems there is around 1.7 ºC difference between Kyronaut and Hydro, so seems it is even lower than GC Extreme, but overall there is less than 1ºC delta from Kyro and GC Extreme (or IC D24).
I think LM might not be needed in this laptop unless you want to go much further in stress tests.

 

Thank you very much for your detailed post, I just noticed that you mentioned not taking out the battery during TIM application. Would this particular laptop not have any issues with shorting with the battery plugged in and working within the system?

 

Hi! I wanted to ask about the RAM you installed. I see it's the Kingston HyperX but do you have the specific specs? I'm trying to go dual channel. When using CPUZ, does it show the proper readings? For some, it gets capped at 2400 if it's a 2666 RAM but others have gotten it to work.

 

I'm waiting for my Aero 15 x to arrive and will repaste it and add thermal pads. the question is if one 60x50x0.5 mm pad enough for the VRAM or do I need to get more?
and anyone knows if there is a noticeable difference between fujipoly ultra and fujipoly extreme ?

 

One pad should be enough for just the VRAM modules. If you are replacing all of the thermal pads on the laptop, then no. As for a noticeable difference between the two, I use Ultra whenever I change out the thermal pads on my laptops, GPU's and etc. There are mark improvements in VRAM thermals with Ultra but I also OC heavy (I'm not your average laptop user). If you do not plan to overclock your GPU, the Fujipoly extreme thermal pad will suffice, specially over the stock crap that Gigabyte uses.

 

Great, thank you !
One more question, should the rest of the pads be 0.5 mm thick also ?

 

I must say, I kinda lucked out with my unit! At an ambient temperature of 24°C, I get 13787 on Fire Strike, max fans, stock thermal paste, -150 mV CPU (core + cache) undervolt, +100 GPU Core & +250 VRAM, but, more importantly, single channel -- which should explain the ~800 point drop in the Physics test in my result when compared to your 13910 result. During the benchmark, CPU temps never rose above 74°C and GPU temps maxed out at 59°C. During sustained (>2 hours) gaming, however, they do rise to 81°C and 64°C respectively.

I'm glad to know that I won't have to void my warranty by repasting anytime soon, but I'm also curious to see whether it is the ambient temperatures or just a relatively worse factory paste job that caused the large temperature difference. When I travel back to my home country in a couple of weeks, I might get a chance to test this theory out!

 

Repasting a crap paste job doesn't void your warranty, at least not in America. Anytime I see one of those "Warranty void if removed" stickers on any of my electronics, I remove them on purpose (even if I am not going open the product).

That's a great score for a stock paste job, perhaps Gigabyte improved the paste they've used on these machines. A repaste will still improve the GPU score, as with that same overclock core/memory setting, I was over 14k points. Keep me updated.

 

Hey everyone, about to repaste soon. Just wanted to know how hard or easy it is to break something on the way? I assembled my PC a lot of times and a couple of times opened up a PS4, but never went into a laptop.

 

Very easy to disassembly and repaste the CPU/GPU. There isn't much to "break" besides the thermal goop they use on the VRAM modules.

 

Hi Rage Set,

Thanks for sharing your improvements with us. I was wondering if you might be able to share some updates on the improvements you have made to date with your current setup?

Just got my Aero 15x 2 months back and been reading up on a few threads and stumbled across yours, which i believe seem to be the most stable from what I've seen.

Please would you be able to advise the following:

1. 2 x Samsung 970 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD - any tips on installing these? I had tried installing these once with Samsung Magician, only to receive a BSOD "NPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION" error 2 weeks, which rendered my unit in bios loop to the point I had to send it in for servicing under warranty. The service provider had informed that they would not be able to service my unit unless I had all my OEM parts put back. Would having the Gigabyte OEM logo installed in the system properties make a difference in stability? What is the best way to clean install Win 10 Pro with driver installation for optimum stability?

2. Intel 9260 WiFi card - bought but yet to be installed. How did you install the driver for this?

3. SODIMM - had bought G.Skill Ripjaws 32GB (2 x 16GB) SODIMM. would this suffice or is HyperX better?

4. Thermal Pads - had noticed you had replaced the stock thermal grease with thermal pads. First time coming across thermal pads, are these supposed to be sandwich between or installed on top of the VRAM? Would Kryonaut do the job as well? Any recommendations for M.2 thermal pads?

Thanks for your kind advice in advance!

 

1.) When I installed my new NVMe drive, I didn't need to download any drivers. I did, however, reinstall Windows 10 on this computer. There is a specific way of installing Gigabyte's software in order. If you google Gigabyte 15X Windows 10 reinstallation, you will see a helpful guide for it.

I am unsure of what you mean by Gigabyte OEM logo installed. DId you modify the BIOS splash logo?

2.) When I installed my Intel 9260 NIC, I let windows initially choose the right driver (I was using the internet through ethernet during that time). After that I installed the latest Intel Wifi drivers directly from Intel.
.
3.) I would have loved to use G.Skill memory in this laptop but unfortunately, Gigabyte doesn't allow you to change any memory related settings in the BIOS. I chose the HyperX since they automatically use their XMP settings (2666) whereas with the G.Skill, you will be stuck at 2133.

4.) You want to use 0.5mm thermal pads on top of the VRAM. Do not use Kryonaut or any other thermal paste on the VRAM, you need the correct height (of which paste wouldn't do). As for the M.2 thermal pad, I didn't use any on this laptop. Any decent quality thermal pad would do

 

Hi all, thanks for this detailed breakdown of tuning the Aero 15x. I have a few small questions if you dont mind. I hope to do this sometime soon already ordered the Kryonaut and thermal pads.

My question is as follows
U mentioned that the VRAM has grease on it so should you wipe those grease off as well and clean it like the heatsink and gpu before applying fresh pads on it. I already got some grease remover ordered as well.

Besides that currently, I've undervolted to -.150 and it still throttles sometimes but normally temp range is around high 80's when pushing overwatch on ultra settings. I hope this repasting drops a few more degrees so I can lessen the throttling if possible

 

Thanks for your awesome post,

I was just wondering if you could help me with what I all need for a complete repasting / pads and so on.

I am going to use:
Thermal Grizzly TG-K-001-RS Kryonaut 12,5 W/m · K 1 g
How many and what size pads do I need? 0,5 mm for the vram, how many?

Thank you

 

Hello,

You do not need a grease remover. Regular rubbing alcohol (90% or higher) will easily remove the thermal grease on the VRAM. When you repaste with the Kryonaut and apply good thermal pads on the VRAM, you should expect good temps around 80C with no (or very little) throttling when playing any game. High compute tasks will still push your temps into the early 90's.

 

Kryonaut is a great choice for a paste on this laptop. You can use two 60x50x0.5 Fujipoly extreme thermal pads. You will need 8 small squares for the VRAM.

 

Just re-pasted, not the best results I suppose. I'm not gonna use this laptop for gaming a lot, but if i don't turn on speed-shift (128) in throttlestop which lowers the cpu usage, I still reach 90 in new games (very occasionally in Darksiders III, and a lot in Black Ops IIII). Is there anything else I can do about it? I also undervolted the cpu (-180), and that doesn't make any difference as far as I can see

P.S.
I don't see a big difference in performance when cpu is not utilized in full in games (with speed-shift on). The cpu temperature in this case is 75 C, which is cool.

 

The nature of a repaste on this particular laptop is to allow the CPU to boost higher within the same thermal envelope. Many factors play a role in thermals in these thin and light gaming laptops, more importantly, the silicon lottery. The goal of my repaste/disassembly was to extract the maximum amount of performance and I guess fortunately for me, I got a reduction in temps in addition to the performance boost.

What kind of paste did you use in your repaste job? What kind of thermal pads? Are you using max fans and still hitting 90c? Is the CPU/GPU heatsink making good contact with the CPU/GPU (when you took off the heatsink originally, did the stock paste cover the CPU/GPU completely)? What are your ambient temps?

 

Hey. I used kryonaut. I haven't used thermal pads, maybe I will try repasting again with them later. Yep, turned to fixed 100% fans and still reaching 90 (but it happens while the game loads, then it's around 75-85, all max settings), but it's better, with the "gaming mode" in a smartmanager I get 85-90 C in the game. I think the contact is good, it was covered completely. Ambient temps are around 25 C.

 

Anyone tried 3DMark? I get 5164 points ( https://www.3dmark.com/spy/8366731) when undervolting the CPU 125mv and this GPU curve in MSI Afterburner:

 

I really didn't bench Time Spy on this laptop. I have since upgraded to the latest version of this laptop with the i9 9980HK and 2080 MQ. Wasn't worth it.

 

In getting 16500 firestrik and 6600 time spy with my aero modded, also temps never go over 80 deferred Celsius with avx2 stress test + furmafk 4k burn in test + heaven 4k Bench's all together (gpu never goes over 80 as well(.

Liquid metal + thermals pads -170mv CPU and using a cooling pad, no throttle, 4ghz Al corez 100% time after 1 hour stress test... Normally in game temps never go over 65 Celsius... With 16600 3dmark firestrike this is actually a full rtx 2060 desktop performance, can play 4k half of games at 60fps... Also had to flash gpu bios with Asus strix one for 90w tdp increase and gpu has +200mhz (over Asus bios which is Lready more clocked) and +900 msmories.
Ah, it's oled WA version, cost 1900 eur, best laptop in the world Lzo for price, no need to use expensive models with 2070maxq which actually goes less then this modded one, also hVe 2x 2tb 3500mb w/r ssds and 32gb mem upgrade, also report dual channel makes the difference... With single channel lost 2000 points in firestrike., Will post my review later this month with screens and suggestions,.temps and bench... Also intern graphic card can be overclooked +300mhz with still +160mv on cpu and performance kmpromentes in windows and YouTube and website is noticeable....the only thing I could not achieve is to install memories with better timings.... Tried all models,mpatriot, hyperx Kingston, gskill ripjaws, ... Only Samsung work on 2019 models and bioz

 

Post a link to your firestrike result please.

 

https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=15kOJ3mDAw8KHGkSCKkHxbI3lAO963xUK

 

I opened up my 2019 to take a look and it looks like Gigabyte is now using thermal pads, so there isn't much reason to open it just to repaste as they use a pretty decent paste, Thermal Grizzly. I have the SA model.

 

It is correct that they are using Thermal Grizzly TIM, but it is Hydronaut, which is their "mainstream" paste. It is a step in the right direction for all of these laptop manufacturers but now that Asus is using LM in their higher end laptops, I expect more from them all.