This close to pulling the trigger!

TLDR: I’ve had a lot of RTX laptops and I’m looking to stop returning laptops so doing a lot more research. I’m super close to choosing. Seems like Gigabyte stops supporting the laptop after a few months. Is this indeed true? Driver and OS issues still a thing?

Long version

All RTX - I bought an MSI GS65, returned for creaks and trackpad, Razer MW, returned for small cool whine, HP Spectre X360, trackpad failed on me, MSI GS75, returned for single channel RAM and inverted Mobo. Now I’m looking for Aero.

Looking at the forum there’s complaints of people saying Gigabyte stops supporting the laptop after a few months. Also OS stability issues and things like that. Is that still a thing?

I’m just looking for a thin and light gaming laptop that I can use for work and not spend a lot on upgrades.

For the record the Razer was perfect until coilwhine appeared.


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Almost all OEMs support their product for 1 yr only and after that you may get security updates if its a high risk and most likely it is delayed.
Tried Lenovo Legion y740? Here's is a review from @B0B

 

As much as that's what it seems, aero 15 series seems to have very similar hardware and quite easy to support. Frankly any optimus laptop is going to be troublesome in the end so you may prefer non-optimus models.

 

How about the dell/aw m15? Dell usually supports quite a while. But cant say anything about the m15. I may have gotten that instead of the aero 15x v8 if it came out a year early

 

Coil whin eis so extremely common. Each device has coilwhine, but some coils vibrate at a level that is audible for human ears. But it is by no means faulty. If you had so many issues I would have stuck with that one.

 

In hindsight I probably would have but it's water under the bridge now unfortunately.

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If I had a chance to do it again, I most likely would not have bought my aero.

1) I would have bought the razer instead. Bear in mind I haven't used the 1070mq razer but I have used their machines in the past. Quick glance in their forum and all of their issues are thermal (typical for anything with the i7-8750h). They don't have terrible keyboard issues, their build quality is just overall better. Long term longevity of the machine though, Razer doesn't have a very good track record considering their older machines.

2) Would not have bought one of the gaming thin and lights at all. I didn't want to have a laptop dedicated to research and a desktop dedicated to gaming, especially when the research machine still needs a Cuda enabled graphics card. But if I did it again, I probably would have bought an XPS15 and built a desktop.

 

I have a kick ass gaming desktop; i9-9900k, GTX 1080Ti, etc., and the reason why I want a gaming laptop is for gaming on the go and gaming in my living room. Since I work on my gaming desktop and play, it's in the office in the dungeon of my house far away from my kids and living room. When I go down to play games, it almost feels like I'm isolating myself, which I need from time to time, but other times, I don't like it.

Now I know, if you're playing games upstairs you're in a sense still isolating yourself which is true, but not as bad. I can still talk with my wife, stop and watch what their watching, etc.

So it has a purpose and that's why a 2060 is quite perfect for me, modern enough, but not too much money. The Aero 15 seems like the best, but I reinstall windows on all my laptops since I need Enterprise and it's easy for me to remove all the bloat in a clean install rather than just entering the product key, etc.

That said, knowing my sitch, would you still recommend I get a Ultrabook? Or think I should just go with the Gigabyte?

 

I'd totally be interested if the battery wasn't so small, if it was a 90w or say 80w, I'd probably go for it.

 

19H1 Windows 10 has some good battery life compared to v1803/1809.
57Wh is modest battery capacity but with proper care and tweaking you can push it for 6hrs-7 on battery mode with Gsync off. Then again, higher wattage battery comes with a compromise, high thermals can make the battery degrade and increase wear level and within months you get smaller battery 70Wh while smaller battery keeps their charge for longer eventhough thermals are higher. For bigger battery, you can choose Thinkpads, Alienware or any Dells(I don't recommend it because of worse thermals out of the box even if you pay 10K$)

 

ok, so before you pull the trigger on any new hardware, have you tried in home streaming? If you aren't playing competitive games, you could just stream your desktop to any crappy machine in your living room and still be around your family. I used to do that all the time. Then the volcano is in your office and the streaming device is running ice cold, can have any specs, and long battery life. Steam streaming can even be done outside the home network now I believe. So if you have a good upload speed and "on the go" equates to good download speeds, you could play anywhere on an ultrabook.

 

Yes but I don't know what it is with my house but it drops frames all too frequently. I mean it's playable for sure but the drop that gets me killed is maddening. One example was playing Fallout 4 and I was fighting it up when I lost packets. When it recovered I had died and didn't save for what seemed like days. I get it, it's my fault but still.

I called a few guys to run an ethernet cable from our basement to the living room but they wanted $800 to $1200, so I said I'll just get a gaming laptop with that money.

Since I'd still lack the portable gaming aspect of it when I have to travel. Unless I went with a small eGPU. Full disclosure I did buy a Switch for gaming on the go but it doesn't quite satisfy.

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oof, thats pretty rough. If your wireless router is sitting in the basement then that will definitely kill your connection too. The only way that could be a worse scenario is if you put it on the floor under a desk or something. If the streaming isn't going to work then I guess the gaming laptop is the way to go.

Some thoughts:
- Dell has a thin and light alienware that is supposed to compete with the razer/gigabyte/msi. I have no idea how good it is, but dell support is the best there is.
- you returned the msi for the upside down mobo, but also the single channel ram. The gigabyte is single channel as well.
- you wanted long battery life, or just small? Because you can do better on the small side if you sacrifice the battery life. Bear in mind, that battery life is only really going to help with productivity. Gaming on battery is still <2hrs, and thats limited to 30fps by default (you can of course change that).

 

The 2015 14" AERO was still getting updates in 2018 - https://www.gigabyte.com/uk/Laptop/AERO-14--GTX-970M-965M#support-dl-driver-vga