GE76 SSD Gen3 or 4 and RAM speed

Hi guys,

I'm looking at getting a GE76 and was able to get some info from a guy on eBay who has one for sale, open-box unused. The SSD is a phison 1tb sm2801t24gkbb4s-e162 and I can see some details online but I don't know how to tell if its a PCIe Gen3 or 4? Also, he sent me CPU-z screenshot and the RAM frequency is 798.5Mhz, what the heck? That's 1/4 the 3200Mhz speed it should be. yes I know you are supposed to double that number but that's still only 1600Mhz. I'm not sure how to add a photo in here as I only see a place to attach a URL.

Edit: Ok I asked him and he said there are four sticks of RAM in there, is that why? I'm kinda retarded with RAM stuff sorry. Also, that's super weird because the GE76 doesn't ship with 4 sticks it ships with 2 sticks of 16. He said he purchased it from MicroCenter 2 months ago so maybe they messed with it?

 

GE76 has two RAM slots, so no idea how this seller have 4 sticks in his laptop (lol).
If this is model with Intel 11gen CPU, then supports PCIe 4.0

 

I'm not familiar with this specific drive, but it uses the Phison E16 which is a first generation PCIe 4.0 controller used in a lot of other well known PCIe 4.0 SSDs (Corsair, Aorus, Seagate, etc.)

This is a bug with CPU-Z incorrectly reporting memory frequencies on Tiger Lake platforms. HWINFO64 correctly reports it as 1600MHz and a memory benchmark like AIDA64 will confirm performance is commensurate with DDR4-3200 RAM.

 

Thank you so much, I was concerned a bit. I also had the seller check and he apologized and confirmed it's 2 sticks of 16GB and there are not 4 RAM slots. Might pull the trigger just for the fact that its $3050 with shipping and I can find it for $3099 at a few places but after taxes for California that shoots up to almost $3400.

 

I'm not against buying used, heck I resell mine all the time. But honestly I rarely get more than about half what I paid for it after using it for a couple of months.

Realize with new you are getting a new one (obviously) so no one has messed with it. When you resister the warranty you can get 3 months extra free for filling out a survey (or at least I did) for a total of 15 months warranty. You may have no idea if the used one had any extended or not. Maybe he popped in cheapo slower memory or SSD or something. Just not worth it for basically full price.

 

Boy did I get a surprise today. Was just about to purchase the GE76 from eBay because I was comfortable after communicating back and forth with the seller and he showed me the receipt and even did a video chat with me to show me the computer etc and then on the off chance I asked if there was any tax. He said, yeah, eBay automatically applies taxes according to your state tax code! What? I used to buy/sell on eBay for years and never charged or paid tax but it's been 3-4 years since I was last on. Looks like in Jan 2020 eBay instituted this change (I'm sure after regulatory pressure) and so I pulled the plug because yeah after taxes it would have been almost the exact same amount. Anyway, I started looking around again and HIDevolution had it in stock. I read through all their FAQ's and it paid off, literally, because they offer discounts to notebookreview forum members! On top of that, 2.5% off for paying through ACH and I got myself a new GE76 with RTX 3080 and i7-11800H, 64GB ram, 1TB Gen4 SSD. I was gonna do all the upgraded paste/temp pads but I already went way over budget so I guess I'll have fun learning to do something new. Thanks to everyone here today for the great feedback, it reminds me of 6 years ago when I got on here to research the Clevo P770DM-G that I have today. Here's to hoping I can sell it to someone with the specs in my signature.

 

I have used HID and have had great experience with them. Don't get super frustrated if due to temps you may want to undervolt or repaste, it sucks but it's just the way things are and likely will continue to be.

The good thing is you got a very easy laptop to repaste, and you have enough controls between the BIOS, undervolting, and even the fan controls to make the system usable and likely one of the very best laptops this generation. If you're not picky you may even live with the stock paste, it's all up to you.

 

Yeah I'll definitely play with it first before committing to making any paste/thermal pad modifications but since I love tinkering as much as I do I don't mind learning how to paste/place pads. I need to get a new laptop stand as my CoolerMaster U3 died a few months ago. Any suggestions on a new stand? It's incredible how many freaking laptop cooling stands there are out there, it makes my head spin. The CoolerMaster U3 Plus or whatever looks the same as this one but maybe they upgraded the fans? I found this wacky looking thing that supposedly sets a seal around the bottom to increase the force of airflow into the bottom.
https://www.amazon.com/IETS-Cooling...9Y2xpY2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU=

 

Personally I use my Coolermaster U3 (I have 2 of them actually) with no fans, I use it to lift the laptop up and give it breathing room and more comfortable to use while in the lounge chair. I have used fans on occasion to try to max cool for a benchmark but I don't like leaving the fans in when playing games as I personally feel it just adds more dust and at times can even fight the airflow with the laptops internal fans.

Everyone will have different opinions & experiences about this but my way saves me a bunch of time and money since the U3's I have will last me the rest of my life.

 

I have gp76 11ug. ge76 have same motherboard with intel 11gen. First ssd slot have pcie gen4, second gen3. Stock ram is always 3200mhz cl22.

I also have a notepal u3 pad without fans, but slightly modified for a bedside table. For me best cooling pad.

 

That looks great, I like how you lifted it a little higher. It gets hot where I live and we can't always run the air conditioning which is why I'm thinking about getting a stand with fans.

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