***Aorus X7 Pro owner's lounge***

The Aorus X7 Pro Owners Lounge

The non official Aorus X7 Pro Owners lounge. Place to share your thoughts on the Aorus X7 Pro and for owners to share tips and tricks.

Given that the laptop is very much niche, I'll also put together a list of current & future owners. Hopefully we can get notebookreview to be the place to be for Aorus X7 owners!

Upgrades:
extra 2x8GB Crucial 8GB 1866 Ballistix RAM ( DONE )
Samsung 850 pro 1TB SSD as Main Drive
Re-Paste Gelid GC Extreme

First Impressions
Laptop's build quality was better than expected. I was pleasantly surprised that it actually came with an IPS display. Nothing comparable to a pro grade IPS monitor, but it's not bad at all. There's quite significant backlight bleeding on very dark backgrounds at 90-100% backlight, but given the form factor I won't complain.

LGD046C LP173WF4-SPD1. It comes with a predefined ICC profile. D6800 2.2 gamma XYZLUT + MTX


Trackpad and keyboard... not great to be honest. The keys while feel good, are very shallow, isn't exactly the best keyboard to type on after being on a macbook pro retina and using mechanical keyboards for a few years now. None or very minimal keyboard flex.

The trackpad... really not sure what to say about this one. The click zone is very shallow again, so hard to left click given the size of the track pad, it tracks quite poorly also. Can I also say finger print magnet on both the glass trackpad and the keyboard/

To me not a big deal, but for those that are going to use this on the go often, you might want to re-consider. This is also the reason why I got me a Poker II with MX clears so I can pack up a nice compact keyboard on the go.


Hardware & Temps

Without doubt it needs a re-paste. CPU is hitting 60C already just running windows updates @ 3.5Ghz with around 20-30% CPU load. No GPU load at all.
With just Prime95 running on CPU, there is no thermal throttling at all. However Prime95 running + Valley benchmark 1080P full screen 8X aa Ultra = some thermal throttling on CPU even though the GPU's are still well below 80C

Fan noise is quite pleasant actually, not much louder at 100% compared to the late 2012 base model macbook pro retina.

Running Prime95 powervirus mode the cpu stays at it's reference clocks peeds. Same with SmallFFT and in-page-fft. It power limit throttling which is normal. Nothing we can do about this.

As for temps sits solid at 71C fan speed spins up, it's audible, but nothing too bad. ( High performance fan auto mode )

Intel XTU Turbo Boost power limits are locked down. Dynamic CPU voltage offset is not. Running small-fft with a -75mv undervolt, I can get 1-2 extra bin of turbo boost. So instead of 2.5Ghz I can do 2.7Ghz. Not bad.

Temps are in the 70C range, and my room is around 68-72F.

Speakers & Audio Quality
The laptop has a pretty basic DAC. Realtek ALC892 if I'm not mistaken.
Speakers sound thin, bass does not have any distortion. The soundstage is quite shallow. I think it sounds thin because of this.
Volume is ok, at full volume they do not distort.

Review in Progress


Pictures

I've been taking pictures, no screenshots yet. I have work on the weekdays, so I don't have very much time. I still want to enjoy this laptop you know!


Questions & Answers
Make requests of any specifics, and I will get to you so far I have this:


Display Accuracy & Gamut: I'm not sure how to measure display gamut, but I can run a profile on dispcal and i1profiler

Audio: I will test shortly with a DT880 600ohm and T90 250ohm

Display Overclocking: Answer: Yes, I've tested up to 100Hz, but given that it's a IPS display there's quite a bit of ghosting. I don't have a camera setup yet so I can't see if it frame skips, but 75hz seems pretty good. There's something odd feeling at 100Hz

 

Can't wait!! Get the good stuff in!!!!

 

Since you haven't done the repaste yet... I'd be interested to see what the temp differences are between stock paste/repaste. It'd also be cool to see some pictures of the amount/quality of the stock paste.

I ordered IC Diamond repasting through Xotic, so I'll post the results of temps once I get mine in at the end of the week.

 

Sure. We need some comparable results though, and since I have more RAM installed, memory intensive benchmarks / stress tests will mean more heat as there's more load on the IMC. Thus also potentially more power limit throttling.

I'll be doing the repaste tonight hopefully, depending if I'm still awake.

Still debating installing a fresh copy of Windows 8.1 Pro, or using the restore functionality.


UPDATE: I did a re-paste last night, it took quite awhile actually. The thermal compound they used looked like some sort of Shin Etsu type paste. My temps didn't really improve, it might have been worse, but I think I know why.

I'll post pictures over the weekend, but the CPU heatpipe, the one that is the widest, goes over the heatsink of the small two heatpipes. And it's not soldered, you need to use paste. The problem is that the QA of the heatsink isn't as good as it should be, so contact gap is quite significant. I feel that I didn't put enough thermal compound. In between the heatplate and the heatpipe. Some additional contact pressure may help also, so I'm going to re paste that part, and add a thermal pad in between that particular heatpipe and the back cover. ( It's metal ) If temps continue rising.

But under BF4, -45MV undervolt I don't see any worries of thermal throttling. Before it will throttle just a tad.

 

Sounding pretty good based of your initial impressions. Glad to hear that it is in fact an IPS panel.

I'm still at phase 1. No updates yet.

I also ordered the IC diamond repaste from xoticpc so we can all compare temps later on.

 

Mine is ground shipped and will be here on the 23rd.

 

Xotic had some issue with UPS on Tuesday (when mine was supposed to be sent out), so I upgraded to overnight and got it this morning. I really like this machine, the build is quite solid, and it feels nice. Screen looks pretty damn good. The fans are definitely loud at max setting though - but I don't really mind.

 

Arghh. I'm so jealous you guys got yours already .

 

I couldn't wait! I ordered their highest level of rush order and then the overnight shipping. In total it took 4 business days to reach my door.

So far, it looks like the repaste with ICD seems to be helping the GPU more than the CPU... I havent seen them run much hotter than 70c, and the CPU is topping out around 78c. Will run some load tests to be sure.

 

This five day wait of mine will be excrutiating!! They shipped before I decided to upgrade to overnight Anyway, since its already on the way, i'l the 60 bucks on getting a good USB DAC for it. Should be good!