Razer Blade Stealth late 2019 with GTX1650 Max-Q

[Thysanoptera]

Yeah, I bought yet another laptop.

Some background: for some time I started travelling with two laptops, the Blade 15 and X1C. I noticed that I've been using X1C way more than the Blade and was day dreaming about having similar form factor laptop but with something more powerful than UHD620. Early reviews of the 2019 Stealth indicated much reduced performance and I didn't even considered getting it. By sheer coincidence one blogger posted his review, I got in touch with him on reddit, asked to run some more specific tests and it turns out this laptop is simply driven to the ground by Razer control software and power limits. Ridiculous power limits. So when I realized there is a ton of thermal headroom I went to bestbuy and got one on Saturday.

Stock it is not even worth talking about, CB20 about 1200, whenever dGPU is active CPU is limited to 15W (or even 12W). But Bios can still be relatively easily unlocked, and when you do - CB20 2200. Holds full turbo 3.5GHz on all cores. GPU is 35W, scores in benchmarks about half of what the RTX2060 does, which is still double of my RX555 equipped Macbook and actually enough for an old fart like me. Battery seems to last longer than X1C. Fans are not overly loud (although have a slightly annoying high pitch whine above 3000 rpm), doesn't get hot on the surface. I really like it. Keyboard still sucks though, that right Shift is just ridiculous.

There is nothing like that on the market, well, maybe MSI 14 Prestige - but this thing has single fan with CPU and GPU daisy chained to it, there is no way that's going to work under some combined load.

 

[zackkmac]

Thanks for sharing this. I just ordered a used 2018 model (1070/144Hz display), to replace my Alienware 15 R3, as it's just too bulky and the front speakers stopped working right outside the warranty period.

I wonder if I will need to explore a similar solution for my Blade. Do you mind to share some more details on your procedure?

 

[Thysanoptera]

Thanks for sharing this. I just ordered a used 2018 model (1070/144Hz display), to replace my Alienware 15 R3, as it's just too bulky and the front speakers stopped working right outside the warranty period.

I wonder if I will need to explore a similar solution for my Blade. Do you mind to share some more details on your procedure?

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The Bios mod part is enough, the rest doesn't do that much. But to be honest it is not that needed on the 15 inch, just undervolt it and even limited to 45W you'll be good to go.

 

[jrichards1408]

Yeah, I bought yet another laptop.

Some background: for some time I started travelling with two laptops, the Blade 15 and X1C. I noticed that I've been using X1C way more than the Blade and was day dreaming about having similar form factor laptop but with something more powerful than UHD620. Early reviews of the 2019 Stealth indicated much reduced performance and I didn't even considered getting it. By sheer coincidence one blogger posted his review, I got in touch with him on reddit, asked to run some more specific tests and it turns out this laptop is simply driven to the ground by Razer control software and power limits. Ridiculous power limits. So when I realized there is a ton of thermal headroom I went to bestbuy and got one on Saturday.

Stock it is not even worth talking about, CB20 about 1200, whenever dGPU is active CPU is limited to 15W (or even 12W). But Bios can still be relatively easily unlocked, and when you do - CB20 2200. Holds full turbo 3.5GHz on all cores. GPU is 35W, scores in benchmarks about half of what the RTX2060 does, which is still double of my RX555 equipped Macbook and actually enough for an old fart like me. Battery seems to last longer than X1C. Fans are not overly loud (although have a slightly annoying high pitch whine above 3000 rpm), doesn't get hot on the surface. I really like it. Keyboard still sucks though, that right Shift is just ridiculous.

There is nothing like that on the market, well, maybe MSI 14 Prestige - but this thing has single fan with CPU and GPU daisy chained to it, there is no way that's going to work under some combined load.

How did you unlock the BIOS?what configuration did you get?

I read how the 4k version is rubbish and does not improve on colour accuracies and brightness

 

[Thysanoptera]

How did you unlock the BIOS?what configuration did you get?

I read how the 4k version is rubbish and does not improve on colour accuracies and brightness

16GB/512GB/FHD from BestBuy. Already have 2TB SSD in it, RAM is soldered but I can live with that in such a small form factor.

Bios unlock exactly as in the link I posted above. Although just today all the unlocked options disappeared and I had to hex edit the Bios, a little scary to be honest, being in a hotel room with one laptop only, but it worked.

 

[jrichards1408]

16GB/512GB/FHD from BestBuy. Already have 2TB SSD in it, RAM is soldered but I can live with that in such a small form factor.

Bios unlock exactly as in the link I posted above. Although just today all the unlocked options disappeared and I had to hex edit the Bios, a little scary to be honest, being in a hotel room with one laptop only, but it worked.

O yes I just saw that thread.it seems like a chore to do though with about 50 steps!

 

[Thysanoptera]

O yes I just saw that thread.it seems like a chore to do though with about 50 steps!

No, he writes about a lot of not really useful stuff, just skip to the Bios part, the Bios unlock is just dump, edit, flash back and use new options, just three of them IMON slope/offset and prefix. I can do that now all in 5 minutes.

 

[jrichards1408]

No, he writes about a lot of not really useful stuff, just skip to the Bios part, the Bios unlock is just dump, edit, flash back and use new options, just three of them IMON slope/offset and prefix. I can do that now all in 5 minutes.

Besides the right shift key, is the keyboard good?

 

[Thysanoptera]

Besides the right shift key, is the keyboard good?

It's ok, but just ok. Doesn't compare to Thinkpads, better than butterfly. Somewhere in this huge gap between them, depending on your own personal preference.

 

[jrichards1408]

It's ok, but just ok. Doesn't compare to Thinkpads, better than butterfly. Somewhere in this huge gap between them, depending on your own personal preference.

If X1 Carbon had a 1650 I'd be all over it

 

[Thysanoptera]

If X1 Carbon had a 1650 I'd be all over it

Yeah, me too.

 

[jrichards1408]

Yeah, me too.

I'm still in the lookout for a Dell XPS 13 replacement
The razer blade 13 surface pro 7 or surface laptop 3 13 are top runners

 

[maflynn]

Yeah, I bought yet another laptop.

I kick around the idea of a 13" carry with me laptop, and I do like the razer but man, the dGPU equipped model is out of my price range. If I have time, I'll see if the microsoft store has this and see how the performance is.

By sheer coincidence one blogger posted his review

Can you post a link to his review?

Besides the right shift key, is the keyboard good?

Yeah, that was wicked annoying to me.

 

[Thysanoptera]

Can you post a link to his review?

Review: Late 2019 Razer Blade Stealth

The Late 2019 Razer Blade Stealth is an awesome ultrabook that can play games!

www.theeverydayenthusiast.com

He didn’t unlock his Bios, said it is a review unit and didn’t want to brick it.

 

[GoldfishRT]

The new Stealth seems awesome but it's really hard for me to stomach the idea of spending $1799 for an ultrabook.

I mean, I had my issues but, you can literally buy a nearly top spec XPS 15 for that. Obviously a different class but you get way more for your money.

That said I'd probably take the new Stealth with GPU over the lower end base Blade 15.

 

[Thysanoptera]

The new Stealth seems awesome but it's really hard for me to stomach the idea of spending $1799 for an ultrabook.

I mean, I had my issues but, you can literally buy a nearly top spec XPS 15 for that. Obviously a different class but you get way more for your money.

That said I'd probably take the new Stealth with GPU over the lower end base Blade 15.

Ha! I had XPS 15 9550, the first generation in the current chassis, and that Stealth is a lot faster both in CPU and GPU. I guess it boils down to size, I learned that I can accept some compromises just for simple convenience. For the same money you could build a killer desktop after all. It really feels refreshing being able to put your bag vertically in the overhead or on the floor. Just one downside - when you put 13 inch bag flat in the overhead people will put their bags on top of it. Almost got removed from a flight because of it, fair warning.

Some reality checks - I have a large split between CPU cores, 10 C, when close to 100C. Supplied PSU can't handle combined AIDA+Heaven+ battery charging, CPU gets down to 400 MHz. A little slower than my PowerPC powered Amiga from the 90's. But I know I can make it work, I need to repaste and it should fix the temp split. But I am disappointed, Blade 15 was perfect in thermal department, I'm really surprised the Blade Stealth is not.

 

[soulreaver99]

Really tempted in picking this up to replace my switch to game on the go. Are you saying the thermal throttling is pretty bad on this? And even at 100W charging is still not enough to power this?

 

[Thysanoptera]

Really tempted in picking this up to replace my switch to game on the go. Are you saying the thermal throttling is pretty bad on this? And even at 100W charging is still not enough to power this?

It’s not bad, I’m just disappointed in the temperature split between cores. The charger is enough, it just craps out in the most extreme scenario where CPU and GPU are both fully loaded AND the battery is low, not enough juice to charge it.

 

[maflynn]

not enough juice to charge it.

I think I came across some blurb about Razer's laptops doing this. I'm not sure its limited to the stealth. Still I can see in some circumstances this being a bit of a pain

 

[kazmac]

Yeah, I bought yet another laptop.

Some background: for some time I started travelling with two laptops, the Blade 15 and X1C. I noticed that I've been using X1C way more than the Blade and was day dreaming about having similar form factor laptop but with something more powerful than UHD620. Early reviews of the 2019 Stealth indicated much reduced performance and I didn't even considered getting it. By sheer coincidence one blogger posted his review, I got in touch with him on reddit, asked to run some more specific tests and it turns out this laptop is simply driven to the ground by Razer control software and power limits. Ridiculous power limits. So when I realized there is a ton of thermal headroom I went to bestbuy and got one on Saturday.

Stock it is not even worth talking about, CB20 about 1200, whenever dGPU is active CPU is limited to 15W (or even 12W). But Bios can still be relatively easily unlocked, and when you do - CB20 2200. Holds full turbo 3.5GHz on all cores. GPU is 35W, scores in benchmarks about half of what the RTX2060 does, which is still double of my RX555 equipped Macbook and actually enough for an old fart like me. Battery seems to last longer than X1C. Fans are not overly loud (although have a slightly annoying high pitch whine above 3000 rpm), doesn't get hot on the surface. I really like it. Keyboard still sucks though, that right Shift is just ridiculous.

There is nothing like that on the market, well, maybe MSI 14 Prestige - but this thing has single fan with CPU and GPU daisy chained to it, there is no way that's going to work under some combined load.

Enjoy it!

Thanks for the review.

I stayed with Apple (16" MBP), but still lurk here and am glad you are finding W10 laptops you can tweak to suit your needs.

It's precisely because I do not know the under-the-hood and common settings of w10 that I haven't jumped. What learning I do now has to be for work.

I do like Razer's products and may pick up a Raptor display next year (or whenever there might be a sale).

Anyway, may it be wonderful for you.

EDIT: My arthritis forced the return of the MBP. Not a laptop person no matter how hard I try. I love that PC makers are forcing Apple to get back on the right track. I will wait to see if Apple continues this trend.

 

[SteveJUAE]

Review: Late 2019 Razer Blade Stealth

The Late 2019 Razer Blade Stealth is an awesome ultrabook that can play games!

www.theeverydayenthusiast.com

He didn’t unlock his Bios, said it is a review unit and didn’t want to brick it.

Thanks for the link

I did briefly look at the stealth as they are available over here, but opted for the new Blade 15" Studio edition for a bit of fun as MS let me down and skipped updating the SB2

Like the reviewer I also spoke to Hidevolution but their prices start 10% higher which is $400 on the the blade and that's before any re-pasting etc and still only a 12 month warranty, but I do not doubt their expertise and service, I spoke directly with Donald there.

The Blade 15 you can alter fan speed manually but other than that and other synapse settings I do not intend to fiddle

BTW the KB is slightly different to the stealth and the right shift is larger and there is a function key right of the arrow key

 

[Thysanoptera]

I think I came across some blurb about Razer's laptops doing this. I'm not sure its limited to the stealth. Still I can see in some circumstances this being a bit of a pain

I'm pretty sure this charger doesn't provide 100W. Blade 15 came with 180W and this is the maximum it pulls form the wall when I stress test it with low battery, the laptop gets much less. I'll check it when I get back home.

Anyway, may it be wonderful for you.

Thank you very much! I hope the Macbook will work for you, I had an impulse to buy it but somehow resisted.

The Blade 15 you can alter fan speed manually but other than that and other synapse settings I do not intend to fiddle

BTW the KB is slightly different to the stealth and the right shift is larger and there is a function key right of the arrow key

I have the Base Blade 15 also, I'm looking for ways to get rid of synapse. There is a tool on github to control keyboard lights - although no individual keys, that would be enough for me, with power limits removed I don't have to rely on Synapse's performance modes. It boggles my mind how much CPU time this POS uses, spread over multiple executable, services and WSH scripts.

 

[soulreaver99]

Agree with above post. Synapse is garbage. It turns all their good hardware to crap. My razer nari was working fine until I decided to install the synapse to change the RGB and it somehow made the mic sound horrible. On an old stealth it caused a lot of stability issues. After uninstalling, everything worked fine again!

 

[kazmac]

Wow sorry to hear the Synapse software is so troublesome.

@SteveJUAE Congrats on the Studio edition. May it serve you well.

 

[maflynn]

It boggles my mind how much CPU time this POS uses,

Agreed, on paper its a great idea but its execution is poor.