The new Aorus 15 gaming laptop is packing some powerful specs in a small package, but
just how hot does it get with Intel’s latest 9750H CPU? I’ll be taking a detailed look
at the thermals and overclocking, and seeing how much we can improve performance by undervolting,
changing fan speed and using a cooling pad.
I’ve got the Aorus 15-XA, which means there’s an Intel i7-9750H CPU and Nvidia RTX 2070
graphics, no Max-Q here, however it’s available in a few configurations, you can find some
examples along with updated prices linked in the description.
On the bottom of the laptop we can see we’ve got quite a large air intake vent, so this
should help out when we test with the cooling pad. The rubber feet also seem to be angled
such that they block the hot air being exhausted from coming straight back into the fans, so
cooler air should only be pulled in from the front. There are also quite a few heatpipes
here, and some are shared between both processor and graphics, so a change in one component
will affect the other, for instance if the CPU gets hot the graphics will be affected
as a result.
I’ll also briefly talk about Gigabyte’s new AI feature that comes with their new laptops.
It’s been updated to include three modes, AI Edge, and two cloud options, AI Download
and AI Download and Upload. AI Edge processes data locally to make the best decisions in
terms of what to change like power limits and clock speeds, while the AI Cloud settings
get data from Microsoft Azure. The download only option is new, and rather than sending
your data to the cloud to improve the service it only downloads profiles to help it run
better. The download and upload one on the other hand will submit data though. All tests
had AI disabled, except where explicitly mentioned.
The Aorus control center software allows you to choose between five levels of CPU power
levels and two for the GPU. The CPU settings boost the maximum TDP between these levels,
while GPU level 0 is stock and level 1 boosts the core clock by 140MHz and memory by 70MHz.
Any time you press the fan button on the keyboard to boost fan speed GPU mode 1 is automatically
engaged, overclocking the graphics. For the purposes of this video, when maximum fan speed
is mentioned I’m running the CPU at level 4 for the highest limit, and GPU at level
1. While at default stock levels I’m running the CPU at level 2 and GPU at level 0.
Thermal testing was completed with an ambient temperature of 21 degrees Celsius, expect
different results in different environments.
There’s a lot of data here, CPU temperatures are shown by the blue bars and GPU temperatures
are shown by the green bars. We’re looking at combined CPU and GPU load here, so both
are fully loaded as a worst case. The gaming tests towards the upper half of the graph
were tested by playing Watch Dogs 2, as I find it to use a good amount of combined processor
and graphics resources. The stress tests were tested by running the Aida64 CPU stress test
and Heaven GPU benchmark at the same time to fully load the system. This isn’t meant
to show typical performance, the worst case results allow you to compare with my previous
testing.
The idle temperatures down the bottom are looking fine. Let’s start with the stress
tests. At stock the CPU is thermal throttling at 96 degrees Celsius while the GPU was thermal
throttling at 92. Even with a -0.15v undervolt to the CPU we’re not seeing changes to temperatures,
however we’ll see how clock speeds were affected in the next graph. If we max out
the fan the GPU temperatures drop back to 86, though hardware info still lists it as
thermal throttling. With the CPU undervolt applied too the CPU is now thermal throttling
intermittently rather than constantly, and if we add on the Thermaltake Massive 20 cooling
pad the CPU temperature drops by 9 degrees, though no change in temperatures to the GPU.
Moving up to the gaming results again there was thermal throttling with the fan at default
speed. I’ll also note that for the gaming tests I’m undervolting the CPU and GPU rather
than just the CPU only, in the stress tests I didn’t test with the GPU undervolt due
to reasons. Anyway in most cases both are still running quite hot. The AI settings didn’t
appear to help in this game, I got the same thermals as running the machine at stock with
the default fan speed. In the past the AI would control the fan speed, in this case
it didn’t touch it and the fan speed remained unchanged, resulting in the temperatures we’ve
got here. The best results are seen right up the top, when the fan is at maximum, CPU
and GPU are undervolted, and the cooling pad is in use.
These are the average clock speeds for the same tests just shown. If we start with the
stress tests down the bottom, we can see the GPU is downclocking quite a bit to keep cool,
same with the CPU. With the -0.15v CPU undervolt we can boost average clock speed by 450MHz
over all 6 cores. Simply by boosting the fan speed we almost see a similar improvement
to CPU performance, but also to the graphics as this helps reduce the thermal throttling.
With the CPU undervolt applied in combination with the fans maxed out we’re basically
reaching the full 4.0GHz all core turbo boost speed of the i7-9750H CPU. With the cooling
pad added despite thermal throttling still being reported on the GPU as we saw before,
the clock speed does rise a bit now, and the CPU is now solid at 4GHz.
In the gaming tests we can see the clock speed increase with the GPU undervolts, as this
helps reduce the thermal throttling taking place. The CPU undervolt is also seeing us
get pretty much full performance, even without resorting to boosting the fan speed, which
is good because as you’ll hear soon it gets pretty loud. The AI settings, like we saw
in the temperatures, are performing similar to the stock settings, again this seems to
be due to the AI feature not controlling fan speed for some reason, so hopefully that will
be updated in future, I’m pretty sure the old model did it. Up the top we’re getting
the best result in terms of clock speed with CPU and GPU undervolted and the cooling pad
in use, as this was the only test the GPU was no longer thermal throttling the clock
speed is the highest out of all results.
These are the clock speeds I got while just running CPU only stress tests without any
GPU load. As mentioned earlier there are 5 different levels in the Aorus control center
software that control CPU TDP, so these are the clock speeds we’re able to achieve with
each. With the 62 watt limit at level 4 we’re only just below the full 4.0GHz boost speed
of the 9750H, the undervolt gets us all the way though. These are the temperatures for
the same tests just shown. As the TDP increases, resulting in higher clock speed, so do the
temperatures. The undervolt provided a massive improvement here of about 15 degrees, while
also performing the best. Here are the average CPU TDPs from these tests, so the undervolt
puts us around the power usage of level 1 with similar temperatures, but with 500MHz
of extra performance over all 6 cores.
To demonstrate how this translates into performance I’ve got some Cinebench CPU benchmarks here.
There’s no difference in single core as that’s not enough to trigger throttling,
though even in the best case with the CPU undervolted and no restrictions I was still
seeing similar scores to the 8750H. I will be comparing these two CPUs in a future video
though, so make sure you’re subscribed for that. Here’s what we’re looking at in
Cinebench R20, until I have more data from other laptops I’ll keep including results
from both.
Here are the GPU only clock speeds while under a graphical only stress test. Just as a reminder,
the GPU 0 setting in the Aorus control center software is default, while GPU 1 overclocks
the core by 140MHz. With my crappy undervolt I was getting similar speeds to at default,
and when we check the temperatures the thermal throttling was removed with this though it
only lowered by one degree under this workload. Given it’s thermal throttling at both levels
0 and 1 at the same temperature, the clock speeds in the previous graph are likely not
accurate. It does seem a bit strange that even with the fan maxed out the GPU is thermal
throttling under GPU only stress test, but I suppose it is the full fat 2070 and this
is the first laptop I’ve had with it, so I don’t really know what the normal is there.
So how does these performance boosts actually translate into games? I’ve tested with the
exact same Windows, Nvidia and game updates installed.
Far Cry 5 was tested using the built in benchmark at 1080p with ultra settings. Down the bottom
I tested with both the CPU and GPU maxed out in the Aorus control center software, the
only difference was one was with the fan at default speed and the other at maximum. This
simple change gave 9% higher FPS as it helps reduce thermal throttling. I’ll note that
the AI settings in themselves do not modify fan speed, as covered earlier, though I think
they should, but I tested with the fan maxed out to try and show best case performance
with them, though as we can see it’s basically the same as not using it. The results up the
top with the manual undervolting gave us the best performance.
As for the external temperatures where you’ll actually be putting your hands, at idle it
was about average in the low 30s. While gaming it gets to the mid 40s in the center, a little
warm but definitely not hot feeling. With the stress tests running it’s a little cooler,
with noticeably cooler WASD keys.
As for the fan noise produced by the laptop, I’ll let you have a listen to some of these
tests.
At idle it was quiet, however the fan was making this sort of pulsating noise. With
the stress tests running or gaming it was about average compared to other gaming laptops,
but when we hit the fan button to max it out it gets very loud. Normally I like at least
having the option of raising fan speed, however in this case there doesn’t seem to be granular
control, I wasn’t able to adjust it like in previous models, so it seems to either
be all or nothing in terms of fan speed.
In general the Aorus 15-XA runs fairly hot, at least in my top end configuration here
with full 2070 and 9750H, I’d expect others to run a bit cooler. Even with undervolting
we didn’t really improve temperatures by that much, however this did significantly
improve the performance. It’s worth noting that we’re able to boost the power limits
over the CPUs specified 45 watt TDP rating though. Many laptops don’t give us the option
and perform worse as a result, though the trade off to this increased performance is
of course higher temperatures, so it’s good the Aorus is equipped with such powerful fans.
The only downside of those powerful fans is at this time they don’t seem to give you
the ability to customize the fan speed like with other models, hopefully that changes
in the future.
In most cases once undervolted we’re able to get the full 4.0GHz all core turbo boost
speed from the 9750H CPU even under worst case combined CPU and GPU load, which I think
is pretty good given there are other laptops that cannot hit full boost speed under these
tests. In my tests the AI didn’t seem to do much, so I’d just stick to undervolting
and if you can put up with the extra fan noise, boosting the fan speed also.
I’ll also note that despite the power of the 9750H and MaxP 2070 the battery never
drained at any point with the 230 watt power brick in use.
These differences in performance shown aren’t hard and fast rules, there are different factors
which will vary results, primarily the temperature of the room you’re running in, application
of thermal paste, and even the specific hardware which comes down to the silicon lottery. You
may not be able to undervolt or overclock your hardware the same as me, it depends on
the chip and its specific power requirements, so don’t just blindly copy my settings and
do some testing to find out where your stable point is for best results.
It may be possible to further improve temperatures by swapping the thermal paste, however as
this is a review unit that I have to send back I’m not able to change the paste, otherwise
the next reviewer will unknowingly report different results due to what I’ve done.
Undervolting, raising the fan speed or even just using a cooling pad to improve air flow
is much easier for most people to do, and as we've seen these did improve performance
in the Aorus 15.
Let me know how much of a performance boost you’ve found by undervolting your hardware
and what you thought of the improvements here, and course don’t forget to subscribe for
the full review of the Aorus 15 gaming laptop, as well as future tech videos like this one.