The Gigabyte Aero 15 X9 is a thin and powerful laptop with some serious specs inside, but
high end hardware in a smaller form factor generally leads to heat and throttling, so
let’s take a look at the thermals and see how we can improve performance using the new
AI feature, undervolting and overclocking.
In my configuration here I’ve got the Intel i7-8750H CPU, but the X9 is also available
with the i9-8950HK. Otherwise the other major heat generating component is the 2070 Max-Q
graphics, and the higher tier Aero 15 Y9 is available with the 2080 Max-Q. I’ll also
be comparing the X9 with the 15X with 1070 Max-Q in a future video, so get subscribed
for that.
Thermal testing was completed with an ambient room temperature of 24 degrees Celsius, so
expect different temperatures in different environments. Also keep in mind there are
heatpipes shared between processor and graphics, so a change in one component may affect the
other.
I’ll also briefly talk about Gigabyte’s new AI feature that comes with the v9 Aero
laptops, so the new ones with RTX graphics. There are two modes, AI Edge and AI Cloud.
AI Edge processes the data locally to make the best decisions in terms of what to change
like fan speeds and power limits, while the AI Cloud setting will send data to Microsoft
and get the best settings for the workload based on other user submitted data, so I’m
expecting it to perform better. Otherwise all other tests had the AI disabled unless
stated otherwise.
Starting down the bottom of the graph at idle, the temperatures were on the warmer side as
the fans were basically silent. The gaming results were tested playing Watch Dogs 2,
as I find it to use a good combination of both processor and graphics. The stress tests
were done by running the Heaven benchmark and the Aida64 stress test at the same time
as a worst case scenario. The CPU was undervolted by -0.12v as denoted by UV on the graph, and
the graphics overclock was with a 90MHz boost to the GPU core.
In every single other test, the CPU was thermal throttling at 90 degrees Celsius, as shown
by the blue bars, while the 2070 Max-Q graphics was thermal throttling in most tests, any
time the green bar was at 86 degrees Celsius. The graphics only stopped thermal throttling
when the fan speed was manually maxed out, and at the top with the Thermaltake Massive
20 cooling pad in use I got the best results.
These are the average clock speeds for the same tests just shown. Let’s start towards
the bottom with the gaming tests. Despite thermal throttling taking place for each of
these tests, there are clock speed differences from the different settings. Both of the AI
settings were giving better performance compared to just running the laptop at stock, however
from what I could tell the AI Cloud setting ran with a higher fan speed, which reduced
thermal throttling, which is why I think it was ahead of the AI Edge results. Either way,
with my manual -0.12v undervolt to the CPU, +90MHz overclock to the graphics and with
the fans manually set to maximum I’m getting a big improvement over both stock and the
AI settings.
With the stress tests it’s worth noting that with the fan on stock but graphics overclocked
I saw the worst GPU performance so far, it was already thermal throttling so this basically
makes it worse until we boost the fan speed. At the top of the graph with our best case
result using the cooling pad the 8750H was 500MHz from being able to reach the full 3.9GHz
turbo boost speed due to thermal throttling.
Despite the thermal throttling, it’s worth keeping in mind the gaming performance tested
previously was still fairly decent.
These are the clock speeds I got while just running CPU only stress tests without any
GPU load, and we’re seeing higher clockspeeds now as there’s less heat in the system without
the graphics contributing. At stock I was hitting power limit throttling for the first
time rather than thermal throttling. By boosting the power limit with Intel XTU the clock speed
was improved, however this now resulted in thermal throttling, which is why the undervolt
at the top of the graph allows us to hit the full 3.9GHz turbo boost speed of the 8750H.
These are the temperatures for the same tests just shown, and we can see that with the power
limit boosted the 90 degrees Celsius throttling was reached, while the undervolt improved
temperatures by 7 degrees Celsius while also boosting clock speed.
While it was possible to boost the power limit of the CPU, this was not attempted in the
gaming and stress tests shown previously, there’s no point as thermal throttling was
taking place without it, we only need to look at boosting the power limit if we’re hitting
power limit throttling but that wasn’t the case there.
To demonstrate how this translates into performance I’ve got some Cinebench CPU benchmarks.
While it was possible to get full CPU performance in Aida64 with the undervolt only, in Cinebench
I still had power limit throttling at the default 52 watt TDP, so I had to boost it
a bit to almost hit 1200, just a little under what I’d normally expect from an unconstrained
8750H.
Here are the GPU only clock speeds while under a graphical only stress test at stock and
with a 90MHz overclock applied. These are the temperatures from the same tests, no change
with or without the overclock, and not reaching thermal throttling at 86 degrees Celsius as
we saw in the combined CPU and GPU loads earlier.
So how do 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’ve got the results purely from running the laptop at stock. Just above this is with
the fan set to full speed, which gives us the second best performance. The AI Edge and
AI Cloud settings are giving better performance compared to stock with the default fan, but
simply setting the fan to full speed was enough to provide better performance as it helps
reduce the thermal throttling. Finally at the top once the CPU is undervolted by -0.12v
and the graphics overclocked by 90MHz on the core and 400MHz on the memory with the fans
at full we’re getting the best performance, not surprising, I think manually tuned settings
will always win.
As for the external temperatures where you’ll actually be putting your hands, at idle it
was in the low to mid 30s, warmer up the back and cooler over the WASD keys. While gaming
the palmrest and touchpad were still fairly cool, the middle of the keyboard was fairly
warm though, getting to 50 degrees, the WASD keys are still sitting at around 30 though.
Similar deal with the stress test running. The back gets to the high 50s as hot air is
exhausted below the screen, but I don’t think it’s an issue as you don’t rest
your hands there.
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 almost silent, and then while gaming and under stress test with the fans
at default it was actually very quiet, much quieter than most other similarly specced
laptops I’ve tested. With the fans maxed out it was quite a bit louder, now about the
same as many other laptops I’ve tested, and as we saw earlier the fan boost improves
CPU and GPU clock speeds by a fair bit.
Overall my Aero 15 X9 is a hot machine, although at stock the fans aren’t actually that loud,
and as we’ve seen performance is negatively affected as a result, and this is with the
i7-8750H and 2070 Max-Q, the Y9 is available with i9-8950HK and 2080 Max-Q, so I’d be
interested in seeing how that goes in the same body.
I didn’t personally see much improvement with the AI feature either, as we saw before
I was able to get much better results with my own simple tweaks, though of course most
people probably won’t be doing that. Compared to running at stock with AI disabled I was
seeing some improvements with the AI, but better results were had by simply maxing out
the fan which is something anyone can easily do. I think in future as different workloads
are learned it may improve over time, it could just be that the AI isn’t currently optimized
to best handle the workloads that I was testing, especially the AI Edge setting, as I presume
that learns from my behaviour whereas AI Cloud has more data to work with.
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 I’m not able to try that. If I change the paste the next reviewer
will unknowingly report incorrect thermal results due to what I’ve done. I have swapped
the thermal paste on my personal Aero 15X, although I didn’t personally see a difference
there, and many people who have gone to liquid metal have also noted minimal changes, so
it may just be the case that the cooler isn’t sufficient to dissipate the heat, regardless
of the contact material between the chips and heatpipes.
In any case, undervolting and raising the fan speed is much easier for anyone to do,
and as we've seen it did improve performance in this laptop.
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 don’t forget to subscribe for the full
review of the Gigabyte Aero 15 X9 laptop, as well as future tech videos like this one.