Gigabyte have redesigned the Aero 15 laptop and are claiming that this results in 30%
better cooling when compared against the older model, so let’s put the new Aero to the
test and find out just how hot it gets.
The new Aero 15 laptop is available in different configurations, my model has the Intel i7-9750H
CPU, Nvidia RTX 2070 Max-Q graphics, and 16gb of memory running in dual channel, so expect
different results with different specs. It’s also available with 8 core overclockable CPU
and from GTX 1660 Ti graphics all the way up to RTX 2080 Max-Q, you can find examples
and updated prices linked in the description.
On the bottom of the laptop we’ve got a nice large mesh area towards the back for
air intake, while the back rubber feet are sort of angled which I think may help reduce
them sucking the hot exhaust straight back in. Unlike the old Aero, the new model also
has air exhausts on the left and right hand sides towards the back, along with additional
air vents above the keyboard, otherwise air is still pulled in through the keyboard too.
In terms of heatpipes we’ve got more compared to the older Aero, which as we can see here
just had two shared pipes. On top of that Gigabyte have stated that they’re using
Thermal Grizzly hydronaut thermal paste, which should hopefully be better than most of the
others out there using who knows what. All in all, we’re looking at some nice cooling
upgrades compared to the older Aero 15, which if you saw my older thermal testing video
would severely thermal throttle under these tests.
The Gigabyte control center software allows us to set the CPU between 5 different levels
of power, and the GPU between two levels, as defined here. Throughout this testing I’ve
tested the stock settings with the CPU at level 2 and GPU at level 0 with the fans on
the normal profile. Here’s what the default fan curve of the normal profile looks like,
so we’re not even getting to 70% max speed and expect it to run warmer but quieter as
a result, however you can of course customize the curve. When testing with maximum fan speed
however, I’ve boosted the CPU to level 4 and the GPU to level 1 for highest levels
of performance, so up to 62 watts on the CPU and 90 watts on the GPU, thermals permitting
of course.
Gigabyte also have their AI feature, which basically automatically controls these power
limits based on the workload being run. The idea is that you just enable the AI and over
time it learns what you do with the machine and then you don’t need to go through and
constantly change these settings around yourself.
Thermal testing was completed in an ambient room temperature of 21 degrees Celsius, so
expect different results in different environments. Let’s start with the idle results, so the
machine is just sitting there doing nothing. With the normal fan profile the fans were
slightly audible, so it’s a little cooler, while the quiet profile made it completely
silent so the temperatures were a bit warmer as a result.
These results are from combined CPU and GPU workloads and are meant to represent worst
case scenarios as I ran them for extended periods of time.
The gaming results towards the upper half of the graph were tested by playing Watch
Dogs 2, as I find it to use a good combination of processor and graphics. The stress test
results shown on the lower half of the graph are from running the Aida64 CPU stress test
with only the stress CPU option checked, and the Heaven GPU benchmark at max settings at
the same time to fully load the system.
Let’s start with the stress test results, at stock with the normal fan profile we’re
thermal throttling on the CPU, and this happens basically any time the blue CPU bar is at
90 degrees Celsius. When we max out the fan the CPU is still thermal throttling, however
the GPU lowers back a bit despite now receiving more power, but we’ll see in the next graph
how clock speeds were affected. By applying a -0.18v undervolt to the CPU it’s still
thermal throttling, and if we instead use a cooling pad with no undervolt that’s still
the case. Only when we combine the undervolt with the cooling pad did we finally completely
remove thermal throttling under this workload.
The gaming tests were thermal throttling on the CPU in a similar manner, however interestingly
with the AI in use plus maximum fan speed the CPU temperature dropped down a fair bit.
Otherwise just the CPU undervolt was also enough to remove the thermal throttling with
this particular game, and when combined with the cooling pad we saw quite a large improvement.
These are the average clock speeds for the same tests just shown. With the CPU set to
the default level 2 we’re seeing lower CPU performance, both in the stress test and gaming
test. Setting the fan speed to maximum helps boost clock speed as the current limitation
is thermal throttling. Interestingly in the gaming tests with AI and the fans at default
speed I saw no real difference compared to without AI, however with the fan at maximum
and AI enabled it was now performing better, though at the same time we’re getting better
performance by just manually setting CPU to maximum power limit.
It’s worth remembering that the point of the AI software is to automatically handle
these changes for us so we don’t have to go around and manually tweak settings. While
it was making an improvement, manually setting things to maximum works out better, but then
you’ll have to keep controlling these options manually, and leaving the Gigabyte control
center software open seemed to use about 13% CPU so you’ll want to close it after making
manual changes.
Almost every time the CPU was undervolted we’re reaching the full 4GHz all core turbo
boost speed of the i7-9750H CPU, with the one exception being in the stress test without
the cooling pad as it was still just thermal throttling in that instance. That’s why
we see a 300MHz improvement with and without the cooling pad in the stress tests, despite
the CPU still thermal throttling at 90 degrees it’s throttling less with the cooling pad.
Alright I know a lot of people in the past have not liked the Gigabyte Aero laptop due
to the thermal throttling, and that’s fair, however despite still thermal throttling in
many of these tests I think we need to take a step back and compare these results to the
older Aero and see how far it’s come. These are the clock speeds I got under the same
workloads a few months ago when I tested the Aero 15 X9 with 8750H and 2070 Max-Q graphics,
so pretty similar specs, though I did also test it with a warmer room temperature.
At stock we’re 1GHz behind on the CPU compared to the new model, and even the best case result
here with undervolting and cooling pad topped out at 3.3GHz, which we could easily get in
the new model just by increasing fan speed. The old model had no chance of hitting the
3.9GHz all core turbo speed in these specific workloads, it was quite far off in fact, while
the new one can at least hit the 4GHz turbo speed with some modifications. Yes the new
Aero still thermal throttles on the CPU under many of these workloads, but you can’t argue
that these are some great improvements over what they had previously.
These are the average TDP values reported by hardware info during these same tests.
Basically we can see the CPU and GPU rise up when we increase from CPU level 2 and GPU
level 0 in the control center software.
These are the average CPU clock speeds while under a CPU only workload. With Aida64 and
just the stress CPU option checked I couldn’t get the full 4GHz turbo boost speed even using
the highest level 4 option for the CPU available through the control center software, however
undervolting or manually boosting the power limit did allow this to get all the way. This
is because it was hitting the 62 watt power limit defined by this mode, so raising the
power limit uses more power to hit the 4GHz clock speed, while undervolting instead requires
less power to do so. This reflects in the thermals, where more power equals more heat.
We’re getting a higher temperature by taking the approach of boosting power limit, whereas
undervolting is cooler than using CPU level 2.
To demonstrate how this translates into performance I’ve got some Cinebench CPU benchmarks here.
I haven’t bothered testing CPU levels 0-3, so down the bottom we’re starting with level
4, maximum stock performance using the options available through the control center software.
The result wasn’t great, however with some modifications we could get very impressive
performance. With the power limit boost Intel XTU was reporting the CPU as running at 100
watts, and it was thermal throttling in this test. Undervolting instead of touching the
power limit gave a better score, but when combining the two a 3100 score was possible,
so this just goes to show that we can push the CPU power limit higher manually which
will be useful for intensive CPU workloads.
So how do these performance boosts actually translate into games? I’ve tested Far Cry
5 with the built in benchmark at 1080p. At the bottom we’ve got the default settings
the laptop comes with, which are still outperforming the 81 FPS the old Aero with same GPU but
8750H got in this test. The AI mode did actually improve on this, however it’s not going
to beat us setting the max CPU and GPU speeds through the control center software and manually
maxing out the fan. When we undervolt the CPU and boost the power limit we see the best
result, I didn’t do GPU overclocking here as I actually averaged 1 FPS worse performance
with it on as the GPU is always power limit throttled, which is pretty standard with RTX
laptops before undervolting.
As for the external temperatures where you’ll actually be putting your hands, at idle it
was in the low 30s in the center, about average. While gaming with the fan at default speed,
so not even at 70%, we’re reaching the mid 40s in the center however the WASD keys are
noticeably cooler due to the fan below them. Pretty much the same results with the stress
test and fan at normal speed, and then with the fans at maximum it’s not really too
different, which isn’t surprising as the internal temperatures were the same, as we
saw earlier.
As for the fan noise produced by the laptop, I’ll let you have a listen to some of these
tests.
At idle with the quiet profile it was completely silent, while with the normal fan profile
the fans were audible but it was still quiet, and this is why we saw different idle temperatures
earlier between these two modes. With the normal profile whether gaming or under stress
test the fan curve makes the fan run at the same speed, which isn’t even hitting 70%,
so we do at least have the option of making it run quieter at the expense of lower performance.
Otherwise with the fans at maximum it can get quite loud, however I think this is a
good thing considering the high level of granularity that Gigabyte are providing through the control
center software, as it should allow you to customize a sweet spot.
Overall I think these are some nice improvements when compared against the older Aero 15. Yeah
it still thermal throttles in many of the workloads, but the performance is much improved
and with some undervolting and occasional cooling pad use thermal throttling could be
eliminated. It’s worth remembering these tests are meant to be worst case as well,
most people aren’t going to be hammering their machine with full load for hours at
a time. There are of course other machines with these specs that perform better and don’t
quite run as hot, but as you’ve probably heard me talk about in the past the Aero 15
otherwise has a lot to offer if you’re willing to accept this.
It’s worth mentioning that Gigabyte are limiting the CPU to 90 degrees too, if they
did what Dell did in the G5 and let it run up to 100 degrees then we could get a bit
more performance out of it, but personally I’m happy to take the performance hit to
not go above 90.
I’m hoping that the new 17 inch model takes advantage of the extra space and has even
better cooling, hopefully I’ll get to test it out once it’s available. I’d expect
the 8 core model to run hotter, however if you are doing multithreaded work the extra
two cores should still give a nice performance improvement in such workloads.
In the future I think if Gigabyte start undervolting out of the box like we’ve seen Acer do in
the Helios 300 and Razer do in the Blade Pro 17 then it should be in pretty good shape,
ideally if the AI software controlled this dynamically within a known stable range it
could make it much more useful.
The 230 watt power brick that Gigabyte include with the Aero 15 appears to be adequate for
these specs, I was seeing some drain during my testing but it would stop at around the
95% mark which is pretty standard behaviour.
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.
We do at least know that they’re using somewhat decent paste now anyway.
In the past when I changed the paste on my Aero I didn’t see any improvement as it
looked like the thermal interface material wasn’t the bottleneck, but rather the heatpipes
and fans. I think this explains why many people trying liquid metal didn’t see further improvement,
so I’d be very interested to hear how liquid metal goes with the new model.
Undervolting, boosting fan speed, or using a cooling pad are much easier for most people
to do anyway, and as we’ve seen these tweaks did help improve performance of the new Aero
15 laptop.
Let me know what you thought about the thermals from the new Aero 15 laptop down in the comments,
is it still too hot for you or is the performance boost over the old model a good improvement?
If you’re new to the channel you’ll definitely want to get subscribed for the full review
of the new Gigabyte Aero 15 laptop, it’s got a lot of other nice improvements over
the old model.