The Aorus 17 is a thicker gaming laptop with an 8 core overclocked i9 CPU and RTX 2080
graphics inside, but high end specs usually equals high levels of heat, so what sort of
performance and temperatures we are looking at? In this testing I’ll take a detailed
look at thermals and see how much we can improve performance with some simple changes.
I’ve got the highest specced version of the Aorus 17 which includes 8 core overclocked
i9-9980HK CPU, 200w Nvidia RTX 2080 graphics, and 32gb of memory in dual channel. You can
find other configurations and updated prices linked in the description.
Air is pulled in from underneath through the mesh area towards the back, it’s also pulled
in from the vents above the keyboard and through the keyboard. Air is then exhausted out of
the back left and right vents, and from the vents on the left and right hand sides at
the back. Inside we’ve got 5 heatpipes in total, two of which are shared between the
processor and graphics. The CPU and GPU dies are cooled with a vapor chamber which is below
the heatpipes, and these go out to two 12V fans that are attached to large heatsinks.
As you can probably imagine, these specs need some serious power, and that’s why there
are two 330 watt power bricks needed to power it.
The Aorus Control Center software allows us to set the CPU between 6 different power levels.
I found that all 8 cores were always overclocked to 5GHz regardless of the power level set.
The highest level 5 mode sets 100 watts for PL1, however we can manually boost this higher
too with software like Intel XTU. The GPU can be changed between two levels, however
I didn’t find this to actually make any practical changes, it would run up to 200
watts in either mode and no overclocking was being done, so not sure if that’s a bug.
The control center software also offers three default fan curves, quiet, normal and gaming.
We also have the option of manually customizing our own fan curve with a fair level of granularity,
however I’ve just tested with either the default normal mode, or with the fans manually
set to max speed. You can quickly enable max fan speed by holding the function key and
pressing escape, which has the fan icon on it.
Thermal testing was completed in an ambient room temperature of 21 degrees Celsius, so
expect different results in different environments.
At idle the temperatures were on the warmer side, but realistically this isn’t a problem.
The rest of the 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.
The CPU was thermal throttling any time it was averaging 95 degrees Celsius, which was
happening with most of the stress tests and during two of the gaming tests. The GPU was
also thermal throttling while gaming with the fan curve set to silent, which is to be
expected as a quieter system comes at the trade off of heat and less performance.
I’ve tested the first stress test with the CPU on the default level 1 setting and GPU
on level 0 with the normal fan curve. If we leave the fan curve the same, but boost the
power limits to maximum, temperatures go up, makes sense, more power equals more heat.
If we then change the fan to max speed the GPU temperature lowers by 10 degrees, however
the CPU was still thermal throttling. Applying a -0.12v undervolt to the CPU didn’t really
affect thermals, and adding a cooling pad only helped a little with the GPU temperature,
again the CPU was still thermal throttling at 95 degrees in this worst case workload.
Setting the fan to max speed with this particular game running was enough to remove the thermal
throttle, but this will of course vary by game.
These are the average clock speeds for the same tests just shown. Regardless of setting
level, the GPU clock speed shown by the green bars didn’t really change much. Under stress
test from the lowest setting to best it improved by 50MHz, though while gaming it was closer
to a 100MHz improvement, but to be fair it was only much lower in silent mode as that
was thermal throttling on the GPU, and I didn’t test silent with the stress tests.
The CPU clock speeds were the lowest with level 1 enabled, which is expected as this
caps the power limit to 52 watts, however in the stress test changing to the highest
level 5 didn’t change much due to thermal throttling. This is why setting the fan to
max speed saw a massive improvement to the CPU clock speed, as its helping reduce the
throttling. The CPU undervolt helped some more, and then the cooling pad was just icing
on the cake and didn’t make too much further difference.
If you recall gaming with the silent fan curve was thermal throttling on both the CPU and
GPU, so simply going to normal fan improved clock speeds to both. We then see improvements
to clock speed as the power limit is raised, which then triggers thermal throttling on
the CPU again, which is why max fan speed further boosts performance, with the best
result of 4.4GHz being hit with best case settings. It’s worth considering that this
is over 8 cores, so that’s a pretty good result given many 6 core i7 laptops I test
struggle to hit their max 4GHz boost speed in these same workloads.
These are the average TDP values during these same tests. We can see the CPU power limit
change as we increase from level 1 to 5, and then rise further as cooling improves to help
lower the amount of throttling. The max 200 watts for the 2080 was being reached in all
stress test results, however it would seem that this particular game simply doesn’t
benefit from more GPU power.
Here are the CPU clock speeds while under a CPU only stress test, so the GPUs idle.
I’ve tested all 6 power levels that are controlled through the Aorus control center
software. Even when I manually boost the power limit above the 100 watt maximum of level
5 and apply an undervolt we’re maxing out at 4.7GHz. Thermals weren’t the limitation,
I ran these tests with the fan at the same max speed, so overall they’re on the cooler
side and not getting too hot. Power limits weren’t the show stopper either. By manually
boosting the power limit to something high like 200 watts with Intel XTU it peaked at
135 in this particular workload. The limit was actually current limit throttling even
with the undervolt applied, which I thought was strange behaviour given both 330 watt
power bricks were connected.
Here are some Cinebench results to see how this translates into performance. For reference,
a best case 6 core i7-9750H can get to around 3000 points or so, which is easily beat even
with level 1 on the Aorus 17. With the CPU undervolted and power limit increased the
best I could hit was just above 4400, which is quite good when we remember this is a laptop.
Just for comparison, here’s how the best results compare against some other 8 core
machines that I’ve recently tested, with a good i7 score down the bottom for comparison.
It’s not quite as good as the larger and thicker machines ahead of it which I think
is expected.
I’ve also tested Shadow of the Tomb Raider with the game’s built in benchmark tool
with different fan modes, and even at max settings with the quiet fan profile it’s
scoring excellent results. Despite thermal throttling in quiet mode, as we saw earlier,
this mode was still achieving fair power limits and clock speeds, so gaming with low fan noise
at the expense of heat and some performance is certainly possible.
If you want to see more gaming benchmarks from the Aorus 17, check the card in the top
right where I’ve tested 20 games in total.
As for the external temperatures where you’ll actually be putting your hands, at idle in
quiet mode it’s around the typical 30 degrees Celsius I usually see. When gaming with the
default normal fan curve and the CPU and GPU at the default lower options the keyboard
area is still completely cool. If I increase the power limits but leave the fans on the
normal profile it gets perhaps just a tiny bit warmer. With the fans at max speed it
gets quite a bit cooler when playing the same game, though as you’ll hear soon it’s
very loud by this point. The results were similar with the CPU and GPU stress tests
running, the keyboard and wrist rest area was always cool to the touch. The back is
only just a little warm, not even hot, not that you need to touch there anyway.
Here’s how the fans sound with these different modes in these same tests.
At idle the fans were very quiet but it was still audible. I only tested gaming with the
silent fan curve, and that was just below 45 decibels. With the default normal fan curve
in use the fans were at 52 decibels both in gaming and while under stress test, which
is quite average when compared against most other gaming laptops I’ve tested. With the
fan set to maximum speed it’s very loud, you’ll definitely want some headphones.
Overall the performance from the Aorus 17 was quite good, however it did run on the
hotter side under worst case stress test even with the fans at super loud speeds. A cooling
pad and undervolting didn’t quite help as much as simply increasing the fan speed of
the machine, and given Gigabyte are giving us quite granular control of the fans it should
be possible to find a sweet spot between total system noise levels and performance. Despite
the internals getting hot, the exterior remained cool to the touch, so they’ve done a great
job of isolating heat from where you’ll rest your hands. Even under worst case load
the RTX 2080 was still able to run up to 200 watts, and we've already seen in the gaming
benchmark video, link in the description, it can smash through any game.
In the end I think the performance is about where I expected. It’s not quite as good
as the thicker options like the MSI GT76 or Alienware 51m, but it’s still offering high
levels of performance while being perhaps a little more portable than those options
- or at least as portable as you can be with two large power bricks. I was a little confused
as to why current limit throttling ended up being the limitation preventing speeds above
4.7GHz in CPU only stress test, but hey these are still pretty good results so I can’t
complain too much. Just don’t expect to hit 5GHz in sustained multicore workloads
even though it’s overclocked to that speed on all cores out of the box. It should be
possible for less core heavy workloads though.
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 improve temperatures by swapping the thermal paste with something
else, say liquid metal, however as this is a borrowed 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.
Raising fan speed, using a cooling pad or undervolting are much easier for most people
to do anyway, and as we’ve seen these tweaks did help improve performance and temperatures
with the Aorus 17.
Let me know what you thought about the thermals from the Aorus 17 gaming laptop down in the
comments, and if you’re new to the channel you’ll definitely want to get subscribed
for the upcoming full review to see everything this machine has to offer.