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- Joined
- 31 Mar 2012
- Posts
- 1,737
Hi all, bought my first Razer (Blade 15 Mercury White - i7 9750H, GTX 2070 Max Q) in mid Feb this year from Razer store in Vegas (I know, a bit rash as I don't live in the USA, I am based in the UK - but the discount and excitement got to me). Wasn't able to buy Razercare or extended warranty of any kind as they only issue 1 year international warranty.
I was getting repeated BSODs from day 1. These WHEA errors and BSODs persisted despite several clean windows reinstalls and even appeared as corrected hardware errors (by the CPU) in Linux.
So eventually had to RMA the unit to be repaired. They replaced the nvme SSD with a Samsung unit and giving the laptop some deep scratches on the metal body for added displeasure.
After getting the device back, the BSOD issue is still happening and I think I have discovered the problem. BSODs only occur at idle (both on battery and on AC power) and there are huge numbers of corrected hardware errors on system logs (up to 5-10 per second). My Blade 15 comes with a factory undervolt of -100mV on CPU and cache. That appears to be hardcoded via the bios. All stress testing, benchmarks, memory testing is fine.
When I use Throttlestop to reduce the undervolt, the number of corrected hardware errors in Win10 system logs reduce. There are no corrected hardware errors with no undervolt in place and much less with a smaller undervolt of up to -50mV. The issue with reducing the undervolt is that the CPU runs exceptionally hot in high performance mode - up to 95-100C even with full fan speed when running even mild benchmarks like Firestrike. This results in massive CPU throttling and poor performance.
Not really sure where to go from here as I am not able to really use this Blade 15 as intended without tweaking and when I tweak it with Throttlestop, it turns into effectively a lower end device performance-wise as the thermals are poor.
What would you do in this scenario? Ask for a new CPU? A new laptop? Persist with sending it back and forth to Razer? I haven't repasted the CPU yet. Considering some TG Cryonaut but not sure whether that will void any warranty.
To be fair, Razer support is ok if a little slow through submitting tickets and they returned the device within 10 days. Re: the scratches, they offered to give me a mouse for free (deathaddder v2) as compensation. Not sure I'll be buying another Razer device based on the above as it shows poor stability testing from the outset but the quality of the product could be great if they took more care.
I was getting repeated BSODs from day 1. These WHEA errors and BSODs persisted despite several clean windows reinstalls and even appeared as corrected hardware errors (by the CPU) in Linux.
So eventually had to RMA the unit to be repaired. They replaced the nvme SSD with a Samsung unit and giving the laptop some deep scratches on the metal body for added displeasure.
After getting the device back, the BSOD issue is still happening and I think I have discovered the problem. BSODs only occur at idle (both on battery and on AC power) and there are huge numbers of corrected hardware errors on system logs (up to 5-10 per second). My Blade 15 comes with a factory undervolt of -100mV on CPU and cache. That appears to be hardcoded via the bios. All stress testing, benchmarks, memory testing is fine.
When I use Throttlestop to reduce the undervolt, the number of corrected hardware errors in Win10 system logs reduce. There are no corrected hardware errors with no undervolt in place and much less with a smaller undervolt of up to -50mV. The issue with reducing the undervolt is that the CPU runs exceptionally hot in high performance mode - up to 95-100C even with full fan speed when running even mild benchmarks like Firestrike. This results in massive CPU throttling and poor performance.
Not really sure where to go from here as I am not able to really use this Blade 15 as intended without tweaking and when I tweak it with Throttlestop, it turns into effectively a lower end device performance-wise as the thermals are poor.
What would you do in this scenario? Ask for a new CPU? A new laptop? Persist with sending it back and forth to Razer? I haven't repasted the CPU yet. Considering some TG Cryonaut but not sure whether that will void any warranty.
To be fair, Razer support is ok if a little slow through submitting tickets and they returned the device within 10 days. Re: the scratches, they offered to give me a mouse for free (deathaddder v2) as compensation. Not sure I'll be buying another Razer device based on the above as it shows poor stability testing from the outset but the quality of the product could be great if they took more care.
