Stealth: overheating, coil whine?

I've heard concerning stuff about those two things. Did you experience them with your own unit? Should I wait for the 2020 model?

 

No and no, but I have undervolted my CPU and swapped the SSD right out of box.

 

The coil whine is real. A BIOS update can help mitigate it, but may impact CPU performance a small amount. I've just gotten used to it. I haven't experienced any issues with overheating, nor really read anything about it in any of the major reviews. The issue most have focused on is the CPU being power-limit throttled (not thermal throttled).

 

I'm such a noob at computers, I have no idea what undervolting is or how you do it. Is the Stealth not a great choice if you don't know how to change a few things here and there?

 

You’ll learn that later, but Blade stealth is low powered cpu (15 watt) so basically you don’t have to undervolte it. Undervolting is a tweak to low cpu voltage offset to gain better temperature and performance due more better temperature, especially needed on gaming laptops like Blade 15 (45Watt cpu) to handle nowadays cpu hunger games, since intel packed more powerful cpu and more cores on same chip that didn’t change since 2016, 14 nm chips. So for low ultra voltage cpu like on stealth you don’t need this and that.

 

I created a little guide to optimizing the Blade Stealth here. None of the tweaks are required, but you might find it helpful in deciding what you're comfortable doing.

 

While the 8565U is already an low volt CPU, I still chose to undervolt as well as to tweak some settings, because the fans on Stealth accelerates very slowly if after you start an CPU intensive task.

By undervolting, or more advanced, lowering PL2 wattage with Throttlestop just a little bit (from 40W to 38W), you can significantly lower CPU temperature spike, avoiding the Stealth from hitting thermal throttles.

By the way, I mentioned SSD swap, because from past experience, a lot of coil whine acutally comes from storage. It doen't necessary mean that the stock SSD is bad, it's just that coil whine tend to happen when electricity goes through it under certain frequency. Swapping to another one will usually prevent it from happening. Replacing 256GB storage to a 1TB storage is a value upgrade anyways.

 

This is all very interesting and I'm thankful for your replies.
You seem to play graphic intensive games like Shadow of the Tomb Raider though. I intend to only use the Stealth to play SC2 after university, and it should be my most demanding task on this device. Does it dampen the negatives of it ?

 

Check the cpu and gpu gaming temperature and see average temperature like using hardware monitor software like HWinfo64 (sensor), if it doesn’t go to throttle areas like 90ish you’re good.

 

Shadow of Tomb Raider is a good indicator to show how well a laptop performs. However this laptop is not build to run those kinds of game.. it's playable, with sacrifice in quality.
The Stealth runs games like sc2 and dota2 (what with play) ease though. If this is your only computer, I would suggest you invest in a good set of keyboard/mouse for desk use.