Blade 15 2019 Base Model vs. Advanced

Yunox
Why does the advanced model (fhd 144hz, 512gb) has the older 8th gen i7 while the base model has the newer 9th gen i7. As well as the base model has the option of connecting a gigabit ethernet cable and the advanced model dont.

Advanced 144Hz you’re looking at is early 2019 model, this model comes with 8th gen cpu. Base Model you’re looking at is mid 2019 version, on mid 2019 other Blade, 15 and Pro comes with 9th gen cpu. The performance difference between those two gen cpu isn’t huge imo. Advanced model has slightly thinner cassis that may be the reason why there’s no Ethernet port, beside bigger battery and huge vapor chamber take also room inside that thin cassis.

Yunox
Is the more powerful battery, better cooling (vapor chamber) and 2070 max-q worth the higher price and compromise of not having a gigabit ethernet and 8th gen i7 instead of 9th gen i7?

I would say yes, cooling is more important on this laptops category. And for gaming better gpu is more important even it’s maybe only roughly around 10%, for some games that need higher vram 8gb on 2070maxq vs 6gb on 2060 is also worth to considering.

I bought the 2019 Base yesterday. After using 6 core MBP and GS65 in the last year, this thing blows them all out of the water when it comes to cooling system performance. I'm amazed. I just removed power limits, and I'm getting 3150 in CB20, but the max temperature is only 78C with fans at max, and this is using stock thermal paste. With fans in auto goes to 83C or so. Undervolted by -140mV, the GS65, which is larger and has more complex cooling system gets to 95C and thermally throttles (best score was 2950), and let's not even mention MBP. I just can't believe my own eyes. The GPU maxes out at 60C @ 80W and about 65W @ 90W while running Valley, with fans at max. The GS65 with its dual fan/dual exhaust GPU cooler is actually hotter in this benchmark, while still limited to 80W only. I bought the base because I needed 2.5 inch bay, I need all the storage I can get, so it has Micron 7.8 TB SSD in it. The screen is flawless, no backlight bleed, could be a little brighter. Reading reviews, even the ones form notebookcheck or so, the Blades were always at the bottom of CPU benchmarks, listed as hot and loud. How the hell? Like notebookcheck has the 2018 Base throttling to score of 860 in CB15, while mine holds 1294 at max turbo forever with good 25C to spare. To be honest I don't understand the idea behind the vapor chamber in a laptop, and I can't imagine the Advanced model being any better thermally. Vapor chamber is used to spread the heat exchange across large surface area, but in laptop you're limited by tiny heatsinks, so the main engine of heat exchange - the phase change, still occurs in the small area above the heatsink, the size of a heat pipe, and the whole giant vapor chamber area is wasted. And the cooling system in the Base, consisting of just couple of heatpipes, is just amazingly efficient. Regarding the Base vs Advanced for gaming, I'd say if you need battery life - go with Advanced, if you need storage - go with Base. If you don't care go with the cheaper one. I don't think you can go wrong with either of them, the difference between 2070MQ and 90W 2060 will be small, I'm getting 17000 firestrike graphics score, to feel a difference you'd need to go with 2080 and that will cause the price to skyrocket.

Thysanoptera
I bought the 2019 Base yesterday. After using 6 core MBP and GS65 in the last year, this thing blows them all out of the water when it comes to cooling system performance. I'm amazed. I just removed power limits, and I'm getting 3150 in CB20, but the max temperature is only 78C with fans at max, and this is using stock thermal paste. With fans in auto goes to 83C or so. Undervolted by -140mV, the GS65, which is larger and has more complex cooling system gets to 95C and thermally throttles (best score was 2950), and let's not even mention MBP. I just can't believe my own eyes. The GPU maxes out at 60C @ 80W and about 65W @ 90W while running Valley, with fans at max. The GS65 with its dual fan/dual exhaust GPU cooler is actually hotter in this benchmark, while still limited to 80W only. I bought the base because I needed 2.5 inch bay, I need all the storage I can get, so it has Micron 7.8 TB SSD in it. The screen is flawless, no backlight bleed, could be a little brighter. Reading reviews, even the ones form notebookcheck or so, the Blades were always at the bottom of CPU benchmarks, listed as hot and loud. How the hell? Like notebookcheck has the 2018 Base throttling to score of 860 in CB15, while mine holds 1294 at max turbo forever with good 25C to spare. To be honest I don't understand the idea behind the vapor chamber in a laptop, and I can't imagine the Advanced model being any better thermally. Vapor chamber is used to spread the heat exchange across large surface area, but in laptop you're limited by tiny heatsinks, so the main engine of heat exchange - the phase change, still occurs in the small area above the heatsink, the size of a heat pipe, and the whole giant vapor chamber area is wasted. And the cooling system in the Base, consisting of just couple of heatpipes, is just amazingly efficient. Regarding the Base vs Advanced for gaming, I'd say if you need battery life - go with Advanced, if you need storage - go with Base. If you don't care go with the cheaper one. I don't think you can go wrong with either of them, the difference between 2070MQ and 90W 2060 will be small, I'm getting 17000 firestrike graphics score, to feel a difference you'd need to go with 2080 and that will cause the price to skyrocket.

Last year gs65 was 8750H so higher cinebench on base model with 9750H is expected. Great to know you can move power limit, would you share me how, is it with changing cpu vr core values from bios moding, or is there another way? Concerning vapor chamber, I can only tell from my case having Blade advanced 15 2018 and 14 (which is similar with base heat pipes), on long run without repasting on default factory paste, at first it was great but after a year gaming usage cpu started getting to 90ish areas easily and had to limit Turbo Boost, but on advanced Blade 15 after passing a year gaming usage even with more cores i can manage Turbo Boost always on, cpu demanding titles like far cry 5 etc are exceptional in this case i had to limit cpu tdp by using balanced mode, but it still boost to max 3,9Ghz. Though you’re right from notebookcheck base Blade 2018 Model the cpu Temperature is indeed great doing Witcher 3 gaming stress, I was underestimated the heat pipe cooling, maybe they fixed the heat sink issue from previous Blade 14 which apparently wasn’t properly touching the cpu. However advanced model was firstly announced before base model, so base model heat sink probably revised from old Blade 14 and be prepared quite well to manage this 6 cores cpu.

Joikansai
Last year gs65 was 8750H so higer cinebench on base model with 9750H is expected. Great to know you can move power limit, would you share me how, is it with changing cpu vr core values from bios moding, or is there another way? Concerning vapor chamber, I can only tell from my case having Blade advanced 15 2018 and 14 (which is similar with base heat pipes), on long run without repasting on default factory paste, at first it was great but after a year gaming usage cpu started getting to 90ish areas easily and had to limit Turbo Boost, but on advanced Blade 15 after passing a year gaming usage even with more cores i can manage Turbo Boost always on, cpu demanding titles like far cry 5 etc are exceptional in this case i had to limit cpu tdp by using balanced mode, but it still boost to max 3,9Ghz. Though you’re right from notebookcheck base Blade 2018 Model the cpu Temperature is indeed great doing Witcher 3 gaming stress, I was underestimated the heat pipe cooling, maybe they fixed the heat sink issue from previous Blade 14 which apparently wasn’t properly touching the cpu. However advanced model was firstly announced before base model, so base model heat sink probably revised from old Blade 14 and be prepared quite well to manage this 6 cores cpu.

The 8750H has a turbo clock 100Mhz lower, so it will score lower in ideal conditions. But I don't think there are any architectural changes that would explain such a huge increase in thermal efficiency, looking at benchmarks of other laptops, which were upgraded to 9750h, they score pretty much the same with same temperatures. Thus - I assume that the cooling on the Base Blade is so vastly superior to GS65. To unlock the power limits I just changed the IMON offset in BIOS, to minimum allowed. IMON SLOPE=50, IMON OFFSET=31999, IMON PREFIX="-", same procedure as with GS65. Modded bios of course, to show hidden options. That makes the system think the actual package power is 30+W lower than real one and never throttles the clocks to get there. Undervolt in Throttlestop, actually the 2019 Base comes with -100mV factory undervolt. I had a look at the Blade 14 heatsink - I have exactly the same issue with GS65 as you described. The temperatures go to crap after a while. Common thing - 3 screws on CPU heatplate. On Blade 14 they are at least evenly spread, on GS65 they are asymmetrical, two on one side, one on the other. The end result is I'm getting like 15C spread between even and odd cores after some time. The 2019 Base Blade 15 has proper, solid 4 screws for each CPU and GPU.

Thysanoptera
I bought the 2019 Base yesterday. After using 6 core MBP and GS65 in the last year, this thing blows them all out of the water when it comes to cooling system performance. I'm amazed. I just removed power limits, and I'm getting 3150 in CB20, but the max temperature is only 78C with fans at max, and this is using stock thermal paste. With fans in auto goes to 83C or so. Undervolted by -140mV, the GS65, which is larger and has more complex cooling system gets to 95C and thermally throttles (best score was 2950), and let's not even mention MBP. I just can't believe my own eyes. The GPU maxes out at 60C @ 80W and about 65W @ 90W while running Valley, with fans at max. The GS65 with its dual fan/dual exhaust GPU cooler is actually hotter in this benchmark, while still limited to 80W only. I bought the base because I needed 2.5 inch bay, I need all the storage I can get, so it has Micron 7.8 TB SSD in it. The screen is flawless, no backlight bleed, could be a little brighter. Reading reviews, even the ones form notebookcheck or so, the Blades were always at the bottom of CPU benchmarks, listed as hot and loud. How the hell? Like notebookcheck has the 2018 Base throttling to score of 860 in CB15, while mine holds 1294 at max turbo forever with good 25C to spare. To be honest I don't understand the idea behind the vapor chamber in a laptop, and I can't imagine the Advanced model being any better thermally. Vapor chamber is used to spread the heat exchange across large surface area, but in laptop you're limited by tiny heatsinks, so the main engine of heat exchange - the phase change, still occurs in the small area above the heatsink, the size of a heat pipe, and the whole giant vapor chamber area is wasted. And the cooling system in the Base, consisting of just couple of heatpipes, is just amazingly efficient. Regarding the Base vs Advanced for gaming, I'd say if you need battery life - go with Advanced, if you need storage - go with Base. If you don't care go with the cheaper one. I don't think you can go wrong with either of them, the difference between 2070MQ and 90W 2060 will be small, I'm getting 17000 firestrike graphics score, to feel a difference you'd need to go with 2080 and that will cause the price to skyrocket.

Thanks for Replying! I really dont need that much storage but I really like the battery life and better graphics card. I was searching for the blade at my local dealerships and I just found out that they have the 2080 max-q model for "only" 200€ more than the 2070 max-q model. I was thinking of getting the 2080 one while it has the discount. Maybe you can help me find Benchmarks comparing the Blade 15 2070MQ and the Blade 15 2080MQ so I can find out if it is worth the slightly higher price tag? Thanks in advance

Yunox
Thanks for Replying! Maybe you can help me find Benchmarks comparing the Blade 15 2070MQ and the Blade 15 2080MQ so I can find out if it is worth the slightly higher price tag? Thanks in advance

It’s around 10 to 15% performance advantage for example on same cpu 8750H early 2019 Model from 3Dmark Ranks, it’s probably with some OC, usually graphics score around 18K vs 20K. For €200 difference I would go with 2080maxq, because i always go with better gpu in one model for longer usage like now I use 1070maxq and still don’t feel comfortable upgrading it. https://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/19012473/fs/20037689

Joikansai
It’s around 10 to 15% performance advantage for example on same cpu 8750H early 2019 Model from 3Dmark Ranks, it’s probably with some OC, usually graphics score around 18K vs 20K. For €200 difference I would go with 2080maxq, because i always go with better gpu in one model for longer usage like now I use 1070maxq and still don’t feel comfortable upgrading it. https://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/19012473/fs/20037689

Okay I will consider this and talk to my local dealership this evening. Thanks for all the help!

Joikansai
For €200 difference I would go with 2080maxq, because i always go with better gpu in one model for longer usage like now I use 1070maxq and still don’t feel comfortable upgrading it.

I agree, for 200 it is worth it. One more reason to get it - 2080maxq has larger number of cores and operates at lower clock, silicon is more power efficient at lower clocks - thus it is faster at the same TDP. Since I lock frame rates when gaming this will result in lower temperatures at the same fps as compared to 2060/2070 maxq - more comfortable and quieter.

Thysanoptera
I agree, for 200 it is worth it. One more reason to get it - 2080maxq has larger number of cores and operates at lower clock, silicon is more power efficient at lower clocks - thus it is faster at the same TDP. Since I lock frame rates when gaming this will result in lower temperatures at the same fps as compared to 2060/2070 maxq - more comfortable and quieter.

Okay, I now have the chance of getting the 2070 model in about 2 days (shipping) and the 2080 for 279€ more and 9-10 (days shipping). I am so damn bad at decisions