The all-new Razer Blade Stealth 13

Droglez
Mine does the same thing, but I don't think it's that bad at all. I once in a while hear a very silent "crackling" noise from it. But it's so low that I can barely hear it. Not an issue at all. Your story about the support made laugh. Install windows... Good one!

Just got mine and found that the sound was coming from the speakers not the coils

Droglez
I have done some further investigation, and XTU does not stress CPU very much, no. I tried Cinebench and it ran like a dream. Hitting all cores at around 3,5 GHz and thermals are still amazing. They really did a good job on that. But in conclusion, it's the power adapter limiting the power at this point, which is a little sad, honestly. But I guess one can buy a bigger one. Or..?

Yes it might be. There’s 2 usb c port there you can try adding one from amazon with similar wattage, I think if the cpu and gpu run at full 25 watt it’ll be only 15 Watt for the rest Systems, fans lightning take also quite wattage, this is maybe the reason why some users say that on gaming the battery rundowns when I’m not wrong. I saw also on the video i shared that shows on gaming usage, cpu running on 100% when he’s not limiting FPS and vsync on, it means cpu bottleneck the gpu, idk if it’s performance or power supply though, but performance seemly great. Second possibility it’s on bios locked to some wattages point in order to keep cpu not throttling, power limit throttling is the result, it’s similar with Blade 15, and I don’t really care about this since gaming performance isn’t hugely effected, i personally prefer better temperatures than performance in a gaming laptop.

Droglez
I have done some further investigation, and XTU does not stress CPU very much, no. I tried Cinebench and it ran like a dream. Hitting all cores at around 3,5 GHz and thermals are still amazing. They really did a good job on that. But in conclusion, it's the power adapter limiting the power at this point, which is a little sad, honestly. But I guess one can buy a bigger one. Or..?

Glad I got some more information on your situation. Thank you for using a better stress tool than XTU. I should have specified I wanted XTU for monitoring only. This may sound weird on an already low powered CPU but have you tried any undervolting?

Droglez


Running a stress test in XTU now, and it's power limit throttling and max core frequency is hovering between 2,3 GHz to 2,9 GHz. It's so low that the fans are almost off..

Dumb question: Did you have to do anything special to install XTU? When I tried to install it I got an error that said I had an unsupported platform?

Firebat246
Glad I got some more information on your situation. Thank you for using a better stress tool than XTU. I should have specified I wanted XTU for monitoring only. This may sound weird on an already low powered CPU but have you tried any undervolting?

From his Intel XTU screen shot he didn’t undervolting, Yes I don’t think this needed too with that temperature and power usage. And power limit throttling happens (I think it’s boost to 25 watt and throttle to 15 watt), pretty similar with our 15 (from 45+ to 35/25), most probably same bios lock when doing something harder like pairing with egpu that may adding extra stress to cpu to avoid thermal throttling.

Droglez
Now I have been playing for a while - approx 2-3 hrs, and the battery is down to 25% while plugged in! This cannot be right.. Any thoughts?

If you have wattage measurement tools from power brick i think you can check power consumption rightly, is it 65 Watt AC Adapter right? More than that will use slowly saved wattage on the Battery, the Solution may be some thing you mentioned before, using bigger power adapter, Razer Core power delivery is 65 Watt as well. I’m curious now how it will run with Razer Core...does it need to be powered on both usb C to avoid battery drain.

autoKenyanCopperbuzz155
Its not right that people have to buy after market chargers to be able to use it! Their CEO in the video advertised it as a gaming laptop!

I will also be returning mine

Discharging under load may also be be addressed by software, maybe some bugs make it draw more power than it should, if it can keep 15 Watt cpu and 25Watt gpu it should be enough for 65 Watt ac Adapter to not to wearing the battery inside the stealth, when I’m not wrong Fans rpm is even higher than Blade 15 (Blade 15 max 5000rpm), when it’s higher, it maybe also the culprit from that issue.

autoKenyanCopperbuzz155
Its not right that people have to buy after market chargers to be able to use it! Their CEO in the video advertised it as a gaming laptop!

I will also be returning mine

I agree! it shouldn't be necessary for the customer to buy aftermarket chargers in order for them to use the product they spent their hard erned money on!!! However, I hope it can be fixed by a BIOS update or software update. I have read a lot about Razers awfull support and I had a lot of concern about this. I went for it anyway, so I hope they won't make me regret it. It seems like there is so much potential in the laptop that is either being bottlenecked by the charger and/or BIOS settings. I really do hope they will address this issue.

Droglez
Yeah, I was thinkg about this too. Or maybe a BIOS update could solve it. I have heard about this before, which was a setting in the BIOS that would let the bettery discharge in order to protect the battery while plugged in. Maybe they are using a more aggressive strategy here. 65W should be enough to supply the laptop and if not, I hope they are working on a more powerful charger that can actually supply the thing they're selling. Like I said in a previous post, it's really sad that the charger is setting the limits of performance of the laptop.

I'm forwarding this information up to get some clarification on possible solutions. Shoot me a PM.

Would folks be willing to share their model and battery life?

mdaly001
Would folks be willing to share their model and battery life?

1080p screen, MX150: 6-7 hrs @ full brightness on screen and keyboard.

Update on the crackling noise. It is in fact coming from the speakers - it’s not coil whine (which is also there in a small amount).

All in all I have encountered the following issues:

-battery discharge, when plugged in and gaming
-GPU struggling to get above 80% usage when plugged in (too low voltage - GPU-Z says ‘Vrel’, which means means that it is capping out based on unrealiable voltage)
- I want the keyboard to turn off backlight after 1 min, which happens, but it then comes back on after 25-30 seconds, and then turns off after 1 min, and the cycling through. This might be fixed by a synapse update.
- CPU thermal throttles @ 50C when not plugged in (I don’t know if this is on purpose to save battery life, but it seems like a very strange Way to do it)
- crackling noise coming from both speakers (I confirmed this by muting speakers, and the noise then stopped). It could maybe be fixed by BIOS Update.
-Small amount of coil whine. It’s not a problem for me at all, but it might be for some people, so I thought I’d put it out there.

In conclusion, I Will return the laptop, if I/we don’t get some clarification on the abovementioned soon. I can live with most, but the fact that my GPU is struggling at 80% is not acceptable. And when you pay 2000 USD (I live in Denmark, so it’s significantly more expensive here), I honestly don’t Think there should be any thing to “live with” in the first place.

Droglez
Update on the crackling noise. It is in fact coming from the speakers - it’s not coil whine (which is also there in a small amount).

All in all I have encountered the following issues:

-battery discharge, when plugged in and gaming
-GPU struggling to get above 80% usage when plugged in (too low voltage - GPU-Z says ‘Vrel’, which means means that it is capping out based on unrealiable voltage)
- I want the keyboard to turn off backlight after 1 min, which happens, but it then comes back on after 25-30 seconds, and then turns off after 1 min, and the cycling through. This might be fixed by a synapse update.
- CPU thermal throttles @ 50C when not plugged in (I don’t know if this is on purpose to save battery life, but it seems like a very strange Way to do it)
- crackling noise coming from both speakers (I confirmed this by muting speakers, and the noise then stopped). It could maybe be fixed by BIOS Update.
-Small amount of coil whine. It’s not a problem for me at all, but it might be for some people, so I thought I’d put it out there.

In conclusion, I Will return the laptop, if I/we don’t get some clarification on the abovementioned soon. I can live with most, but the fact that my GPU is struggling at 80% is not acceptable. And when you pay 2000 USD (I live in Denmark, so it’s significantly more expensive here), I honestly don’t Think there should be any thing to “live with” in the first place.

Are you sure it’s thermal throttle not power limit throttle?
About gpu usage, is it on all games? It depends on games usually, poorly optimized one like pubg may not optimized all gpu usage efficiently.

Droglez
It almost seems like they’re making the costumers doing the the QC for them. This is quality information they’re getting from US!

It is thermal throttle for sure. And regarding the GPU, I’m playing WoW, and the GPU is at 100% to the point where the laptop “realises” that it’s not able to sustain voltage. Thermals are good CPU is around 60C and GPU is around 60C aswell.

Sounds to me it’s not optimized well, some dell laptops has similar issues even on charging condition, I think on battery condition the gpu usage isn’t controlled well that made software detect somehow thermal throttling, usually as you know, laptops cpu throttle will be usually 5 to 10 degrees under intel limited temperatures which is 100 for laptops cpu. And talking about intel, since this is new cpu, maybe it still isn’t optimized it as well, because recently I saw softwares like 3Dmark and even Intel XTU couldn’t recognize it well.
Thermal throttling on low temperature usually can be addressed with throttlestop my adjusting multilplier or other setting there, but for some it’s not ideal solution.