aaaargh the ASUS gaming laptop we got back from the repair/replace/refurbish depot a week ago has cheerfully displayed the EXACT SAME FAILURE. RTX 2070 "space invaders", flickering and distortion, argh. I spent too much on this computer to be anywhere close to happy about RMAing it twice for the same problem, paying for shipping myself.

@kistaro Ugh.. :(

I had to deal with Max Q razerblade being murdered by latest Nvida drivers.

@wobblewuffess Razer is moving back up my preferred brand list because my complaints about my former Razer Blade are starting to look a lot less reasonable compared to the computers I’ve been sold recently. Yes, its battery stopped working after a year and it developed serious heat problems after four years, but I haven’t been able to keep a gaming PC in *any* form factor alive for more than two years since.

@kistaro I loved my 2n gen razerblade 14" for the first 3 years I owned it, then the battery died and I couldn't find a replacement.. then one fan died and finally a month and half ago the second died.

I had been doing research and shopping around, settled originally on either a Max-Q 1060 MSI G65 Stealth Thin or reluctantly a Razerblade 15" Advanced with Max-Q 1060 .

Asus's offerings were kinda lacking, expensive or had a numpad on a 15" laptop (ewww for me).

tbc..

@kistaro
I bought the MSI G65 and loved everything about it except the keyboard and trackpad... two weeks in I was still making typos I couldn't explain, the keys would rapidly stop accepting input until I clicked back into a window and the trackpad was... infuriating. After two weeks I accepted I wasn't going to adapt or work around those problems. Otherwise it is a brilliant laptop.

I started the return on it and bought a late 2018 razerblade advanced 15"

tbc..

@kistaro

The long term reviews were surprisingly positive that I could dig up aside from some very specific issues with windows trying to install the wrong wireless drivers (Which I experienced after the doing a rollup update)

Two weeks ago I started having random gpu related BSODs and crashes. I was in the process of RMAing the unit when the support tech suggested I roll my drivers back to pre 4.17 with DDU and suddenly the crashing stopped. Apparently this a problem with all of the MAX-Q

@kistaro Cards right now..

So thoughts after a month of owning my current blade 15"

I love everything about except the fan management. It is fucking terrible. MSI came out of the box with amazing fan management, overclocking, downclocking and hardware control software.

By comparision Synapse is terri-bad. Especially since it does not let you set fan profiles. The automatic fan control lets the laptop get very warm before turning them to max rpm until cool and then shutting them down..

@kistaro Manual fan control lets you set the fans between 4k and 5k (max) rpm.. no lower.

The lighting controller for Synapse loses all of its settings if the laptop goes to sleep. (So things like disabling the glowing logo.. have to turn on.. and off again to get it to stay off)

But.. it has a fantastic keyboard, amazing trackpad.. like just as good as the macbook pro I use for work stuff. I do wish it had a dedicated ethernet port like the GS65 (which is somehow lighter and thinner)

@kistaro And unlike my original razerblade 14" from 2014.. opening the it up does not void the warranty.. and the ram is swapable, fans replaceable and SSD serviceable. In fact none off the components are soldered to the mobo except the stuff that is build into it (GPU, wireless etc)

So it is extremely serviceable.. the battery is easily replaceable* (razer does not sell them but it is a more standard cell arrangement and easy to buy 3rd party compared to their older offerings)