Stealthy purchaser
Active member
Hello all,
Here is a summary of my first six hours with my new Proteus VI.
Sorry for the wall of text, but I didn’t take any screenies or pics to break it up a bit.
Yesterday I received my new Proteus VI laptop (standard spec apart from a 512Gb M2 and a 512Gb SSD (both Adata), the Coolermaster Paste and 16Gb of whatever the fastest RAM was).
It’s a replacement for my old gaming laptop which was an i7 with a 670m and was starting to get a bit long in the tooth.
This is actually my second computer from PC Specialist – I purchased an 8600K / GTX1080 based desktop last year to replace my old one which was running a i5 750/ GTX 580 combo.
The good service I received from my first PC Specialist experience was the reason I opted to be a returning customer.
Delivery
The parcel was delivered safely by DPD in the allotted time slot (I have always received great service from DPD personally). The laptop arrived well packed. It comes boxed within an outer box, suspended by cushioning wraps, so the laptop box is not in direct contact with the outer box. On opening the laptop box I found the laptop itself to be bagged and suspended in place by more pads at each, so I’m very impressed with the packaging.
First Impressions
The brushed aluminium finish looks good. The laptop feels sturdy. The keyboard works very well – it’s a type I've never used before. I’m used to normal big chunky plastic keyboards, but this one has very low profile keys.
I don’t like the touchpad – it feels cheap. I don’t like the way the touchpad lights up as it looks tacky.
But I’ll be using my Naga 99% of the time, so won’t be using the touchpad and I have turned off the touch pad Led so all is good.
It's not a deal breaker by any means.
Performance
Having read that many people are having issues with 8750H thermals I expected the worse and spent much time during the build process reading up on how to under volt using ThrottleStop.
I know that some feel that they shouldn’t have to do this with a new laptop, but I have no issues with tinkering around with that sort of thing – I actually quite enjoy it and it enables me to learn something new.
I didn’t actually go about my testing in the most ordered way – a good reviewer would test things in an orderly manner, starting off with a baseline of thermals and performance tests at stock voltages, with screenies and notes etc. Unfortunately I am not a good reviewer and jumped in with both feet and went about it in a un-orderly, haphazard manner, so apologies.
XTU Stress Test
The first thing I did once windows was all set up was to install HWMonitor and XTU (yup, I know I said I had looked at using Throttlestop, but I wanted to run the stress test in XTU as I had run it on my desktop and wanted to compare).
A point to note – I was using a Havit 5 fan cooling pad throughout (model 2068 I think)
I changed no settings in XTU and ran the test. The first thing I noticed was that it was power throttling (excuse me if I use the incorrect terminology as Im writing this in work and do not have XTU in front of me). IIRC the temperatures were in the high 60’s. I don’t remember the CPU speed. I didn’t really know what this meant other than that the CPU wasn’t running as well as it could.
ThrottleStop
So I uninstalled XTU and installed ThrottleStop. I followed a You-tube guide on how to set it up and ended up with Core -0.140, Cache -0.125, Speed shift = 1 (offsets confirmed in HW Mon)
Prime95 and Cinebench20
Next I installed Prime 95 and ran it. The temps went into the low 80s. I thought this was strange as I was expecting temps in the 90s. So I clicked on the “x” and decided to install and run CineBench20 instead.
With Cinebench running the temps stayed in the low 80s, but I got what I thought to be a low score of 1600. A quick glance at the hidden Icons in the bottom right showed me I still had Prime 95 running (I’d only minimised it and not stopped/ shut it down).
So I had been running Prime 95 and Cinebench at the same time I guess – I was surprised at the temperatures staying in the low (read 81 – 82 degC)
So I stopped Prime95 and re-ran Cinebench20 and got a better score of about 1950. The temps remained the same as before. The fan speed never changed during any of the Prime/ Cinebench testing btw.
Total War – Three Kingdoms
By this time Total War 3 Kingdoms had finished downloading so I decided to run that.
The game had set the graphics to Ultra and I ran a historical battle to see how it performed. The temps went into the high 80s and the fans ramped up to what I assume was maximum. I forgot to check the FPS, but the game was running perfectly smoothly.
CPU-Z
Next I ran CPU Z stress test – the temps stayed in the low 80’s
Ark: Survival Evolved
Finally a few hours later, Ark Survival Evolved had finished downloading so I decided to run that (I selected the default High settings, which is a mix of High and some Epic values).
Apparently Ark is quite a demanding title with regards to CPU and graphics – I know it makes my fans kick in when I’m playing it on my desktop gaming PC (its the only game that does this to my desktop, so I assume that this is going to be an ultimate test for my laptop)
I only ran it for 5 minutes (I wanted to go to bed) and was seeing temps in the High 80s and FPS varying from 70 to 100.
I assume the fans were running flat out as my laptop sounded like a hover craft.
A check of the temperatures showed that the max temps reached were all around 88 or 89 except one core that had reached 94.
It was at this point I called it a night and went to bed.
Finally
I may still have some scope to carry out some further under volting as I didn’t bother going beyond -0.140 core & -0.125 cache, although Im probably near the limit I guess.
I can reduce the turbo clock a bit (thinking back, I never saw it go above 3.9Ghz) to see if that will reduce the temps a bit.
To summarise, the temps when running Cinebench, CPU-Z and Prime95 were in the low 80s and when running Total War 3 Kingdoms and Ark I hit the high 80s (with one spike at 94 on one core).
In my own mind I am very happy with my laptop and its performance.
I will update this post as and when I make any changes.
If anyone has any thoughts, comments, suggestions or requests for a particular game or piece of software to run I shall do my best to help.
Ryan
Here is a summary of my first six hours with my new Proteus VI.
Sorry for the wall of text, but I didn’t take any screenies or pics to break it up a bit.
Yesterday I received my new Proteus VI laptop (standard spec apart from a 512Gb M2 and a 512Gb SSD (both Adata), the Coolermaster Paste and 16Gb of whatever the fastest RAM was).
It’s a replacement for my old gaming laptop which was an i7 with a 670m and was starting to get a bit long in the tooth.
This is actually my second computer from PC Specialist – I purchased an 8600K / GTX1080 based desktop last year to replace my old one which was running a i5 750/ GTX 580 combo.
The good service I received from my first PC Specialist experience was the reason I opted to be a returning customer.
Delivery
The parcel was delivered safely by DPD in the allotted time slot (I have always received great service from DPD personally). The laptop arrived well packed. It comes boxed within an outer box, suspended by cushioning wraps, so the laptop box is not in direct contact with the outer box. On opening the laptop box I found the laptop itself to be bagged and suspended in place by more pads at each, so I’m very impressed with the packaging.
First Impressions
The brushed aluminium finish looks good. The laptop feels sturdy. The keyboard works very well – it’s a type I've never used before. I’m used to normal big chunky plastic keyboards, but this one has very low profile keys.
I don’t like the touchpad – it feels cheap. I don’t like the way the touchpad lights up as it looks tacky.
But I’ll be using my Naga 99% of the time, so won’t be using the touchpad and I have turned off the touch pad Led so all is good.
It's not a deal breaker by any means.
Performance
Having read that many people are having issues with 8750H thermals I expected the worse and spent much time during the build process reading up on how to under volt using ThrottleStop.
I know that some feel that they shouldn’t have to do this with a new laptop, but I have no issues with tinkering around with that sort of thing – I actually quite enjoy it and it enables me to learn something new.
I didn’t actually go about my testing in the most ordered way – a good reviewer would test things in an orderly manner, starting off with a baseline of thermals and performance tests at stock voltages, with screenies and notes etc. Unfortunately I am not a good reviewer and jumped in with both feet and went about it in a un-orderly, haphazard manner, so apologies.
XTU Stress Test
The first thing I did once windows was all set up was to install HWMonitor and XTU (yup, I know I said I had looked at using Throttlestop, but I wanted to run the stress test in XTU as I had run it on my desktop and wanted to compare).
A point to note – I was using a Havit 5 fan cooling pad throughout (model 2068 I think)
I changed no settings in XTU and ran the test. The first thing I noticed was that it was power throttling (excuse me if I use the incorrect terminology as Im writing this in work and do not have XTU in front of me). IIRC the temperatures were in the high 60’s. I don’t remember the CPU speed. I didn’t really know what this meant other than that the CPU wasn’t running as well as it could.
ThrottleStop
So I uninstalled XTU and installed ThrottleStop. I followed a You-tube guide on how to set it up and ended up with Core -0.140, Cache -0.125, Speed shift = 1 (offsets confirmed in HW Mon)
Prime95 and Cinebench20
Next I installed Prime 95 and ran it. The temps went into the low 80s. I thought this was strange as I was expecting temps in the 90s. So I clicked on the “x” and decided to install and run CineBench20 instead.
With Cinebench running the temps stayed in the low 80s, but I got what I thought to be a low score of 1600. A quick glance at the hidden Icons in the bottom right showed me I still had Prime 95 running (I’d only minimised it and not stopped/ shut it down).
So I had been running Prime 95 and Cinebench at the same time I guess – I was surprised at the temperatures staying in the low (read 81 – 82 degC)
So I stopped Prime95 and re-ran Cinebench20 and got a better score of about 1950. The temps remained the same as before. The fan speed never changed during any of the Prime/ Cinebench testing btw.
Total War – Three Kingdoms
By this time Total War 3 Kingdoms had finished downloading so I decided to run that.
The game had set the graphics to Ultra and I ran a historical battle to see how it performed. The temps went into the high 80s and the fans ramped up to what I assume was maximum. I forgot to check the FPS, but the game was running perfectly smoothly.
CPU-Z
Next I ran CPU Z stress test – the temps stayed in the low 80’s
Ark: Survival Evolved
Finally a few hours later, Ark Survival Evolved had finished downloading so I decided to run that (I selected the default High settings, which is a mix of High and some Epic values).
Apparently Ark is quite a demanding title with regards to CPU and graphics – I know it makes my fans kick in when I’m playing it on my desktop gaming PC (its the only game that does this to my desktop, so I assume that this is going to be an ultimate test for my laptop)
I only ran it for 5 minutes (I wanted to go to bed) and was seeing temps in the High 80s and FPS varying from 70 to 100.
I assume the fans were running flat out as my laptop sounded like a hover craft.
A check of the temperatures showed that the max temps reached were all around 88 or 89 except one core that had reached 94.
It was at this point I called it a night and went to bed.
Finally
I may still have some scope to carry out some further under volting as I didn’t bother going beyond -0.140 core & -0.125 cache, although Im probably near the limit I guess.
I can reduce the turbo clock a bit (thinking back, I never saw it go above 3.9Ghz) to see if that will reduce the temps a bit.
To summarise, the temps when running Cinebench, CPU-Z and Prime95 were in the low 80s and when running Total War 3 Kingdoms and Ark I hit the high 80s (with one spike at 94 on one core).
In my own mind I am very happy with my laptop and its performance.
I will update this post as and when I make any changes.
If anyone has any thoughts, comments, suggestions or requests for a particular game or piece of software to run I shall do my best to help.
Ryan