Review of my Defiance VII 15.6" - rtx 2060

[Alex_]

Chassis & Display
Defiance Series: 15.6" Matte Full HD 144Hz 72% NTSC LED Widescreen (1920x1080)
Processor (CPU)
Intel® Core™ i7 Eight Core Processor 10875H (2.3GHz, 5.1GHz Turbo)
Memory (RAM)
16GB Corsair 2666MHz SODIMM DDR4 (2 x 8GB)
Graphics Card
NVIDIA® GeForce® RTX 2060 - 6.0GB GDDR6 Video RAM - DirectX® 12.1
1st M.2 SSD Drive
512GB PCS PCIe M.2 SSD (2000 MB/R, 1100 MB/W)
Memory Card Reader
Integrated Micro-SD Memory Card Reader
AC Adaptor
1 x 180W AC Adaptor
Power Cable
1 x 1 Metre Cloverleaf European Power Cable
Battery
Defiance Series Integrated 3 Cell Lithium Ion Battery (73WH)
Thermal Paste
ARCTIC MX-4 EXTREME THERMAL CONDUCTIVITY COMPOUND
Sound Card
2 Channel High Definition Audio + MIC/Headphone Jack
Wireless/Wired Networking
GIGABIT LAN & KILLER™ Wi-Fi 6 AX1650 M.2 GAMING + BLUETOOTH 5.0
USB/Thunderbolt Options
1 x THUNDERBOLT 3 PORT + 3 x USB 3.2 PORTS
Keyboard Language
15" DEFIANCE SERIES ITALIAN KEYBOARD
Operating System
Windows 10 Home 64 Bit - inc. Single Licence [KUK-00001]
Operating System Language
Italy/Italia - Italian Language
Windows Recovery Media
Windows 10 Multi-Language Recovery Image - Unlimited Downloads from Online Account
Office Software
FREE 30 Day Trial of Microsoft 365® (Operating System Required)
Anti-Virus
BullGuard™ Internet Security - Free 90 Day License inc. Gamer Mode
Browser
Google Chrome™
Keyboard & Mouse
INTEGRATED 2 BUTTON TOUCHPAD MOUSE
Webcam
INTEGRATED 1MP HD WEBCAM
Warranty
3 Year Gold Warranty (2 Year Collect & Return, 2 Year Parts, 3 Year Labour)
Delivery
3 - 4 DAY DELIVERY TO ITALY
Build Time
Standard Build - Approximately 6 to 8 working days
Welcome Book
PCSpecialist Welcome Book - Italy




I'm sorry for eventual writing mistakes.



Construction & build quality



The laptop's ridiculously thin for the specs it has in it. The lower part of the chassis is made out of metal. While the screen it's made out of some different plastic material, nothing to complain because it fits perfectly with the lower part. It's covered everywhere by a matte black finish, so it can be a fingerprint magnet, though you don’t get this stylish without fingerprints. The screen has very small bezels, so the laptop it's much smaller compared to the size of 15" notebooks I'm used to. I would have preferred a slightly bigger laptop, with such a thin screen it looks very fragile to me, in the first days I was always afraid to break it while opening. Anyway, I'm using this for university so it’s useful to have something that can be carried around as easily as a 14" laptop.







The screen's a very nice 144 Hz, movements are very smooth and in-game fps over 60 have a real use. I thought there was an option that could make you calibrate your refresh rate to turn it a little bit down for battery life, but I can't find it. Searching on online forums I found people saying that having always 60 Hz vs 144 Hz cannot make your battery last that much longer.








There's a big selection of ports, the only downside is the LAN port on the right, which could interfere with mouse gaming if right-handed. I haven't been able to try this yet but I don’t think that this could give me many difficulties. I didn’t try the thunderbolt but it’s a good thing to have it, could get you more future-proofing, or the possibility in the future to plug-in an e-GPU.



Gaming performance

This laptop features the NVidia RTX 2060 mobile. It brings the performance on very high levels. I tried playing Resident Evil 3, Far Cry New Dawn and The Witcher 3. Every one of these games was handled very well, with FPS going as high as 80 and 90 sometimes too especially with The Witcher. I tried gaming with an external monitor via an HDMI and I gained something like 10-15 fps more. One thing I couldn’t find it’s if the GPU mounted on this system is the refresh 80w or the refresh 80-115w. I asked PCS, they say the person that has that info is now on vacation and that they could reply me as soon as they hear from him/her.

Thermals

Being a 15’ laptop and being only 2 centimeters thin, thermals aren’t the best in the market of gaming laptops, but with a few tweaks I’m now playing with entertainment mode in CCC not going above 70-75 °C for the CPU, and the GPU never going above 70 °C, this while keeping very good high fps. I’m happy to sacrifice just a bit of horsepower for the sake of keeping the laptop 30 °C lower. I’m always gaming with a cooling pad under the laptop, but it doesn’t change temperatures that much, only a few degrees. Fans are not that loud, if you push them to the max, they can be quite audible. A pair of headphones and you won’t be hearing them anymore.



The keyboard and the trackpad feel great. I can’t complain about the keyboard, the backlighting looks very fine to me. I also like the thing that the trackpad has separated click-buttons, feels more precise. The trackpad has also an integrated fingerprint sensor, when it works, it works well, but sometimes when I turn the laptop on it won’t work until I have made the first login writing down the password, maybe I should contact PCS about this.

Concerning battery life this laptop is doing great for now, I never gamed on it when on battery but for everyday tasks, it keeps up well. I get around 5 hours of usage.



Overall, the laptop is behaving well. I will update the review if I’ll find other problems or anything that could be useful, for now, I’m satisfied. PCS has been great helping me with everything I’ve asked them before buying the laptop. If they keep that quality for the support over time, I will be buying my next desktop from them too.

 

[boggi12]

@AleSca

Hey ho, thanks a lot for your review!

you mentioned some tweaks. What kind of tweaks did you use? Undervolting?

 

[Alex_]

Yeah I tried with that and can help too, but the thing that helped me really get out of the 80-85 degrees was lowering the power limits. For some games I even disable the turbo and they run very smoothly anyway, with way less heath.

 

[boggi12]

@AleSca
thanks again for your response. how did you lower the power limit? what program do you use? throttlestop?

 

[Alex_]

Sure no problem. Yes I'm now using Throttlestop, there are a lot of useful guides online. In the TPL options I disabled the short power turbo and reduced the long turbo to 30w in case I need it. Works fine for me now, maybe when I'll need more power I could take that up. Default settings are 45w for the long and 90w for the short I think.

 

[boggi12]

ok thanks again! I will try this out

 

[Alex_]

No problem! Let me know

 

[Piepie]

@AleSca may I ask you how your speakers sound? I have a distortion on certain frequencies (ie the win10 alert sound, sounds like it is played in a tin can )
Thank you

 

[Alex_]

Speakers alone are not that good, I prefer headphones or external audio to play. But I never had that kind of distortion I'm sorry. There’s another thread on this forum for this laptop, it’s about sound blaster atlas and the audio drivers, maybe that could help you.

 

[Piepie]

Thank you @AleSca. I have seen the post and I got them working but unfortunately it doesn't sound really different. It's really annoying on a brand new midrange laptop 😓
Can you please tell me which realtek driver release you have on your system?

Another question I'd like to ask is about thermals: I have done nothing like undervolting yet.
Did you notice if the top of your chassis after some stress heats up A LOT (it is barely touchable just above the keyboard (apparently where the ac plugs in) and on the keyboard itself around f12/backspace/enter keys?
I wonder if on the long run this heating might compromise other system electronics, the cpu/gpu never exceed 85° each - which seems a good temperature value compared to other systems I've dealt with.

Thank you!

 

[Alex_]

Hi @Piepie I'm sorry, yeah it must be kind of frustrating, but nowadays I see that other midrange and even high-range laptops don't have a really good sound. Anyway, I don't know if or what realtek driver I have, I'm sending you the list of the Sound, video and game controller I see on the device manager.

For the thermals, yes, even now that I'm able to keep good temps on games (68-70s) the high part of the chassis, right above the keyboard, gets very hot. I don't think it's a problem, it must be just because of the design. I think that heat pipes transfer hot air through these ways and out by the sides from CPU and GPU, making the chassis hot. Maybe it's because of the metal too, it conducts heat better than plastic. I didn't play with the keyboard, if you did, did this heat give you problems? Did it get in your way when working with the laptop or you need to "search" it with the hands? Let me know!

 

[Piepie]

Thank you! It seems that you don't have the realtek driver but the generic windows high definition 🤔 I will try to switch it there then. Does soundblaster atlas work for you?

I am playing through a pad now, but when I noticed the "heat bar" I touched the keyboard. The heat zone is away from WASD so I assume it won't be a problem for playing, and the plastic keys don't transfer the same heat as the case does, so it should't be a problem for working either.
I noticed that there is a small grid just below the monitor, it might be part of the cooling system, so it makes more sense that the area gets hot (and it might be a good idea to dissipate the heat through the chassis, I just wasn't expecting it to become this hot 😅).

Maybe I will try throttlestop with your settings, but I read that the working temperatures are now acceptable up to 95°/100° so I wonder if it is really needed.

Thank you again

 

[Alex_]

Do you mean if I have the Soundblaster Atlas program? I don’t know how to test it good.
Yeah probably that heat bar in near the grid where the heat dissipates, so it’s just hot air passing through.
Sure, the i7 10875h works up to 100 C and you can see it on Intels web page, I think the components are made to resist these temperatures. I feel just a bit more secure knowing it’s working a little cooler, that’s it.
Let me know how it works for you!

 

[Piepie]

Sb atlas should be with the other software in the start menu, you can tell if it works by changing eq preset and listening to your speakers.

I am on your side about temperatures, that's why I am a bit worried: but disabling turbo or undervolting the cpu sounds like buying a Ferrari and avoid using it at full speed.. so what was the point of buying it? 😅 I suppose I should trust the engineers who designed it and stop overthinking..

 

[Alex_]

I don’t have the software installed, even with sbx driver reinstalled from pcs download page I couldn’t find it.
For the turbo you‘re right, but I’ll use the full power only when I need it. Now, even with turbo disabled I’m playing at 85 fps with Rise of the tomb raider with all graphical settings at max, and it doesn’t get higher than 65, that’s fantastic for me. Obviously when I’ll get to more recent games I’ll give the processor more power, but for now it would be useless for me. It would get more hot, but I don’t need more frames for a game like this.

 

[Piepie]

I assumed atlas was installed if you bought the laptop with windows preinstalled. It's on the cd in the welcome pack, but if everything is working don't bother
I will try switching turbo off and see what I get.
Thank you!

 

[Alex_]

Thank you! It didn't arrived with a cd as far as I'm concerned but I'll look better in the package. But as you say maybe I shouldn't bother anyway. Sure, let me know !

 

[juliettec49]

@AleSca
Hi Alesca, how are you getting on with your machine?

 

[Alex_]

@juliettec49
Hi Juliette, it’s holding really great. I learned to use better throttlestop, the battery can maybe last for 6/7 hours or more when doing light tasks and if configured right. Gaming is good and I really can’t complain, speakers are not great but it doesn’t bother me. Tell me if you want to know something more specific!