Thanks alot. Never know the core voltage can be tuned via bios. I am doing some quick stress test at the moment with Intel extreme tuning and found that the cpu temp rises up quite fast to 90c+ and it seems to me the fan profile is not that aggressive. Cpu clock most of the time stay at 3.85ghz. Not sure if this is normal, I was expecting better performance from selenite... Will try to undervolt the core n cache, then proceed to gpu.

This post has been edited by l2k: Mar 13 2019, 10:52 PM

Just to quickly ask around here:

What are the setting are running with you selenite to get a good balance between performance and thermal?

1. Core voltage offset
2. Max package TDP limit
3. Turbo time limit

Yup, getting to know more about this little beast as I have more time to spend with it today.

I also chatted with illegear tech support and learnt on few more things.

1) The turbo boost power max is 70w (PL1) and 90W (PL2), and it was tuned by manufacturer.
2) Not recommended to use 3rd party software to undervolt (e.g. Intel XTU), use bios setting instead.
3) The fan button apparently is to switch between game and office mode, game mode will set the 70w/90w tdp limit, office mode will set to 35w/35w tdp limit, disable turbo clock.
4) Office mode also seems to force intel built in GPU even in gaming.


Overall a quick review for me:
1) Size - it is huge ! However, I believe it is one of the smallest in terms of footprint for a 17 inch gaming laptop in the market.
2) Cooling - Very good cooling performance indeed, with some undervolt (I able to get it stable at -155mW it seems, maybe still can go lower), sustainable 3.9Ghz full load, about 85C average. Still need to test more on the GPU thermal performance.
3) Screen - It's gorgeous ! Love the slim bezel.
4) Speaker - Volume is better than I have anticipated
5) Mechanical keyboard is a tad bit noisy, still need to get used to it.

Overall quite satisfied with my selenite.

Next up:
1) Find out if possible to lower down the turbo multiplier to reduce fan noise.
2) Try GPU undervolt
3) Laptop cooler in on the way, will see if it helps to further reduce the temp.

This post has been edited by l2k: Mar 14 2019, 08:09 PM

Yeah, I am also trying to get use to the keyboard So, you were disappointed with the sound quality or sound volume, just to check?

More sharing from me

More undervolt:
By no means the machine is running hot, but I am a fan of high efficiency and striving to run the machine as cool as possible. Additionally, also helps to prolong the component lifetime. After some researching, fiddling around, able to achieve a stable undervolt of -185mV via bios. Running prime95 after 40mins, temp is at 90C but probably due to very high power limit set by BIOS straight out from factory (85W !), constant 3.9Ghz boost clock. For moderate demand game like POE, temp is at about 60C with fan barely audible.

GPU tuning
Undervolt RTX2060 to about 700mV @ 1400Mhz and stable, I suppose I can bump up the core higher but my intention is not to achieve best performance but to lower thermal. Game like POE easily break 144fps with high setting, but if I cap the frame to 60fps thermal is only 60C.

Overall, internal fan is kept at low speed and is barely audible Seems like selenite's 5 heatpipes, dual fans with 4 vent holes + undervolt really do a decent job here. Had a desktop before with blower style GPU, never thought a laptop can be more quiet than a desktop gaming machine.

Cinebench R15 score close to 1300.
Superposition extreme score @ 3550

Built-in Speaker
If I were to pick the weakest link of Illegear Selenite, it would be the speaker. My volume is alright (sound blaster working fine) but it sounds a bit hollow. My guess is the midrange and bass is a bit lacking. Have not played too much with the setting but it is definitely not a decent one. Not a deal breaker though. Anyway, plan to buy a decent bluetooth ANC headphone, I guess I won't spend too much time fiddling with this.

Have not really done any intense FPS gaming for long hour to verify the temp and stability, don't really have much time for gaming nowadays unfortunately.

This post has been edited by l2k: Mar 18 2019, 07:38 PM

The 60C probably is just for not so demanding game like POE as the CPU load was only like 20-30% most of the time at 3.9Ghz. My guess is for AAA game, it will definitely go higher. I have temporary ditched throttlestop and only undervolted via BIOS. I guess the question is do we really need the CPU to be turboed all the time at 3.9Ghz? If not, I guess by using throttlestop to limit the multiplifer would be an effective step to lower down the temp.

On the GPU, it seems like you able to hit a very high core clock on your 2060 From what I know, the difference between mobility and desktop 2060 are as below:

RTX2060
Laptop Desktop
Default 960Mhz 1365Mhz
Boost 1200Mhz 1680Mhz
TDP 80-90W 160W

What you achieved is even faster than desktop version. Are you able to achieve a stable core clock? From my own testing, I have never seen the core voltage go above 1.1V and it was limited by the power profile.

This post has been edited by l2k: Mar 20 2019, 04:25 PM

It's real. I did see my GPU getting bumped up all the way to 1600Mhz+ during superposition benchmark but only like briefly a few seconds with core voltage up to 1.1V. Most of the times it stay at about 850mV @ 100% load, and 1400+Mhz. My guess is it depends on the GPU load.

I just flatten the curve to 700mV @ 1400Mhz at the moment, I guess the 800-800mV region can be bumped up to hit a higher clock speed.

A useful tool to verify the GPU core voltage and clock speed would be GPU-Z.

This post has been edited by l2k: Mar 21 2019, 02:49 PM

Experienced the crackling sound twice, but just very briefly. It seems like it happened while I quit some application, but I don't know for sure and can't recreate it.

I guess I just ignore and live with it

I have not experienced this so far during gaming or video playing with my selenite, but I am a relatively new user. I have experienced this crackling sound with my desktop speaker before with subwoofer, if I turn off the AC power before turning off the speaker, probably due to the subwoofer discharging its driver and causes vibration.

For your case, I think if speaker is not the issue, perhaps it could be due to the speaker driver on the motherboard itself?

This post has been edited by l2k: Mar 21 2019, 05:24 PM

Seems like the crackling sound is a common issue for selenite users. I guess I am on the lucky side as I have been experiencing minimal cracking sound, perhaps as I usually keep the volume quite low (below 30). I only experience some very minor cracking if I stop a video or quit a game for example.

Finger crossed for a driver update.

Wondering how you disable the power management for audio? Don't seem to have this one in the power plan.

Was googling this issue and found the following. It seems like it is not selenite problem, but some other users have experienced same thing.

https://www.drivereasy.com/knowledge/audio-...ows-107-solved/

The original news shared 3 solutions: 1) minimum processor state to 100% (not desirable for heat and battery life) 2) Disable ATI HDMI (not applicable to us) 3) DPC latency (interesting one)

However, what caught my eye is one of the user in the comment section actually solved his popping issue with "fast boot disable".
SOLUTION: Disable Fast Boot
STEPS: Control Panel - Power Options - (Left) Choose What The Power Buttons Do - Change Settings That Are Currently Unavailable - Now Uncheck or Deselect 'Turn On Fast Startup' - Click Save Changes and then fully Shut Down Computer (not restart) - Power Computer Back On - PROBLEM SOLVED.

Will try it after work and report here.

More info

https://www.reddit.com/r/nvidia/comments/7h...o_crackling_on/

I have latest nvidia driver, my realtek audio driver is v6.0.1.8581. I have been experiencing very minimal cracking sound.

Before I mess with my driver, I am trying the "disable fast boot", so far have not experience any crackling. Will update again.

I do agree with you Illegear should follow up closely and come out with a solution.

However, the more I search for this issue, the more it points towards driver compatibility issue (if the driver was designed to play well with windows 10 fast boot).

FYI, windows 10 fast boot stores all the kernel and drivers in the hard drive to facilitate a faster boot up, your laptop enters a state between hibernation and shutdown, so it means the laptop is never fully shutdown. I assume if realtek doesn't have good support for this feature, once you restart and go back to windows, driver may have issues (hence the latency issue).

If it is really Realtek driver issue, I bet the full solution is only thru new driver release.

Above is just my opinion anyway, I so far has not heard any crackling since I disable the fast boot, will keep you all updated. BTW, our SSD is fast enough, so far I only lost less than few seconds on boot up time compare to fast boot. Moreover, drivers update usually requires a full restart/shutdown, I can only imagine if the driver doesn't play well with fast boot, more problem will occur.

This post has been edited by l2k: Mar 29 2019, 10:18 AM

Are you using throttlestop? I found that without downclocking (just merely undervolt), the temperature can rise and fall very fast. With i7 8750H turbo constantly at 3.9Ghz, temperature can easily overshoot 75C and come back after the fan spooling up. So I never able to achieve a stable temperature, it is more like a roller coaster.

Guess you are right, I still have detected like once or twice the popping issue.

Let's hope for a decent driver update news from the manufacturer.

You can monitor your cpu usage with msi afterburner.

A bit of correction from what I mentioned earlier. The temperature will fluctuate if let say the CPU utilization jumped from let say 20% to 60% or more. It is the fan speed tuning relative to the temperature, usually the temperature will rise up then followed by the fan speed.

If constantly stress the CPU with certain load, the temperature is more or less stable.

Anyone has experienced calibrating the battery? I know the recommendation is to calibrate once per month to keep the reading accurate, but what is the procedure?

Thanks, seems like quite tedious to do. Few questions.

Do I have to run down the battery until 0%?

What is the disadvantage of not calibrating the battery? Is it just inaccurate battery % reading? (I almost 95% of time will plug in the power adapter though).

Do I really need to perform this on monthly basis?

Would this improve the battery life in long run?

This post has been edited by l2k: Apr 17 2019, 01:57 PM

Long time did not come by to visit the thread. Just to confirm also I have not experiencing any audio popping issue since few weeks ago, probably due to the new driver as well from windows update.