Gigabyte AORUS X7 DT v6 GTX 1080 Gaming Laptop Review

Acoustic, Battery, Power & Thermal Performance

Acoustic Performance

During idle conditions, the AORUS X7 DT v6 is really quiet and I couldn’t detect any fan noise. It’s practically silent and makes the laptop a joy to use. Unfortunately, the noise output increases at a blistering pace under stress even when using the normal fan profile. The noise levels are difficult to adjust to unless you’re wearing a pair of noise-isolation headphones. Even though the noise output isn’t a shock due to the thin frame, I would have preferred a result under 50 dBA.

Battery Life

Despite incorporating a huge battery, the running time isn’t great and the laptop barely managed to pass the two and a half hour mark. I can’t pinpoint an exact reason why and it’s important to remember that NVIDIA’s G-Sync technology doesn’t impact on battery life.

Power Consumption

When idling, the laptop is really efficient and consumes a mere 37-40 watts. During games and other demanding tasks, the wattage peaks at 270.3 before settling back to a 254.9 average.

Thermal Performance

In a disappointing turn of events, the laptop’s cooling solution cannot maintain the CPU’s 4.0GHz frequency during the AIDA64 stress test. The CPU begins to heat up really quickly and it doesn’t take too long before the frequency is scaled back to prevent hardware failure. According to HWMonitor, the 4.0GHz clock leads to a 100C maximum value before changing the frequency to 3.6GHz. Once this occurs, the temperatures begin to recover to more acceptable levels and the CPU dynamically adjusts the frequency upwards to 3.8GHz. Clearly, the 4.0GHz figure is not sustainable and I’d recommend either using the processor’s stock configuration or an overclock which requires less voltage.On a more positive note, the GPU thermals were excellent and easily within the chip’s maximum operating window.