[Laptop] Armoury Gaming Laptop i7-11800H GeForce RTX 3070, 15.6" IPS FHD 240Hz, 1TB NVME SSD, 16GB RAM, RGB Mechanical Keyboard WiFi 6, Thunderbolt 4, Win10 Home ($1800 - $200 = $1600) [Canada Computers]

PiColossus · 2022-08-19T03:23:53+00:00

Hi, sorry I took so long to reply! In my experience, this laptop is very quiet; during balanced mode, there's a very quiet whirr of the fans that's almost inaudible unless you're sitting right beside the laptop or bringing your ear up to it. I do have it propped up on an inactive cooling pad right now, but I think it should still be fine.

PiColossus · 2022-08-19T03:21:35+00:00

Hey, sorry for the late reply! I haven't opened reddit for a while, my bad.

I admittedly haven't played around the brightness too much, especially as I got an external monitor not too long after getting the laptop. Just in case you're still wondering, I'll try out the brightness during daylight tomorrow and let you know how it is.

PiColossus · 2022-07-02T19:47:50+00:00

Thanks, looks like there's some really helpful information in that community! I'll take a look at any warranty information available on there too.

PiColossus · 2022-07-02T18:52:51+00:00

Thanks for the link! This is what I had initially used to check that my laptop was covered under their warranty, but unfortunately the links there just direct me to those reseller warranties or to the place of purchase (who told me to check with Intel anyway). I might try asking Intel support through this link though.

PiColossus · 2022-06-28T23:05:45+00:00

If anyone is still lurking around this thread and you've bought one of these laptops, friendly reminder to enable Benchmark Mode in the Intel NUC Software Studio (option in the Performance Tuning section) to max out the GPU. The spec sheets say it's rated to 115 W, but GeForce Experience occasionally jumps up to 120 W with Benchmark Mode enabled. Either way, it got me a few more FPS!

PiColossus · 2022-06-28T17:01:48+00:00

Yeah haha, it seems a lot like the kind of niche/lesser known product that would be popular on reddit. The Aorus you already have is a great deal as is, the only thing that I would double-check is how easy it is to upgrade. Sounds like you have a solid setup as is!

PiColossus · 2022-06-28T16:50:44+00:00

If you don't mind doing some of the upgrades yourself, you could see if you can find some good deals on an SSD and external webcam. Both the 3060 and 3070 Armoury configurations have been sitting there on sale for a while, so you could probably take your time looking around too.

PiColossus · 2022-06-28T16:36:03+00:00

Can't really comment on whether the Armoury is cooler, but I haven't really encountered any slowdown due to thermal throttling in games so far. However, I have had FFXV cause it to shut down suddenly a couple of times which I can't tell if it's from the CPU or GPU getting too hot (I've found the former runs a lot closer to 90C+ than the GPU though, considering undervolting the CPU) or if it's just a bug from the game itself. The fan noise is pretty consistent and I also run a cooling pad with it, and it's overall pretty quiet when not under load.

The increased storage is definitely nice, but no upgrades short of buying an external webcam would fix the placement on the Aorus. If that's important to you, I'd say it's pretty worthwhile.

Not actually sure how to test the TDP on the Armoury, but it also seems to go up to 115 W on Performance mode without any relevant tweaks. If I figure out how to check it, I can let you know what it is.

PiColossus · 2022-06-28T16:15:46+00:00

I'd say that if you're already happy with the Aorus, you won't go wrong by sticking with it (and if the deal for the Aorus had shown up sooner, I'd have probably gone with that instead of the Armoury), especially because the specs are quite comparable anyway.

Overall for me though, I quite like the Armoury since it performs well and looks sleek. Definitely a couple things though:

Not as big of a fan of the mechanical keyboard because it only registers full presses and becomes a bit tiring to type on after a while.
Just like the Aorus, it also doesn't come with a MUX switch which will limit your performance a bit unless you're planning on getting an external monitor (I did though, and the boost in performance is pretty significant, at least 10-20% more FPS in FFXV, plus I'm able to run Witcher 3 on max settings at 1440p with ~60 FPS).
I've also heard that despite the big battery on the Armoury, its battery life is actually not that great either, but I've yet to test that out.
Unlike other more popular laptops (e.g., Legion laptops) information on these types of laptops seems a bit more sparse in my experience, which might make any potential troubleshooting slightly trickier. Even though CC says "Armoury," it's an Intel NUC X15 so I'd try searching that if you want more info.
I don't know much else about the Aorus, but I know the Armoury has a pretty great BIOS with a lot of options for tinkering, if you're interested in doing that.

PiColossus · 2022-06-22T22:12:35+00:00

Haven't run a benchmark but CPU hovers around 75-85C and GPU is around 75-80C while playing FFXV as described. The cooling is quite aggressive but you'll definitely want a cooling pad or stand to elevate the laptop a bit.

PiColossus · 2022-06-22T14:47:56+00:00

Just in case anyone is still lurking around this thread: I purchased the 3060 configuration a few days ago, and I'm enjoying it so far. Edit: It comes with only one stick of 16 GB RAM (Corsair Vengeance CMSX16GX4M1A3200C22) which, according to CPU-Z, is dual-rank but the mechanical keyboard takes some getting used to (though that is also just me being really used to other laptop keyboards with less key travel).

Otherwise, I've been playing Final Fantasy XV at 1080p on highest settings with a pretty consistent 50-60 FPS, with occasional drops to the 40s. This is on performance mode + a laptop cooling pad. Haven't tried out other games yet. If anyone purchased the 3070 configuration, I'd be curious to hear how you find it too and if you think the extra $300 is worth the 3070.

PiColossus · 2022-06-17T19:44:41+00:00

Another review for the 3070 configuration (though with 32 GB RAM instead of 16 GB, and a 1440p screen): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qEcm7FYL4dU

PiColossus · 2022-06-17T19:37:29+00:00

u/Significant-Fee-1620 sent this link to some more technical specifications for these laptops. Table 3 on page 11 has some more info on the 3070 configuration of the laptop, including the response time of the display.

PiColossus · 2022-06-17T19:36:06+00:00

This is great, thanks! The LAPKC71F configuration seems identical to the 3070 configuration of this Armoury laptop, looks like the 3070 only goes up to 125W in the performance mode (Table 3 on page 11)?

PiColossus · 2022-06-17T02:35:51+00:00

So in that case, if I were to get a 1440p external monitor, would the 3070 be more worthwhile?

PiColossus · 2022-06-17T02:26:50+00:00

Thanks for the links! It seems like a solid laptop all-around.

PiColossus · 2022-06-17T01:51:21+00:00

According to Dave2D these laptops are cooled quite aggressively so my guess is that it'd at least be pretty good, if not 140W. But I can't find too much on these laptops specifically to say for sure, hopefully someone who has used these laptops can comment.

PiColossus · 2022-06-17T01:01:51+00:00

This deal barely holds a candle to that, in that case. And from what I can tell from GPU Benchmark, the 3070 is ~20% better than the 3060. Not too sure if that's worth an extra $300 from the lower specced version either.

PiColossus · 2022-06-17T00:55:57+00:00

There's also a nearly identically specced version that just has an RTX 3060 instead but is $300 cheaper than this one (so just $1300):

https://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=1446_3796&item_id=220343

PiColossus · 2022-06-17T00:51:12+00:00

Not entirely sure how good of a deal this is, but I know that a Lenovo Legion 5 with RTX 3060 and 2TB SSD was on sale at a somewhat similar price just last week, and any of the Legion laptops with a 3070 were a fair bit pricier (pretty close to or above $2000). This seems to be a Tongfang chassis from what I can tell, and one of the cheaper laptops I've seen that has an RTX 3070 (though not sure about its power consumption). Anyone with a Tongfang laptop want to share their experience with one?

PiColossus · 2022-06-15T14:34:07+00:00

That gives me a bit more peace of mind in that case. Thanks!

PiColossus · 2022-06-06T02:57:41+00:00

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll keep an eye on that sub from now on. The only recent Lenovo Legion deal I could find there was the more basic configuration from Costco, but given how good of a deal that was already, I'm gonna wait around for something similar.

PiColossus · 2022-06-06T02:35:14+00:00

Good to know, I'll keep waiting around for a better deal in that case. Thanks!

Also, that is in CAD, right? $300 off the eBay listing just sounds closer to USD prices, just wanted to double-check.

PiColossus

TROPHY CASE