Well, Guess Jack didnt play any role in this price. This is the Razer Blade 17 Pro refreshed in Mid 2021. Unlike the early 2021 models these RTX 3070 GPU's rip at 130W of power while having a I7-11800H in it. I would say if you don't mind the heavy package this is (2.78kg) then it's a pretty great deal considering that the it retails for $4500, Both QHD and FHD versions are both the same price but I would say the QHD version is the better option.
crypto comments like this make me so sad :/
Laptops are gutting powerful graphic cards so why not?
because you are not considering the earth is only one
@MuddyClear: You'd think that but you'd be surprised the amount of laptop e-waste that ends up in landfill
@Jackman117: Given that we are:
-not in any danger whatsoever of running out of landfill area and
-NASA is predicting that the Earth may not support human life within 50 years
I believe you may have things in the wrong priority.
@MuddyClear: They might have meant burning large percentages of the world's electricity to keep a ledger and operate pointless smart contract scams.
@Diji1: So you’re saying laptops burn electricity, which we run to keep a ledger and operate smart contract scams? And this is harmful to the world? Whaaaaaat you smoking dude?
@Diji1: Quit your whining. Crypto uses less energy that the computing required to keep the visa networks live. Think about that for a moment while you're hugging that tree
@BuIIy: This is firstly bullsh!t especially when considered on a per person and per transaction basis, and secondly, visa network does something useful in faciltating real world transactions (that aren't majority just playing pass the parcel with your other crypto mates to see who is willing to buy it for more money)…
https://www.statista.com/statistics/881541/bitcoin-energy-co…
One bitcoin transaction uses 2264.93kwh and Visa uses 148.63kwh for 100,000 transactions !!
https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption/
This one notes 1,484,891 VISA transactions that could be powered by the energy consumed for a single Bitcoin transaction on average (2207.00 kWh) at the time / price it was calculated.
@MrFrugalSpend: This is a start - however, you've not included the power required to run the Visa via a centralized infrustructure and security. Care to mention to power usage on this? This is the game changer part which you've overlooked or left out to suit your arguement.
Bitcoin avoids all of the associated infrustructure costs by being decentralized.
@BuIIy: You have no idea what you are talking about.
Visa has a good idea of power usage BECAUSE it is centralised, the power used by data centres on their payment network is reported.
They only have to have 2-3 copies of all their transactions because of the centralisation. They secure it on their own servers, back it up live (active/active), and back it up cold.
Bitcoin has things all over the place burning power because it is decentralised plus deliberately make mining harder the more people do it as the value goes up.
Additionally its Apples and oranges - because VISA adds value to the world by facilitating large numbers of real commerce. Bitcoin has a proportionally small number of transactions that are external to the actual trading and running of bitcoin. If people used bitcoin for real commerce transactions outside of bitcoin itself more readily it would use even more power - if it could cope, which it couldn't, because its too slow to handle a fraction of the volume required to replace something like VISA.
Bitcoin just burns energy for the f..ks sake of it because it was designed so inefficiently once the "value" (cough, cough) gets so high.
Globally, Bitcoin uses more power than whole countries like New Zealand. You're not even in the right ballpark.
Go back and do some more research
@MrFrugalSpend: Are you taking into account all the energy needed for all the workers to get to and from work, or even things like food?
All that energy needs to be taken into account to make a more apt comparison with crypto mining. Crypto doesn't need an army of workers and offices all around the world to maintain.
@studentl0an: For what? a comparison to a made up concept of burning energy for a made up currency?
Its completely irrelevant.
Bitcoin pisses energy up the wall by being inherently effiicient and adding proportionally little value to the world of commerce.
Visa helps the world go around by facilitating millions of transactions in an efficient way.
I can't see why you can't understand that.
@MrFrugalSpend: I think it's very relevant if you are going to compare the energy expenditure of crypto vs Visa, and I think you should realise this if you want to make a good comparison.
You may also want to look into layer 2 scaling solutions such as the Lightning network and Polygon as they are much more efficient to process crypto transactions.
I think you're being disingenuous by not taking these into account and only using your single example of kWh per transaction on layer 1 networks when you don't take into account the true energy expenditure of Visa or the fact layer 2 scaling solutions exist with crypto.
@studentl0an: You are totally missing the point - Visa is efficient because of its centralisation which uses less energy to a factor of thousands. Bitcoin is extremely inefficient because of its decentralised nature and need to make mining it exponentially harder as the value increases and we approach the end of the 'limited quantity'.
The number of people going to work and using it would go up if people used Bitcoin for their transactions ON TOP OF the wasted energy running the core infrastructure.
Surely then you would count all the energy of the oxygen thieves that are selfishly burning brown/black energy to mine a crypto currency in the hopes of being able to get a portion to sell it to someone else for more money speculatively, and all of the people running exchanges and everything else! Your misguided comparison is surely a two-way street and would apply to bitcoin if used in the same way.
There's no one "mining" visa's money somewhere for the sake of the algorithm. Bitcoin is inherently wasteful by design.
@MrFrugalSpend: I understand your point fully and have given 2 very strong counter points as to why your point is incorrect at best, and disingenuous at worst. I think you should address those points.
I think the vitriolic language you use when talking about crypto shows a clear bias against it. It shows a lack of pragmatism.
Crypto can be run entirely on renewable sources of electricity. It doesn't need an army of workers to maintain, unlike Visa. Do you understand this?
@FrozenFred: Actually El Salvador uses geothermal energy from volcanoes to mine their bitcoin: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/01/el-salvador-just-started-min…
A startup in Texas has raised over 150m to create a green mining operation there: https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=46d1ec22-846c…
There's other examples if you bothered to actually search for it.
@studentl0an: completely irrelevant - VISA DOESN'T NEED TO MINE FICTIONAL CRAP!
Geothermal could be used to power real industry, power homes etc.
@MrFrugalSpend: The entire VISA network (along with their 20,000+ employees) needs a lot of energy to maintain, which is what mining is. Bitcoin mining is the validation of transactions to which a small mining fee is paid to the miners to maintain the network. I don't think you have this basic understanding which is quite worrying considering you want to appear as an authority on the topic. I think at the very least you need to do more research.
In addition all the VISA employees and offices across the world take a lot of resources to maintain (which you refuse to acknowledge as a cost to maintain the network - which it clearly is), which bitcoin mining is also. Bitcoin doesn't need an army of employees to maintain the network.
I don't think I'll be able to change your mind, so keep thinking what ever. I'm here to help other people have the correct information.
@studentl0an: No studentl0an - you're embarrassing yourself.
Please try to understand this simple concept:
1. using one centralised computer to process transactions is efficient; whereas:
2. Using many thousands of computers to process the same transaction decentralised over and over and over and over is not efficient
and that's just the verification of transactions, PLUS then there is the creation of bitcoin through mining - a concept that doesn't exist with Visa. Furthermore, that mining is designed to get less efficient as processing power increases in the pool. Thus wasting more energy the bigger the pool gets and the scarcer it gets to keep the mining time to 10 minutes.
Read - https://www.fxempire.com/education/article/bitcoin-mining-fo… and
https://www.dummies.com/article/business-careers-money/perso…
Also note: How do new bitcoins come into existence? All the additional bitcoins have to be generated through a computational process called mining. You do it by letting your computer hardware calculate complex mathematical equations, which can be done at any given time of the day. Doing so enables you to become an integral part of the bitcoin network, not only by securing the network through your dedicated hardware, but also by generating more coins to put into circulation.
The available supply is slowly increased as more is being put into the mining process. That said, the way bitcoins are mined is by solving complex computational problems, which require more resources as time progresses.
Visa doesn't have to mine a made up currency, its processing fiat government currency transactions between financial institutions. The comparison isn't even that relevant because then you'd have to count all the crypto exchanges etc as well which facilitate the transactions.
Furthermore, You keep talking about Visa's staff like its a big number and its bad - of course that counts but it's still a drop in the ocean next to bitcoin (even though VISA process way more transactions) - *"How Many Bitcoin Miners Are There? Slushpool has about 200,000 miners. They have 12% of the network hashrate. Assuming all pools have similar numbers, *there are likely to be over 1,000,000 unique individuals mining bitcoins. *" - Just because they do it freelance instead of as employees doesn't mean they don't all consume energy to be people!!
Also see this and try to learn:
https://reneweconomy.com.au/bitcoin-mining-to-consume-more-e…
The operation of cryptocurrencies like bitcoin requires substantial computational power to process transactions and to maintain a transaction ledger.
Computers dedicated to processing these transactions are awarded in return for their computational power by being issued units of the cryptocurrency.
The offer of potentially lucrative cryptocurrency units in return for computing resources has sparked a surge in investment in dedicated ‘mining’ equipment, which has sent energy consumption surging with it.
https://youmatter.world/en/bitcoin-bad-environment-impact/
Why Is Bitcoin Bad For the Environment? It Spends A Lot of Energy
Bitcoin’s public ledger is decentralized, which means it is not controlled by any single authority. Instead, Bitcoin is constantly updated by a network of computers around the world operated by so-called “miners”.
These miners use purpose-built computers to solve complex math puzzles in order to allow transactions to go through – the only way to mint new bitcoins – in exchange for being rewarded a small fraction of the Bitcoins transactioned.
Over the last years, with the price of Bitcoin reaching new highs (and lows, as happened recently with Elon Musk’s Bitcoin Tweet), the attractiveness of mining Bitcoin lead the total energy consumption of the Bitcoin network to grow to epic proportions.
Since mining can provide a solid stream of revenue, the number of people – aka miners – willing to run power-hungry machines to make a small profit out of every Bitcoin transaction they help approve has skyrocketed.
As a result, the Bitcoin network now consumes more energy than many countries.
@FrozenFred: Indeed:
Much of bitcoin mining still doesn't run off renewables - Bitcoin can't be regulated to run off renewables as it is decentralised meaning anyone can run it off any power source they want. Like off this laptop as per the original comment plugged into standard wall charging!
Visa can also run off renewables, just as bitcoin mining can. Visa set a 100% renewable goal and claims to have met it - https://investor.visa.com/news/news-details/2020/Visa-Reache…
Additionally, even if Bitcoin mining did run of renewables, that renewable energy could be put to something more useful like charging batteries for cars for transportation rather than meaninglessly "mining" due to an inefficient algorithm.
The "army of workers" is due to its much larger importance and higher volume of transactions in the real world in a centralised location; There are way more people messing around with bitcoin mining relative to transactions (compared to Visa) and all that should be counted the same;
Layer 2 scaling options exist to try and fix the inherent problems with the initial bitcoin. It's merely trying to make it more like how the world's efficient transactional processing systems such as mastercard and visa already work. The currency being transacted is irrelevant, it's all electronic and centralised will always be at least the same or more energy efficient.
@MrFrugalSpend: Lol just saw this now.
You need to dig into more detail if you're attempting a comparison, and spare the emotion.
Seems like @student0an schooled you already though.
@CyberMurning: Different topic. I am only asking whether crypto mining is possible with these laptops with higher graphic cards in them. Not desktop pc intended.
@Mighty man: The answer is that it’s feasible, because people have been using laptop farms in various Asian countries where the contracts for OEM suppliers are more reliable than the retail suppliers.
Recommended? No. The same money can just be invested in $3,000 of crypto and waiting for the market to suddenly change. The “windfall” of crazy pricing is likely to change once new hardware is added this year.
Mining calculator pages can give you a current difficulty/pool assessment, based on the notebook TDP 3070, but don’t expect the notebook GPU to have 70-80% of the desktop performance. It’s very limited.
I would expect the ROI to be $2-5/day, or lower once you factor in the power usage and cooling, as well as the 3070’s undervolt performance to reduce the problem(s) with thermal throttling and 24/7 operation.
It would take perhaps 9 months to 1 years of mining to just get the power bills covered for months of ~250w ($0.29x0.25kwx24hours = ~$2.40/day) usage. YMMV.
Various methods can be used to run laptops headless, or even case-less, so it’s bare circuit boards, sic.
Even if you luck out with $3/day, $100/Month will take 2-3 years to recover as an investment, unless you are trying to “invest” 0.0004 dogecoin for a rainy day.
After one year there’s also the difficulty curve, when more mining hardware is added to the pool(s) to compete with. The investment return is likely not going to exceed the cost of energy used for a week if used for mining/lottery work.
Also, most performance for 50w-200w based Air/Peltier/phase coolers will create some surrounding condensation which laptops are not designed to remove.
If you run the laptop for days without rest, you will develop some later rust/grime and thermal problems with the battery and cooling fans internally, as they aren’t designed for 24/7 work. Especially the heatpipe/sink. Especially if the lid hinge area is weak, as the heat is designed to rise through the keyboard area or inhale from the front/side to the rear. You will likely not find convenient ways to cool a laptop that don’t involve extraordinary solutions like ducting or box/stand fans as well as room AC.
yes, but not with this one. this one would probably run hot due to its thin and light formfactor
It has one of the best vapor chamber cooling solutions that's ever existed in laptops and has 4 fans.
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Razer-Blade-17-laptop-review-N…
Mobile 3070s with different power draws and rough ETH hash rates:
85 watts gives ~45 mh/h
95 watts gives ~52 mh/h
130 watts gives ~63 mh/h
with some fiddling possibly required to maintain this.
Mine these negs
Why negative voting? It was a legitimate question.
I got one of the last gen models and it’s very well cooled with 4 fans. Great sustained performance under heavy load. Also one of the few laptops that can keep a 970 Evo Plus SSD at reasonable temps.
Sadly had to return due to screeching coil whine noise. I probably received a bad unit.
Coil whine does settle after a couple of years…
No bloat battery?
Out of all Razer laptops, technically the odds of battery bloating on this laptop is very slim.
All the hot components are as far away as possible from the battery and there are 2 fans between the batteries for added air flow.
970 gets hot???
Yeah, they run hot. They can go over 80 degrees under heavy use in some laptops (e.g. Asus Zephyrus G14).
I like Razer laptop, simple black design and no fancy lighting for the body. just warranty turn me down.
The warranty only cover to purchased by Authorised seller. And lots bad reviews for their customer support. Maybe still stick on my Asus. Been more that 7 yrs, still fast and working very well.
Yeah had to deal with Razer CS with regards to their el cheapo Death Adder 2 mouse that had super sticky right click and it was such a PITA . Had to jump through so many hoops despite buying from an auth seller and still within warranty time frame. Imagine the pain when RMA'ing a laptop
wait for 12th gen
It would be at least double the price of this deal when it comes out.
This price does seem to make those TechFast deals look expensive.
Bought a 14" Razer last year and love it!
Yeah! I got one too but had to return mine due to the poor timings on the soldered ram which affected my performance. Most new models have the bad ram so
Sheesh, soldered RAM in a 17 inch…
No, the 17-inch is removable SODIMM but the Razer Blade 14 is soldered.
@keanoobreaves: Ah that makes more sense. Even so it's a shame the industry is moving away from upgradeable components
Got the 15 inch 3070 last year.
Intolerable fan whine - like a screeching and overheating temp spikes.
Had to return it.
Lots of concern over longevity and quality of razer support.
Luckily I purchased through amazon.
I'm hesitant to purchase a razer again. I'm sure there's more happy people than not, just too many concerns over support / warranty process / battery bloat / QC / temperatures.
Looking at asus / lenovo options instead now.
Coin whine isn't a Razer thing, its an NVIDIA thing :)
Nvidia sell chips, not coils.
And coil whine comes from electricity passing through NVIDIA's GPU inductors, not actual coils?
@JannaOP: They actually don't - TSMC/Samsung Foundries does.
Nvidia design and sell GPU/APU chips. They don't design or sell inductors, they source them from other manufactures for their reference designs, and OEMs source their own from different places based on Nvidia's source. That's why you have certain manufacturers cards having more noticeable coil whine than others because they source components from different sources.
It wasn't coil whine - it was the fans. Sounded like an airplane.
https://www.reddit.com/r/razer/comments/msnfgp/fan_whine_fix…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWad1KEk6FY
from about 2mins. hard to appreciate, though a really annoying high pitched whine / whilstling tone.
17 pro has the best cooling setup of all razers, with 4 coolers that ensure airflow from front to back, effectively solving the battery overheating issue
but quality control is spotty. my unit had screen flicker and audio distortion on battery power, and support was utterly useless, so I returned it and happy I did.
never again
I got the 15" version of this with the 3080 late last year. Gets very hot under load but the performance and build quality is great, no complaints so far.
Would take the Kraken NUC variant over this
Kraken QC is also very spotty. my Kraken X15 F (3070, FHD 240 hz) was literally unusable due to constant overheating. fans just wouldn't ramp up appropriately when temps went up (I could hear creaking inside the laptop when that happened, probably due to rising temps)
I think rubbish Intel software is to blame here, but others reported other issues like loose touchpad, mine had severe coil whine from keyboard backlight on battery power, burn in on the screen (that is weird)
Intel X15 QC is quite low it seems. buy at your own risk. not BPC's fault, it's Intel literally not releasing the product properly
Kinda nuts to consider this Razer over a Kraken laptop. This represents no value over Kraken models with the 3070.
https://www.bpctech.com.au/category/kraken-gaming-laptop.htm…
Only thing is probably build quality, aluminum chassis vs plastic.
The intel x15 (kraken is just a name the resellers took) uses a magnesium alloy finish so theres no structual integrity concerns there. Razer laptops are also certainly not know for their build quality neither.
I think Razer are known for their build quality. What other gaming laptops out there use a single piece of milled aluminum block for their chassis?
Linus used a blade for like 5 years and the build quality often came up as to the reason why.
@studentl0an: One example isnt indication of anything. Look around ozbargain razer laptop posts and you will find plenty of people having problems with razer laptops, and the subsequent troublesome rma/repair process.
What other gaming laptops out there use a single piece of milled aluminum block for their chassis?
Others dont because it overheats way too much and apart from marketing bling that it looks 'cool' it serves no other purposes, razer laptops are prone to battery swelling because they use a unibody design without sufficient cooling that makes heat build up more within the battery compartment.
@Brrrrt: I'm not denying they have their issues with components such as battery. I have a 2017 Blade Pro 17 (7820HQ/1080) that had the battery pillow and stop trackpad from clicking, but the quality of the chassis and other things like the screen and speakers are of a much higher build quality than a $300 Acer with a celeron and plastic chassis that is reliable.
I guess I separate build quality from reliability, but I can understand how for a lot of people they are the same thing.
@studentl0an: and? you are comparing a 3-4k laptop to a $300 laptop?
Literally every other high end gaming laptops have a good screen, build quality and much better cooling than razer, with only compromises being thicker and heavier. But you are already getting a gaming laptop of all things so neither of these should be a problem.
If you are looking for a gaming laptop that drops some performance to trade for thinner/lighter chasis, there is the zephyrus line and legion slim line. Both offer better thermals, better port selection and better upgradability.
@Brrrrt: I don't think anyone would say that a Hyundai Excel has a better build quality than a BMW 5 series, yet the Excel will be more reliable and cost much less.
I still think that Razer chassis with the single piece of aluminum outclasses the legion and zepharus in terms of build quality. Durability, reliability and upgradability is a different matter.
@studentl0an: In case you doesnt know most zephyrus lineups since like 2020 have been CNC aluminium as well. Legion dont use it as a cost saving method. In reality CNC machined or not doesnt make a difference to the actual build quality. It's simply a gimmick that laptop manufacturers like to sell to people. Tell me, are you repeating this 'single piece cnc aluminium stonk' phrase because you truly think it made your laptop tough or you say it because razer said it so?
@Brrrrt: I don't understand why you're being so adversarial. Could you be a bit more pragmatic? I'm not arguing that Razer have issues with their batteries and some QC issues. It's well known for decades from tech reviewers that Razer and Apple have a better build quality than their counterparts. It's written/spoken about in reviewers from notebookcheck to linus to Dave2D and more - do you take issue with them also?
Plastic notebooks wear down over time. The area where the hinge bolts to the plastic chassis are particular concern as well as around ports for cracking in the chassis. Using a single piece of aluminium makes it so those issues never come up, and it feels incredibly well built in the hand (which is what many people, like myself, Linus, notebookcheck, Dave2D and more mean by "build quality").
I operate a computer/notebook/phone repair business with a particular focus on Macs. I've never seen a mac that has the hinges fall off the chassis - but it's common with expensive MSI, Acer and Asus gaming laptops. I'm not looking to argue about semantics about what "build quality" actually means. Can't we just agree that we have differing views about what "build quality" actually means?
I have the 3070 QHD Kraken, build quality is excellent, metal all over, not too many pieces leading to less points of failure.
see my comment above
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/comment/11717437/redir
I returned my Kraken X15 F (3070, FHD 240hz) due to overheating
buy at your own risk
This or one of the techfast deals of similar specs in a PC variant?
If you dont need the portability of course the PC variant.
PC/laptop parts, despite sounding really similiar, are wholly different things. A laptop 3080 is at best desktop 3060ti levels of performance, barring the vram. CPU are also very different, for example, my laptop have a Ryzen 9 5900HX cpu, except in both synetic benchmarks and real usage, its only around a 5600x (single core)/3700x (multicore) levels of performance and gaming wise its worse than both due to only 16mb of L3 cache, thats even excluding the fact you can overclock the desktop CPUs. And it is miles behind its desktop Ryzen 9 5900X counterpart.
What laptop do you own?
rog zephyrus duo, 5900hx+3070 model
@Brrrrt: Ohhh yep a little on the pricier side for the zephyrus duo. Only downside i see to using AMD is no PCIE support and Thunderbolt support but everything else is so good on the Ryzen platform.
@keanoobreaves: yeah the 6000 series will support pcie 4.0 (which is what I assumed you meant) but no brands seemed to be willing to take the TB tax to bring it to mobile AMD platforms yet.
@Brrrrt: Actually, How much did you end up picking up that zephyrus duo for? Kinda keen as the stock for those units are quite rare in australia
@keanoobreaves: The rrp price of 4099 aud. I dont think ive ever seen a sale with this particular model.
@Brrrrt: Doesnt the Zephyrus Duo come with the 5980HX? Think it's a slightly higher binned CPU compared to the 5900x
Buying a FHR 3070 on ebay second hand is cheaper for mining than this laptop so I will pass.
I wouldn't touch a Razer pro laptop again, would much prefer a comparable Lenovo.
Hello .. this is comparably the same. Is there any reason to choose one over the other considering same price? The CPU in performance is pretty much the same as well. Infinity has a membrane keyboard which is not the best but does have a numpad which I like lol
https://www.scorptec.com.au/product/laptops-&-notebooks/gami…
Or would it just be down to preference?
worse build quality. but if its just gonna sit at home then it wouldnt matter
I assume you mean the infinity has worse build quality yeah?
yeah, infinity appears to be made with worse materials. its just another brand that slaps their logo on mass produced identical machines (that other brands may adopt too)
@zjz93: Interesting. Thanks, nah I need a gaming laptop to take along with me when i travel for work hahaha but other than the initial trip (and return) it will sit in the accommodation.
I can personally vouch for the Kraken from BPC (Rebranded Intel x15, [rebranded Tongfang] )
Many people did have problems with the fans though, but who's to say that this laptop is any better. I feel like there would be more support for the BPC one.
Everyone here worried about Jack, I'm just looking for No Show Joe - where did you go No Show Joe? There's a sale on, don't be shy!
I'm trying to sell my 2018 Razer, with hardly any interest or very low offers. I did have a battery issue and had to replace it after 2 years, razer said they would cover it over the phone but then made me pay for it.
thats absolutely a shit dog CS! Lucky I almost bought one during that last MS ebay sale.
I want this, but I don't wanna pay that much moneeeeey. soooooo expensive!!!
This model is actually Razer Blade 17. Not Pro 17. They dropped the 'Pro' in the 2021 11th gen model.
Model: RZ09-0406BEA3-R3B1
Seems like all major retailers have incorrectly listed this as Blade Pro 17.
Mighty man on 03/02/2022 - 12:47 Comment score below threshold.