AFTERSHOCK PC - Now featuring Nvidia 10 series graphics cards!

[solarboi]

hmmm.
G14 2060 + R7 4800hs + 16GB + 512GB = $22XX consider exp?

From where got this offer? Sic!

 

[wrathofgod]

hmmm.
G14 2060 + R7 4800hs + 16GB + 512GB = $22XX consider exp?

Can sic this deal ???

 

[prataboy666]

hey bros, just wondering how repairable aftershock laptops are after 3-4 years? I generally repair my laptops and use it for around 5 years.

Since Aftershock relies on OEMS, i kinda worried that there might not be enough parts like motherboard or battery to repair it down the road.

I am also considering the Gigabyte aero 15 because I think it will be better supported in terms of repairability.

What are you guy's thoughts?

 

[flowerpalms]

hey bros, just wondering how repairable aftershock laptops are after 3-4 years? I generally repair my laptops and use it for around 5 years.

Since Aftershock relies on OEMS, i kinda worried that there might not be enough parts like motherboard or battery to repair it down the road.

I am also considering the Gigabyte aero 15 because I think it will be better supported in terms of repairability.

What are you guy's thoughts?

Many years ago i bought thw S series from them. Very fast the motherboard spoil and need repair. Bring down to their shop at Bendemeer. After repair, not long later spoil again. Same issue with motherboard. Not confident to buy with them again.

Posted from PCWX using SM-G973F

 

[jgyy1990]

eh i realised that aftershock laptop camera alignment is not centered at all.

 

[prataboy666]

eh i realised that aftershock laptop camera alignment is not centered at all.

my acer is not centered too.

 

[jkohlc2]

Many years ago i bought thw S series from them. Very fast the motherboard spoil and need repair. Bring down to their shop at Bendemeer. After repair, not long later spoil again. Same issue with motherboard. Not confident to buy with them again.

Posted from PCWX using SM-G973F

keep hearing this horror story

 

[flowerpalms]

keep hearing this horror story

Somemore their shop located at the Bendemeer industrial area quite ulu. Where got time everytime travel until there to repair?

Posted from PCWX using SM-G973F

 

[jkohlc2]

not much for mid range

 

[prataboy666]

keep hearing this horror story

that might be because flowerpalms did repeat the same story a few times.

To be honest, it is very hard to gauge the quality of a brand through forums. This is because people who had a bad experience will be more likely to post their experience. For those who had an ok experience- meaning everything is working just fine, they usually wont bother about posting any feedback unless they experience really really good service or the hardware is really imba good.

Having said that, I still ask about the quality because that's the only way you can find out more about a brand that is still lesser known than others.

To be fair, the Asus and Acer service centre are also in a ulu industrial place too.

Anyway to bros who are going to get your products serviced, please treat the service staff with politely. I used to work as a frontline staff and I get abused by customer's hardware problems. We are all humans with feelings. Sometimes **** happens. Even if the hardware is of poor quality, it is not the frontline staff's fault. it is the engineer's fault. So

 

[prataboy666]

Anyway, for those who preorder the Apex 15r, you are now getting the bigger battery!

 

[razorlala]

that might be because flowerpalms did repeat the same story a few times.

To be honest, it is very hard to gauge the quality of a brand through forums. This is because people who had a bad experience will be more likely to post their experience. For those who had an ok experience- meaning everything is working just fine, they usually wont bother about posting any feedback unless they experience really really good service or the hardware is really imba good.

Having said that, I still ask about the quality because that's the only way you can find out more about a brand that is still lesser known than others.

To be fair, the Asus and Acer service centre are also in a ulu industrial place too.

Anyway to bros who are going to get your products serviced, please treat the service staff with politely. I used to work as a frontline staff and I get abused by customer's hardware problems. We are all humans with feelings. Sometimes **** happens. Even if the hardware is of poor quality, it is not the frontline staff's fault. it is the engineer's fault. So

most laptop brands in ulu area.. maybe except fujitsu.

about posting feedback online.. its the same for all la. the question is why 1 brand got more negative feedback from others.

i also have similar experience as flowerpalms. maybe even worse. but AS customer service is good so long u manage to reach the boss. if you student, think pretty safe ur device can last through your 3-4yrs of school.
during my time afew yrs back.. even now.. they still new company. alot SOP havent straighten out. hope its better now.

 

[jkohlc2]

Anyway, for those who preorder the Apex 15r, you are now getting the bigger battery!

How many Wh they bump up to?

Posted from PCWX using ONEPLUS A5010

 

[guile]

How many Wh they bump up to?

Posted from PCWX using ONEPLUS A5010

63Whr

gotta wait till oct though
https://www.aftershockpc.com/welcome/ProductconfigRec/apex-15r-lite

 

[albertyap]

sienz, hopefully I can upgrade to the 63w battery as well for my 17R.

Anyway, added a 1TB HP EX950 NVME into the laptop, 512Gb is simply too little for my use cases.

 

[albertyap]

For those who are interested to know, the larger 63w battery can be purchased and installed into both the APEX 15R & 17R at the cost of SGD 112 (all inclusive).

Anyway, I have been using the APEX 17R since earlier this month, and strangely the model is now MIA from Aftershock front page.

My feedback after using it for some casual gaming, a few live streaming session as well as 3 video projects.

1. The 17inch screen is pretty and color are nicely displayed, great for color critical applications
2. This laptop is ways faster than what you need for all kind of heavy OBS, Zoom, Skype calls usage and etc. I've even tried OBS screen-cap Zoom, as well as walking around in a game - CONTROL (With RTX Rays turned on) then stream-out. Everything still reasonably fast and responsive.
3. The drivers pre-installed and provided by Aftershock (As of time of writing) is bare minimum and outdated. Worst is I don't think they will be kind enough to update it as frequent as larger corp. such as Dell, Asus and etc
4. For some reason, the THX software 'enhancement' is missing compare to the 15R. This was originally and STILL 'advertised' in the product page.(Which can still be accessed via https://www.aftershockpc.com/welcome/Productinner/apex-17r-lite) However they can be rectified.
5. You cannot simply download the latest Nvidia drivers and install directly. The generic driver does not have the hardware ID for aftershock (Which is common for least well known/smaller DIY brands). This is the BIGGEST disadvantages to me, and still do. Coz Aftershock only provided VERY outdated Nvidia driver dated back to April 2020. You can of course spend lots of effort modifying the driver to manually add the ID, but its ways too troublesome for me. The WORST part, the latest Adobe Premiere Pro CC flagged the provided driver as incompatible/critical. It might randomly crashes and you will need v451 or newer nvidia driver to fix. Which wasn't provided from AS still Luckily I found a workaround for this... which bring us to next point,
6. As we all know, Aftershock sourced this model from ODM Tong Fang, which happen to be the same as Eluktronic RP-15 & RP-17, I have downloaded and installed newer drivers that confirmed WORKED for my APEX 17R from https://www.eluktronics.com/rp-15-rp-17-drivers/ . I've updated the Control Center (Which you can see the screenshot below), NVidia Driver, and added THX to my APEX 17R via the files from Eluktronic. For AMD, the generic AMD Adrenaline software will work directly, and that will also be updated. Unfortunately, the Nvidia driver from Eluktronic is also not the latest, latest. It is currently modified from v451, which is the recommended version for Adobe, so at least that will work for me.

Side note:
- 512Gb storage really is TOO LITTLE. I've added a 1TB NVME from HPEX950 to it, worked flawlessly. My primarily usage of this laptop is video editing, with light entertainment on-and-off.
- The built-in speaker is crappy sounding. Hollow with virtually no bass. the THX driverss did not help, it just made it louder. The individual 3.5" out worked, but the quality of the audio DAC is OK-ish, I tends to plug in my spare Creative SXFI with USB as my primary sound driver/output tho, sounded much better.


In short, if you are confident that you at least has some knowledge, or effort to solve these issues manually, the laptop is still a good deal for the package. However, if you are not well-verse in these softwares, nor do not have the time to research on your own, BETTER don't buy this, and go with more, well known brands such as Dell, Lenovo, Asus and etc.

 

[guile]

For those who are interested to know, the larger 63w battery can be purchased and installed into both the APEX 15R & 17R at the cost of SGD 112 (all inclusive).

Anyway, I have been using the APEX 17R since earlier this month, and strangely the model is now MIA from Aftershock front page.

My feedback after using it for some casual gaming, a few live streaming session as well as 3 video projects.

1. The 17inch screen is pretty and color are nicely displayed, great for color critical applications
2. This laptop is ways faster than what you need for all kind of heavy OBS, Zoom, Skype calls usage and etc. I've even tried OBS screen-cap Zoom, as well as walking around in a game - CONTROL (With RTX Rays turned on) then stream-out. Everything still reasonably fast and responsive.
3. The drivers pre-installed and provided by Aftershock (As of time of writing) is bare minimum and outdated. Worst is I don't think they will be kind enough to update it as frequent as larger corp. such as Dell, Asus and etc
4. For some reason, the THX software 'enhancement' is missing compare to the 15R. This was originally and STILL 'advertised' in the product page.(Which can still be accessed via https://www.aftershockpc.com/welcome/Productinner/apex-17r-lite) However they can be rectified.
5. You cannot simply download the latest Nvidia drivers and install directly. The generic driver does not have the hardware ID for aftershock (Which is common for least well known/smaller DIY brands). This is the BIGGEST disadvantages to me, and still do. Coz Aftershock only provided VERY outdated Nvidia driver dated back to April 2020. You can of course spend lots of effort modifying the driver to manually add the ID, but its ways too troublesome for me. The WORST part, the latest Adobe Premiere Pro CC flagged the provided driver as incompatible/critical. It might randomly crashes and you will need v451 or newer nvidia driver to fix. Which wasn't provided from AS still Luckily I found a workaround for this... which bring us to next point,
6. As we all know, Aftershock sourced this model from ODM Tong Fang, which happen to be the same as Eluktronic RP-15 & RP-17, I have downloaded and installed newer drivers that confirmed WORKED for my APEX 17R from https://www.eluktronics.com/rp-15-rp-17-drivers/ . I've updated the Control Center (Which you can see the screenshot below), NVidia Driver, and added THX to my APEX 17R via the files from Eluktronic. For AMD, the generic AMD Adrenaline software will work directly, and that will also be updated. Unfortunately, the Nvidia driver from Eluktronic is also not the latest, latest. It is currently modified from v451, which is the recommended version for Adobe, so at least that will work for me.

Side note:
- 512Gb storage really is TOO LITTLE. I've added a 1TB NVME from HPEX950 to it, worked flawlessly. My primarily usage of this laptop is video editing, with light entertainment on-and-off.
- The built-in speaker is crappy sounding. Hollow with virtually no bass. the THX driverss did not help, it just made it louder. The individual 3.5" out worked, but the quality of the audio DAC is OK-ish, I tends to plug in my spare Creative SXFI with USB as my primary sound driver/output tho, sounded much better.


In short, if you are confident that you at least has some knowledge, or effort to solve these issues manually, the laptop is still a good deal for the package. However, if you are not well-verse in these softwares, nor do not have the time to research on your own, BETTER don't buy this, and go with more, well known brands such as Dell, Lenovo, Asus and etc.

Nice review. So were you able to use the Elektroboost as well and unlock 115W on the GPU?

 

[albertyap]

Nice review. So were you able to use the Elektroboost as well and unlock 115W on the GPU?

The boost can be enabled in term of option, but I dunno how to check the numbers. Hwinfo shows 90ish most cases, but I am not sure if that's the one to look.

 

[chiaRH]

hey bros, just wondering how repairable aftershock laptops are after 3-4 years? I generally repair my laptops and use it for around 5 years.

Since Aftershock relies on OEMS, i kinda worried that there might not be enough parts like motherboard or battery to repair it down the road.

I am also considering the Gigabyte aero 15 because I think it will be better supported in terms of repairability.

What are you guy's thoughts?

You have to remember that Gigabyte like all companies also relies on OEMs and no OEM makes the same replacement parts for ever and ever. And 3-4 years would likely already be beyond the warranty lifespan of most notebooks.

From my experience, long term support such as 5+ years is a sort of privilege you only can get if it's for like, enterprise level support contracts.

At the end of the day you can only hope you weren't on the unlucky side and whatever model you get has enough longevity for its money's worth. I've been on both ends before (1st laptop from aftershock had GPU die after 2 years, my current S-17 has lasted 4 years and counting with the only major incident being faulty RAM that was easily replaced under warranty)

 

[prataboy666]

My mini review of the Apex 15R lite 4600h.

I got the laptop for around $1220. I got the base model 8gb ram, 512 gb lexar ssd ( default ssd) and with enthusiast thermal pasting, battery 46wh, gtx 1650.I bought an OEM windows 10 license which work great!

I was coming from 5th gen i7 laptop. Performance is a major upgrade for me and everything flies!

In terms of display, it is sharp but color accuracy is quite average. While doing some light photoshop, I notice the light blue looks more like mint.

No problems when watching on netflix.

In terms of gaming, you should be able to game quite at around low to mid for graphic intensive games like Detroit become human and Red dead.

Battery life is around - 3 1/2hours. It is not fantastic but I usually work with AC. You can extend the battery life to 4 1/2 hour by using Ryzen controller to reduce the TDP. But Ryzen controller is still abit unstable and sometimes the settings might be applied over time.

Thermals: Temperatures is around 40-50 degrees for normal productivity use and 60 degrees when gaming with thermal boost turned off.

Summary: For someone looking for a budget gaming laptop with local warranty, this is probably the best option out there. Most budget gaming laptops in Singapore starts from $1400 plus and they weigh around 2.2kg and above. Aftershock only weights 1.96 kg and has great thermals.

I know that the option is no longer available on the website but it might appear again. It disappeared awhile previously too and when it appeared, I jumped on it. So there is a possibility of it coming back again.