LG 2025 Notebooks

[John Ratsey]

On 2/6/2026 at 8:13 PM, extremecarver said:

Edit: so it worked to just plug in my old harddrive. Steps to do: 1. you need a USB mouse. 2. Change boot order and move old disk to spot 1 in bios, best remove fingerpring login and any other login before moving the drive - else you will need to cut power three times while booting to get into boot option, boot in safe mode with networking - change a registry setting, reboot, use the physical mouse to click on other sign in option and select password... Then install the new LG updater for the current model (the old program is useless now) - install all updates. 5. Make sure under settings --> apps --> optional features --> to install windows hello facial --> reboot plently of times and run windows update --> after 3 hours everything was working without fresh windows installation. Power options were messed up again - so need to set in registry all the options especially AHCI link and again select lowest - as otherwise it defaults once again to HIPM only. Last step - get a new windows license used and activate windows. 

Somehow you will need to login back to many places - and still reactivate the 2nd factor authentication from fingerprint now to facial. For me that still saves plenty of hours vs a fresh installation of windows 11 madness.

This is something I would like to be able to do if I change computer. Do you have any software with a single licence which needed to be transferred? If so, did you release the licence before moving the SSD and then reapply? The need to do this probably depends on what hardware fingerprint the licence system uses.

On 2/7/2026 at 8:00 PM, extremecarver said:

After repasting I now get constant fully loaded power use slightly above 40watts. Huge change. LG had put enourmous amount of paste onto the CPU. Now good point about that way is - it will never pump out as much as they put, bad think is performance. I went with Durnaut by Thermal Grizzly as this is considered to be the most durable paste on the market right now (except some funky Chinese ones where however you never know if you get what you order...) with great performance.

How much fan noise are you getting at 40W? I want good performance with minimal noise.

 

LG refunded my money for the Arrow Lake gram 17 (not Pro version) and I'm wondering what to do next. (i) Get the gram 17 Pro if the price is right; or (ii) get the Nvidia version which is known to have a better cooling system (but this is likely to have a substantial price premium); or (iii) get another non-Pro gram 17 if at a good price and modify the air vents for the fan plus the power limits; or (iv) wait for the Panther Lake models to first appear and then be discounted. LG seem to have had some muddled thinking while configuring for both Arrow Lake and Lunar Lake.

 

I'm currently away from home at the moment so thinking and watching the prices.

[extremecarver]

Any software licences do not get transferred, also all websites the login cookie is deactivated. Authenticator needs to be re-initiated. But all my registry hacks and modifications survice - it would take me ages to redo all of this which is needed to tame Windows 11.

So it's still much faster. And a used windows pro license is like 10€ so I don't care and just buy a new used one. I don't really know how to deactivat a license so I can reuse it on another PC. Also I think not all licenses support this.

 

Noise is very low. Actually I ran Passmark full test on Silent with fans off, and I still got 19,500 CPU mark result - so higher than an non modified. It fluctuates quite badly but 15-25w are possible passively cooled without the fans running at all. I really didn't expect the fans kinda mainly keep the base cooler but have not that much effect on the CPU below 5-10 minutes. 

 

See the results once silent once with AI fan mode. They are better than 155H intel inside the Gram. Passmark is pretty good estimate of real use except gaming. But it's quite obvious that the lower benches which are done later suffered from the heat build up (full run takes nearly 10 minutes)

 

Cinebench is also with AI fan mode.

[extremecarver]

Ah and what to buy. In general I would have said, wait and get the Ryzen 7 AI 450. They are sold cheaper than the poor Ultra 5 325/335 models right now with twice the multicore performance, and still great battery life (yeah those low power panther lakes gonna be astonishing in battery life still beating Lunar Lake by 20% or so but at actually less performance).

 

The new H (or X) panther lake look great in benchmarks, but they will cost a fortune.

Now the problem is - with RAM/SSD prices skyrocketing right now - prices gonna increase a lot more than expected. A lunar lake Gram Pro on offer or a 255H model on offer looks like the best choice. Especially if you want 32GB it's gonna be a steep price.

 

LG sells the new gram Pro with 256GB SSD in the base models to counter prices (and likely betting buyers just swap with an older NVME they still own and put the cheapest junk in just for selling and getting the price right).

 

Oh yeah - Geekbench 6 with AI fan mode: 

2700/10600

vs in silent mode:

2700/10100

 

Geekbench 6 GPU gives identical 30500 approx (255h would have 15.000 multicore and 40.000 GPU score on default settings with LG gram more or less).

 

So it hardly makes a change but Geekbench has not much sustained load.

PL1/Pl2 set at 45w, and Speedshift EPP to 20 (setting it to 0 may gain some more points - but is really pointless as it increases heat a lot. On battery I run EPP at 180 usually, or 210 if I have scarce access to power.)