Category Archives: Tech Stuff

2nd-Gen MateBook X Pro (2019) Revealed in FCC Docs

A 2019 successor to the Huawei MateBook X Pro is coming, and it’s looking good — at least in these documents from the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.

Annotated page of KLV-WX9 (2019 MateBook X Pro) label document from FCC, showing unique port selection and revised design.

The model in question is the KLV-WX9, codename ‘Kelvin’. See the original label document here. Read more about MateBook model codenames here.

Chassis

At first glance, this looks very similar to the MateBook 13’s bottom, with a wide air intake for a dual-fan cooling system. However, you can see that this is a more premium laptop. It has a machined aluminum unibody just like the current X Pro. Meanwhile, the MateBook 13’s body is composed of multiple, cheaper, mostly two-dimensional stamped aluminum sheets.

Measuring the body drawing to-scale, the new MateBook appears to be roughly 4mm wider and 7mm taller. So, we may be getting a slightly bigger (14″?) screen, or thicker bezels in exchange for more internal space, or neither — Huawei’s drawing may just be distorted.

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Easily Disable Intel DPTF (Power Throttling) for Good

If your CPU frequency is being reduced under load, even at low temperatures, you’re probably experiencing power throttling. On many laptops, you can get rid of it by disabling the Intel Dynamic Platform and Thermal Framework and then setting a higher power limit in the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility.

Your laptop may have an option to disable DPTF in the BIOS menu. If not:

  1. Install NoDPTF.reg to prevent Windows from automatically reinstalling DPTF.
  2. In Device Manager, find all the devices whose names start with “Intel(R) Dynamic Platform and Thermal Framework”. They may be in the “System devices” list. Right click on each and “Uninstall device”. Check “Delete the driver software for this device” whenever available.
  3. Now you can use ThrottleStop or Intel XTU to raise the power limits.

Warning: if your computer can’t cool its CPU VRM properly, then raising the power limits may cause it to suddenly shut down. If that’s the case, you need to give the VRM more cooling like I did here.

If any DPTF devices are still present, please tell me their hardware IDs in the comments. (To check hardware ID: right click on the device, Properties, Details, select “Hardware Ids” in the drop-down menu.)

Confirmed Working Models
  • Huawei MateBook X Pro

A lot of laptops have further Power Limits controlled by the EC, which is much harder if not impossible to change.

These laptops include:
  • Lenovo Yoga 720-15IKB
  • Razer Blade Stealth (2019)

MateBook X Pro Survey Results: Most User-Modified Laptop!

How common are the issues plaguing the MateBook X Pro? And how many users have taken solving them into their own hands? This past month, I surveyed 309 visitors of Reddit.com/r/MatebookXPro and BradsHacks.com about their experience with the critically acclaimed Huawei laptop.


The majority of the surveyed users reported having a loose or rattling touchpad. Based on my understanding of how the touchpad is installed into the frame, I suspect that all units actually have this issue to some degree and some users just don’t perceive it as an abnormality. After all, loose trackpads are quite common in laptops.

Subjective Perception

Similarly, the issues with temperature and various types of noise are inherently subjective. For example, the same laptop can be considered too hot or loud by one user yet be completely acceptable for another. Some people are more sensitive to the buzz of coil whine and work in quieter environments, so they could notice the coil whine much more than others.
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Huawei Revises MateBook X Pro with Speaker Distortion Remedy

Previously, the Huawei MateBook X Pro’s speakers would produce distortion because they rattled against the laptop body. As shown in this unit purchased in November, Huawei has addressed this issue by putting small pieces of foam underneath the speakers. Is this because they saw my original post, where I both pointed out the issue and introduced this very solution? We may never know.

You’re Probably Doing 3D Printing Tolerancing Wrong. Here’s a Better Way.

Do you use 3D printing to make functional parts? Do your printed parts have slight dimensional errors, such as undersized holes? It is essential to take care of this if you use your FDM 3D printer to make precise or functional parts. Here’s the easiest and most elegant fix, using nothing but your slicer and a caliper.

Because the extruded molten plastic gets squashed by the nozzle and also flows outward toward the sides, everything you print is fattened, creating overall oversized prints and undersized holes.

Fortunately, there are ways to fix this flaw. First, I would recommend against these methods, if you currently use them:

Bad methods
  • Compensating by slightly changing the values in CAD: this is cumbersome if you use different printers or have collaborators, and problematic if you work with assemblies in CAD.
  • Changing the size in the slicer: FDM 3D printers generally have undersized ID and oversized OD, so enlarging or shrinking the size is bound to reduce one problem while worsening the other.

The Elegant Way: Horizontal Expansion

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