Welcome to the FAQ collection of TUXEDO Computers! Here you will find answers to the most frequently asked questions about our InfinityBook Pro 14 - Gen9.
Questions about technical details
Driver for Motorcomm YT6801 LAN chipset
The Motorcomm YT6801 LAN chipset installed in the device requires a driver that is already integrated into TUXEDO OS but is often missing in other distributions. You can add the driver to Fedora and Ubuntu using the following packages. Please note that Secure Boot must be disabled in the BIOS/UEFI for the driver to load successfully.
Device Immediately Wakes Up After Suspend
With Tomte version 2.39.0, a fix was introduced to address this behavior using the boot parameter acpi.ec_no_wakeup=1. If your distribution was not installed via TUXEDO WebFAI and therefore does not use Tomte, you can manually add this parameter to your boot manager.
We’ll explain this using Grub as an example: Open a terminal and edit the /etc/default/grub file with a text editor that has administrative rights.
sudo nano /etc/default/grub
Locate the line starting with GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT and add the parameter acpi.ec_no_wakeup=1. The line will often look like the following example:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash acpi.ec_no_wakeup=1"
Save the file with Ctrl+O, then press Enter, and close the editor with Ctrl+X. Then run the following command to apply the changes and restart the system:
sudo update-grub
If you are using a different boot manager, such as Systemd-boot or rEFInd, you will need to add the parameter according to its specific configuration.
Background on design and configuration
Why did you change the chassis design?
We consider the new design to look a bit more modern, while the predecessors had a very classic design. While this is of course a matter of taste, from a technical standpoint, the new chassis design has several advantages:
Ports placement / cable management: The new design allows us to place ports also on the back. On the IBP 14 - Gen9, ports, which are not meant to be unplugged frequently like LAN, external monitors via HDMI or USB-C DisplayPort, are placed backwards to route the cables to the back to free desk space on the sides for your mouse hand and for a more pleasant and clean setup of your desk.
Less hindered airflow: On the old design, the hinge was pretty close to the fan exhausts. It did not fully block them, but this design had the fans blowing the hot air against the hinge and the bottom display bezel where the panel electronics are located. The new design allows the hot air to be blown out of the exhausts unhindered.
While cooling still consists of two small fans due to the extremely thin chassis (space for cooling is barely more than 7 mm) this unhindered airflow, combined with other detail improvements like slightly thicker rubber feet to create more space between desk and bottom panel and sucking air through the keyboard, allows to increase CPU power/performance to up to 60 watts (IBP 14 - Gen8: 40 watts) or presumably (not tested yet) quieter fans when you limit the CPU to the same 40 watts like on the predecessor.
Wider opening angle / less hinge torque resistance: The predecessor’s classic design constraints the display’s opening angle to around 140° while the new designs allows an angle of nearly 180°. While not everybody needs this, this gives more flexibility for laptop stands, where the notebook is in an almost vertical position.
But there is another advantage, too: With the old design, we had some hinge problems in the RMA because many customers do not open the display gently to the max angle, but rather with a swing, which puts quite a bit mechanical force on the hinge. When opening the new InfinityBook’s lid to the same ~140°, the hinges are far from their stop position, so that less mechanical resistance force acts on them.
Why did you go from magnesium alloy to aluminum?
The new InfinityBook Pro 14 and 15 feature very rigid and high-quality all-aluminum chassis. This is a clear step forward in quality into the premium range which our InfinityBook Pro series stands for. The new series of laptops (IBP 14/15, Stellaris Slim 15, upcoming Stellaris 16) are the best laptops we ever had in terms of build quality! Of course, the magnesium chassis had also good quality, but the focus with that material is on absolute minimum weight at the cost of some rigidity.
We don’t rule out to bring laptops with this material again in the future, but especially ultra light and portable laptops are normally constantly on the go: They get „thrown“ into bags, slapped out and on the table, moved to different locations and it is not always easy to take the care it deserves. So we consider the material change to the more robust aluminum as a clear step forward, especially since the weight has increased virtually imperceptibly on both the IBP 14 and IBP 15 (compared to IBP 16 - Gen8).
How does the color look like?
This was quite a hassle in production to get colors come out correctly. The IBP 14 - Gen9’s color changes significantly according to angle and light conditions. We would describe it as „metallic grey/gunmetal grey“. It is definitely clearly darker than the bright silver from the previous IBP 14/16.
Why did you downgrade the battery from 99 to 80 Wh?
Short answer: Because InfinityBook Pro 14 - Gen9 has added a second M.2 SSD drive.
Long answer: IBP 14 - Gen7 was offered in two editions. One with 1x M.2 and 99 Wh battery and one with 2x M.2 and 53(!) Wh battery. Although the first one sold much better, there were still many customers who chose the „storage edition“ although they had to give up almost half the battery capacity!
In other words: In a chassis this extremely small and light you get dual fan cooling (single fan cooling on a chassis this thin would be awful in terms of fan noise, fan on/off cycles and temperatures), 2x upgradable RAM slots, 2x upgradable M.2 SSD slots and a 80 Wh battery: There is not enough room for more.
According to latest internal battery tests, the InfinityBook Pro 14 achieves ~7 hours during YouTube 1080p streaming via Wi-Fi and ~9 hours during local 1080p video playback (both at 150 nits and 60 Hz display settings).
If you need the 99 Wh battery, please consider our still highly portable and very lightweight InfinityBook Pro 15.
Why no powersaving CPU for better battery life?
Actually, IBP 14 - Gen9 still plays in the same performance class - which we would call „fast/upper mainstream performance“ - like its predecessors. The Core Ultra 7 155H is the successor to last gen’s Core i7–13700H. AMD’s pendant in this performance class is the Ryzen 7 8845HS.
On the one hand, we have only limited CPU choice for certain devices, on the other hand, the InfinityBook Pro series stands for strong CPU performance in a maximally thin and light form factor.
Please also note, that both Intel and AMD have improved their low power efficiency quite a bit during the last few years. You CAN throw heavy workloads at them, but you can also use adjust/lower powerlimits to your liking via our inhouse-developed and pre-installed TUXEDO Control Center.
Last but not least: IBP 14 - Gen9 is charged via USB-C. The 100 watts power supply is really handy and very light.
If you seek for extreme levels of portability, but also rigidity (aluminium chassis) and good performance to also get some heavy workloads done without slowing down, the InfinityBook Pro 14 is the way to go.
Why no dedicated GPU anymore?
There are several reasons for this design decision. If you need significantly more graphics power, we simply have to refer to physics: You need a bigger chassis to cope with the additional heat.
Reason 1: The large majority of IBP 14 laptops we sold, were the version without dedicated graphics.
Reason 2:The chassis design/cooling was/is not meant for dedicated GPUs: Due to the extremely thin and light build, we had to throttle down the RTX 3050 to 45 watts (and of course the CPU heavily as well during cross loading) which is just slightly above NVIDIA’s lowest allowed power target (official range: 35 to 80 watts). While this meant still much better performance than the predecessor’s Intel Xe graphics, the price-performance ratio was rather bad, because despite getting not even close to the RTX 3050’s full performance, you still have to pay the full market price for the component.
Reason 3: Intel Core Ultra 7 155H and Ryzen 7 8845HS feature much better graphics than the predecessor’s Intel Xe graphics. On both new iGPUs, we talk about ** a roughly doubled performance**. Therefore it was decided to go solely with the iGPU version.
If you need (significantly) more graphics power, we simply have to refer to physics: You need a bigger chassis which can cope with the additional heat.
Solution 1: Connecting an external desktop GPU enclosure (eGPU) via Thunderbolt4/USB4 allows you to massively boost graphics performance at stationary use while maintaining the InfinityBook’s extremely portable form factor on the go.
Solution 2: If you prefer the all-in-one laptop solution while maintaining the thinnest and lightest form factor, we recommend to take a look at our Stellaris Slim 15.
We are aware that in times where every laptop vendor fights for attention with always „thinner and thinner“ and „lighter and lighter“ claims - just to surpass the competitors by 1 or 2 mm or 100 grams on paper - we should get proportions right: These marketing tricks do not aim to bring customers real added value, but to attract attention to their products.
The extent to which the industry has drastically changed the ratio of performance/power draw to chassis thickness/weight over the years is not only more than remarkable and has boosted portability a lot, but from a technical standpoint it is not the best way to go.
Adequate cooling needs space and weight, but allows lower skin temperatures and not only quieter fan noise in all load scenarios, but also often more pleasant, lower pitched fan acoustics due to taller fan blades.
Please be sure to think about all aspects of your next laptop: Which portability in terms of chassis size and weight do you really need, which kind of rigidity and build quality do you expect, how important is it to you to have a dedicated graphics card and/or a powerful CPU and how important are fan acoustics to you?
We have various notebooks and every one serves different preferences. If you need assistance, please reach out to our customer support team or get in contact with us here. We are always happy to help!
