Corsair Voyager a1600 problems

[klehriker]

Impressed by the large Trackpad, the "best keyboard ever" on a laptop and the superb build quality I changed from a Razer Blade 15 to the new Voyager a1600.

While it's a thin powerhouse with a 99Wh battery mobility should be a thing but as stated on your product page you can excpect around 2 hours of light work till the lights go out.
I don't know why it's a thin device while it's obviously not designed to work on the go.

But that's not the problem. 
Build in Slipstream can't forget dead devices. Even if you format the whole Voyager the devices keep connected. In my case there is a friend's headset connected which i cannot remove because the headset is not in reach and i don't have any other slipstream devices at the moment.
Because of this my primary audio device is forced to be the headset that isn't connected anymore. So at least the speakers of  my Voyager stay quiet as long as I don't change my audio device manually to another source.

Speaking of "quiet"... it's just not. I don't know if it's just my unit, but the Voyager is just loud, always.
You have 4 different power/noise levels (quiet, balance, extreme and user)) each of them are loud but in a different way. 
While the fans are annoyingly loud even at the lowest rpm, "quiet" is by far the worst one as it spins up and down every few seconds because you opened a file explorer window or moved the mouse from a corner to another. 
It gets better at balanced mode. While there is the annoying higher pitched fan noise it doesn't change as much while you do nothing on your Voyager.
With extreme & user mode by the way I'm totally fine. They are loud and I'm kinda expecting them to be as those are for higher workloads like gaming, rendering or compiling. But then i can go away or put a headset on.
But I don't want to use a headset on everyday tasks like browsing or working remotely from home.

After reformatting the Voyager I don't even have the "fan symbol" in iCue anymore to change it visually. So I have to use Fn+F5 or UEFI to change.

So I have to ask if this is normal or do I have a faulty device because if this is normal I really have to get rid of this device.

[Jeffieyboy]

I hear you. I think much of this comes down to firmware updates - especially with the fan. It would also be great if they had the HX cpu so you could adjust the frequencies specifically, etc. What I recommend, which is what I did, was make two power plans. One for just the office (silent) where I had to make a regedit to add the 'Power Performance Boost mode' option under your power settings (high, balanced, etc). I disabled the boost in this quiet mode by switching 'Power Performance Boost' to 'disabled' so the frequency of the cpu stays at base 3.3 or something. 

Then when I want to game or do something more demanding, I enabled the 'Performance Boost Mode' under my 'High/Performance Power mode'. This would then allow the CPU to boost. 

Additionally, I assigned my fan speeds to 3 of the buttons on my streamdeck. That way I can quickly change between them on the fly.

What would be very cool is if they are able to tie the power plan to the fan curve/mode - similar to ASUS. If I want it quiet, I'd like it to not turbo and reduce the fan noise. If I want to go balls to the wall, I'd want the fans up and performance maxed. 

At first I was frustrated with the display drivers, etc. Then I realized this is a new product and I hope Corsair is working to develop these drivers or at least fix windows update driver conflicts. That being said, I did do a clean install and installed everything from Corsair website again, works like a charm. What I recommend doing - HIGHLY RECOMMEND - is to run through all the windows updates first until they are done and there is nothing left to update via Windows Update. Then, install/reinstall all the Corsair drivers. That way it replaces any driver that the system installed that may not be entirely compatible or at least cause issue.

 

The video card driver I found on this forum by someone who works with Corsair. Wish they put it on their driver list on the main Corsair page. I work in medical computers and understand that upon every new product there will be bugs, especially by a company who hasn't had experience in it before. Just be patient and it will get better. The build quality, performance, trackpad/keyboard and screen are excellent. Really the issues are coming down to drivers where they either conflict with the system or Elgato software.

 

Link how to add Processor Performance Boost: 

 

 

 

[klehriker]

Thank you for your reply.

Meanwhile I limited the cpu max performance to 99 percent which did almost the same in case of fan noise.

Now I can finally understand reviewers speaking about an "almost silent" system in idle.

I know it's a new product and of course Corsair never did this before so I really hope they read about the concerns of their customers and fix this with future firmware/uefi/software updates in this particular model not only with their upcoming products. 

So I will format the whole thing one time again and do as proposed. Is there a recommended order to install drivers after all updates (e.g. 1.chipset, 2.gpu, etc.)?

If you could manually adjust fan curves and power plans (with tdp sliders like the user mode in uefi) for the presets would be nice as well as some kind of a lightweight version of icue software.

[Jeffieyboy]

You will get issues with installing AMD drivers from the Windows Update. It will not allow you to install it. So, what I recommend is going through the entire Windows Update and ignore the AMD driver. Then I'd install the chipset drivers, followed by the display drivers. After that I restart and install all the other drivers and restart as needed.

There is a way to disable driver updates via Windows Update. That way, windows doesn't automatically install drivers that may be incompatible (since this is a new product).

Here: How to Stop Automatic Driver Updates on Windows (makeuseof.com)

There's a way to install windows 'Group Policy Editor' if you have the Home version of Windows, here: Download Group Policy Editor for Windows 10 & 11 Home Edition - MajorGeeks. This allows you to make a modification to the Windows Updates. There are other methods as well including Regedit. 

You can either disable driver updates via Windows Update or just ignore the error codes you get when Windows tries to install the drivers. I believe Corsair is currently working on a fix for this driver discrepancy via Windows Update.