Please note Gigabyte released a new BIOS (305) which is much quieter on idle - the fan now rarely comes on and if you keep Silent on it's still quieter than it was even under max load. So it's only in cases where you push everything to the limit and beyond with turbo that you will notice all that noise anymore :)

Well, after months of searching for my 4 year old sony z1 replacement (1.3kg carbon,256 ssd ,8gb, GT320m, $3500usd) and giving up on Sony ever producing a top spec business design again I settled on this p34g on Friday. An the search from Vietnam to Malaysia to Australia to track one down on the outskirts of Brisbane was worth it. While not the stylish design of Sony, it is well made, ports in all the right places, business like appearance. And being one of 10% the worlds left handers appreciate the big vents at the back.

As for noise, yes its loud in intense graphics, but otherwise quiet in a normal office environment, super quick ssd, great screen...and only $1799 aud. Would have been even cheaper if I had time to get the 10% tax rebate at the airport.

For me as an architect who uses this for interactive flyarounds of complex models (using sketchup / lightup) with clients all over Vietnam this makes me very satisfied.

PS also looked at the gtx765 and gtx770 models and they look good to but size and weight were the deciding factors for me.. I have a dell 30" monitor at home if I need a big screen.

Yeah, it's definitely loud when you push it.

But: You can install the Smart Manager Utility, which is really nice for switching all stuff like Wifi, Bluetooth etc on and off anyway - it has a fan control built in, too. If you switch this to "stealth mode" the fan will stay in lowest setting (of course throttling the CPU, but this is what we want, right?)

You'll find this "Smart Manager V3" on the Gigabyte website amongst the P34G downloads. Look under "Drivers" for "Windows 7 32-bit". There's a version from mid-Dec 2013.

I didn't think it would be that loud when I read this, but I just got it and I can tell you it is like a jet on take off!

Great review.

If you want to hear how loud it is, check out the video I made.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nY2NFSpv8E

It's too bad that this is so loud.  That's one of the reasons I built a desktop and moved away from a gaming laptop in the past.  I was about to order one of these but now thinking I will just buy a tablet and upgrade my desktop system.

All covered, as always :) I'm interested in his big brother - p35k. Are You planing to review it  anywhere near this month ?