2014 Asus N550JK -DS71T quick mini review and opinion so far

I just added overclocking and under volting to ThrottleStop 7 for many of the Haswell processors. These new features work great on the 4700MQ and they should work on the 4700HQ that is in the Asus N550JK. Under volting reduces power consumption which reduces heat and can improve battery run time. It can also increase the amount of Turbo Boost available if you are running at the TDP limit.

 

For the people reporting throttling issues (not on battery down to 800MHz but on AC down to 2.8/2.9) are you actually seeing a performance hit in any non-benchmark applications?

 

No missing keystrokes for me either.. My previous Sager was horrible about that.

 

Hi everyone,

I was wondering about the fan noise of this laptop on idle basic tasks (web browsing, word, excel, photoshop). Is it disturbing in a silent room (library, conference room) ?

Thanks.

 

I received mine two days ago. The notebook is impressive, looks very solid, great (glossy) screen, excellent performance. I tried realtemp stress testing and temp never passed 60C in any core. However, I don't know if mine is defective or what, but one of the two fans is working full speed all the time, making a lot of noise.

I have installed every fan control and hw monitor app out there without any success. The fans (neither the one on the middle that's going full speed or the one on the right which appears silent) are not detected by any tool, I have zero info about them on BIOS (though using AMIBCP seems to show reasonable values for the options that are hidden on my current BIOS), and nothing seems to stop the one on the middle.I purchased the notebook on USA thru amazon but I'm now in Uruguay without much chances to return it or something. All my drivers are on the latest versions and BIOS on 204, which is latest for JK. I even opened it to see if something seemed out of place, removed and placed the battery in again, but at no avail.

So, yeah, excellent laptop, but mine sounds like a fridge.

 

@Bruninho

The missing keystrokes thing is erratic at best. I had the touchpad disabled in BIOS these last weeks while using a usb mouse and everything works great. Then since you asked, I enabled it again to make sure and installed not the latest version for "Asus gesture" but the one before (VER227) and again I experience missing keytrokes, albeit less than before or so it seems. This is a really tough to pinpoint issue. I also tried a couple weeks ago to enable the touchpad in BIOS without having drivers/asus gesture installed, and that seemed to fix the problem as well. Still I disabled it again since I'd tap accidentally the touch pad with the base of my hand while writing.

SO! Yeah, it's an issue. At least it is for me in my unit, me being a somewhat fast typer and occasional programmer. It's the first time I notice something like this in a laptop, so I'm positive it's not me just randomly not pushing the keys right. And again, the issue seems to disappear with the asus gesture software uninstalled. So I'd say it's a software problem.

I don't know if the people here who claim that they don't have a problem with it are fast typers (typists?), or maybe they just got lucky with their units. But it exists. Sometimes it happens after 30 fast keystrokes, sometimes right after a couple slow ones... as I said at the beginning, this behaviour is erratic at best. I checked like 30 times it wasn't me and I can guarantee it, it's just not me screwing up. Only thing I can do from here is to record myself typing and go over the video checking where it failed to make super extra sure it was the keyboard and not me. I might as well do it some time. For the time being, I'll just disable the touchpad in the BIOS again.

I already contacted Asus but they suggested the typical: reinstall Windows, blah blah. I kinda understand they won't look deeply into it though, such a weird and difficult to test problem!

Uhmmmm, maybe I should try installing some generic touchpad drivers, synaptics or whatever... does anybody know which touchpad does the N550JK use?

 

After clean install, I reinstalled Smart Gesture but not the Keyboard Device Filter Utility. I type about 90 wpm.

Not doubting that a problem does exist for some people, though, since I've experienced it before with a previous Asus as I mentioned above.

Did the N550JV have this issue?

Sent from my SPH-L720 using Tapatalk

 

I remember noticing a slight improvement on the missing keystrokes thing after uninstalling the keyboard filter utility, but maybe I just got lucky during that timespan. Such an elusive issue, so frustrating!

 

Edit: Haha wow, I hit unlock Turbo on the turbo page and it went to 3.3ghz under full load.. holy crap.. I got scared though because my temps shot to 80+C.. I'll try again soon.

I'm not exactly clear on what im doing but here's a screenshot of my current setup and i'm currently under 100% cpu load to show what my temps/cpu is holding.. Won't go higher than 2993mhz


What do you see going on here with my 4700HQ?
Attempt #2.. Looks better now:

 

Yes it should be able to go 2 turbo bins higher than stock with an unlock (+200mhz) there is usually enough room to drop the voltage below stock even for this increased speed.

 

Can someone explain if the 2gb vs 4gb graphic memory makes a big difference at FHD resolution? Apparently there are two versions of N550JK.

 

No difference at all!

 

I can confirm that audio worked fine for me over HDMI.

 

Just did a little research, and you are right. I really have no idea, why they even sell the 4gb version, which is quite a bit more expensive. Just thought 4gb would compensate for DDR3 in this case, but guess not.

 

It makes a difference for me since I work with graphics, and software like the Adobe Suite and Blender take quite a bit of advantage of the extra vram. Also, for games like Skyrim and others where there are hi res texture packs available, the extra vram is a significant upgrade. Plus, games will continue to use bigger and bigger textures as time passes, so it's always nice to have some extra room. So "no difference at all"? Not at all

 

The audio over hdmi is resolved by installing latest Realtek audio drivers so we can close this as an issue for those of you on the fence.. It works great now.

 

Finally someone read my posts

 

If 4Gb version cost much more maybe look for a machine with the GTX 860M with GDDR5, like the Y50 coming out I think might have it.

 

I am just waiting for more info on Y50, if it will not have an IPS display option, i will probably buy N550JK. Need to figure out, what weights more for me, better display or better GPU...

 

Kinda sux that you could get a Y50 with better GPU but lack on the screen. Guess its always a trade off somewhere. I love the JV/JK screen. Had JV now just got JK in yesterday. Screen is awesome! Not tested the GTX 850M yet but already know it is better than the GT 750M I had.

*Anyone have issues with applications having text blurry? I changed the settings on many by checking "disable display scaling on high dpi settings" in compatibility and it fixed it but some like windows apps don't have that option. My JV didn't do this so why is the JK?

 

Would be nice if you will give some feedback yes. There were reports of pretty bad speakers (what do you say?) and missing keystrokes (you experience any of this?). Im just trying to get as much info as possible, as it is really a hard decision. Thanks.

 

The blurriness is Windows 8.1 scaling feature.. It can be disabled completely and you can regain all that screen real estate. I leave it on since my JK will primarily be my htpc and it's easier to read when you're sitting on a couch!

 

The 860m with gddr5 is proving to be almost as fast as a 780m after overclocking.. I don't expect the 850m with slower memory to do as well but so far I'm right at stock 860m speeds with the simple 135mhz overclock .

 

And voltage on stock? Temps? Any throttling?

 

Since there's no custom bios out there for the 850m yet I can only overclock on stock voltage and I'm limited to 135mhz more speed on the core. The ram is weak in my unit. I was only able to squeeze another 199mhz out of it before I start to artifact. The good news is that I'm not seeing any throttling at all at with these small overclocks. However last night playing crisis my laptop overheated and shut down... My lid was closed I was hooked up to my tv .. I'm not sure on the cooling design but maybe it gets less air flow when the lid is closed.. I'll post an update..

 

Its probably due to an overclock eventhough it is on stock voltage.

 

Actually come to find out, it didn't shut down from heat at all... I must have accidentally hit a sleep key or something on my wireless keyboard.. Last night when it shut down I took it as a clue to go to bed so I did lol.. Come home from work today and turn the laptop back on and it picked right up in the middle of my Crysis game.. The overclocks were there still and it was fine.. Played more and it never crashed.. My overclock is indeed very stable.. I do think I can get a lot more core clock out of this thing once I get a custom bios (if it's even possible to flash the 850m in the N550JK)... Kepler bios tweaker can't even dump the bios so that's already a bad sign. I dont think the bios is dumpable.

 

I have not seen the missing keystrokes myself (knock on wood) but have only used it for a day. On the JV I had an audio issue where the bass would only play at first then regular sound would play with treble tones as well, did worse with sub but did either way. Not tested audio enough to say but I think they should have not placed the speakers on the bottom. I am seeing the same sound issue where the bass plays at first when listening to a video then the sound gets normal. Irritating and not sure what is going on.

Quality wise I will need to test with some sound files and get back with you. Love the build of the machine, don't care for the touch-pad much but hardly ever use one due to preferring a wireless mouse (Microsoft with Blue Track works great for me on many surfaces), the touch-pad doesn't seem to be all the way flat either, no big deal just annoys me a little and they should take more care on a nice machine. Hard drive is sure a bottleneck so an SSD is a must to me (but wont buy one for a bit cause really want the 500GB SSD, so did consider a 7200RPM, but heat/noise made me wonder if 7200RPM was worth it or not?). Like that it has 1x 8GB stick of RAM rather than 2x 4GB like my JV had that way it is cheaper to upgrade to 16GB. I do wish the keys were black or the back-light was blue or red or something different. Will try to update more info later.

Will it be ok if I disable it (got to search how yet) and still connect it to my 22" 1080P TV? Does it change anything there? Thanks.

 

1.) Anyone have the audio issue where only bass plays or a few seconds after starting a video?

2.) Is it worth the trouble of putting a 7200 RPM drive in to gain performance or should I just wait till I am ready to buy an SSD? Thanks.

3.) I seen a place selling the JV model with back-light color choice once, Is that changeable? I would love to change either the key color (with keys that back-light will shine through) or the back-light color!

4.) I see one place sells this PC with the option to have better thermal compound but that would void my warranty if I did it myself, but they also sell it with added copper heat-pipe to it, Can we add heat-pipe to this somehow like they do and what do we need to do it. Cause if I was to ever overclock even a little I prefer to add cooling to it somehow if I can.

5.) Anyway to get programs that were fine with windows 7 and 8 both to work with 8.1 on this machine, even using the compatibility feature on it, some still do not. Or is there an "easy" way to downgrade to windows 8 without driver issue and driver update issues? Seen it sold with Windows 7 too, but I fear dealing with driver issues too much or would prefer 7 really.

Thanks.

 

2. No the 7200rpm HDD isnt worth it. Save the cash for a SSD.

4. Copper heat pipe changes I believe dont reduce the temperatures but just delay the inevitable temperature rise when doing intensive tasks. Not worth it imo.

5. Just stick with 8.1 if you can get used to the windows new interface. Would be a lot easier down the road dealing with drivers issues and such.

 

1) I dont have that issue with the audio.. Although if you're using HDMI some audio devices will sleep the audio processor when it doesn't detect any audio and then wakes up after it gets a signal.. That's what it sounds like is happening for you. Test on the internal speakers? Are you updated to the latest Realtek audio drivers?

2) I would skip another platter drive and shoot straight for the SSD when you get the funds.. I put a 480gb Crucial M800 SSD in this thing and boy is it night and day difference in speed.. Boots up in like 15 seconds and using Windows is a treat when everything loads up in milliseconds!

3) I haven't looked at the JV keyboard but I am sure it's swappable.. I think the only difference in our JK models is seriously just the motherboard/GPU..

4) I've thought about doing this myself but after testing i'm seeing no throttling on CPU or GPU even with Throttlestop + Nvidia Inspector overclocking going!

5) Can't help you here since all of my games/apps are working fine under Windows 8.1 so far..

 

The only thing that would happen is that text would be smaller than if you did not disable it.

 

To be exact, you would just be running the scaling at a 1:1 ratio.. Apple scales up on their newer OSes ever since the release of their 1800p panels to avoid everything looking so tiny on such a high res panel, they scale all UI elements and pictures,etc. to look larger on the screen. 1080p is fine at native res unless you're like me sitting behind a TV about 10 feet away.. I need the scaling to be able to read this far back.

 

Not using HDMI when it does this. Not sure about drivers, only updates done were some windows ones. Guess i need to check on other drivers that are not in windows update maybe?
Don't mean swap the JV/JK, just mentioned a seen a JV being sold with different color back lighting, so wondered if someone could do that themselves cause I would prefer either different color back-light or darker keys.

Do I need to shut the PC off to attach the HDMI from TV to PC, Or can I just shut the TV off?

 

The backlighting is built into the keyboard just order the JV keyboard and you're set.

 

You can actually just use the Win + P shortcut to toggle back to only using the laptop display. It may still use it for audio though, not sure.

 

Guess I need to contact that retailer and see if they can sell me one of those keyboards then thanks. Think I will end up removing any stickers that will void warranty doing this? * I see the retailer has the JK now too and offeres it with several backlight color options as well as a different logo on the back with options for color light there as well. I asked them if they would sell me a keyboard with blue back-light.

I mean like if the PC is on and I plug or unplug the hdmi cable (hot swapping) will it damage anything? Mostly I can leave it on probably though.

In response to a previous post, I cant find anywhere to completely disable the display scaling/DPI settings without editing the registry. Is that the only way to fix the text blurry issue. Messed up that even some windows programs do this! And I cant change compatibility for those apps to change it.

 

Hello, new to this thread. I'm stuck between the Asus N550JK and the Y50 at the moment. I have some questions for Asus owners.

1. How's the keyboard flex and trackpad on the Asus? My current Y500 has a very responsive keyboard with no flex, but the trackpad is the worst.
2. Would you say an IPS screen panel is way better than a TN panel? I feel like the Y50 has decent viewing angles despite it being TN.
3. How big a difference is the 2GB DDR3 GTX850m and the 2GB GDDR5 Maxwell GTX860m?

 

1) Dont notice any flex.. pretty good to type on.. Touchpad is crap but i'm used to the offerings of Macs so there you go.. I haven't used a Windows laptop that had anything good or close to a Macbook trackpad. I'm at home with an external wireless mouse.
2) IPS screen is night and day compared to TN.. Although if you're just gaming mostly you dont really notice/care about the quality of your screen but for working and doing everyday stuff, you'll notice how much cleaner and vibrant a IPS screen is. I really like that low-cost laptops are finally getting IPS screens so that's a big plus for the N550. I would value a laptops size vs. GPU offered vs if it had IPS/TN though.. but that's just me. Much like you can grab a 860m powered machine over the 850m DDR3 powered N550 for the same cost and that's probably enough to outweigh the machine's use if you care more about GPU strength.
3) Big difference if you're overclocking.. The 860m guys are getting to 780m stock performance for the most part but i'm not sure how the long-term results will pan out. I can tell you that if you just push the 850m to +135mhz and the ram a little bit, it reaches the stock 860m level of performance. If you dont care about overclocking, I strongly recommend the N550JK and just overclock it +135mhz and leave it alone knowing you're getting basically a 860m but in a lighter/less builky machine than what you get in a 17"+ gamer chassis.

Other thoughts I have is that you need to really think deeply about what makes you happy in a laptop and your uses for it will be.

Things to think about:

Power consumption, the N550 has 120watt brick (will cost you less to power it over long periods of time).. You decide you want a "Gamer" machine with a 860m and you're into a 200+watt brick now, although i'm not sure if it really needs to use all that wattage since the 860m is very efficient.

Size.. The N550 is a 15" in a 1" thick chassis only weighing 5.9lbs... Compare to a "Gamer" machine.. 2" thick at roughly 9 lbs.. combined with an even bigger/heavier power brick.

Quality of panel/chassis used.. The N550 form factor and luxury look/feel is better (to me) than the "Gamer" machines out there.. They are all about raw power, less look, etc. I would rather show off the N550 than show off the G750.. plus it's massive..

Overall cost vs. what you get.. I got the N550JK on Amazon when it was 1049.99.. Sure you can pick up a MSI/Clevo with 860m with the same exact specs.. but they are both heavier and thicker.. The Clevo 13" is probably the coolest one out of the bunch being roughly the same cost and I THINK it has a IPS screen option but not sure if that's standard for the $1000 price. The rest all have TN panels..

END RESULT.. If you plan on using it more as a laptop and moving around a lot with it, N550 might be better on the average.. If you plan to use an external monitor and "docking" your next laptop more often and not tug boating it around in a bag a lot.. I totally say skip the N550 and get a 860m powered machine because it will offer better gaming potential and overclocking potential..

I'm torn because I do plan on docking my laptop probably more often than moving it around and I probably should have gotten a 860m machine but I am still overall extremely happy with the N550JK knowing it's got a super nice IPS screen in a very thin, lightweight body..

 

Is anyone else having an issue with wifi randomly dropping? It corrects itself immediately once I turn wireless off and back on, but still annoying.

 

I updated to latest wifi drivers from Intel's site directly and haven't had any issues. I didn't seem to have any issues on the Asus provided drivers either though.

 

Ive had enough of waiting for more Y50 models and just ordered N550JK. Will get it next week. Will give my feedback asap.

 

I envy you. I too gave up on the Y50, but I'll have to wait till July to buy the N550JK. I look forward to hearing your impressions.

 

Thanks for the info, I think I'll wait until the end of May to make my decision when the 4k Y50 model arrives and see how they compare.

 

Does anyone know if there will be non-touch model available in future like the previous N models? I am interested in non touch matte display.

 

I bought the non touch matte version in germany: ASUS N550JK-CN042H W8 (Art.-Nr. 90546705) - Notebooks / Laptops - computeruniverse

 

Had that on my N550JV all the time, but not yet on my N550JK (Knock on wood).

but now keyboard just stopped, using on screen one it sux.- restarted and works now, not sure if hit something or what caused the keys to stop working.

 

It seems the battle is between the Lenovo Y50 vs. Gigabyte P34g V2 vs. Asus N550JK

I'm stuck between the Y50 and the Asus N550JK because I want the touch screen. Is an overclocked 2GB DDR3 GTX850m (by XoticPC) better than or on par with the GDDR5 GTX860m (Kepler, Maxwell)?
Will the 4k TN panel be better with viewing angles than the FHD IPS panel of the Asus?

 

Depends on how much it's overclocked.. I overclocked mine +135 on core and +199 on mem and it's very close to being an actual 860m but not quite.. GDDR5 is a huge leap in overall performance vs GDDR3..

That being said, I just picked up a G750JM with 860m and will post my thoughts on how each one compares in stock form and overclocked form.

 

can anyone post a link to replace the bluray optical drive with a 2nd harddrive bay? also how is battery? i've never gotten more than 3 hours from a 15"