A8jm owner's Lounge

I've had my A8jm since mid-july and love it. However, lately I've noticed a minor problem. When the computer is on standby, it seems that I can hear the power light at the front turning on and off. The sound is very faint, and alternates between a high-pitched whine when the light is on, and a low-pitched whine when the light is off. Strangely enough, this only happens when the computer is plugged in, not when it is on battery. Most of the time it isn't a problem, but if I am in a quiet room trying to read, it can get quite annoying.
Has anyone else had this happen to them, and if so, is there anything I can do to fix it?

 

I have heard a clicking noise on occasion from my hdd or power light but not a whining noise. It hasn't bothered me (yet) so i haven't really looked into it.
I don't imagine there would be anything you could do short of de-activating (or replacing) the lights.

 

Hi,

This is my first post on that forum, I was looking for information about my last purchase : the a8jm of course... and i found you guys : addicted and enthusiast about the a8jm, i've read everything in this thread and now here my feedback on that machine. (I'll have some questions for you too

First of all, thanks to Darrick, his review was one of the first i read, and certainly the most complete and precise one i've ever read about the A8.

I appreciate this place for the detailed information about bios, cpu, hd and everything else i can find here, it seems i found the right place, i had some difficulties to find such a thread on the french forums.

So...
I love this laptop, I use it for about 2 weeks.
I had to read a lot of stuff before i decided to buy it, the Q35 samsung was very nice to me but the poor GPU (intel gma 950) made the decision easier...

I read bad reviews about the a8jm screen, but i'm very happy with it : i've brought back my A8JM twice for a new one to my shop because i had one dead pixel each time and i didn't want any...

Darrick you said on your review only north america doesn't have the bluetooth module but in France all A8 don't have it, you can find 2 A8JM models, one with bluetooth and 5400rpm drive, and the other without the BT module and a 4200 rpm, I own this one.

I'm very happy with the performance so far, especially in video games, i tried several demos until now : fear, flight simulator, warcraft iii (not very recent i agree), gtr2, etc... and the very nice rise of legends : everytime a very good gaming experience.

Now the bad points :
-Ok the "body" seems to be solid, "rock solid" would say asus, but it scratches quite easily I've already have some on the cover... Not very important but my last laptop didn't have any in 4 years.
-I've read 2 of you at least have the cover which not close correctly, an align probleme perhaps, for me the "problem" is on the right side of the close mechanism, i have to push the open button to allow an easier closing of the cover, that's not very important for me but it happens sometimes...

One of the biggest bad point is the fan management i think :
As you i tried several bios... Mine got 207 initially, then i tried 208 with fan's spinning all the time then 210 and perhaps 209 i don't remember, both have disappear today as Darrik noticed earlier.
I've succeeded to go back to the 207 version not with the /nodate flag but through the bios, you have a kind of emergency procedure which allow you to load a bios from the HD, it's what i've done, it seems the date isn't checked that way.

So first question : you talked about the good old time with the 206 which had a higher limit for the fan, is it still available somewhere for download ?
I would like to find a way to avoid running fan every 30s...
I don't want to buy an external laptop cooling system, and i failed in using the soft (which i forgot the name... nhc ?) to undervolt : it made windows to reboot in a blue screen of death way...
Find a way of keeping the CPU to <50° or find a method where the fan only runs at 55° would be great !

Another problem for me, and it's the last one :
The left side of the palm area is quite hot, it's above the HD.
I changed the original one : hitaschi 120 4200rpm by a 5400 rpm Seagate momentus (ST9120821A), with the new disk temperature range is about 37/44°C so i guess it's 2 or 3°c more than with the original one.

Do you know any palm protection, perhaps in carbon, does that exist ? to protect palm from heat ? That's not too hot but I would feel better without that extra heat... Perhaps i could add some protection between the HD and the palm zone... There is nothing but air between the HD and the palm zone, that's what i noticed when i replaced the HD, so perhaps there is some improvements to do over there...

Thank you for reading me so far, here's a reward for you the brave : 2 benchmarks i made to compare it with Darrick's review ones :
3Dmark06 : 2282 (gpu in quality mode so it's close to Darrick's results),
I was in Super perf mode, sm2 : 887, sm3 : 819, CPU : 1514.

And last one : HD tune (with the 5400 Rpm 120Gb seagate i mentioned earlier) :
Min : 17.9 mb/S
Max : 40.5 mb/S
Avr : 32.1 mb/S
Acces : 15.8ms
Burst : 69.5
Cpu : 3.3%

That's all for tonight !
I hope asus will release a new thermal policy soon...

Bye,
arnaud

 

Hey arnaud...the oldest bios around is 207. and I couldn't manage to revert to older bios through the BIOS so if you managed could you maybe let us know how you did so, without burning a cd or something.

Also you shouldn't call the palmrest hot, because its warm at the most. If you have used Acer's you'll know what a hot palm rest means.

Your HDD temperatures are perfectly normal...however if you are looking to not feel the heat on your wrist i guess you could just use a piece of cloth. There are covers you get to cover the palm rest area so that there arent any stains etc...but I dont know if they'll act as an insulator against the heat.

As far as scratches on the cover i have 1 very slight scratch which i wouldn't have noticed if the light didnt fall on that spot one day. I guess it depends on how you carry your laptop around and what sort of sleeve etc. you use.

 

I'm running 210 and my palmrest is nice and cool...specially the area with the spendid sticker....

one gripe i have of the a8jm...is sometimes when i type my thumbs hit the touchpad and make the cursor jump to a different spot in the text. is there anyway to disable the touchpad while using a usb mouse?

 

Fn + F9

im using 207 and was playing Prey for about 2 hrs almost done with the game now i can feel it and my palmrest is cool as well. The HDD is under the sticker which has the A8J config listed. That place is warm nothing uncomfortable. Honestly I feel this laptop has a wicked design using 1 fan to cool cpu and gpu yet keeping the entire chasis very cool. Very impressed. I have seen Acers and Sony's with integrated video cards get warmer in the worst places i.e. keyboards, touchpad etc

 

Arnaud, welcome to the club

A couple of things I wanted to mention:
- If the lid doesn't close properly, try picking the hole where it latches with a pin or something (just don't break it in there ), I think it fixed that for someone before. Sometimes the latch is just stuck or not aligned properly...

- I'm using 207, undervolted and lappie cooler, keeps the fans off most of the time (I'm browsing web, coding, chatting and no fan)... although ambient temp prob plays a big role too...

- How did you go about undervolting your notebook? Don't jump too far at a time, it might not be stable. Best thing to do is test it out at the highest multiplier (11x), reduce voltage by 1 stepping, run Prime95 a few minutes at a time. Once you hit the crash voltage (where notebook crashes or BSOD's), up it by one stepping, run Prime95 on both cores (so 2 instances) for a couple of hours. If it still crashes, up it one more. Once you manage to run prime95 for more than 6 hours without crashing, that should be your stable voltage. I just upped mine one more from that point to ensure it's stable. FYI, the lowest voltage for 11x on mine is 1.013. I've set mine at 1.025 just to be safe. After that, you can pretty much let RMClock/NHC auto fill the intermediate PStates. (If that's too confusing, let me know, I can try give you a step by step instruction process if you want...)

- Haven't seen any palm rest protection around... but I'm sure someone in the Accessories forum could probably help out with that. Again, try the undervolting and notebook cooler if you want, maybe it'll help a bit?

Enjoy your new notebook

 

hey darrick wat are ur temps now in quiet office after undervolting? without the laptop cooler.

 

Hi guys, how are you?
About the "body", I myself use transparent tape to cover it silver body outside to avoid scatch while made it look as original as possible (will post some pics)
I suggest use do the same, it very easy.
As for the fan, I am using BIOS version 207 and I am very happy with it. Normal use with or without AC, you cant hear the fan (super and high perform). Only when playing game that you can hear the fan kick in.
The palmrest is warm, I have been playing for 3 hour and it just a little little hot but nothing close to uncomfortable. Overall, it cool. But then, maybe because I lived in Asia which is hot over the year.
And if you feel hot, just stick something in the palmrest, like a sticker or tape (like me).
I attach some pics of my belove lappy after I used the tape on them
Here are some other pics taken right after it out of the box



See if you can find the different after I use the tape
PS. I can only upload 3 pic for I have slow connection, sorry
Have a nice day guys

 

Hi,

zydus > I'll check tonight the bios procedure to explain you the way I dit it, i don't remember exactly but i confirm it was only through the bios.

Darrick > Thanks for the details about the undervolting, actually I couldn't try because the blue screen + reboot appeared when I launched the program, not after an optimistic setting.
I've read something on that behavior somewhere, I have to retrieve it.
I'll check the accessories forum, thx I keep you inform !

bye,
arnaud

 

Hey hey, Have anyone try out the new method at the font page
About configure Duo Core for windowXP?
Does it real? For after I try it I dont find any notable different

 

front page where?

 

harro harro ppls im joining the owners lounge, just got my a8j series custom...

2.0GHz core duo
1Gb ram
120GB hdd
nVidia Go 7600 512mb

nothing spectacularly different, but i got a 209 bios, which is ok cos it doesnt have that fan thingie that 210 has... and as always, the a8j kicks ass and kicks ass quite well!!! gotta say tho, all these new features like some bluetooth and stuff has me all google eyed cos upgrading from my 3 and a half year old dell, im new to a lot of the specs!!

hmm so thanks to all the ppl who have posted here, ive looked around heaps and certainly helped in providing me with some insight into this lappie...

just a heads up ppls, the a8jm PRO 80 is about to hit the markets... it features 2.13GHz CD / 2gb ram / 120Gb hdd / Go 7600... this is set at 3500 AUD recomended retail, but theres plenty of places you can get it for cheaper...

well, i wont rant on too much cos you guys probably are all far more familiar with the machine than me!!

 

Sorry , here the link http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=60416

 

My a8jm is coming tomorrow and i plan to reinstall xp using ryanvm's integrator which includes all hotfixes from microsoft (including the one in that link anubissx). I wont have anything to compare it to tho haha so i guess im not much help.

 

How much does that patch really improve performance and does it reduce battery life?

 

Hmm... I managed to try it, and with 3dMark06, it gave me very little performance increase, probably 10 or so points.....

 

Hi,

zydus > here is the procedure to downgrade your bios version through the bios itself and not with the winflash windows app and the nodate flag : press F2 at the boot for the bios, once you're inside go to "advanced" and "start easy flash", that's the dos app which allow you to choose from your local disk a new image for your bios (no check on the date apparently)... That's worked for me.
Be careful it seems not to support usb disk neither cdrom.

And for my warm "problem" on the left wrist, i perhaps find something which could help : http://minilien.com/?o6B2gbms32 it's initially designed for the macbook but i can fix it to fit the A8JM i think.

bye,
arnaud

 

hehe, or u can use a square coaster =). The hitachi hd that came with my a8jm left me in shock. Its not as hot as seagate. I guess this is because its uses very little voltage. Its also quieter than a seagate. To be honest I been a seagate fan for a long time and I am just totally shocked. This is the only none seagate drive in my home that rocks!

 

agreed....even on high/super performance mode...its very quiet.

 

Hi,
Arnaud ,that method is what I have been doing and I think you can do it on your own. No need to waste some money for this. Just fine something you think is good and stick it in, then cut the rest to fit your notebook. At least that is what I have done.
As for the hot fix I mentioned above, I dont see any major, noticable changes. But then maybe because I am not using any high load program.
Anyone else using it and notce any changes ?
Have a nice day guys

 

Hi,
What material did you use for that ? Apparently the material i gave the link is repositionable, so it's not stick for life to the notebook, what kind of glue did you use ?

Thanks,
bye
arnaud

 

The material I am using also do not stick for life. It just a kind of tape which is transparent and stick and can be remove anytime you want. I dont know what it is call, cant find it in english. You know the kind of tape they use to seal package, that kind of tape have yellow or blue colour, the kind i am using is the same but it transparent, and more easy to remove. And it stick by itself so no need for glue. And it very cheap.
Hope this help, have a nice day

 

My A8jm has been flaking out on me a lot lately. I have two specific issues that are recent.

Sometimes I manually engage Standby, visually verify that it enters Standby, close my notebook, pack it up, then go do other things. I then go to open up my notebook, and it is VERY HOT with NO FAN running -- and it's out of standby. I have to shut it down completely, power off, and then back on before it engages the fan again.

I'm using 2.08 BIOS, and I'm really getting stressed by this because I can't trust my laptop to simply go to Standby mode reliably and come back out. I used to think it had to do with going into standby by closing the lid, but that's not the case, it's going to Standby at all. And it definitely reaches standby. The spontaneous exiting of Standby...don't know what's causing that. Ideas?

The fact that it turns back on and won't engage the fans is very alarming as well.

Is there a temperature monitoring utility I can use?

 

That exact thing happened to me only once with my cpu temp close to 75. I vowed to use hibernate from them on. My best suggestion would be to upgrade to 210 and test it out. Also install the latest Asus approved nvidia drivers. You can find them www.laptopvideo2go.com its 85.98 WHQL and Asus certified

 

The latest bios on their site is 2.08 -- where's 2.10 located?

 

ftp://dlsvr03.asus.com/pub/ASUS/nb/a8j/A8J210AS.zip

 

Chaos: Thanks...but why isn't it listed under their a8jm page? Was it officially released for a different A8j series?

Edit: Also, does anyone have more comprehensive information as to what the different releases have in terms of features? The 210 docs are...sparse.

 

Hi,

Bacon > I don't exactly know for the 210 but since the 208 thermal policy changed.

Yesterday I made the test again : 207 -> 210, I wanted to test how to reduce warm on my left wrist, the fan is always running with the 210 bios.
So I came back to the 207 and then, for the first time, I encounter the "fan stop problem" : my CPU reached about 75°C, it was very hot on the top right of the keyboard, actually the fan didn't work at all, so I made a reboot and then the fan was always running, 45° and still running, which is not the 207 bios normal behavior.
I then stopped and powered on again and now it's all right... It's a bit confusing

ok the 210 makes the machine coolier but the fans are running non stop, I can't understand how asus can release such a bios, how can you make a customer happy with the fans running permanently ?

I'm also a bit disappointed by the warm of the machine, very few of you seem to be disturb by this ? No complaints about your left wrist ? Are you all kevlar made ?

bye,
arnaud

 

Maybe yours is defective? I'm running 210 and I can't even hear the fans but they are on most of the time. I can hear the fan when I put my ear up to the left side of the notebook but when im just typing like this.....i cant hear anything...

and my notebook is running cooler than ever...NHC reports my cpu temp is a cool 44c while im typing this and my hdd is 31c. the left wrist side of the notebook is almost cold hahaha. I barely feel any heat coming out from the right side vent. And those temps are with the notebook cooler I have not plugged in.

I originally had 209 but 210 runs nice for me.

Also, 210 is not on the ASUS support website because the one that you connected to is the ASUS USA site and not ASUS Taiwan. The USA site is slow with updates.

 

Hi,

I would like to know if other A8JM users with 210 bios don't hear the fan neither ? I don't hear the fan itself but the noise made by the air coming out, that's all.
Your HD temp seems very low, I bet it can hit 40° under load ?

About the asus website, I can see the 210, my access link is :
http://support.asus.com/download/download.aspx?SLanguage=fr-fr

bye,
arnaud

 

yea i can hear the air coming out but its not loud by any stretch....its just air coming out of a vent. I don't remember what it was hitting under load but I'm sure it was low 40's at the highest. my hd idle temp is usually around 31-34c. I know the CPU hits around 57 or so under load...but still thats nothing compared to those macbook and macbook pro users

 

i agree professor chaos... but do you realise the simpsons already did it??

the jumping out of standby is a bit strange... have a look under power options and see what your selection is under "close the lid"... maybe if you select "do nothing", it somehow will jump out of standby eh...

this lappie is a pretty quiet machine eh, better than the vaio 28's... but all things considered, 210 is recommended because its better to keep the laptop cooler, just depends if you can stand the very minute noise eh...

 

So you mean with a 210 you have your fan off sometimes ? In my case, and it seems it's the case of most of the 210 users, once it started it's never stop again because the temperature which will make it stop is too low and never reached again...

Perhaps you live in a fridge
My 207 bios makes the fan ON for about 30 sec, then OFF, then ON again, the cpu idle range temperature is about 48/50° and the fan's goes ON when 50° is hit.

bye
arnaud

 

This is EXACTLY what happened to me, but it happened as a result of going into Standby, waiting for the power light to turn off to indicate standby, then closing the lid. I thought my system had died when I opened it back up -- burning hot, no fan running. I was close to panic =(

 

Also, to update the BIOS, can I use the BIOS flash utility or do I need to use the DOS utility and make a bootable CD-ROM etc. etc.?

 

Yes that's exactly how the 207 works. When i first switched toteh 208 the fan noise did bother me. For the past 2 days i have been using 210...my laptop is again successfully coming out of standby. I just booted my laptop and I am monitoring the temperature...cpu @ 45 and the fan hasn't kicked in yet.

Yesterday the fan was spinning the whole time since i was gaming, and when i stopped the fan kept spinning but it ws hardly audible. My idle cpu was down to 43-44 degrees and a very quiet fan didn't bother me, in fact it was nicer than teh fan kicking in and stopping, kicking in and stopping

 

use winflash...it works fine

ok im at 48 degrees with 210 fan still hasn't kicked in...seems like a definite improvement over the 208 which kicked in at like 40degrees and never turned off. I think with 210 the fan kicks in at ~49 - 50 and then just stays on.

 

Update: Fan started exactly at 50 cpu temp down to 41 now fan is still spinning. Suprisingly since now i got to compare between quiet operation and operation with the fan i can tell teh difference. My ambient noise is very low so that surely magnifies the sound of the fan...i would say the noise is what a super quiet 120mm fan makes in desktops...line the antec fans.

 

after some time like rt now i cant even tell its running

 

So you're happy with the 210 then ?
I'll try again tonight...
I had the feeling that the 210 fan's rpm was > to the 207 rpm.

I think I prefer a fan ON/OFF rather than a non stopping one, but, I'll try again...

 

ya im gonna stick with this...initially its like switch off after some time its fine and definitely depends on ur ambient noise levels. I am just thinking that non stop fan would cause more dust build up

 

Hi all,

New to the forum here, just picked up an AJ8m and love it so far. Derrick thaks for the review it really helped me make up my mind.

I bought mine at Memory Express, a local reseller here in Edmonton.

I decided to run ubuntu as my main os and keep a small windows partion for gaming.

For those thinking of linux, I can tell you that evrything worked "right out of the box" with ubuntu. Just had to download the nvidia drivers to get xgl working.

Curious if anyone has any tips for runing linux on this laptop, as i find i'm not getting as much battery lif as I do in windows.

 

Kula, welcome to the club

Did the webcam also work out of the box in Ubuntu? I've heard that's the only thing that doesn't work in Linux...

I wonder if there's anything like NHC or RMClock for Linux.. maybe that's what you need to handle the throttling so it can save some battery in certain modes..

 

Not sure about the webcam, the system has detected it, but I have yet to find a webcam app to test it out. I'll keep looking and let you guy's know.

I've been looking at the cpu speed, it will switch between 966mhz and 1.83ghz (depending on load). Is that the same in windows, just the 2 speeds or is it more of dynamic adjusment ?

I'm new to linux in general, so I going to be doing a lot searching on the forums to figure out how to optimize for my system.

 

Hi,
In windows you have : (ac mode)
presentation
quiet office
game
high performance
super performance

battery mode :
battery saving
cd audio
dvd movie

I didn't make tests on all these modes but about the dynamic adjustment "quiet office" runs at 966mhz max, the high performance switches between 966 and the max possible, and super performance runs everytime on the max i think.
I don't know for the game mode.

About the battery mode, you can slow down the processor : 75%, 50%, and 25%.

That's all i know.

bye,
arnaud

 

I double checked; ubuntu is scaling frequencies between : 933mhz,1.33ghz and 1.83ghz. That works out to 50%,75%, and 100%. It doesn't seem to matter if i'm on a/c or battery, rarely does it actually use the 1.33ghz mode it normally jumps up to full speed when I launch a big app or doe something cpu intensive then drops back down to 933mhz.

So it looks like the frequency scaling is working properly, I'm going to google around to see if those modes built into the chip (my guess is yes) or if i can change how it scales.

But since it seems to be on par with windows, i wonder why my battery life isn't as good, i have also adjusted the screen brightness to 65% when on battery.

thanks

 

I got my A8JM earlier in the week. Part of me wishes I had spent the extra 300 CDN and gotten the W3J though. The A8JM is definitely on the big side for a 14'' notebook, this thing feels as big as most 15'' notebooks I've seen as used. The screen also suffers from a bit of light bleeding. The build quality and design also don't look as good as the W3J. Overall, I'm not dissappointed enough to return it, but if I had it to do over again I probably would have spent the bit extra and gotten a W3J.

 

particleman: sorry to hear that, but the W3J isn't necessarily a lot smaller than the A8Jm at all. They're both actually on the bigger sides of 14" notebooks.

I think screen should be the same even with the W3J, there will be some bleeding also.

The materials definitely are in W3J's favour and looks a lot nicer than the A8Jm. I think if you have these doubts in your mind, you should try exchange to the W3J now rather than have more regrets later on.

 

Hey Particleman and everyone else who reads this ,

I totally agree about the screen on the a8jm. The amount of backlight bleeding is horrible, I really don't like it at all. Luckily it has a dvi out that you can hook up to a monitor that has accurate colours and is not brighter on the top half as the other.

To be fair though, ALL of these glossy screen laptops suffer from this, I have used a W3J, and it's the exact same thing, terrible back light bleeding, and colour uniformity. But that's what happens when that glossy screen exaggerates the contrast (meaning that it also exaggerates back light bleeding). I returned a Toshiba model Sk9, with about the exact same specs as the A8jm because the screen was just horrible, as laptops screens go the a8jm is not to bad, but not the greatest screen.

Have had my a8jm for about 3 weeks now and I really love it. It's a speedy little guy in maya and plays a mean Counter strike. I added another gig of ram and am probably going to upgrade to the the T7400 in a couple months. All in all, it probably is the best value to performance ratio for a notebook out there IMHO.