ASUS ROG Zephyrus GX501 Owner's Lounge

So a 2 hr session of PUBG got the CPU up to 76 C. I think this is reasonable. I am actually so satisfied with this change.

 

I ordered the thermal pads on Amazon, should be here on Thursday. I am holding off on doing any serious gaming until then. Although now in retrospect, I'm confused about something. Like I mentioned before, when I played BF1 at ultra everything 1080p 120Hz, my GPU temps were in the low 80's, but my CPU temps were astronomical. When I plug my laptop into my TV which is 1366x768 @ 60 Hz and play BF1, temps on both the CPU and GPU only got up into the 60s.

That would suggest that both are being taxed less than at the higher resolution, but why would the CPU temperature drop? I can understand the GPU dropping, it's not rendering as large a picture and at only half the frame rate. But the CPU is running just as many calculations as it was before. The only thing I can think of off of the top of my head is the shared heatpipe design, but that would imply that the GPU is adding 30 degrees to the CPU. I guess that's plausible but then why would the GPU only get up to 80?

 

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Yes 0.5 mm pads work fine for me.

Hmm, how come you cannot answer your 2nd question. Come on you can't be serious

Of course you remove the old pads/factory paste. I would suggest you use isopropyl alcohol to remove the residue (works for both CPU/GPU thermal paste and VRMS and other components + heatsinks).

 

I also recommend keeping an eye on the Battery Health %'s as a proportionality to the number of recharge cycles.


The left shift key squeaks on my brand new replacement unit....

 

Last update on this. Several long gaming sessions done and I am proud to say that I saved this laptop's life!
Max CPU temp: 78C
Max GPU temp: 76C

Huge improvement from 94C.

For anyone out there that decides to use LM please make sure you know what you are doing as this operation is quite risky if applied improperly and without taking all safety measures.

 

Have you undervolted yet? You could have dropped load temps from 94c to 84-85c just from a software change, rather than risking opening your laptop, and now you may have no warranty...did you ask Asus if it is ok to re-paste - always good to get that ok from them in writing (email/ticket) to use in your defense later should you RMA.

 

It's like a new pair of shoes, it needs some time to wear in.

Are you still gonna swap that one for a Coffee Lake 6c/12t??

 

My new unit also has battery drainage when running Middle Earth Shadow of War...
Can anyone reproduce this issue?

As far as I can remember, my previous GX501 did not suffer from the same problem....

 

I can;t be bothered to go through another awful customer support situation. Last time I contacted Asus about a ROG device it was taking about 3 weeks in between their responses.

I would like to think I am more than capable of repasting my CPU/GPU.

I do know this voids the warranty but then again I like the risk - sounds silly I know but in about 15 years I have never had a laptop going dead on me that required me to ship it to the manufacturer. And I've had a lot of laptops (probably around 8 or 9).

Whenever I purchase a new device I try to test and push its limits for a while before repasting - if it has a manufacturing fault - it will either break down whilst I am testing it or as just after buying it.

Again - none of these have happened to me (lucky I guess).

On all brand new laptops I actually advise you do a repaste as the stock paste is just incredibly bad. At least that's how I do it.

For about 4 years now I have started using LM (on a MacBook Pro, an older Asus Rog, MSI gt83 this Zephyrus and on a few other friends' laptops). I cannot recommend LM repaste enough ( ONLY IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING - cant stress this enough).

I sold my old Asus Rog (LM applied on both CPU and GPU - i7 4820hq and GTX 980m) and I am still in touch with new owner. He has had the laptop for nearly 14 months now. He never had to repaste it. Temps are still as they were when I sold it to him. He will however have my guidance and support when the time to repaste it will come.

 

You won't void warranty if the sticker isn't broken.

The sticker can easily be removed without any specialized method.


https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/pre...panies-it-illegal-condition-warranty-coverage

 

Hey at least you won't need to resort to lying and subterfuge when dealing with the dreaded warranty sticker, if you are in the US.

Re-pasting is another story, we'll need to see how the vendors react to this and how they classify user serviceable repairs. I think the vendor can still limit what voids warranty if they can show cause for refusing repair.

And, this is for the USA only.

 

Yes, if you know what you are doing is very subjective, and people mix their ego's into the mix and take on things they actually can't do, that's the general problem I see with failed attempts. Their imagined expertise doesn't serve them in the end.

That's why I recommend not doing re-pasting and especially LM, as people see it on the internet and after reading and watching others with expertise do it, they believe they can too. Unfortunately there are years of hands-on work that those examples were based on, not just the few minutes of video shown.

Glad you are well versed in it all, I am too, and I don't re-paste, but do undervolt and OC with success for dozens of laptops over the years.

I like my method better, it doesn't risk others laptops, or mine, but gets the job done. OC with tuning that doesn't thermal throttle in a fraction of the time, with no physical exposure or potential damage from opening up the laptop, maybe multiple times.

After all these years you never tried undervolting? Asus usually answers within 24 hours, if it's taking more than a couple of days, send another update through the ticket system to prod an answer. Or call through the phone system. Sometimes you hit them before a major trade show or on a holiday - they have long ones, or just before their weekend, which starts earlier due to being in a different time zone. I haven't had a situation where they don't answer within 24 hours... what did you say to scare them off?

 

Okay, update. I repasted with NT-H1 on the CPU/GPU, but went with 0.5mm thermal pads on everything else. The IC heatsink by the left fan had an odd problem, though. The heatsink had a minor upward bend to it, and the heatsink lifted off one of the ICs, meaning that the heatpad wouldn't touch the IC unless I held it down a bit. I compensated for this by placing 2mm worth of heat pads on top of it so that when I close the case up, the additional thickness will push the two into good contact.

I'm happy to say that it was a success all in all, as during a half-hour BF1 ultra-everything 60Hz session, CPU temp topped at 80C and GPU topped at 72C.

 

An uneven pressure across the heatplate / CPU can cause one set of cores to get hot while the others run cooler, the heatplate conducts heat better on one side over the other, which can happen when there is a too thick pad on one side of the CPU heatplate.

You might try a run of Prime95, to do a 100% CPU all core run - with even load across all cores - so you can see if the cores are all within a few degrees of each other - core temperature differential.

2-5c is typical, even up to 8c is "acceptable" by Intel if it's an IHS CPU showing the differential, at 10c Intel replaces it for another CPU.

But, the problem with a high core differential temperature is that the hottest cores will trip thermal throttling first, before the other cores are even close to thermal throttling, reducing all core performance.

Don't forget to disable AVX and FMA3 in the prime95 configuration, those features create uneven thermals across the cores and run them too hot.

 

As mentioned I had an Asus ROG G751JY and I reached out to their customer support team as I wanted to find out if they can replace the display due to a dead/stuck pixel. I sent numerous chasers within 2 weeks and after 3 weeks they finally responded to say they need more information. I mean I gave them exactly what they needed in order to provide a simple answer. I had a dead pixel on my 17.3 inch display and wanted to know if they can replace it (I would have paid for it) - just didn't want to do it myself - at the time I was living somewhere else and I was quite tricky to get the part shipped to my home address (the display).

I have them all the information they required. Then another 3 weeks went by.

I stopped replying to them, they eventually responded for the 2nd time in 6 weeks - ASKING FOR THE BIOS VERSION. At that point I had enough. Got the display from China and replaced it myself. Awful experience.

 

Wow, I can understand how you got frustrated, too bad you didn't call in, sometimes it takes escalation to a manager to get action, staying with the frontline ticket / email support people can get handed off to many that don't have / make continuity, and this happens.

It's happened with other vendors too, sorry it happened to you, but I wouldn't give up, try again. It can happen for many reasons not related to fixing the problem. Vacation, Holiday, new product training, trade-show, etc. Your situation sounds like you lost continuity being handed off to various people and then getting picked up by someone else.

Call in their support line when you file the ticket with the ticket number, and ask them to escalate the ticket to a manager - explain your last experience and that you want to make sure it doesn't happen again.

IDK what else to tell you, you can't give up if it's your only hope of getting it fixed in warranty.

Spending extra money and doing it yourself sucks, and shouldn't happen.

Try again, and good luck.

 

New here, just purchased a used gx501.
Any detailed teardown videos or links, specifically for the cpu/gpu cooler?

Thanks!

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/thr...s-gx501-dissasembly-and-repaste.808713/page-3

and some of these last few pages 99-102.

 

Thanks. As far as Nvidia drivers.. If i wanted to do a clean install of windows, would the drivers from nvidias site work with the maxq gpus (because they don't specifically say on the nvidia site)?

 

They will work. Don't worry. You can select between DESKTOP GTX 10XX or LAPTOP GTX 10XX drivers.

Pick laptop and you'll be fine. U dont need a 'specific' max-q driver.

 

I have repasted my GX501 just last week. Unfortunately I think I will have to redo it so I will attempt to video it and upload to youtube and perhaps share it here.

I used LM and I've recently noticed that the temps on each core vary by A LOT (core1,2 and 3 are quite ok'ish - however on core4 I keep noticing a huge difference in temps: example: light usage: core1,2,3 average temps 45C and core4 avg temps 55C) - which can only mean 3 things:
-bad copper heatsink (not quite as flat as it should be) - which is bad.
-uneven LM surface/contact - unlikely
-screws aren't quite tight making the heatsink press just on one side of the CPU - likely
-a combination of all these options - unlikely


I will do it in a few days as I am waiting for a T5 screwdriver to arrive. I also ordered K5 pro paste in case I have to re-apply the thermal pads.

I'll keep you posted.

 

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That could also be a problem.
As I was putting the heatsink back in its place I noticed that the 8 'arms' did not give any resistance whatsoever. I might have to carefully adjust these (lift them up a bit).

 

Do you know what thread size/length the screws that hold down the CPU/GPU are? I've opened it up a few times and it looks like the screws heads are beginning to show a little bit of wear. Just thinking for the future in case I ever need to open it up again.

 

I found a video of a complete tear down of the GX501. However, it is (i believe) Korean, and though I don't understand it, the tear down seems pretty straightforward (like i didn't realize the fans are separate from the heatsinks).

 

My god he actually kept the keyboard hanging onto the 3 keyboard/touchpad/led connectors for the whole duration of the video. Please don't do that. You will destroy your connectors:

 

Yeah these two sections scared me.

 

Actually, removing those kind of connectors from their retained socket can be deadly too, if you break the retaining clip, or snap off a tab, your cable won't stay in the socket, then you have to figure out some way to tape it, glue it, or some other creative way to keep it connected. Not disconnecting them, without putting a strain on the cable / connector is optimal, but difficult, there usually isn't much slack in the cable.

Another reason I suggest never re-pasting; if you can tune your way around the thermals, CPU undervolt, OS power plan, Application settings, RTSS / Gsync / Vsync FPS limit to refresh, fan curve, all are better choices than getting into the hardware.

 

Props to that guy for making a full tutorial, but he had some big pitfalls. Most notably the fact that he didn't disconnect the ZIF cables. Second, he didn't really clean the surfaces off, he just dry rubbed a q-tip on it. Use rubbing alcohol to get a better surface. Three, he lifted up the heatsink and then reapplied it later but hadn't redone the VRMs, could cause air bubbles.

 

Re-pasting seems not logical for me. You open up a brand new piece of hardware just for 10 degree heat reduction. Why buy this laptop if you have concerns about heat? Its max. life span is 2-3 years so it seems useless to me.


Tapatalk kullanarak iPhone aracılığıyla gönderildi

 

The whole point is to extend the life of the product as much as possible. High heat has a tendency to reduce the lifespan of a computer. Electrical components wear out faster with higher heat, and likewise, the cooling fans will burn out sooner.

A side-benefit of it is that a cooler laptop doesn't have to spin the fans up as much, so it's quieter. You can make the argument that it's not worth possibly breaking it, which is a valid point, but I bought mine used so I had no warranty, and I've opened up laptops before so I had no concerns doing it.

I think the lifespan is greater than 2 years. Considering that the processor and graphics are nearly the same performance as full desktop equivalents, I'm not worried about it's lifespan considering that I can get 120fps on Battlefield 1 at 1080p with ultra settings across the board.

 

That's a fallacy that supposedly rabid repaster's are trying to extend the life of their laptop. It's the furthest thing from their minds. They just want to win the lowest temperature competition.

It's a thin excuse after the fact that has no basis in reality.

If I undervolt bringing load temps down from 90c to 80c, that's showing a range of temps in mid 70's to mid 80's during heavy use, it's not going to extend the life of the laptop by reducing thermals further.

I've had laptops last 10 years or more (probably still in use somewhere), running in the 80's under load, and I've seen others laptops run in the 90's, still kicking after 10 years.

There is no further advantage to reducing thermals once you are under thermal throttling. None.

The risk of repasting over the life of the laptop negates any imagined benefit of further temperature reductions.

In fact, after you sell your laptop it's unlikely the new owner, especially the 3rd or 4th owner, is going to be re-pasting savvy, and they will reap the vengence of dried out pumped out paste and super high thermals for the rest of the life of the laptop, and it will probably keep running for years at those high temps too.

Remember, the CPU's are rated to 100c-105c, with plenty of built in protections against damage from high temperatures, the CPU will survive just fine without repasting.

 

No basis in reality? I'll give you 1 single comparison example:

Hm...can we look at last 5 years (since liquid metal started to be popular) - how many examples of people taking the risks and managing to achieve -20 up to -25C temperature changes (regardless if Desktop or Laptop) as opposed to using normal thermal paste (lets leave the risks aside for a second). If this is not increasing your components' life, I don't know what is.

I have also had all kinds of laptops in the past 15 years and yes I have seen temps reaching 95C (with absolutely no thermal throttle whatsoever) on an Alienware M18x (i7-2960XM + Nvidia 580m SLI) one of my old devices. I repasted/opened this unit for maintenance (repasting+dust clearing) more than a dozen times in 5 years and after 5 years of intense usage it was still rocking.

But personally I would always advise people to repaste ( AS LONG AS THEY KNOW WHAT THEY ARE DOING). If you know what LM does and know what you are getting yourself into: do it. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to realize that conductive liquid needs to be applied in tiny amounts with appropriate safety measures (which, in this day and age - are all over youtube/notebookreview/other websites/google/on the web generally. I haven't seen more than 2 examples on the web of people (perhaps they didn't want to post it...) bricking their devices by going for LM repaste.

Finally, my take on this is: if you can repaste and have a bit of knowledge on what you are doing - do it - it is worth it and it will extend your device's life by a lot.

I do however agree that tricks such as undervolting and keeping fps counters to your display's refresh rate (+others) can also lower temps. But repasting your unit once/6 months can save you a lot of trouble on the long run.

With laptops like the Zephyrus you got the tiniest heatsink blades - dust will get in between in a matter of months and undervolting your CPU will not help with this issue. Yes you can get an air spray can and try to get rid of it but you risk damaging the fans by pushing dust directly into the fans reducing their speed and life.

Luckily for me I live in England and quite far from the nearest city and it rains a lot over here (in the North) I don't get much dust to be honest but I used to live in Eastern Europe for quite some time - I had to open up my Alienware (which was my 4th laptop) every 4 months and clear out the dust.

There are so many factors that can directly impact a laptop's life. Repaste will only help ( ONLY AND ONLY IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING) - you only need to know the basics. The small things: such as using the right screwdriver so you don't damage screws on the long run, using the right thermal pads, the right paste, having a bit of common sense when dealing with compact devices such as the zephyrus - not applying too much force as the thing is fragile (+others) - and if you are not sure about it - go on the web and ask. There will always be people willing to help - at least that's how I got into it long time ago.

 

Your comparison isn't a good reason, as I've already said, unless you are thermal throttling you don't *need* to re-paste, as any thermals under thermal throttling will work fine long term.

There is no advantage in performance or longevity dropping thermals under thermal throttling, and undervolting will do that without re-pasting.

If your brand new laptop still thermal throttles with an undervolt, then return it within the 15 day (more or less, check your receipt) and get another one.

You wouldn't pull out your new car or truck engine and re-paste it, would you? If your new microwave or stereo failed out of the box, you'd return it without a thought about fixing it yourself. You should consider your laptop the same way, it's not your responsibility to fix it, and getting involved can make it much worse - including losing the ability to get it working again.

I'm glad you enjoy working on computer hardware, I do too, but after many years of experience I know enough not to recommend or encourage people to start re-pasting if they haven't already, too much can go wrong to encourage people to open up and screw up their laptops.

I've seen enough basket case situations where people that shouldn't have tried working on their laptop were encouraged by people that make it sound easy - mostly because they have been doing it for years - and then the unsuspecting novice is convinced they can do it themselves.

It's got no benefits worth the suffering I've seen, or the bricked laptops from leaking LM - crazy as it seems people with zero experience will try LM on their first go around and wind up with a dead laptop.

Working on laptops have too many little details that have a learning curve and surprises for those doing it the first time.

Given there is no actual performance benefit to reducing thermals under thermal throttling, it's not worth wasting the time and effort.

 

A book I found on computer reliability as well as a paper by TI seem to come to the same conclusion, that lower temperatures corresponds to higher lifespan. The textbook said the rule of thumb is double the lifespan for every 10 degree drop.

Plus, thermal cycling hurts longevity, and I'd rather have a CPU go from 40 to 70 rather than 40 to 90. And, even if temperature didn't affect longevity at all, I'd prefer a quieter laptop to one that sounds like a vacuum.

 

Hey, if you want to believe some theoretical book calculation over insights gained from years of actual hands on experience , you go for it.

I'm writing for not just you, but for people that will pay attention and save themselves the trouble of re-pasting a perfectly good brand new just out of the box laptop to no useful benefit.

If that's not you, that's cool, you enjoy your DIY project, and others can choose to enjoy using their laptop, instead of pulling it apart for some imaginary benefits.

You'll likely sell that laptop and trade up long before your imaginary benefit to longevity has a chance to kick in.

The 2nd and 3rd owners won't benefit either, given your "rule of thumb" doubling the life span.

From what, 10 years to 20 years?

As your re-pasted laptop dries out from aging in a dustbin somewhere, long forgotten, as that 2nd decade of existence comes to an end, you be sure and track it down and find it and check out what the temps are.

No sense letting all that re-pasting work go for naught.

 

Well, ignoring the fact that the part of the book was based on actual observations and not theory, and also ignoring the fact that I consulted my dad, who has about 40 years of experience building microprocessors and circuitry for the Navy as well as co-designed the first digital microprocessor to ever be used by the Navy on a submarine (so I would call him a reliable source), I guess we can agree to disagree.

 

So he agrees that you should disassemble your brand new laptop merely to make it cooler for longer life? I find it odd that a person with that experience, not unlike my own, would think that wise.

There is no reason to disassemble a non-thermal throttling laptop just to reduce temperatures for longer life.

You won't have it long enough for that to make any difference at all to you personally.

Even if you keep it for 5 years that is well within the lifespan even running in the 90c's.

The end of it's competitive advantage is probably over in 6-12 months, and the latest you should try to get the most resale value back is 18 months, so it really makes no economic sense either.

Wise experienced technical people will tell you that above all:

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

 

Just repasted my ASUS GX501 with liquid metal. Dropped the temps as expected. Hovering around 75-80C on GPU and CPU under full load. Also I have undervolted the CPU -120mv. ECO Mode ist off in ROG Center.

Do you have any other tuning tipps to get the best out of the ASUS, especially the GPU ?

 

Not sure if Asus has a working GPU tuning tool for that model, but MSI's Afterburner usually works, and you might be able to adjust the power as well as the GPU core / memory speeds too.

You might need to disable or uninstall ROG Gaming Center first, and install Intel XTU as well to tune the CPU.

Also MSI Afterburner is bundled with RTSS which lets you set up a Frame Limiter setting, I usually set to Refresh - 1, with or without G-sync, to reduce CPU / GPU load rendering frames not used.

MSI Afterburner
https://us.msi.com/page/afterburner

Intel XTU
https://downloadcenter.intel.com/do...treme-Tuning-Utility-Intel-XTU-?product=66427

 

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If you are saying you edited teh Advanced Settings for your active Windows Power plan for CPU Performance to 1% Min and 99% Max, you have disabled Turbo completely, and are running at base clock only, that's a big performance drop...

I'd suggest 0% - 100%, that way you get Turbo Boost which comes in handy during heavy CPU demand sections of games / apps, and with 0% set you downclock completely during idle periods on each core independently.

It shouldn't raise temps much, as you already undervolt, which kicks in most during highest CPU load's, which is during Turbo time.

Do you OS your CPU? If it is OC'able, and you set each Core multiplier, you could stagger the multipliers favoring 1 and 2 threads, and reduce the multiplier for core 3/4 to save power without much of a performance hit.

Otherwise it looks good.

What GPU tuning have you done? Have you tried MSI Afterburner and undervolted the GPU?

 

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IDK if it's locked out on this model, but it's worth a try, at least you can set more finely the GPU Core and memory speeds.

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+undervolt+with+msi+afterburner

And, yes the 99% cuts off Turbo boost and limits your CPU to base frequency only. A rather drastic cut in performance. Now that you have undervolted and LM'd you should be fine to restore your CPU to full performance.

 

I'm pretty sure the core voltage on the GPU is locked, at least it was locked out in MSI Afterburner. But you can adjust the curves though, that should help decrease the temps a bit if my understanding of curved is correct :/ There are plenty of youtube tutorials to watch.

 

Just received my GX501VSK (1070 version).
It's a used/refurbished unit, and so far so good.
Clean install of Windows 10 Pro, so I had to reinstall all utilities to get the keyboard rgb and touchpad/numpad to work.
No issues as of yet.
Previously had a Gigabyte P35W V5 (5700HQ and 970m), so this is a huge upgrade for me.

Small, nitpicky things:
1. Red LEDs on the side are kind of annoying. I will mainly use this as my work laptop, and it doesn't look very professional.
2. Arrow keys are very small.
3. Seems like I received the bulkier charger, and not the slimmer one (again small, first world problems, lol).

Good (and surprising) things:
1. Trackpad placement and usage is actually very cool. It feels more natural than having the trackpad on the bottom.
2. Keyboard placement is surprisingly good. I thought this was the toughest to get used to, but it doesn't feel any different from a regular desktop keyboard placement (away from monitor). Actually it makes more sense, and I'm happy to know that my hands won't sweat as much when I game (due to less heat from internals underneath keyboard).
3. Speakers aren't as bad as what I've read. It's not good, but it's not bad either.


***Only thing ASUS that I've installed is Aura Center (for keyboard rgb customization). I'll be using Intel XTU to undervolt, and hopefully MSI Afterburner to overclock gpu.

 

Hi. Been using the GX501 1080 version for a few months now without any issues. I do a lot of photo and video editing and this thing flies thru 4k footage. Awesome.

Also, my temps while gaming have never gotten above 75 on the GPU and 80 on the CPU. I am very into modding Bethesda games, and that really pushes the GPU. I have not undervolted or done any modifications. Did I just get lucky???

I recently encountered the speaker issue though. It's strange as it goes away if I turn off the Sonic Suite Bloatware, but returns soon after. I rarely use the speakers, so it's not a huge deal, but is there really no other way than opening the beast up?

I also d/led new Realtek drivers from the Asus page, and now Sonic Suite throws an error saying it can't find the audio driver on startup, and the program no longer works.........

Any help appreciated

 

Curious, after the computers warmed up, but idle, what temps are you guys getting?

I had mine connected to my TV (720p), and after I stopped gaming, it idled around the high 50s/low 60s. I thought that was pretty odd. Later I disconnected the HDMI cable and the temps immediately dropped to mid 40s. Anyone have any idea what might be going on?

 

I get 35-40 GPU and CPU idle. That's odd about the HDMI. The lid was open right?