Asus G53JW (A1 & 3DE) Owners' Lounge

So,

Can anyone comment on the quality of the AC adapter (everything from the brick, to the cables, to the plug)? Does it have a third prong for ground? Does it have any indicator lights? Is it a straight adapter or a L-shape adapter? Also, please comment on the adapter-jack on the lappy.

If it's not too inconvenient on this beautiful Saturday nite, could pictures be provided too?

Thx!!!!!

 

i think there are pictures on the net... go to metallic's review thread and there are tons of pictures with the power brick and the jack plugged in.
The wall plug portion is the standard 3 prong plug.
The powerbrick is beefy and get warm during normal usage and hot during high usage. It has green light when it has power and the laptop jack is straight. The port on the laptop is very firm because I guess a solid contact connection is required to transfer the power between the ps and the lappy

 

Haha , I guess this should be normal, perhaps like what DT770 said some sort of overcharge circuit protection

I did encountered the similar issues that the upper left top corner of the lid popped out , I also don't know what caused this. I just pressed it back and assume everything works fine.

Shoot some photo for your references!

Spoiler

 

Wonder if you could pop the lid off entirely and put some good old super glue in there

 

I wouldn't recommend that...you may need to get in there for repairs later.

 

I guess i could use an alternative method and stretch a vinyl skin over the seams of the lid when i install the cover

 

My my my.. you sure are a romantic today Thanks for the photos.

By any chance, could you snap a photo of the underside of the brick so that we may see the brand, voltage, etc of it? Just wanted to make sure ASUS provides an ASUS brick, rather than a LITE-ON one, like cheapy MSI does.

Kinda disappointed by the straight laptop jack--my HP jack eventually melted away due to the high voltage running through a bent cable. Had to eventually replace it with a Kensington universal adapter which is higher quality.

 

Its listed an as ASUS power adapter.
Model Number: ADP-150NB D

 

Haha, i was in great mood after friend's housewarming party! Here you are , i think it's from Asus.

Spoiler

I feel a bit weird about the straight jack too, more ever it located at the right side which is quiet inconvenient and always interference with the wired mouse. However, I'm getting use to it, so not a big deal at all. But I do worry about the melted away issue

 

Well i got my G53JW on Friday and have had most of this weekend to play around with it.

First of all I got the G53JW-XR1 which as far as I know is a Canadian only model right now. It ended up being nearly $400 Canadian cheaper than the A1 for me when all was said and done. It has the following differences from the A1:

-500GB drive instead of 750GB drive included
-4GB ram instead of 6GB ram included
-No backpack or mouse
-1 year warranty plus 1 year accidental coverage (instead of 2 year + 1 year accidental on the A1)

Everything else is the same including 1080p screen.

I plan on putting a SSD in the other bay plus upgrading the ram to 8gb in the next few weeks.

OK so this notebook is awesome. I wanted something that could mostly keep up with my desktop when I am on the road - especially with the WoW expansion coming soon I will be traveling so much around the holidays but will want to be playing WoW as much as I can since it comes out Dec 7th! It definitely fulfills this role.

WoW with everything on Ultra runs fine - 50-60fps in big wintergrasp battles or raids, 30fps in crowded dalaran (this is good!) and over 100fps everywhere else.

As for other games, one benchmark I wanted to try was how it handled the final mission in Starcraft 2 with everything maxed. If you've played it you know it's one of the most stressful things SC2 can do to your system and even during the biggest battles of that mission it stayed around 30fps.

Crysis on High (not very high) is actually playable, Metro 2033 is another game that brings a lot of PCs to their knees and that is playable too.

Here's my 3dmarks using newest nvidia drivers:
3dmark 06
3dmark vantage

As for temperatures, the GPU always stays below 80C during games (usually 76-78ish) except after 10mins of Furmark it topped at 88-89C. The fans don't kick into their highest speed until the GPU hits 80 so the thing is quiet. I think it's so awesome to have a notebook that can game like this and not require a clunky notebook cooler.

OK now for some cons...nothing is perfect...

- Used to an IPS screen on my desktop so viewing angles were more noticable for me. Horizontal is fine but for vertical you need to move it to the optimal position.
- The touchpad buttons suck. Too stiff and loud. Thankfully I just use a mouse 90% of the time on it.
- I gotta rip the keyboard off to get to the ram and hard drives? Silly Asus.
- It doesn't get me beers out of the fridge
- Keyboard has a bit of flex in the middle (not really noticable during typing, just if you're being picky and looking for flex).

Overall this laptop owns.

 

Wonderful! Thanks alot! I sure hope its actually one that's made by ASUS and not just restickered/rebranded ASUS lol.

Any pictures of the corner of the lid falling apart that you and Ms. AnimataurKo were talking about? Kinda odd that a $1.5k machine would have such a flaw

 

NCIX has both the XR1 and the A1 models. And the XR1 is 200$ cheaper than the A1.

 

Not really, $1500 for a gaming laptop isn't that expensive, My old macbook pro ($2500) had a lid issue too. No matter how expensive it is, it's still made by people and can have defects

Plus if you pick the cheapest notebook and upgrade 1500 worth of stuff in it, wouldn't the build quality be the same?

 

True. I guess its the hardware inside that 1500 goes towards. Cuz my hp from 2007 cost only ~$700 and there were zero cosmetic flaws, and zero flex anywhere unless a muscleman came and bent it in half How much were gaming notebooks in 2007?

 

Well my Dell inspiron is from 1997 and it was 1400 so i'm guess gaming notebooks were way more expensive

 

Well, here are some pic for the pop up lid (i did it purposely )

Pop Up

Spoiler

Normal

Spoiler

 

Well this is made by Delta, one of the biggest PSU suppliers, makes all the high end Antec PSU, imo among the best maybe second to seasonic, but still is a great company.

 

hey guys, when I bought my last ASUS notebook, I had to register online to get the 2nd year warranty but I guess now-a-days you just get 2 years automatically?

I just registered my computer under my account.

 

These are great, thanks! Still, kinda disappointing that you paid more than 1month's rent, and ya have some flaws like these. So they just snap back together, or do they not snap back together? (Like, does it hangout/flapout when you don't hold it together on purpose?)

 

Actually, once it snap back together, it will retains its original look. Unless, you accidentally or purposely snap it out again. So don't worry, i guess this is the standard design for g53 lid.

 

How hard is it to snap it out? Scale of 1 to 5, 5 being you need to pull a couple of muscles before you can rip it open (as if it were super glued), and 1 being you can flick it with your pinky and it'll break open?

 

It's not that easy to snap it out. You need to apply some pressure at strategic position especially the corner. Personally, I would rate it 3.

 

Kay, nothing to worry if it won't come out on its own. Can't wait!

 

SNAP ON (clap clap) SNAP OFF (clap clap), sounds like some product

 

So, any updates on the vinyl stuff? I'm still planning to throw on the faux-leather if the plastic lid is too sucky.

 

It's real good, Im just waiting for my g53 so I can apply it, I should have it before thanksgiving

If you haven't ordered it yet, I'd advise u to buy it from gentech, amazing service

 

Sounds good. Where do you plan on applying it?

 

On the lid, I'm going to stretch it across a little more though so it holds the lid firmly (to prevent peeling problem)

 

Sounds good. Dont forget to cut where the corners are, so that it can fold over. I.e., if its a 90 degree corner, make a slit in between it, so that you can fold it over itself. Know what I mean?

 

Oh u don't need to do that with vinyl, u just heat it up with a hair dryer and stretch it around the corner

 

True, though I was able to do a significant price match on the XR1 which is where my difference came from. it sort of trivialized the debate i had between the two.

 

Well, for some reason I can't use firefox on this particular laptop since it freezes my entire system non stop, forcing me to do hard restarts.

I went to Chrome and 95% of the freezes stopped. Chrome has AdBlock, but not NoScript ...I'll just have to be more careful (I hate IE).

Anyone else having firefox issues on their G53?

 

I havent encountered any full system freezes yet. MSN froze couple of times and i guess thats it

 

So far I don't have any freeze issue while using Firefox v3.6.12. But my desktop pc does encounter this issue badly.

 

Are you serious ?
we cant use FireFox on Asus G53JW

 

Havent had any issues with firefox 4 beta or any of the programs I have ran so far on my G53-A1.

 

No firefox issues here or freezes of any kind.

 

no issues with firefox... but I'm getting a weird red hue on my vga montior and hdmi tv... is anyone getting that?

 

@Voodoi
Just firefox? No additional add-ons?

 

I have been using firefox 3.6.12 and no issues.

 

Cool! Sounds easy. Kinda like shrink wrap! Btw, did you receive yours yet?

I have 3.6.12 on my dinodesktop and lappy, and no issues here. You may wanna update java or flash or shockwave? Maybe even all that directx or .net stuff? It could also be a wlan issue. Check all those.

 

put me on the buying this on Black Friday list

 

You sir, need to brofist my avatar. Do it now

Also, how do we buy it on BF via the resellers anyhow?

 

Formally joined the club yesterday.

UPS finally turned up at midday.

So far ... who every said its not big...
I'm not complaining as this is what i want but its by far the most gigantic laptop I have every had. I can kill someone with the battery.

Ok i've been getting by on a Asus netbook and mac air recently so its a bit of a change. Gona do a review at one stage and get a picture of my two asus together... both very similar shape but the size difference is hilarious.

Setting this up as my Photoshop workstation and sometime game machine. retiring my old desktop to server duty.

Man this thing flies... i've got firefox(newest no issues)/chrome/opera/lightroom/photoshop running at the same time without missing a beat.
Couldn't figure out where to turn up/down the keyboard brightness in the dark.. lol had to turn on the lights to figure out it was on the keyboard and not a function in control panel.

Its been great reading all this stuff from you guys leading up to the purchase... got a great exchange rate with the AUS$ at parity to the US$.

Cheers

 

Yeah, everything is updated. I'm really meticulous with updates Just gonna stick with Chrome until a new version comes out. It took me almost a dozen crashes/forced restarts before figuring out one of the culprits was Firefox, so I'm sticking with Chrome for a while

Glad to see more people are receiving theirs Spectacular unit.

@sychen
Hah, I also really enjoyed the pre-discussion as well. The whole group journey was pretty damn fun

 

I went poking around the body of the machine a bit yesterday since mine also has that mild vibration noise if you tap on the desk next to the system (noted in the BTOtech video). It turns out its the DVD drive - if you open the drive and tap on it lightly you can hear the noise. If I get ambitious this weekend I'll try to open the system up and re-seat the drive, I think it's just a loose fit.

 

have you guys had any luck with windows live messenger 2011?
It freezes sometimes and my friends don't receive my sent messages all the time

 

lol, thats just messenger 2011... it sucks big time, the facebook integration doesnt work right... it froze on both my laptops

 

Dont wait
I ordered mine in Sep from GenTechPc
& hope to have it by this month by 20th

 

Hi guys,

I just recently bought the G53JW, and I'm having an issue with the performance...
With games such as SC2, the frame rate lingers around 40-50fps on with the settings I use if the AC is plugged in, however as soon as I unplug it, the frame rate drops down to about 30 or so.
I have set the Power4Hydbrid program so that the minimum and maximum processor settings are always at 100% for both battery and AC, and cannot for the life of me figure out why there is a dip in performance.
Can anyone help me out?