Asus N550JV - user review and owners lounge

Still no W7 drivers on Asus website, i so want to ditch W8...

 

Anyone know how you flash the bios to an older version? The embedded one in the bios does not allow it.
EDIT: nvm found it.

And yes... this BIOS version is 'possibly' worse than the older one. Any application that uses both the CPU & GPU will cause CPU throttling even when not even near full load.

EDIT: yup... reverted to version 203 and it's seemingly better since it doesn't throttle ridiculously as stated above.

 

I'm sorry but, oh god I hate when people do this lol. Explain how you managed to revert the bios!

 

Hey guys i'm having several issues on my n550jv and I was wondering if you guys are experiencing the same on yours since i'm planning on having it exchange instead of refund if you guys don't have these issues and mine is a dud.



Here are the list of issues I noticed the last couple days of using

1.) There is some kind of static/hissing/squealing/interference noise using the 3.5mm port using any diff earphones/headsets and the only solution I found to get rid of it is to uninstall the realtek/waveaudio driver. Even after updating the realtek driver the annoying noise is still there .

2.) The Atheros wireless card has like a mind of its own and it keeps on disconnecting at different intervals and it won't reconnect unless I refresh it manually again. It is so annoying especially when you are inside an online game or currently downloading something and it gets interrupted

3.) Some keys on the left side (Q,S,1,2) are all woring fine but it is emitting some type of sticky noise like when you press it, then 1-2 sec later, a tick sound will come right after it like there is something underneath the keycap that is smacking or sticking.

 

Sorry about that, I was a bit panicked for a bit, so I went straight to testing.

I think c_man posted this in an Asus ROG thread... somewhere.
Basically you use WinFlash and use cmd to navigate to the folder where WinFlash's executable is and start it up with the phrase WinFlash /nodate so that you can flash an older bios even though WinFlash & Asus Easy Flash straight up refuse to flash to an older bios.

Also... a lot of us know that WinFlash is not exactly safe since you're running it in Windows where program interference might cause flash to fail. However, the WinFlash procedure looks a bit different when you compare it to older generation WinFlash. It does not actually flash while in Windows, and simply reroutes to Easy Flash (BIOS level) with a reboot which seems safer.

 

I've been using the 3.5mm audio jack with a pair of headphones, and it sounds like any ordinary jack (doesn't seem to be any major interference). Haven't had any keys sticking. My Atheros card hasn't had a single problem so far with connectivity.
If I were you, I would definitely try an exchange if those issues appear extreme (such as the sound jack whining & wifi connectivity).

On a side note:
I tried using my older gen Intel N-6230 Bluetooth combo wireless card and it didn't seem to be directly compatible with Windows 8 since the Bluetooth could not be turned on/off in the the settings. In Device Manager, there would be a Bluetooth peripheral device that would be unknown.

 

BD PROCHOT stands for bi-directional processor hot. This is a signal path to the CPU. This allows other items on the motherboard like the GPU or voltage regulator to send a signal to the CPU which will trick the CPU into thinking it is too hot. The CPU then responds by dropping the multiplier to 8 so it drops down to a hair under 800 MHz, your frame rates will instantly drop and your games will stutter to a crawl.

When you disable BD PROCHOT, this prevents these messages getting to the CPU so the CPU will continue to run at its full rated speed.

Disabling BD PROCHOT does NOT prevent the CPU from throttling. If your CPU ever reaches the thermal throttling temperature, it will throttle and slow down regardless of anything you have enabled or disabled in ThrottleStop. Intel builds thermal throttling into their CPUs at the hardware level. No software can prevent the CPU from throttling if it needs to.

 

Battery life seem to be not that great, after testing it from 100% to 5% until it hibernated. In Balanced mode at 40% brightness and only wifi on ( backlit kb and Bluetooth turned off) and just web browsing with 2-3 tabs in 2-3 different message board/forums without playing any video or music, using task manager uptime, from 100% battery to 5%, I was only able to get 3 hours and 20 minutes on today's test and yesterday with a little bit of mp3 music here and there, I was only able to get 3h and 07 minutes. Also checked the Nvidia GPU Activity icon notification in the taskbar to make sure no program is running the Nvidia GPU and to guarantee intel HD 4600 is the one in control while only web surfing on 2-3 tabs of message board/forums and typing/replying or refreshing the site every 30-45 sec.

So basically it is about the same scenario on all 3 laptops I have tested so far with 1080p IPS panels. First was the Alienware 14, the 2nd one was the Clevo W230ST, and last the Asus N55JV. It seems like the FHD IPS Panel paired with a full mobile core Quad Core Haswell cpu drains a lot of battery and from research, I noticed from different people with their findings including HTwingnut that the claim of Intel that Haswell is energy efficient is only half true and it only applies to ULV Haswell processors and not the full mobile core ones.


I don't see this laptop reaching 4.5 or 5 hours of battery, 4 hours is possible if the brightness is lowered even further maybe to 30% or 20% and with minimal web surfing or word editing.

 

On Windows 7 64bit Winflash does not work for me at all

And yes, it's like you said and like I've said it before, it takes a long time for the CPU to clock up from 800. That is a bug and Asus left us with it.

 

Well keep in mind that laptops weren't exactly designed in the mind that anyone would actually run a CPU and GPU both at 100% which is the probably reason why Asus decided to put a power throttling scheme between the CPU and GPU. How long does it take for the CPU to clock up from 800mhz once load is reduced? (should be near instant if you stop running a test)

 

If the GPU has load on it and boost as normal, it takes like 15min. or so CPU temps are way down +70 something. As we could see the CPU can run now at 90°C just fine around 2.6-2.9GHz even. So yes, I see it as a bug.

Might be a scenario Asus overlooked.

Is is true that right now I see temps going over 80 and clocks more like 3.1-3.2GHz. In the past was around 80 and clocks at 3.0-3.1GHz. Laptop seems to make a bit less noise under full load, but not much. Maybe I just imagine stuff.

 

It's perfectly normal for the CPU to downclock turbo a couple notches if the CPU gets hot because turboboost was designed to boost the CPU if given adequate cooling. This is why they still advertise the CPUs as only having a 'standard' clockrate of 2.4ghz since maximum turboboost is not guaranteed. How much Turboboost is controlled by temperature & TDP, but from how I've been testing both my 2nd gen and 4th gen CPUs unless the temperatures are extremely high and actually causes throttling, it's mostly TDP wattage controlled.
In my Asus N53SV, the turboboost wattage was actually unlocked so that you could run 57W normally without it slightly downclocking from say 2.8ghz to 2.5ghz under full load. Of course, it used like 55W during Prime95 and displayed core temps at 92C without the GPU running (so it's not practical anyway unless you have a way better cooling system).

If I use Intel's stress test, the temps sit right at around 75C while running 3.4ghz constant 100% CPU usage. If I then run a program that suddenly stresses the CPU slightly more & uses the GPU with the stress test still on, the CPU will increase power usage to run both stress test and program, and thus the turboboost will abandon a full 3.4ghz usage because it exceeds 47W and bounce around 3.0-3.3ghz to keep wattage down. This is intended normal behavior.

There are variations to the clockrate, so what you see 3.1-3.2 ghz might only be 3.0-3.1ghz when another internal application may be using slightly more CPU.

 

Scenario is like this. Run Furmark or anything else that will make the GPU boost as it should.

Now while Furmark is doing it's thing, the CPU itself has no load. CPU temps will rise even with no load. This is because of the cooling system design.

And I start full load on CPU as the GPU has boost and is under full load as well. The CPU was at 800MHz and it will stay there for some time. Makes no sense. Temps are well below even 80.

What you say is another matter and that is normal.

With Prime95 I never got variations on G55 or 75. Only top boost clock all the time. This means N550 has throttling.

 

You running Throttlestop in monitoring mode with the unchecked BD PROCHOT while doing these tests?

So basically the GPU usage is what triggers the throttling.
I assume you start up Furmark ---> CPU downclocks to 800mhz shortly after

Maybe it's related to the 205 BIOS? I did state that I reverted because it seemed to throttle a lot easier.
Adding onto what I noticed upon flashing to the 205 BIOS...
Ran Dolphin Emulator - slight 1-3 frame rate drops with the more CPU intensive DSP LLE sound setting even with the same overclocked 3.4ghz clockrate. Moved back to the 203 BIOS and the framerate smoothness returned. So it was an unexplainable performance hit even with Throttlestop.

 

No, when running Furmark the CPU is at 800Mhz, since there is no load on it to start with. But when you try to put a load on the CPU, is stays at 800MHz while Furmark is on and GPU has boost. And this is not exactly normal behaviour. Since if you do the other way around, full load on CPU and then full load on GPU, things work just fine, it will never hit 800MHz.

I do not use Throttlestop.

Might be related to 205, I have not seen this when I did my first tests some time ago.

 

Well you could give the beta throttlestop a shot, because it almost seems like the artificial throttling is possibly not caused by the CPU load or even temperature, but by the GPU being loaded. (and the fact that the v205 BIOS might be more extreme than v203)

 

Anyone else getting repeated reboots after installing the Intel chipset drivers?

I restored from system restore, will try again some time. Had to reinstall Office and other apps heh.

 

Does ThrottleStop fix all issues (at least in games, let's forget about furmark/prime)? It's still unclear to me. One mentioned that no throttling anymore but another one mentioned that it didn't help.

 

Hi Guys, i travel a lot, so i don't know how big is the N550JV, because i tried to see one in different stores but i couldn't find anything...

so for example how much is the height and compared against a macbook pro for example??, just to have an idea???

and a last question can i expand the ram to 16gb??

Thanks a lot for all the information about this laptop!!

Regards!!

 

Personally, it does seem to completely alleviate all hard 800mhz CPU throttling (So far I haven't seen it throttle once Throttlestop is used). I can't speak for all of the users though. Throttlestop is really only needed once you start playing games or use the CPU with GPU intensively.
You will need to reinitialize throttlestop every time you sleep/hibernate the PC (unless you keep it minimized all the time and don't close it). Same goes for restarting the pc, but you can set Throttlestop to run at login with Windows's task scheduler.

The Asus N550JV 15.6" is slightly larger than that of a Macbook Pro 15" in all size constraints (and more if comparing to the Macbook Pro Retina 15").
With a pair of calipers I have measured an actual thickness (ignoring the feet at the bottom of the laptop) to be about 1.1" thick, versus the Macbook Pro which is 0.95" thick and the Retina which is 0.71".

The length side to side will be almost exactly 15" across, which is about an inch wider when compared to a Macbook Pro with 14.13".
The width front to back will be about 10" across, which is only about a quarter of an inch longer when compared to a Macbook Pro with 9.8".

RAM is expandable to 16GB.

 

What game could put a full load on both CPU and GPU?

I have tried Metro: Last light with a bunch of settings.

During intensive fighting the GPU boost will drop. I have never seen it under it's base value so far, but it will go under 1000Mhz. The temperature it tries to keep is 80°C.

The CPU itself looks good, with full boost I guess when needed, highest temp I got was 87 an graph looked solid full boost for a long time, the entire scene. I'm not sure for how long it could have done that. The game it's not exactly a "bloody" one, so it's not a very long scene of fighting anywhere in the game, except a few times. The GPU did throttle during this, to around 980MHz. When fighting was over, the GPU got back mostly to 1032 or even more. Keep in mind that I am interested in generating heat under gaming scenario here, not doing fps.

Since the game did not slow down, I would say the fps drop was little.

During these tests the laptop got hot. This means the level of demand was very high and the system did very well. Test lasted for about 1h or so.

 

throttlestop does work according to others, i just can't take benefit of it cause i'm not experiencing hard throttling like others. Probably because i used adhesive pads to rise my lap, don't know.

I did a repaste with MX-2 and made some holes above the cpu fan with a dremel, temps seem to be pretty much the same, hard to say cause it's pretty hot in my room. Well, i tried. I'm not throttling anyway, did that by curiosity.

 

I also hear noise using earphones. High noise

and where is num lk indicator?!

 

1. Yes, there is a background noise if you have no imput. But it won't increase with volume and any sound will top it perfectly. It's not exactly audiophile grade electronics so I'm OK with it. The sound is very good.

2. That is not normal, mine works like a charm. I never ever got a disconnect with it. Maybe the signal is not very strong or something like that. Try to see how it works near the router.

3. Mine are just fine, no strange sounds.

 

Is there one? I could not find it. I guess we'll know if it's on or not by using them

 

Thanks a lot for the info, i think i will buy this one

i was checking in amazon that i see 2 versions N550JV-DB72T and N550JV-DB71

can some one tell me the differences??

Thanks in advance.

Regards!!

 

They're identical except that the DB72T has a touchscreen and the DB71 does not. DB71 uses a matte display, DB72T is glossy because of the touchscreen.

 

Thanks a lot!!

i think i already decided to buy this laptop, i need to sell my hp envy..

Thanks a lot guys!!

 

I've thought about adding holes, but often times the intake is designed to carry the air over other components. I had one laptop that I added holes and the temps went up because of that. Glad to see you where brave enough to try so I am no longer curious if it could help or not.

 

How good was the stock paste job? Worth replacing for peace of mind?

 

Mine wasn't bad, but I've never see a sticker on the CPU heat sink screw that voids your warranty once you break it.

 

I must say that even though I was extremely careful, those Torx screws are really delicate and completely ridiculous. I stripped a few and literally if you slip by just a fraction of a turn, then its pretty much a pain in the after that. Does anyone know of any replacement screws that would fit that are anything other than Torx?

 

That's what i was thinking, the intake is in fact quite well thought. Temps didn't went up but didn't seem to improve either, or by a very small margin. And mx-2 was no better than stock paste so i'd say stock was decent paste enough.

 

Okay well here's my take on that... when I was testing/swapping the wifi card out, I was too bored to actually close up the panel, so I ran the laptop upside down with the lid on the cooling pad and the body in the air. Idle temps dropped to like 26C/29C when normally they'd be at least 30C/35C from a fresh cold start (and the temps would be stable).
Didn't do anything heavy in that awkward configuration, but yea that's something I did notice.

Dunno, if someone could test running the laptop with the whole bottom lid off and run a stress test... see if it actually makes a huge difference or not (which it probably will since the fans will be able to push the air easier).
So yes, more holes are better for the laptop in general, but now it's a matter of how many holes you need to see a gain.

 

Well, the holes are just above the cpu fan and large enough to give fresh air, especially on a risen lap. It's just the fan kicks late so max temps don't change much if for a few degrees, but maybe it takes more time to get to those max temps on the other hand.

Even for the paste i can't be sure. Ambiant temps are a pain in the . Yesterday afternoon, lowest temp i've seen on a core is 28-29°C, and this morning, it's cold and some cores at iding at 23-24°C after a little web browsing.

 

Just did a quick test with two pairs of headphones and a brand new N550JV, a 16Ω pair of earphones and a 50Ω pair of headphones.

1. With Realtek drivers - very high noise on sensitive earphones, lower but clearly audible hiss on the headphones.

2. Without Realtek drivers the noise levels drop significantly: using the earphones I still hear audible hiss, while using the headphones there is no audible background noise. On the sensitive earphones i can also pick up a low frequency hum that instantly disappears when touching the notebook chassis.

If you have no clear use for the Realtek drivers, don't use them.

 

i removed the dvd drive to know what a dvd drive is consuming at idle (yeah i'm a little obsessed by power consumption ) and it is clearly 0W or so. Doesn't change anything. I removed the security screw of the dvd drive to be able to remove it easily without dissasembling when i want to in case i put an optical bay someday. I probably never will.

But funny thnig is i tried to play without the dvd drive and it creates a nice airflow through the lap haha.

So now i'm asking myself the same question than this guy :

http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...grades/134928-ever-heard-fan-optical-bay.html

Doesn't exist. Too bad. i will be obliged to make a diy optical bay blower haha. Actually i would have been disappointed if it already existed. Less fun

Kallogan useless infos at ur service

Oh gosh i think i will add pipes until the optical bay, power a blower with that :
http://www.cdrohlinge24.de/inlinesa...r030m-p-52395.html?language=en&cPath=593_3793

That's it. I'm so excited now

 

ye, i found the same. and already removed realtek drivers. but now i cant use subwoofer

 

Could be just a setting and not the entire driver. Some sort of loudness that amplifies something. I barely hear it so I'm good so far. Any level of music will top it entirely. On my model that hiss is on only if I play a file and pause it. If I stop it, the hiss will be gone in seconds. So something gets on while playing audio and off after I close the program. Sounds very similar to a preamp noise.

 

Interesting, I'm mildly annoyed with the realtek driver adding a systray icon with none too usaeful options.

Did you use a Torx-5 screwdriver? I thought it went pretty smoothly; made sure you wiggled down for a snug fit before turning? Tricky part was making sure the lid closed all the way. I still have no idea how it fits but it made me think there were two different sized screws for a bit.

 

I've had my N550 for less than 2 weeks now, but I would like to make a backup of Win8 just in case I ever need to reinstall the software. My system didn't come with any discs, so I would be interested in hearing anyone's advice in making an install disc for Windows 8.

Any suggestions??

 

At the start menu, search for "Create a recovery drive" in the "Settings" tab. This takes you through the standard Windows procedure of creating a recovery drive. If you want to back up the recovery partition (and I would, just in case the HDD gets messed up) then you'll be told you need a 16GB USB drive to backup on to. Otherwise you can get away with a much smaller flash drive, though I suspect this would only allow you to boot into a recovery console where you could initiate recovery from the HDD's recovery partition. It won't help you if this recovery partition is lost (due to corruption, failed HDD, etc.).

Unfortunately I don't have a spare flash drive to sacrifice for this at the moment, so I can tell you how well it works. Hope this helps.

 

Ho hum, I received a replacement N550JV today, as the first one had a dodgy GeForce in it (either it wouldn't start, according to Windows Device Manager, or it would cause system instability and freezes with graphical corruption when it was engaged).

After 15mins on this new one however, I've noticed a black speck in the screen, about an 1/8th of a screen width from the right, and 1/4 of the height from the bottom.

It most definitely is *not* dead/stuck pixels. This black mark is around the glass layer (I have the touch screen model), so it appears to hover in front of the pixels, with a gap in between. For example, if I move my cursor to behind the mark, then move my head, I can see the cursor and mark move relative to each other, due to the changing perspective between the two caused by the distance between them. Hope that makes sense.

So I've been scrubbing away to remove this mark. However, I have to conclude that the mark is in fact *inside* the glass itself. Not behind the glass, but part of it. If I lightly run my nail over the area, I can't feel any imperfections that would suggest this mark can be removed by me (certainly not by half an hour's scrubbing - I'm worried if I scrub much more I'll damage the touch sensor).

Very disappointing. Looks like I'll be on my 3rd N550JV come next week once a replacement is sorted. I'm excited for when I get one without issues (and chuck an SSD in).

As an aside, the retailer - John Lewis here in the UK - have been very good so far. Currently it is out of stock though, so I'll be waiting on more to arrive.

Are there any alternatives I should consider? The new HP Envy Touchsmart 15 looked like the only similarly spec'ed machine out there, but I went for the Asus expecting better a superior build quality (which I'm now ambivalent toward - overall it seems very solid, but I hesitate to call anything that has had these faults "well built").

Cheers.

 

ChewBubblegumKickAss you beat me, so nvm

 

Ouch... tho what are the chances of getting a 4th bad one?

I'd go for a 4th, extra touches like the subwoofer are just great. The only thing that makes me yearn for another is the keyboard; I prefer snappier springs but not too big of a deal and eventually I'll hook it up to a monitor for use with a full-sized keyboard.

 

Yes, I was just testing the jack to see if I could hear it or not. I realize that it affects lower impedance headphones more (perhaps) because I was using active noise cancelling headphones with the powered amplifier off and getting a very very slight trace of preamp noise. When turning the noise canceling on, preamp noise is heard loud and clear but can be overshadowed by music. It definitely just sounds like preamp interference.

 

I bought one of these ADATA DashDrive Series UV128 16GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive and created a recovery drive no problem. This was even with a new SSD drive in the laptop and the stock HDD in an external USB enclosure. It found the recovery partition on the external enclosure HDD and copied it no problem.

 

Hey guys, I just picked one of these machines up for school and am generally very pleased with the machine. I'm a little curious about people's experiences with temperatures though. It's summer, so ambient temps here are pretty hot, but when I'm playing say GTA IV, my CPU goes to the mid 80s in a few minutes and hovers there pretty much consistently (I'm assuming throttling), while the GPU seems to max at 80 degrees. The fans on this machine are so quiet that it's kind of hard to tell if they're doing anything, though I can certainly feel the hot air coming out at the hinge. The performance for the games I've tested has been alright, though my old Sager with an HD Radeon 5870 an first gen mobile i7 did seem to beat it in all the games I tested. For those that want to play games on this machine, how are your temps and are you using throttlestop and manual fan controls to improve performance. Also, to those with audio issues, uninstalling the preinstalled drivers totally removed the hiss for me and had no noticeable effect on the volume or clarity of sound. I might try newer drivers in the future, but I'm quite pleased with the sound as is, so if you're annoyed with the audio, give it a go.

 

It's about on par with 5870 so it makes sense if the temps are high enough to get heavy throttle, to have less performance. Someone in here found a protection cover over the GPU and the paste over it. So there might be mixed results due to poor QC.

I'm fine in games and performance seems to be where it should for a DDR3 version.

 

Are there many heating issues with this laptop that would prevent it from lasting several years?