Asus N550JV - user review and owners lounge

Hey, i've got one question about this notebook. Is it possible to move HDD to optical bay? I would love to put a SSD for system while keeping HDD for some data, but I don't want an external drive :x

 

1. My system came with a Atheros AR9485 and that works 100% under F19 . I guess the best way is to replace the wireless adaptor as Broadcom support on Linux is sometimes quite hit-and-miss.

2. Try putting acpi_osi="" in the kernel command line in grub. This fixed all of the ACPI issues for me. Suspend works fine 100%, hibernate ~90% of the time (sometimes the system hangs on a black screen on resume after hibernate).

3. I've never tried to make Win8 co-exist with any Linux distro. The hassle with secure boot put me off completely. Windows works fine under VMware/Virtualbox, even with 3D support. For games, I use Wine and PlayOnLinux. I also have a subscription for crossover wine for office apps.

4. Bumblebee works fine as long as the kernel detects ACPI handle. There was an ACPI code cleanup commit in Linux 3.8 that broke ACPI handle detection on some laptops. See my post above for more info.

 

Short answer is yes. You'll need a HDD caddy for 9.5mm drives. The 12,5mm model won't fit.

 

YAY the last version of XTU works even after sleep ! Awesome ! Now we can undervolt and put whatever multipliers we want forever. No need of 99% cpu usage anymore

 

I have a problem with this pc, the blueray reader keeps making noises at random intervals but I don't have any disk in it.. Is anybody experiencing this?

Edit: A format fixed it. Now I've got a clean Win 8 Pro install without the asus bloat.

 

Just received this unit and it's beautiful. Was not able to see it before I bought it, but now that I've received it, I'm completely satisfied. Gorgeous screen and design. One question, though for owners of the laptop. On the right side of my machine, right under the cd drive, my bottom casing is extremely loose. It does not lie flush with the unit (the left side does) and I can feel the space between the internal components and the bottom casing. Also, my cd drive is extremely crooked. Is this a normal thing for this machine?

 

I just got mine last week. Very happy with it, kallogan what do you mean by the last version of xtu? 4.2.0.6 the latest version or a previous version?

 

Something is wrong. My drive is in there perfectly and the underside is all flush with only slight flexing when applying pressure in the middle. Might want to send it back for replacement.

Honestly, Asus gets a better reputation than they deserve for quality control. My experience managing computer accounts with thousands of pieces of hardware showed me pretty quickly that purchasing Asus anything is pretty risky due to abysmal QC. Their products don't last long either, Asus had by far the highest failure rates for laptops, monitors, and desktop components. With the way most people quickly upgrade laptops, a year and a half is usually long enough and all I really hope to get.

 

Care to elaborate or is it just anecdotal? This study from SquareTrade not only says otherwise when it comes to Asus laptops, but it places them in the first place with the smallest 2 year failure rate. Sure the study cannot prove your malfunctioning units are in fact ok, but it does tend to prove other brands are not doing any better.

Anyway, I would rather focus on laptop model quality and reliability rather than laptop brand statistics. When a brand covers both cheap(est) consumer models and high quality business machines, statistics get skewed.

 

I never had a laptop or desktop that failed in twenty years. And that makes a lot of computers. I'm upping the stats.

 

Latest. 4.2.0.6. 8/8/2013

 

Good to know. Many thanks! I thought that I was being a little overly sensitive, but when I pick the laptop up, there is a ton of space on the right side and it's really annoying. Calling Amazon today. Thanks for the input!

 

So I updated my BIOS to v205 (I had 204) before, and that seems to have fixed my issues with my temps reaching 95-96 Celsius. I ran a XTU CPU stress test and am currently encoding videos with Handbrake at highest priority possible and my CPU temps are about 79C constant with 3.09Ghz frequency (also my fans are very audible). I've never heard my fans this loud, so I'm questioning if they were working right before...

 

well i ordered yesterday from Amazon i hope i will receive it tomorrow

can't wait to start using it

 

Glad to hear temps are under control. By the way, after having some time to tinker with the system i noticed changing power profile can have a dramatic effect on CPU behavior and power usage.

For example going from Balanced to Power Saver, even when plugged in, will result in the processor going down to 800 Mhz when idle. This rarely happens while using the Balanced profile. Even when running on battery power there is a clear difference between the two power profiles, as Power Saver will shave about 2Wh from idle power consumption. (as reported by software)

This might be old news for those of you who owned or worked on newer machines, but up until recently i was still rocking a Core 2 Duo

 

Yes, same here but with 75°C. (Tested further while writing and in a second test it was 79-81°C aswell)

The problem is that Asus seems to link the fan speed with the CPU utilization which is just stupid.
If you start the stress test in XUT the temperature goes up to around 80°C and as stated you can hear the fan really loud but everything is fine, you can feel cool to warm air streaming up the display and the clock stays up to 3 - 3.1 GHz which is good.
But if you play a game, for example i am testing with Guild Wars 2, which utilizes only 30-50% of your CPU, the fan is only running barely, the CPU gets hot and then gets throttled down to 800 MHz regularly which lets your game stutter and ruins your fun.

I don't get what they're doing. The cooling design seems to be capable of handling the heat if used properly and the hardware is capable of running Guild Wars 2 at mid-high settings with 40-60 FPS at FullHD(no city tested yet).
But instead of "programming" their fans properly they are throttling.
They'd only need to link the fan speed to the CPU temperature instead of the utilization if i'm right.

Another view(not so sure about the above anymore ): If playing GW2 in Window Mode with around half the resolution of FullHD the GPU is used less and the CPU fan speeds up and you can hear it nearly as loud as in XUT stress test.
But if i play GW2 fullscreen in FullHD the GPU is used more and the CPU fan is not speeding up that much causing throttling.
Why can't they let both CPU and GPU fans speed up? I don't get it.

Maybe, just maybe, they fix this some time...or we get a possibility to fix it manually.

 

It is all anecdotal, obviously I was not performing studies at my job. I used to manage hardware accounts for different Air Force bases. We dealt with LOTS of varied hardware. I always tried to talk people out of purchasing Asus products for the squadron because Asus is so bad that it was guaranteed to increase my workload on the warranty side. It happened at multiple AF bases. The other manufacturers really didn't have problems with the exception of a bad batch of motherboards that slipped into production from time to time. Honestly Dell seemed to last longer than anything.

My own personal experience with Asus is just with motherboards and they have all failed prematurely. I actually recommend my friends not purchase Asus laptops. I had one that did 2 years ago and his broke, but then he just purchased this predecessor to the laptop being discussed in this thread as a replacement. He laughed when he told me, but he is like me and prepared to buy a new one within a year or two. I purchased one as well, I fully accept the fact that the probability that it will premature die are substantially higher than other brands, but right now this laptop is the only one that has what I want for the price I want. Buying a laptop just about once a year pretty much means I'm not going to be buying $2k laptops.

 

Lots of bullsh*ts said of this thread, first saying that Asus has more failures than other brands based only on YOUR experience is laughable to say the least.

Then fan speeds are not linked to cpu utilization, only temps. And instead of constantly crying on this thread like a bunch of babies, try to fix yours problems, there are lots of options to avoid throttling, such as rising the lap, undervolting, lock mutipliers via XTU etc...It's not that complicated. Every damn laptop with quad on board is throttling out there, and if not, they simply overheat and sound like choppers, which is not better. Intel cpu are power hogs, always on the edge of current cooling systems capacity, especially on turbo, so deal with it. It's getting old.

 

Lol, getting mad?

I had the Samsung Chronos 770Z5E before this one and it's even smaller with a more powerful GPU while the CPU was on the same level.
And guess what? Not a single sign of throttling in a thinner case.
It was only the display which sucked because it burned in.

For the chopper part: I'd take rather this(on full load) than being forced to tweak things the producer should handle.

And instead of insulting you might give tips or a handy guide on how to do these things instead of preaching that it's such an easy thing to do and fixes the things others are complaining about.

 

I have a question for those that bought the N550JV-DB72T from Amazon.....

I know the specs are wrong on Amazon, but want to double-check a few items with their config...
- does the laptop come with GT750m? I am assuming it does since it is a DB72T.
- Is a Blu-Ray read/writer included?
- Does their config truly have a 24GB SSD?

If it truly comes with a Blu-Ray & SSD, then their price is not bad.

 

Hey. I just got this unit from Amazon yesterday.

- does the laptop come with GT750m? I am assuming it does since it is a DB72T.
Yes. Definitely comes with a Gt 750. Can confirm this.
- Is a Blu-Ray read/writer included?
No, a bluray read/write is NOT included. Only a regular dvd rw
- Does their config truly have a 24GB SSD?
No, there is definitely NOT a SSD of any size in this laptop. There wouldn't even be room for one.

Just my two cents, this laptop is pretty great. On the pricey side, but definitely thin, relatively light for the power, and has a beautiful screen.

 

Thanks for the reply. Since it does not come with a Blu-Ray nor SSD, I might as well purchase it from Xoiticpc. I can have them add the Blu-Ray & maybe the Intel 7260 WiFi card. I can add the SSD later (maybe a Samsung 840 pro 512GB).

 

So I was gonna ask this earlier anyways but um yeah.. can you point me to a really good undervolting guide? or at least tell me which toggles i should use in XTU? Thanks, im just looking to undervolt and maybe up the multiplier a little

 

Except the samsung costs a leg and does not maintain cpu turbo under furmark and prime as well. Via xtu, just put -100mV on cpu voltage offset and lock the multipliers reasonably on whatever you want for one, two, three and 4 cores and bye bye throttling and enjoy Asus silence. Don't forget to disable deep sleep in power settings as it will reset xtu settings. Normal sleep and reboot are fine and keep settings.

 

There you go. You can go up to 28-30x on 4 cores even more depending on the game i guess without throttling as undervolting helps temps a lot. Put settings, click apply.

If you just use cpu and don't game, you can even lock the cpu on 34x on four cores with -100mv cpu voltage offset.

Also Xtu graphics show wrong clocks in the last version so use HWinfo64 to check the clocks. Not a big deal, knowing that the last version of XTU is the only one that keeps settings between reboots and sleeps.

 

Also, i read a review on Anandtech this morning and it seems that overclocking gpu memory on the 750M ddr3 from 900mhz to 1100mhz via Nvidia Inspector can improve significantly the framerate if you game at 900p and above. At 768p, it does not make a that big of a difference.

AnandTech | Acer V7-482PG-9884 Review: Everything You Need

 

That's not really true. The difference from the np870z5e and my N550JV was 29€. Not counting with the screen the samsung was a better notebook: much better battery life, faster gpu, no cd drive, thiner, better keyboard and kb backlight, touchpad, heck even the sound was better. Now the image retention thing in it really kills the deal.

The fit and finish of the samsung was way better than the asus. Asus has a lousy QC, to the point that the store where I got mine checks every key, the casing/lcd for scratches. Now to be honest both are macbook pro clones.

 

From all I've seen so far i they did no such thing. Fan speed is related to temperature.

However there does seem to be a bug related to GPU enforced throttling: as soon as the GPU reaches a certain temperature the system will throttle the CPU in favor of the GPU. It does seem to be pretty agressive, forcing the CPU right down to 800Mhz, but that's another issue. The real problem is what happens after this throttling is enforced: even if the GPU cools down, the CPU won't be allowed to reach normal speed.

Easiest way to deal with this problem is to disable this throttling. I suggest taking a look at Throttlestop. The curent beta version supports Haswell. You can leave all options default and just disable BDPROCHOT.

After disabling bi-directional prochot i was able to run Furmark (GPU stress) and Prime95(CPU stress) at the same time and still maintain 3,4Ghz on all CPU cores. My maximum turbo multiplier is set to 34x even when all cores are loaded, and the CPU is undervolted by 90mV.

With bi-directional prochot disabled my CPU reached 94C. This is really close to 95C, the temperature at which the CPU will begin to throttle no matter what. I had no reason to wait for that to happen though, i don't intend to play Furmark and Prime95

PS: for those who decide to use Throttlestop - make sure you don't tick the Nvidia GPU in the Options area, in my experience it started to activate the nvidia card every couple of seconds

 

So had the Samsung been a better notebook, it would have been the better one. Ok.

Good to know where you're coming from.

 

Yep the sammy was better in most regards. Now not being a fan boy but the internal layout is pretty much the same. Yet the fruity company has a much cleaner assembly. I don't really see what is your problem.

But now to useful things, do your speakers pop when shutting down the notebook?

 

My problem is simple: you invoked design similarities between the notebook models to establish the macbook pro for a benchmark. For what purpose, i do not know.

Speaking of fruits, did you know the first retina macbook pro's equipped with LG screens had image retention problems? They do have an exemplary clean assembly though.

Yes, they pop on both shutdown and sleep. I didn't notice this earlier since I use an external soundcard and keep the onboard one turned off.

 

Since lately most notebooks look like an macbook pro, that makes them the benchmark. And I am not telling you that they are the benchmark, the companies are.

Yes I know that the retina macbook pro have that issue, not that I care though. The samsung notebook that I had suffered from the same issue, and it had an AUO panel.

And yes I was talking about the assembly, yet they do toast under load.

 

Well, in Europe, the Samsung is a hell lot expensive than the Asus that comes with an extra bluray drive. Ok, it's thinner and the gpu is better but i don't really care. And it does not consume less, it's just the samsung has a bigger battery, 91Wh vs 59Wh for the Asus.

And frankly, there is no easy access to HDD or cooling system on the Samsung, only one ram slot is accessible (which suggests that the other ram slot is soldered yuck) so swapping for a ssd or repasting is a pain. Direct deal killer for me.

 

Well I'm in Europe. And the asus is not that cheaper. And yes the samsung has a much bigger battery. The back is pain to remove, but the asus is not that easy to remove, it's easier but not by much. Now the soldered ram is a deal killer. Yet with 8gb soldered, you could add another 8gb and have 16gb of ram.

Now my asus has 16gb of ram and 4gb of vram so I am at the top limit. I've only swapped the hdd to an 500gb 7200k western digital that I had lying arround and this thing is fast.

Don't get me wrong, I like this notebook. The only thing I need to fix is the loud pop when I sleep or shutdown the pc. I also really like the desing of the charger, it's a flat brick that fits really nice in my backpack, instead of the usual tall brick.

Now maybe someday I will remove the bd drive since I have no use for it, and fit the original 1tb hard drive there. Has anybody swapped the bd drive for an hdd and has pictures?

 

Since i'm idling at 11-12W at the wall with 80% brightness and wifi on and never go above 20W while web browsing, i can fairly say that my battery life should beat more than one ultrabook. And i still didn't receive my ssd.

You can put a 9,5mm optical caddy for the HDD, but you will probably lose the Asus dvd drive front/facade, unless you can put it on the caddy.

 

I oversaw entire military bases worth of hardware. My largest account had over 6,500 desktops, laptops, monitors, projectors, servers, and networking equipment. I handled all of the warranty issues when equipment malfunctioned while still covered. That last part alone took up a huge part of my day. I certainly did not need to deal with people pissed off that their equipment was not working and some of the companies that couldn't be bothered to care about honoring their warranty until you amassed a truckload of hardware so they felt it was worth it to send a vehicle to pick it up. Asus was not only the worst offender when it came to malfunctions, but they were the bottom of the barrel when it came to honoring their warranty in a timely fashion.

What exactly is your experience that somehow invalidates mine? My experience is unique and it is safe to say that I have been in a much better position to know what kind of failure rates exist in the real world than someone like you that takes it personal for reasons that make zero sense.

I still think that this laptop is a great laptop. No I do not believe it will last longer than 2 years. Yes, I recommend anyone purchasing Asus anything to go ahead and pay for an extended warranty if they are not into upgrading to knew hardware constantly.

 

You should be able to get a solid 5 hour battery life. My battery only reports 55wh instead of the desing capacity of 59wh, yet I was able to get 4 hours of battery life not that bad.

About the caddy I was hopping to keep the dvd front for dust / cosmetic reasons. Let's see if someone does it first, since I don't really need it atm.

btw: I just tested the display port thing and it works like a charm. I am using the internal lcd and an 1080p external monitor just fine.

 

Stezzus you may have handled thousands of hardware, it is still 0,01 % if expanded worldwide.

 

yeiiii, i just got it from Amazon

it look pretty awesome, im loving it so far!!



my first mistake was to install avast without uninstalling mcaffe and that cause me some crashes!!

but now is working pretty nice!! the display is awesome!! i never had an hd laptop!! so i just can said WOW!!

 

Thank you!
I already had the current beta of ThrottleStop downloaded but didn't know what exactly i had to do, didn't find something what exactly pointed to the problem but i guess i just didn't read right because i saw the ThrottleStop guide here on notebookreview.
Disabling BDPROCHOT makes running Prime95 and Furmark without throttling possible - Hell yeah! - although it goes down to 2.67 GHz but that is not that bad. (Laptop stands plain on a desk aswell)
I will experiment with XTU to see how far I can get the clock.

@Kallogan:

Thank you aswell.
I would have tried that now or rather i will use your little guide together with ThrottleStop anyway
The problem is that i am experiencing throttling the very first time so i didn't know what i am able to do and get rid of it.
Don't be mad at people asking, help them as you did now.
Now i think i can get happy with this machine

Oh and in Europe, both the Ativ Book 8 870Z5E(which is the relabeled 770Z5E, exact same machine) and the Asus N550JV-CN088H cost the same - 1199€.

@javier_83:

Haha yeah, once you got a 15" machine with FullHD you never want to go lower than this :-D
Was experiencing the same when i had to give my Chronos 770Z5E back to the trader and was searching until i found this one.

 

Hey, question for you! I may be being a little neurotic, but I would like to get a confirmation from you. I bought my laptop from Amazon as well. My first unit had a very loose (or so I thought) bottom casing, especially around the cd-drive. I found out that one of the screws underneath the unit was missing, so requested and received a replacement. My replacement also seems to have very loose casing around the cd-drive. It's not so loose that it's falling off, but directly underneath the cd-drive, I can tap the bottom casing and feel a little gap between the casing and the cd-drive. Am I just being a little crazy, or is this normal? Thanks a bunch.

 

Just made my first attempt to swap the optical drive, with mixed but encouraging results.

First, the good news:

• The optical drive can be opened (unscrew the top) and the plastic front can be easily removed. It will snap off if pulled from one side. Just take your time and pull with care, it's attached with plastic hooks.
• The system booted from the SSD mounted into the caddy without any problem. I didn't even have to configure the BIOS.

Now the bad news:

• The was no way to attach the plastic front to the caddy. I improvised using double adhesive tape, and although i was able to attach it firmly to the caddy, it sticks out about 2mm from the chassis. I guess results will vary, in my case the caddy is probably a bit too long.
• I'm only getting 3Gbps SATA speeds. I don't think this is a system limitation though, it should be my caddy (old Dell E6400 part).

I'm considering bypassing the caddy and attaching the SSD directly. This should give me a better chance to fit the plastic front perfectly, but will require more tinkering.

There is also one more interesting discovery: the optical drive seems to generate a ton of Hardware Interrupts / DPCs. With the optical drive attached my system would constantly have a 4-6% load from hardware interrupts. This translates in one core being constantly loaded. Removing the ODD has quite an effect: now all cores are idle and the CPU defaults to 800Mhz even while on Balanced Power profile (plugged in). My idle power usage while on battery seems to also drop a bit, between 500mW and 1W as observed via software. The "gain" is coming from the CPU being completely idle.

I'll investigate further when i have some time. Would help if someone else could independently confirm/deny this by removing their own ODD and checking CPU load while idle. Hardware Interrupt load can be easily checked with Process Explorer, a handy Sysinternals tool. You should also observe the CPU going down to 800Mhz while in Balanced power profile.

 

You can get it to clock up to 3400Mhz at full load. Undervolting a bit will help, i would say you can safely start at -50mV for the CPU. My system crashed at -120mV, crashed after a while at -110mV, and seemed pretty stable at -100mV under stress load, so i decided to try running a -90mV undervolt.

If the cooling system is able to handle even nominal CPU speeds under Furmark&Prime95... you definitely have a winner. That kind of load will never happen in "real life".

 

So the caddy you used was from your Dell E6400? Or was it one that you ordered with the N550JV.

 

Just an old caddy I had bought for an old laptop of mine.

 

I am considering getting one of these. What is the maximum memory size a N550JV-DB72T can run?
For anyone who has replaced the stock RAM with a larger capacity on this model, what RAM brand and specs have you had a good experience with?

 

if i'm not wrong is 16gb

 

Sorry to read this man!! but mi computer arrive in perfect shape!!

wich was your seller in Amazon??

 

I was leaning toward a Zenbook but I see the N550 is several hundred dollars less for a lot more performance. Now I'm leaning the other way. Does anyone know if you can install Windows 7 on the N550? I see Asus does not offer Win7 drivers for this model on their web site. Windows 8 is my only hesitation as I'm hoping to avoid it at all costs. I'd love to hear if anyone has any experience with Windows 7 on the N550. Thanks!

 

@burghblast:

Here it is said that it's no problem to use Windows 7 because you can find all the drivers on the manufacturer sites, Intel Graphics, Nvidia Graphics, Realtek Sound and Ethernet etc.
Though i have to say there is no real need to switch back to Windows 7.
Install StartIsBack and you have your original Windows 7 start menu in a Windows 8 (would have been) look.
You can disable all hot corners but you can still switch to the Modern UI if wanted by pressing a shortcut( CTRL + Windows as default ).
If you do it this way you profit of the things Windows 8 offers but you have your familiar working environment.
I would not bother myself with installing Windows 7 on machines with Windows 8 anymore since i know StartIsBack.