Asus ROG GL702ZC owners lounge

Why bother with another software to control the fans, if we have Rog gaming center. Every time I need to work i hit the keyboard key and it boosts fans to 30% and remains cool under 80 degrees on both gpu and cpu. It remambers where I left it.

Sent from my MI 5s Plus using Tapatalk

 

It would be nice if a NBFC config file can be made, since NBFC is cross-platform.

 

Yes i have read it, my ASIC is a little bit higher ( 74%) but it really doesnt matter because I couldnt get it stable at -97mv, so that should be the sweet spot.
A very interessting question could be how much the RX580 is able to increase the clock speed? I think it can handle about 1150 to 1250Mhz depending on your ASIC quality.

Regarding to your crashes in Cinebench, actually as I said my one is stable when I test Cinebench and prime95. It changed when I push the GPU and CPU both at the same time to the limits that I can show you that picture what you wanted to check. So I had to increase the mV a little bit to about 1.17V and under load it drops exactely to 1.15V.

In the following picture I marked the important values in RWEverything for Fan RPM, Stages, Temps. I have let it run about 20 minutes, then it stucked at 82.5°C at CPU and the GPU at 68°C while both fans are running at 100%.
FYI in automatic modus it only pushed the fans into stage 5 (totaly there are 8) so my CPU hit the nice 94°C and even If the CPU handle it, it isnt a really nice number.



The min/max values are a bit strange because I pressed the reset buttom while it was at full load.
Another strange thing is that it seems the CPU and GPU temps have both two registry for temps and they show two times the temperature.
If you want you can try and change the fan stages from 01-08 then you can hear how they start but after some seconds the E/C will reset it. Stage 8 is NOT the maximum fan speed but the maximum stage!

Because there is no way to control with a little bit more precicsion, just set one fix value. Maybe average people will be statisfied with that solution, but I am that guy who want to have a full control and overview. Furthermore, what the ROG Gaming Center offers you is just a joke.

Just check something like HWInfo, GPU-Z,CPU-Z...way better.

 

I'm curious... which software did you use to affect your CPU voltages?
I use Ryzen Master Threadripper, and there is no 1.165V option. I can choose between 1.1625 and 1.16875 before the next notch goes up to 1.175. - unless of course you are using other programs to read the voltages.

Also, I wouldn't worry about the CPU reaching 94 degrees C at maximum.
Asus apparently set it up in such a way that the fan speed doesn't really increase at all if you stress the CPU itself... hence why its temps go up high and fan speeds stay relatively low.

 

As I wrote I use the ASUS Zen States what I needed in the beginning of Ryzen, because the first months P-State overclocking via BIOS wasnt available. I dont know If the Ryzen Master can do it, but the Zen States you have the possibility to "start with windows" so once it is set you have not to care about anymore.

And I have to apologize, indeed you are right. The volt options should be overall the same and to correct myself it was 1.625V like you also wrote.

Of course the CPU can handle that temperature, but honestly it hurt my eyes. AFAIK the CPU will throttle at 95°C, so I didnt tesst it If it already throttels or it just stuck at 94°C because of the fans.

If there would be the possibility to set a fan curve and just put the fan rpm a little bit higher then the result would be a better cooler system.

However, appart from that I am pretty glad about this red/red laptop.

 

Hi guys - greets from Turkey. Just got my laptop yesterday, and I agree it's a beast; it's big, it has a great screen, it has the biggest power supply I have ever seen, and its performance is just amazing.

I shrank windows down and installed Fedora 27 alongside, and I boot fedora for real work, and windows for games. Everything works great. I even tried ethereum mining; and it's faster than my i7 server's performance. Just amazing.

I agree that the cooling could be improved - when I stress the RX580, its temperature shoots up to uncomfortable levels, 75-80 degrees easily.
I'm getting a new laptop cooler tomorrow and hopefully that will help with the temperatures.

Talk to you all later.. take care, -turgut

 

In fairness, Asus could have done A LOT better for the same price with all AMD hardware... but as you say, it would already be better if the CPU fan was set up to kick up a notch or two when stressed - otherwise, 94 degrees C is not exactly a nice thing to see.
On the other hand, you should be able to run the CPU at 3.3 GhZ and 1.05V (or lower, depending on how stable your CPU is at specific voltages) and it shouldn't exceed 84 degrees C when stressed like that.
I know its 300 MhZ lower than 3.6GhZ, but maybe you could compromise instead and use 3.4 or 3.5GhZ and lower voltages, resulting in lower temps of course.

 

Glad to read that you are liking the GL702ZC.
You didn't have to spend money on a laptop cooler though.
You can simply download MSI Afterburner, and undervolt the core to -93mV. That should drop temperatures on the GPU by about 5-10 degrees Celsius. Depending on your GPU ASIC quality, you could potentially undervolt the GPU more and drop temperatures further.
Similarly, you can download Ryzen Master for Threadripper, and overclock and undervolt the Ryzen 1700 using the Creator Mode tab... your voltages may vary for a given frequency, but I was able to drop the voltage on 3.2GhZ across all cores to 0.98125 (stable during stress testing)... and 3.3GhZ is stable with 1.05V (but this is for my CPU... yours might be able to undervolt better).
3.3GhZ and 1.05V results in about 84 degrees Celsius when the CPU is stressed to the maximum with the GPU (which at maximum produces about 75 degrees C).

The laptop's fans are also quieter as a result of undervolting.

 

Many thanks! I'll download and use those for the times when I switch to Windows.
I mainly use Linux; but I was able to find some decent tools there as well. For example, "ohgodatool" is pretty decent at cooling down the machine.
Regards, -turgut

 

Did anyone find a replacement power supply for our laptops?
The only one I see at aliexpress is priced at $186. Ouch.
I like to have a spare so I don't have to keep carrying from/to work.

 

The model number of the power supply is: ADP-330 D

Here in UK, it seems to be unavailable via Amazon... but it also looks like its a version of a Dell power supply (ours is 330W).
As for the price... I agree that's steep, but Aliexpress usually can be.
I'd suggest focusing your search to Amazon and ebay for spares.

If you are in the USA, then Amazon.com has it for $87.6:
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=+ADP-330AB+D

ebay also has it for a lower price still:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Genuine-...967412&hash=item41c9c6f45f:g:Mz0AAOSwKQ9aTGlz

However, that ebay listing is the only one I could find with that price... anything else and the prices start to go up quite high.

 

Asus Gaming Center gives users enough control, many people havent really understood its use. Imagine the fan curve on a graph, i belive asus lowered the curve so that users won`t feel bothered by the noise that it makes, efectively crippling the cooling a bit, but also gave you that simple fan boost control slider. If you adjust the slider to lets say 30% as i have you wont be affecting the fans to lock in position at 30% speed of their 8 steps of what you mentioned, it simply reads the stock asus fan curve point based on the temperature you are at and adjusts 30% more RPM`s. Basicly boosting the fan speed wont give you a spike and thats it, it will strech the hole fan curve up on that graph so that it will start to acces earlyer those 5-8 steps at lower temperatures. And doing so you will se that the fans will reach the 8-th step.

Could have asus made the curve better? YES

Could have asus made the curve better and please the reviewer`s and users who aren`t geeks to understand what the drawbacks are when cooling this CPU/GPU? NOT LIKELY so they chose in favour of media publicity.

Could have asus made the hole cooling system better? YES but not at this price point, because its allready expensive enough and many compromises have been made to cut costs in terms of ports (thunderbolt???), half sticking micro sd slot, flexy keyboard, sub-par camera etc.

But overall this laptop is and will forever remain a niche product that is not in favour of anyone other then people who need a workstation on the go that can do some gaming from time to time. More users are needed in order for software developers to introduce some compatibility with this product and even to convince ASUS to assign man power to unlock the entire laptop with a BIOS update )) wishfull thinking i know)

 

Could you share how you configured OhGodATool and any other settings in linux?

 

Hi there.. well, I'm a novice when it comes to this idea of power levels (and very little documentation on the net).. This seems to help with the heat:

#!/bin/bash
for state in {0..7}; do
/usr/local/bin/ohgodatool -i 0 --core-state ${state} --core-vddc-idx 8
done
/usr/local/bin/ohgodatool -i 0 --mem-state 1 --mem-vddc-idx 9

 

Many thanks - I managed to order one from Ebay -- Australia!
That was amazingly the cheapest place to order from. Take care.. -turgut

 

Something weird today.. I arrived at work, plopped the laptop down, hit the power button. Nothing.. Tried a few times, nothing. It was not until I plugged the laptop in that I was able to turn it on. It felt like the battery had drained all the way. I was sure I had it shut down before packing it up at home.

 

Have you checked the battery capacity after you plugged the laptop into the mains and switched it on?
If its indicating the battery is charging, then it is likely you might have forgotten to turn off the laptop.
Though you can try disconnecting the laptop from the mains and checking if the battery is working (aka, holding its charge)... if its not, then its possible the battery went kaput and you might need to ask for a replacement unit by RMA-ing the current one.

Best check everything over first to make sure it wasn't just a case of you forgetting to turn it off before thinking the battery died.

 

Thanks. Yes, there's so little documentation. Every little bit helps.

 

How coincidental. I am having a battery issue as well. Unit was plugged in all day, as it usually is. Was about to turn it on when I returned from work and noticed that the battery indicator was blinking orange. Unplugged it and tried to start it...nothing. Plugged it back in, started it, and Windows shows it is plugged in, not charging, 0%, and the indicator is blinking orange.

Unplugged her, pried her open, pressed the power button, saw an indicator light go on for a second, then nothing. Disconnected the battery, pressed the power button for a few seconds...reconnected the battery, hit the power button - and she started. Plugged her back in, indicator light turned green, and she immediately showed 99%, not charging.

I've been suspicious of the batteries in these laptops since I first received mine. I wonder what Asus' "appropriate" response to @Donald@HIDevolution is going to be regarding the 17%+ out-of-the-box wear levels that a few owners have reported...like me...?

 

That sounds like a charging circuit problem... might want to report that via a Support ticket with Asus.

The wear level is the same for all the reports so far, around 15% out of the box, which means the spec is 15% higher than the actual delivered battery. Fixed with a BIOS update I would assume.

There are reports from time to time for most makes of laptop with the charging circuit going wonky a couple of times when new, during new / first charging cycles, hopefully it's just that and not a real problem.

 

Thanks -- later on I did some sample test runs.. Unplugging while the battery is at 100%, and it survived very nicely.. No idea what it was that time, but it has not repeated itself..

 

Here is my laptop's battery status.. Indeed it's not "new".. Two days old laptop
$ upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT0
native-path: BAT0
vendor: ASUSTeK
model: ASUS Battery
power supply: yes
updated: Sat 10 Mar 2018 09:58:07 PM +03 (112 seconds ago)
has history: yes
has statistics: yes
battery
present: yes
rechargeable: yes
state: discharging
warning-level: none
energy: 60.26 Wh
energy-empty: 0 Wh
energy-full: 61.615 Wh
energy-full-design: 74.228 Wh
energy-rate: 0 W
voltage: 15.4 V
percentage: 97%
capacity: 83.0078%
technology: lithium-ion
icon-name: 'battery-full-symbolic'

 

Great to see those details. Such a big difference between energy-full-design and energy-full is strange on a new laptop battery. For my previous Asus laptop it took probably over 2-3 years to get that kind of capacity drop.

 

I hacked my laptop cooler with window insulation foam all around. I highly recommend it, it pushes air into the laptop. I tested it after turning off the laptop, and hot air still comes from the rear vents of the laptop.. make sure that the cooler can deliver lots of air. more than the laptops own puny fans..

 

Sorry if this is already resolved.. Laptop's hardware stays powered on even after we power it off. I found that some weird glitches can ONLY be fixed after unplugging the laptop AND unplugging its battery, and waiting 10 minutes.
Good luck. I hope it works.

 

Today the battery issue happened again. Laptop's been off and unplugged all night (it was at 95% when I turned it off last night). When I turned it on this morning, it turned itself on, stayed on for several minutes, (Fedora linux appeared) and it turned itself off.
Turning the laptop back on was not possible -- until I plugged it back in.
After login, I found that the laptop was at 95% battery full. I will try the same test dual-booting to windows instead. Perhaps it's the linux that's causing it to power off.

 

Did you do before and after testing during load (the same workload at the same room temperature)? How much difference in temperatures between with & without foam?

 

i didn't do any tests yet, but anything that helps the fan and quiets down the laptop is probably not all bad.. I will do some tests soon..

 

My issue was resolved by RMA-ing the unit. Asus simply replaced the motherboard... but never explained why the problem occurred in the first place.

 

So...I have Win10Pro up and running on the 960, but it was a bit of a chore. For some reason, the NVMe does not show up as a boot option in the BIOS (ver. 303), so after the first time I installed Win10Pro on the 960 (from a USB stick) I discovered that I could not boot from it at all. I did notice that there was a bios option for adding a boot device, but I had no idea how to point it to my 960. Guess I've been spoiled by my Dell M6600, in that all I had to do was setup a boot order depending upon the devices/ports, and it booted from wherever I wanted it to.

So...I installed Win10Pro on the 850, and could boot from there, then reinstalled Win10Pro on the 960 such that a duel-boot configuration was created. I then deleted all partitions on the 850 to see if I would be able to boot from the 960 afterward, which resulted in an unmitigated failure.

So...I repeated the entire OS installation process I described above. Great, so now whenever I start up the machine I am given a choice as to which drive I want to boot from, despite the fact that the 960 still does not show as a boot device in the BIOS.

So...I have found a work-around, but it is not ideal. I don't want to have the 850 set up in this manner. I just want Win10Pro installed on the 960, and I want the 850 totally free to do with as I please.

So...I "know" this can be done - I just marvel at my own ineptitude in failing to figure out how to do it . Any suggestions are very much appreciated.

 

did you enable the legacy boot option (can't remember it's acronym) and disabled secure boot in bios? it might help.

Sent from my MHA-L29 using Tapatalk

 

Yes I had the same problem but I have managed it and everything works without any problem, so Windows and programs on the 960 M2 and everything else on the 850.

I did it like this:

- There is a option in the BIOS for Security (Press F7 for advanced). Go Security -> Secure Boot and switch the Secure Boot Option to disable.

- Next step, you have to go into the BIOS again to the section Boot and you have to enable CSM Support.

-> ONE of these two options requires a reboot after changing, but cannot remember which one

- Now you need to install Windows10 Pro at the M2 NVMe and do a reboot. If it not works, check the BIOS again for these option and also check the boot options.

This should allow you to see the M2 as a boot option, boot from the M2 and use your SSD for everything else.

Edit: @tkalfaoglu : you was faster

 

Thanks for the replies, I'll get on this post haste! Owning this computer has been a culture shock for me, in that I never dealt with a UEFI before. Where have all of the options that I came to know and love over the years gone?

EDIT: AHA! Who knew you had to...scroll... to see the security options? What manner of witchcraft is this???

 

Yep, I'm sure it will lower your idle temperatures because as you say it pushes air through the laptop vents even at idle, but at load I'm wondering what the benefits really are, at idle it would lower laptop fan activation though which could be a positive.

 

What are the specs of the RAM module that comes with the GL702ZC? I know that is a 16GB 2400MHz, but I want more detais like CAS latency, rank, manufacturer, etc. Thanks in advance

 

Best place to find that information is crucial.com, i always use it, and then buy it locally, which is cheaper for me..

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The module that came in my laptop is a Samsung M471A2K43CB1-CRC:
https://icecat.nl/en_in/p/samsung/m471a2k43cb1-crc/M471A2K43CB1-CRC-33038040.html

 

After reading through 49 pages of comments in the lounge I figure you guys might be able to help. Although it doesn't look like any of you have been using the Gl702zc for premiere pro.

Hey guys! I've been lurking around this website for years and have never actually posted anything before! For my first post I could really use the help of all you tech savvy great people.

I am about to purchase a new laptop and after months of consideration I believe the days gl702zc may be the best machine for me.

Here are my concerns:
1. My primary use for this machine will be editing 4K footage in premiere pro. I have read that premiere runs better with CUDA supported GPUs. I have also read that OPENCL works just as well in real world editing and that's the only really important thing is to have a dedicated graphics card for GPU acceleration rather than relying on the CPU alone. This brings me to concern 2.

2. I have read that premiere pro since a recent update isn't working well with intel i7 cpus due to internal (switchable) graphics and premiere defaulting to the internal graphics/not using discrete graphics at all with no fix available. (This is a large part of my leaning toward the ryzen 1700) which brings me to

3. Premiere runs better with more cores/threads. I can't realistically buy a nice sager/clevo style laptop with desktop 8700k and I can't really wait until coffee lake mobile CPUs finally come out.

4. Not being the greatest with computers.. I'm concerned that this laptop not being a huge seller it won't get the bios support/updates it may need to work out issues with the "custom" GPU or any other bugs it may have (is this a dumb concern?)


Those are my main reasonings/concerns. Here are a few things about my use.

1. Video editing only, no gaming needed on this machine.

2. Loud fans don't bother me.

3. Battery life doesn't matter as everywhere I need to edit I'll have access to an outlet.

4. I understand the GPU in this laptop gets hot when gaming (CPU temps sound on par with intel in other machines) but I won't be gaming or pushing the GPU too hard and I'm willing to use a cooling pad during heavy editing. So this shouldn't be a big problem for me I assume?

Does anyone have real world experience editing video on the Gl702zc? Especially in premiere? Is there a better laptop out there for my needs? I'd really like to stick around 1500 but can spend up to 2000 if I absolutely must.

Thanks for anyone who read this huge post and for your help!

 

Check out from minute 3.40
Best answer I can give you

Sent from my MI 5s Plus using Tapatalk

 

WOW! So many hours reading and I hadn't checked out YouTube for a review at all. Not just speculation but actual real world use in premiere pro with comparisons! I couldn't be happier thank you so much for the link and taking the time to reply!

 

Hope you get what you seek in purchasing this laptop, I have no experience in video editing but if it's spec's required are similar to 3d rendering softwares then this is a beast, and using some of Deks OC tips you could shave 20-30 % off of export time's

Sent from my MI 5s Plus using Tapatalk

 

Thank you! I've never done any OCing but when this thing finally gets here I'll be reading through Deks posts more thoroughly and will try to take advantage of that performance boost. Many thanks again for the link I'm going to place my order now!

 

Hey @hmscott when My Gl702zc comes in do you have any suggestions for setup? Specific things to install/uninstall? updates to do? I read a post by you about taking a recovery image on a flash drive before connecting to the internet. Any chance you could elaborate on how to do that a bit for someone who has never done so? Thanks again to all of you on this forum!

 

The guys with a GL702zc already in their hands would be a better choice for input, and I've already spoken with them here in the thread with my generic suggestions for Asus laptops, so read the older posts here to get that and their feedback. Then if you have specific questions not already answered - or not answered to your need - please post them and there are a number of people like me that can help

My most important generic recommendations are:

1) Backup your OS install with either the vendor too - like Asus Backtracker or MSI BurnRecovery (32GB USB 3.0 flash drive), and also with a generic OS/partition imaging tool like Macrium Reflect (Free) using their restore USB boot recovery - usually a 4GB drive and then your OS image backed up to a USB 3.0 HDD/SSD. Get the flash drives ordered with your laptop or pick them up locally before delivery so you won't be tempted to go online - with Windows seeking out updates - before doing the backup. Really you want to wait till you have the OS recovery image backed up before going online. Even if the Windows updates don't affect the recovery partition they still effect the OS and support for the image backup tool, with many reporting it doesn't work after Windows 10 updates are done, so do the backup first before going online.

The vendor apps are easy to use. Run app, plug in your USB 3.0 32GB flash drive (or plug it in before running the app, up to you), select it in the app, and backup - usually takes 10-about 20 minutes with a USB 3.0 flash drive, and an hour plus with a USB 2.0 flash drive... it's worth getting a fast USB 3.0 flash drive.

Get a nice fast USB 3.0 32GB flash drive, or get 2 and make 2 backups, that's what I do and keep 1 in the original box taped to the lid, and one on my desk for use. Drives die with infant mortality in the first days or weeks too, so some report getting caught out without anything to make a backup of, and have to return it or RMA it to get a new drive - when if you did the backup first thing you could just buy a larger SSD and restore it yourself, saving the weeks of return or RMA back and forth.

2) After backing up you can do several things at your desire. Play games right away to get an idea of how it is working. Watching the temperatures and fan operation in the vendor monitoring software - Asus ROG Gaming Center or MSI Dragon Gaming Center, and see how things run in general.

3) Within the 2 weeks or so you have for a return for refund, check out all the ports and features of the laptop to make sure they are working well and there are no cosmetic defects - bad joins, creaky assembly, bad keys on the keyboard, bad lettering or lighting effects, so you'll be happy accepting the laptop long term.

4) I take the time to go a bit further and run benchmarks to find the base performance out of the box. Then I install Intel Extreme Tuning Utility ( or you can use ThrottleStop supported right here on NBR by unclewebb's The ThrottleStop Guide thread ) to undervolt the Intel CPU at stock speeds to reduce the 100% load temperature 10c by undervolting -100mV - some CPU's will undervolt more some a little less.

5) Same goes for overclocking or undervolting the (Nvidia) GPU as well, Asus has GPU Tweak, but I usually use MSI's tool AfterBurner + RTSS (to limit FPS instead of Vsync). GPU Tweak has had a couple of divergent versions over the years, so find the right one for your laptop, there should be a download in the support area for your laptop, or already installed.

In the case of the GL702ZC you'll want to look at posts here to figure out which AMD tool to download, I think the ThreadRipper version of the Wattman tool is what works on this build.

6) If you have a problem, return it for another unit or get your money back to order from somewhere else in stock. Don't waste time trying to fix problems yourself, it can be an easy success or a long term headache without future warranty support. It's better to get what you pay for than trying to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse, many here will attest to that.

If you wait too long to return it, you can get denied - usually it's 7 - 14 days, check your receipt or vendor for the easy return period. They may suggest RMA'ing to get a problem out of the box fixed, but that can take weeks, so it's not the best way to resolve this. RMA is fine months later, as that's your only choice, but in the first week or two of ownership, the acceptance period you can return for cause (problem) without restocking fee. If you just don't like it, and there are no defects - real or cosmetic, then you will be charged a restocking fee - so make sure whatever you order you have found out enough about it before ordering to *know* you'll be happy with it, or be ok with being charged a hefty restocking fee - usually 10%-20%.

I think that's about it from me for now, but read all the posts in the thread and maybe even some other new Asus laptop Owner support threads, and learn all you can before ordering.

Have fun!

 

What's the reason for this? Is there anything irretrievable in the vendor's installation?

My thought was actually the opposite: after initial testing to make sure the unit is not defective, install any upgrades (SSD, RAM, etc), then wipe everything and start with clean OS installs, and choose which vendor tools I install, if any.

 

That's exactly how so many get caught without a download for some utilities or apps with laptops.

Quite often, mostly in fact, the support areas only have updates for apps and utilities and drivers, not the full set of what came in the original out of the box install.

So you end up trying to download vendor OEM drivers from other sources for the things you can't download from the builder of the laptop. And, often enough they won't work, or work the same.

A good example is the MSI Realtek / Nahimic pairing of drivers where the only ones that work at the ones that MSI bundles into a package of both to download and install, in a specific order of uninstall and install.

If you can't quite fathom this, you aren't alone. So many times new owners blow away the "bloatware ridden" OS that their laptop came with, without backing it up first, assuming they can do a better job of installing Windows and configuring it - better than the paid engineers that have worked for years at the vendor and have gained expertise into a build / imaging cycle for generating a stable OS out of the box for new owners.

It's much easier and quicker to uninstall any "bloatware" you don't want, like the Norton / McAfee trial security software, or some Asus specific store app, but there are usually apps, utilities, and drivers installed in that image that aren't available for download, so don't immediately uninstall everything until you find out if you can download it from the builder support site

Even if you think you "know it all" and have done this dozens of times on desktops, believe me that there are things you don't know that can hurt your joy of owning the new laptop if you don't think things through before blowing them away.

It only costs $20-$30 for a 32GB USB 3.0 flash drive, and 10-20 minutes to back it up, then you are covered in case you need it later.

Even if you get a good build on your own, when you RMA the laptop Asus / MSI will want you to restore the original image and test to see if the problem still exists - a sanity check to make sure it's hardware and not your custom software install that's messing things up.

When you sell the laptop you'll want to blow away your build and personal files, and it's very easy to restore the out of the box OS image in a few minutes so that the new owner starts with a known working OS, putting them back in control of what is loaded as you were when buying the laptop new.

You'd be surprised how many people come back begging for someone to make a backup image of their laptop for them to download... it's sad, but too much effort on anyones part to do, don't ask if that happens to you, it won't be met with sympathy.

The builder won't send you a copy of the image, you'll be required to RMA the whole laptop, not just the disk for re-imaging.

If you accidentally blow away the OS image in the first 7-14 days of ownership, it's best to return the laptop and get another one that you can backup.

I hope that helps you understand, there are lots of other nuances to consider, but just understand it's easier to just backup the image for when you want it again, instead of not doing it.

 

Wwwwwow. All I can say is that is some serious insanity if vendors don't make all the software available for download or on drivers discs (remember those?)...

Does this backup have to be to a usb flash drive? I'd be tempted to dump an image onto an external hdd. And what about those hidden vendor partitions?

And again, wow. No, really. Wow.

 

The vendor app bundles it all up into a single USB 3.0 flash drive so there is no benefit to getting a large USB 3.0 flash drive than it needs - currently just over 19GB or 32GB in standard size availability - 16GB used to be enough.

The newer MSI BurnRecovery lets you create a DVD restore media - IDK about the Asus Backtracker, but I haven't tried that. The USB 3.0 is cheap and fast enough to not worry about alternatives. But, feel free to try the DVD method too

The Macrium Reflect tool makes a small bootable flash drive only for booting and running the restore utility, so with that you can use a USB 3.0 HDD or SSD in an external case, or get a large USB 3.0 flash drive to hold both the boot and image data all in one. A 256GB Patriot USB 3.0 drive would probably be big enough for the compressed image, but it can grow much bigger, there are now larger USB 3.0 flash drives, or you could re-purpose a 512GB-1TB SSD as an external drive for Macrium backup images.

I recommend disconnecting all USB drives from the laptop before doing a restore, all except the recovery boot flash drive, mishaps with selecting the wrong drive have happened and people have lost the contents of their external USB drives during a restore.

Same goes for restoring to the internal SSD, the app will by default format and re-partition all the internal drives, so pull any not used for the restore, and backup the data on the HDD that gets the recovery partition as it will get reformatted and re-partitioned too!!

Also, don't test the restore onto the original boot drive... why? Because if the USB media didn't succeed - which has happened before, it says it created and worked ok, but then upon using it for restore it will say "can't find recovery media", and your original boot drive has already been formatted and partitioned before the app discovers the recovery image isn't there... yipe, right? Seen a few people caught out that way. Always pull your original drive and restore to a test / new drive when restoring for the first time with newly created recovery media... so many details, right?

Yeah, it's caught many people out, these little gotchas, you have to think like a professional backup person and know all the gaps of coverage in order to cover yourself 100%.

That's why I do a vendor backup onto 2 media I know work, and keep image backups using Macrium Reflect (Free) on a regular basis.

It's no fun always restore to the out of the box configuration and then building it backup to how you like it with updates, apps, and configuration tweaks, so back that up too, your stages to 100% and finally a 100% "perfect" build, and then incrementals or fulls weekly, so in case of emergency - or a "lost" laptop, you can recovery from the disaster quickly with your working set intact.

A little pre-thought and pre-readiness effort will reward you in the long run.

 

Jeez @hmscott you are the man. Thanks for the lengthily response and all of the tips. Sorry I've read through the entire 50 pages of this and have started mixing up names, I thought you owned one of these. Unfortunately not being the best with all of this technical stuff I wasn't able to fully take in some of the great info previously posted. I might track out to @Deks and some others for help with bios stuff and needed updates. Again really appreciate you taking the time to relay all of that info. Last question for you. Will the computer prompt me to "make an image" (is that just another way of saying backup or is this something different?) or is the a setting I'll need to enter to create the image?

 

The new MSI's do have a "nag" dialog that pops up to chide the owner constantly to do the BurnRecovery Backup

The Asus did too, but Backtracker App changed since I've used it with Windows 8.1... I haven't setup Windows 10 on Asus, but I've setup enough Windows 10 to know that with Windows 10 you need to *not* connect to the internet when getting it or it will overwrite the original OS install immediately, and I've seen people complain that the MSI BurnRecovery app won't work after they updated - this can vary depending on the OS image on the laptop and where in the update cycle Windows 10 is at the time you boot up first time... so it's important to get the backup done before setting up the laptop online.

The last 2 MSI's I set up were backed up immediately upon first boot offline, the MSI BurnRecovery dialog comes right up upon first entry into the system - you should set up a local login during set up - you cancel or select a local login set up option in Windows 10. And, not set up the "networks", be careful to not get tricked into doing that, as even while you are still setting up your account Windows 10 update will be running.

Deks and new GL702ZC owner's can help you with additional tips and tricks for setup, tuning, and use.

Please let us know your Asus experiences