Asus ROG GL702ZC owners lounge

Hmmm...

https://elchapuzasinformatico.com/2...to-benchmarks-precios-y-fecha-de-lanzamiento/

Real? Fake? Maybe this is why @thattechgirl_viv and @Donald@HIDevolution have been so silent regarding the suggestions of @hmscott? Or, did Asus give HIDevolution a beta bios to test on the current X processors? Why is it that when the previous testing failed we heard about it, but now that more testing has been going on....crickets? Perhaps things are going well, but they're looking for a competitive edge?

Makes me suspicious...but in a positive direction! I WANT AN UPGRADE PATH!! GIMME GIMME!!

 

Hey, sorry I've been too busy to post.

Even with the suggestion provided by @hmscott it wouldn't hold. Same issue, so we decided to put that to sleep for now.

Too bad, I was looking forward to it working out.

 

Booyah!!
4,270 combined score in 3DMark TimeSpy.
CPU = 3.8GHz all cores, 1.2125v
GPU = 1,250MHz @ 1.025v, 102w max power limit, stock 2,000MHz VRAM clock.

It was the 102w power limit that made the improvement in GPU performance btw:
1,250MHz @ 68w max power limit = 3,246 graphics score
1,250MHz @ 102w max power limit = 3,997 graphics score

 

Nice!!
What are you getting for temps?

 

I did not monitor CPU temp during the test but the maximum GPU temp was only 72c. Note that I am running a more aggressive than stock fan curve (+35 via Asus' ROG Gaming Center.)

 

Longtime since I´ve been here and typing this on a German GL702ZC keyboard...

Bought this laptop, as I was interested in the red side of the force.

Being the owner of more Wintel and Ngreedia stuff (No flame intended), I was anxious to see what this machine would bring.

Bought it on Ebay, r5 1600, 8gb, 1tb sshd for 1049 Euros excluding p&p (25 Euros).

From the very start, it was clear to me, this machine would lose it´s warranty, even before it was in.

Instantly bought an r7 1700 as well, Gskill memory and SSD´s were still in the house.

I left it alone for a few days, to gather (Dutch) courage, which is coincidently the country I originate from.

I opened her up only after playing around with the original interns, making sure all was ok.

After several complaints of the misses and kids, about the noise, it was time for a change.

We live in the near of Schiphol airport, but this machine got louder than passing Boeings 747!

Time for action...

Removed all paste and SSHD, which was quite an ordeal, given the size of my hands.

Did not have the guts to go with liquid metal, this time...

Replaced all paste with eiscold Sargon something, with 14mw and cpu & gpu with Gelid extreme.

Can´t really say these alterations brought the peace and quiet I was looking for.

Temps dropped a bit, non-arguably, but it was not the gain I hoped for.

Played around with settings, some unsupported software and came to the following solution, that worked for me...

This machine obviously has insufficient colling heatpipes, no discussion here.

Threadripper Master gave me the hopes I set for.

This machine performs well, with either CPU or GPU operating at full force, combine those 2 and you will be left with damage to the ears.

Switched of 4 cores in Master software and all seemes to be going smooth.

In no way it´s a quiet machine, nor will it ever be, regardless all modifications or hacks performed.

But it got to an acceptable level.

Don´t ask me for temps or decibels, this is not a review, but a mere user experience.

Sorry, in addition...

This machine is use either for gaming or handbrake / staxrip, so the two interns will not be used at the same time...

 

hi. try the msi afterburner. I was able to cool down and quiet down the machine.. also see my "upgraded" laptop cooler. these really help and the machine stays quiet

Sent from my MHA-L29 using Tapatalk

 

And now on the software side...

Mine came with German W10 Home pre installed.

I speak the language, that is not so much the issue.

But I like my games / Windows being projected in either English or Dutch.

Had some major issues with the fall creator update as well (Yeah, switched of few things in Bios/Uefi), but still did not work.

What worked for me, is downloading the complete update from MS website and it updated flawlessly.

Standard drivers for the speakers are terrible as well, mine sounded like they were played too loud constantly (Blown uo).

Installing fresh drivers helped great time...

Sorry, am not too involved with Asus in general, my heart goes out to Gigabyte (On personal experience),
but this laptop seems to be missing out on updates held back.

Really, Asus? Bios update 303?

Unfortunately, Bios updates can´t conceil designing errors.

I love this machine, just to screw Wintel / Ngreedia, but support leaves much to be desired...

 

Tried it, but GPU is not the issue... CPU is...

 

cpu is very quiet imho. in that case maybe amd ryzen master would help you

Sent from my MHA-L29 using Tapatalk

 

i mainly play wow and overwatch. haven't had the sound problem. or any problem actually.

Sent from my MHA-L29 using Tapatalk

 

Definitely does.

If there are better solutions without liquid metal, I´m all ears...

Brgds,
Rob.

 

But ... IMO 8 cores 16 threads is the very reason of this laptop's existence. Everything else about it seems mediocre at best.

 

its display is first rate.. sound is pretty good too.

Sent from my MHA-L29 using Tapatalk

 

Plus the GPU is pretty good too. Limited to 65w and same performance as mobile 1060 6gb (limited to 80w).

 

What GSkill memory did you swap in? Has anyone had any success swapping in faster-than-2400MHz RAM?
Anecdotal evidence suggests the machine would support 2666MHz DDR4 without needing any special procedures, but I'm really curious about pathways to getting the RAM running closer to 3000MHz. Of course there's no BIOS support for manually selecting RAM timings or activating XMP profiles, etc. and I've yet to come across any laptop DDR4 with native timings faster than 2666MHz outside of an XMP profile. I guess it's possible that if I dropped in some off-the-shelf fast RAM, the system might utilize the RAM's XMP settings automatically - but I find that very unlikely.

I'm willing to throw some money at an experiment and see if I can flash some laptop DDR4 with faster native timings but still wondering if anyone else has any ideas and/or success stories to share.

 

Undervolt works.
It reduces the noise considerably.
Undervolt the CPU to 1.05v and over clock it to 3.3ghz (experiment with the frequencies and voltages as they depend on your silicon quality).
Alternative is setting the cpu to 3.2 GHz and Undervolt to 0.98125v.

Undervolt the GPU using MSI afterburner by setting the core voltage to -93mv (this easily brings down the fan noise on maxed out usage).
Best way to test it is using toomb raider game. That thing normally stresses the GPU to the max and forces the fans to full throttle (without Undervolt)

 

Yeah, I think you could use Typhoon Burner to edit the timings & then flash the RAM. I did that years ago to overclock the RAM in my Alienware M17xR3 laptop (now ancient). Choose some conservative timings at first & then test for stability - it's easier to recover from slightly unstable RAM than completely unstable RAM, make sure you know how you will recover it, and how to test the stability. (Copy some of the timings from similar sticks, because manually setting all the timings is a hassle, and I don't know how to do that, and then tweak from there.)

 

I'm looking to purchase the GL702ZC now, but I'm worried about the battery wear issues reported by virtually every owner. So, I contacted Asus support to ask what they consider normal vs defective. I went through 3 different chat/phone agents and the responses were frustrating and comical:

Q: "What level of battery wear (full vs design capacity discrepancy) would you consider normal vs defective?"

A: We guarantee you that we have no known issues with the battery of this unit.
1) We cannot give you an exact run time but it should last 3+ hours depending on usage. (LOL!!)
2) It would be defective if the laptop cannot power on with battery only and if the battery won't charge at all. (@.@)
3) We can't say anything about the battery capacity, but the Asus battery utility will manage it for you....

They wanted to discuss battery capacity in terms of runtime, but gave no objective measure, and in the same breath said they don't guarantee runtime due to differences in usage. (of course...)

They didn't know the Wh capacity of the battery, or even understand the difference between units of charge (Wh) and power (W). They started quoting me the power adapter's voltage and power ratings.

They did mention the battery has the same 1 year warranty as the laptop, but could not provide any details of the warranty terms. What use is that..

I also asked if they would ship a battery directly in case it is defective instead of requiring the whole laptop be returned, to avoid downtime and shipping costs. They seemed to say no. I can't in good conscience buy a device that is likely to be defective and knowingly put myself in a position of weeks of RMAs and downtime.

They escalated my request so I'm still waiting for more technical answers.

 

It seems the screen is good, but is it exceptional enough that someone would choose this laptop based on it? I doubt. And I don't know anyone who buys a laptop for its speakers.

The power management and battery life of laptops with 1060s seem far better than this one's and still outperform for gaming. It's great to have an AMD option, but that's about the only reason to get the RX580 as far as I can tell; to avoid NVIDIA. For me as a non-gamer, having CUDA support would have been a big pro for GPGPU.

The big win on this model is the 8C/16T desktop CPU. That's absolutely fantastic. A very poor laptop; an amazing DTR.

 

The consistency in reporting a wear level of about 15% out of the box suggests they programmed in the wrong value for capacity and the as made battery is 15% under capacity for spec.

That's not a defect that should bother us for long term use, it's too bad they did that, but it's not unheard of.

Normal working in of a battery in my experience continues to drop 2%-8% for batteries close to their capacity spec, so a total of 17%-23% would be normal for this underspec battery.

This could change if Asus updates the firmware to match capacity, or they sourced a new battery that met spec out of the box.

For this kind of laptop, gaming laptop with desktop CPU and desktop GPU, albeit reduced power spec in use, the battery life even with a full 99whr isn't going to be very long.

If you need long life on battery, get another laptop for carry use, like a nice 2in1 non-gaming, or maybe one of the new AMD 2700u with good gaming for on the road use, and keep the GL702ZC plugged in.

I wouldn't worry too much about the battery life / runtime / capacity on a desktop CPU/GPU laptop, or let it keep you from getting it for a trial.

You've got 2 weeks for typical return, and maybe if you discuss your concerns with the vendor they will extend the return period to 30 days. Be sure and get that commitment from a manager that can officially extend that to you, and get it in writing on the invoice / receipt, and / or in an email from him specifically.

That approach of discussing my specific concerns for a model's potential shortcomings has worked for me a few times. They may ask for a restocking fee, which on 30 days use is worth it for some.

Good luck.

 

Is the battery capacity spec indicated in any documentation? Even if the programmed capacity spec is wrong (strange error), in my previous laptops, I haven't seen capacity drop so quickly. It's both the discrepancy and rate of wear that concern me.

I use the battery as a UPS. No intention of mobile use. At ~1hr I find it already short. If it deteriorates quickly, it's basically like not having any battery. And the prospect of RMAing is something I'd rather avoid.

Where I am, the GL702ZC has been on backorder for months. Stock is extremely scarce and is just starting to become available on special order. Final sales, no refunds.

To be clear, I'm mostly decided on getting it. Just doing my due diligence first to avoid headaches later. Although it is possible I'm giving some people headaches now.

 

It's not unheard of, especially in a pioneering new laptop, a little detail was transposed or written / programmed wrong, or the battery vendor did that and built to a different spec than Asus spec'd and wrote into the battery controller firmware (?, or BIOS).

If you look at the expected capacity reported by various inventory programs, like hwinfo64 vs. 100% charge level reported out of the box, and after a few full charge cycles - drop to around 30% charge and then recharge to 100% - that will be the base level or reading to write down, and watch for drop from there.

After about 6 months I usually see 0%-10% settling - wear level - but then it hangs at that for most of the life of the laptop. Years usually.

There is always the possibility that a battery will fail early, it's not typical, but I've heard it reported from pretty much every vendor, it's like any part that can fail early in "infant mortality".

Again, it's not typical, but it happens. I wouldn't fixate on it. The out of the box 15% differential between expected and actual capacity sucks, but it's not fatal. As I discussed in the previous post.

Read up on the posts about battery again, so far I don't think we've seen anyone report a failure or constant wear level drop, so it doesn't seem to be a problem other than rated vs actual capacity.

Asus is considers itself a cutting edge pushing gaming computer vendor, and pushes the boundries often with unique designs and expressions of some factor for improvement, but does stick with it over time if there is user interest - they sell - so if you can't find the GL702ZC right now, source it from another compatible region that still has stock, or wait for the next version of an Asus AMD CPU / GPU gaming laptop, sometimes you miss the window and what I do is set the $ aside to act quickly when it is in stock somewhere, before it sells out quickly again.

 

It would be great to have users report this information. (design capacity, full charge capacity out of box, full charge capacity X time later, etc) tkalfaoglu and I think some others were helpful in providing this info from their units.

I guess some folks are pretty easy going and have different levels of expectation. However, if my payment had a 15% differential, I suspect they might fixate on it. Is it unreasonable for consumers to expect to receive exactly what they paid for? Sure, it's understandable that mistakes happen, in which case they can be remedied. If not, those responsible can expect their headaches to increase by 15%+

 

Maybe you shouldn't buy one then, as this is bothering you even before owning it. Perhaps avoid the long term disappointment and wait for another Ryzen laptop that has a battery you can accept?

 

exactly. no one should force someone to buy one. I am only saying that I am very happy with mine and very glad i bought it.

Sent from my MHA-L29 using Tapatalk

 

Unfortunately I have little choice but to buy something now. I can grudgingly accept the battery life. The questions are whether the batteries are defective (or off spec), and how Asus will deal with it.

Did you figure out what was causing your battery / powering on/off issues? And has there been any more change in battery wear?

 

IDK, I hate to plant a wrong thought - it might be months before a new Asus Ryzen laptop with the 2000 series CPU arrives for purchase, but perhaps now isn't best time to get the current model of the GL702ZC? What with AMD about to release the 2000 series Ryzen, it might be part of Asus plan already - most likely - to move to it with a new model laptop asap.

Just like us, those Asus engineers are champing at the bit wanting to take the newest parts and build the next great laptop. Of course the bean counters are gonna wanna have their say too, so they may pull back on the reins until all the GL702ZC's are sold.

So yeah, maybe you should buy one now...

 

Well, power management on Nvidia equivalent laptops might be better as OEM's thus far have worked specifically with those GPUs. Then again, Asus ROG laptops that have Intel/Nvidia combo don't have great thermals... In comparison, GL702ZC actually works better than most ROG laptops.

How would the power management be handled better BTW? Ryzen 1 doesn't come with an IGPU but the RX 580 has power efficiency mode in drivers.

Apart from that, not sure how much Asus could have done (apart from putting in better cooling and some other bits). The fact they limited the power consumption of the mobile RX 580 to 68w for same performance of a 80w 1060 is pretty good (since the RX 580 has 20% lower clocks for only 10% performance drop vs desktop version). And that's just dx11 (most of which is optimized for Nvidia anyway) without taking into account dx12 where RX 580 usually wins.

Power management might have been better if Asus decided to give us an unlocked Bios. But as you can see, we manage easily enough with undervolting which brings down power consumption and thermals on both the CPU and GPU by quite a bit, and the fans get noticeably quieter.

I avoided Nvidia and Intel combos specifically because I wanted AMD hardware and besides, Intel's and nvidia conducts have not exactly been something I like.

AMD offered technology that works much the same without potential corporate schenanigans. As for gpgpu, opencl can do the same as Cuda... And opencl was usually already integrated beforehand, but it's support has been lacking because devs decided they would prefer to support closed source more as they would get paid for it by Nvidia (which is not surprising and people have been telling off devs for not using opencl to it's full potential). But otherwise, opencl support also grew quite a bit… so I wouldn't discount AMD on those grounds.

As for the CPU... The fact it's 8c/16th is a big plus, but I wouldn't say it's the sole selling point as other hardware inside it is more than decent.

Now that AMD has better market Penetration overall, we might see better optimizations for opencl and ryzen on general.

 

Compare the OpenCL and CUDA columns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_deep_learning_software Warning: it isn't pretty.

 

That's just one field software learning comparison of opencl vs cuda

 

No, it hasn't happened afterwards. I am assuming that my mining processes that are in my startup were using up too much power at startup. It was not a battery wear but a miscalculation I think that showed the battery at 85%. Mine is showing 100% now (under Fedora Linux).

 

Hi guys. New owner from India here. Got it today. Been lurking here since the day I preordered. There is currently only version on sale here. 1700, 256gb ssd +1tb hdd with 16 gigs of ram. Surprised to see that .303 bios was pre installed and I got 2 8gb ram sticks dual channel configured instead of 1 16gb stick. I was looking to buy another 16gb stick and I found out my unit has already 2 sticks fully populated. So far the laptop is really good, as it should be as I am coming from an old HP llano laptop.(Skipped the bulldozers yay!)

 

Oh, nice! Did you do any battery recalibration or it "fixed" itself? In both linux and windows? What are the design and full charge capacities now?

Mining... hehe

 

On the contrary, I´m very glad with Master, I have the choice...

It´s a personal thing, I believe...

When I want to go all out, I just switch and bear the noise...

 

Can confirm Kingston 2666 worked, had only one bank unfortunately, but that one worked...

Gskil F4-2400C16-8GRS (x2) brings pleasure...

 

I copy that!!!

 

Have tried with Master to undervolt CPU, but won´t let me (Profile saved, but settings won´t apply).

Going to concentrate on undervolting GPU now...

 

Ok fellow overclockers - I have a few questions for you, based upon my observations with my system:

1) I'm using Ryzen Master "Creator Mode" to overclock the CPU. I have all cores set to 3700, voltage @ 1.1625. I apply the settings and receive the green "Success" bar.
2) I have ROG gaming Center running, bump the fans to +35, and it reports the cores running between about 1650 to 2400 at idle.
3) CPU-Z reports the core speed fluctuating between about 1375 and 1592, with a voltage of about 0.875 to 1.05.
4). As soon as I run the R15 CPU bench, Ryzen Master reports the cores are running at around 4500; CPU-Z reports the cores at around 3550 to 3690 and the voltage around 1.15
5) I can pull a 1590 R15 score, but I haven't yet tested for Prime 95 stability. HA! As I was typing this the system just crashed, so perhaps a bit more voltage is in order.
6) I haven't set up my system for high performance mode in Win10 yet, but I'm figuring that when I do I won't see as many fluctuations being reported.

So...what gives? Why all of the weird reporting? 4500?? That's absurdly wrong! Why the differences in voltage reporting? Which program is giving the proper information? Seems that despite Ryzen Master reporting 3700, I'm runing a bit short of that. I've always relied on CPU-Z in the past, but is the voltage that it is reporting correct, or is Ryzen Master's reporting correct?

 

My "74wh" battery never charged past 60wh. Given the popularity of similar reports, combined with the fact that the only battery replacement I could find online for this model is listed as 62wh, I've concluded that Asus has just lied, ahem, I mean made a mistake, about the battery being used here. It really seems like a conscious mistake too because the battery is labeled both physically and electronically as a 74wh battery but in reality it's just... not. I'm not sure why they did that but I also do not believe this is a true 74wh battery at all.

It sounds like you already know this but there's absolutely no way this laptop will ever operate on battery for 3 hours, even with a real 74wh battery. In my experience, light usage yields 60-90 mins at best. Now maybe if we stacked another one of these 60ish-wh batteries on top of the existing one and spliced the output wires together... then maybe we could hit 3 hours, lol.

I cannot speak for Asus but I have known other OEM's in the past, as well as the 3rd-party warranty company SquareTrade to use 50% capacity as their rule-of-thumb for ruling a battery defective within the warranty period. Since Asus has mislabeled these batteries creating an instant claim of ~20% wear, we're already nearly half-way there from the start.

 

That's weird; my CPU-Z (v.1.83) has always reported my clock speed correctly whenever observed. The preloaded Asus Gaming Center on my rig, however, does exactly what you're describing your CPU-Z doing. I would assume that running a bit short of the reported 3700 in Ryzen Master could be due to the fact that the CPU bus speed isn't a true 100MHz as Ryzen Master assumes when providing its settings. In reality it's closer to 99.8MHz, although it moves around a little (spread spectrum I believe they call it.)

Btw, you have a 16-thread 4GHz Xeon CPU in a Sager laptop? Is that as freakin' awesome as it sounds or what?? Did you have to modify the BIOS to get the machine to support the server CPU?

 

Thanks @AngieAndretti. Do you have your system set up as high performance in Windows? Before I started overclocking this system I ran R15 with the stock settings and with high performance settings, and I actually got a few extra points at stock, so I decided to try overclocking at stock.

As for the Xeon....the Clevo P570WM, which my Sager is based on, was built with Xeon v2 compatibility, and the 1680v2 was one of the few Xeons that Intel made with overclocking capabilities, although @Prema developed a custom bios for the system that unlocked various features. I used to run a locked 2696v2 with 12 cores/24 threads instead, but after I destroyed it due to a bad Conductonaut repasting I decided to have some fun overclocking.

 

High performance? Are you referring to the Windows "High Performance" power plan? I used to heavily use the old "Power Plan Switcher" gadget, originally intended for Win7, but the latest build of 10 seems to be pushing us away from these legacy power plans and toward the new Power Mode slider instead. If that's what you're talking about then no, I have not compared the legacy "High Performance" plan against the new "Best Performance" option on the Power Mode slider.

 

I just realized that the specs for the GL702ZC from my potential vendor list the battery as " 76WHrs, 4S1P, 4-cell Li-ion" which seems to be the exact same specs and info as found on other GL702xx models, where xx = VM, VS, VT, VR, etc.

The shape of the battery appears the same in reviews for those variants, and they last 3-5 hrs max (idle), of course without a desktop CPU. It would be interesting to see design capacity, full capacity, and wear level on those models.

I speculate that it is unlikely for Asus to have procured a different ~60WHr battery with the same shape for the same chassis just for this AMD ZC model. Besides, labeling it as 76WHr when it isn't would be quite egregious. So perhaps it is a 76WHr battery and the issue is with software, BIOS, or battery controller, etc. Hopefully it could be fixed with an update to get the remaining ~20%. Maybe only 60WHr of charge is being used/charged, or perhaps 76Whr is being reported as 60WHr, or...

Aside from the max capacity there's the issue of the rate of wear, whether it's real or a reporting issue. If the battery is not actually defective, perhaps that is also due to the same underlying problem.

In any case, I think this needs investigating and getting a resolution from Asus.

 

Agreed, I would hope that all of you have registered your laptops and so you can open a ticket for this problem.

It's easy to confuse the 1st level response people at any large support organization by putting too much in the ticket, so I'd simply state that the battery as it comes out of the box isn't showing the rated / advertised capacity, even after power cycling the battery (using it) a few times.

You all seem to be reporting about the same 13%-17% - 15% range of under capacity, so if they get a bunch of tickets opened about the problem, they'll need to escalate it to the manager, and then to engineering.

I'd ask the to ask engineering / technical people about the problem, and ask for an answer back from them.

You can't really rush this, and you will likely end up repeating it a number of times to them and different people as it gets escalated - even though the answers are in the previous ticket responses, but be patient and persistent and an answer will eventually come with a fix - hopefully.

 

@hmscott My ticket was escalated past the 1st level and supervisor to the technical people, and I'm expecting an answer by tomorrow. If you have suggestions on specifically what to ask, let me know, in case I get the chance.

I was on the verge of placing my order a week ago, but ideally I want a satisfactory response from Asus first, so hopefully that comes soon.

 

It always comes down to common sense, and putting yourself in the shoes of the person you are asking.

What are their motivations to helping you, what is their interest in this task they have in front of them - answering your question to sell you a laptop, or to motivate you to keep your laptop while still in the return period, or if you or the problem have waited too long - how to solve the problem in 1 ticket / RMA turn around.

Keep it simple.

If you don't own it, you have to rely on postings from new owners, you can provide a link or two to postings where someone has listed their capacity vs actual capacity out of the box.

Let them know it appears to you and to others that either it is a programmatic error listing / showing the capacity at higher than the actual battery capacity, or the battery is labeled for a higher capacity than it really was manufactured to deliver.

Then when you get the laptop - if you do - you can reply again to the closed ticket, or open a new ticket referencing the original ticket (pre-purchase question) showing that your unit either has the problem or doesn't have the problem, so they can track the issue.

It's often tough to open a ticket about something you don't own, did you file the ticket under another registered MSI product?

 

Nice.

No, I initially used Asus' email contact form: https://www.asus.com/support/Product/ContactUs/Services/questionform/?lang=en-US

There's also chat, and phone contact info: https://www.asus.com/us/support/CallUs/

 

Cool, good to know, Thank you!!

 

It could be helpful if more users report their battery stats.

Windows 10: In PowerShell (Admin) run: powercfg /batteryreport /output "C:\battery_report.html"

Linux: In terminal run: upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT0
alternatively: upower -i `upower -e | grep 'BAT'`

In particular look for "Design Capacity" / "energy-full-design" and "Full Charge Capacity" / "energy-full"