Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 Owner's Lounge

Not fair! I must reduce the length of the wire for less resistance and more POWER!! What are we saying is a safe power range for the GPU? 115W? I think I'll measure the actual wire once I have it taken apart again... I really should be getting ~6500 TS Graphics score on stock settings and easily over 7k and I'm not really even close... another issue is the memory clocks... its really unfortunate that the VRAM is underclocked and undervolted so much when its actively cooled...

Well I shortened the wire a tad:

Went from about 3/4-1" per leg to about 5/8" per leg instead.
Here's the comparison result: https://www.3dmark.com/compare/spy/17435069/spy/17436481
Went from 6275 to 6401 on the graphics score. Unfortunately it didn't really boost the max score. I'm finding out that I can benchmark at +200 Core but when I start a game it almost instantly crashes... I have to back all the way down to +175MHz on the core to be game stable which is fine.... The end result added about 4-5W according to my WEMO power meter which is slightly delayed since it works through wifi but previously I was getting around 129-131W in benchmarks...now I'm 134-136W from the wall...

 

FYI. 219 BIOS are out and also a new version of the MyAsus app is out... I just upgraded to 219 without any issues... haven't tested on battery though...

Edit: Ran on battery last night... noticing 1.5-2W more draw...reducing battery life by about 1 hour.... kinda disappointed with the bios update. Did notice slightly higher scores in benchmarks though....

 

Yes I have just upgraded too, i wish they would be more specific with the changelog.... 'improved stability' means nothing..

What wattage are you getting now with your shunt then? And what cards have you next to in terms of upgrade?

 

anymore shunting going on? Can we share some FPS increases in games?

 

I use the G14 to mine some ETH on the side. However, the fans constantly spin up and down. Adjusting the fan curves seems to do nothing. Is there a way to lock them to a constant level?

 

no

 

Anyone have the 2021 model ( 5900HS+RTX 3060 ) model yet?
Just asking if they improved cooling and upgraded the fans for better thermals and less noise

 

I've had the 2021 model for a few days, the fan noise when under load is unchanged. They used LM for cooling this time, thermals are maybe a bit cooler than 2020. Despite this the 2021 is a major upgrade to me compared to the 2020. Armoury Crate actually works and silent mode is actually silent = fans off. You can cap the CPU watts in the utility as well. Manual fan curve actually works. You can disable the dGPU completely within Armoury Crate now. You really don't need to tweak the 2021 G14 at all compared to the 2020. Here is my Timespy result using manual fan curve (constant 80%), CPU watts capped at 65W, and +200 / +150 GPU overclock in Armoury Crate.

Overall 7905, graphics 7724.

https://www.3dmark.com/spy/19393428

 

Is the 144 Hz screen any better than the 120? I'm not particularly sensitive to ghosting, but it was very noticeable on the 2020 model.

 

Apparently not any better based on the limited comments out there / reddit thread. I'm not sensitive to it really at all / never bothered me on the 2020.

 

Is it also true that Type-C charging only works on the left side port?

 

Yes, up to 100W I believe.

 

Unfortunately that's a deal-breaker as the situations where I work throughout my house make it far more convenient for a power input, USB-C or otherwise, to be on the right side of a laptop. Appreciate the confirmation and your other insights.

 

Curious your temps under load?

I'm getting 95C on the CPU, 86C on the GPU over time under gaming load, standard Performance Mode or Turbo mode - if I put on a laptop stand (no active cooling) these temps drop 6-10C. I've seen others claim incredibly low temps while gaming, so I'm confused.

 

Hello,

I know it is time to post more info about new model... But it was quite a bit out of my budget.. I got myself older version on a "discount" and was wondering what are the best software tweaks I can do to make my experience with it a lot better. I know about the registry edit option that get it a lot cooler but maybe there are better ideas now? Not gonna lie I'am a bit afraid going int o 14" gaming machine from my Clevo P751ZM... It might feel weird to have something light for a change...

 

How's everything enjoying their 3060 G14?

 

It depends on the game I think. I've only played F1 2020, I have CPU and GPU fans set to 80%. GPU gets up to 72 degrees or so and CPU mid 70s.

Manual fan tuning really works, it should help your temps.

 

Ehh, I'm just curious about defaults - not sure I care about "helping" my temps - just wanted to make sure mine is operating in spec. 95C stable on the CPU is 10C below max spec temp for the CPU. I like quieter fans at all times - and I love SILENT mode on this thing.

 

Liked your review - you hit the nail on the head. This is a very well balanced machine - especially that silent mode works so well for 60FPS gaming in a lot of titles. It was really interesting that the G15's SILENT mode struggles. This 2021 G14 reminds me of the Alienware 13 OLED i had a few years back that was a machine with long legs. I get most gamers want max power - but I like the balance of super portable and power, and this thing has great battery and plays anything I throw at it. Hell, it plays Cyberpunk with RTX on pretty well (50sh FPS)!

I was going to drop that I actually grabbed another G14 from BestBuy a few days back, wanted to check if temps were any different underload, and the answer is NO - so it's clearly spec that on performance mode the CPU will reach 95C and the GPU 86C - I'm sure with levitating fans it would all run cooler.

But one thing I learned on the new model, is that the Panel is listed as manufactured by SHARP, whereas the original 2021 G14 I got a couple weeks back has an "unknown" panel in it. The Sharp panel, while being a bit better on RED replication, was overall INFERIOR for response time - just felt very slow in comparison. The unknown panel is superior - faster feeling, less smearing of text, etc. So buyer be warned!

 

Just picked up a 2021 model G14 today with 5900hs and RTX 3060, and getting accustomed to it. Coming from an Alienware 13 R3 OLED, I like this form factor a lot. Looking forward to seeing how it really is to use day to day, but my initial impressions are that the things that suck are not a big deal (like the impossible to read key caps, thankfully I touch type). How are people finding the durability of these machines to be?

 

How is the G14 screen compared to AW 13R OLED?

 

Honestly? It's worse, and I will have to get over the slight ghosting, small amount of light bleed, lower contrast and color gamut, and lack of a touchscreen. To be realistic, the 144hz 100% sRGB panel is probably a pretty decent IPS, it's just not the 200+% sRGB color spectrum that OLED has. The 1080p resolution is no big deal given the screen size. Other things I'll miss are the IR camera, dual memory slots, and dual SSD. Once again, things I can probably get over, given that this thing runs much lighter, cooler, faster, and is probably better balanced overall. I have abhorred the lack of a precision touchpad on the AW13.

The lack of an insert key is an awkward omission, and for coding and keyboard shortcuts I'll need to resolve that with autohotkey or something.

I noticed that the model I got was 16GB with 8GB soldered. After a quick search, I didn't see any models with 32GB / 16GB soldered -- are those not available?

 

2021 G14 here. It seems users are totally locked out of both the system BIOS and vBIOS. I've tried to mod system BIOS using Afuwin + AMIBCP, the BIOS will flash but no settings take effect. I've enabled many of the bios entries (switched from "default" to "supervisor" and also "user") to no avail. I wanted to disable PCI-E ASPM to give more power to the GPU; this worked in an old Razer Blade I owned.

I had hoped to be able to flash the vBIOS considering folks have done it with Asus' 3070 laptop. Finally found a G15 RTX 3060 80 watt vBIOS but still got the ID mismatch error. I've tried all of the versions of NVflash. I am all ears if anyone has any ideas, would love to try to flash 80 watt vBIOS onto this system.

 

Interesting. Is the goal to flash a different vBIOS that will treat the 3060 as a higher performance version with higher power limit?

 

Yeah I figured the screen would not be good compared to a OLED but still a quality IPS display.

 

A quick comparison of screen quality, Alienware 13 R3 vs 2021 G14 with FHD 144hz Sharp panel. I don't care enough to set up on a bench with black background; you can immediately tell there's a difference.

The G14 screen is quite good. Just don't look at it next to an OLED at the same time or you'll be disappointed.

 

Yeah, though I wouldn't go any higher than the 80 watt BIOS. It seems futile anyway. There are a ton of laptop 3060 vBIOS now available and every one of them including the G15 3060 gives me the ID mismatch error. I've tried all versions of Nvflash as well. So curious how people are able to flash the G15 with different 3070 vBIOS but I can't flash the G14.

 

Thanks for doing that testing for us.

I'm curious as well. 80W would be a 33% increase though; that's very significant. Would be a good test of thermal management. Since I haven't been paying close attention prior to getting this machine, I had to look up a comparison of heat pipes vs. vapor chambers and found this:
Vapor Chamber vs Heat Pipe Cheat Sheet | Celsia (celsiainc.com)

It seems that ASUS decided that the 3060 would stay within the thermal capacity for heat pipes and just used those to keep costs down.

 

The 3060 in the G14 goes up to 80 watts with performance boost. It is base of 65 watts. So I want to use a vBIOS that has a base of 80 watts, like the G15.

 

How is everyone getting the G14 to boost to 80w? I only see 60 at most even with CPU at 5% load. Overwatch is the title I'm using.

 

For the 2020 G14, what is adjustable in Armory Crate. Are you able to set CPU base and boost power, or do you need to rely on third party tools?

The 2021 model is scarce here, but the 2020 4900HS/2060 is heavily discounted.

 

I believe it only controls the fan and lighting...I haven't tried it for anything else.

Ryzen Controller handles TDP. No need to touch anything else. Let the CPU boost to its highest clock then it'll downclock based on TDP setting.

 

Best Buy is offering a $50 discount on the 2021 G14 right now. If you bought it from there in the last two weeks, hit up their live chat service and request a price adjustment.

 

I see 80w sustained from mine after I setup custom fan/power settings in armory crate.

 

I was also attempting this, I found a version of NVFlash on Techpowerup that might bypass that mismatch. Thinking I'll try the G15 vbios again after work today using this.

https://www.techpowerup.com/download/nvidia-nvflash-with-board-id-mismatch-disabled/

 

I tried that version as well. Let us know if it works for you.

 

It didn't recognize the 3000 series card unfortunately, nothing changed.

Hopefully I can find another option, or someone updates the newest version of NVFlash to allow that bypass.

 

I also tried flashing the vBIOS of my G14 with RTX 3060 to a higher TGP, but can't available (searched through TPU database) find a vBIOS that is compatible

The reason why the other RTX 3060 mobile vBIOS does not work is due to different Board ID

The 2021 Asus Zephyrus G14 RTX 3060 has a board ID 0x0280
The majority of the RTX 30060 mobile vBIOS that I have found has Board ID 0x027F

So far the only RTX 3060 vBIOS that I found that has the same board ID 0x0280 is for MSI GF65 Thin with RTX 3060, but it has lower TGP of 75w max compared to 80w max on the G14

I suspect the vBIOS on the MSI GF66 or GF76 with RTX 3060 (has a 85w max TGP) should have the same Board ID, but I can't find available vBIOS for it online

to check the board ID of the vBIOS firmware file use the command --version "vbiosfilename.rom"

 

I completely forgot how to do this as it was back in the GTX 670 days but can't you mod your existing bios to run a higher TDP with some weird application? Like NVTune or something of that sort....wonder if anyone has kept up to date with that. My shunt mod is working very smoothly with my machine. I'd say temps are the only thing holding me back. I typically don't go about 69C on the GPU but CPU can see closer to 80C when gaming... I'm not comfortable going liquid metal but I'm sure that would drop things a few C...

 

How are your temps so good? I wanted to shunt mod yet even with liquid metal my gpu hits 86c and throttles down. With cpu boost disabled it hits around 80c. Cpu temps with Lm are great however. Rarely goes above 80c. I dont think you can bios mod the new gpus as I think they are encrypted and require a signature from nvidia. A scummy move imo considering that I could do whatever i wanted with my r9 390

 

Probably from lapping the heatsink. There's still some room for improvement where I ended up calling it a day but the flatter the heatsink the more efficient it'll be...mine is pretty darn flat and smooth... I noticed a little Knick out of the heatsink surface which was probably creating some lift to the surface...

 

My heatsink does not seem to have a nick although my 4900hs does have a couple "dents" on the die for some reason. Would LQM mitigate the need for lapping? How would I go about lapping my cooler and how do I determine if it is flat? Should I just order a new heatsink? Lastly what is the resistance of the wire you used for the shunt mod?

 

Hi everyone, I'm planning to get the new g14, and the primary use case for me is when it's plugged in to an external display and the lid is closed. 2020 model had overheating problems when closed. Do you happen to know if the new model has the same issue?

 

FYI, I've broken down and I'll be attempting Liquid Metal TIM here soon with my G14... I'm hoping for a crazy drop in temps...

 

Go for it! I used some cheap kapton tape and nail polish to insulate the smds, all is going well. I think im going to buy a new cooler to fix my horrid temps. http://imgur.com/gallery/dwaQSoU

 

I wouldnt run it lid closed, the 2021 is the same chassis just better Armoury crate and hardware

 

Also how is the shunt mod? What resistance are you running? I noticed you got rid of the shunt resistor

 

Just broke my Time Spy record: https://www.3dmark.com/spy/21315891 | 7118 Total | 6828 Graphics

I use 2 small 28awg wires as "shunts"...not exactly sure the power draw...maybe 95W.

Once I do liquid metal TIM I may shorten the wires even more for more power draw... I think my G14 could handle 110W from the GPU probably...

 

Hello everybody
,
my laptop (Asus Zephyrus G14) shows me that the programs "acpowernotification.exe" and "armouryswagent.exe" are using my GPU (Geforce 1660ti) permanently. How can I stop this?

In my global NVIDIA settings I had actually put that it should primarily use the internal GPU.
I can close the above programs in the Task Manager, but the next time I reboot they are active again.

Can anyone help?

 

Liquid metal is ON!!!!

All is well so far. I had to fix one of the wires of my GPU fan...it came off when I took the heatsink off...thankfully soldering it back on was very easy:

Unfortunately I haven't seen much of a change in GPU temperatures...maybe 1-2C better. The CPU is where the big gains are. Here's some before and after:









I used butyl rope to seal the SMD's and substrate and added TIM above that to create a seal to the heatsink. I think this might be adding some additional space/gap for the GPU which is maybe why I'm not getting the best temps on the GPU...they're certainly not bad but not amazing... I'm also probably getting some heat spread from additional cooling capacity from the CPU over to the GPU. I've noticed that temperatures between the CPU and GPU will be nearly equal when gaming so I'm sure there's considerable sharing of the heatsink...