Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 Owner's Lounge

Best Buy is a certified Retailer for Asus, so this makes the purchase the same as buying from Asus. They will verify your serial number and show it was purchased from Best Buy and honor the Asus warranty if you choose to extend it?

 

But take a look at this link to buy Premium Care, it says not compatible with Best Buy units.

https://store.asus.com/us/item/2019...ium-Care-Warranty-for-Gaming-Notebooks-3-Year

I cannot buy it through the My Asus app as the FAQs instruct. I get the message "premium care is not available yet" which according to Asus' site my laptop may not be eligible for it. I can buy it on the Asus store website and then need to register the contract with the laptop (and hope that Asus will honor it).

 

No need to repaste them. Removing the bottom is very easy. The screw in the lower right vorner is a po off screw, don't remove it. I've seen that one guy just ripped it out...

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Man, I have never seen anything like this. Does not make much sense to me. I guess they leave you stuck with BB warranty or one of the other third party warranty companies? Sorry man.

 

I got my unit. In short: i love it!

I fiddled around with the manual fan settings.

PSA: Bug Warning! Don't set your fans to 0%, they won't turn on after, they will stay at 0% in manual mode.

Setting the fans to 100% is also impossible, try 95% instead. Protect your ears!

It is possible to set the fans to 20% PWM - 1500RPM manually at lowest setting. Below that they try to run but fail to start. But at that setting they are unaudible, absolutely silent.

Changing the fans is very buggy at the moment. The fan profile does not activate manually and cannot be saved in the Armory Crate profiles. The changes have no effect after you unplugged the laptop. You have to close Armory Crate and set the curve again manually. Then it works fine. It needs 10s after pressing apply until the changes take effect.

I also tried to set the fans on 65% (very audible but not very loud) with full overclock while gaming. Temps were fine, i will publish benchmark results soon.

 

Tested the battery life today. My use is strictly office use, internet, MS remote desktop, 20 minutes of YouTube. I had the Asus software set to "Windows" power profile, and then battery saver profile within Windows. Screen brightness was between 60 and 70%. I experience a bug where the screen won't go to sleep after the time set in power options. This was fixed by running a system troubleshooter (type troubleshoot in Windows search bar) and select the power option. It resolved a couple of power issues, apparently, namely minimal processor state and display sleep issues. The changes stick after rebooting.

Anyway, I turned the laptop on at 8:45 AM using the above settings and it shut itself down at 3:45 PM when the battery got to 5%. I got 7 hours on the dot. I left the display set to 120Hz refresh rate as well. Considering my screen never really went to sleep throughout this time, this is a pretty great result.

I will compare tomorrow and set the display to 60Hz to see what difference, if any, it makes.

I also contacted Asus support and they confirmed that because the laptop was purchased through Best Buy, I cannot purchase Asus Premium Care. This is a major bummer, still not sure I'd return the laptop over this considering my credit card adds a 2nd year onto the warranty. My desktop motherboard just got sent to Gigabyte for repair, so I'm using the G14 full time right now. Makes me appreciate Dell or Lenovo onsite warranty service even more.

 

Congratulations man!
Would love to hear some more impressions on fan noise and temps when gaming. From the few reviews of seen CPU temps get pretty toasty but performance isn’t affected too much.
Notice any ghosting with the screen when gaming?

 

Anyone who owns this, there is mention of missing keys such as end and home but is there any alternate way to activate them? FN+Something or are they just simply gone gone. I had intended to buy this for Programming and working with Unreal Engine 4 but those are some pretty commonly used keys for my workflow. The wife did mention why not just get a mouse with extra buttons and map the keys to that which will work if I have to but beyond that this is the perfect laptop for me to replace an aging thinkpad so I would love to know if there was a physical way with the keyboard to activate those keys still.

Thanks!

 

The buttons are gone completely. But there are a ton of programs for that, autohotkey for example. It is no problem to set the key combos by yourself.

I tested a bit with Shadow of Tomb Raider. CPU reached 100C for a sec and 90C average but in the boosting phase, after the tdp settles down i see 92C max and 87C avg. GPU is 76C max. Fans are working normally, but it is far from loud, especially no whine for me.My older Acer and my Dell 7577 (G5) were far louder under load. Everything in Performance Mode.

 

Does using it in balanced mode reduce performance in gaming? If so how much of a performance hit do you see in FPS? Temps in balanced mode better? Gpu temps look great have you tried overclocking for a performance boost?

 

Thank you for the reply, I will have to see if that would work hopefully I can test on my current keyboard and see if it would work for me

 

I have only played two games so far, Bioshock Infinite and F1 2019. They aren't the most demanding games, running in performance mode vs. turbo mode hasn't impacted my gameplay. Someone who runs more demanding games can chime in. The fan noise is noticeably quieter in performance mode vs. turbo mode. It isn't *that* much quieter, but it is quieter. For these games CPU temps were down by only a few degrees over the course of 10 mins or so (performance mode). Maybe 93-96C vs 100C at times. GPU temps remained excellent in both modes, I've never exceeded 80C (more demanding games I'm sure will cause more heat).

I would've liked to have seen maybe a 200w power supply rather than 180w. Considering how cool the GPU stays, they could have raised the GPU higher than 65w for a bit more gaming power. Not sure how much more heat an 80w Max-Q variant would generate in this laptop.

 

The 180W power supply would easily be enough for an 80W gpu version. Maybe we will see a Bios mod in the future.
Turbo mode brings about 5-10% more fps to the cost of fan noise. I experimented with the manual settings and i get better and quieter results with manual fan curve and overclock. I will post my curve after more experimenting.

 

Have you tried overclocking the GPU? Temps seem very good so theres a bit of headroom .

 

Yes. Armory Crate manual profile allows you to add +150 to the GPU core. I tried adding +200 in Afterburner but crashed, so for my system at least, +150 is probably pushing the most the GPU can handle.

 

@Wertzius - I saw some of the comments on the reddit thread for this laptop and a recent Best Buy review about battery life. The nVidia GPU hasn't been deactivating when not in use on my system, I just discovered. HWInfo showed the GPU consuming 3.5w while in battery saving mode and idle. I didn't realize that within Armoury Crate, if the GPU stats section does not state "power saving" , the nVidia GPU is active.

I followed the comment on the Best Buy site and it worked. I uninstalled the latest AMD drivers (I got from AMD site) using DDU. This removed the Radeon software utility as well. I reinstalled the AMD drivers just using Windows Update, but the Radeon software utility unfortunately will not be reinstalled, nor are they the latest drivers from AMD. But, I can confirm that now the nVidia GPU shuts off as it should when idling both on battery and AC power. HWInfo shows 0.0w used, and the Armoury Crate app shows "power saving" by the GPU stats while idling.

Tried some gaming, it appears that FreeSync still works without the Radeon app installed, which is a relief. It is too bad that it is now not possible to reinstall the Radeon app. I hope there will be no adverse effects.

Just an FYI for those of you who may be getting lower than expected battery life, this fix should resolve it.

 

For me the fix was to install the 211 Bios version. I have the windows Update AMD drivers installed. There are a few things that still have to settle a bit for sure.

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I am going to return/exchange my unit. I keep on getting the blackscreen on mine and I tried some of the fixes (the hotkey and driver reinstall with WU and cleaner didnt resolve it for me)

I have till May 15th to return it and I think I am going to return it and get a newer batch later down the road when the bios/drivers mature further.(maybe sometime in May/June) I love this system, its just got too many teething problems right now that I dont want to put up with. I dont need a gaming laptop right now anyways because its not like I am going anywhere right now. (I also own a Surface Pro 6)

 

I figured out how to reinstall Radeon Settings after reinstalling AMD drivers from Asus site! The setup file is contained in one of the folders in the downloaded file. I have no idea why this works but it does, and the nVidia GPU shuts off as it should when idle too. Here is a screenshot of where the file is located, I have the file highlighted. An install prompt should pop up and you're good to go.

 

Overclocking does near to nothing to the real GPU frequency. The TDP is too limiting. I got maybe 50-80MHz more, not 150. But with memory overclock you can get around 10% more power out of it. I will do further test at the weekend with all profiles and manual fan settings.

 

That really stinks, sorry you appear to have gotten a lemon. Does anything trigger the black screens or is it just random?

 

Can someone try a little test for me , can someone run a few games at 720P and 1080P same settings and report back FPS and temps for each resolution? I just want to see the performance difference and if it improves temps at all.
Would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

 

Getting fantastic battery life now that the dedicated GPU properly turns off while idle. Powered on at 9:05 AM with 96% charge. It is 4:45 PM and the battery has 43% remaining. Just office work, internet, remote desktop. I also kept the display at 120Hz and using Windows power saving profile. Incredible.

 

just using the pc while not gaming browsing the web, also happened once when I switched from AC to battery. (what was odd is when I plugged in the power the screen came back...)

 

Encountered an odd issue just now. I am connecting the laptop to my monitor using a USB-C / mini-DP adapter. I cannot also connect a USB mouse and my Xbox controller all at the same time. I get the "not enough USB resources" error message. Is this a limitation of the chipset and is this an issue on other laptops? This could be a deal breaker, not cool.

 

You are drawing too much power from the USB socket. You should add a power adapter to the USB-C Hub.

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I have the laptop plugged in using AC adapter. You are saying I should use an additional adapter?

Edit- yeah, apparently a USB 3.0 hub with its own power supply is what is needed. I will survive as-is for now. I unplugged both the Xbox controller and mouse from the two USB ports. Then plugged in the controller again, followed by the mouse. When doing it in this order everything seems to work, no issues in device manager status either.

 

Most USB-C Hubs can also connect to a power supply in addition to the PC. This will help.

Possible Black Screen fix

I tried to fix the black screen problem and until now (wish me luck) i never had a black screen again.

I downloaded the newest AMD Driver package: https://www.amd.com/en/support/apu/...-processors-radeon-graphics/amd-ryzen-9-4900h

Don't install the package right away, the Nvidia GPU will not go to sleep after that. Start the installation, so the driver unzips in your C:/ Drive. Abort the installation process.

Just go into the Device Manager - AMD Radeon Graphics - Update Drivers - Search for drivers on the PC - Point to the AMD folder on your C:/ Driver and choose to install the AMD driver from 03.04.2020.

You are done.

Don't install further drivers of the package, one driver is responsible for the Nvidia power draw in idle.

Good luck with trying and please give feedback here.

I will report back if i get a black screen again.

 

Not getting black screen errors but decided to try this anyway because I want to be on the latest drivers. I was able to locate and install the Radeon Settings app separately as well, the file is again located deep within one of the driver folders. Installing Radeon Settings app causes the nVidia GPU to always be active / draw power in idle. I removed the app and the GPU now goes into power saving mode within Armoury Crate. Not having the Radeon Settings app working properly isn't ideal but I'll have to live with it. I'll continue to tinker within the app, maybe there is a setting I can toggle on / off that allows the nVidia GPU to go into power saving mode while idle.

**EDIT- I posted this in the G14 reddit thread, copying here in case people here have problems with AMD driver update and Radeon Settings app, related to black screen fix and nVidia GPU not sleeping when idle:

I have everything working. Convoluted method, but it works. I wiped all AMD software and driver using DDU. Then I installed the AMD driver package from the Asus website. Then I installed the Radeon Settings Lite software separately (it is within a folder in the unzipped Asus package). At this point, everything works, nVidia GPU goes into power saving mode when idle.

Now, I installed the latest AMD driver using the method posted here, through Windows Update / pointing to the folder where the new driver is located. The Radeon Settings Lite app still works with this new driver. Further, the nVidia GPU goes into power saving mode when idle as it should.

So there is something up with the latest software package (drivers + AMD software) from AMD's website if you were to install the whole thing at once, something in the AMD software specifically, that causes the nVidia GPU to not idle.

 

I suspect I'll be joining you folks as a proud member of G14 soon enough. ETA May 11th, but I, just like everyone else, am hoping to get it sooner.

Mr. Mysterious

 

Personally I’m waiting for the darker Eclipse Gray model, not a fan of White laptops and the keyboard backlight on the White model is pretty bad.

 

If I had the choice, I'd have gone for the darker model with the exact same specs. But I heard a rumor that it's coming out in Q3, and only in the FHD version, so that's not worth it for me, either for the specs, the price or the wait.

Mr. Mysterious

 

I hope not it’s in high demand so I hope they release the same specced white model in justbthe darker color.
I did hear the same though which is unfortunate.

 

The reason for the Nvidia standby power draw in idle

Yesterday AMD released a new Adrenalin 2020 driver package for all Ryzen 4000 APUs.

So i tried it and as usual you get 4-5W Nvidia power draw on idle, even if the dGPU is not used at all. The reason is not the driver, the reason ist the AMD Adrenalin settings app. I can use the driver just fine after manual installation, the app is the problem. At the moment i am trying the grahics driver for the black screen issue but i deinstalled the settings app. The Radeon setings Lite app of the ASUS driver does not work anymore with this driver version. But i don't need the settings app, what settings should i change constantly?

Furthermore both AMD settings apps tend to use the Nvidia GPU. As soon as you started one of them they stay in the background and the Nvidia GPU stays active and halfs your battery time. You can correct that behaviour in the Geforce setings by assigning the iGPU manually.

I will write to AMD about that.

 

I installed the Asus driver, then manually installed Settings Lite from that same driver folder. Then manually updated to the latest AMD driver (no software install) that was just released via WU. The Settings Lite app (bundled with Asus driver) still works for me and the nVidia GPU shuts off when idle. It is the latest software version from AMD that is the issue for me as well.

Give it a try again in the order I did and see if it works for you if you want the software? I don’t change any settings anyway in the app except for disabling Varibright.

Thank you for contacting AMD about it, I’ll do the same.

 

I could try that, but i don't need the app at the moment and i hope the next package will work flawless.

I did a LM repaste with benchmarks before and after:



TLDR: Just game in Performance mode and be happy! The repaste is not worth it as long you cannot lower the fanspeeds to game with quieter fans.



I just finished my LM repaste and did benchmarks before and after.

Shadow of Tomb Raider - FHD - Ultrahigh preset - integrated benchmark

Manual = max OC in Armory Crate and fixed fan speed at 65%

To sum it up:

-Stock cooling solution is pretty decent

-Turbo mode is not worth it, louder fans for minimum of gains

-Performance mode is the mode of choice

-Setting a manual fan profile at 65% reduces temps significantly because the fans spin up slowly after gamestart in automatic mode and the heatsink heats up in the meantime

-It is still a pain to use manual fan profiles, wait for updates

-This LM repaste i definitely not for beginners! I think it is not worth it, because temps and loudness in performance mode are already fine and you loose your warranty. It might be worth it if the manual fan profiling gets fixed and you could set the fan speed below the present minimum values to create a silent game profile with full speed.

-Overclocking the GPU might be worth it, more speed with no real influence on temps. Max speed gain is 10% which is not really necessary in anything.

 

Hi, new one here looking for information. Is it possible to:
- disable the dGPU
- set the screen at 60hz
and do some light work fanless?
I'm looking for an ultrabook with a bit more power than the normal ones with integrated GPU, willing to trade a little bit of weight for it, the G14 is at the upper limit for me.

My main concern for the G14 is the fan noise, I'm used with a 7 years old macbook pro that mostly works fanless and I'm often in a room with other people. My ideal notebook would be a 15W Ryzen 4700U + 35W 1650ti max-q, but this does not exists.

 

When you're not using the dgpu it will automatically switch off.

When on battery the display automatically switches to 60hz. You can set it to 60hz using cru when plugged in but there's no point in that.

As for fan noise you can set the fan speed to 0% manually in Asus Armoury Crate.

 

You cannot set manual fan speeds on battery! At the moment there is not silent idle on battery. Manual fan profiling is also still very buggy.

 

How loud does it get when it's running on battery?

 

Thanks! I've read on Anandtech that the dGPU seems not to shut down and the screen seems not to turn itself for 60hz for web browsing and other standard tasks, so here my question.

Strange you cannot set the fan on battery, setting fan speed should be much more important on battery than when plugged in. Well, I think I will stand by and see if Asus solves these problems and if my dream 14" 15W Ryzen 4700U + 35W 1650ti max-q comes out.

 

If the dgpu doesn't shut down you can try removing the gpu drivers using DDU then reinstalling the drivers. That usually fixes it but I read that the latest amd igpu drivers is the culprit behind the dgpu not shutting down.

If the droplsy doesn't switch automatically to 60hz you can create a custom script that makes it do so. You won't gain much battery life though, it just reduces power consumption by 0.5-1w

 

It is the same like on power supply. Fans are running but are far from being loud, nobody should be disturbed by that and they stay low, no unnecessary turn ups.

 

Very nice right up.
Do the fans still get loud in performance mode?

Asus is going to release a cheaper model with 4600HS and 55W 1650tiMQ

https://www.asus.com/Laptops/ROG-Zephyrus-G14/Tech-Specs/

 

Same loudness as stock as the "border" for the fan spinup is at 80C CPU temp. But the fan noise is very nice in comparison to other gaming laptops. No whine, it is a satifying wooosh. ;-)

And i post all versions with Central European prices - they are ridiculous.

 

Whew, that's quite a premium. Honestly it might be better to just get it imported from the States.

Mr. Mysterious

 

That is what i did. Still saved me around 450€ after shipping and VAT.

 

Hi I'm also a new owner of the Zephyrus G14. I got the AMD Ryzen 7 4800HS with NVIDIA GTX 1660 Ti. I have it only since couple of days and was really exciting for it. While watching videos and doing some light surfing on chrome my device frooze already 2 times. When the screen freezes nothign works no keyboard input, no mouse, nothing. So I had to restart it. Also 2 times mostly after I restart it my screen turned black. Again the same thing couldn't do anything and had to restart. The fans were still working though. In general I have the feeling that the fans are always working on the same capacity unless I switch to "turbo"mode. I can't hear any difference between Windows, Quiet and Performance mode. I updated my Nvidia driver but am really worried. What should I do?

Also I noticed when I open task manager that my CPU is always pretty high 40-65% because of system interrupts. Then after 1 second it jumps right back to 2%.
Edit: When I tried to update my AMD driver (installed the software from the website) I get an 182 error. The radeon software can't find my hardware

 

In general have a look here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ZephyrusG14/

These are all known teething problems. Update the AMD drivers via Windows Update. Disable AMD Varibright in the AMD settings.
Follow my tutorial.

I tried to fix the black screen problem and until now (wish me luck) i never had a black screen again.

I downloaded the newest AMD Driver package: AMD Driver

Don't install the package right away, the Nvidia GPU will not go to sleep after that. Start the installation, so the driver unzips in your C:/ Drive. Abort the installation process.

Just go into the Device Manager - AMD Radeon Graphics - Update Drivers - Search for drivers on the PC - Pick drivers from a list - click on datadrive in the corner - point to the AMD folder on your C:/ drive (C:\AMD\Win10-Ryzen-Mobile-4000-Series-Adrenalin-2020-Apr3\Packages\Drivers\Display\WT6A_INF) and choose to install the AMD driver. (You have to use choose driver manually.

You are done.

Basically it is a downgrade from the generic AMD driver to the latest realeased AMD driver for AMD Renoir 4000 chips.

Don't install further drivers of the package, one driver is responsible for the Nvidia power draw in idle and they are older than the already installed ones.

 

Congrats, I was looking at this model too and was wondering the performance difference between your model and the 4900HS/RTX 2060MQ