Asus ROG Zephyrus G14 Owner's Lounge

Do you think it's just a software issue? I'm willing to wait until they iron it out but I just read from a reddit post that it's a hardware issue that's why I'm now hesitant about the device

 

Yeah, from the guy talking about an asian forum without any source? No way that this error passed development without notice, it has to be software.
I am already in contact with ASUS about that.

 

So, hardware or BIOS error confirmed i would say: https://www.reddit.com/r/ZephyrusG1...ghtness_of_internal_screen_not_adjustable_if/

 

Bios version 212 is no longer on the support page...

 

Kind of sad that it takes members of the community to address an issue that should be Asus' responsibility. I've had nothing but terrible experiences with Armoury Crate so I returned my GU502.

 

What kind of issues with armoury crate?

 

It is there under the BIOS and firmware tab, not under the drivers tab. I installed it earlier today, it seems to update the firmware version according to device manager.

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

It's part of the fun for me. I tweak everything when building a desktop PC. All of the tweaks we've been doing on the G14 are very simple and take little time, and are one and done. The fan utility that has been created is fantastic. I've had no conflicts with Armoury Crate while using it. I've added the fan utility to my startup programs and when I want things silent just click on the profile in taskbar icon. Can easily switch back to default Asus profiles right within the utility or Armoury Crate.

People have been undervolting Intel laptops for years. One can argue Intel should've been doing this all along.

My old Razer Blade 2017 required a BIOS mod to unlock the full potential of the GTX 1060. By disabling ASPM at the BIOS level using my modded BIOS, I got significant performance gains.

 

• Not loading properly from a cold boot, which results in the ROG and fn layer keys as well as the OSD not working.
• Non-functional manual fan control.
• Not detecting installed games so I can make proper fan and screen profiles.
• Not properly switching in and out of the power profiles I create for the games that are detected.
• Only one power plan (silent) that properly puts the CPU in all of its c-states. Despite my overriding it in the Windows power and sleep control panel, performance mode locks the CPU in a turbo boosted state at all times.

Clean installs of the software and/or operating system are like whack-a-mole - when one issue goes away, another pops right up. People throw shade at Razer Synapse, but compared to Armoury Crate, it's god-tier amazing.

That's all very well and good, but most of the folks who frequent this forum are a subset of a subset of the overall market. Most folks who walk into Best Buy to pick up one of these want to power it up and go.

 

Yeah, the whole manual fan stuff in Armoury Crate is completely garbage but i also just use the new small tool now. A fan profile for every game? I invest my time more in gaming itself ;-)
I just use the quietest possible manual profile for everything.

 

Perhaps performance profile would have been a more accurate term. For some games I play, the silent profile actually works fine, but for current, more demanding titles, I want to be able to use all the horsepower I paid for. It should be as simple assigning the profile to a executable. The problem is, I can't choose it on my own. Armoury Crate relies on its own scanner to find programs. It's fine for Steam games, but it wouldn't pick up anything I had installed from the Windows Store or Origin. Further, in the games that did show up, it would switch to performance mode when the application started, but wouldn't switch back to silent when quitting.

 

Hi.
I'm new to both PC's and computer gaming (usually use Macbook).
I just bought this G14 last week, and encountering something weird, wondering if anyone had a thought. I've updated all the drivers, Windows updates, BIOS, Armoury Crate, etc.
Every once in a while, *some* of the Function keys will not work. It's always the Function keys associated with screen brightness, and the Armoury Crate key that won't work.
This morning when I booted up, I went into the Asus app (don't have it in front of me, so can't recall the name) and while it said I didn't have any hardware *or* driver errors, it said something like "some functions are unavailable, please reboot", which fixed it.
One thing I do notice, is that the first time I booted up this morning, it didn't seem to flash the Profile on the screen (Performance), but the second time I booted, it did.
So almost like Armoury Crate isn't loading at boot or something?
Again, forgive my being new to PC gaming, and that there's a lot of words.

Thanks!

 

Only if you choose "restart" the PC actually loads everything new. If you choose "shutdown" the PC goes into hibernation and just reloads the latest Memory image after the next start and you can proceed where you left. So it is important to restart if you want to fix something or after a driver installation, don't choose shutdown.

 

I was having the exact same issue with a different Asus laptop, so there's clearly something wrong with Armoury Crate and how it interacts with the laptop when it's powered up from "shut down" (deep hibernate) state. I didn't do this myself because I was having other issues with the laptop that prompted a refund from the store, but try disabling hibernation by opening command prompt as administrator and typing the following without quotes:

"powercfg -h off"

Then go into classic Control Panel, Hardware and Sound, Power Options, then select "Choose what the power buttons do" from the menu on the left side. Click "Change settings that are currently unavailable" then uncheck the "Turn on fast startup (recommended)" box. See if that doesn't resolve the issue with Armoury Crate not starting correctly after a shutdown.

 

I guess everyone's needs are different. I only use silent and manual myself. On silent I have even TDP down'd the CPU and reduced the clocks of the GPU so it's basically silent and enough for the games I play. For more demanding games I use manual mode which does allow me to set a custom fan speed for both CPU and GPU (which I do which also keeps it relatively silent) together with TDP down as needed. Regarding why sometimes the armory crate button doesn't work, I believe it's a timing issue. You can't press it as soon as it boots up as it's not the highest priority. Either way I agree the GU502 has a bunch of problems, but for me the problems I find issue with most is how it's difficult/even impossible to TDP down the nvidia GPU. Everything else that can be manually fixed I can fix it manually myself.

But yea, I guess some of these issues also pertain to Zephyrus G14, especially the armory crate and GPU TDP up/down.

 

You actually got manual mode to work? Any time I tried to enable it, the fans would just spin at maximum speed.

That's not it. The hotkeys would not work at all, even after letting the computer sit for several minutes after startup. Doing a soft reboot would get everything working until the next time the laptop was shut down.

 

Does gaming in performance mode generally get you less fan noise and CPU temps? How much less performance do you get on performance vs Turbo?
Can someone check for me in each mode and report back with the DB readings using Armoury Crate? Would be greatly appreciated.

 

Performance mode is quieter, Turbo has a higher max fan speed.

I don't have Armoury crate numbers, but there's a 5db difference between Performance and Turbomode with an external dB meter.

 

Is the performance that much different between the profiles?
I did read your great review on this laptop but was a little overwhelmed with the numbers, do you have a dumb down take between the two?

 

I'm very metrics driven LOL.

Use performance mode with a overclock (MSI Afterburner) as your daily, Turbo mode for benchmarking IMO. Performance is basically the same.

The IDEAL though is to use Balanced mode with the 3GHz tweak, I noticed some games performing BETTER at 3GHz than boosting to 4.2GHz, probably because of no thermal limitations on the CPU and GPU side.

 

No need for turbo mode at all.

 

Is there a step for step guide disabling turbo mode?

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/ZephyrusG14/comments/gho535/important_update_to_properly_disable_boosting/

 

Turbo mode and Turbo boost are 2 different things.

 

So I see many people in this thread use a strange method to install AMD gpu drivers to avoid triggering nvidia gpu on battery. There is actually a very easy way to fix this problem without having to jump through all the hoops.

All you need to do is open "Graphics Settings" in Windows 10 settings, and choose AMD Radeon Settings Lite from universal apps, and set it to use "Power Saving" gpu. After this, you can open the amd settings app without spinning up the nvidia gpu.

Another thing you probably want to do is go to the "Background Apps" settings, and disable "Microsoft Photos" from running in the background. Apparently this app sometimes starts itself in background and uses the nvidia gpu (maybe for AI photo tagging).

A good way to spot undesired gpu activity is to open Nvidia control panel, and enable "Display GPU activity Icon in notification area".

Hope this helps some people.

 

Radeon settings lite never was the problem. Radeon settings of the AMD released 2020 driver was it. You had to use this driver because of the black screen problem but ASUS released an update so that the method you are talking about is not longer needed. Microsoft photos is shown in the activity symbol but is not actually drawing any power.

 

The technique works for the full radeon driver too. Just add "C:\Program Files\AMD\CNext\CNext\RadeonSoftware.exe" to the list and choose "Power Saving" for it. You'll need to logout for this to take effect. I'm running the AMD driver right now and there is no Nvidia GPU activity.

 

Has anyone received the Windows 2004 update yet? I’m curious to see if Hardware GPU Scheduling along with Nvidia’s 450 drivers has been upping performance at all.


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Question: how (or rather with what app) you can get shortcuts to "home"and "end" buttons?

 

There are plenty if tools for that, well known is autohotkey.

I run 2004 but i will wait for an official driver release,

 

So when you open HWinfo for example, the nVidia GPU shows 0.0w being used? That's the true measure. I've tried what you did on the full AMD driver before and it still caused my nVidia GPU to pull about 3w at idle.

 

Are the newer batch of models fixed any issues? Blackscreens etc..

 

There are newer batches? I doubt that, newest devices were already manufactured in March.

 

There's no proof of any "new batches" having fewer "issues." It's luck of the draw. Most issues with the G14 are driver and/or software related. It is entirely possible that a laptop manufactured in May 2020 has a defective fan. The best comment I've seen recently was another thread here where the poster suspected his G14 was defective just by looking at BIOS bootup screen without any OS or drivers installed. I mean, everyone was a PC newbie at some point, but that's just bonkers. There isn't a great risk of getting a defective G14. This forum and reddit represent 1% - 5% at most of all owners I'd think. My March 2020 G14 has been flawless since day 1.

You should follow the subreddit:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ZephyrusG14/

 

I just grabbed one from BB.

Between coming from 8.1 and a GT72 without Optimus ...I feel like a freaking virgin ...I don't know what to touch [remove/update/change] first.

 

It's yours white? How's the keyboard backlighting?

Enviado desde mi GM1913 mediante Tapatalk

 

Silverish-Grey, white lid. The backlighting is weak IMO. You barely see it in any light and in the dark the screen lights up KB a lot.

[edit] If there's a setting to adjust, I haven't got to it yet. I haven't even got to the W10 corralling yet.

 

I think keyboard brightness is controlled with Fn + Up or Down key.

My question was more regarding homogeneity. At first keyboards had this patchy lighting that has been corrected on Grey versions of the laptop. I wanted to know if this is also now the case for white laptops.



Well, found this on Reddit and it looks fine:

 

I saw that pic.

Having maxed out the lighting [thanks for giving me one less thing to look up], I would say mine is patchy as some key's letters are less well lit to even poorly lit.

 

Not sure why Asus didn't just put per key RGB instead of this white blacklighting that is poorly done.

 

This is a HOT laptop. The cpu happily maxes out 105c within minutes of BFV and the deck gets hot.

-Using “Windows” performance power plan.
-Change advances power settings.
-Disable Processor boost mode.

This allows the CPU to max out at 3ghz and keeps temps 20-30c cooler on the CPU with very low fan acoustics.

I haven’t flipped through this whole thread yet so if this was already discussed than I’m sorry.

Has this been a pretty common solution?

 

Pretty much (aside from LM or a cooling pad) . Also, gues it is possible to create a power profile with Ryzen Controller to keep the CPU under control.

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I went to ~5 stores looking for a laptop cooler without luck.

Is there a G14 guide for fans? I don't want to ramp it up too quickly. I'm not planning on overclocking ever as I think the stock 2060mq is more than enough power for my Steam backlog ...and CP77.

I've limited the 2060 to 40fps for the moment and kept it on the performance profile until I get a better feeling for what the cooling can/can't do.

 

You can't overclock Ryzen Mobile, but with Ryzen Controller (and similar apps), you can change the operating parameters for the CPU. You can either boost power, temperature and Amps... or at the same time cap these parameters (something I do with my 3700u equipped Lenovo Flex 14).

With MSI afterburner you can play with curves, and create different profiles for different scenarios as well. You can overclock your GPU and at the same time reduce power consumption (check the Alienware Area 51m overclock and undervor guide).

Or you can just tape an old Noctua fan to your laptop. Everything is better with a Noctua fan blowing air to it.

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I was referring to the 2060.

 

Hmmm...

...requires some fiddling to get 20 degrees cooler huh... Works with all other H/HS CPUs?​

 

Yes, works with all. Depending on the usecase lowering the tdp might be a better solution. But this was already mentioned here weeks ago.

 

I am buying new laptop that I will use for work and overall everyday use.. 10h+ a day on laptop.
4800h or 4900hs with 16gb soldered to add another 16.
I don't play games so want to make sure thermals are at the lowest possible point. I guess 1660ti is cooler then RTX2060 but are the both versions coming with same cooling system or 2060 might have better one? Guess both CPUs have same cooling also?

btw it would be cool if they had "black and white" option.. I prefer black lid but silver keyboard, same as I have now on N550JV
Since most of the time laptop is opened, I guess I would go with white version.. maybe I could even paint the lid

 

U might need to look thru the different reviews dude... If Asus TUF A15 comes with different cooling internals base on different configurations, I doubt the Zephyrus will be uniform in design as well...

 

It must be disappointing to have to return it... I found a reviewer who have some suggestions on the overheating issue of this laptop. Not sure if it helps...(I mean for those who still own one)

 

Both use the same cooling