Asus UX430UN i7-8550u, 150MX GPU, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD $999 Costco.com

I´ve been researching this subject over the last days. I have an Asus UX303LB and I experienced nausea with it´s PWM regulated screen even before knowing PWM existed and could cause this. Quite curiously the nausea effect disappeared after a few days, but now I´m worried about getting a laptop with even worse PWM.

Right now I´m thinking about updating my laptop and found a good deal on the Asus UX430UA. I read about the terrible PWM on the UX430UN and UX430UQ, but it looks like the UX430UA has the N140HCE-EN1 panel you mentioned, which is classically not associated with PWM.

Is there any way to make sure if the UX430UA models all come with this panel?

 

Regarding pwm, i'm not susceptible to low PWM so i don't notice anything. Nevertheless, i've read about this PWM controller. I tried it, it says that i changed my PWM but i can't tell cause like i said, i'm not susceptible to PWM. Perhaps you can try it out

https://github.com/dmytrov/IntelPWMControl

 

In Portugal they do not allow for replacement of a laptop bought in an electronic store (I know... ridiculous), so I need to make sure it does not have PWM. I doubt these softwares work properlym specially if you want to keep a certain specific brigthness level and color calibration. I´m a photographer and want a near-100%sRGB screen, which will be hardware calibrated.

 

Went to the store today to check for PWM on the UX430UA. Used my smartphone camera in manual mode, and tried all kinds of shutter speed. Couldn´t not detect any kind of moving bands at any brightness level, so I guess this model does not use PWM. They allowed me to run AIDA64 on the laptop and it uses a Chi Mei N140HCE-EN1 panel. Interesting.

 

BIOS 304 is out for the UX430UNR. For some reason, it only shows up in the "Driver & Tools" tab and not the "BIOS & Firmware" one, plus you need to select "Others" for your OS.

I installed it from the existing BIOS and so far so good, although who knows what's different about it.

 

hey guys,

I have a question that maybe some of you can answer. Some people say that you should only use gpu drivers provided by the manufacturer of a laptop. I'm wondering if it's better to stick with that idea with the UX430UN, or if I should updated to the latest nvidia driver.

There's conflicting opinions on that matter online... I've found a thread somewhere on an Asus forum (for a different laptop) where dev said it's alright to get the latest driver.

Other than that I have to say that this laptop is great, quite light, sound is impressive, it can handle work quite well - but for gaming it's a step down from my previous two Zenbook. My last one was a UX303UB, and playing games was much more responsive than on this one. Assassin's Creed Origins was running much better, with many settings much higher, Witcher III as well, although I have to say the UX430UB handle the Witcher III better than AC Origins. The cutscene where also more fluids than on the ux430un.

I set the laptop with ThrottleStop and GPU Teak II, I also changed the SSD to a 960 EVO 1TB.

Whats your take on the GPU drivers?

 

Did you fix the throttling issues? I'm surprised an older laptop with a weaker GPU would perform better than this one, unless the limitation is the thermal throttling.

I use the latest nvidia drivers and the aforementioned thermal strategies to play Doom 2016 in 720p consistently at over 50 fps, frequently around 80.

 

Gaming performance is really worse compared to my older Zenbook which only had a 940m (roughly the same as an mx150 in fact). I'm not sure if it's because there was two fans in the UX303UB, instead of one in the UX430UN. The UX430UN has a bigger fan but share the same heatpipe, whereas the UX303UB had two smaller fans but they were acting on the GPU and CPU separately. Back then I was able to play game sitting on the couch with the laptop in my lap. It was getting warm of course, but not as much as this new laptop, and I wouldn't consider gaming with it on my lap either.

I'm thinking that the better performance on the older version also had to do with the CPU which was clocked at base 2.5ghz (3,1ghz turbo), instead of this new one that is at base 1.8ghz.. I think it struggle to keep over 2ghz more or less, and will not sustain high speed for long, which is needed for a game. This is just an idea, but I think it may be connected?

I'm going to have a go with the latest Nvidia driver and see if that make any difference. I can always rollback to the stock one if it doesn't go well.

 

My CPU can sustain constant 2.4GHz at around 65C while gaming, that's with thermal pads and a cooling pad. Manually limiting the turboboost helps a lot with the temperature. It "shoots itself in the foot" when it boosts close to 4.0GHz for a short amount of time and then has to underclock afterwards to limit heating.

The laptop does require a fair amount of fiddling around to get good *consistent* performances though, there's no debate there.

PS: IIRC on linux, with no limiting of the turbo boost, it stabilized at around 2 GHz encoding x264 with 8 threads over a few hours, but the temperature was barely over 60C.

PPS: I've looked at youtube videos of the 940m playing Doom 2016 and the mx150 is definitely better if you can keep its thermals in check, I get around 1.5x to twice the FPS of the video I've seen with some settings at higher quality than in the video.

This laptop would really shine if they'd just unlock the ridiculously low thermal limit already.

 

Did you try the latest BIOS version 304? Any difference than 302?

 

I tried it and I didn't notice any difference. I tried my overclocked non-"undervolted" preset in GT2 and it did stutter, but it was fine and cold like usual "undervolted".

 

So they improved the temperature management at least! I'll refer these observations to their support.
Just a question. Are you sure that, in order to fix the stutter issue, it is absolutely necessary the removal of the low thermal limit?

 

I did not see any improvement in the temperatures, sorry if I wasn't clear.

I didn't notice any change, and I tried to explain how I tested it in order to check for changes.

I can't be 100% sure the thermal limit would fix it, but I've never had stuttering at temperatures under 72C, even if I overclock.

 

If I understood correctly, the removal of the thermal limit would fix it, because the stuttering happens with temperatures => 72C. Right?

 

This is my best hypothesis.

PS, I corrected tipos in my previous post.

 

This is the message I sent to the ASUS North America Facebook support:

And this is the reply:

The only thing I can do (at this point) is to reach them regularly every 10 days to not let die that conversation.

I think we need more people that report the stuttering issue to the ASUS North America Facebook support in order to raise the attention. There are over 200 posts in this thread, I hope that others will join our efforts.

[UPDATE]
@QuantumCakeIsALie
I received another reply from ASUS:

I don't use it (yet) for gaming purposes, so could you list me all the games you play with the stuttering issue and the settings that you use? Possibly not too heavy games and without overclock profiles / unlocked temps.
In the case of GT2, I need to know if you really meant Gran Turismo 2 (1999).

 

GT2 = GPU Tweak 2

I played DOOM (2016) and Rise of the Tomb Raider at 720p with mostly low details/quality with stuttering. Only after I tricked GPU Tweak 2 into not increasing the GPU voltage with the frequency and added thermal pads and cooling pad did I manage to eliminate stuttering for extended gaming sessions.

 

New reply for you from ASUS:

 

No and no. Maybe they could try it themselves instead of asking us extremely basic questions? For the record, the laptop was also turned on.

 

It's considered as low priority. Probably the guy who's answering me will start to hate me, but frequent replies are the only way to keep the issue alive. I won't post here for a while until there will be a meaningful change (hopefully).

 

Maybe we should try some blender renders, that would probably also induce throttling yet be considered "work" load rather than gaming.

 

Probably any video at 1080p in full screen with a lot of movement would be enough to trigger it.

For example, you could try with something like this:

Code:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhaHqRrbQ8o

The only thing is the short length of time...

 

Decoding Video is highly optimised, I doubt this would work. I'm on linux using the integrated GPU right now and that video played smoothly in 4K.

 

My brand new UX430 shows battery wear. Is this normal? It says design capacity is 48,856 but current capacity is 48,279. Not much difference I would expect it be 100% on new machine. Also this product is supposed to have 50W battery (it says even so on the box), so are they only rounding up numbers or did they install wrong battery at the factory? I'm reading this information by using Windows 10 command line command powercfg /batteryreport.

Also my unit seem to have PWM flicker display (BOE something). I found PWM tool that allows to adjust it higher and it seems to work but I was worried is it safe to use. Obviously it must have some side effect because why not manufacturer did not just adjust it higher already. I noticed display start to make slight sound when going over 1000Hz but strangely 3000Hz did not make sound (or my ears are damaged ).

Also I'm considering to use Notebook FanControl but this also puzzles me. Is it safe to use it and if I uninstall it, will my system fan control go back to default settings (or does it require some steps to go back to defaults) or does this program do permanent changes to fan speed controller?

Also would it be advisable to use battery health charging program from Asus? I noticed that it just limits charge by setting upper limit to 60% or 80% but both of those mention that battery starts to charge once it goes to 58% or 78% so I guess it just charge and stop charging constantly and is actually charging battery almost all the time just like without that but just prevents it charging fully (which I understood it harmful in long term).

 

Just wondering what is the date manufactured as stated on the box or underneath the laptop? Thanks.

 

There is a label underneath the laptop that says mfd 2018-01, so I assume it means January 2018. Not sure if this means anything but when I opened box and tried to turn on the laptop for the first time it did not start at all until I connected charged and tried again, so battery was maybe fully drained (or maybe it has been programmed to do so when new).
I did not pay attention what battery level was then and due to Windows installation initiated I had to wait a while for insallation and I forgot to check battery when it was readty, so I really cannot say for sure if battery was realle empty but I think it was. Also date was wrong showing Jan 23 (if I recall correctly), so maybe that was actual manufacturing day or the day when battery run empty.
Did anyone else need to connect charger before it started when it was new?

 

why i asked the manufacturing date is because someone bought (quoted below) this laptop with Feb-18 manufacturing date and it came with a non PWM screen... im eyeing this laptop and cannot stand a pwm screen flickering at 200hz!

 

I guess they are using both of these screens and depending on manufacturing batch it can be either one. If you look at ICM profiles that come with Asus Splendid tool, there are two ICM profiles for the same model (one for BOE and one for ChiMei). Basically BOE panel looks pretty nice and uniform but I also hate PWM even I can live with it. Obviously those PWM tools can raise PWM rate but I'm not sure if it is healthy for the panel in long term. Also it looks like BOE panel is not even close to 100% srgb.

 

Has anyone had problems with display or display lid? I'm asking because display lid feel damn thin and bends very easily. Just a light press around Asus logo causes it to warp! I guess I should have paid more attention to that at the shop but I somehow did not look it so carefully because pretty much every other laptop I was testing seemed to have pretty solid lids, and I was just testing Zenbook base (which is pretty solid except keyboard area) and thought the lid must be the same quality. Not sure if Asus has some clever reinforcement below metal cover to protect display because otherwise I think that will cause trouble during transportation eventually.

 

Updates from my anti heating endeavours: I bought some cheapo $1+ thermal pads from aliexpress. 1mm one. Tested 4 runs of 3dmark each before and after sticking the thermal pads on top of the heatpipes. I placed one where the fan is, 1 on top of gpu, 1 on top of cpu. I never used GPU Tweak in this scenario.

GPU Max temps after was about 3 degrees cooler. The hottest recorded was 71 degs after the 4th run, vs 74 degs (throttle) without the thermal pads.
CPU Max temps was about 2 degrees cooler.

Maybe if i bought more expensive fujipoly i could lower the temps more. But im quite pleased with the minor decrease in temps. Every bit helps. Also, i played World of Warcraft stably without frame dips for over an hour. That's most important to me. To have a consistent, stable performance.

Also in reply to the guy asking about the display lid: It's fine, i dont have any problems with it. Im not in the habit of pressing my laptops unnaturally either.

 

Me neither, I try to handle my laptops with care but I was worried about carrying it in a laptop bag. Even those made for laptops don't usually have very hard walls covering device and when you place other stuff (like charger) on the next compartment in a bag, there is a possibility that lids gets some pressure against it and it does not require a big bump to cause considerable pressure against the lid.
But since no one is complaining here, it probably is not so fragile as it feels like.

I also have question about keyboard. Is it normal that second key from the left and second key from the right on the top row (small key row) have different feel than other keys? Those two keys even tend to stick a little and click more noticeable than the other keys, especially when pressing them slowly down on the left corners and then release the button. Just quickly tapping them they don't feel like they stuck but they click different way. I'm guessing that it is caused by case shape around those keys since it does slightly warp around there and keyboard is probably installed so that it warps with casing a little.

 

Please try one of these workarounds about the GPU throttling issue and let me know:

 

I also tested this with HWiNFO (I downloaded HWiNFO standalone version from here: https://www.hwinfo.com/download.php). This program says the same as I mentioned above and it also says that battery wear is 1.2%. Is this normal for a new unit? Can others try it with their laptops and tell what it says?

 

Yes, it's normal. I have the same wear level after two months.

Some interesting articles to keep that value as high as possible and about when to replace the battery:
https://www.asus.com/support/article/604/
http://www.windowstechinfo.com/2015...time-before-battery-dies-batteryinfoview.html

Please reply to my request above, if you can reproduce the stuttering issue.

 

Man I really wish the throttling on this guy was more manageable. I was really hoping I'd be able to do some light gaming on this, but those temperatures make basically anything unmanageable, even with the increased heat limit...

 

OK, that is good to know. Did yours show that wear when new? Mine did but it has not changed since in last 3 week and about 8-10 charging cycles, so I guess it is ok.
Anyone noticing things I mentioned about two keyboard keys?

 

I noticed that the pression of the enter key in certain angles is not uniform, but I have exactly the same feeling on a new Fujitsu KB900 keyboard that I bought for my desktop pc. For me it's just a shape thing.

About the throttling issue in games, unfortunately my communication with Asus support is more troublesome than I thought initially..

A summary of the latest Asus replies:

I tried to explain that this problem persists also on very old games like NFS: Most Wanted at 720p, but they didn't reply about it . Before ending the conversation, I'll try to ask them if they can consider a stable profile to underclock GPU and CPU in an easy way...

 

What temps are you seeing on the unit?

 

Is palm rest area really made of aluminum? It surely is pretty flexible but could be due being so thin but it also feels a lot like plastic. Usually anodized aluminum feels pretty rough when you brush it with your fingers, like in Macbook or Lenovo Ideapad 720s and similar units but this feels smooth like plastic.

 

I have got one more stupid question. What your units report as battery design capacity? Is it 48856 or 50k something?
You can see that by using HWinfo or simply open up command prompt with admin rights and then type cd\ to go c: root and then type powercfg /batteryreport and it will write a battery-report.html file. Just open it with web browser, like Edge or IE11 etc, You can see all the information about battery there. Thanks for everyone in advance for checking this out.

In my unit it says 48856 but on the box it says 50W battery, so the two aren't exact match but I'm not sure if they are simply using few different batteries from different vendors and just round up their capacity to 50W in their printed information. I did check briefly one demo unit at local store and it did show design capacity little over 50000 but that was quite old 430UQ model with MFD 2017-06 but that definitely tells me that there are real 50W batteries installed in these units too. I also noticed that palm rest area did feel a bit more solid and there was considerably less flex around keyboard. It did not bend easily on area between space bar and touchpad. You could press it very hard to see even slight flexing, where in my unit just light press on that area causes flexing. Also tapping that area with finger makes hollow sound and like there is something slightly loose inside but in UQ the same area felt like it was filled with hard concrete.

Edit. I learned that battery in my unit is type C31N1620. Battery type code is written on the box. I pulled some docs for that type and it seems to be labelled as 50W battery but it has capacity information quite interesting. It says typical cap. is 4335 and min is 4210. So simple math tells that 4335 x 11,55v = 50,069W. Well mine was 48,856W so it is about 4230, so barely above min capacity, so I did not win in batterylottery, and it also had wear right out of the box, so it was well under min cap when I got it. I stupidly let it run almost empty today and ended up increased wear level 3,4%. Looks like battery is weakening very fast or battery is simply old already.

 

I have the same concern. Went to the store and tried the twist the display and indeed flex quite a lot ... Considering this and the swift 5..

 

Hello can someone provide me default settings for GPU Tweak II for UX430UN, I'm afraid that I screwed up something.. Thanks

 

I asked Asus for the money back because the FPS crash was filed even though the manufacturer changed the board. I argued that Asus had false advertising on his page showing this ****ty laptop as a gamer. Also tested with the software Heaven Benchmark at low resolutions and low quality and deactivating Vsync, and showed the fall of FPS, which is not even in laptops from 10 years ago with older graphics cards.
Asus had no choice but to return the money. I suggest everyone do the same, arguing very well why Asus deceives users with this notebook.

 

UX403UNR bios 305 is out. havent tested it yet

 

I did try it. I didn't see any improvement or regression.

 

Sorry for the double post, but this is for new content, so I hope it's ok. Otherwise feel free to merge my last two posts.

I did some testing under linux for increasing the TDP and to see the effect of the thermal pads used with the cooling pad.
I managed to properly unlock the TDP of the i7-8550U until it's limited by thermal throttling; the trick is to decrease the Turbo frequencies to avoid the latter. Yet again, less is more.


So I did a little test with three TDP settings:

1. Nomal: Untouched settings that Ubuntu 18.04 with Kernel 4.15.0-36 selected for me
2. Long Term Performance: Unlocked TDP and Turbo limited to 2.7 GHz; potentially lower instant performance, but better on the long term!
3. Long Term Aggressive: Same as above, but 3.2 GHz TurboBoost.

I also did test either on a flat desk surface or on my cooling pad (laptop pad with fans). The test consisted of a parallel program I'm developing using OpenMP, it spawns 8 threads that yield a 100% load on all 8 logical cores (4 physical).

Note #1: As described earlier in this thread, I have thermal pads in my laptop thermally shunting the heat-sink to the frame of the laptop. The mx150 GPU was unused throughout the testing. Everything was done in the same conditions: a ~22°C room with a ceiling fan. The CPU is undervolted at -90mV for the CPU Core and CPU Cache, and -60mV for the iGPU. The laptop is always running on AC.

Note #2: When I'm gaming on Windows, I limit the TurboBoost at 2.1 GHz. In that situation, the GPU is the important part so limiting the CPU gives the mx150 a little headroom to heat the heatsink.

Note #3: The idle temperature on the cooling pad is 42°C using the performance preset in Linux (basically 3.7 GHz when doing light work) and 37°C using the powersave preset on battery (basically 800 MHz idle, and 1.6 GHz for light work).

Here are the results:

Code:

Normal (flat surface):
    test time:  138.9 s
    stab freq:  1.8 GHz
    stab temp:  53°C

Long Term (flat surface):
    test time:  96.1 s
    stab freq:  2.7 GHz
    stab temp:  70°C

Long Term aggressive (flat surface):
    test time:  80.2 s
    stab freq:  3.2 GHz
    stab temp:  87°C    # Starts Throttling if run twice


Normal (cooling pad):
    test time:  138.8 s
    stab freq:  1.9 GHz
    stab temp:  46°C

Long Term (cooling pad):
    test time:  95.0 s
    stab freq:  2.7 GHz
    stab temp:  64°C

Long Term Aggressive (cooling pad):
    test time:  80.5 s
    stab freq:  3.2 GHz
    stab temp:  83°C    # Doesn't throttle if run twice

Remarks:

• You can see that the cooling pad doesn't seem to help the performance significantly (it doesn't really allow to reach higher clocks) but it keeps the temperature about ~5°C lower.
  
  
• The normal setting is actually very good at keeping the temperature low, and the everyday performance is top notch, unless you're doing heavy work, this is already very well tuned.
  
  
• On the aggressive setting, the cooling pad is enough to avoid the thermal throttling if I run the test twice or more. So it should be able to stay in that mode for longer if not indefinitely. Although, I don't think I'd be comfortable to run the laptop at 83°C for an extended period of time. In real situations, I'll probably use the "Long Term" 2.7 GHz mode for video encoding or scientific computation, maybe increasing the frequency a little.

I hope this data can be of help to some of you!
If someone wants to try something similar without the thermal pads it could be interesting.



PS: Here's the code to increase the TDP, it's specific to the i7-8550U and it could void your warranty or brick your CPU. The only warranty is that it does not make coffee. Use at your own risk.

Spoiler

Normal:

Code:

#!/usr/bin/sudo bash
# 3.7/3.7/4.0/4.0 GHz Turbo for 4/3/2/1 cores
wrmsr 0x1ADH 0x25252828
printf "Turbo for 4/3/2/1 cores: "
rdmsr 0x1ADH
# Original 8 to 44 watts TDP
wrmsr 0x610 0x42016000dc8040
printf "Register 0x610 value: "
rdmsr 0x610
printf "\n Editing MCHBAR register value ...\n "
devmem2 0xFED159A0 w 0xDD8040

Long Term:

Code:

#!/usr/bin/sudo bash
# 2.7 GHz Turbo for 4/3/2/1 cores
wrmsr 0x1ADH 0x1b1b1b1b
printf "Turbo for 4/3/2/1 cores: "
rdmsr 0x1ADH
# Unlock full 44 watts TDP
wrmsr 0x610 0x42016000dd8160
printf "Register 0x610 value: "
rdmsr 0x610
printf "\n Editing MCHBAR register value ...\n "
devmem2 0xFED159A0 w 0xDD8160

Long Term Aggresive:

Code:

#!/usr/bin/sudo bash
# 3.2 GHz Turbo for 4/3/2/1 cores
wrmsr 0x1ADH 0x20202020
printf "Turbo for 4/3/2/1 cores: "
rdmsr 0x1ADH
# Unlock full 44 watts TDP
wrmsr 0x610 0x42016000dd8160
printf "Register 0x610 value: "
rdmsr 0x610
printf "\n Editing MCHBAR register value ...\n "
devmem2 0xFED159A0 w 0xDD8160

 

when my zen start backlight keyboard is off have any way for when start lock backlight keyboard ever on (dell) thanks

 

Has anyone figured out a way yet to by-pass the thermal limit on the GPU? It seems that there was some thread in spring/summer time that Asus rep confirmed that 305 will be the last bios update and according to their data there won't be a bios ever to fix the thermal limit.

Asus TweakUI 2 (or any other software) will not fix the issue nor by-pass the limit (I have tested all since first bios and what happens in best case scenario is that you can run few moments your card with 85-90 degree limit and then the bios figures out that something odd is happening and limits the thermals to 73 pronto.

 

The best way I found isn't a bypass but more of a workaround.

1. I put thermal pads between the CPU/GPU heatsinks and the body of the laptop.
2. I undervolt the CPU as much as I can.
3. I use a cooling pad with fans.
4. On a per-game basis, I limit the TurboBoost, and I make custom voltage curves for the GPU so that it overclocks and undervolts at the same time.

The goal is to be able to keep the system both stable and as cool as possible under load. I typically can stabilize it at around 67°C.

As a comparison, I can play for hours that way for DOOM at 720p low 60+ FPS or Prey at 768p med 45+ fps.

The real heat culprit in that laptop is the CPU (and shared CPU/GPU heatsink). The CPU Turbos aggressively which heats it up really fast and then it has to downclock agressively too. For short workloads it's perfect and snappy, but for sustained loads (gaming, encoding video, rendering, etc.) it's better overall to just limit the turbo and keep the heat in check.

Less is more!

Keep in mind this isn't really marketed as a gaming laptop. It's a great powerful daily driver for people that need quite a lot of horsepower for productivity; being decent at gaming is just an extra. I game maybe 5% of the time with mine, but I don't own a Desktop so it's perfect to get a taste of current games.

 

Yup. I did all but thermal pads. I have limited the cpu to 5W tdp which works wonders (but does not turbo anymore that much. Temps are much better. Furmark 800x600 default gives me stable 30-31 fps.

I got the GPU briefly around 90c with GPU tweak2, but after 15 seconds it went back to 73. Durin that 15s period fps was 41-42, which tells where the issue is. Remember that cpu cannot go over 5W, so cooling is almost completely for GPU (which is not enough...)