Asus Zephyrus S GX502 Owner's Lounge

What it says in the title. I can't find much discussion of this model elsewhere so I'm hoping it can happen here.

 

I agree there should be a thread for this.

 

And now there is!

I quite like the overall build quality of the system. I didn't expect to be crazy about the "flap" on the bottom but it's actually been really nice, like having a built-in cooling pad so I can play games with it on my lap. Performance has been good and while max fan speed is a little too "hair dryer-y" for my liking, managing heat-to-noise tradeoff via Armoury Crate has been solid.

My only hangup is that I've had a few spontaneous hangs and reboots. A lot of the time when I turn it on, it freezes during the boot logo animation, then I turn it off and it powers up without issue. Every once in a while, it seems OK until I get to the desktop, then hangs a minute or so after login.

Other than that, it's been pretty stable, so I've just kind of been dealing with it, but I'd feel a lot better long term if i figured out what was causing it. I'm trying to avoid dealing with an RMA during lockdown, but who knows how long that's going to be...

 

Any bios update that would fix the issue? Seems more like software than hardware.

I was debating between this model and the GX531 before I actually got it because they were both in the neighborhood of super thin and portable with plenty of power. I ran into some high temps with it before I liquid metal both CPU and GPU and now it runs like the coolest laptop ever. How's the temp in the GX502?

 

It's on latest BIOS (308), at least as of this past weekend. If it's a known issue, I haven't really seen anybody else complaining about it. Then again, I haven't seen that much written about it at all -- especially the GX502GV that I got, with 2060 instead of 2070. I haven't really done a full on stress test to check temps, but it hasn't gotten uncomfortably warm while gaming which is what I mostly care about.

 

let me introduce myself as a gx502 owner! well let's start off by saying that temps on this laptop aren't the greatest, I had to undervolt it and set turbo boost to a max of 3.4ghz to stay underthe 90s range without loosing much performance, I'll probably repaste it too in the near future if I find the strenght to do so, I'm a bit scared of doing it ngl

 

Looking to maybe buy this laptop. How is the noise in light load (like watching youtube video in FHD@50fps + some other apps opened)?

 

Alpha, I run it in G-Sync mode (with Optimus disabled) so my temps might be slightly higher than what you'd get without waking up the dGPU, but the fans are still either off or at the lowest level (barely audible) when I'm just web browsing or watching videos. That's with Armoury Crate set to "Silent" profile, which lets things get slightly hotter than "Performance" would. I'm very pleased with the fan noise on "Silent".

Re: the complaints I had back in April, it's better but not totally fixed. I've still had a few crashes and/or spontaneous reboots, maybe once a week on average. One thing I've started doing that seems to help is waiting to plug it in until after it's been awake / booted for a minute or two. It might sound weird, but Armoury Crate has hooks to change state during power transitions, and I suspect that if you go from "unplugged" to "plugged" while it's still starting up, it can cause a driver problem. Since I started doing that I've only had it hang on boot / resume once or twice. Not sure my superstition is the cause, but it can't hurt, right?

 

You problem sure sounds like some sort of weird hardware issue if there is no one else experiencing it. I am looking into the 2020 version. Comes with liquid metal on the CPU stock.

Anyone have any opinions about the ESS sabre DAC? Any hiss on IEMS?

 

Got mine in the mail today. It's pretty nice but the screens viewing angles are terrible. I don't feel like I ever can be completely centered. Pretty bad bleed in middle and edge of the screens. It's going back.

 

Which display do you have? (What frequency, etc?)

 

There is only one display option for the 2020 S15 300hz. Showed it to a few other people here and all of them are also weirded out. You literally can't see the whole screen without some sort of viewing angle problem unless you walk 6 feet back.

 

Gotcha. I wasn’t sure if you’d end up getting an earlier gx502, the ones that are on sale now with i7-9750s and 144hz screens (I think they still qualify for discussion under the gx502 owners thread).

Anyway, the 300hz screens that are used here are the same AU Optronics screen used in other 2020 laptops, like the new MSI’s, Razer Blade 15 2020, etc. So I was surprised to hear a complaint about the viewing angles since all of these 300hz screens are the same one, and I’d never heard anyone else complain about viewing angles, only heard good things about the screen in other reviews and forums. Some people did say that at 300 nits, it’s not ideal for work in direct sunlight though.

Other reviews actually have good things to say about the viewing angles specifically:

“The matte 300 Hz Full HD IPS display is also one of the innovations in comparison to the predecessor model. The display scores points with stable viewing angles, sufficient brightness, good contrast, quick response times, and great color reproduction. The color-space coverage is pleasing too.” ( Source)

 

This is what I thought as well. It's a bit mind boggling. It's like there is a circular area that is bright and vignetting that is dark that tracks with head movement. I got a video of it that looks to demonstrate it fairly clearly. The dark areas provide much worse contrast and make seeing things in dark games difficult. I end up moving my head around to move the bright area to the area I am looking at. Really weird.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1THl0VvDZByaeQyv1Zd5JaMOI8ch7f8Vg/view?usp=sharing

HWiNFO reports the display is:
AU Optronics AUOBC8C
B156HAN12.0
Week: 32 Year: 2019

 

I haven't visited this thread in a while, just wanted to say that I've had this system for 10 months now and the hang/freeze issue is at least as bad as when I first got it. It's especially bad when I'm installing new games, for some reason -- I've been trying to install Mechwarrior 5 (from Game Pass) all day, and after about a dozen reboots it's halfway through the 50Gb download. I've already tried a "keep my files" system reset, and it seemed a bit better for a while, but I still get hangs at least a couple times a week. The only thing I haven't tried is a full reset. I'd RMA it but I don't want to go without for who knows how long in the middle of the pandemic.

 

Anyone has a GX502GW BIOS v308 somewhere?

 

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AjfKGcMl1Xuog48mfR1rfQoo87XywQ?e=L7GWFE

Password is "notebookreview".