N56vz review and owners lounge - Techno Art

If the heatpipes come in contact with the wrong components inside the laptop. Or there's a contact point in the chassis, or on a screw on the motherboard that's connected to the bottom of the chassis, that sort of thing. Then the heat is led into the chassis instead of to the heatsink.

It's critical when you have aluminum plates, and so on, because the aluminum has almost no heat-capacity, and will absorb heat really quickly. And you get a glowing bedpan heater you can use in the winter, the internal components are boiled, etc. You'll notice right away once the temps go up on the cpu/gpu - only the exhaust should get hot.

 

nipsen.. would you mind to write a step by step guide on how to clean install Win7 with MBR on this machine? i've googled around but am so fearful to try anything, i've never dealt with UEFI bioses before.

i have a Win7 dvd and all the drivers ready, and backed up everything, but:
1. will i break anything by using MBR instead of the factory GPT format?
2. will the bios be able to support and detect the new format?
3. some threads mention about having to change BIOS settings, but i dont see anything related in the bios, except for Add/Remove EFI boot option (and that scares me again)

thanks~

 

Your wish is my command. ..no, actually already wrote it. Link to the guide in the sig.

I don't know if there might be something that breaks, to be honest. It is possible that Asus has some power profile settings or behaviour set in the efi boot. It could be there's some initialisation here. The last bios with the s6 sleep for example just turns my computer off after a while instead of putting it into hibernation. This could be another Asus bios tweak with the professional touch we've come to expect. Or it might be something that's been corrected through some efi setting. Maybe they moved one function from the acpi scripts and to some hardware layer script, maybe it's just some driver I installed that broke it, maybe it was some power profile setting that broken. I don't know.

But everything works just as before, aside from that one little thing. There's no link between the bios and efi boot directly either, since the actual efi boot is launched as a secondary program. It must work separately as it is currently made on all laptops, technically speaking.

But I don't know for certain. Because it is possible to set a couple of settings in the efi boot before windows starts.

What you lose with going from gpt to mbr is:
-you can only have 4 primary partitions.
-you can't boot encrypted partitions without a second gpt-bootloader, etc.
-asus' efi boot manager.

For me that doesn't matter, though. You don't need to change anything in the bios either. The bios will pick the first bootable device, and then switch to "legacy" mode if no bootable gpt-partitions are found.

 

hmm.. i read your guide.. so its basically i have to wipe the partitions and format the HDD as MBR during windows install? It means i will lose the Asus recovery partition too. Other than that, its just a normal format>reinstall procedure?

 

Yes, just install the driver disc after the install completes.

..Hm. You know, I guess you could keep the partitions (asus efi, recovery launch, recovery partition), but just remove the windows partitions. The bootloader(100mb system) and the other one. Then reinstall windows on the free space inside the gpt-partition, and add an entry in asus' efi boot. Then you could still use the asus recovery partition later if you wanted to, by launching it from the asus efi boot as usual. (That would likely overwrite everything, though. Partition setup, sizes, allocation, etc).

How is the i5 version working out, by the way? Power-draw on battery a bit more easy to manage..?

 

theres currently 4 partitions

Asus Recovery
200 MB (must be your mysterious bootloader )
OS and Data 2 partitions

so i could delete the OS, Data and bootloader partitions but keep Recovery? That sounds good then i just convert the blank space to MBR > install Windows?

i5 is awesome so far, but what do you mean by easy to manage?

 

I would like to buy this but I cannot decide between the n76vz or the n56vz - I'm leaning towards the latter due to portability but the n76 has one lovely screen! Also, do you think that the QWERTZ [German keyboard] would be an issue if I am using Photoshop or Adobe Premiere Pro?

 

I suppose you could just leave the space inside the gpt-partition (it's a wrapper, really), and windows should create the two partitions it needs inside the gpt-partition. I haven't tried it, though.

You could also add a new primary partition outside the gpt-partition. But then you can't use the EFI bootloader to boot it. You would just be circumventing it completely. This /might/ also work, though. If it's possible to switch between defaulting mbr and defaulting efi on the same disk in the bios (but I don't think you can do that).

The i5 thing - the i7 is a bit power-hungry, so when the battery power falls below some 20% capacity or something, you start to get mainboard panics when you go over 60w draw. This isn't easy to get around, because the i7 draws pretty much exactly the same amount of power as long as it's powered, and there's no way to really reduce the power-draw if you want wifi on, or light on the screen... So heavy gaming on battery then is dicey at best.

 

Hey guys,
hope this is the right forum. Just bought an N56VZ. It's really nice, but when I tried to replace the optical drive with my SSD (which I had from my previous notebook) using a SATA-to-ODD caddy (just like [1]), it won't recognize it.

I've put a 120gb OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G into the caddy, removed the screw indicated with an icon which vaguely looks like a CD, took the optical unit out, switched front plates, and put the caddy in.

I couldn't manage to fit the separate metal piece which is screwed in the back of the unit and allows it to be held by the aforementioned screw in the bottom of the notebook, but the connections feel like they are plugged.

Sadly as these units use a slimline sata connector I can't easily plug this thing to another computer (looking for it though).

Question is, has anybody successfully replaced their ODD with an SSD?

Thanks!

nachokb

[1] 2nd hard drive HDD/SSD Caddy Bady For ASUS N56 V56vz N56vm N56VZ-S4044V Series | eBay

 

No. Try again.

 

Hi,
Newcomer and first post.

just to say that my vz has arrived here in the uk from the usa.
No backlit keyboard (as ordered).
subwoofer not working.
Probably more wrong. Will know more after the weekend.

Rang uk Asus technical for some clarification, and they advised as follows:
1. Yes, you can return it to Asus here in the uk under the international warranty, since the subwoofer is not working.
2. No, if the backlit keyboard is missing, you send it back to the supplier and take it up with them.
Brilliant.
The Asus tech said that the ba keyboard had been an issue for them. They treat it as an option, like bluetooth (their words).
They said "if the supplier wants to order them with backlit keyboards, then we will supply them".
I can see me being in the middle of a nice little bun fight here, and daughter's big combined 18th/Xmas present lost somewhere in the ether.

Off to find a corner to cry in.
Cheers,
Stuart.

 

..great. They treat the backlit keyboard as an option.. even on the variants that should have it? New low. Which is amazing, considering where we were.

 

Had my 56vj for almost a week. Seems pretty nice. Does this thing ever stop smelling? Thought maybe something was burning up but my temp monitors say 45c.

 

Could be spilt cooling goop around the graphics card or even the cooling block near the cpu, etc.

Btw, if that's the 635m version..? Might want to use it as an excuse to consider trading it in for a variant with a 650m (kepler) card. Very small price-difference, and the cooling is so good it's a sin to not have a better graphics card in it..

 

Hi Nipsen! Thanks for a Very Good Review!

I'd also switch to the GT 650M if I were in this situation as the performance difference is quite substantial.

 

Can people post their CPU temperatures? These are mine using Speccy:

N56VZ-DS71
Windows 8:
Power Plan: Balanced
Iddle Temp: 56C - 60C
Heavy load temp: ~81C

Is this normal? I just did a clean install.
Cheers

 

Does anyone know how to remove the wireless card for replacement? Thanks

 

Question on installing a HD in place of the CD drive

I took the CD drive out with no problems. However, I am not sure how to screw in the HD caddy. Am I supposed to remove anything from the CD drive and put it on the HD caddy? When I install HD caddy, it does not take as much space as the CD drive, so it does not line up with the top (lines up with the bottom). Normal? And When I tried to take it out, it got stuck on something, I am not sure what. Any good guides?

 

Hi everyone,
I just bought this laptop and I find it to be amazing.
Yet I'm concerned for the CPU temperature. While playing Skyrim, it easily reach 90C, and it's winter. This happens with turbo boost of course.
With prime, it goes up to 96/97C...i'm kind of worried. In summer in Rome (i'm italian), outside temperature goes all the way up to 40C...and I'm afraid that my beloved notebook will melt.

So, should I be worried or not? Gpu temp is fine (max 69c, overclocked to +135/+100).

One more thing. With prime, CPU voltage @ 3,2ghz is 1,224volt. This looks pretty high to me, and I think it could cause the issue. Would you please tell me your CPU voltage in the same conditions (BEFORE turbo stops working of course...so just launch prime and take note of the voltage before the frequency goes down).

Thank you guys!

 

Someone posted a good walkthrough on how to do this in this thread somewhere...

You shouldn't need to do anything else than picking off and replacing the face-plate. The size should be the same as well.. unless the frame has the contact at the bottom on the outside of the dock, that sort of thing. Only thing that should stick is the contact point..

Not sure. It's supposed to go gradually up with the multipler from 0.8 to 1.1 or so, I think.. I've never seen it go over 1.076v when running something like prime. But I've been running throttlestop and enabling the power-saving options, and I'm not sure if that adjusts something down or not.

Could be it depends on the bios you have? Still, it's not really a problem to get to 97 degrees on full burn - that's where the processor ends up before it hits the passive trip-point, and it's supposed to go to boost less often. And you get 85-90 degrees on the core when running "real" full load programs on this processor - that's completely normal, and the cooling handles that well. So if it actually stops there, then it's not really a problem.

But the volt seemed a bit high. Anyone else seen that high? Shouldn't be possible to overclock it after all, so don't think it's abnormally high or anything.. it's not necessary to set it that high to get it stable at 3.1-3.3Ghz, or anything like that.

 

I have the size right now, but I am still worried, because there is now nothing to screw in. Should I have removed the bracket from the CD player and attached it to the HD caddy so I could screw it in the same place the CD drive had the screw (from the bottom of the laptop)? I still cant get it out, but it works so thats the most important part. Even if I pull really hard, it is stuck on something, and wiggling it doenst help.

 

Securing the caddy - yes you should transfer over the small bracket from the CD player to the new caddy, then the single screw on the bottom of the case holds it in place in the normal way - double check that you screw on the bracket the right way around- have a good look before removing from CD player

Is a common problem that they get stuck when pulling out - search my sig. and you'll see a post I placed about ways to release - the edge of the cd case gets stuck against the edge of the slot and will only pull out a few mm.

Brute strength won't pull it out. I used a thin piece of plastic to act as a slider to ease the edges past each other - usually jams on the right hand side

Good luck

 

Illuminated Keyboard - UK versions

As I posted on the N56VZ-win8 thread - my UK N56VZ didn't come with illuminated keyboard, and I fancy the idea of sourcing one, strip down & retrofit. Should be possible as some (? USA ) versions of N56's had backlit keyboards as standard.

Advice pls: anyone been able to buy / seen anywhere selling the backlit keyboard, or have the part number? (Asus EU site doesn't as far as I can see)

Anyone seen a full strip down thread on he N56 (any version) - have searched and googled without success. If I can get a keyboad I may be the first !!

PS anybody found any issues wih updating to the new 215 BIOS?

Thanks

 

Thanks for your answer. I thought it was a bios issue too. My bios was v215 while running those tests, so I tried to downgrade to 211, but i had no luck.

What I did right now, is to set the max multiplier to 30 with throttlestop. Now the voltage stops at 1.16, and prime temperature at 90c...but still, i think 1,24volt is very high. That's a 4.3+ghz voltage!

The power saving feature of throttlestop only lets the multi go down to 8x (instead of 12x) when idle...it does not affect voltages at all.

What else can I do?

Thank you!!

 

215? Agree it's high, and that you would probably be able to lower the temperature and still run stable at 1.1v. I.e., that it's something you would do after overclocking the processor and failing.

Not sure what would motivate doing that. Upping the volt in general seems a very strange thing to do on a laptop. Ram or processor - just makes no sense. I mean, I've said it before - the guys tweaking the bios at Asus don't have control on what they're doing. They still have the standard ram running at a slight overclock, for example, with timings that aren't determined by spd.

And no -- there's really nothing we can do here. It's possible to change some of the functions in amibcp 4.53. It's possible to alter that and then flash that part of the bios. But there are a bunch of functions you don't see and can't change, which are set elsewhere. Relationship between base clock and dram, dram max speeds, and so on just isn't there. I can't find the vcore settings and the steps either. So is it in a different module from what you can change with amibcp..?

I guess we just have to hope Asus blows up someone's laptop with the 215 bios, and that that will prompt them to hire someone who knows anything whatsoever about bios-tweaking.. Point is, they don't respond to nice letters. They don't respond to slightly annoyed letters. They don't respond to angry letters. And they don't respond to threats. But now they're ending up releasing something that could cause serious problems themselves..

 

The point is that I don't even know if return it or not...I wish i could just lower my voltage a bit, but this seems impossible, even tweaking the bios with AMBCP 4.53. As you said, there's no vcore setting at all. I feel kind of stuck in the mud.

 

Yeah. And I feel bad about writing a review like this for a laptop that is kind of being tweaked worse and worse over time.. I mean, it literally would take me 20 minutes to fix this if I had the tools Asus has. I'm not bragging here - this isn't rocket science. And it's one hardware config - just one. The only difference that makes any difference is the ram.

But you can slot it in and out, like the hdd, and have the settings change, right... It's not a coincidence that those two things are accessible from the service hatch.. even if Asus marketing seems to think it is...

 

I have heard these bios problems mentioned, but what issues, besdies the ones you are responding to, are happening because of it? Will new 8gb ram run into problems, as long as it is the same (pc 12800) as the orininal 6gb?

 

..Maybe. You get ram with the same "rating", that has different timing in the spd-table (..or, it's made with different latency rating) that fits with the ... 100 x 8 Mhz FSB = 800Mhz, and FSB RAM ratio at 1:2, that the system runs at.

So the standard hynix chips run at 11-11-11-28 timing with CR:1. That's set in the spd-table as well. But the bios is just locked to those timings it seems. So if you for example had another set of PC12800 rated ram that also will support 800Mhz.. but with different timing. Say.. 12-10-10-27. Then the timing won't fit, and the laptop might not boot, or you get the weird hangs that turn up when you play games, run something taxing on the computer, that sort of thing. If the ram only supports cr2 rating at the highest timing, it's not going to boot.

Same happens if you have ram that can go to higher frequencies. They tend to have higher latency timing for the higher frequencies. Or lower volt ram, or dynamically adjusted volt ram - might have very low latency timing on the lower frequencies, but have higher latency timing on 800Mhz. So then suddenly the extremely expensive ram won't boot.

On top of that, the ram will always run at max speed, at max volt, etc. It's possible to use any amount of different schemes on this mainboard to clock up and down, adjust the bus-speed, etc. This would have saved some battery, made it get better idle/low effect time. Without losing the performance on peak speed. Lower volt ram would have been perfect..

Other than that, with higher voltage than needed - it's the usual. Shorter life-time, more frequent repastes, possible overheats, passive throttle too early, that sort of thing. Won't blow up now, but might do that later.

And there's no reason to do something like this. It's just bad work. No "it could have drawbacks and advantages". It's like putting higher octane fuel in a motor without opening the valves, or something like that.. Might sound better on high revs, but..

 

Thank you all for the great information in this thread! My laptop arrives next week, and hoping that I have more of the pros than the cons!

I think I saw your post on another forum when I searched this issue (nothing else came up on google, so hoping it's an isolated issue). I also noticed that your configuration comes with the core i7 3630qm instead of the i7 3610qm. Do you think the change in processor might have something to do with the raise in voltage / temps?

The configuration I ordered also comes with the i7 3630qm, rated at 2.4ghz - 3.4ghz. I'm not knowledgeable about voltages etc. But has it had an impact on the battery life as well? Maybe the updated processor is causing some problems.

So because of the Asus BIOS settings, we're actually investing in a laptop that's going to die sooner than normal (even with the well managed cooling)?

 

Voltage does have an impact on the lifespan of a CPU. Still, 1,22volt is a safe voltage. That's not the problem. Problem is that higher voltage will lead to higher temperatures, and higher temperatures will ruin the cpu faster.
It's impossible to tell how long a cpu that has been operating at 90, 95C is gonna last. But for sure, the same cpu at lower temps is gonna last longer.

That being said, the answer to your question is no. There are several 3630qm topping at 1,1volt full load. It's just my sample being somehow "special". I think is a bios related issue..for some reason, the motherboard is pushing in too much power. Sometimes this also happens to desktop computer, but in that case user has full control of voltages and it's a matter of seconds getting the problem fixed.

Anyway, don't worry as I said: it's not something that has to do with every 3630qm.

Once your laptop is delivered let me know your full speed voltage under load please!

 

Hmm...the ram I bought is 9-9-9-24 (Crucial Vengance.) Should I even put it in?

 

were you able to replace the card? care to share how?

 

If it's rated 9-9-9-24/cr1 at 1600Mhz, it should work, since it's lower on all the timings. But.. you won't actually get lower timing than what you had.

..look in the "16Gb for n56" thread in the forum one level up. Some examples of what will work there.

 

Once you remove the cover (same one that is over the HDD, RAM, etc) the WIFI card is exposed; it's only 1 screw.
The main problem was that, even though the card was there, it wasn't easy to remove as there's a plastic just over the screw that holds the card that makes using a screwdriver very difficult... What I did: remove all the other screws of the laptop (the back/base) so the plastic that is over the card would be lifted just a few millimeters so the screwdriver would fit.. Your experience might be different and might be able to remove the card with only removing the main HDD/mem cover (as it should!)..
I bought the Centrino Advanced-N 6230 (2 antennas) that fits well (considering the description above) and is 30 dollars or so. I don't understand why Asus chose to save money with this part of the computer, major let down.
At first the 5Gz would drop constantly the connections and had to switch to 2.4; after upgrading to W8, it's working well at 5Gz at 270-300 mbps and WIDI is OK, too.
Hope the long explanation helps

 

[sorry, replied above without the correct quote]
Once you remove the cover (same one that is over the HDD, RAM, etc) the WIFI card is exposed; it's only 1 screw.
The main problem was that, even though the card was there, it wasn't easy to remove as there's a plastic just over the screw that holds the card that makes using a screwdriver very difficult... What I did: remove all the other screws of the laptop (the back/base) so the plastic that is over the card would be lifted just a few millimeters so the screwdriver would fit.. Your experience might be different and might be able to remove the card with only removing the main HDD/mem cover (as it should!)..
I bought the Centrino Advanced-N 6230 (2 antennas) that fits well (considering the description above) and is 30 dollars or so. I don't understand why Asus chose to save money with this part of the computer, major let down.
At first the 5Gz would drop constantly the connections and had to switch to 2.4; after upgrading to W8, it's working well at 5Gz at 270-300 mbps and WIDI is OK, too.
Hope the long explanation helps

 

16gb? But I was under the impression the N56VZ could only go up to 8..

 

Will do! Once it arrives I'll immediately put it through it's paces. I'll make sure the temps are responding normally.

 

Official memory capacities are sometimes are there because not all configurations will work and they can just tell people it's not supported, or the larger sticks were not common on launch so they are not tested.

 

What about N56VM, does it support 16gb RAM? Bought a pair on amazon and is only taking 8gb.

Amazon.com: Komputerbay 16GB (2x 8GB) PC3-10600 10666 1333MHz SODIMM 204-Pin Laptop Memory 9-9-9-24 for PC only - not MAC: Electronics

I tried both modules by itself and they work perfectly, but when I put 2x8GB my notebook will not start..

I'm running BIOS ver. 214 think so

 

That's because it's rated 9-9-9-24 at 1333Mhz. At 1600Mhz the timing it will run at will be lower. There's usually something to go on, so it won't be a problem running a bit tighter timing than the rating. It also is different from chip to chip.

But since the bios locks the timing, you need to use pc12800 ram with equal or better timing than the ones in the laptop already. ..

 

Any solution? Or I'll just have to sell them ???

Thanks

 

Yeah.. the entire bios with spd-timing project hit a snag.. The part of the bios we could flash doesn't have a setting to enable xmp profiles or timing governed by spd (..there's a data strip on the actual chip that says, you know.. "this ram-stick is certified for THIS PARTICULAR TIMING!!! HIT ME!").

So unless Asus releases their tools (not going to happen), someone clever figures out a way to maybe rip a functioning ami-bios with the functions enabled from another laptop brand (possible, but difficult to predict all things that could go wrong, since it might be possible to force-flash the bios with the extended settings..), or Asus employs someone with a brain to spend ten minutes tweaking their bios (seriously improbable) -- you're stuck with a pair of ram-sticks you can't use.

Same with my expensive 1.35v chips. If they run, they are automatically overvolted, which they don't like. Same with chips that specifically are supposed to idle down to 1.35v, and then push up towards 1.5v on higher states -- not working, just like the power-scaling on the bus-speed.

So.. not sure what to tell you. I've been pretty sharp with Asus. They're just ignoring me. I know others have written Asus as well, with the same specific requests - down to particular bios-settings in the actual bios interface, asking for them to enable it. No response.

The closest I got to an official response was that someone said the frequency for the ram was locked, so the processor shouldn't be overclocked. Makes absolutely no sense. As in, it's idiotic. But if someone at corporate hq believes that, then that's how it is. And I've seen bigger companies than Asus run products to the ground because of some imbecile with a marketing degree dictating "truths" they've convinced themselves of.. To the point where they've ended up retiring the entire product-line rather than admit they were wrong. I'm not joking here, by the way.

So if someone at Asus declared next year that they were dropping the n-series due to complaints, and launched another new series with one single configuration, to copy Apple and the Macs, that had iron-clad settings and no service-hatch, no replaceable battery, and so on (i.e., it'd be called a "unibody design"). If that happened, it wouldn't be overwhelmingly surprising.

 

Well you can use thaiphoon burner to at least change what the ram reports itself as.

 

So, just as I planned a long time ago, I've now ordered my N56VZ. Hopefully it won't have any defects so, I won't need to send it back.

Anyway, I've been following this thread for quite some time, lurking in the bushes, and I was wondering if you guys could give me some kind of check list of things I should check or tests I should run to make sure that everything is ok?
Anything from common hardware and software issues, to cooling system/max temps and voltages is appreciated really.

But I'll start off with a smaller question; I've read that the laptop has the screws on the bottom covered by small pads that are glued on, is this correct? Glued..on? So, when you have been opening things up, have you just ignored putting them back or do you have to apply glue to them again?

Thanks for a lot of great info in this thread.

 

..just use a screwdriver and flip them up. They'll stick back again afterwards a few times (<- first absolutely certain thing in the entire thread).

Checklist for defects could be:
-misplaced/bent contacts on either power plug or the sub-woofer plug. Could mean there's a ground problem.
-heat leaks. When running heavy loads and the fan revs up - do you immediately get spots with 30+ degrees around the chassis? If so, heat-leak. Not supposed to be that way.
-sticky keys. It's very difficult to get into the chassis on this computer, so make sure the keys seem ok.
-touchpad - supposed to be 1mm below the chassis surface on all sides
-idle temps/load temps: Cpu - 45-50/80-90 degrees. Gpu - 30/65 degrees.

(Note that running tools such as prime95 will be able to push the processor to the passive trip-point at 95 degrees, since it can run operations into the processor cache, instead of waiting for and transporting in and out new data. This never happens in "real life". Also, when you boot up the computer the first time and connect to the internet, a bunch of updates are going to automatically run - this will push the cpu to max temps, and specially the .net recompiles can last for hours if you keep interrupting the process. And they will always begin again when there's free cycles on the processor - so then the processor will never idle. Just fyi when checking idle temps..)

 

Thanks, nipsen. Will pick it up tomorrow, so I can start having a closer look at it.

What about the cracking/weird noises from the internal speakers and/or subwoofer?
The speaker-thing, if I'm not confusing myself was just them turning on and off, right? Or do you guys suggest any tweak to the settings in order to make it happen less often?
As for the subwoofer-cracking, I don't quite remember what was finally said about it (the thread is long and I have actually read every last post ). Was there anything to do about it if it occurs, or should I just assume hardware-defect and exchange it for a new one? I don't think I'm going to use it very much, I'm more of a earphone/headphone kind of user, but I mean, if it's part of the purchase I would like it to work as intended.

 

Oh, yeah. That. *wince*

The internal speakers draw a bit of power, and they thankfully turn off automatically when there's no activity on the soundcard. I.e., when no program has opened a thread on the sound "governor". In the same way it only turns on when there's activity.

So when you start up the system for the first time, you have all the windows sounds on, such as the clicks for every catalogue you open. And that sound is finished before the speakers turn on. And what you hear then is just crackle. Over and over again, while scrolling and just clicking on files, or clicking on a flash-video(it claims a sound hardware thread).

I'm pretty sure that the continuous crackle in the sub-woofer people had is connected to the ground problem with the laptops that had misaligned jacks..

So just turn the windows sounds off, and you should have a pop at the beginning of a sound-track or a video, and so on. There's no crackle while using hdmi or the stereo plug, of course. Crackle sound grows more timid as the amplifier element grows warmer as well.. But it sure got annoying when having the default windows sounds turned on, no doubt about that..

edit: the registry tweaks (just search for realtek sound crackle on the forum) didn't work for me. I'm not sure why. Tried as user and as admin (which runs the sound card daemon), but no difference. But the idea would be to increase the timeout for terminating the sound daemon when on power cable. ..seems not that significant to me, and doesn't matter for my use. I'd rather the speakers turn off as quickly as possible when not using them anyway.

 

Hello

Im new to this site but i have read that " the reasons for that crackling noise is the MACAFFE antivirus. I deleted it and and crackling noise was gone"

May help ?

Im think about buying a UK version of ASUS N56VZ from Currys / PC world , is this laptop old news now please ??

 

So, I got the laptop yesterday and spent some time looking it over and testing it briefly. I thought I would share my first impressions and issues with it. Overall I'm quite pleased.

Chassi-and-port-wise everything seemed to be ok, it gets surprisingly cool when it's turned off for a while.Keyboard is pretty easy to get used to, but that might be because its feel is fairly similar to the one on my old laptop's keyboard (less noisy though). Miles ahead of the usual floating-island types that are used in many consumer laptops.
The touchpad is ok, but not up-to-par compared to the rest. The surface can feel a bit rough, the upper third is pretty difficult to click with and the lower corners feel a bit loose, it feels like they got quite a bit of nothing underneath them when you click them. It works, but it doesn't give you the impression of quality that the rest of the chassi gives. Also, since it doesn't have dedicated buttons, the touchpad might misunderstand what you are trying to do when you're using more than one finger at once.

Screen, backlit-keyboard, everything seems to be working.
Sub-woofer and integrated speakers as well, and they had a pretty good sound to them. No sound issues so far. I tried "Asus Product Demo Movie" on Windows Media Player, and was a bit worried at first when the speakers started making that vibrating/hollow-noise (That speakers often do when they're on the limit (or passed it) of what they can optimally deal with in terms of volume. Not sure how else to explain it...) at the volume that had been pre-set in Windows (67/100).
However, I ran it ran the video through Youtube on my old laptop as well, that has pretty good sound even though it doesn't go up quite as much in volume, and that one did pretty much the same thing. So, I'm thinking it's probably normal. Any of you guys noticed anything similar on yours?

Going on with the same video, it was the source of a bit of my annoyance, parts of the actual video actually get stuck a little now and then about a sec at a time, which makes the playback of the video very choppy and you can clearly see parts getting stuck if you look carefully. Not sure if the video is the problem or if it's some kind of playback issue. Haven't really tested video playback any closer, but didn't notice it anywhere else so far.

When running at virtually no load (or idle), it hovers around 38-45 celsius on the CPU and 34-35 on the 650M (not in use), but the CPU temps can go up pretty fast to 50-60 depending on what is happening, especially if you start something more demanding. At these low temperatures though, the chassi is cool and the laptop is generally very very quiet even when the fan is running at minimal. The 7200RPM Hitachi drive that shipped in the laptop is actually the part that occasionally makes the most noise at these levels. In terms of chassi temperature, again it's the HDD that is positioned just to the write of the touchpad, that is clearly hotter than the rest at maybe mid-30 to 40 degrees depending on what it's been doing. A bit annoying, since your hands/wrists spend some time resting there, and you notice the difference in temperature constantly from on to the other. I'm planning to put the HDD in the Optical bay and put in a SSD there anyway, so that will probably fix that detail.

Haven't really done proper load testing and cooling-system testing yet, but I did run 3DMark06 a few times and tried to run 3DMark Vantage, and even though the CPU can get up to 60 very quickly, from that point on the fans also start working harder in stages. The result is that I never managed to get it over 78-82 (with or without using the HD4000, when used the 650M got up to about 75 max according to HWMonitor). I expect at least the CPU to go higher when I get to it, but for now that didn't bring any major temperature increases in the chassi apart from making it considerably hotter right around the air vent.

I said I TRIED to run 3DMark Vantage and that is because I didn't manage to run through it all. The benchmark kept throwing an exception at the start of the 2nd CPU test, basically saying that "setForegroundWindow Failed!". It ran on my old laptop running Win7 without any issues, not sure what's going on there but at least it's software related. UPDATE: A third re-installation of 3DMark Vantage fixed it.

In general, a lot of the small issues and annoyances that I've been having are with the software parts of the package. Asus Live Update has been pestering me with an update that always fails, "Asus APRP" or something similar. Any similar issues?
After running Windows Update and being forced to reboot I got completely stuck at "Updating...Don't turn off the computer". I turned it off and on again, and suddenly it was actually doing something.
At two occasions yesterday Win8 decide to slowly just freeze. The part that previously at least was called "explorer.exe" stopped responding, meaning ModernUI and anything connected to it (taskbar) stopped responding too. Anything that I could open or run from the desktop was fine though. Finally, slowly but safely, everything just froze... I haven't uninstalled McAfee yet, so that's my first suspect, but it wouldn't surprise me if it's Win8 itself that's responsible.

I would say, that depends on what you want/need. Is it old news? No, it's still a very good laptop that is trying to find the middle-road between performance, mobility and price, and it does it fairly well. Of course, if you don't need it for the next 4-6 months, there's going to be new models with new hardware out (at premium prices at the start, as always).
Just make sure you actually research the one they're selling properly, so you don't get disappointed later. There's variations between what different versions come with. Make sure that version has what you're expecting.