Sunny's G51VX-RX05 Review

I have no excess heat when i overclocked it.. Check my first post..

 

so did you come up with any ideas on why the heatsink isnt sitting flush on the gpu, im thinking its due to the thermal sticky pads being to thick or the copper flaps its on being bent to much in height compared to the core of the heatsink so not everything is fitting right... did you try bending any of the copper?

While running furmark again this time for 10 minutes, gpu got up to 105c which is 3 degrees from its critical temp, ran fine, no throttling down, no clocking down.... the air coming out of the vent was hot, if u stuck your finger in a hole of the vent then you do get burned becuz thats where the fins are, right after running furmark, exiting then as quickly as possible shutting down laptop so fan is off while its heated up, i turned it off checked with hand and felt the bottom vent for air where the gpu is inside of the laptop and it was warm but not scorching hot on bottom, then i put my hand over the big PRETEND vent/subwoofer area and that was warmer than the gpu area on the bottom...

so its like the cooling solution is working like its suppose to... and because of the copper over the gpu components and the small area in there next to the fan and what not maybe the temp sensor is just reading the heat levels in like a pocket where the heat resides... i still have not seen the system crash, lockup, or do funny stuff especially in crappy vista os! and it has yet to AUTOMATICALLY downclock and leave an event msg in event manager saying it downclocked due to high temps.. Its very strange....

 

I tried bending the clamps a little to push the heat sink towards the gpu but still nothing.. Same temp readings looks like this is how the laptop was designed to run... Are you going to pull your heat sink out to check and see if yours too is not sitting properly?

 

thinking about it..... maybe we can divise a way to get a very thin sheet of coppper like a shim to put over core so its flush, then put the asus heatsink over that... i dunno.. i got big tube of as5 i just dont want to mess up the thermal sticky pads

 

the guy at best buy said the windows 7 free upgrade thing wouldn't be a problem if i bought it before the 26th. he said he'd "take care of it". how do i get the free upgrade once it's released? do i show my receipt to someone at best buy?

 

I guess the only other thing would be to call Asus and ask if those temperatures are safe for the GPU. I'm going to bet they answer either "yes" or "probably".

If they say something like "it seems a little high, but you should be fine" then I would start looking for mods to cool things down.

EDIT: There's one other thing. Just looking at the internal workings of the machine, I'd like to know if temperatures change at all with the main bottom panel off. That's still resting on a table or hard flat surface.

 

The slip clearly says before the 26th would not garner a free upgrade. Wouldn't take his word for it. If you really want Win7 don't take any chances.

 

How did you manage to negotiate the price down $100? I didn't realize that Bestbuy would do this, especially since there is such a small profit margin on laptops.

 

ok, My quad didn't arrive today so I haven't taken anything apart yet. Now from reading this thread since Ive been home, it looks like you guys have been busy today.

With Prime95 and Furmark each running separately, I had no locks ups, crashes or other wired oddities with Vista, surprisingly. . .

I used the latest Nvidia drivers, and nothing was changed or overclocked.

Note the two different GPU clock readings, but these are the maximum temps out of a few runs.

My biggest concern is the CPU idling at 50+ in a room with AC while sitting on a desk. Is that normal??

 

Take your laptop in on the 26th and have them return it and then purchase it again to get the upgrade.

 

Alright it was my turn, applied Arctic Silver 5 to cpu core, gpu core and heatsinks where the core meets it when all put back together... didnt change anything i dont think yet but it takes awhile for AS5 to take effect and sink in the pores of the copper 200+ hours of high temps and low temps to set it!

my gpu heatsink for the mostpart was flush on the gpu core, since on my heatsink all of the thermal paste was touching it!

look at pics all of them are before i cleaned the surface of copper with goo gone and polished up then applied as5 to heatsink and chips ACCEPT for the Northbridge chip as there was some weird special pink foam sticky thing for it, and i left the gpu copper heatsink sticky thermal pads on so they go back on chips!

here ya go click for larger version:

 

nice a little bit cooler what settings did you use for furmark exactly? also what was the AC set too? we dont got no AC in my home so its 76-80F as of lately indoors... and muggy/humid

 

Very nice pics, thank you for sharing those! +rep

The placement of the thermal pad for the GPU looks the same as sunny, so that just be the way they're putting them together.

 

Check out that attachment, anyone notice what I notice.

The machines thats applying the paste is configured for the 9800M still. It has not been adjusted for the position and rotation of the 260M

However, given the 99% coverage I see wouldnt have affected the unit within a measurable degree celsius. Paste is a little thick but given the imperfect alignment it looks like it was near proper to make sure the two surfaces had bonded.

Looks like they switched fan suppliers can you please get me the numbers off that fan? I want a spare lol

 

Nice work skyhawk, but to be honest, I think that break-in thing is overrated and won't change much. If it doesn't help any now, it's not gonna help much 200 hours later.

And the fact that it's an incredibly new product. Only reason I can see is he if got some accessories and extra warranty.

 

I was forced to use 1024x768, some weird error message kept popping up yelling at me about minimum resolution. xtreme burning mode, stability test.

Internal room temp was 70F


I'm starting to think I might need to drill some holes in the bottom after I place that quad in here.

 

Lucky I guess. I just asked if they had the asus g50 series and was directed to the g51, saying that the g50 is no longer being manufactured and that they don't have any. he went on about how the g51 is basically the same thing but with a better graphics card and wireless card. i said it was out of my price range and he said "i could check to see if i can bring it down to match the price of the g50". etc. etc. i didn't buy any warranty or accessories, just the laptop. i didn't even buy it on the spot since i knew little about it. he said he'd be there later, so i went home and researched then came back and bought it.

 

lol

are u sure u went to BB???

 

Clutch is 100% correct
look at this post: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=4987883&postcount=992

the 9800m's core is diagonal on the PCB and the thermal pads on the g51's heatsink is also diagonal.

After looking at both of your pics again i noticed that quite a bit of the top of the GPU(towards the end of the heatsink pipe) isnt touching the pad, especially on sunny's his core looks burned even. These heatsinks arent sitting flush.

 

Dude, do you always spam and have nothing to contribute with...? Seriously... every freaking post.

 

Well its not a pad its paste applied by a machine do it does look kinda like a perfect surface like a pad right lol. All the others are pads though.

From what I see except for that tiny corner the paste is making 100% contact with both surfaces. Its obvious that the paste is thick and as thick as it is its not touching very close to the gpu.

But its important to note that it is touching, part of the paste job is to create a path for heat where there are voids, but such filling does not conduct as well as if it were perfectly mating.

 

lol i call it a pad cuz it is perfect like one, i know its a paste

look very closely at sunnys pics again in this post:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=5001139&postcount=216

aleast 25% of that core hasnt even touched the "pad of paste"

 

Yeah not good on his at all. I would send that picture to asus, hopefully even though you pulled it up yourself id hope theyll honor the warranty. Id be afraid of core damage. Damn thing looks like the tip of my exhaust and i paid extra to have it burned.

 

You're talking about this pic right? I thought it might just be a fingerprint or some residue. But if you look at this pic, you can see it's the opposite side of the logo, and that's the side that is least imprinted into the pad.

 

skyhawks is better but still 10% of his isnt touching at all along that same edge.

if you guys are brave enough you can try to bend it flush into place.

 

exactly, its no bueno.

 

Yes now when I contrast skyhawk's pic with sunny's pic I can definitely see the difference, but the IHS still isn't making contact entirely, which is just sloppy

 

From what I see of skyhawks his is covered entirley in my opinion except for the corner due to the alignment of the paste. Should be fixed by him doing his own paste.

Now the weird part is where they both come up with the same temps even though one of them is clearly only half attached. This is really bad the contact with my G50 is nothing like this. Outside of a horrid batch of pipes I wonder if the core and card are not perfectly aligned in symetry with the pipe on its end, only thing i can think of as same pipe different card.

I would tell sunny to send the damn thing in if ASUS will take it at this time. If they will honor the warranty id rather send it in. Skyhawks might benifit from a minor tweak but new paste is my recomendation and then realizing in the end this things gonna run hot, sunny clearly has a bigger issue.

 

i wonder if having the core square with the mounting holes enables the heatsink to pivot "front to back" so to speak

with the 9800m core turned it allows the mounting holes to be in line with the longest part of the core (corner to corner) that also means the length of core to pivot "front to back" increases

if that makes any sense to you guys

 

So it seems like this problem is not going to be common on all laptops.. Yea i am going to call asus up and see whats up.. They should have improved the cooling in this system an i too did notice the way the thermal paste was seated on the heat sink..

 

I'm sitting here pondering if it's a good idea to return this one and wait for the G71(1920x1080)... Looks like it's delayed till mid July now. Bigger case=more air flow?

You know, I'm sweatin' the cooling system on this thing since my idle processor temps seem too high for a 2gig cpu. Maybe I'm just asking too much of it, or I'm spoiled with desktops. Sincerely, this is my first notebook so I don't really have a reference point, but at this point I can't imagine placing a 45w quad in this thingy.

Sunny, I hate to ask but could you post a follow up to what ASUS says about the warranty when removing the cooler?

 

Warrenty Voided!! Asus will only look at it now and decide if they will fix it for free or charge me a fee. I even told them about a few more guyz having this issue so its obvious that there is a problem with the unit.. He said that the temps should not be getting higher than 90 degrees and yet all of us has experience temps going above that.. Asus only runs 3dmark tests to check for temps but i told them that after running crysis only when it brings up the temps.. Looks like this is going back to best buy for an exchange.. I guess i will just stick with it going to those temps and just use the Zalman cooling pad.. I have the 3 year best buy warrenty so i am not so worried if this takes a dive on me. I will just get a replacement.

As i stated they told me that they get temps like 85-90 degrees when running 3dmark. This is exactly what i was getting when running 3dmark. Only when i was running crysis was when i was getting the higher temps.. Seems like this may be normal for this unit..

So if you want asus to take a look at your G51, don't remove the cooling system or else you will most likely get charged a fee for the repair.. I don't want to send in my unit and wait 2 weeks for them to make a decision so i will just be making an exchange and test the other unit out..

 

I appreciate the follow up. I am exchanging mine then for a G71 in hopes that more space equals better airflow.

 

No problem.. I tho will be sticking with the g51.. I just like the unit. 17" is going to be too big for me since I do carry my laptop around. I will just have to deal with those temps and tell myself that its normal..lol

 

that's so sad to hear. seems asus qc isnt what it used to be. i will not buy this unit. guess ill have to stick with the sager np8662. -_- really wanted the asus.

thank you for everything you've done sunnyc90 +Rep

 

yeah the g51 is starting to disappointing me...

ill probably get a g50X5 instead...

 

I wouldn't say mid-July. Some places have it already, as we could see from the pics. Maybe first week of July hopefully we can see them in all?

 

In my opinion, I would crack that laptop open, and remove and warranty stickers as carefully as possible.
To go about doing this you need to do a few things:

1. Heat up the GPU to around 180F, then immediately turn off the computer and remove the battery. The stickers should be easier to remove now, and then remove the GPU.
2. Remove the heatsink and the thermal paste and apply newer thermal paste to the chip.
3. Tighten everything back together, and don't do anything GPU intensive for the first day. After that, go back to regular usage, and I guarantee you, that your GPU won't hit above 175F.

 

That isn't a bad idea. I hate the thought of lugging around a 17"er when this one fits so well.

Now... where are those oven mitts.

 

I was very careful when removing the sticker.. don't try it.. no matter what it will still break.. I even heated it with a heat gun for a little and it still broke on me.. Anyway I don't think there is anything wrong with this unit.. Just need to know that this laptop comes with a very powerful GPU which will run hotter than the last unit.. I game with this laptop for a little and it was not going above 100C degrees.. I am happy with it and since i have the additional warranty i am not worried.. I am safe for the next 3 years..

To give you all with a reference point with this laptop.. When the computer is sitting idle the temp should read around 60 degrees.. If it reads 70 or more then obviously something is wrong with it.. When you run 3dmark06 you should be getting between 85 - 90 degrees C.. THIS IS NORMAL.. If it goes to 100 degrees when running 3dmark06 then there is something wrong with the unit.. Even after i overclocked my cpu to 2.25ghz and even 2.4ghz, i was getting 90 degrees. Its completely normal to get these temps.. While crysis did increased the gpu temps but it was still below 100C.

This is a great laptop so don't let some of these temps scare you all away.. For $1000 its a great poweful laptop and with some upgrades it can do better.. I will be modding mines and get a better dual core or maybe even a quad core, don't know yet.

 

thanks for everything and all the hard work sunny.
looks like Asus kinda knew what they were doing, and the higher temps are to be expected? (relatively). still, wont this possibly cause trouble down the road? if it dies out after my warranty is up, then what?

still a really nice laptop.

 

Just an update.


I ran two hours of Prime and Furmark combined. My results were intresting.

Max CPU temps - 69c-70c
Max GPU temp - 92c


I wonderin' if just maybe it might be an ASUS temp/bios reporting issue. I am questioning the results since Sunny applied paste and his results were nearly identical.

So, this weekend I'm going by BB to check out the case size of the G71, but I'll probably void the warranty and go quad since it's sitting on my desk waiting to find a home.

Now, where did I put that cpu guide at??


Sunny, again, I appreciate your review and all the trouble you went through to keep us posted on your progress.

 

So, simply because you're running at 92c you're gonna return it? how do you know that it really is a problem? it seems to be just slightly above Asus' expected GPU temp for any kind of gaming..

 

You welcome all.. I will be doing some more mods and testing so i'll be keeping this thread up to date..

 

The temp only goes so high when you game with it.. When you use it normally you wont have much issues with the temp.. So i don't think there will be any issues unless if you damage it accidentally or something.. I'd say that this laptop should last a good while. I bought the best buy warranty just to make sure i am good for the next three years. If anything does go wrong i will be getting a new replacement. I am glad that i got it and i would recommend it to anyone..

 

Nope. CPU temps are high. The question being does it provide enough airflow for me to place a quad in such a small space. That's all.

 

Can you take a chance and play Crysis for like, more then 10 minutes and see how the heat does?

Also, what is a bad temp that could severely damage a Laptop? Like the highest it should not reach?

And will constant high temps in the 90's-100's damage the computer regardless?

It is between this laptop, a G50VT-X1, or an MSI i was looking at that had the same specs as the X1 except a better CPU.

Oh yea, and sunny, even with a 2.0GHz CPU, does it hold back Crysis? Or would you say it would be better I go with a X1 that has 2.26GHz (2.49GHz oc'd) and a 9800M GS?

Thanks! ^.^

 

Whats the difference from G71 models?

 

There is a HUGE difference between the GTX 260 and the 9800 GS.. I played Crysis on very high on the G51 and the G50 and the G50 could hardly keep up to the G51.. The CPU is not soo bad but it can use a better one and of course they only way to do that is get a better G51 other than the BB version or upgrade the BB version if you on a budget. Overclocking the processor also helped for me and it hardly raised the cpu temp..

 

According to sources in the G51 thread, I take no credit but:

Model G71GX-RBBD09 will have the C2Q Q9000 with 6GB DDR2 Memory and 500GB HDD for $1399.99
Model G71GX-RX05 will have the C2D P8700 with 6GB DDR2 Memory and 500GB HDD for $1149.99
Model G71V-X2 will have the C2D P8400 with 4GB DDR3 memory and 320GB HDD for $1499.99

So clearly superior laptops in terms of some specs.

Edit looks like you got your answer anyways.