Asus ROG Strix GL702ZC / G702ZC / S7ZC with Ryzen 7 1700 8-core CPU and a Radeon RX580 GPU

Each country will apparently have it's own versions of GL702ZC it would seem.
Unless you are buying from USA or a retailer that offers customization... you will probably have to get the version that falls in your price range.

Either way, you can upgrade yourself as time goes on.

 

The best one for the ratio price / parts installed I find it's a Ryzen 7 - HDD 1000 GB - SSD 256 GB - RAM 16 GB for Euro 1.799 (tax incl. and authorized seller).
Considering that I will sell all the part of my actual desktop it will cost approx. 1.200 Euro.

 

That's allot, I paid 1420€ total with taxes and shipping, for an R7 1700 - 1tb HDD, 16 gigs, and a Samsung evo 960 256 gb. 2 year's warranty 100 € if I what 2 more year's of warranty. And it's still cheaper than an iPhone X in my country

Sent from my SM-G925F using Tapatalk

 

Mine was initially £1566.
But because I experienced initial issued with the OS and lack of drivers on Asus website and considered returning the laptop, LaptopsDirect offered a £70 refund if I decide to keep the unit. So, technically, I paid £1496.
Yes, I had to RMA it a month later, but, now, with the replaced motherboard, and nrunning undervolted GPU and CPU at the same time... I'm hoping I can avoid further RMA-ing.

Btw...I installed and ran Star Wars The Old Republic last night, and fans were quite low.
CPU reached 64 degrees C (3.3GhZ at 1.05V) and GPU reached 61-63 degrees C (-93mV via MSI afterburner).
That's on Very high settings btw (didn't see the need to use Ultra as the differences were... non-existent to me, not that either impacted the temps in particular) and I limited the game to 60 FPS (no point in going over the monitor refresh rate).

Fans ran normally... no different vs browsing and media watching.

The game doesn't seem to be particularly demanding.

Star Trek Online however stressed my GPU before... so I'll have to test that with the undervolt.

 

in gaming, 1070 is better than 580

 

Well seeing how 1060 is on par with 580 that makes sense.

 

Hello my Friends !,
i would like to add RAM but i can't do it cause of colling system. should i take off ?
thank you in advance !





[

 

Not unless you whant to risk voiding your warranty

Sent from my HTC Desire 200 using Tapatalk

 

so Asus sold laptop not upgradable except if will kill waranty ??...what's a pitty !. I will not buy anymore asus Ryzen laptop.

 

This has been brought up in the past a few times in this thread. While it's not the easiest upgrade to perform, inserting the RAM is very doable - I did it, and it only took a couple of minutes. If you look back in this thread you will find at least one video showing such an upgrade, and I have found others on the Internet. Contrary to what you might think, you don't have to insert the top module at the exaggerated angle that we have all come to know and "love".

The people who I dealt with at HIDevolution assured me that this upgrade could be made without removing the heat sink assembly, and they were right. Just be patient, and it should work just fine.

 

Zdroj : thank you for you answer, it's a good news ! i will try to find this video....

 

Scroll to minute 6:50

 

supert !! thank you so much !

 

Hi, I've just ordered this laptop and plan on re-pasting but I need help with thermal pads. I don't know much so I could use help on deciding what to buy. I presume they'll go where the white pastey looking stuff is in this photo
http://forum.notebookreview.com/attachments/upload_2017-8-23_13-31-51-jpeg.148913/

 

As a suggestion, it's good to keep the laptop stock during the return period, in case some other component of the laptop fails or you discover a problem in assembly, or you find out through testing that the temperatures are just fine and the repasting / re-padding isn't worth losing your warranty.

Waiting for your warranty to expire is also a good idea, before doing things that void the warranty, otherwise you may find yourself with an unsupported laptop with a hardware problem down the road.

It's also a good idea to do testing and get temperature and performance results on the stock laptop before making changes, so you have a baseline of readings to measure against - to see if your changes improve things, or make them worse - or the same. Others have reported only a couple of degree's change / improvement after repasting, so be aware doing it doesn't always result in useful improvements in thermals or performance.

Opening up and making changes can open Pandora's box, and it might be weeks or months before you get her back into it.

Good luck, and Enjoy your new laptop, before parting it out.

 

Hello,
Now I have at many time windows bleu screen hard crash...I was thinking that it's can be too much hot so i decided to put fan under the laptop but nothing change still have hard crash blue sceen. Can somebody could help me ?
thank you !

 

The design is running cool enough for everyone but you, maybe there is a production error with your unit? Return it for a new one, I wouldn't waste time trying to get it fixed on your own, you might void warranty and get stuck with the problem.

The longer you wait to return it the closer to the end of the return period you get and you might get stuck not able to return it for a refund or another unit.

Call / email the seller and tell them it's been unstable since you unboxed it, and it's still crashing, and you want another one.

 

I agree, the laptop comes with Windows preinstalled and no major issue are to be expected from it running out of the box, besides some minor errors and glitches that people have already reported which caused them to reinstall a fresh copy of the OS you shouldn't experience any issues like BSOD, overheating, crashes.
Even if I tamper with the voltages and frequency of the cpu and gpu I still don't have any crashes or Blue screens, the laptop just freezes upon failure to achieve stable parameters

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New BIOS update was posted on Asus website.
Version 305 it seems.

It only says: Improve System Stability

I'd wish Asus was clear on what BIOS changes they made.

So... I'm looking forward to a specific someone here to slipstream Zen 2 support into our laptop... along with higher RAM frequency support for future upgrades.

If you do that... please use the 'latest' BIOS version if possible.


Still hadn't updated the BIOS... might do it later on, but I doubt I would notice some (if any) improvements.
What system stability are they talking about anyway?
I hadn't noticed GL702ZC being inherently unstable (unless they might be talking about security patches for the CPU).

 

Btw guys... I've been looking into upgrading my GL702ZC SSD and HDD to these:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-MX...ords=ssd+M.2+500GB&refinements=p_72:419153031

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Crucial-MX...e=UTF8&qid=1531868866&sr=1-6&keywords=ssd+1TB

The 2TB SSD drives are still too expensive, though I suppose it would be possible for me to wait until next year for the prices to halve on those.
In the meantime, I could get the M2 500GB SSD to double my OS storage capacity at least.

Crucial seems to be getting good reviews from technical reviewers... and they are more affordable than others.
What do you think?

Also, in regards to a backpack that can comfortably house the GL702ZC, I was looking between these two options:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Norsens-Li...1532372514&sr=1-6&keywords=18+inch+laptop+bag

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Joymoze-Bu...531526709&sr=8-12&keywords=18+inch+laptop+bag

 

Crucial aka Micron is better on AMD systems. Samsung does say the SSD will perform on Intel systems on their forums while Crucial guarantees 100% compatibility and speed on Intel/AMD. So, MX500 is best bet!

 

While checking out the SSD links for current pricing, I ran across what looks like a great price on a 2.5" 2TB SSD:

Micron 1100 MTFDDAK2T0TBN-1AR1ZABYY 2TB SATA 6Gb/s 2.5" Solid State Drive - $297 !!
https://www.amazon.com/Micron-MTFDDAK2T0TBN-1AR1ZABYY-Solid-State-Drive/dp/B01LB05TOO
https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B01LB05TOO/ref=dp_olp_new_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=new

Spoiler: Amazon Reviews

https://www.amazon.com/Micron-MTFDDAK2T0TBN-1AR1ZABYY-Solid-State-Drive/product-reviews/B01LB05TOO/

" Great price. Good performance
By T. Harperon March 1, 2018
Verified Purchase
Great price. Good performance:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 6.0.0 x64 (C) 2007-2017
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 531.593 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 518.363 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 8,T= 8) : 378.228 MB/s [ 92340.8 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 8,T= 8) : 332.606 MB/s [ 81202.6 IOPS]
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 187.080 MB/s [ 45673.8 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 233.310 MB/s [ 56960.4 IOPS]
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 27.763 MB/s [ 6778.1 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 96.613 MB/s [ 23587.2 IOPS]

Test : 1024 MiB [G: 0.0% (0.2/1907.6 GiB)] (x5) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2018/03/01 16:05:45
OS : Windows 10 Professional [10.0 Build 16299] (x64)"

" An excellent, wonderful, fantastic drive full of wonder and surprise.
By Ricky on June 2, 2018
Verified Purchase
Alright, so you're probably looking at this drive, being skeptical and wondering how many of these reviews are paid reviewers who have never used the drive a day in their life. I can't tell you how many of these are fake reviewers, but what I am going to do is sell you this drive and Micron can recruit me later.

First of all, you cannot beat this price. I don't care what kind of sale is running or what store is closing down, the price to performance ratio is absurd. $300 is the price for a 1TB SSD, and a mid-range 2TB will run you about $550.

Second, I'll tell you now, this thing is no Samsung 960 Pro. Don't put it in a speed race and drop your paycheck on it, because you'll be out a paycheck. That being said, it's a solid, consistent riding horse. It'll get your data from A to B at five or six times the speed of an HDD (or at about 30x, I'll get to that in a second) without missing a beat. See my attached pictures for details.

Third, don't let the brand Micron scare you. It's not some knockoff Chinese brand held together by Elmer's Glue and plastic clips. Micron is the company that owns Crucial, so you can expect the same or even better quality. Metal case, came with no dents or dings. It's not pretty and it doesn't have RGB functionality, but it's not an eyesore either.

Fourth, listen closely, this one is important if you want a jet powered mechanical hoverpony instead of a riding horse. There is a program that you should download as soon as you pop this bad boy in your case called Crucial Storage Executive (and yes, this application will work perfectly with the SSD, see point three). It will show you the health of all your drives, as well as some special options for Crucial/Micron drives you can check out yourself. But the important one is called Momentum Cache in the tabs on the left. If you have less than 16GB of RAM, I would recommend that you stop reading here as this feature is not really for you. If you have 16GB or more, enable Momentum Cache. It uses your RAM to cache data and then writes from the RAM in periods of low disk usage. It will take up 25% of your RAM, but never more than 4GB at a time. It will never cause you to max out your RAM, it will automatically reduce its usage if other application(s) go above 75% to accommodate your needs. Talk about a smart program! The downside to this is, if you don't have an UPS (uninterruptible power supply) for your computer and were to experience a power outage, the data that was stored in RAM at the time will be lost. So use it at your own discretion! Using Momentum Cache will result in read/write speeds about 20x faster than a mid-to-high-range HDD.

So, that's my spill. I am confident you will make the right decision!"

It's quite a bit more on UK Amazon:

Micron 2 TB 2.5-Inch 1100 Internal Solid State Drive - £342.99
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Micron-2-5-Inch-Internal-Solid-State/dp/B01LB05TOO

 

Yeah those drives are perfect too. Enterprise SATA SSDs promise best R/W at steady usage than consumer SSD. Only downside is Micron doesn't have Consumer NVMe drives. I'm looking at ADATA sx8200 with micron 3d NAND 64L. I don't want samsung products.

 

I noticed the Samsung prices are higher than I would have expected, I haven't checked for a while - it looks like a premium is being added to Samsung drives. The Samsung 4TB drives are ridiculously priced.

 

Its 30-50$ extra than micron. Samsung doesn't make FW updates for M.2 850/860 evo so you're simply paying the premium. It really throttles faster than my NVMe PM951 at full load. I did see a video where the Youtuber posted repeated tests of mx300,mx500,850 evo,860 evo and its m.2 counterparts. He came to a conclusion that the difference is almost NIL and micron fared better samsung at sustained benchmarks.

 

The pricing I am seeing on US Amazon for the Micron 2TB vs Samsung / Crucial 2TB is a lot greater than $30-$50, more like ~$83-$199-$502!!

Micron 1100 MTFDDAK2T0TBN-1AR1ZABYY 2TB SATA 6Gb/s 2.5" Solid State Drive - $297

Samsung 860 EVO 2TB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-76E2T0B/AM) - $496

Samsung 860 PRO 2TB 2.5 Inch SATA III Internal SSD (MZ-76P2T0BW) - $799

Crucial MX500 2TB 3D NAND SATA 2.5 Inch Internal SSD - CT2000MX500SSD1(Z) - $380

 

£342 for a 2TB SSD is still too much.

Mind you its just over my one week's pay, but still... the price IS an overkill for that storage capacity in 2018 for an SSD.

I think I'd be better off waiting for the 2TB SSD's to drop in price rather than to spend so much money on one

 

I installed the new bios.
Can't say I can determine any improvements or alterations, but general system operations seem to be running smoothly (as always).

 

I have ordered the Crucial MX500 M2.
Should get it by Tuesday at the latest (but hopefully earlier).

I could have also ordered the 1TB SSD (2.5') to replace my HDD, but I'm still not sure if I should just wait until 2TB drops down to that or lower price by next year so I can also double up on the capacity in the process (as opposed to just replacing with same capacity drive).

 

500GB or 1 TB?

 

500GB.
Should be more than enough for the forseeable time frame.

 

Got my Crucial M.2 SSD (500GB).
Now I just need to dig up my USB thumb drive (which I've been looking for the past few hours) so I can actually install Windows 10 on it.
Sigh... just as I need something to finally upgrade my laptop, I'm missing a frigging usb thumb drive for Windows install (grrr).

Btw... any suggestions on how I can replace the M.2 ssd drive in the laptop without discharging the battery? As you know, the GL702ZC has a fully integrated battery (thank you Asus for making THAT nonsensical decision), so before I opened the laptop before, I ended up discharging the battery completely and then opening it up and working on it.
Is there a better way without worrying about a fully charged battery?
I really don't want to mess about with the innards of this thing without properly discharging the thing, but it takes about 45 mins to discharge it.

EDIT: Found the USB dongles.
Will probably install the M2 tomorrow after work.

 

You can unplug the battery and hit the power button, I quess is this one

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Tnx for that.
However, I just decided to drain the battery and just do it like that.
Anyway, I installed the M2 500GB ssd... works great.
Really fast... Windows installed in a jiffy.
Apart from that, I also placed some of those cooling grills for Rasberry Pi onto that exposed MOBO chip just in case.


Software thus far works fine... I installed everything I could find, updated it to latest version...
Chipset installation was giving me issues as for some reason it failed initially, but I installed the one from Asus website and simply upgraded it via express install to the latest one.
Freesync worked immediately as the drivers recognized the panel is Freesync compatible.

Rest of the software will be installed tomorrow.

 

Do you see an upgrade in opening programs like 3ds max or something higher then 3 gb?
I upgraded from the start to ssd m2 Samsung Evo 256, and migrated the OS to it, everything work with no issues but I do t see a difference between this ssd m2 and my old laptop running a corsair force SATA 2. Benchmarking my ssd gave me 3600 MB read and write and I never once achieved more then 10 MB when opening programs.
Maybe I'm doing something wrong

Sent from my MI 5s Plus using Tapatalk

 

Hadn't had a chance to install 3dsmax yet. I only managed to install the os and latest updates for it. It was already 2am when I was done and I usually have to get up around 8am (I was out in town all afternoon).

I'll see about that later on today most likely.

But I also wanted to report that I had to remove the self adhesive cooling grills for raspberry pi because apparently they didn't exactly stick to that chip on the mobo. I could hear them moving around after I put the laptop to sleep. So I opened it up and lo and behold. One of them completely fell out of its position.

What's the point of self adhesive cooling grollgif they don't actually stick to the needed component?

Anyone have any other suggestions on that front?

 

And... here we are again.
The laptop fans started spinning on their own again for no reason and the issue resumes immediately after starting up the laptop from a full blown shutdown.
I was just browsing the net (and had a video player in the background with a paused video) when the fans kicked in to 100% again.

This time, I'm not messing about with repairs.
I will demand a replacement and am not waiting another month for the laptop to be repaired.
How would I go about that?

 

And, now the laptop is completely dead.
It just died in the middle of me transferring files to my backup HDD... it's refusing to turn on.

 

I don't recall how you did it last time, if you worked with Asus support or your regional office / seller.

I'd assume you RMA'd to the support for your region and that's what you don't want to go through again, but unfortunately you have to go through several failed RMA's before they talk replacement. Like on the 3rd failed attempt.

How many failed attempts did you have the first time? This counts as another failed repair - delayed by a few months - so is that 3 total?

Otherwise you will need to RMA it.

Unless the seller is willing to step in and replace it for you and work with Asus on that failed unit return. In this case it depends on your long time relationship with the seller.

Do you think these failures might correlate with working on the insides of your laptop without disconnecting the battery? I noticed you asked that again, how to disconnect, and instead ran the battery down - but I don't think it will drop lower than a few percent, which is still plenty of power to cause damage - maybe that is what is going on? Your failures seem to come after opening and working on the laptop...?

 

The first failure occurred a month after buying the laltop without me opening it at all.

So, no. This issue is not connected to me opening the laptop atter the first rma to upgrade the ram and ssd.
Besides the failure would have had to have occurred almost immediately after upgrading something... not suddenly pop up after about a week or so of me upgrading the SSD.
Also, I upgraded the RAM after the first RMA and the laptop ran fine for months.

I drained the battery prior to opening the laptop and I pressed the power button to get rid of any excess charge. I did not disconnect the battery as I thought that would be too much hassle with a possibility of damaging something in an attempt to disconnect the cable.

The procedure is safe and I was careful to not do anything that could damage the hardware.
I've done it on other laptops without issue... there's no reason this one would be different.

No. This is an Asus problem (or should I say, they probably created a design flaw).

This would be my second RMA actually.
The LaptopsDirect person I spoke with said that since Asus controls the warranty, I'd need to go through them as it would be quicker (LaptopsDirect would otherwise simply sent the laptop to Asus, then Asus would send it back to them, and them to me - which takes an extra 2 to 4 weeks).
She also mentioned that the laptop would need to go through 4 failed repairs before Asus sends it to a special team and discusses a replacement or a refund.

But I'm not willing for them to try and repair this unit again because this time the whole system seemed to have been fried (well, the motherboard probably did anyway - I tested the secondary HDD in a CADDY of my flatmate's laptop and it worked fine). If the motherboard keeps failing, its an Asus issue which can happen again - only this time, apart from just the fans spinning to 100% and staying there, the whole motherboard seems to have gone 'kaput'.
Plus, they would just take out the CPU, SSD and HDD and transfer them to the new motherboard... if one of the other components however (apart from the motherboard) is damaged and might be causing this, it could 'spread' to the motherboard again.
That's why I would prefer a new unit.

I detailed what might be the problem the last time and they completely ignored me.
They didn't even seem to have touched the papers I sent them (which they requested) and I asked them to check the cooling design and try to fix if any such faults are discovered to avoid this problem from happening in the future (which it has).

 

The fact that you still want another one of these pieces of garbage astounds me to untold levels only witnessed when people defend bad video games

 

If it's under warranty, why wouldn't you let them try and deal with it? It's better than giving up IMHO.

 

1 -

2 - This is an ASUS non-single GPU flagship. Literally every veteran of this forum knows what that means for repair/warranties.

 

D2, please refrain from such abrasive posting as you did above. This is not helping anyone, and can only add to levels of frustration which when they involve ASUS RMAs are incredibly high to begin with.

There may not really be a great chance of @Deks returning the laptop (for refund) at this point unless they get into a long dispute with the retailer and/or credit card issuer.

 

I suppose it's a difference between having a fancy brick, or a slight chance of a repair/replacement. I'd give it another chance... if it's absolutely fried, there's really no harm in just sending it in. At least until the warranty is up.

 

you don't know ASUS RMA history.

I've seen accounts of people literally getting back a unit more broken than when they sent it in.

 

This is true, there are lots of accounts of bad experiences but it varies greatly due to the repair contractor and region that contractor is in. It's down to luck. I used to live next to a pretty large scale refurbishing place that was ASUS authorized, and brought in a machine to be fixed, I think for a bad cooling assembly. They took care of the problem but bent the webcam connector on the motherboard when they reassembled it. I talked directly to the tech, face to face, and was able to bend the pins back in front of them. It was kind of gratifying. They were also highly confused because they thought Linux was some kind of virus.

If you're dealing with a decent retailer who customizes things and does some of their own repairs you have a much better shot of getting something actually fixed.

 

Even if it's a 99% chance I'd receive a hot mess, and 1% a fixed unit... I'd take the chance. It's pretty hard to part out a soldered notebook.

My friend returned an Asus laptop through Amazon and got a flawless replacement. They even upgraded him from a 502 to a 503 I believe. (They upgraded a generation, not sure on specifics). I'm also not entirely sure if it was sent to a center, who dealt with the upgrade... and whatever.

Unfortunately, the laptop in question has already had a few bad experiences. But if you don't send it in again, you'll never have a chance of fixing it anyway.

@Groceries
Linux as a virus though... bahaha.

 

I called ASUS support before. I asked them what their <exact model number of laptop> had for a screen. "We don't know, give us the serial number".

I said the model only comes with one screen.
" That is correct".
So the serial number won't matter because there is only one screen, right?
"Yes".
So what's the screen?
"We need the serial number of your notebook to know".
But you just said the model only comes with one screen, so you should know the screen without my serial number, right?
"We need your serial number before we can check which screen you have installed".

I just gave up because I didn't own the unit. It was the first G-sync units, with the LP173WF4-SPD1 or LP173WF4-SPF1 panels that were at 75Hz. But ASUS support didn't know. I didn't call a retailer mind you. Called one of their support numbers. It was distinctly an american woman I spoke to as well, no outsourcing that I could tell.

Sent from my OnePlus 1 using a coconut

 

Was it a technical support line? Sometimes help desks ask for a serial number in order to "verify" a purchase or product.

Sometimes it's best to send questions like that via email. For example, I sent an email to Clevo... took about a week to get an answer, because I imagine the question was being forwarded to someone who had the information. If I had called, I know for certain I would have gotten a run around. Perhaps I will try calling the US Clevo center and see how the experience differs haha

Anywho, way off topic now. Basically I believe if you have warranty, there's no harm in sending it in if the computer doesn't function.