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

Honestly, anything under 90*C under heavy load is usually fine. In most cases, you'd likely see thermals of around 80*C anyway. I mean, my machine does go to 90*C if I put it near max load but in games like CS:GO, Hearthstone and HotS - I average 75-78*C

 

@Papusan knows what I am speaking to, the ill fitting Clevo heatplates - mostly for high CPU temps, but I've also seen higher than Asus GPU temps.

Remember this Asus laptop is the 1st RX580 / Ryzen laptop, so there will be some adjustment period as Asus get the design optimized, I think it's excellent for their first attempt.

Also, with the new 144hz Chimera absorbing 144 FPS gaming heat, beefed up cooling, hopefully the designs can feed off of each other for future laptops.

I'm hopeful that companies will start making thermally friendly physically larger designs as they see their customers are becoming savvy to the fact that thin laptops + performance are impossible to build.

We need the volume and weight of real cooling to handle these and future higher power higher thermal CPU's and GPU's, there's no faking it moving forward.

 

I'm sure Clevo P8xx socket beast with fully cooling capacity of +500w would have ice cold graphics temp if we could use a single 65w gaphics from AMD or just put in similar performing graphic from Ngreedia (80W 1060) And for the records... I can't see my machine suffering from temp problems Wasn't even a problem out of the box.

Edit. And please don't forget the other review of Asus with R1700 and AMD RX580

But I would say this is a drunk man's work... Awful designed cooling!!

 

The "Chaotic layout" probably has a design reason, so as to not concentrate the heatpipe "overpass" in one area heating up surrounding components.

The Clevo "chaotic flatness" is manufacturing and QC follies, not "designed for"... or maybe it is

 

I'm sure more than me have got an ok Heatsink from Clevo. I've even got good quality heatsink for both of my Clevo's I have won the lottery, HeHe. Not every day this happens, HaHa. Maybe I should spend more money on lottery? I play and my wife pay? YEES!!

 

Doesnt really 38-40db idle noise level bother you?

I never used MSI but as far as I compare it online, it is always louder than Asus. (I do not compare how cool it works).

For that extra work from Asus with more heatsink, etc at GL model, I expect less noise.

 

It's min 32dba not 38dba, learn to read / post / inform for accuracy

And, Ambient is measured as 31dba, so the G702ZC is 1dba above ambient room noise at idle at minimum - which is when nothing else is running - the range of 32 dba to 40dba is likely high due to actual work being done - not actually idle, they were a bit lax in including that higher measurement, IMHO.

You can't have a low min of 32dBA at idle and call 40dBA idle too, likely new laptop syndrome, with background things de-idling the laptop.

In fact you can see this in the idle graph, with less than idle peaks at the start smoothing out to 32dBA true idle the longer it sat "idle". 1st Graph.


5% higher than 3 quiet laptops in comparison, and 12% for the one. So not noisy out of the box, and I think tuning will give better results.

For a power hungry 8 core CPU + RX 580, plus reasonably low temps, that's amazing.

 

Those Witcher 3 and Max load DB are worrying. As you may be aware DB measurements are not linear, and 57 DB is high if constant. Hopefully its pitch isn't bad.

 

Not impressed after reading the full review.

Sent from my SM-G955U using Tapatalk

 

What, those percentages don't make sense. The math is totally fkd up

decibels is logarithmic.

3dBa increase = 41% louder.

So Asus 57dba vs Acer 44dba ....13dba increase.... is a 346% increase in volume.

So this Asus is very noisy.

I don't care about idle noise. If you're doing anything intensive, you might need one of these (well almost)...

 

The difference in human hearing for those different dba output won't be much.

"An increase of 3 dBA is barely perceptible to the human ear"

 

Still better than the 61dB(A) of the RB14

 

Full english review is up on notebookcheck

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Asus-...700-Radeon-RX-580-Laptop-Review.247548.0.html

Looks like it's kind of a mixed bag overall, but it's definitely a nice package and a step in the right direction. Whenever they
put a mobile version of vega out, that combo would definitely be killer.

Edit: it looks like there will be a vega nano with a TDP of around 150 watts being released in the near future. If that's true, that would be perfect (assuming good performance).

 

considering that 13dba increase is greater than 10dba, which is generally understood to be double the volume,

Play any fan noise recording at 50% volume and 100% volume, and you'll see that an extra 13dba is very perceptible to the human ear.

at idle low cpu load, this 702zc probably sounds fine

i hope future reviews have a video recording of this under load.
and how it compares to this....

 

Some news on the ROG Ryzen laptops.

I tried calling Asus customer support to inquire about availability of ROG GL702ZC-GC104T,
and the woman I got kept telling me I need to check with websites and social media for news, and of course the retailers.
I kept telling the retailers were all in the dark about the release date of the laptops in question and that social media and websites are all out of date in terms of information, not to mention the fact the laptop was available for pre-order for months now with 0 change.
I tried asking to speak to a supervisor, or to be connected to an office, or sales team, and she kept saying they don't have that information. It was really frustrating.

Finally, I sent off an e-mail to Asus with this issue and inquired about the release date or at least an approximation of it, and this is what I was told:

Many thanks for your email.


I am sorry that you had a poor experience when calling our service center. I will address that internally.

In regards to your question, we are VERY pleased to hear you have ordered our new RYZEN NB.

This will arrive in the UK by the second week of October (at the latest) but we are in fact pushing to have it land even earlier.

OCUK should have their stock by the first week of October.

Did you purchase from OCUK?

BR


Arjang Salehi

Gaming Manager

ASUS UK


So, there you have it folks... it would seem that availability of this particular laptop should happen at the latest in 5 weeks... potentially 4 weeks for Overclockers UK.

Intriguing.
Finally can get my hands on a decent/sizeable upgrade.

 

Prohardver ( hu) has a nice Asus Strix GL702ZC review. Ryzen Master was used to optimize clocks, acheiving 0/8/12/19% multicore improvement depending on the benchmark, at the expense of turbo boost. Apparently they measured low idle and (CPU?) load noise levels and high full (CPU+GPU) stress noise, the latter presumably due to the higher-than-stock multicore clocks. (The low-high difference might mean more than the absolute numbers.)
(via GL702ZC article list at Techspot.)

NotebookCheck ( en) lists more GPU benchmarks that weren't included in their GL702ZC review, on their RX 580 page. (Perhaps the measurements weren't ready in time for publication, or perhaps they didn't consider them reliable: for example, they list a Luxmark Room Scene score near desktop RX 470 as you might expect, but they list a Luxmark Sala scene score way below expected, so there may be an OpenCL driver problem or other problem somewhere.)

 

I'm hoping the GPU results aren't due to throttling issues... which sounds like they might be.
This might open up the GPU to the option of being undervolted via Wattman which would allow it to achieve and sustain boost clocks (past 1200 MhZ?).
Also, if they overclocked the 1700 then they might have ended up starving the GPU of needed power as a result.
Ryzen Master seems like another Windows software utility like Wattman... meaning that the CPU could be undervolted on stock without affecting the boost.

I think undervolting both the CPU and GPU would be key or important as it would allow supply of enough power to both pieces of hardware by avoiding thermal throttling and allowing them to reach their proper potential - but in all honesty, Asus should have already done this themselves and improved upon the cooling.

 

Also ... here's more information on my inquiry regarding Asus ROG laptops with Ryzen 1600 and 1700 about RAM speed and capacity support, upcoming BIOS/AGESA revisions, etc.

This is an extract from the email I sent them:
"One other thing... will the Asus ROG GL702ZC-GC104T support higher frequency RAM and will we be able to choose between 16 and 32 GB RAM too?
Ryzen has Infinity Fabric in it (as you might be aware) which is sensitive to RAM speeds... and it was noted that replacing the 2400 MhZ RAM to 3000 MhZ increased Ryzen's performance by 10% or more.

Also, will the motherboard in that laptop receive future BIOS and AGESA updates that AMD releases which could affect Ryzen's performance for the better"

And their response:
"Our models are only tested with 2400Hz memory and the R7 with come with 16GB memory installed on our first batch.

We have no plans to install 32GB as standard.

Our laptops are always able to have BIOS revisions – but we cannot guarantee how quickly they are released, and how compatible they are with our other internal components.

These will be tested / tried on a case by case basis.

Many thanks"


So... it looks like the first batches will be arriving with 16GB RAM.
There's 0 official word on 32GB as standard (which is odd considering the official Asus webpage for this ROG laptop states 'up to 32GB'.

I would have hoped that we will at least get an option to customize the laptop to the point where it could have higher capacity RAM with faster speeds.

Mind you, faster RAM speeds did not seem to impact Cinebech multicore results at all... most of what it did was increase 1080p gaming performance... which is kind of critical here because the laptop's screen will be 1080p.

Still, I don't think the issue will be too apparent since I'll mainly be working with 3d Studio Max, etc, and some gaming too.

I could always upgrade to 32GB faster RAM speeds several months down the line when the prices drop - that's assuming that Asus keeps releasing BIOS/AGESA updates for the motherboard as AMD releases them and that the motherboard won't be artificially 'locked' to 2400 MhZ (though I doubt Asus would introduce this kind of limitation).
Looks to me like they are going with a B350 motherboard (which should incorporate most of the AGESA updates to date).
What worries me is that usually laptops end up with a much shorter life-cycle in terms of support. So, they release 1, or maybe two BIOS updates and then completely stop - though, this time, it might be different given that this laptop is more of desktop equivalent (with desktop grade parts) than a customized laptop (which also has downsized desktop grade hardware, but more customized?).

 

Well the good thing is that by the time they release it and have all the release kinks worked out, Black Friday will be around the corner. I got 32gb for about $100 last year, so you should be able to find some good deals on it then.

 

Yeah, but good luck finding 32GB (2x16GB) so-dimm DDR4 3000 MhZ for £100.
This is laptop RAM we're talking about and the cheapest I saw 32GB 3000 GhZ (so-dimm) online was for about £295 (I think).
Doubt that Black Friday would drop prices by £195.
They might slash it down to £150 for example... but I'm not so sure about that either.
Black Friday means they have select items on discount - and this usually implies low grade tech.

Further issue is that the laptop might ship with 2x8GB sticks... so if I'll want to upgrade the RAM, it will mean taking out both ram sticks and putting in 2x16GB.

Though here's what Notebookcheck says on the laptop memory:
16384 MB so-dimm ddr4-2400 Mhz single channel, 1 of 2 slots used, 32gb max.

This indicates that the laptop might ship default with 16GB RAM stick in just 1 slot giving room for expansion to 32GB... but again the issue is RAM speed.
And running things in single-channel at first would be discouraging (especially due to infinity fabric sensitivity to RAM speeds and single/dual channel modes).
Ryzen Master software might potentially be used to increase RAM to 2800 or 3000 MhZ (which is 25% at maximum), but not sure how it would affect stability or RAM thermals.

 

Some past Asus Strix GL702ZC videos with audio:

DX12 benchmark: "TheVR Tech" ( hu) ASUS Strix GL702ZC preview video opened with the TimeSpy benchmark and the fans are quite audible...
Battlefield auto: ...Yet most of the rest showed WW1 Battlefield with much less fan noise.

CPU benchmark: Notebookcheck compared a Cinebench R15 multicore CPU run on a GL702ZC next to an i7-6700K desktop, and did not record loud fan noise from either machine. (The mouse clicks were much louder, perhaps assisted by microphone position.) (I assume the cardboard box on which it was placed did not have cutouts to improve airflow.)

Idle: Nocom unboxed and powered-on a preview GL702ZC, exhibiting fan noise inaudible over a background electric motor(?) hum in a reverberant classroom with hard floor.

The B2G Asus Strix GL702ZC preview ( en_PH) also includes an unboxing with fan noise inaudible over a background hum. It also compares the preview GL702ZC to a desktop with R7 1800X, 3200 MT/s RAM, and factory overclocked RX 480. As can be expected, the GL702ZC with stock 2400 MT/s RAM does not keep up in memory intensive CPU games/tasks. How much is due to the clocks and memory slowing the CPU driver, and how much is due to GPU differences, is not clear.

 

forgot to quote
please delete,

 

I think that GL702ZC might be operating in single-channel mode because Notebookcheck indicated that the RAM is a single 16GB stick at 2400 MhZ.

Maru... that last review you linked to seems to have 24GB installed in the laptop, however, the RAM sticks aren't identical (obviously) as it implies 1x16GB stick and 1x8GB stick.
In order for dual channel to be activated, RAM sticks need to be identical (at least in RAM speed and quantity - don't think that latency matters for dual channel, or if one ram stick has better latencies than the other, then it will default to the other stick speeds).

As a result, the laptop might not be operating in dual-channel mode and the AIDA memory test reports too low MB/s.
This yotube video compares single-channel vs Dual channel RAM on Ryzen (relevant timestamp included) :


If you noticed, the AIDA test results seem eerily similar and produce almost the same (low) MB/s.

I suspect that if we upgrade the RAM to 32GB with same speeds, dual channel will be activated and might improve overall performance - unless of course the laptop does not support Dual Channel, which would just be plain nuts and downright impossible for ASUS to botch this kind of machine (unless it was intentional).

 

Ah, I see that Notebookcheck answered a question for us on whether the CPU is BGA or not.
It's interchangeable.

Sadly though, the GPU seems to be soldered (dang).
Would have been nice to upgrade to a potential Vega or Navi replacement down the line (oh Asus, why couldn't you turn it into an MXM gpu?).
Though, given the issues we ended up with in exchanging laptop gpu's in the past due to them being ridiculously expensive, and finding proper MXM type...

But as I said, it looks like we might benefit from Ryzen+ (12nm when it comes) or Ryzen 2 upgrade - which should arguably be a lot easier and cheaper for us to replace because we don't have to find a notebook specific part. Just put the desktop part into a notebook.

 

Depends on if you are allowed to flash mod firmware with new Microcode. I don’t know how strict Asus is with secure Boot.

 

Since the motherboard is B350, it could be said the situation is a bit different, and... simplified.

Asus did mention to me in their emails that they tend to include BIOS updates for these laptops... so, is it possible they might include microcode updates themselves?

 

What changes Asus will do for their model refresh, will determine if this is possible. Time will tell.

 

Here's a quick survey of what some retailers' websites claim now.
(Given that no one has reported receiving one yet, I suspect "in stock" means "in transit to store", not always "in store".)

TZ	State	GL702ZC-	Store	2017-10-08
-8	ca.us	WB74	ExcaliberPC.com	00, preorder
0	ie	GC098T	Elara.ie	00, 2017-10-26
0	uk	GC098T	SaveOnLaptops.co.uk	12 in stock
0	uk	GC098T	CCLOnline.com	10+ in stock
0	uk	GC098T	Getronics.com	00, 2017-10-26
0	uk	GC098T	LaptopsDirect.co.uk	00, 2017-10-10
0	uk	GC104T	AshDistribution.co.uk	08 in stock
0	uk	GC104T	SaveOnLaptops.co.uk	08 in stock
0	uk	GC104T	Overclockers.co.uk	00, preorder
0	uk	GC104T	Getronics.com	00, 2017-10-26
1	at	GC204T	Syswork.at	00, not available
1	at	GC206T	Electronic4you.at	00, preorder
1	at	GC207T	Syswork.at	00, not available
1	be	GC104T	CentralPoint.be	00, 2017-10-21
1	de	GC006T	Amazon.de	00, not available
1	de	GC104T	Notebooksbilliger.de	00, mid-Oct 2017
1	de	GC174T	Baur.de	00, 1 week
1	de	GC179T	Saturn.de	00, 7 weeks
1	de	GC204T	Cyberport.de	01+ immediately
1	de	GC207T	ComputerUniverse.de	00, unknown
1	fr	GC201T	Material.net	00, 2017-10-31

Sorry to hear that AMD still does not support flex mode. (Intel has implemented flex mode for enabling dual channel access using mismatched DIMM sizes since about 2004.)

Yes the AIDA result shows single channel provides half the bandwidth even for a 4-core R5 1400.
(The rest of the results show the performance difference was small for applications, though it is for a 4-core R5 1400, not an 8-core R7 1700.)
(Not referenced, but for anyone watching this video, beware: The first Cinebench page shows two different tests, not the same test. The Cinebench and Photoshop charts are misleading with huge lie factor -- the difference is on the order of 1%, not 50% as charted. The compression section was also misleading, using double time until the first finished, then real time until the second finished, exaggerating the difference.)

Yes, it could be suspicious that no preview or review unit has been run with dual channel memory. 24GB is an unusual configuration, so it is likely intentional. Makes one wonder if anything gets worse when dual channel is used (heat, noise, throttling, ...). An opportunity for reviews.

 

It would seem reviewers simply don't go into too much depth when it comes to technology.
They didn't try tweaking it either (for instance, the RX 580 can easily be undervolted, and yet, no one tried it as of now in this laptop).

 

It's the same or worse in the general community, it's a long time for some to get comfortable with the idea of gaining real control over their laptop, to embrace the magic so to speak.

It's gotten a lot better, reviewers are now at least mentioning undervolting, and some of them are doing it - at least for the CPU, and a few are even putting out undervolting CPU / GPU walk-throughs.

It's improved a lot over the last 6-12 months, and I have hopes it will continue. As they try more things and share them through video's more people will be on board and acting in the community to help others, creating a grass roots ground swell of support.

 

Indeed... as for Nvidia's GPU's... they can't really be undervolted without lowering the clock speeds because the two are linked.
As such, when talking about voltages, AMD and Nvidia aren't comparable. For all intense and purposes, nvidia already runs on optimized Voltages (thanks in part due to auto-voltage tuning, and Nvidia setting a lower upper voltage threshold lower than 1.2V - plus using a manuf. process better suited for higher clocks), whereas AMD does not... hence why undervolting shouldn't be overlooked in AMD's case or considered any voltage 'tweaking' as 'cheating'.

At the very least, we know that the ROG laptop with Ryzen and RX 580 does not throttle in gaming.... what will be interesting to see if we can undervolt the RX 580 (most likely yes) to reduce power consumption and reduce temperatures.
If the RX 580 can undervolt in this laptop, it might be possible we could overclock the GPU as well to run a tad faster (again for a lower power draw than stock).

Will have to wait and see until I can get my hands on the thing.
I've been waiting for my paycheck to finally clear so I could get the laptop, but there have been issues.

 

When would it be released or is it already?

EDIT: is there any possibility of them making the power brick smaller / changing the look?

 

PC Watch has Takashi Liu's GL702ZC-r7 review ( ja) reporting that the fan is quiet for CPU-only loads, so the laptop is suited for multithread CPU-limited content creation tasks (photo editing, 3d rendering, video production). He also reports the CPU clock can be raised, although the GPU is limited to 68W and can't be raised.

 

That's good, I could Imagine people that are getting this laptop are mostly focused on CPU intense tasks.

 

Three users are reporting that AMD-V virtualization support (often labeled in the BIOS as SVM Secure Virtual Machine support) is not enabled, and the current BIOS of GL702ZC / S7GZ has no setting to enable it.

GL702ZC: darklajid at ROG forums ( en): AMD-V not enabled ("Virtualization: disabled" in Task Manager / Performance). No AMD-V or SVM setting in BIOS. In Intel ROG laptops, VT-x can be enabled. Still contacting support.

S7ZC: FA in JD product comment ( zh): AMD-V not enabled. Needed to run [Android?] simulator multicore. Not aware of plans to update BIOS.

GL702ZC: TMM_ at Phoronix forums ( en): AMD-V not enabled. Filed a bug with Asus. Was able to get Linux working with a development build (Fedora 26, amd 4.3.11 staging, ...), though touchpad is not working well yet.

In addition to multicore Android smartphone/tablet development, virtualization is also used for developing cloud or cluster applications using containers like Docker 64-bit, and for testing developed software on different operating systems or on different OS versions. So CPU virtualization support is a requirement for many multicore software developers and programming students.

[edit: added TMM_ paragraph.]

 

JagatReview has Gatot Tri Yuwono's nice detailed picture tour and review of the Asus RoG Strix GL702ZC ( id) (viewed translation via Chrome browser).

The fourth page ( id) shows the 8-core Ryzen 1700 performing well on multicore content creation application benchmarks such as rendering (Cinebench, Autodesk 3DS Max, Blender), transcoding (Handbrake), and image manipulation (Photoshop). Some of the PCMark scores might improved slightly with a faster SSD.

Temperatures were at most 85°C on the fan 'auto' setting, and below 70°C on the 50% setting. The loudest 100% setting was not needed. (The ambient temperature was not specified.)

• Charts CPU temps on 3 fan settings (auto/50%/100%) while idle and on full CPU load (Blender).
• Charts GPU & CPU temps on 3 fan settings (auto/50%/100%) while gaming (Metro Last Night).
  
• Many FLIR images show which laptop surfaces stay cool or get hot (while gaming).

The conclusion ( id) points out that the GL702ZC may be the lightest, most portable system available with the 8-core Ryzen.

 

I've had a laptop come without virtualization in the BIOS enabled at release, it took about 5 months for them to update the BIOS. (Haswell laptop: Acer).

Keep complaining to Asus

 

I'll also raise a ticket to Asus about upcoming AGESA 1.0.0.7 (the one that would enable support for Ryzen refresh, Ryzen 2 and 3).
I don't tend to use virtualization so it doesn't exactly pertain to my situation, however, it's downright silly that it's not enabled by default.
Seems to me Asus still might be getting out of its way to cater more for Intel vs AMD... though, in all honesty, it's early days yet.

It's also quite odd that the GPU being limited to 68W results in ridiculous fan noise under gaming - even limiting the FPS to 60 and enabling Radeon chill in the drivers doesn't do much to reduce the fan noise.
Yes, the temps are acceptable, but it's not advisable to game without headphones.
Ori and the Blind Forest however is one game that doesn't seem to stress the GPU at all... fans stay on low and it can be easily played without headphones.

Any other demanding 3d game though... nope.
Asus should have done more to improve cooling in this laptop (especially for the gpu).
There's no reason for the fans to be so loud for a 68W GPU limitation - even the GTX 1060 has a higher maximum TPB than this and the fan noise is lower.

EDIT:
One other question... how do I reliably set the fans to 50%?
Should I use the Asus ROG Gaming Center for that and then go into the FAN boost and move the slider to 50%?

I can definitely try that, but my past experience seems to indicate that the FANS will ramp up regardless of what I try.
Also, keeping the fans at a certain lower level and temperatures on the GPU at say 70 deg C would be really acceptable.

 

I found this review online

 

Great multi-core performance from the Ryzen 1700



Now if only Asus would produce enough to get into shops for sale before Xmas

 

Asus ROG Strix GL702ZC review and impressions – what to expect from an AMD Ryzen laptop

 

An interesting take on the laptop, most people aren't used to a laptop having the CPU being the higher performance component, and think the RX580 is mis-matched, I think it's great.

The red line accents are subdued enough for professional use, I don't think the laptop needs any further toning down. Besides, it's ROG + AMD Red

I've heard of 3 PSU sizes quoted now. 280w in this review, 350w in the D2D video review I posted, 330w is what I originally heard before release.

The Asus product specification page says 280w...it's the first I've heard of a 280w or 350w PSU from Asus, before this they've been 180w, 240w, 330w.

This review got better low use battery life:

42 W (~1 h 45 min of use) – very light browsing and text editing in Google Drive, Power Saving Mode, screen at 30%, Wi-Fi ON

I wouldn't have expected that much run time from a 76 Wh battery.

 

I honestly feel like the mismatch is more on the gpu and chassis end. It would have been nice if they had put it in the g701 chassis instead. I'm hoping they do a more premium model next year whenever the vega nano comes out and stuff it in there. It would also benefit if they managed to keep the 90ish whr battery that's in the g701 too.

 

The GPU is capped to 68W ... in actual games it behaves similarly or better to a mobile GTX 1060 despite being downclocked.
So, its not really 'mismatched'... though Asus should have probably installed the RX 580 as an MXM instead.

Problem is, I think Asus didn't put too much effort into cooling this laptop without the fans going insane on the decibals when the GPU is stressed.

Also, I now have a problem with this laptop.
My fans are constantly running on 100% inside and outside Windows irrespective of hardware load.
Because the fans are constantly maxed whenever the laptop is powered on, the CPU and GPU are under 30 degrees C as a result, but they aren't being stressed/used at all and the fans are just staying on maximum.

This didn't start happening until last night. I was playing ME: Andromeda, and after several hours, the fans suddenly went up to 100% and refused to go down since.
Its the same in BIOS... which I tried resetting (and didn't do a thing to change fan behavior).
The moment I power up the laptop from shut down, the fans just go directly to 100% and don't come down.

I have no idea what's causing this behavior.
I sent off a support ticket to Asus, I wrote to them on Twitter and Facebook... I tried calling them (to no effect because all their lines were busy it would seem all day long).

Having eliminated software as the problem (I did another clean Windows install even and chipset drivers - which didn't solve the problem, but since the issue is happening from the moment I boot up the system and inside BIOS/UEFI, chances of Windows being the cause are low), I am theorising that the thermal paste might have been 'used up' completely, but I am not sure if this would actually cause the fans to go to 100% from cold boot and stay there irrespective of under 30 degrees C on both CPU and GPU?
Could gaming have caused the fan control to go haywire and lock it somehow to force the system fan to spin at maximum inside and outside of bios?
And if so, how could this possibly happen?

I cannot downgrade the BIOS as Asus never uploaded the older BIOS (only the newer one), and when I simply tried to re-flash that same newer bios, it keeps saying I have an older version than the one currently installed.


I don't want to risk opening the laptop just yet (Even though I was told by Asus before that I can open it and upgrade the RAM and that the warranty will remain intact so long as I don't misplace any screws - the laptop doesn't have a separate RAM access doors).

I find this problem to happen barely over 1 month of getting the laptop (and an expensive one at that) to be highly disconcerting.
I also got the laptop with effectively broken Windows installation which didn't allow games to produce saves or to install any major Windows updates, and the partition for factory reset was broken as when I tried to factory reset it days after I got it, it reached 40% and then stopped, undid that and threw me back into windows).

 

I hope you are looping in Asus technical support for this new problem, it's just the kind of failure that might happen with a completely new design using new desktop hardware that hasn't been packaged into a laptop before.

It sounds like an internal fan control power problem, and it could get worse if there is a stressed component(s) that is failing.

Early adopter failures are part of the game unfortunately...

The failure to restore problem with Windows 10 is old news, and has been happening to lots of laptops. When Windows does a major update it can / will break the recovery restore from a previous "version". It's a MS problem, not an Asus problem.

That's why it's important to create the recovery boot media immediately upon getting a Windows 10 laptop, before connecting it to the internet. IDK if Asus provided a working version of Backtracker or not. It's a problem for all companies with Windows 10, it's been a nightmare.

 

I tried calling Asus customer support without success (none of their operatives were free all day long).
I sent a technical support ticket along with contacting them on Facebook and Twitter and posting in Asus ROG forums... but as of yet, I had 0 replies.

I had an issue with the original Windows pre-install not allowing major windows updates or games and programs to produce saves.
That's why I tried to do a factory reset early on after getting the laptop, but it failed at 40% at the time... and since Windows managed to update itself, the factory reset partition was no longer accessible (it's still there and intact... the recovery simply cannot recognize it for some reason).

A clean install solved the save and update installation problem and was running fine for a while, but now, the fans refusing to cycle down inside BIOS or Windows (with or without the hardware being stressed) is entirely new and unrelated one... and it happened without warning or expectations while playing a game no less.

I just don't see how playing a game could have resulted in auto fan control to force the fans to run at maximum at ALL times inside and outside Windows... unless if gaming itself used up the thermal paste (Which could have been of inferior quality) or caused failure in the hardware that controls the fans - which could point to a design flaw/issue (and I'm sorry, but a £1600 laptop should not come with these kinds of problems ).

If Asus won't respond, I may have to resort to RMA-ing the unit to LaptopsDirect and calling them beforehand to explain the entire problem yet again (to avoid hassle) and just asking for the money back if I decide to not bother with the repairs.

Short of that, I 'could' try opening the laptop and replacing the thermal paste, but there's another issue with that:
There's no guarantee that Asus didn't install warranty seals that cannot be easily seen, and removing the cooling assembly itself would void the warranty if Asus detects it (though I do have their permission to open the back panel and install RAM).

Plus, there is no guarantee that replacing the thermal paste would fix this problem (which leads me to another question - is it at all possible for thermal paste applied by the OEM to fail after just over a month of use and even if it did, could it cause the laptop fans to run on maximum all the time inside and outside of Windows?).

 

I'd keep the RMA simple, just the fan 100% problem - explain the higher than desired temps and high speed fans during use, that led to the now 100% all the time fan issue. It could be a probe issue or another control problem - it's locking on 100% fan's instead of responding to system thermal's as it should.

You could suggest a re-paste + checking the fitment of the heatplates and cooling pipes, wondering if the high thermals are causing the problem and it might happen again, so please consider investigating and redoing the cooling.

You could also ask them to restore the out of the box OS install so you can make a backup with Backtracker on a USB 3.0 flash drive before connecting to the internet, in fact tell them your problem trying to restore and ask for a solution so you can make a restore media boot device. You could even ask if they have an updated OS image with the latest MS update configured into the OS install / recovery partition.

These guys go through a lot of laptops during every day, the shorter and to the point you can make the RMA problem description and requests the better chance they will do as you request

 

Since I prefer going into details, would you mind creating a short but proper description of the problem that I could send to Asus if I send them the laptop?

 

Sure, when you have a longer version together with a numbered list of your requests I can shorten it. You could send both. Call one the brief overview, and the other "details". That's how I started doing it myself, until I was comfortable just sending the brief overview - having some faith in the tech's that do this a dozen times a day, having done similar myself, I know it's still hard to be brief.

It helps me to think of the overview as "self-documenting source code", or source code without comments.

 

It's almost impossible to be brief given how many people described horror stories with RMA-ing units and OEM's charging money on something the users didn't cause in the first place.

Also, another problem of NOT going into detail is that if you call them over the phone they will go through the 'obvious' (but lengthy) process of asking something like 'did you check the Task manager', 'make sure you don't have other third party services running in the background' and same garbage all over again (even if you told them upfront you already did all of that and that it wasn't a problem).

I cut through the garbage by being detailed and covering my bases... and avoid any issues for them to claim some kind of ridiculous obscurity.
LaptopsDirect tech guy I spoke with was ignorant of my unit and didn't even know at one point I was talking about a laptop panel, not a desktop one when describing the loss of FreeSync with new drivers.
I had to wait to be put through a customer service guy who actually knew his stuff and could supply proper answers.

It's obscene that ignorant people end up in certain positions being of little to 0 help - and then you need to spend a lot more time and money waiting until you get through to the proper person (because LaptopsDirect is on a separate number which charges people large amounts of money for every minute - you'd think they'd have a free line for customers).