Asus g60vx first time

First time self laptop owner here. My asus G60vx is arriving tommorow and I'm wondering what are the necessary/helpful things I need to do first before I begin personal use. I'm talking about drivers, programs, recommended settings, ect. Tips would be great as well.

 

Hey ChunkyGerbil! I just got my asus g60vx from newegg couple of weeks ago. You probably know about the heating issue with the G60vx, it has a pretty mediocre air flow system. You shouldn't have any problem but you should buy a cooling pad to help it, it really works, currently using a homemade cooling pad. It will lower you CPU and GPU temperature by a lot.

Another thing is that you should get Nvidia Powermizer for your video card, because the idling temperature can be very high, well atleast for me it was 70c idling until i downloaded powermizer which lowered it to 52c idling. All it does is just down clock the GPU when you are not gaming and such. But once you game, it will revert back to the original clocks. I play games like Starcraft 2 and my GPU never went pass 80c. that is a pretty good temperature. So you should deff look into that. I also have it clocked to the normal speed that the 260m should be. When u get yours, i think it will be underclocked because of the heating issue, but you can safely clock it back to normal. just follow the guide below.

As for programs and drivers, the only thing you will need is the important drivers, everything else is useless. Unless you want smart logon, which is the face recognition login. There is a thread on this site that talks about what each program does, asus comes with a lot of bloatware but its no problem.

If you are planning on overclocking, you should be careful and read the threads.
Here is mine that i posted awhile ago http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus-gaming-notebook-forum/505854-overclocking-g60vx-safe.html
and heres the overclocking guide for the g51 (same mobo as g60vx)
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/401345-optimization-guide-asus-g51.html

The G60vx is a really good laptop for it's price. Unfortunately it has a pretty old CPU, but you can overclock it to 2.5ghz safely. I have it Overclocked to 2.67ghz and my idle temperature's are 37 core 1 and 35 core 2. When i play games like starcraft 2 on high/ultra settings, my CPU reached only 60c max playing for about 2 hours straight. I was playing the mafia 2 demo earlier for about 30 minutes on everything high, the CPU hasnt exceeded 60 either.

What else i did is found an old case fan, turned it into a USB fan. I put that right next to the side vent helping the airflow go out. That reduced the CPU temp by 2-4c. B4 without the usb fan, my idle temp would be 42-45c. Thats not too bad but havin it 37 right now is even better.

The last thing i havent done which i plan on doing is replacing the thermal compound on the CPU and GPU with something better like arctic silver. That should help the temperature reduce probably by another 5c or even more.

Good luck and hope you don't regret buying the asus g60vx, it is a very good laptop, runs any game. Replaced my desktop. I also plan on upgrading the cpu sometimes in the future too and maybe add another HDD and more ram. Happy gaming!

 

here check it out, you can see my temp. I would recommend you reapply the thermal paste, it should even make my CPU and GPU temp drop even more!

 

Wow! I didn't expect that much help. This is such a great community. Thank you tjnguyen, all of this information is a great help to me. Especially coming from a fellow g60 owner. I'll definitely be looking into the cooling options and optimizing mine for the best performance. And its good to know that overclocking is an option for this laptop. Ill probably be posting my temps later today or tomorrow. Yours looks extremely cool. Also, by important drivers, you mean the sound and graphics right?

 

yes, for drivers just install the sound, graphics (if you plan on gaming you might want to read the optimization guide, it uses a dox drivers which gives better performance during gaming) and make sure you have the synaptic touchpad drivers installed too. Your laptop should come with a drivers disc that will tell you whats what and whats important and not. But you should look into this forum right here
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/380681-asus-utility-bloatware-guide.html
itll tell you what each program does so you can uninstall/install it to your liking.

here is another great thread you can look on, it has a lot of information and maybe it can answer some unanswered questions you may have.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/122632-asus-info-booth-read-before-posting.html

another great thread is the g60vx's owner lounge, they talk about you know the g60vx =)
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus-reviews-owners-lounges/427705-g60vx-owners-lounge.html

good luck ill try to help you as much as i can

 

why are my frequencies so much higher than yours :O

 

Im not sure, I think because my CPU was idle it wasnt doing much so it lowers it? im not sure if it's because powermizer or not, i think powermizer is for video cards anyway. idk why urs higher but mine does change when i load up a game, so does the multiplier. how are you liking your G60vx so far?

 

Ah, I see. I'm loving it. It's everything I expected and more I'm having a lot of fun and I installed everything you recommended and they're all very helpful. Thank you .

 

I would like to thank you guys as well. I just got my g60vx from newegg yesterday.

 

I had a g51vx (same mobo) and it was an amazing computer! It had dead pixels, so I RMA'd it (instead of ZBD-ing it) planning on getting another. But I couldn't replace it at the same price I paid (got an amazing deal, like $900 for it back in nov 2009) so I'm now using a g73. And it isn't much "better" than the g51. Sure, benchmarks are different, but real-world usage? Framerates? It all feels about the same, and I wish I could have stayed with my g51vx.

I guess I'm saying: Good buy! It's an amazing computer and you will love it!