Pretty disappointed with the ASUS GL702VM Cooling System

Don't get me wrong, it is a decent laptop overall if it wasn't for the God awful cooling. I don't get why ASUS still didn't learn anything from the past years. They keep being the worst of the worst when it comes to cooling solutions.

And there's more to this, the ASUS GL702VM being a 17' inch laptop with 3 fans you would expect temperatures to be at least semi-decent. But no, despite being a loud system and having the extra fan it gets super hot to the point that, and this is the main reason I'm complaining, the components tend to throttle a lot and so frequently that kills the fact that I'm running a i7 KabyLake and a GTX 1060, which is unacceptable

How's this even possible, how could they fail at this, it's a 17' inch laptop with 3 fans running a GTX 1060.

Compare it to the LENOVO LEGION Y520-IKB running the same specs, with a side-by-side ****ty small dual fan solution and it's registering much lower temperatures and noise (according to reviews and benchmarks out there). But once you see the actual copper that LENOVO has put on the grill and fins, it's like the heat pipes are "wrapped" by it. making the contact between them so much better, and thus soo much efficient in comparison to the GL702VM that is basically just the fan blowing air towards the heat pipes hoping to cool the components.

I suspect that this is a case of bad quality engineering overall and they definitely have cut the price on the heat pipes, they're just so small and slim and they're not making enough contact where the pipes meet the grills/fins.

 

Your disappointment is totally understandable.

Looking at photos of the two machines (neither of which have I ever examined at any point in time before) it appears the Lenovo might be a thicker base. How do the actual chassis measurements compare? If the Lenovo is thicker, that may have something to do with the temperatures being better as well. Thinner and lighter form factor is always going to be at a disadvantage here. I also noted how thin the ASUS fans are in their product page. The fans may be too thin to work great. I could not find any images of the bottom cover online. How does the air intake compare on the two machines you mentioned? The MSI 16L13 has the fans choked off severely and opening the bottom cover or adding holes to enhance air intake makes a measurable improvement in the temps. Any chance the ASUS air intake is overly restrictive and messing things up on the cooling?

 

The Lenovo Y520 is the cheaper and worse version of the Y720 (which I had in the past but asked for a trade since it had a terrible screen), it was made for holding a GTX 1050Ti or something inferior, yet I see it running a GTX 1060 with no problems at all.
They have the same base thickness, and the Y520 is a more compact 15'.
Honestly I'm trying figure out what I can do but all I see on their (ASUS) forums is people complaining about he temperatures reaching 90's on both the CPU and GPU and having immense throttling. Things that (as they report) undervolting the CPU and using a cooling pad didn't help. And I can't afford to "drill" more holes as that would void the warranty.

ASUS was cheap on the cooling system and now we (the costumers) are paying for it... on top of the 1300-1500 that we paid for the laptop plus the extra for the cooling pad and better thermal compound. And the hassle that we have to go through just to figure out what's wrong with it.

Quickly answering your question, air intake on the GL702VM should be sufficient, there's the extra fan helping pulling in the air from the bottom.

 

Traditionally Asus has exhaust only systems and I just dont understand why that is.

EDIT:

Thanks for the rep Mr.Fox

I'll add that when I was looking into one of the ROG units maybe last year as a trade candidate for my SFF pc (couldnt bring with me to Korea) naturally I looked into vBIOS modding and by extension cooling mods.

The most popular cooling mod was unironically cutting a hole right below the GPU and CPU fans and dropping the temps iirc 10-15c. Heres a link to one of the modders

http://voltground.com/haven/threads/9/

I just dont understand how you can cheap out on the manufacturing at the cost of 10-15c increase in operating temps. It just severely limits what otherwise a great many would consider to be nice laptops.

 

Careful with what you say, others may actually try to do the case modification.
In the "guide" that you provided he states that cutting the holes above the fans only gave him drop in temperature from 3 to 5 degrees which in my opinion is definitively not worth unless your laptop isn't covered by the warranty anymore. And also that totally depends from laptop to laptop.

In this case the thermal compound that ASUS used is good, so repasting it made absolutely no difference.

 

He had another guide somewhere with the 970m dropping that much but alas I couldnt locate it. I was lazy and posted that one instead since the principle was the same.

I wouldnt cut into any warrantied system generally unless I could replace it on my own. If your looking at a laptop and it needs to be modded to operate correctly then I wouldnt be buying it lol.

I would be surprised if any ODM had good TIM application from the factory, been buying new and used laptops and its never applied correctly.

 

That's actually the same mod (different laptop) that I did to the Tornado F5/EVOC 16L-G-1080 and it was definitely worth it. So much so that HIDevolution has made it an official mod on the brand new systems they sell. It's extremely stupid how so many of the new laptops have their air intake choked off like an 50-year smoker dying of emphysema. The engineers designing most of this new stuff must be imbeciles, or they just don't give a rat's ass if their stuff works correctly. What good is a warranty on a poorly engineered product that malfunctions as designed? Seems like it is kind of worthless if you are hog-tied and can't take the steps that are necessary to fix the stuff they botched up from the factory.

I even used the same grilles that was linked in the above post. I had never seen that before. Thanks for sharing it.

 

No problem!

Even on the F5? wow... Im not sure why these companies are forgoing simple attributes like that in their design.

This Alienware 17 is likely to be my last "enthusiast" laptop and then ill just be getting another desktop. Hopefully ill be settled in by then but time will tell.

 

Probably because most people buy laptops based on aesthetics and most consumers don't even know enough to realize when something is malfunctioning if it does not lock up or crash with a BSOD. And, if they can sell the same number of laptops built with shortcuts that save them money instead of doing it right, they have no incentive to do it right. It's the same everywhere in this sad world that we live in, and every one of these damned OEMs (all brands) operate the same way in that regard. They really don't have any pride in their products any more, despite the ludicrous hype and hoopla you see in their marketing crap. They all just wants to sell as much of their broken trash as they possibly can so they can sell an updated version of the same broken trash a few months later. Whether or not any of it works well is somebody else's problem.

 

Probably this isn't the best place to ask but do you guys know any other laptop with a GTX 1060 and a G-Sync panel?
I'll try to go back to the store and explain the situation, maybe they'll let me exchange it for another model

 

The problem with circumventing air flow over the rest of the motherboard by installing vents close to the fan intakes, is that the air drawn over the rest of the motherboard parts - HDD and SSD's - is cut off.

The one time someone had equipment to measure the change in temps on their motherboard after doing the cut out under the air intakes (Asus G750) they measured increases in temps throughout the rest of the laptop. So they plugged the holes and the cooling to the rest of the laptop returned.

Sometimes optimizing one side of a system for performance will negatively affect the rest of the system, this is one of those mod's.

It's something to consider when making mod's, how will this affect the rest of the laptop.

 

I am not aware of one, but I am not very in touch with the type of system you are looking for. It might be difficult to find a really good notebook from a local retailer rather than shopping online. Please let us know if you find something that fits your needs and works well, and where you found it.

There is only one way to find out and that is to try it. It might work extremely well as it does on the 16L13. There were zero adverse aspects of that mod. When a machine works like garbage from the factory, you either need to get your money back and go buy something better, or use your noggin to take care of somebody else's mess. Just ignoring it and believing the retards that built it actually knew what they were doing is not going to have a happy ending.

 

In a nutshell.

Even with my Ranger it still needs a lot of work to get the most out of what it can deliver. Sometimes I really enjoy that, modding for more performance and such, other times I just wish it worked like that out of the box.

Something as simple as being able to mod fan tables always seems to be the thing Ill never be able to have in a laptop

 

I know you don't have the laptop any longer, so you can't check now, but did you check temps of the HDD / SSD's before and after the mod? The other guy used thermal probes on other components as well, and the temps went up enough to be concerning.

It's like having the air-conditioning on only in the front seat area and not allowing cooling air into the rest of the car, the people in the back seats get hot while the people in front are nice and cool.

There is little doubt that that kind of mod will increase cooling for the CPU and GPU, the problem is instrumenting the rest of the laptop - measuring temperature increases of those components - which usually don't have a way to get readings before and after the mod, so you know the effect of cutting off air flow over them. Some NVMe SSD's have conveniently removed thermal probes, I wonder why?

The air intake design may not be optimal for direct cooling of the GPU and CPU, but designing the air intake from the front of the laptop or under the motherboard is done for a reason, to allow all the components to get air-flow for cooling.

Better would be to optimize the cooling of both by taking in air in both ways, but that's not been done yet for consumer devices, that I have seen.

Mod's are fun, and it's nice to claim improvements, but don't forget to instrument the rest of the laptop to see what the side-effects are, there will be side effects from cutting off air flow to the rest of the laptop, you can be sure.

 

Yes, I did. So did HIDevolution and Eurocom. None of the temps on the drives or memory increased in any of our testing. Those components were within 1-2°C of the same with or without the mod. The only thing that changed was CPU and GPU temps improved by 5 to 10°C depending on the workload and fan speed. The way it was originally designed was similar to sticking a Post-It Note over the fan intake. There is between 1/8th to 1/16 of an inch (depending on where you measure) air space between the bottom cover and the fan intake. Blockage of airflow without the holes is severe.

You also have to consider that if the CPU and GPU run significantly cooler, it can positively offset the temps of other things in the chassis even if the air flow over those items is reduced because they are not being overheated by the CPU and GPU that are being cooked alive due to inadequate ventilation.

We have to be careful about giving too much benefit of doubt to the people that design these things. All of them are on tight budgets and needing to cut costs to stay competitive. Just because their calculations and CAD mockups suggest their idea is a good one does not mean it is going to actually turn out to be true. I think one of the areas they are all really cutting corners is testing the effectiveness of their designs and relying on AI more than appropriate. What happens to the public after products are released to manufacturing seems to have become their R&D program.

 

Then maybe that MSI 16L13's air movement design is the problem, so in that case there was little air flow over those components to lose by the mod.

The Asus G750 testing showed the temperature differences to the HDD and SSD were as much as 10c+ under usage, and rose over time because there was no air flow happening to draw heat out from the front of the laptop, so the problem kept getting worse the longer you used the laptop in a session.

In the Asus G750 case it was better to close up those additional holes as the negative side effects outweighed the benefits.

It's interesting that the MSI 16L13's SSD / HDD / memory did show some small temperature increase change, but not much, perhaps those components were idle? Or the readings were done soon after starting, vs running with a load for a longer session, as most users will run?

IDK what Asus did with the GL702 cooling, but that's a really slim case, and I assume Asus designed it to draw air from front to back as in all their designs, so drilling holes would have the same negative effect as it did for the G750.

I wouldn't try it.

@macaco000

I'd get another unit, I wouldn't futz around and invest too much time, return it before it's too late and get another unit from another production run - get it somewhere else out of the area of that depot you got your original unit.

Maybe they can pull another unit from another shipment that happened later - that might be as good, ask the seller to pick from another shipment.

Good Luck

 

Y520 I think is 1060 MAXQ not 1060N

 

That was an MSI, not a Clevo. I have not needed to do a ventilation mod to a Clevo before. Their laptops almost always have properly designed ventilation. When I was done with that mod the MSI had a design that resembled what is common on Clevos and it was measurably better after the mod.

When you look at how the 16L13 and it's BGA brother are designed inside, it makes perfect sense that there was almost no change in memory or drive temps. The memory and drives are as far away from the fans as they could possibly ever be inside of the chassis, at the extreme opposite end of the chassis, with no realistic way for the fans to draw air across them for cooling. What tiny bit of air movement might have been there before the mod was far too little to be meaningful or measured. The fans would draw air through the path of least resistance, which is the large center grill area closer to the fans than the memory and drives.

 

As with all things modding, its unique to the model. YMMV, but dont be surprised if your mileage works in your favor...

I already have more or less open vents on my Ranger but its not going to stop me from creating more vents for the HDD's in the future

 

In the Asus there are vent holes in the front of the laptop to draw in air over the HDD and SSD, and holes for ventilation under the motherboard, but there is enough air drawn in from the vent holes in the front to make a difference of 10c when that air flow is cut off.

It doesn't matter how far from the intake the front is, and if there are other ventilation holes between the front and the back, as some air will still flow through the front vents to cool the HDD / SSD.

If the center ventilation holes weren't there under the motherboard, there would be more air pressure sucking in air from the front air vents, but again, you have to treat all areas that are getting hot, allowing some air flow through and to all of those locations.

When you circumvent the air flow and cut it off completely, stopping whatever air flow was occuring before, no matter how small, it will have an effect.

So if the cooling effects from those other vents all sharing the air pressure being generated by the exhaust fans is cut off completely the previously marginal air flow is now completely gone.

It doesn't take much air flow to cool the front mounted components, but if you cut it off completely, it's going to build up heat and eventually overheat.

Same for motherboard components that were previously getting some air flow to all them to expel heat, now without any airflow they will hold in and build up heat.

I'm sure you've added fan's to hot points on desktop motherboards before to get around case air flow issues. Imagine somehow removing the front air fans and then redirecting the rear exhaust fans to only exhaust the CPU and GPU heat, leaving the rest of the motherboard, power supply, storage to build up heat.

It's just common sense, but it's good to measure the effects under load to be sure, and when that G750 mod with vents cut out to get cool direct air intake, circumventing the ventilation designed into the G750, the CPU and GPU temps went down but everything else got hotter as there was no air flow to cool them.

That's another interesting point, you get some (most?) of the benefit with the mod by not using the pre-heated intake air - preheated with HDD / SSD / Motherboard / PSU heat, so that 5c improvement might have simply been the difference between getting cooler air in before it cooled the rest of the laptop, so everything else in the laptop is getting hotter after the mod.

 

If it was such an issue I'd imagine someone wouldve posted a few horror stories by now considering the first mod was 2 years ago now.

 

You'd be surprised how people don't pay attention to other things when focused only on one.

That G750 mod guy was crowing about the drop in CPU and GPU temps, then I suggested there are likely side effects on the rest of the laptop cooling, and how to measure them. He finally got around to doing just that, then he posted the results, and then he covered the extra holes because his SSD and HDD were getting too hot.

He hadn't even thought to look until it was pointed out to check them.

I doubt the CPU / GPU temperature drops from the mod makes any performance difference, no improvement in FPS or benchmark scores, as it's only 5c by itself. And, someone doing this extreme of a mod would have already re-pasted and tuned their voltages for best performance and cooling.

It's just not worth it hacking the laptop up like that, and then ignoring the side-effects for such a small gain that makes no performance difference.

But, some will still do it, and some will insist everyone else should do it too, it's just in their nature.

 

mod guy? You mean Dreamonic? or someone else?

Opening airways does tend to help but its laptop specific. The best example of this would probably be the y510p / y410p for terrible follow through on a good idea.

 

Nah, it was some handy guy on the Asus forums a few years ago.

I found one of my responses based on that testing, probably a year later, I'm looking for the original thread, but haven't found it yet:

https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthre...ake-for-g750js&p=487740&viewfull=1#post487740

I did find the Dreamonic intake mod Postings, but that wasn't the guy that did the thermal probe and thermal meter testing after the mod:
https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?33681-Laptop-Intake-Mod&highlight=cutting+holes
https://rog.asus.com/forum/showthread.php?78745-Another-Laptop-Intake-Mod-for-G751JY

I recall at the time it was tough finding his thread after time went by, his title wasn't related, and my directed searches are turning up things I recall from that same time period, 2014, but not that thread.

I guess someone else is going to have to instrument the components with thermal probes, and get an infrared thermal monitor to do the thermal tests before and after on new laptops attacked with a Dremel tool

Or, undervolt, tune the fans, and if you aren't thermal throttling, stop there and enjoy your laptop.

And, then break out the power tools to build a new table for your new laptop, instead

 

You could likely resolve the overall temps with just another vent space near the center of the base plate no?

 

There's that model as well with the Max-Q version, but the one I'm talking have indeed a "Full" GTX 1060 6GB GDDR5, they're selling those over here and you can look it up on YouTube.