ASUS N71JQ Owners Lounge

Hi !

Yes I bought HDD Board Assy N71VN R2.0 from ASUS from that link.
(Note: There is no cable, it's just a "plug in" on the motherboard)
I didn't bought any caddy (I forgot...) but I have "fit" the second drive in the bay making sure it is motionless.
As I have said, ASUS didn't give any screw with the HDD Board.. But I didn't ask for any. You can take 2 screws under the battery(out of 5). Also need a third screw at the bottom of the piece, to make it more motionless seem a good idea. I found 1 in my stuff, but none in the N71JQ compatible to salvage.

And Yes, you are better to buy the caddy from ASUS then EBAY.. ($$$) It is exactly the same thing.

From this forum you have the complete disassembly guide with photo to guide you. Not easy to find, but it's there.. A first link is not good anymore but later it as been posted again. I have a copy of that PDF file on my N71JQ.
(I found it again : Hotfile.com: One click file hosting: Disassemble N71VN Series Chapter 02-v1 0.pdf)


For this job, you must take appart EVERY part of the N71JQ !! Even the monitor and the motherboard ! (the socket is under it!)


Good luck to you !!
And give my news when it'll be done!

P.S.: I love my N71JQ with is SSD (120GB) and HDD (500GB)!!!

 

Ok cool man, I'm going to make the order now They probably won't arrive for a month or 2 though Thanks for the disassembly guide, that will definitely help. Will do man I'll keep u updated

For the time being I'm running my secondary drive via eSATA, which is a bit of a pain still cause I have to completely power down the drive to access the primary drive as both MBR's are conflicting with each other. Hopefully I don't run into this issue running it directly through SATA. See what happens, if not I'll have to dedicate one whole drive for data and partition the primary drive. Anyways thanks again. Yeah I bet the SSD made a huge difference

 

I've been thinking of getting me this 9cell battery but it's not an ASUS original.
Does anyone have had an expirience with this thirth party battery?? Laptop battery for X72 Series, X72J, K72 computer batteries

 

Just an update if anyone cares, got the laptop back from Asus. As suspected a hardware problem, had to replace the cable connecting the bluetooth chip thing to the mainboard.

 

Thanks for the update !!
I hope for you that this time it'll work for good !!

 

Just got my laptop back from Asus Repair Centre in the Netherlands with a brandnew motherboard after a shortcircuit near the power jack (which happened in the last month of a 2 year warantee period ). The guys at Asus were nice enough to replace the CPU fan and thermal paste as well. Great job Asus!

 

Hey, my parts finally arrived. For those who are curious as to what the parts look like.

HDD Board Assy N71VN R2.0


HDD Bracket Assy N71-1A


Both parts cost $50(AU) shipped to Sydney.

I whipped up a quick video in case anyone on here is interested in doing it. It seemed a bit tedious at first but its not that hard, just requires a bit of patience. I've worked on other notebooks before and this notebook has to be the easiest one I've ever worked on.

ASUS N71JQ SATA Connection installation - YouTube

It's so much better having a second drive, i have a dedicated drive for games and one for multimedia. Definitely worth it.

 

I need Help, I;m trying to find a motherboard for my asus n71jq cam some please point me in the right direction to find one?

 

Nice job on creating this video, having that empty void in your laptop without anything useful in it makes no sense whatsoever. For the people who don't or almost never use there optical drive I can also recommend hotswapping it with a HD caddy to make even better use of this (large) laptop.

 

Here is one:

ASUS N71JQ,Asus N71JQ motherboard,Asus N71JQ motherboard,Asus N71JQ mainboard,Asus N71JQ systemboard,Asus N71JQ motherboard

Please post here if you find cheaper options..

 

thank you so much paul but their out of stock any other ideas?

 

today finally received the 2nd hdd board and the hdd case.
To bad today i also heard that the motherboard of my notebook is burned .
So as of now, just an other one desperatly looking for a n71jq motherboard.

hmmmm, just a f****ng bad day

 

I know right. Just a complete waste of space. That sounds like a much easier option of course with the sacrifice of a optical drive, but who needs an optical drive these days I do recommend chasing up all the screws for this upgrade because with out the screws the drive is a little noisy.

People are frying up mobos already. . :0 I know they can run pretty hot these things, when I was playing Dead Island the CPU was hitting 90 deg C. After that I bought a cooling pad and that bought it down to about 86. Funny thing is I tested the temps without the keyboard and the ram cover under my cooling pad and it hardly made any difference. I wouldn't ever play games on a bed or even my lap.

 

I've got a quick question. I need to recover the 16GB from the restore partition to extend my C: to gain the extra space. Can I simply delete the hidden 16GB restore partition and extend the C: using Disk Management in Win 7? I made restore disks when I first got the laptop and use Acronis on a regular basis to keep current config images so I won't need the hidden restore partition.

It's a bit humbling to have to ask as I used to use Partiton Magic to run a fairly complex system in XP but being under some time constraints and not as familiar with Win 7 I just need a bit of direction to gain the extra space without causing any issues.

Thanks for any help.

 

i wouldn't delete your hidden partition with out making a backup of it first. If your using Acronis, just backup the hidden partition first, and then delete it.

 

Doe's any one know if Asus N71JV Motherboard will fit in the the n71jq laptop?

 

I've made the backup discs from the ASUS utility as well as an Acronis image. I just was hoping to verify that I can extend the C: Partition over the hidden partition area after it's deleted without issues. The hidden partition is showing as located in front of C: in disk management and I've read there may be issues when that's the case. It's been awhile since I've done stuff like this and the last time was on XP, I'm not so familiar with Win 7 in that regard.

 

I can't verify that sorry cause I've still got my hidden partition, but I'm pretty sure you won't be able to extend it without backing up your current partitions in a tool like acronis. As you said, because its at the start, i doubt you could extend that onto following partitions. With Acronis TrueImage, you can backup the whole disk (in case all fails) and then re-partition your drive and then you can select where you want to dump your old partitions on the new partitions and Acronis will dynamically adjust the partition sizes accordingly.

 

motherboard-home.com states that it's also possible to mount a n71jv motherboard in a n71jq notebook.
only difference would(i think) be the nvidea video controllers witch is i guess much slower than the ati controller on the n71jq board.
I contacted the helpdesk of motherboard-home.com before but never got a reply.
Comming tuesday my notebook is going to the asus repair centre in the netherland for an motherboard exchange. gonne be a pricy joke i guess.
By the way i fryed up my mobo by tripping over the powercable and not by overheating the notebook.
will let know about the cost.

 

Apparently a lot of people are having serious problems with the charger port. I have pretty much given up on my n71jq now. I even went so far as to buy a completely new motherboard (twice) only to find that it too had been "repaired" by replacing the charger port. The repair was not good enough and eventually overheated (within a day of using it). I contacted the company I bought the board from and they said they didn't have any n71jq boards without some kind of repair having been done to the charger port.

On a related note... anyone need any spare parts for their N71JQ, I'm about to the point where I'm just going to sell off all of the non-motherboard parts and try to get at least some money out of this beast..

 

After a flash and smoke from the charger port area mine had a new motherboard under warranty. A few months later it started "smelling hot" again (which is how the first fault started). I dismantled and removed the motherboard. Soldered a jumper wire to bridge a very dodgy-looking path from the socket's centre contact. Seems OK....

Disgraceful this should be necessary on a computer of this price though.

 

just cost me $418 from the ASUS service center. I wanted to just buy the mb and install it my self but they wont sell it to me without me paying for labor cost as well :/ they must think im a n00b or something haha

 

Hello everyone i've been following this post since i bought my n71jq(2 years ago), i have a problem with overheating the pc gets to 100 c° just watching a video and thus it shutdowns in about 3-4 min,the fan is always running to minimum i remember that at the beginning it would ramp up/down when needed but this doesnt happen anymore and i dont understand why.The laptop has latest bios flashed and started being like this all of a sudden,is there any way to force the fan to higher rpm?

 

Hi guys I was just wondering if anyone has tried installing 2x 8bg 1333 ram equaling 16gig total? the asus website states that it is upgradable to 8gb. but im just wondering if anyone has tried it and if it worked b4 I go and spend my money on something that is not going to work.
thanks in advance guys

 

For all those people out their looking for a mother board for the n71jq laptop I have found them

laptop motherboard for Acer,HP,Toshiba..

 

So update i opened my laptop and mirror finished cpu and gpu i removed thermal paste that was a ing a mess whoever did that should be shot there was paste 1cm thick on the core and all around the socket so i put new paste remounted everything and now its back to normal with 25 c° less on full load!

 

has any1 here installed mini pci-e or msata (hope it's the same) SSD on the laptop?!
i'm thinking about buying one (since i cannot add a bigger hd in the empty slot....
the dilemma now is between those two but any other information would be appreciated!

64GB Crucial m4 1.0" (2.5cm) mSATA MLC synchron
120GB OCZ Nocti Module mSATA MLC asynchron (NOC-MSATA-120G)

 

Hi

So, decided to upgrade my wifi card to an Intel 6300 card. However I am only able to get wireless "g" according to my router (DLink Dir-655). With the old wifi card, was about to get "n" up to 150 mbps. Googled around, but can't find any information.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

 

Out of curiosity, is there such a thing as a "recent" video driver for our laptops? With the newest expansion for Warcraft imminent and the newest patch having just been released, I'm having video driver problems.

Even if there isn't an official asus driver, has anyone a suggestion as to how I can install a more recent one? (I know I've done this on other laptops). Thanks in advance.

BTW, for those with really good memories, I came here asking for advice about charging problems - you were of course spot on with your diagnosis, a buggered charging port. I took it to the repair depot in Markham (outside of Toronto) to be repaired. I knew full well that I'd have to pay for the repair, but getting the thing back from them proved to be nearly impossible. I live about 3 hours away and arranged (so I thought) with the person I left it with to have it shipped when completed. Apparently the instruction of shipping it back was somehow lost in translation.

Getting it back was honestly one of THE most frustrating experiences of my life. It is bordering on impossible to get through to the repair depot and the support people you call at ASUS WILL NOT give you a contact number or contact email or, frankly any help whatsoever. In the long run, only by running a bit of a boycott campaign on some websites did I actually ever get any help. Suffice it to say I was NOT impressed with customer support from ASUS, even just thinking about it now makes my blood boil.

 

Hi,

I need a lil' help. I was trying to run Sleeping Dogs, but the old 5730 drivers cause the problems... What is the best way to update them? Is this cryostatis post ( Sleeping Dogs • View topic - Stuck at loading screen ) is the good choice? I replied there.

Thanks in advance.

 

Guys I have a problem. I open my access panel and to help cool my laptop during gaming, I keep a tray of ice underneath my laptop stand. In a fit of rage I slammed my fist on the desk sending water onto the ram and surrounding area. I know this because my laptop froze and every time I turn it on it eventually fdhreezes and the power button light blinks what should I do

 

LOL. So as it turns out, one of my 4 GB Crucial RAM cards is fried. But everything is fine, just went from 8 GB to 4 GB ram.

 

Och no... I just bought this notebook from my friend.

I did bios update, it pass successfully, but after it screen is dead black..

Can someone help me unbrick it?...

 

Hello, Tmaven, welcome to NBR.

Can you try a full power drain first:

• Unplug the power cord and system battery.
• Locate and unplug the CMOS coincell battery.
• Press the power button for ~30 seconds.
• Put everything back together and boot it up.

What type of BIOS does this system have (Phoenix, AMI etc.) ?
Based on the BIOS type, there are different recovery procedures.

Do you hear the fan spinning or any other activity when you turn it on?

 

Asus BIOS are usually AMI.

 

Hi
I tried everything. I trying to boot from cdrom that bios or from flashdisk with dos. But usb is not active (no green light, just during connection for 1 sec)

 

Ok repaired. Asus has some new tool for this bricking. It was bit usual, so instead of better bios check, they have developed tool to unbrick it .

 

what tool are you talking about and how

 

Hi guys

Seems my DVD drive no longer works. I have probably used it a handful of times in the past few years, but I do need to use it once in a while. I know I can probably buy a cheap external drive, but if possible in an ideal world would like to keep everything neat and "tidy". Is there anyway I can pick up an aftermarket internal DVD drive for this model?

So was having another thought, could I just replace my DVD caddy with another HDD, like this?

OptiBayHD - Second Hard Drive or SSD to your laptop using the laptop's CD / DVD optical drive bay

If so, any idea on dimensions, etc?

 

I have noticed that after two years of nearly constant use, setting up and putting it back in the laptop bag when done, the charging port had become a little stiff. Rather than risk a break requiring replacement of the motherboard, as others have suffered, I put a little dielectric grease in the socket of the power plug. This is the same stuff you can put on automotive spark plug boots to resist moisture and corrosion. Only a little bit is required, no more than the tip of a toothpick. Insert the plug and rotate it around a bit. Removal and insertion are now very easy. Just a little tip for long-time N71jq users.

 

ya my power cord port is pretty stiff, ill apply that grease. its amazing that ive had this laptop for so long.

 

Mine seems to have settled down nicely after I reinforced the circuit-board around the power socket by soldering in jumper wires. There's bad design in that area.

 

Just bought a new 1TB HDD and when I open up the cage.. surprise surprise, no SATA connector. After finding this topic I realised I would have to buy an onboard connector and a caddy..

Did someone find some other place than asusparts.eu to buy these parts? 67€ for a connector that should be there already in the first place is just ridiculous. It's a price of my new disk for god's sake! I would expect this part for max 10€ and some cheap chinese replacements out there.. but nothing.

It seems that I have no other option but to throw out the old disk and just replace it.. what a shame.

 

Yeah, I am noticing this problem myself here lately and wondering about it. Appears to be a video card crash since very little to nothing shows up in the Windows crash logs. Might be heat related since the top left quadrant of the keyboard gets pretty warm (right over the fan and heat sinks). I have about six months of warranty left and am considering an RMA if this turns out to be hardware related. I have never operated in a dusty environment and keep it in a laptop bag when not in use. I have even removed the bottom panel and blown out the air flow path as best I could without further disassembly. Didn't see any dust dislodged. My fan speed regulation seems to be performing as usual since the BIOS 208 flash. Sometimes the system will reboot all by itself and other times, when stressing it with video playback, it will freeze and I have to force shutdown. I suppose I will check out the ASUS driver versions for updates but little has changed there since 2010. Last resort would be to consider further disassembly of the cooling circuit, and maybe even CPU thermal paste replacement (warranty in jeopardy). If it is an age-related disorder, perhaps other users are experiencing it now.

 

Hello all,
My N71Jq-A1 is a little over two years old so it's out of warranty. In the last few weeks I'm also experiencing the issue where the system would just lock up/freeze and then the fan would kick into "high gear" and get loud and then the system shuts down. I've also had an issue where I'd go get the thing and it's just sitting there in with black screen and a blinking cursor in the upper left. When I start it up, it won't boot and I found out, later, that when this happens, the BIOS has reversed the boot order on my drives. So I have to go in and change them and then it boots.

These freezes have caused mutliple problems where chkdsk has shown issues with my disks so I thought maybe my HDDs were the problem. I actually replaced the HDDs with new ones and still the same issue.

Has anyone successfully replaced the factory video card with another one? That was the next thing I wanted to do, i.e., replace the video card to see if it's the cause of these problems. I need to check the BIOS notes but I upgraded to 208 quite a while ago so this didn't just start happening after a BIOS upgrade. Just in case the BIOS versions had issues with temperature and/or fan control. I'm not even sure the BIOS can be flashed to a previous version?

Any other thoughts/ideas? Thank you.

[UPDATE] So I decided to take the notebook apart last night just to see what my options are for replacing parts. Aside from the HDDs, Memory, WiFi and optical drive, not much. However, I learned how to take it apart and put it back together. Now, while I had it apart, I took the opportunity to clean it. Now THAT was the right thing to do. I couldn't believe the amount of dust that was in the fan assembly, both in it and on it. I blew out every spec I could.

After putting it back together and turning it on, it's now running not only a TON quieter, but, at least for now, it's also running about 12-15 degrees cooler. If it runs for another two years after the cleaning, I'll be happy.

If you decide to take yours apart and are not sure how, there's a very good reference video on YouTube.

 

Hello,

My N71Jq-A1 gets extremely hot, with only a few programs open, and whenever I run a game, the CPU throttles after 1-3 minutes of playing.
Temperatures
These temperatures are without my laptop cooler on, with it on it's around 85-90.


Every game I play gets extremely laggy and unplayable after a few minutes. I can take a break, let the CPU cool down, and then play again for a few minutes until it happens again.

If anyone has a possible solution for this, I'd really appreciate it.

 

Had another "crash" just now. Black screen and reboot. Was offered safe mode so Windows may have been aware of it. Nothing in the crash log or event viewer however. Still thinking this is a problem with the ATI Radeon HD 5730 card. Went to the AMD site and got their Radeon Driver Verification Tool which suggests I download and install AMD Catalyst Mobility, at my own risk. I posted some questions to ASUS tech support a while back about this, and derived from their broken english that I should only use the most current version offered on the ASUS site. That is Version V8.692.1.0 from 02/23/2010. Pretty dated. I already experimented with an updated version from AMD and continued to see crashes and had other problems. Maybe I'll try this Catalyst Mobility update and see what gives. Nothing else comes to mind.

 

Decided to see what happens and ran the Radeon Driver Verification Tool again. Installed the Mobility driver download and it blue-screened on the first attempt. Not very encouraging. Ran it again and install was successful. So far, so good. No crashes yet just running normal stuff so will attempt some video playback and see how it goes.

 

Anyone having issues with random crashing/freezing is almost certainly related to overheating. I had to replace my thermal paste a year ago due to this issue (in my case worsened by trying to play games)

The only fix for this is to disassemble the laptop, clean out the accumulated dust (using an air duster) and clean and replace the thermal paste. If you have a warranty, this act will void the warranty and so you should seek resolution via ASUS. If you're not sure what you're doing you're probably better off getting an IT technician to do it for you.

Also, while ASUS may not encourage your to update your drivers you always should. Almost all drivers for this laptop have been updated since release, most critical of which would be the video drivers (ATI Mobility 12.10 is the latest available).

 

Agreed. I recall some earlier posts in this thread regarding users getting warranty work done by a specific authorized repair facility and as part of the repairs got their thermal paste replaced with the then highly regarded Arctic Silver. There were even some DIY'ers that made the switch, against warranty considerations. My ASUS warranty is up this June so after that I will probably make the switch myself. So far no system crashes since I updated the video card driver but I really haven't put the system to the test yet. It sure would be nice if the ASUS registered user site would keep us updated on the various other software or firmware available for N71jq components. Nothing since 2010. The only other unresolved issue to my knowledge is the slow-scan of the integrated web cam. I don't use this feature very much, and if I do Skype I use an external Logitech camera.