ASUS ROG Strix Scar II GL504GS-DS74 Review

Here is a new YouTube review of the ASUS ROG Strix Scar II GL504GS-DS74

 

Oh god the temps are downright fightning.

 

No throttling, highest temps in the 80's...why are you frightened?

 

The cooling is a shared heatsink design (hence cinebench only 74c and in games much hotter) causes massive issues on games such as AC:O, Shadow of the tomb raider etc. As you can see on the video, far cry reached 87 and 87c on both GPU and CPU, this was with a rather low CPU usage but high GPU usage, with the mentioned games (which are far more CPU intensive) it easily reaches throttlingpoint and that's actually really scary.

 

So the problem with the cooling design of this is the shared cooling design?

@Donald@HIDevolution have you tested the 1060 in terms of temps?

 

Almost all newer laptops come with shared heatsink. All this design does is puke heat over from GPU to Cpu heatsink and grills if both graphics and cpu is fully loaded. They make this design due thinner and slimmer chassis design. + GPU with high TDP need better cooling than the thin and flimsy heatsink grills for the GPU part can provide. Puke heat over to cpu grills can lower GPU temps. They can still use maxed out W/hr battery size but the battery has to be in bigger footprint. With the results... MB PCB design have to be smaller to fit in the slim and thin chassis with the bigger battery who eat up the space.

Just look at Alienwares flawed TRIPOD shared heatsink cooling. Not even space on MB for needed attacment screws for the Cpu part.

 

No, only with the nVIDIA GeForce GTX 1070.

After AIDA64 Stress test
Stock: GPU = 75C - CPU = 95C
After Grizzly Conductonaut + Fujipoly Extreme Thermal Pads upgrade and -110mV: GPU = 70C - CPU = 75C

 

Yes and no, shared heatsink isn't bad if your mass and fans are good enough. Obviously games like assassins creed would thermal throttle the hell out of the system.

 

My Hero 2 throttles like crazy on Farcry. How the hell can laptop manufacturers get away with highway robbery for so many years I will never know. I get massive fps drops in Black Ops 4, 120+ to 30 every 5-10 seconds. Not sure if throttling or what.

 

Have you, or did your vendor, repaste? If so, with what?

Have you undervolted it?

 

Yea I bought it from you guys with a liquid metal paste/fuji pads 2 months ago. I tested FarCry 5 again today and it seems WAY better. 65 degrees ish CPU and GPU after I undervolted both. Im also using my power brick as a temporary stand to keep the back up, seems like it helps alot letting those bottom vents breathe. Need to buy a laptop cooling pad. Will test Black Ops now and report back.

Firestrike looks great temp wise. That's with the undervolt.

 

Great progress!

Keep us in the loop if you need our Tech Support (experience REAL technicians who care, not script readers).

If you should ever need tech support or warranty service, please understand that I am not a technician, so it would be better to contact our Tech Support Team by phone at 888-666-3418 when calling from the USA, or +011 562-485-6541 when outside the USA, Extension 3, between 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM Pacific Time, Monday through Friday, by email at [email protected], or by Online Support Ticket at http://www.hidevolution.com/contacts/ (in the department dropdown menu select Zoltan S - Tech Support).

Please let me know if they don’t resolve your issue.

 

You bet, I'll be back for another purchase from you guys once the 2080/2080 max q comes out....hopefully in a Asus Zephyrus model

 

We will be here to serve you whenever you are ready!

 

Issues are back....submitted a contact request from tech support on the website. Temps are fine but my FPS in FarCry 5 and Black Ops 4 bounces from 120 to 20/30 and back up every 2 seconds...my gpu clock also bounces from 1405 to 17xx.

Sorry for the poor quality but you get the idea...

 

Thanks for submitting your Support ticket...we are ON IT!

 

LUL i just bought this laptop (cos my clevo is giving me the finger) and so far it seems to be fine with the games I play like siege, cod, and battlefield. I'll have to install my monitoring tools to see what the temps are for 1070 model that I have.

EDIT: I did notice that balanced was the only power mode available. I wonder if doing a fresh install will fix that?

 

So a fresh install does not give me the high performance power mode.

EDIT: found it in the windows mobility center LUL

 

This was the second time

 

That seems to be the case. now running this puppy with high performance power mode LUL

now just gotta find a place for thermal pads.

 

Just bought this laptop on Newegg for 1599 USD! I’m very excited and was just wondering why this laptop doesn’t have an owners lounge. In general, I haven’t seen much buzz surrounding this model. Why is that? Personally, I feel 1599 is great for a 144hz screen and 1070. Any recent user reviews from anyone?

 

I dunno about other people but i have some weird issues with the sound where it won't load on boot or i'll get sound in the headphones but not through the speakers. I am using the latest driver from the asus website but can't find any other place for the driver.

 

I finally took the plunge after a year of comparing stuff and got the GL504GS from Newegg during the sale. So far everything checks out except for one thing:

The trackpad, right out of the box.

This trackpad has an odd behavior where when I am doing 2 finger scroll, every minute or so it freaks out and stops responding to input or moves strangely. This is out of the box, on latest bios 305, no changes to drivers/os. I did all the stuff I could find - ensure Asus PTP driver is installed, disable multitouch gesture, set to max sensitivity, etc. Verified that this doesn't happen with a mouse and there are now new system/application events when the problem occurs to help track it down.

Has anyone encountered this issue and knows of a fix? Otherwise I have to decide whether to just live with this or try to get newegg to swap for a new one. This sample has decent temps and OK light bleed, so I'm hesitant to play roulette again over the trackpad

 

i haven't seen any issues with my trackpad but I haven't even bothered to use it. The main issue for me was the sound drivers constantly playing up with the onboard audio and so I replaced it with a USB sound card instead and that works better (but it means I have to wear headphones but that's OK).

Mine came with 302 BIOS and I flashed it with 303 then 305. I even....

• cleaned the VRMs, mosfets, and VRAM chips from that thermal paste gunk that was applied at the factory and put in some proper 1.0mm thermal pads (6.0mk/W i think for thermal conductivity)
• repasted the CPU and GPU dies
• Swapped out the 256GB NVMe drive with a 950 Pro 512GB NVMe drive
• Swapped out the 1TB SSHD with a 1TB 960 EVO
• Installed XTU and undervolted the CPU by 80mV to help combat any high CPU temps.

 

Can someone explain to me how the asus built in software handles updates? I can't find any user facing pre-installed app that shows me asus updates, but the machine exhibits behavior like it's rootkitted and just randomly updates stuff, including bios.

 

I just did a full OS on a separate SSD.

 

I’m thinking of using some conductonaut on a gl504gm hero ii (1060 version). Are the contact points between cpu/gpu copper like the scar? @Donald@HIDevolution

 

Yes.

Be careful, and seal it properly.

 

so 1.0mm thermal pads seem to be working fine as a replacement for the factory applied goop that was applied on the VRMs and vRAM chips. The temps don't seem to be all that different so I think we're all go on that front.

 

I got the same deal, just got mine a couple weeks ago. Overall I love the machine. Of my 3 issues with the machine, two have already been spoken to:

Yep, I have the same thing going on. Toggling the spatial processing on/off seems to kick it in the pants and get it working again. I'm pretty confident we can figure this one out, I'm wondering if it has to do with allowing apps exclusive control to audio out, I'm going to try disabling that and see if it helps.

Yep, I have this also. So far it's only been a minor, occasional annoyance. I'm going to try and work out that audio issue first.

My 3rd issue is with the SATA connector/adapter. I bought mine with the SATA drive deleted because I already have an almost new 2TB drive I wanted to use with it. Well, not only did the laptop come without the drive but it came without a connector to plug anything into! I have the empty ribbon cable socket on the mainboard, and nothing plugged into it. Asus' drawings and parts listings do not even mention this part, and without access to one of the parts I have no way of knowing what the part # is. Looking up photos of the part # for the OE drive, I don't see any evidence that the connector comes with the drive. I contacted Asus about it via Reddit post, to specifically ask what the part # is and how/where to obtain it, and their public response was that they apologize for the inconvenience, and to send them the serial # and place of purchase via direct message. So I DM'd them, and their response was "we don't support modifications or upgrades, you need to take it to a technician", LOL. I'm going to figure out how to make this work, with or without Asus parts. At this point, I would happily sink a lot of time into prototyping my own adapters just in spite of Asus, but I have a feeling the part is nothing more than a standard SATA connector and a break-out board to carry the connections into a ribbon cable (which also appears to be a standard size). If that turns out to be the case there are probably any number of SATA adapters from other manufacturers that could be made to work.

 

I haven't even touched the parts on the motherboard that would affect the sound and I am thinking it's a driver issue. I'm using a USB sound card (soundblaster X) and that works but it does take up 1 USB slot.

 

Just wanted to follow up with this, I un-checked the option to allow apps to take exclusive control of the audio, and that has fixed the problem. I suggest anyone having the same problem try that.

And to follow up on this, it turns out the vendor I purchased the machine from DID include the SATA adapter I've been looking for, it was in a little baggie that had got caught up in the retail box, inside all the cardboard pieces that make up the risers/spacers underneath everything. Photos of the adapter are here, in case it might help someone else someday: https://photos.app.goo.gl/YLgXoioYgabC5kQy6

 

when I disable exclusive control, sometimes the audio in the headphones will drop to a low volume level and sound distorted even though it says 100% in the settings.

I shouldn't have to use my USB audio card to get the job done but it works and is cleaner.

 

I bought an GL504GS(Scar II) last friday, and ran into numerous problems:

1.) The fan goes from very low to full blast and never idles down.
2.) I was getting 30FPS in GTA on medium settings and in Nioh the frames dropped to 1 FPS upto 35fps.
3.) Stuttering while using Windows 10 and in game.
4.) Asus Gaming Center app makes no real changes on the hardware settings.

I bought the laptop from Amazon and I am going to send it back since after I reinstalled Win10/upgraded && downgraded bios nothing changed. I am most likely going to pick up an Acer Predator 500 Helios(I7 vers) or MSI GE75 Raider.

 

In regards to #2, check that it isn't running the game with the Intel graphics by default. I've had this happen with quite a few games. Just go into the Nvidia control panel and switch the game/program to run with the Nvidia GPU if this is the case.

Side note, I'm considering this the 1070 version and has a few questions. First, has the throttling or temp issues been fixed in any of the BIOS updates?

Also just curious if the Armoury Crate app is useable if downloaded from the windows store. It comes preloaded in place of the Gaming Center on the 17" model, and is mentioned in the Scar II (shared 15-17") product page on ASUS website, but the GL504 isn't listed as compatible in the Armoury Crate description. I don't see why they'd enable it for the 17" but not the 15" of the same model, especially when it actually comes a 1070, really strange if it doesn't work imo.

 

i don't get why when i have the battery removed that it says 'plugged in and charging'. I feel like it's using the battery over the AC.

 

WOW! So disconnecting the battery to force it to run exclusively on AC seemed to have "fixed" my problem of games downclocking too much because of the GPU hitting 99%.

Is there some weird hybrid power thing going on?

 

OK so after doing my testing I think i've hit on the cause: the Nahimic Service. So since I can't uninstall it from the OS I just disabled it and now when my GPU hits 99% it doesn't massively downclock.

 

I wonder if it's possible to do a hackintosh with this laptop?

 

kinda pissed now, the M.2 slot no longer gets detected in the bios.