ASUS ROG Zephyrus GX501 Owner's Lounge

Use an x-acto knife to cut little oles for screws. Leave holes, or tape over with thin electrical tape when done

 

The tape is over the heatpipes, which need to be removed along with the heatplates on the CPU / GPU, so it's gonna be interesting to see if it can all be removed at once, or if the tape will need to be removed to allow sections to come out in stages.

If the adhesive is only at the ends, you wouldn't want to cut away any of it, as you remove it and apply it over and over - he's likely going to need to do this a few times till he gets temps as low as he wants them - the adhesive is going to wear off and cutting away sections will reduce the sticking area further.

Maybe best to not cut it up before getting a pattern made from the original is good too. It's also tough to cut through that stuff without overshooting or causing an extended rip further than desired.

After he pulls it apart the first time he'll know better if access holes to the screws will help.

@Darkhan has already pulled up the end's of the tape to find the screws, an idea would be to remove those screws and the heatplate screws and see if the tape and heatpipes can come up as one assembly, by only unsticking the ends of the tape and leaving the bulk of the tape attached to the heatpipes.

 

It's stickier than the average thermal tape used for the heatsink to fan connection. But it will peel up with care and patience and remain intact for re-use. I did it and removed the three tapes to do a repaste. It went back on and adhered fine.

 

@pdagal Thank you Sir. +Rep

 

You're welcome, but actually, it's "m'am" .

 

She's a "m'am", of MobileTechReview fame

https://www.youtube.com/user/MobileTechReview

 

Apologies! I just seen your name now in Sig.

Thank you M'am ;-)

 

Here's some pics:

 

Did you take any pictures of the internals. What are the results of the repaste? Did the temps improve?

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The whole point I posted the link is to show a comparison of the noise compared to two other gaming notebooks measured under the same conditions. It is already clear that the 15inch maxq zephyrus performs below 17inch non maxq units, has poor battery life and certainly is not for you. But pls stop stating it was noisy because its not, neither under normal usage nor under load. If I would not own this unit already I may have turned away if I have read it was noisy because noise is a major factor for me. And I will tell you now again as a user it is one of the quietest gaming notebooks around, especially the noise oriented to the user sitting in front of the notebook and this is what counts the most.

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No, what counts most is the noise to the side and behind the laptop, as that's what others in the room are going to be subjected to. The user gets the fan noise drown out by the game play, and with the GX501 most of the noise generated is forced back into the room behind the laptop.

I keep stating it's noisy because I see the 55dba-65dba measurements in reviews, I've already posted them here on NBR as I find them.

Here's the first review I saw, there are others.

Asus ROG Zephyrus GX501VI with nVidia GTX 1080 Max-Q Detailed Review & Benchmarks


Idle readings start at: 09:00
Load test reading: 10:40 - You can hear it's loud back there

As they say in the video, compare these readings to their other review videos, using the same testing hardware and methodology.

The other GX501 reviews show the same readings, and other videos show noise in the room reflected off the walls, you are too close to it - too positive about it - to notice, which is cool, it's always that way with new cool toys.

Check my earlier posts in the Max-Q threads here on NBR, I posted the videos and their noise readings. I haven't seen all of them, it started getting repetitious watching all those videos. See if you can dig up some more

 

If you watch my review on YouTube, you can see actual video of the internals with me describing what you're looking at: . Starts around 8:50 if you don't want to watch the whole thing.

Temps barely changed with IC Diamond; like 1C lower. Asus did a good job with the paste and it was reasonable quality- in fact, it felt a little like IC Diamond.

 

@pdagal are you keeping g your unit? Did u buy it or is it a review unit?

 

It's a review unit. I love it, but it's a bit beyond my budget at the moment.

 

I agree, for me its about the same as my XPS 9560 with 1050 under heavy load. That's pretty impressive noise for a machine hitting 20k firestrike.

However if your behind it or placing it against the wall like hmscott says, I am sure it's louder but under 100% load, school stuff is not going to make the noise any louder than a mouse fart.

 

Spoiler: Actual Mouse Fart for GX501 Noise Reference Level

 

O.k., ill give up... If you ever have the chance to test out the zephyus yourself you will know what I mean. It may be louder on the sides and back but is still quieter than my AW17R4 and Phoenix on all sides. I have seen all the video reviews you posted and I think to draw conclusions the comparison at notebookcheck is more valid

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Keep in mind that early reviews were done almost a month before final Max-Q optimized drivers were ready from NVIDIA. The July 29th drivers reduce noise and heat without even using Whisper Mode.

 

That's good to know, thank you

Did performance suffer? What do you think were the changes to reduce heat and noise? Usually we get that from undervolting, or frame limiting, or game settings quality reductions, as those are the available parameters we can tune.

Given a certain performance level it's tough to reduce thermals further without performance loss. I could see the driver shaping power for the under maximum usage scenarios, but even then performance requires enough power to deliver results.

What would be available for Nvidia / vendors to help keep thermals down which keeps noise down? Did they say anything about what they did to make this happen? Was it Nvidia drivers only or also firmware updates from vendors?

Edit: It looks like CPU and GPU temps went up along with the quieter operation. Not a big surprise, if you throttle the cooling you'll throttle the CPU / GPU with higher temperatures.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/asus-rog-gx501-leaked.805107/page-39#post-10583071

 

No stuttering, no weird fps drops when gaming. I just switched over to an MSI GT73VR Titan Pro with i7-7700HQ and (obviously) non-Max-Q GTX 1080 for review soon, and it's astounding how similar gameplay and fps are. The CPU temps are of course significantly lower on the Titan- that is the most glorious overkill cooling I've ever seen on gaming laptop (and I've opened up probably a hundred over the years).

There are so many things that NVIDIA can tweak from micro timing changes to voltages for just a few milliseconds when load is lower or higher for a moment. They don't have to live with the basic all or nothing adjustments that we end users do.

 

Interesting you say that.

I hate the look of the MSI laptops... I went with an alienware 17r4 as a travel gamer....after 3 systems I still have huge thermal issues... even after repad and repaste. I am giving up. Also seeing similar issues on the Aorus laptops. I am thinking of just going for the GX501.

Those that bought the gx501 how are you liking it?

 

Best gaming laptop I owned so far. It may also be the first one which I do not have to repaste. I had good luck with an AW17R4, no stutter or heat problems after repaste and repad but I like the zephyrus more. Imho the only real drawback is battery life, but this is the case with most gaming notebooks.

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You made the move from the 17r4 to the zephyrus?

Also I notice mobile tech reviews showed high 91c on gaming load... I was a little surprised by that how are your thermals?


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If I had to choose between my x7 dt v7 and the gx501 it would be a hard choice but would pick the gx501 for the size, weight and power it's hard to beat.


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That's one of Asus's standard things, let things run hot but quiet as long as possible, until it's clear things aren't going to slow down, then ramp up the fans. I would imagine that for Max-Q that's even more important.

In a non-Max-Q laptop I'd suggest ramping up the fan curve a bit, but I think that's locked down by the Max-Q settings.

The other thing to do always is undervolt, all CPU's get too much voltage by BIOS default, you can reduce temps quite a bit underload by a nice undervolt, but reviewers typically don't do that they run things stock as a user would find it out of the box.

Maybe @pdagal can elaborate on her methods?

 

All the talk about undervolt Why not talk about raising the clocks so stock voltage fits the clock speed Fix the underlying problem and get most out of your chips. The way it should be.

 

Wouldn't that also increase the temps and make the heat worse?


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Fix the underlying problem. Voltage and higher clocks increase temp.

 

So yes it will increase CPU temps.


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Anyone else with light bleed? Definite bleeding along the top. Severity esp depends on how I open the display.

 

I have a small amount of light bleed in the upper left corner, no big deal, only visible at max brightness with black background.

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With a CPU undervolt of -130 and a gpu overclock of 200MHz I typically have cpu temps around 80c and gpu temps also around 80c under extended gaming sessions. Keep in mind a heatpipe connects cpu and gpu so the temps will adapt tp each other. The cooling system is very effective and quiet. However, I think it is advisable to undervolt cpu in any case. But most importantly the power delivery is very robust, no stuttering or throttling like with most AW17R4 and Razer Book Pro out of the box. Also paste job seems very good according to @pdagal. I did not repaste yet.

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Benchmarks!!! Boy is this laptop quiet!


Highest CPU temp 97c
Highest GPU temp 80c
Does not score as high as gt80s but still quite good

Www.3dmark.com/fs/13358479


Not sure why all the laptops I get tend to have higher CPU temps lol.

 

Can you use the snipping tool? Those cell phone pictures are horrendous.

97 Seems high what is ambient. Most users I saw when researching today and yesterday reported mid to high 80's on load.

 

Dude, you need to reframe your thinking, it's way out there on this topic.

What you are suggesting is ridiculous

You want people to keep an artificially static voltage setting and spin the CPU settings around that number?

The fixed high BIOS CPU voltage setting is the same for everyone that gets that model. The tuning is up to the end user to refine for the CPU in their unit.

That fixed CPU voltage is set too high out of the factory to make sure the variation in CPU voltage sensitivity doesn't cause some CPU's to be unstable.

Makers don't tune for the best voltage for each CPU installation, they pick a high number that covers all the CPU's in general to make sure all laptops come out of the box running stable.

On average all the CPU's will *all* be overvolted to some extent, I've run across CPU's that will only undervolt by -15mV at stock frequencies, and some that will undervolt to -220mV at stock settings, so as you can see there is a wide range of overvolted CPU's coming out of the box.

The fixed BIOS CPU voltage needs to be tuned with a negative voltage offset.

By undervolting you are customizing the voltage to that particular CPU in your particular laptop installation to only give it the voltage it needs to run, and no more - as overvolting causes overheating.

Undervolting isn't "losing performance" undervolting is ridding the CPU of unneeded voltage to reduce heat.

If the CPU is locked, they can't change the frequency multiplier or anything else to overclock but they can undervolt for lower CPU temperatures.

If the CPU is unclocked, then undervolting at stock speed is a good first step to find out how good the CPU is, if it undervolts a lot then you have plenty of voltage headroom to increase the multiplier and increase the power - independent of CPU voltage.

There is nothing wrong with people undervolting at stock speeds and then not overclocking at all. The vast majority of people won't feel comfortable overclocking but they do understand undervolting will reduce temperatures at stock speeds and they know that has great benefits to reduce fan noise and perhaps even extend the lifetime of the CPU running cooler.

Undervolting is part of Overclocking, as well as a good standalone technique to reduce heat even for those that don't want to Overclock

 

Looks good, but try ramping up the fan curve to reduce temps, maybe there is a Max-Q tuning you can do with GFE on a Max-Q laptop that doesn't show up on a non-Max-Q laptop, check it out

That CPU hits thermal throttling over 93c, so you are losing performance there. Same for the GPU, Pascal likes to bounce frequency and averages down the higher the temps.

You need to find a better CPU voltage through undervolting, use a negative CPU offset voltage. You already know this

It's your Thermally Radiant Personality

 

I would say 97C is way to hot. No?

 

76F ambient

 

Yeah, that's why I said he needs to undervolt and adjust the fan curve, as he is thermal throttling starting at 93c, losing performance

"That CPU hits thermal throttling over 93c, so you are losing performance there. Same for the GPU, Pascal likes to bounce frequency and averages down the higher the temps.

You need to find a better CPU voltage through undervolting, use a negative CPU offset voltage. You already know this "

 

Running stock drivers right now so no fan curve

 

Did you undervolt??

 

Where is everyone buying this system at can't seem to find any decent place with it in stock. Adorama camera has one but an awful return policy (if you open it its your problem)

 

Yeah, but they have great prices

You can return it to them if it's non-functional, otherwise there is a restocking fee, right?

So far @mason2smart has the worst performing CPU, too hot, otherwise we've only seen 1 DOA, so it might be worth getting from Adorama.

 

Newegg has them in stock.

 

I found mine factory sealed in micro center. Only one in town

 

Yeah, I haven't been able to get @mason2smart to do that either, he likes using the cellphone camera... it's so much easier using snipping tool or even a simple screenshot with Win+PrtScn, but he won't do it...

Yeah, that's the highest CPU temperature at 97c reported so far, he clearly hasn't undervolted.

 

LGa vs BGA war!
http://www.3dmark.com/compare/fs/13358595/fs/13358479#

 

OMG, a gimped Max-Q 1080 coupled with a thermally throttling CPU in an Asus GX501 Zephyrus fails completely to match the performance of a REAL full performance GTX 1080 laptop GPU and CPU?

What a surprise!!

 

And might I ask how much your laptop weighs????

 

is a nice machine that i look before buy mine, but
from my perspective is 2,2KG vs 2,9KG and 3622Eur VS 2800Eur for mobility/crippled VS semi mobility/Best out
Sorry not counted on PSU weight..