ASUS TUF FX705 Owner's Lounge

Meta
Starting this Owner's Lounge as I've recently purchased an ASUS TUF FX705GM-EV101T for work purposes, and hope to create here a defining resource for all information and discussion pertaining to FX705 variants.

This main post is to be considered a work in progress; I'll review other Owner's Lounge threads and continue to amend and improve this as time goes on. All suggestions and contributions welcome!

If you're an owner, don't be afraid to say hi The more of us there are here, the better we can support each other. No apologies for links being UK localised

Links
Official

• Asus - Features
• Asus - Specifications
• Asus - Gallery
• Asus - Support:
  • Drivers & Tools (Windows 10 x64)
  • BIOS & Firmware
    
  • FAQ
  • Manual & Document:
    • GD/GE/GM English Upgrade Guide (v. 14252, 2018/10/19)
    • GD/GE/GM English User Manual (v. 14249, 2018/08/13)

Unofficial

• Forum.NotebookReview.com (Search All SubForums: FX705*, Order By: Date)

Variations - TBC!
GD vs GE vs GM
DY vs DD vs DT vs DU

Reviews - TBC!
Text
Video

• Tech ARP @ YouTube - "Official"(?) Product Showcase

Random

• Back Panel Screw Placement

Self - Justifications
I purchased this laptop after having started a new job, and saved up a small bankroll, where the April 2019 price of £1,100 (£400 discount!) + £80 self-upgrade (RAM, re:below), was an acceptable hit.

My previous laptop of 5 years+ is an Acer TravelMate B113-M, which has served me very well for the £250 it initially cost me, but needs to be retired, as my productivity is being limited. UserBenchmark: i7-8750H vs i3-3227U = +236%, so the bottleneck is now sitting between the chair and the keyboard.

The price for this laptop looked very good for the details on screen, and in particular:

• Homogenised Components: "Industry" seems to have settled on the Intel i7-8750H, HM370 and Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB as standard components in the ~over-£1500~ bracket for Q4 2018 laptops. Thus I have (perhaps unfounded) confidence in long-term support being offered either commercially or through communities (i.e., later on in life through Linux).
  
• Ease of Disassembly: It's 11 screws for the bottom plate, and that's it. Memory, battery, cooling is all exposed for maintenance, replacement or upgrade. Brilliant. Queue current hardware plans to double the RAM to 32G.

I'll keep Windows 10 Home, for now. Debian would almost certainly be my choice desktop OS to go to, but I'd like to maximise hardware support for now, and potentially see how the next Windows iteration behaves. This laptops main purpose for me is virtualisation, not gaming, and fits my needs perfectly thanks to these stock specs, easy upgrade and competitive cooling system.

Self - Aftermarket

• Flashed BIOS to v304 - all went smooth, external drive had to be FAT32 (not available in Win 10 formatting options ), Intel RST as a new feature.
• Installed 16GB RAM module, a duplicate addition to the factory installed module.

To Do:

• Define Variations
• Discover Reviews
• List (Asus UK) Stock Software
• Ideate Improvements from Other OL Threads