Asus ZenBook Pro UX501 Owner's Lounge

I upgraded to Windows 10 when it came out. I will just download all the drivers from the asus website and install them. Let's see if that helps...

 

If you upgraded, I guess you didn't perform a complete reformat - which is advisable.

It's not entirely certain that the asus webpage has all the drivers needed for win10 - intel drivers are usually the ones that are needed, namely the intel management interface, chipset, graphics and the colaboration drivers.

For me it sounds like a software problem, though I can't be certain. The best (and perhaps easiest) way to be sure is to do a complete reformat, followed by reinstalling win10 from scratch. It's luckely way easier than the update nightmares on win 8.1. But only if manually updating the drivers doesn't help.

 

how do in calibrate the battery? My battery is at 96% but it says there is 56 minutes remaining. I thought this laptop has around 4-6 hours of battery. All im doing is typing my essay and this laptop is fairly new (1 month).

 

Have you turned down your brightness and set the power mode to balanced?

Is your GPU active all the time?

 

Im fairly new to PC laptops (mac guy) and i checked the task manager and it has something called service host: local system at 678 mb (memory) and service host: Local service 300mb ish.... my disk also ranges from 80%-94% and all i do is type word and read pdf files. My cpu goes up as well and i have no clue why.

 

that's nothing to worry about

Is your disk transfer at 80%+ all the time? then there's something very wrong....

What are your actual battery times ? don't trust the task managers time horizon.

 

based on clicking the battery icon below it fluctuates from 2 hours to as low as 56 minutes with 90% battery.

timed it while regular browsing and pdf running (doing essay) and it lasts me 2 hours 20 minutes (starting from 97% charge)

 

That's not a huge amount.. you might have some processes running or something utilizing your ressources, since it's that low - resetting your laptop might work.

- just to be sure, what model do you have; the 4 or 6 cell battery - models with traditional harddrives have 4 cell (normally the 1TB models) and basicly all the others have 6 cell.

 

kewl...thx

 

I am very interested in this laptop, but waiting for its upgrade,
someone knows anything about this?

Thx

 

i have the base model (1080 p , 1tb) is that a bad thing? i love this laptop though cuz of its power...the portability just bugs me bit not cuz of the size but the battery....

 

I have same model. Its the perfect price performance ratio. If you want it to be more speedy you can add SSD.

battery is 3.5 - 4 hrs. For me its fine. I dont expect any laptop with this build, power and storage to have 7-8 hrs battery life. Battery needed to be sacrificed here.

 

yeah thats fine...i love using this laptop though. Playing games is great on this and its pretty fast so im happy with that. Battery is a bummer but im thankful for my mum for getting me this )))

 

well it's not really a bad thing but i does mean that you battery capacity is lower than other models, as you have a 4 cell battery as opposed to the 6 cell in the ssd versions - it's about 1/3 of the size. However you should be able to cramp 3,5 - 4 hours out of that baby, like Khanis12 said. lowering your brightness will help. But if you still have running processes that eat up your system, as well as your harddrive being utilized a lot, that will kill the battery faster. So all in all be sure nothing is running on the laptop, monitor your ressources and notice which programs are doing what.

Otherwise if you can't figure it out, reset the computer to insure you are not infected by something ugly - and install programs one by one and monitor

 

Hi there, can anybody show me a way to turn off power to my USB ports when laptop is fully powered down ? I use the laptop as a desktop when not travelling and hook it up to a 4k monitor via the displayport, but also a USB mouse and keyboard. When I power down the red light remains on to the mouse and I also notice that I do not have maximum charge when I power back up the laptop after some time (not charging). Put simply I do not want the laptop charging anything or powering any devices when it is off, let alone plugged into AC.

I cannot find any settings in BIOS (unless I missed something).

I have gone into device manager and unchecked the 'Allow the computer to turn off this device to save power" in USB root hubs and disabled USB selective suspend setting in advanced power options as well.

Any help appreciated.

 

It's in the bios options - USB always on or USB always charge - But i'm not sure it's in the standard version, you might have to unlock the advanced options of the BIOS/UEFI..

 

afraid I cannot see any such options in my Advanced tab settings..... alternate BIOS available ? running V 210 5.5.1028

 

The real advanced options have to be unlocked, through a bios mod - I can run you through it if you want. You will, however, potentially ruin your RMA posibilities and unlock features that can ruin your laptop.

That's the only way I know of for shutting down the feature, there might be other ways..

 

hey SpQg it won't hurt to post that. as a user I expressly accept all risk if I choose to do try.

 

okay there are many ways to this but in general if all you want to do is access the hidded options of the bios, this approach has worked for me and is by my judgement the far easiest.

download the following: http://www.sendspace.com/file/owfsdf
and the newest bios version: http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/nb/N501JW/N501JWAS210.zip

1. Unpak the Rar file from the first download
2. Unpak the Bios file from Asus - and rename it .rom at the end instead of .210 (alternatively make a copy), it will come up with a warnimg - ignore that
3. open AMIBCP v4.53
4. open the N510JWAS.rom file you just renamed
5. In AMIBCP you'll see a filefolder style layout, containing different aspects of the bios, you can expand the folders as you wish, but only change the Access/Use colomn. In general you'll want to change the access permission in the areas, where you don't already have access - from "default to USER". You can verify this by going into the bios and see what's there
6. In the root folder you can change the main access to the overlay of the bios. no need for change here.
7. In the main folder itself, you should already have access - in the subfolder, however, there might be a few interresting spots go through them and change the ones you see relevant. If you're in doubt just google it
8. advanced folder, there are many that are interresting to unlock here, most commonly if you change the top Access/Use from default to USER you get acces to the entire subfolder - but not always.
9. When you've found the option to unlock - save the file as N501JWMOD.rom - or something like that -
10. verify the filesize is exactly 6.146Kb
11. flash it using either winflash or the better easyflash in bios.
12. enter the bios to verify the changes have been made

Good luck

Remember it could ruin your bios, which is very hard to fix, so be careful - it can be somewhat fixed if it is, unless you mess with the secure sector of it - I speak from experience.


EDIT: almost forgot one very important aspect, if you brick your laptop and at the same time your USB ports, I can't help recovering. Using a USB stick is the way you can crisis reflash your bios.

 

Is it possible to upgrade the battery (mine is 4 cell something) to a better battery down the road?

 

Well in theory yes, it's not dificult to take the battery out and replace it. However, finding a replacement will be kinda hard.

 

how come? i bought this in the philippines and i plan on upgrading the battery when i visit my parents in the States

 

Well It's basicly because I don't know, where the battery can be purchased - bear in mind, that if you where to replace your 4 cell battery with the 6 cell, there won't be room for your harddrive. As such you'll need to replace that with an M2 SSD instead.

 

Hey do you guys know where the fans are on this computer? I know the air comes out just between the keyboard and the screen but where is the air intake? thanks

 

It's the same place, there's only one vent, which is quite impressive.

 

http://www.laptopultra.com/guide/asus-zenbook-pro-ux501-disassembly/

Here is a good tear down.

 

I have a question about the nvidia and intel graphics icon in my notification area...do i need to have them both activated or can i disable the intel one and use the nvidia one instead?

 

One is for your 3d quality (nvidia) settings, the other is for your desktop and monitor setup (intel). That's what they are hard wired to each control.

 

Is it ok to fully drain the battery because i read it helps calibrate it..maybe thats the reason why it drains so fast. Ive been getting 2 hours on normal word processing and adobe pdf reading

 

You should not really need to, check your power settings/screen brightness and that the Nvidia GPU is not being switched on by something by mistake.

 

sorry im not good at this but what do you mean "switched on"?...i clicked the little up arrow in my notification area and nvidia is always there and intel RARELY pops up. My asus smart gesture never shows up except one after every re installation of the driver. I did find a temporary solution online but its annoying to use (basically create a shortcut for the gesture loader on my desktop)

 

Hi guys,

can someone please confirm that the unit can handle a 16GB DIMM? These modules are starting to show up this days and i would really love to buy the FHD model, which only has 4 GB Ram built in and one exta slot.

 

There is FHD model with 8GB ram built in and you can upgrade it to 16GB with another 8GB ram.

 

hi and thanks for your answer! are you sure there is a FHD model with 8GB built in? in Germany i can only seem to find this FHD models: CN245T (90NB0872-M05720) and CN245R (90NB0872-M07410) which have only 4Gb onboard.

 

In my region, the Middle East, I found a model of this laptop with 8GB on board with another extra slot to upgrade it up to 16GB. I think u can add 8GB to the 4GB on board and make it 12GB. However, I'm not sure if u can change the 4GB on board to 8GB. Search for another model of this laptop with 8GB on board.

 

yes, to add another 8gb to the onboard 4 is definitely possible, i was wondering if anyone has done this with a 16GB DIMM. Unfortunately there is no FHD model with 8gb onboard in my region.

 

In terms of perfromance, 16GB of ram is not a big difference from 12GB. Only if you will multi-task a lot, then 16GB will be useful. 12GB is sufficient for most people.

 

You can check by doing this:

 

Has anyone managed to get Adobe FLash to correctly size in Firefox (win 8.1)?

HTML5 works perfectly but some programs (like VLC) and Adobe Flash in Firefox have a tiny user interface which makes it almost unusable. I attached a screenshot of Chatroulette in Firefox and you see how tiny it is...

EDIT: it works very well in Internet Explorer. And I use the 4k display on full resolution.

 

Does anybody else experience a VERY significant drop in performance when you unplug the laptop? It is almost unusable on battery, which makes me have to carry the charger around with me all day. I've had other laptops that throttle the CPU when on battery power, but not nearly as much as the UX501. I checked my power options and looked through every setting in the bios (v211) but there is no setting to change the performance. I wouldn't mind a decrease in battery life, and I could actually use it. Like the laptop otherwise...

 

Most limit their performance on battery, have you checked what the frequency and TDP are limited to in intel XTU?

The limit will be on what the battery can deliver safely without reducing the life span. The thinner and smaller the battery and the smaller the design the less it can deliver.

 

It depends on what you are doing with the laptop on battery. If its gaming, I dont know any laptop that plays new games well on battery power.

If its operating system, mine worked fine even when I had it installed on the Harddrive. The laptop was very useable.

Check the Task Manager to see if CPU, Memory or Disk usage is high. Report those values back and we can figure out whats causing the drop in performance.

 

is there any way i can turn off the annoying light on my webcam during my video calls on skype or facebook?

 

Put some black electrical tape over the light. Or use semi-transparent tape(white electrical tape for example) so you can still see when its on or not.

 

Have you tried?
Power Options > Edit Plan Settings > Advanced Power Options > Processor Power Management > Maximum Processor State.
If that's set low for battery, you should turn it up.

 

The light is a security feature so you are sure when then we cam is on, as such you can't turn it off easily. You could try a tiny piece of black tape over it.

 

i remember replying to this, but cant find my post anymore which i find strange. i got the same when unplugging, a chatscreen with cam stream can lag heavily. and browsers too, let alone the other heavy programs. And that's all while the energy setting is at high performance settings.

 

Since the Windows 10 threshold 2 update earlier this week, the onboard graph (intel 4600) crashed atleast 10 times, and i updated the driver thru device manager but didnt help a thing. most times its just a moment of stuck and reload with the notice ' intel...has crashed and restarted' ect. however 2 times was during watching some vid and the sound gets stuck with the image and the whole laptop isnt responding anymore while this mechanical sound like a stuck record keeps going on forever. i had to force shut down the lappy.

 

the upgrades are out by now, it has i7 4750 instead of 4720 which has a lower clock but prolly less heat which is why they replaced the 4720 with that one.