ASUS U46SM-DS51 at XoticPC too good to be true?

I've been SCOURING every inch of the web for a decent laptop to get before this month is up because I am leaving the country and need a new laptop badly.

I really want something with a GT635m but I honestly can't find something decent.

So then I saw the ASUS U46SM-DS51 on XoticPC for a fairly low price. It looks very nice, has pretty good specs and the price is fairly low. From what I hear the 630m is comparable to the 540m which is what I will be replacing, except it would be in a smaller form factor.

The part that has me incredulous and skeptical though is that the next CPU upgrade bump on the configuration page goes to a quad core CPU.

2nd Generation Intel® Core™ i7-2670QM, 2.2-3.1GHz, (32nm, 6MB L3 cache) (SKU - X2N166) ( + 183 )

So leaving everything as stock (except for maybe a wireless card upgrade) and upgrading the CPU you can have a quad core laptop with midrange GPU in a 14" thin form factor for just a tad over 1000? Is that right or am I really that sleep deprived?

The only downside would be the screen which is glossy and I imagine to be of average (read: POOR) quality.

Are they just slapping on a quad core CPU without changing the heatsink? Because that would be downright irresponsible in my opinion.

Any advice and information would be appreciated, thanks!

 

Perhaps you might consider emailing or PM directly with Xotic on your question, or PM with one of their reps who frequent the forum here? Best and quickest way to get an accurate and correct answer.

 

I will let you know once mine comes in. Should arrive monday evening. Check my signature for my upgrades. I went with the i7-2760 cpu for better virtualization support.

 

How long did it take to ship once you placed your order?

 

Customized computers have been taking 6-10 business days then will ship out. If you need it sooner rush is available and cuts down 1-4 business days. Since you have a need by date make sure you let us know that so we can do everything possible to get it to you in time.

We do use the same heat sink but there are no overheating issues caused because of this. The i7 don't generate more heat, they just run down battery time a little more because of the two extra cores.

 

Thanks for the reply. Looking up specs on Intel's site or Wikipedia the Core i7 in question has a TDP of 10W greater so I imagine it would expel more heat, at least under moderate or full load.

And being that this is a "thin and light" system with a moderately powerful GPU (which usually shares the same cooling system in most notebooks) I would be wary of the increased heat output. I guess I will have to wait until a user that has the laptop with the upgraded CPU chimes in.

Do you ship internationally?

 

A better paste job on the CPU could compensate some of that extra TDP, just look at the temps of G73JH users with 920xm CPUs, it's often very close to the temps of the i7-720qm on stock paste.

 

We do put on IC Diamond for free when you upgrade the CPU so that will help with temps. We also do ship internationally. For more information on that feel free to send me a PM.

 

Okay everyone, I have received my new U46SM. Boy is it awesome. Thank You XoticPC!!!

For everyone else in this thread, what info do you want and how do you want it? (ei. which programs do you want screen shots of results from and what not)

 

kcobra you are the best for doing this!

Some of my requests would be temperature readings using HWmonitor during idle, moderate load and heavy load. For idle I would let it sit there in desktop for about 10 minutes on a flat surface with regular airflow. Moderate load would be internet browsing or maybe regular/HD video playback. Heavy load would be a long gaming session or using Prime95 or other torture test tool to make the CPU run at 100% for 10/15/30+ minutes. GPU temp readings would also be appreciated during any gaming sessions.

If you could mention the noise level of the cooling fan during these stages of testing, that would rock too. I know that noise levels are always subjective without testing tools but just being as descriptive as possible always helps.

If you could comment on the general build quality of the machine and screen. Is there anything that bugs you? Does it feel flimsy? Well designed? What is it missing? Is the screen of good quality or does it wash out unless you are in a very narrow sweet spot?

Finally battery tests would be nice. I'm not a fan of using battery run down tests, just subjective tests and numbers are fine as long as you mention what kind of activity you were doing to get those numbers. 5 hours on wifi, medium brightness, browsing? etc etc

Thanks!

 

Okay, I have been able to complete all your CPU Heat testing. I am not sure what to do for your GPU testing as I am not a gamer...but with this I am sure we can do something. So if you, or someone else, can suggest a tool to use I will gladly run it.

I also set the laptop to run in Asus's High Performance power scheme and was plugged into AC power. Just to note this in case anyone was wondering.

Here is the screenshot of CPU-Z:




Here is the idle screenshot of Hardware monitor. I booted it and left it alone for 15mins.



Here is a mid-load screenshot. I ran three instances of VLC. 2 instances with a 720p h.264 vids playing and the third instance ran a 1080p h.264 video. Screen shot is after 10 mins of continous play from all three files. (Via the network, not local for all three)



And the final screenshot. The with heavy load. I ran Prime95 for 25 minutes and the screen shot is from that 25min time mark.



To Note, it took the laptop 2.5 to recover back to low 50c temps. But it dropped to high 60c temps in about 20 seconds or so.

I will start to time the batt life in the High Performance setting now.

 

Thanks again kcobra. You rock for doing these tests.

Those temps look very good for a quad core in a thin form factor. They are similar to my quad core in a regular 15" form factor.

How are the fan sounds during all this?

By the way you can use a free, small utility called Furmark to stress the GPU.

Looking forward to your other tests and impressions.

 

Sorry for not including the fan stuff earlier. During the idle and mid-load testing the fan was not noticable. With the high-load testing, the fan was noticable but it only seemed like a small personal desk fan was going. Not loud at all to me. My wifes HP dv6000 has a louder fan system.

The batt test I just completed started with a fully charged batt and set to high performance setting. It claims just over 4 hours if you use the timer as how long it has been on batt and add the remaining usable time. Not too bad for being set at High Performance settings. I will have to test the batt saver mode tomorrow.



Durring this test I had the stopwatch site opened and in IE I was using Meebo and various other sites. Watched three movie trailers at 720p settings, played around with the endless city demo program via nvidia's website for 10 minutes. Not as smooth as I was hoping for, but these are the first drivers for this model so further tweaked ones should come out eventually. I didn't set the FPS to be displayed so I don't know off hand what they were.

As far as build quality, I am really loving the stainless steel feel. It is light and strong to my perspective. I have yet to test out the headphone jack interfearence claims of the U46SV on this newer refresh. Hopefully ASUS heard the reports and better sheilded the headphone jack system on this model. (if you have no idea what I am talking about, supposidly on the U46SV model when you plug a USB drive into the port next to the headphone jack and transfer files...you get static bleed through on the headphones)

The screen is good and crisp. For the size, the 1366 x 768 resolution is fine for me. Items do not seem pixilated. Sure a higher native res display could have been nice, but I thing it would make the visable DPI cause things to appear to small. We do have the option to hook up a tv/external monitor if we need something of higher resolution. The keyboard is a full size keyboard and I am typing all this without looking at the keys. So you should be able to transition from a normal keyboard to this one very easily. Also, the chiclet style is smooth so your fingers wont get stuck on them. I have tried some chiclet keyboards where the keys have a texture which prevents me from typing correctly.

The larger capacity battery also lifts the rear of the laptop up to proved some airflow which is a very nice touch. Typically you only see that with the HP laptops. This model has an indicator light which shows if Caps lock is enabled. I mention this because i believe others have complained about there not being one on other older models. (but i could be wrong about them saying i isn't on theirs)

Thank you for the graphics tester program. I will let my batt charge some and then run it.

 

I ran FurMark for you. Around 82-83degrees C is when the fan kicks in high gear

Here is the 720 Preset test results:



Here is the custom one I did. At the 1366 x 768 resolution, full screen, and AA set to 2x. I first just did the burn in to get the temp up (took about a minute). Then I exited the screen and ran the custom benchmark with the same settings to get the details for the screenshot. So the correct high end temps are being reported.



I hope this all is helpful. Just let me know if you want other settings tested, also the above tested were only getting about 9 FPS.. how sad. Oh well, I wasn't going for a true gaming laptop. If I was, I would have grabbed the ASUS G74.

 

Thanks again and again for all this info. It's tremendously helpful. Unfortunately 9 out of 10 reviews online for any machine never include some important information that determine the quality of life when using a machine like noise from the fan and temperatures.

You've pretty much answered all my questions so I won't bother you much more. The last thing I can ask is how the viewing angles are of the screen in your opinion. To be honest I am very reluctant to get anything but a 1080p screen (or at least 900px) because generally those screens are of higher quality and have better viewing angles. I don't know if the screen I have on my current Acer is the norm or just particularly bad but the viewing angles are AWFUL and it has left a sour taste in my mouth that I don't want to repeat with my next laptop purchase.

 

Okay, with your latest comment, this will probably be my last comment in this thread for you.

The viewing angle horizontally is pretty wide and well. However, like most notebooks I have seen. (even the ASUS G74) the vertical viewing angle is what you have to set pretty close to get full color quality over the whole display area. So you will need to either open or close the display to get into that sweet spot. So, it would seem, the wide viewing angle ASUS gave it was horizontal and not vertical.

One of the awesome mods, tijo, of our forum copied most of my stuff into the owners lounge thread for this machine. I would prefer to develop that thread in the future. So if you have more questions, just ask in there. Here is the Link