Asus N45sf/n55sf/n75sf

Made a new thread for the new N series line of ASUS since all posts relating to the laptops were made at a thread for the N55SF (Which made me feel we were hijacking the thread )

All laptops generally sport the same spec sheet especially on the CPU/GPU side. Announced at Taiwan's Computex 2011, these are the successors to the N43/N53/N73 series.

ASUS introduced at Computex 2011 multimedia notebook ASUS N45SF, N55SF and N75SF

http://event.asus.com/my/2011/productguide/PG_Aug-Sep.pdf

ASUS N45SF

ASUSTeK Computer Inc. - Notebooks- ASUS N45SF

ASUS N55SF

ASUSTeK Computer Inc. - Notebooks- ASUS N55SF

Asus N55SF – Pursânge Multimedia (in Rosu si Negru)

Asus N55SF Review | Laptop Review Shop

ASUS N75SF

http://www.asus.com/Notebooks/Multimedia_Entertainment/N75SF/

 

Asus N45SF, N55SF e N75SF, notebook multimediali - YouTube (Presentation is in English)

 

Looking at buying this lappy, seeing as it's got a great value for price here.

Would it be feasible to replace the DVD-player with an SSD?
What sort of drive bay would I have to get?

 

Hello,
firstly sorry for my english Now... I have got this notebook from monday and I have mixed feelings about it.

According to test at notebookcheck.com, a GT555M should be able to run Mafia 2 at 45FPS with high details, but this notebook only gets 29FPS with medium details. And its still not fluent. In the benchmark, there is clear distinction of "it works (50FPS) - it doesnt work (11FPS)" changing every second or so. As if the notebook constantly changes between the Intel HD 3000 and GT 555M graphic in half a second. The notebook is connected to power cord and is set to "High performance", which is the highest state with all the settings to the maximum. Maximum temperatures during the benchmark were 80°C on CPU and 71°C, so I think nothing critical.


Otherwise notebook seems as fairly good. Temperatures in idle are about 47-52°C on CPU, 36 - 45°C on GPU and 33°C on HDD. The fan has about 2400 - 3000RPM in idle. When under heavy load, the notebook starts to exhaust really hot air and the lower side of the notebook around fan exhaust is getting very hot, but other parts of the notebook stays fairly cool.

The display is awfull, but I havent seen any notebook currently on the market, which wouldnt have one of these, including the matt ones. I am a bit "displayfreak" and everything below S-IPS is very bad for me. Sound is really great for a notebook and with subwoofer in, its almost amazing what a device this small can do (its not hi-fi though, of course).


If only the problem with performance would be solved, I would be very satisfied with this notebook...

 

@Daxwax:

I don't know whether ASUS supports dual HDDs or swapping the OD for an SSD. On larger models such as the G series you could but I have no clue whether they support for it on the N series. We haven't even seen the actual notebook up close so only more user reviews could tell.

@ Mr. Katana:

Thank you for the first hand description. Hmmm, it seems that looks like a buggy driver on the GPU as well as on Optimus. The GT555M should be able to play it just fine. Good news on the temps though.

Hmmm, so the screen wasn't the rumored IPS screen it was supposed to come with...I guess vendors trade screen quality with better hardware just to get prices down nowadays. The subwoofer was great freebie to throw in, because the speakers on the N43 were already good to begin with.

 

Mr.Katana do you got the n75 or n55 or n45?
Thinking of the panel, i think the n75 will be better then the n55, does enyone know which panel it is in the n75?

 

I have N45SF with i5-2410M, 4GB RAM and GT 555M 2GB.

There are some matt panels (I have glare, sadly), but I doubt they will be any better if you wouldnt count the glare (no contrast, no colors, no angles,...)

 

In N45 panel sucks... The better panels are matt 1600x900 and full hd, wchich will be availible in n55 and n75.
Could you do please some fotos of you notebook? And what about bould quality?

 

It looks exactly like on any photo available. Built quality is rather good, when considering what the manufacturer is and for what price is he selling it. Its not Acer, but its not HP either.

I have took a video from Dirt 3, where it is clearly seen what the notebook is doing. Any ideas what to do with it?

 

Sounds like there are still some issues with Nvidia's Optimus driver. The best you can probably do at this point is to update the driver. Other than that, you'll have to wait until the bug is fixed.

 

There is currently no update by the Asus and drivers from nVidia pages doesnt work at all (wont even install)

 

Viper's right. A bug fix from ASUS (Or nvidia) could help resolve the problem. Though I haven't known of any issues about Optimus other than the whitelisting part.

 

any idea when this laptop is coming out? I read on the net about 3rd week of august but not a single store have it listed yet. Also any hints about what the retail price will be?

cheers

 

Well... its not optimus. I have tried MSI Afterburner and it showed, that the GT 555M is underclocking itself when reaching 100% load. It underclocks to 203Mhz core and 405Mhz shaders. Here is a picture of how it looks in afterburner. It doesnt underclock when testing in window mode rather than fullscreen, but when its windowed, the graphics is only under cca 70% load. I tried it with ultra details in windowed mode to put some more load on and it underclocked once or twice a while before the end of the benchmark, but the last part of benchmark was "underclock-free" again. I suppose newer drivers could solve this, but I dont have certainty that the Asus will do the update and official nvidia drivers just wont work.

Well... in my country, I have the possibility to return the goods within 14 days after buy without any sanction, when orderd on the internet, so I am gonna use that today

 

That's too bad. What a let down for an otherwise great (and newly released) laptop. Maybe you got a bad one which could exchange for new?

 

I could, but what would I get from it? The same problems, perhaps... I very much hate returning stuff, so I wouldnt go through it twice.

 

Take n55, maybe it will be better There are few opinions on internet and people are happy.

 

Before you return it, can I ask how much battery life are you getting from the laptop?

 

Not much... I have tried running on battery and after about 1h, I had about 45 minutes left. There was a lot of HDD activity though, and I was in High performance / Entertainmant mode about 50/50 of time. But about 50% of time, it was with display off and put on my TV through HDMI.

But even when battery safe mode was activated, the computer was telling me about 2:50, I think.

But I havent tried it much, so dont completely rely on this info, I ran it on battery only once and the few times disconnected AC only to look what would battery life be (and Windows can miscalculate this by a big margin).


I was doing some research and I think the replacement will be Lenovo Y570. Its about the same config and price, disadvantage is bigger size, but it has some features which should give me more battery life and it shouldnt be overheating, as Asus was (I dont have any other explanation for that. Even though temperatures wasnt so high, it seems that the Asus has set the overheat control pretty low, because it was acting exactly as if it was some "safety feature"). Of course, Lenovo will give me better built quality. The display, however, will just suck

 

Apparently there are a few Malaysians who own N45 have this problem, sent to Asus Service Center and still waiting for reply.
Link to the forum

 

That's too bad considering the 555M's capability crippled by GPU throttling. Hope ASUS issues a fix for this.

 

Probably will... but I didnt want to wait and hope for that, so I got Lenovo Y570 and I am very satisfied with it. It is louder, but then it actually cools the components, so I believe when Asus will actually cool something, it will be louder too. Lenovo is slightly better built and it has by far better keyboard and touchpad. A bit better display too, I think, but bigger with the same resolution, so more grainy The sound was better from Asus though.

In short, Lenovo has better ergonomy and is more practical (matt lid for example), it has more or less the same components (GPU has less shaders, but faster memory), but is bigger (14,1" vs 15,6") and has the same resolution (bad on that size of a display). Lenovo also doesnt have USB 3.0 (only Core i7 model has, I think) and has slightly worse sound (but it has JBL speakers and the sound is quite OK). Lenovo has also better battery pack (56Wh vs 62Wh) and you can turn the nVidia chip completely off by simply clicking a button and getting better battery life for sure. Its for about the same price.

Even though I had fairly good experience with Asus before, I dont think I would get this brand nowadays, because the difference with better brands is quite noticable.

 

ive also got this baby, sweet laptop got the n75sf though. runs very smooth and im happy it is so silent, even under heavy load (starcraft 2 on extreme settings) it still maintains a average of 45 fps (dependend on which map, singleplaer) but multiplayer even in 3v3 i have not seen it go below 35fps.

oh 2day i will test the new deus ex, see how it handles that.

btw can this laptop handle 2 seperate harddrives ?

 

Hi guys, I need some help.

Does anybody know if the Asus N45SF ODD can be removed ? I wanna install my own caddy with SSD in there.

 

if im not mistaken, the new N-series has room for 2 hdd. i know the N75sf does.

 

Hello all,
can somebody confirm that ? I want to buy a N55SF-S1128V but I also want to use my SSD on this computer...

 

Pretty sure the N55SF doesn't have 2 HDD bays. However, you certainly can swap out the ODD for an additional HDD.

 

A quick review of the N45SF from my country. The sub-par battery life (2+ hours under normal use) is a deal breaker. Guess I'll have to cross it from my shopping list.

ASUS N45SF laptop review | Reviews | Techie.com.ph

 

Hi,

I just wonder any of you own a Asus N55SF face the same problem as I am, because my laptop could not detect the external subwoofer that come along with the laptop.

I'd tried to reinstall the driver and format the laptop but still it is not detecting the external subwoofer. If any of you face the same problem, I do appreciate you would share with me how you go about it.

Thanks.

 

^ I found few users having the same problem, they solved it by plugging it in deeper..

 

i have the asus n75sf for a few days now

here is a sound test Asus N75SF B&O SoundSonic sound Test VS Dell Inspirion 1720 - YouTube

and here is a video i made with my just installed intel ssd booting vs mny previous laptop Asus N75SF Boot time VS Dell Inspirion 1720 + Viewing angle Screen - YouTube

i also just flashen the 210 bios on the n75sf. it came with 204

the cpu throtteling has improved it responds quicker and clocks higher

 

Can anyone tell me is N45SF fully compatible with SATA 3 (6Gb/s) and am I going to get a full speed of, for instance, OCZ Vertex 3 with it? I've read that HM65 Express supports SATA 3 but I've also read that in many notebooks it is disabled. What's it like with N45SF?

 

I'm waiting for an N55SF to be delivered this week. Got the HD+ 1600x900 res screen.
Any news re the graphics problem on the N45 - is the 55 immune or affected I wonder?
Is there a handy "how to" regarding adding an SSD? Will I need to lose the BR combo drive or is there any room inside?
Do ASUS partition the HDD with the OS on a smaller partition? Is there a hidden recovery partition? I assume its a matter of copying these (2) partitions onto the SSD and then reformat the HDD?

Thanks in advance for replies - HNY )

 

The N55Sf doesn't have the same GPU problem with N45SF.
Only have 1 slot HDD.
There is hidden recovery partition.
Better just do clean install on the SSD.

 

So does the one and only HDD slot in the asus n55sf/n45sf sata 3 compatible?

 

Hello guys,

I was just wondering, what kind of temperatures do u get on ur 2nd gen i7 when gaming heavily?

I would appreciate some feedback on this

Regards.

 

I'm, also interested in N75SF with 1600x900 panel, sold in Spain, my country

I've seen this laptop today at a store and I was not real
ly happy, I felt a few high temperature just on my hands, surely on my right hand in fact !. Do u fell the same?, Should I buy a fridged base to avoid it ?

And finally, very important, do u know if it has the same problem related with GPU throttling or Nvidia driver?
Thanks is advance

 

I have bought my N75SF in Germany (since I live here =)). Now I have two questions:

1. The keyboard has a small dent around the Keys D and F. Are your keyboards completely even/flat?

2. The right speaker is a little bit louder than the left one. At least the right speaker emphasizes the hights more. Is this the same with your models?


I also had the issue with the subwoofer which was not recognized. I could solve it by following these steps:
1. Download the newest realtek driver from ASUS web page
2. Extract the zip into separate directory (don't execute setup within zip)
3. Connect sub
4. Execute setup, setup will remove the old drivers
5. Immediately repoot system when setup prompts you. Otherwise Win will install its drivers when you wait to long
6. Setup will install new drivers aafter reboot
7. Reboot again

 

Yes, at least I have seen one user N45SF with Crucial M4.

 

what about the N45 and N55, they should have the same sound system? You can hear the difference especially when the volume is low and you hear sound with higher pitch, for example the klick when you change folders in the win explorer

Edit:
The lower the volume the more you can here the difference of the two speakers

 

Hi guys, I'm hoping you can help me answer a question I have about the N75SF.
Why is it no longer available? I've been eyeing it for about two weeks now, and suddenly I can't find it anywhere. Anyone know why?
thanks

 

Need help, how can I open the "door" on n75sf, need change HDD.I screwed of two screws but can't move out the "door".Do I need more power to pull up the door or what.Sorry on my english.