K53TA.. The best deal ever... could be!

Try this chart: http://images.anandtech.com/doci/4444/amd-llano-dualgpu-branding.jpg

1) Sorry for the consecutive posts.
2) Do you have screen recommendations? And, do you have a recommendation for a place to buy a screen. I don't trust any of the sites I've seen.

 

hmm.. AMD A8-3530MX.. might be a worth upgrade just for the crossfire... While changing the CPU, might as well mod the cooling system also to reduce temperature

 

Awesome! Big rep for you. Looks like I'll throw in an A8-3530MX when I get bored. Can you run a 3dmark11 run @ 2.6 Ghz and Crossfire on to see where you're at?

 

I notice that you're running at 3.0 GHz.. but the Intel Burn Test resulted in slower speed than my 2.4 GHz?

WEI @2.4 GHz
http://img69.imageshack.us/img69/554/13573094.png

Intel Burn Test @2.4 GHz
http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/8611/unledzvtf.png

 

Mine is the Samsung panel as well. It does have the graininess but only in the specific circumstances of turning the screen up to full brightness and sitting 6 inches away from the screen (essentially having my face pressed up against it).

To the person I'm quoting here - if you want to respond to multiple people, please use the multi-quote button immediately to the right of the regular quote button. Click multi-quote on all the people you want to respond to, then on the last person, click regular quote. The next page that opens will have all the selected quotes together, and you can respond in one post. Repeated consecutive single-response posts is a violation of forum rules so please be conscious of this.

 

I'll be happy to run that later today and get back to you.

Yeah mine seemed a bit disappointing. I'm going to take a look at my configuration, I've probably done something silly. Also I'm not quite satisfied with my thermal characteristics so I'll wind up redoing that once the MX-4 gets in.

 

runtohell: can you post your k10stat profile for your 1.2 GHz (Underclock)?

 

^^^It's the one posted at 2.4 GHz, just running in "Quiet Office" mode under Power4Gear which will downclock it to 1.2 GHz.

 

I wonder if these needed a "burn in" mine is about 2 degrees cooler now than the first days I got it at idle.

My extra usb fans for my Cooler Master NotePal U2 will be here tomorrow, can not wait to see the difference of four fans compared to two.

 

according to some observations here, bios 207 either raised the fan speed or dropped the voltage. Did you update to bios 207?

my P6 @ 700 @ .700 volts is 37C at idle

 

Suffice to say something is not working correctly.. Going to have to wait until I get home. Also 3dmark sees three graphics cards?

AMD Radeon HD 6620G video card benchmark result - AMD A8-3530MX APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics,ASUSTeK Computer Inc. K53TA score: P1625 3DMarks

 

I have a question regarding repasting:

Seems like most people in this thread recommended Arctic Silver MX-4 -- over newer Arctic Silver compounds and other popular products like IC Diamond 7. Is there a reason for this exactly? Just because its cheap to get? I saw other threads on this forum talking up IC Diamond...

I'd definitely like to do at least a re-paste. It seems like a sensible thing to do for a factory made laptop and I don't know if I want to get into any of the chopping and dremeling that gumba did in the cooling mod thread.

 

It's really up to you (obviously) about cooling compounds. From the literature I was able to google it seemed that MX-4 is almost dead even with IC Diamond but it has no cure time and it's much easier to apply. That's why I went ahead and ordered it. It's a few dollars cheaper than IC Diamond too, but that wasn't really a decision factor for me.

 

207 definitely did not lower voltage.

fan speed, i'm not sure.

does anyone notice increased fan speed at idle? or is it only at load ?

I'll have to downgrade back to 206 to see if idle fan speed has increased.



all you guys shouldn't be comparing your idle temps. it all depends on surrounding room temp. on a hot day, mine goes up to 42. In the evening, it goes down to 36.
simply weather variations can bring your temps down.

 

Yeah keep at it I am at P1681 at 2.6Ghz yours should easy be 1800 or above.

 

Bestbuy has this on clearance for $427 now.

if you bought this recently, you can try for a price match refund.

 

Okay, so I got home and had enough time to repaste my chips. I also took some pictures and threw together a disassembly guide to hopefully help anyone else who decides to delve into their machine. Definitely quick at this laptop now.

Also if someone could look at my paste job and just confirm that's what you'd do as well -- I never go overboard on the paste.

There'll be a about (not certain on number) ten visible screws on the bottom of the laptop that you'll need to remove. Also remove the RAM and HDD covers then remove the RAM and HDD.

In the RAM bay you'll see two screws you need to remove -- One is clearly marked with a K for keyboard. The other is the empty gold socket in the upper-right of this picture. That's the screw that holds the CD drive in.


Looks like I dont have a shot of the HDD bay (a lot of my shots turned out very poorly), but there is only one screw, in the lower-right of the bay (toward the edge of the computer) to remove here. This holds the lid and the bottom of the unit together.

Next you'll need to pull the CD drive out and remove the two screws on the lip of the bay.

Once you have all of the screws removed you'll need to flip the computer back right-side up and gently unclip the keyboard (there are three holding clips at the top rim of the keyboard). Make certain that you've removed the two screws that hold the keyboard in place and then gently lift it out and remove the ribbon cable from the board.


Once you have the keyboard out you'll see that there are three screws which are holding the top lid to the board. Remove these.


Once you have these three screws removed go ahead and unplug the two ribbon cables.


Once you have the ribbon cables off gently pry the top lid off from the bottom portion of the laptop. It should just unclip gently and then you can remove it and set it aside. Keep in mind that with the lid off the unit starts to get a little unbalanced -- You may want to position the screen so that it is leaning into the unit instead of out.

Now that you have the lid off you'll be looking at the underside of the board. There's one screw here in the upper-left which holds the board to the bottom portion of the laptop. Remove it.


There are two more cables to remove on the underside of the board before we can get to the CPU and GPU. Go ahead and unplug these.


Now you can flip the board back toward the screen (make sure the unit is open all the way). At this point it's up to you how to handle the situation -- You could either put something soft between board and the screen (I used a Belkin laptop stand/cooler) or try and disconnect the LCD from the board. I opted not to disconnect the LCD because I've had troubles with that in the past.


Congratulations, you now have access to the CPU and fan assembly. Now you can do a re-paste or swap the CPU out. There are three screws that hold the fan assembly/cooler pipe to the GPU and 4 spring-loaded screws that hold it to the CPU. When you remove it make sure that you give a through cleaning for all of the excess paste that comes from the factory.

Below is what my MX-4 re-paste job came out to look like. I cleaned up a bit after this picture.

 

please update with temperatures before and after repaste when you can!

 

Very good write up let us know the difference it made.

 

If you opened your laptop to change the CPU, you might as well buy some heatsinks and add to it for better cooling lol.

 

Yeah -- I took a look at the ones over at Newegg but it's on hold for right now. I used to work for a local shop that refurbs PCs and I'm going to go over there and grab some of the heat sinks they pull off of machines.

Okay, so I'm using RadeonPro to try and rerun the benchmarks for Furmark -- I'm getting between 8-12 FPS on the first test with an average of about 9-10. What is everyone else seeing? I know I'm on the low side and need to figure out the problem, just trying to gauge how far off I am. Not sure that RadeonPro is doing anything either, since I get the same results without it.

 

Perhaps I am just horrible, but I can not unscrew this thing to put some new ram in. I think i might have stripped it..... =( Any tips? Thanks!

 

I'm going to do that, and also ask for an open box discount.

Edit: Are you sure it's on clearance? On the website it says $449 still. I guess I'll call 'em up and ask.

 

Clearance? I didn't know they had any left!?

 

The only advice I can give about the screw is to make sure that you're using the right size screw driver. if you try something too big you'll definitely strip it. Go with a micro set (One of the $5 "Computer toolkit" kits from Microcenter or Fry's should do the trick). Beyond that if it's already stripped you can use a small dremel to drill through the screw and then wedge something into it to spin it.

Good luck!

----------

On the cooling front, great news! My idle's still suck for whatever reason but my gaming performance is dramatically improved. I played HoN earlier today at work where the room temp is actually cooler with the old thermal paste and hit max of 85C. Anyways I just played for an hour and my max was 73C and I'm pretty sure that's from the Furmark that I ran earlier.

Old HoN temps: 85C
New HoN temps: 73C or lower

 

Something tacky (dried gum even, seriously) and the top of a screwdriver or pliers to get it started, then pliers to grip it and forcefully unscrew it out. Otherwise dremel drilling will be your other best option, but just be careful because you don't want all that metal dust in your laptop.

 

as far as i can tell, these units are again orderable. maybe they re-allocated the hundreds of units that ended up in florida.

and the price in store is now $426.99.

does not show on the website. but when you pick up instore, they will give you the clearance price. it is in their system.

i am much more comfortable with this price, seeing that the previous fleeting $375 HP dv6z deal is getting canceled.

 

are you guys oc your gpu and how you doing it

i still can't seem to make crossfire work properly, anyone have luck

 

??? Not a K53TA on clearance from what I see. K53TA ae hard to find, it is the K52F on clearance, not the same machine by a long shot

ASUS - Laptop / Intel® Pentium® Processor / 15.6" Display / 3GB Memory / 320GB Hard Drive - Brown - K52F-BBR5

 

Oh and to O/C GPU you get Sapphire Trix, and disable ULPS in settings...
Then get MSI Afterburner...but before you launch it edit the MSIafterburner.cfg file in notepad, find the "Enable Unofficial Overclocking EULA" line and copy/paste exactly this:

I confirm that I am aware of unofficial overclocking limitations and fully understand that MSI will not provide me any support on it

There is also a field next to it for a 0 or 1 value to enable o/c, change to 1.




Crossfire doesn't seem to work without stutter in anything I've tried except Dead Space 2...probably due to it's 30FPS Vsync.

I took the computer apart to put on some Arctic Silver 5 - and in the process of -loosening- the screws on the bottom....not 1, or 2, but 3 of the nuts they screw into broke off the plastic surrounding them.

?

1 in the middle right of the hard drive, 1 next to the battery, and 1 under the battery.

I felt kind of crappy after that. Still works, no rattles, lower temps. But damn.

 

it doesn't show on the website. need to call store.
reduced price seems to have started this past sunday. maybe they'll update the website later.

you can still order the k53ta, and if you call your store and give them the sku #, you'll get the updated price.

 

So what's the general consent? Good buy? I'm feeling very impulsive! I might buy if it's still available! I will call the local store in the morning and see if they have it!

Apart from the grainy screens - Any other annoying problems? Any issues that doesn't have a fix?

Thank you

 

It is the K53TA, I got mine last week but my BB sold me mine for $399.99.

I posted and ask about ram, ordered 8gb Kingston Hyper X for it, I'll post my thoughts.

 

Tell me guys since this laptop has 3 graphics modes, integrated discrete and crossifre, are those 3 switching automaticly or only it can switch between integrated and discrete while crossfire is something you manualy have to enable/disable,
can you set like DX9 games to run on only discreete and DX11 to run crossfire without manualy changing it?
can someone post results of Call of Duty 4(dx9game) clocked vs stock? ;-)

 

thanks for all the info bro, I'm assuming this OC's only the dedicated card right? Which I'm not using since I don't have Crossfire enabled, prob just leave it alone for now

 

Get it if you can

Update bios and graphic driver (I tried asus package and one from amd's site) do not really see any difference, your mileage may vary?

I just adore mine!

 

grainy screen is the only major problem left. but if you're lucky enough to get one with a samsung or lg screen, then you won't have any issue.

this isn't the first time asus has dealt with a grainy screen though.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/asus/95731-lists-graininess-fixed-bios.html
as this thread shows, 5 years ago, the ati x1600 graphics card had a grainy vbios bug that was fixed with a bios update.
now, it's just a matter of when they'll release a fix.

i had the exact same problem with a previous unit. the screw mounts are very fragile, and shear off if the factory workers screw too tightly.
so on my current unit, i learned to delicately screw, not too tight.

mine had the worst broken locations. 3 consecutive screw mounts along the left hinge sheared off. You don't want that, especially with the upper left case weak as it is.
they are a clean break, though, and you could probably use some super glue or epoxy to fix, as these glues can withstand lots of shear force.


I've been reading that AS5 is no longer good compared to other pastes on the market.

 

Gonna partition my HD for Windows 8 developer release

Windows Metro Style Apps Developer Downloads

 

So much to read just found this as I was having a terrible time getting this to work, THANKS!

 

This ONLY works on 11.6. It is broken on 11.7, 11.8, and 11.9 RCX.

 

When I was buying my K53TA I got them to sell it to me by having a printout of their website with the price listed as $449. They sold me mine for $429 and I should have asked why I got a discount from the regular price but I figured it was because it was open box. I honestly never want to do business with Best Buy ever again, so even if they put up the reduced price on their website I will most likely will not call or go back to the store. The only way I am setting foot in Best Buy again is if there is some defect with my notebook within the 14 day grace period or they come out with an updated K53TA for a similar price later down the road.

How did you get it at that price?

 

so are there any benefits in updating the bios to 207, winflash stopped working for me and waiting to hear if it's even worth it... thanks

 

207 here and the only thing I have noticed is I can hear the internal fan when it speeds up.

 

he got a last-unit open box discount.

 

mmm that might be a good thing... did you notice a drop in cpu temps?

 

A little but I use a cooler with four fans so ehh.

 

Is this ram worth buying for this laptop: Amazon.com: Corsair 8 GB DDR3 Laptop Memory Kit CMSO8GX3M2A1333C9: Electronics
or are there cheaper ones?

 

Just buy the cheapest 4 gig you can, IMHO.

 

Newegg.com - G.SKILL 4GB 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600) Laptop Memory Model F3-10600CL9S-4GBSQ


G.SKILL 4GB 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10600)

Same timings and only 23 bucks works great.

 

Basically everything on Newegg is cheaper. It's almost all 22.99.