Opinions on the N56JR..

uninstalled and reinstalled the drivers and it started working again
it would only happen if i had an external mouse plugged in

also, does anyone get a high pitched noise from your headphones if you plug in a usb mouse into the usb ports near the audio jack, and is it possible to replace the wifi card with a 7260-ac?

 

Hello! And where are links for drivers?

 

My N56jr works perfectly now, but I would like to upgrade to 8.1 .... has anyone here done that while retaining full use of the 760 gtx (the main reason we all bought this laptop) ?

 

I upgrade to 8.1 and don't have problems, the 760 works the same

 

My N56JR came with the usual atheros card (model AR9485WB-EG). I'd really like if it came with intel standard, preferrably AC.

There are two known panels from LG and Samsung, the samsung has very minimal grainy-ness, but is more reflective and has slightly lower contrast (500:1 or thereabout in most tests), the LG is more grainy (easily noticeable if you look for it) and less reflective, but has better contrast (700:1 or so in most tests). To me the LG dispaly also has slightly better viewing angles and it has more max brightness. The color gamut feels average, nowhere near some of the IPS monitors I've used.
My N56JR has the samsung panel and I'm okay with that, but overall the LG panel is slightly better in every aspect, except for being a bit grainy.

Here are two reviews with measurements from the panels, there will always be individual variance between panels though.
Samsung panel: Review Asus N56VZ-S4044V Notebook - NotebookCheck.net Reviews
LG panel: Review Asus N56VB-S4050H Notebook - NotebookCheck.net Reviews

 

IPS monitors will usually have a gamut advantage over TN panels.

 

1&2. I get that. But I'm talking about ram timing, bus frequency, fsb:dram ratio, throttle settings/tresholds, that sort of thing. None of those settings can be used to increase the volt draw beyond any sort of limit the motherboard has to support to pass certification..

And on the throttle settings, the current throttle settings on all asus laptops I've seen have been hardset to the same limit, regardless of cpu config, expected power draw, powersupply or the kind of heat dispersion the cooling can handle. Comparing the bios settings on the amibios, they seem awfully similar to a standard "recommended settings" for an intel desktop motherboard..

The n56 first had a passive throttle set at 95 degrees (which would never be reached), with a core "boost" interval that ensured the boost wouldn't reach the allowed max setting without being forcefed artificial traffic on all cores constantly. After the small edits, the (sensible) limit has been removed, allowing you to theoretically let the cpu run hot until it reaches the hardware shut-down limit on 105 degrees.

..I'm just a hobbyist, of course. But I see two problems with that setup that isn't tailored to the actual hardware:
- It decreases the life expectancy of the setup. Allowing the cpu to run hotter than what the cooling array can handle, ensures that the cooling goop cakes more quickly, and that you can run into actual hardware failure instead of a sign that the cooling is eventually failing.
- You actually don't get as much out of the hardware as you should be. Throttling too early, or too late, causes the same practical things for the user. Either the output is lower than it could be, and you don't get the expected max performance. Or you hit the hardware limit and see weird crisis-shutdowns. Both causes stutters that you as a user can't really work around.

Then it's the ram timing. You guys sell different kinds of ram, and add some of them to the laptops, upgrading for people and so on. The highest rated ram will still run at the standard timing, even if it will allow higher(faster) timing settings. While higher clocked ram with lower rated timing won't run at all. The same goes for low volt ram (which I bought) -- won't even boot. Even though it could (while drawing less power), after simply changing two settings in the bios.

There's also a feature on the Panther Point boards that allow dynamic clocking on the bus-speeds. This is something Asus pays for, and which we pay for in the end, and so on. It's also possible to enable on desktop boards, but doesn't make sense there, of course. But on their laptops, it's set to one frequency, the highest allowed. This doesn't make sense on a laptop or anything that runs on a battery.. And it makes even less sense to not enable a feature that is already there, that would extend the running battery-life.. make the statistics look better for "max battery life", while making customers happy.

I mean, this isn't rocket science. But went through this patiently with asus support. And what I'm getting is that they've disabled all of this and locked the bus frequency in order to "prevent overclocking". That's not what you can do with that. You could for example allow people to set the bus-speed but only within the recommended rates, and still get a better result than the standard settings.

In any case, at the moment everyone trying to play games on for example the n56 while on battery, will run into the problem that at some point the battery can't give the psu enough power to run at the .. somewhat overclocked settings.. And you end up getting panic locks while the entire system clocks down for a moment.

Get that..? The current standard settings that are supposed to not draw more power than the psu can provide, prevent overclocking, and get the laptop to live longer, not overload the battery and kill it, and all of that. These settings draw more power than a healthy, new battery can provide.

3. Replaceable parts. What we're getting is that hardware manufacturers like Nvidia will produce, on request, various card modules with specific connections and buses. And specific tdp limits and watt drain. That are fitted to laptop configs very much like add-on cards (even if they are soldered to the motherboard).

There's nothing physically preventing Asus from allowing people to insert a new graphics-card with the same connector and same watt drain as before. I mean, that hasn't been much point before, since new graphics cards couldn't really be made with much better performance without higher watt-drain. But now, you hit limits on the power supply, while manufacturing processes become much better very fast. So we see, and will see more and more, that the "same generation" boards could be replaced by versions with more stream-processors and significantly better performance, without raising the watt-drain.

So why not offer those two types of replacement options? Higher density ram with better timing, and higher performing graphics cards with the same watt-drain? The point is it wouldn't actually extend the life of the laptop until forever (or even longer than it would normally). But it would make the laptop be better and more useful for a longer period of it's life-expectancy. You could imagine adding more sales-value to a laptop in the same period where you would buy one single laptop anyway. It's a win-win situation for everyone. We want to pay for it, and you want our money.

----------------

The thing is that configuring all of this is possible for a hobbyist to do in their (read: my) spare time. (Changing cards wouldn't be too difficult either.. even without a design where the slots are open in a service panel of some sort). But instead Asus chose a variant where they follow a "standard recommended settings" setup, with no regard to tdp, heat dispersion, cpu type, cpu speed, ram-speed, etc. That's why almost all of their laptops have the same settings, and why we run into anomalies like the n56 that actually works somewhat well thanks to the extremely good cooling. While the zenbook runs hot (to the point where they have to replace several of them - they're known for breaking early).

So this doesn't make sense for asus, it doesn't make sense for you as retailers, and it doesn't make sense for us as customers. ....Just saying.

 

Good info OC-Freak, I just picked one up yesterday from Microcenter and my display model is LG Philips LP156WF1. I was expecting it to be grainy but to my surprise it ain't really grainy maybe just a tiny bit but hardly noticeable. When I had the Alienware 14 R3 with the 1080p IPS panel on it, the G75VX and the Razer 14 earlier last summer, those were sparkly and grainy displays like as soon as I unboxed and turn on the screen, i knew it wasn't going to be my laptop for very long and it had to go back. So far the only laptop display I've seen that has a very clear matte panel besides my N56JR is the N550jv and the Clevo W230ST that i also had a few months back.


To be honest with you, I actually prefer this high quality LG TN matte panel on this N56JR compared to my former IPS displays from W230ST, AW14, N550JV, and Samsung Attiv 15.6" and you know why? It has just the right vividness/color natural look to it and i have a hunch it is around 60-65% color gamut instead of 72% which covers 100%SRGB, and it doesn't suffer from oversaturation or yellowish cast of an IPS/AHVA/PLS screen and i don't have to deal with that annoying BLB backlight bleeding glow since that was a nightmare on the AW14 and the Clevo W230st.




I'm quite surprise how beefed up and how good of a quality this laptop is for only $1,000 and even the actual box itself and the goodies inside ( cable tie, microfiber cloth) makes you feel like you are really unboxing something cool and premium kind of like those Alienwares in 2010-2011 when they use to ship them in nice boxes/packaging.


I basically gave up a year ago on 15.6-17" laptops because of portability issue and the only laptop i was mainly interested in the 15.6" range earlier this year that was sporting at least a minimum of ddr3 gt 650m/750m and is or less than 6lbs was that Samsung with that class 1 ati card, the GE60 which unfortunately suffers from severe keyboard ghosting and not so good build quality and high temps throttling issues, and so i decided to try the N550jv and I thought it was going to be the one until i found several issues with the laptop like the silver keys being totally useless when backlit keyboard is on, the hissing/interference noise when headphones/earphones inserted, the weird speaker placement that makes it unbalanced like the sound is only coming from one side, the severe disconnecting of the wireless internet and the not so good gt 750m at FHD display even at medium settings which is because it was only ddr3.


Then a few days ago, i was doing some researching again on 15.6" laptops that is not too heavy and I didn't know the N56JR was just recently released with a haswell quad, a gtx 760m, and finally a black keyboard instead of the silver ones and i was once again excited and right now i have the N56JR with me that i purchased from Microcenter and wow this thing is definitely worth it. So far so good, especially with 3dmark06 where i scored 18,505 and 3dmark11 and scord 3,567 which proves that the gtx 760m is working as intended, i stil haven't tried any games with it yet since I've been busy but i will try some games tomorrow and see if there's throttling or some type of glitches. This laptop definitely hit the sweet spot in my opinion for $1,000-1,100 with a gtx 760m w/ great build quality, great audio quality with or w/o the subwoofer, the extra goodies with it, and the high quality FHD TN anti-glare LG panel.


BTW OC-Freak, i also have the same wireless card model AR9485WB-EG and so far it has been smooth w/o any disconnects or lag whatsoever. I been downloading all day with it and it's been perfect. I know this card is also being use in the G series of Asus and other laptop brands and they report problems with it but i don't have any issues with it at all. How's your AR9485WB-EG so far?

 

No issues here and no disconnects so far. But signal strength and range is below intel cards, this could also be caused by bad antennas of course, which has plagued the N56 series since it the first N56 computer.

For some reason I only score 2900 +/- in 3dmark11, which is a bit disappointeing for a GTX760M.

 

Uninstalled nvidia driver and installed the driver from windows update (331.65) and that seems to fix the score.

3dmark11 basic: P3643
3dmark11 basic with GPU overclocked (+110Mhz core +300MHz memory, higher clocks are unstable): P4064
3dmark11 basic with GPU overclocked and CPU overclocked with XTU: P4091

Conclusion: CPU overclocking is about pointless, most likely due to the 47Watt power limit, so it won't hit higher speeds du to hitting the power limit - which unfortunately can't be adjusted.
Overall very good results and about in line with with GTX765M computers when overclocked, which is not surprising since the only difference between GTX760M and GTX765M is the clockspeed.

 

There's something wrong with your n56jr if you are only scoring 2,900, your score suppose to be in the range of 3,400-3,500. Have you checked gpu-z or msi afterburner with hwinfo32 while doing the benchmark? It's possible that something is throttling, could be your gpu core or gpu usage or perhaps your cpu. Run your 3dmark11 again when you have time and link me your 3dmark11 score so I can look at the cpu and gpu score when you can.



Oops did not read your next post after it so disregard what I just mentioned above. All is good now right? Another way to test if the cooling/temps and if there is throttling when doing actual gaming is to run a game that is gpu/cpu intensive in the background, stand in 1 spot for 15-20 min and make sure msi afterburner and hwinfo32 run in the background, run fraps also and just monitor your fps from the beginning, so let's say you are getting 70fps static on avg standing in 1 spot and if that changes and dips after several minutes or within the 15-30min timeframe, you can check and see when the anomaly happened via the graph on msi afterburner if it is a gpu anomaly like gpu usage dipping below 90% usage or gpu core/memory clocks dipping below normal or hwinfo32 when the turbo clocks disables itself or goes all the way down to base clock.

 

Hello Guys,

Sorry to bother you guys, I'm just new in laptop things, i'm planning to buy my first ever laptop. I just recently saw this model but i'm confused regarding the design, is this laptop has 2 fans like the N55JV? i search about the interior on this laptop but no one posted it, the only pic that i saw was the back cover being remove on the hdd, ram, wifi slot part. I'm thinking why that back cover has vents? is that vents for the ram,wifi, or hdd cooling ?
Can someone show the inside of their N56JR model?

I consider this model compare to the other brands like MSI GE60 or GE40, Lenovo y510p, Clevo W230st and Clevo P151SM1.
MSI GE60 or GE40 = poor cooling, im not sure
Lenovo y510p= SLI got issues
CLEVO w230st= i like this model also but its too small, but very portable. In my opinion i can be more productive in larger screens without using external monitors
CLEVO 151SM1= this one has a great cooling, 2 fans also and has a higher GPU, but im in south east asia ordering and warranty service might be difficult for me. Also few reviews on this laptop.
Asus N55JV=good design, good cooling (2 fans) but i like more power on gpu like 760m, slightly thinner to the other laptops compare to CLEVO 151SM1 and MSI GE series

Im need a laptop for daily computation, casual gaming, multimedia, photoshop and some website editing.

Sorry for my bad english guys,

 

It's a single fan solution, most GT760M designs are.

 

It's a single fan design, but surface temps are very low, so it's very efficient at keeping surface temps low. Almost any other laptop I've had with dedicated GPU (yes even weaker dedicated GPUs) suffered from higher surface temps.

Internal temps are average for a quadcore haswell laptop, in other words 90C +/- during gaming, no throttling so far. Under prime/furmark loads it will hit 95C and turn off CPU turbo boost to keep temps low enough, but no throttling beside that which is great. Very many other laptops based around the haswell quadcores will throttle to 800MHz during prime/furmark stress.

Overall the cooling is good, one could wish for lower CPU temps, but that is almost impossible with the small core of the haswell CPU, it's difficult to transport the heat away efficient enough.

 

Temps after 1 hour of gaming.

As you can see the GPU temps are very good.
CPU temps around 90 C.

 

Yep as long as there's no fps drop or throttling then that's good news. I've been testing for a few hours also and the max temps on cpu is 89c and gpu is 82c after continues 30 minutes of Crysis and CS:GO and with hwinfo32 and msi afterburner graph, gpu core graph at 719mhz for straight 30 min, 98-100% gpu usage graph for 30 minutes and fraps frames per sec never dipped so no throttling compared to the N550JV where as soon as the cpu hits 80-82c while the gpu is also being taxed while in a game, the cpu will throttle all the way down to 800mhz base clock which will dipped the frames per sec so low you will feel a sudden lag and the only solution is to turn off intel turbo boost since cpu and gpu shares the same fan and distribution of heat and if both are being taxed one has to be automatically throttled down.

I also experimented with turning off intel turbo boost to see if temps will improve, so I set min/max cpu on power options to 99/99 since that will automatically turn off turbo and wil run only at 2.4ghz speed, after running it looping Crysis/CS:GO for 30 minutes, same scenario as above except no intel turbo, the cpu temps only reached 80c and gpu only 78c, so almost 10degrees cooler on the cpu and 3-4degrees cooler on gpu and there was no difference in performance with fraps running and same numbers w/ and w/o turbo.

Conclusion, even w/o turbo, the 2.4ghz quadcore is plenty enough power for games, the gpu is the main thing that is very important in games so instead of throttling the gpu via NVidia inspector, try turning off turbo boost of the cpu instead since 2.4ghz is plenty of clockspeed and power unless the game you are playing reduces the frames per sec and is CPU intensive that needs turbo to get the frames per sec that you need.

 

Yep, I seriously considered the N550JV myself, but the 800MHz CPU throttle and silver keyboard put me off. Black keyboard with white letters is the best. But I'd like the IPS screen and slightly longer battery runtime of the N550JV.

The neverending story of having to sacrifice something since there is never going to THE perfect laptop made

 

Very good laptop for its price. Intel Dual Band Wireless-N 7260 provides a stable connection in saturated network. Drivers for now are officially ONLY for Windows 8.0 64bit!!! Under clean installation run stable with Windows 8.1. The drivers for Intel HD4600 and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 760М must be downloaded from Windows Update, and the rest of drivers from the disc and on the website of Asus. Automatic disc menu does not work under Windows 8.1, but the drivers ( without for the video) are recognized and work stable.

 

Looks like Asus is shipping the N56JR with both the AR Atheros card and Intel Centrino N-7260. So far so good though with this Atheros card, no disconnects no glitch whatsoever. But the moment it glitches and disconnects like those Atheros cards I had in the past on different laptops, then I will upgrade it to an Intel 7260 AC.

The battery life on it wasn't that good, I was only able to get 3-3.5 hours while on balanced mode @ 40% brightness web browsing and some music playing. I actually think the battery life on the N550JV is going to be lower than our N56JR since the IPS panel sucks out more juice but I won't know until later tonight and right now i'm testing the battery of the N56JR.

 

Is the n56jr compatible with the 7260AC? cause then i'm probably going to get one

 

Not with stock wifi card. You have to replace the wifi card to get AC.

 

Yes the 7260 should work fine, Asus does not use white or black listing.

 

yeah that's what i meant, replacing my stock wifi with a 7260 AC
and that's nice to know that asus does not have any whitelisting, having returned my y510p because of the wifi card to get this laptop

 

According to Asus "Unfortunately it is not possible to install any other wireless network card. This particular model only supports the INTEL/7260.HMWANG 923253" (because of the warranty) , but that is not a disadvantage.

 

Hello

I'm thinking about getting this laptop and upgrading it with a 500GB SSD. Which wouldn't exactly be cheap. So I have to be 110% sure that this laptop is the right choice.

For the most part I'm pretty much convinced about the awesomeness of this laptop, but I still have one doubt - Fan noise. Which leads me to the following questions.

How loud exactly is it when...

• Idle and web browsing - I expect it to be very quiet in this state - is this the case?
  
• Multimedia (Movies/Youtube/Twitch.tv) - I'm really interested in this one. My current laptop gets really loud when watching Movies/Youtube/Twitch and it annoys the hell out of me. It's actually one of the major reasons why I want to buy a new laptop. This is really important because I like to put my laptop next to my bed and watch something on it when I go to sleep.
  
• Gaming - Of course it will get loud when gaming, but that's ok,

Besides that I'm pretty much sold on this laptop, it looks so awesome!

 

I can sleep with the PC next to me and with the Little sound i wake up, I can say it's very quiet the fan

Enviado do meu Nexus 7 através de Tapatalk

 

Ok that sounds great, thank you tenico.

I'm wondering why there are no (professional) reviews of this laptop. And also why they sell this laptop for such a low price. There are laptops in the $1500+ range that are like a little kids toy compared to this powerhouse (at least where I live, Switzerland).

It makes me skeptical, but I don't know if it should. It's currently the only thing holding me back from buying this laptop.

 

There are so many models and notebooks are not cheap so some tend to slip through.

 

this is confusing now. has anyone actually changed their wireless card to the 7260 AC?

 

The range in Portugal goes between 1100€ 8gb ram, to 1300€ 16gb ram model and BD-player

Enviado do meu Nexus 7 através de Tapatalk

 

The N56VZ (closest match) reviews show it to be quieter under load than a MBP 15" Retina under load by 1db. I can confirm that at idle or low level usage they run cool and make VERY little noise. At maximum load while gaming you get a very slight whooshing noise from the fan / air. The only laptop I own or have used that's quieter is my acer netbook which is nearly dead silent.
Movies etc aren't really a noticeable load to this laptop. Plus the sound system rocks. Very good sound and very loud. You won't hear the fan at all unless something's wrong with your machine.
Even when gaming it's not that loud. Seriously unless I turn the sound down real low I can't hear the fans.

The N56JR may be a slight bit louder, but I can't imagine it being by a whole lot.

(There's an open box at my nearby microcenter for $899 and if I didn't already have the N56VZ I'd get it in a heartbeat.)

 

Hi,
I've read through the entire 19 pages of comments and I can say that so far I could no find anything wrong with this laptop. I am in the process of buying a new laptop and so far, this laptop has the best price for performance. However, I want to have it for at least 4 years so quality of products really matter. I currently own an Asus G60JX (bought 4 years ago) and which at that time was high performance. However it sucks when it comes to portability since it is really heavy and big. Another downsize is the fact that the GPU runs at 55 on low loads and it tends to get hot around the left side of the keyboard. I had to improvise ways to cool it down so that I can have my left hand sit on it while typing, playing, etc. So far, this Asus did not have any major faults in the quality of products.

Now, for those of you that already purchased this laptop I have a couple of questions:

1. Is the left side of the computer acceptable to have the hand sit on it or it becomes a bit annoying when you would have low loads on it. I've been to a Microcenter and they have it on stock but not on display (which sucks). The closest one was a N550 (very similar in design, with I think a GT 750M), but which has the cooling exhaust in front of the laptop where the LCD is. I loved how cool the computer felt at touch.

2. When you type do you get some missed keys? My current Asus used to have this problem and I've read some reviews for other Asus laptops and in a very high percentage the missed keys problem was there. I don't know why but right now I don't have this problem any more with my current Asus.

3. If you unplug the charger while the computer is running does it freezes? Again, after reading Asus laptops reviews in general I learned that it happens in many cases. My current Asus had this problem until I stopped installing the Asus Power Management software.

4. Do you feel that the hardware inside is good quality? Do the plastics are high-end quality? I'm skeptic because I cannot find this model anywhere else than Microcenter and it's just too cheap for the configuration. Cannot see reviews on other sites (except for here).

5. How about the heat-sink? Is it copper or aluminum? My Asus has copper heatsink and another low-performance Toshiba has aluminum (or some kind of metal) heat-sink. The difference is huge.

6. Repeating a bit the 4th question. Can anybody figure out why this laptop is so cheap? GTX 760, 16GB RAM -> BestBuy, Amazon, NewEgg => prices over $1,250.

7. Is GTX 760M significantly better than GT 740M, or GT 750M?

Thank you!

 

anyone know how to factory reset using Recover partion, if F9 doesnt work?? please help ;(

 

Can someone link a photo of the Windows Index Rating?

 

Hey guys

I have ordererd this laptop today and it will probably arrive in ~2 days. Because of the low price, I'm still a bit skeptical about the build quality, but we'll see. All reviews of this laptop I could find were throughout positive, with the only minor downsides being the size, weight and the absence of an SSD. Weight and size don't really bother me since it's in a tolerable range and the missing SSD isn't a problem either, because I'll upgrade it with an SSD anyway.

I'll probably share my first impressions and try to answer some questions as soon as I have the laptop.

 

1: Nope, even during full load it's just slightly heated up on the left side above the air vent.
2: So far none.
3: Not for me so far.
4: It's an "remake" of the N56VZ, keeping price down I guess. Pricing depends where you live I guess. Here in Norway you could get better performing clevos for less, but they are ugly and noisy compared to the asus.
5: Not opened mine, but the heatsink works well, considering this laptop only have one fan/heatsink.
6: See 4
7: GTX760M is about 40% more powerful than GT750M, quite noticeable.

So far it's working well for me, if I have to mention one negative thing it's the speakers causing resonance in the keyboard, causing a rattling sound which kinda ruins the very good sound from the speakers. Most noticeable during normal speech or opera like music.

 

Hi,

Im curious about the build. I know that there is aluminium behind the screen, is the rest of the body completely plastic? Its hard to tell from the images, I am hoping that the silver surrounding the keyboard/trackpad and side ports is aluminium with just the bottom plastic, though it seems like it could all be plastic. What about the trackpad itself? Can someone who owns the laptop or has seen it first hand please let me know?

Many thanks.

 

Body is plastic, the keyboard "deck" is aluminum.

 

Great, Thank you.

 

Just saw this machine. Gotta say, this is a great deal for what you get. Though I have to ask, what are the temps like?

 

OK I've had this laptop for almost a week now, thought I'd post some info here seeing as theres a lack of reviews around for this model.

Asus N56JR (or R501JR, as it's know in Australia)

Pros
*Powerful hardware - 4700HQ i7 @2.4GHz (up to 3.4Ghz Turbo), 16Gb DDR3 ram @ 1.6GHz, GTX 760M with 2Gb GDDR5 ram
*Whisper quite operation during low CPU / GPU load (i.e. web browsing, office etc.)
*Highly efficient cooling system / outer case and keyboard remains cool even under load
*Decent screen with anti-glare (i.e. matte finish) @ 1080p / non-touch (a plus for me)
*Nice back lit key board (with Num pad) and nice overall design of the case (a fairly solid build)
*2.7Kg is a reasonable weight for a laptop with these specs, and it doesn't feel heavy to pick up due to the weight distribution
*Blu Ray burner was a nice bonus
*Good speakers (if the sub woofer is connected and audio settings are correctly configured)

Cons
*No SSD. An SSD drive is essential for a laptop with these specs
*Key board layout seems a little unconventional. I keep making typos, but I guess I'll get used to it
*USB ports have an inconvenient location on the front corners of the case
*Strange high pitch whining noise from the CPU fan during heavy load. It's still fairly quite for a laptop under load, but I found this noise irritating, a bit like finger nails on a chalk board

Overall, no deal breakers here. Don't let the lack of professional reviews put you off if you are considering buying this laptop. (I did find one, link is below, it's in Bulgarian and they tested and confirmed CPU throttling is minimal on this laptop, consistent with testing by others in this thread).

Google Translate

The first thing I did was swap the hdd for an SSD, and the performance increase in Windows noticeable instantly. Not just loading times, but also everyday tasks. I've replaced the optical drive with the SSD, and the good thing is you can boot from this SATA port (my previous laptop, Dell XPS 14 L401X did not allow this), so the original 1Gb Toshiba HDD is still in the HDD bay. During idle / light load the CPU fan is mostly off, and the only sound is the HDD, which doesn't bother me. This is a big plus for me, and it was the powerful specs / quite and efficent cooling system that convinced me to buy this laptop.

All of the above considered, I'd recommend this laptop to any body looking for a good value, powerful laptop with an efficient and quite cooling system.


****EDIT:
After further testing I fixed the problem with the speakers

 

deleted. posted twice in error.

 

Either they downgraded the N56JR speakers or there's something wrong with yours. I own an N56DP and N56VZ and my brother has an N56VZ as well and all three sound GREAT. Must be some QA problems because this is not the first time I've heard of this issue.

 

Hmm, I might have to RMA it I think. The speakers on my N56JR basically sound like very cheap low quality speakers with lots of distortion

 

Hmmm so the headphone jack sounds normal? Are there any odd settings for the speakers you can disable maybe? But yeah it sounds like there's an issue with the speakers.

 

Thank you so much for the review. Somehow this model is only available through Microcenter (I guess in US only) and the reviews are missing.
I've been looking for a laptop for a while and I keep on stopping at this model. Price/Performance => best deal you can get.

Question for you: Does that whine comes from the location of the CPU? You said that it's coming from the CPU fan, but myself I have a Toshiba Laptop that has a whining noise while charging and on low loads and I am definitely sure it is coming right from the CPU or at least underneath.

If it's not too much, can I ask you what happens with the noise if you unplug or if it's plugged and battery full = not charging. Any changes for charging/not charging at same level of loads?
And even more, can you record that sound (video, mp3, anything)? I ask you this because, as I said, I own that Toshiba laptop and it drove me crazy when I had to use it and it was charging. The noise is unbearable.
If it is coming from the fan, it's a different story but if it is coming from the CPU things are different in terms of solutions to find a fix.

Thanks!

 

Hi SPS14blue

Where did you get the tray to insert the ssd and replace for the Optical drive from?
I was considering replacing the HD for an SSD and put in the HDD bay, but what you have done could be a better option. I am not interesting in the Bluray burner at all.
Where you able to reinstall win8 in the SSD with the recovery disk ?

 

I only noticed the whining noise once, when the CPU was under heavy load, I'm assuming it's the CPU fan. Also I discovered the speakers are pretty decent if you tweak the audio settings and stay away from high volumes, and the mini sub gives music a much richer sound thanks to the extra bass.

 

You can buy the ODD caddy thingy off ebay, it's about $10. Note the optical drive is 12.7mm version. You can also but from ebay an USB 3.0 enclosure for the optical drive for around $20.

I stuffed around for hours trying install Windows using a Windows image recovery. If you buy a Samsung SDD they include free data migration software, I ended up using this because I have an 840 series 250Gb SSD. It was a breeze, just connected the SSD using a USB enclosure, took around 45 minutes (via USB 2.0) to clone the system drive (including recovery partition).

 

Can you record the whining noise? (Can you reproduce it anytime it goes on heavy loads?) And are you sure it does not have anything to do with charging? So far every review was great for this laptop but when I heard about the "whining noise" and since my old Toshiba (that's gonna be replaced) has the whining noise I got scared a bit. I know that most newer CPU have some sort of a whine but in my case it's more than just the CPU doing that.

As for the speakers, I guess high volumes for a laptop are not really something easy to get. At least you have what to play with. My current Asus ROG G60jx has the worst sound ever. On max you barely hear it. Without headphones or speakers there's no way!