Question for z70va Asus

Okay .. I already narrowed down to two laptop to decide on. One of them is Asus z70Va 1.73GHz centrino, 512mb, ATI x700 128MB, 60GB, and DVD-RW. SOh i want to know: 1-) if this laptop is good for extensive use up to 6 hours or more. 2-) if this laptop is good for extensive use of gaming to 6 hours or more. 3-) Any noise or heat? 4-) Anyone who has z70Va could please post their specification, how long he/she have it, and any problem since purchase? I would really appreciate it. Thank You.

 

Its definitely good for extensive gaming. Has separate GPU fan that also gives you some margins for overclocking without overheating. However, it comes at a small cost.
Under normal office use (or more silent areas) you pretty much have to use the following setup to make the thing silent:

* Notebook Hardware Control with undervolting. Keeps the CPU fan off at normal surfing loads
* ATI Powerplay set to "Max Battery", even if you're on AC
* Speedfan, (preferrably hacked version), setup with 30% fan speed on the GPU fan. This keeps the GPU cool, without giving a high-pitched howl.

A more elaborate guide is found elsewhere on the forum (written by Bird59, if I am not mistaken)
With that setup, the one I had here was barely audible. A bit of nuisance, but it only takes seconds to switch the thing between a decent gaming rig and a excellent office workhorse. I am getting the WSXGA+ version as soon as it is in stock again in Norway :-(

EDIT: My guess is there will a bios available that makes the speedfan-fix unnecessary. Shouldn't take the asus engineers more than minutes to add an extra stepping on the fan control.

 

I use mines for longer then that, the heat is acceptable and not surprising under the conditions

The noise will be quite loud but when gaming(Like all computers),but who actually doesn't turn up the speakers?

 

Flavs83...all those questions have been answered many times over, just do a search on the forums.

Since I'm a nice guy I'll just post my thoughts.

The fan on the GPU as coriolis has stated can get pretty darn loud, but who plays their games without sound??? The CPU fan is quiet, you will hear it, but it isn't LOUD.

Like coriolis has said you can use it for extensive periods of time without any problems or crazy heat. Only thing that heats up on this baby is the harddrive compartment on the bottom left of the unit. I mean it gets pretty hot. The GPU exhaust vent on the back left of the unit gets hot as well, but you're not gonna have any parts of your body near that area so you're fine.

The heat on the left keyboard palm rest gets a bit warm, but nothing too serious. The area around the power button gets pretty warm as well, but you're not gonna be resting any parts of your body around there so you're fine.

Like I said only thing to worry about is the harddrive, so try to get a Z70Va configured with a cool running harddrive, like a seagate, or a western digital.

My specs are in my signature, so check it out, it's hard to miss since it's in red.

Cheers,
Mike

 

I run my Z70V (not refresh) using RMClock for undervolting the CPU and SpeedFan using the nice tutorial here to control the GPU fan. Thing is, I also want to be able to use Linux, and depending on the distro I get annoying fan fluctuations. I was thinking of trying to flash back to an older BIOS (I'm using the latest) to see if the fan control was actually better, but I'm wondering if anyone has fiddled with that already and knows the results. TIA.