Seeking advice from anyone that is familiar with ASUS.

Hi! I have recently decided that I'd like to buy an Asus N56VZ for my first notebook. I'm planning on doing a clean install to get rid of the bloatware. The thing is , I don;t think this laptop comes with the OS CD, so how would I do a clean install? If there is a way I would like t to know [Sorry for all the questions!] :

What is the safest and most benefiting way of doing a clean install?
Do I remove the OS and reinstall it and any drivers, how will I know if I have all the drivers?
Do I have to update the BIOS?
Are there and CPU/GPU issues with nvidia optimus if I do a clean install?
What is a good cooling pad for this laptop and do I have to apply thermal paste regularly? Or is it a one time application?

~Thanks in advance!

 

You can read the guide in my signature

Since any n56 you will buy now comes with the second bios update, updating the bios isn't critical.

Display drivers are two separete packages. Intel and nvidia. Both can be installed separately, no issues. You can not turn Optimus off (but I'm not sure why you would want to, since it actually works nowadays).

You don't need a cooling pad. From what I've seen so far, it shouldn't be necessary to do a repaste as often as with your average gaming laptop, since the heatsinks don't eventually go up towards 90 degrees+, and the motherboard doesn't constantly bend and unbend because of the heat in the chassis, and so on. Which is what causes things start to evaporate, and even the closest and most perfect paste-job will start to boil until it's fine dust very quickly. So unless they used toothpaste at Foxconn, or whatever they had them made at.. With typical use, we're talking perhaps.. 1.5 years until a repaste? More if you're lucky.

The things you have to worry about is:
1. Asus' absurd memory timing and support policy - making you have to be a bit circumspect when choosing memory upgrades (and you will never get those 1.35v ram chips you bought to work, because Asus likes to annoy you personally if you don't think high volt ram on a laptop is a swell idea).
2. You need to install/work around Asus' power profiling software and how it interacts with the locked bios settings. I.e., you need the right chipset drivers, and the p4g programs. And then you need to use that program exclusively to change the profile options. Don't override settings with the windows manager.
3. Small build issues. Such as heat leaks. The plastic channels in the laptop are very tight, and it's not much that has to go wrong before heat is vented into the surface. And the plastic and the thin aluminum layer each have very low heat-capacity. So if there's a heat-leak, the entire chassis will be hot pretty much instantly. Also, look out for keys not properly fitted, and touch-pad not flush or 1mm lower than the surface of the chassis. And, of course, displaced contact points by the power-jack and the sub-jack. That has apparently been extremely common. And could be an indication that something is broken elsewhere as well.
4. If people have been fitting a new hdd for you, make sure an eager technician didn't break the tracks for the service-panel towards the right underside. Or else the panel will give in if you grip the chassis too hard.

 

Hi Endhiran

You asked the right questions and they was answered very promptly and honesty in my view. I can say that the biggest Asus drawback is their support if you need it. My next laptop will be Clevo in that reason.

@nipsen
Hi nipsen
I have my questions too :rolleyes2:

Is the Optimus works in Linux flawlessly?
Is there a way for manual switch between Nvidia/Intel under Linux?

 

lol
1. Yes and no. You need to struggle a bit to get it to work. And you need the proprietary drivers installed. That can be a bit of a pain, because it means you need to know about how to update the boot image/initramfs, about what might go wrong with kernel modules, and some blacklisting, and so on. This isn't the easiest thing in the world, but it is possible to get it to work on any distro. What you need to check with distros that support "optimus" (or have bumblebee in the depository already), is that they also support kepler cards. I'm not really an expert on compiling packages across distros, so I can't tell for certain exactly what happens. But it seems that it's possible to screw up between an optimus fermi card and an optimus kepler card. I just don't know how it hangs together. But scripts made for one might fail on the other.

2. It's called "bumblebee" (Bumblebee was Optimus' right hand man, right..). Ideally, you would just use it the way you use it in windows - you run an executable in a wrapper, that then enables the dedicated card. Then when the program ends, it disables the dedicated card again, etc. It might be some time before it's commonly supported, though. But it does work. For some value of teapot.

(By the way, the keyboard won't function well under linux. And you can't really remap fn+key combos, since they don't register. This is of course possible to work around, but it's difficult. Or would be partial solutions, etc. Enabling backlight won't work - not because it has something to do with linux, but because the commands aren't possible to access.. Thank you, WMI toolkits!)

 

+1 Rep!!

Hands down the most informative reply I have received so far on this forum! I am really looking forward to buying this after reading the guides in your sig!
May I ask if I should wait for the next n series? I don't think I will anyways wince the n56 came out not too long ago.
Also I've heard there were issues with the trackpad being loose and the subwoofer making faint humming noises after a sound was finished playing. Is this fixed in the newer models of the n56vz?
And did you buy yours with default specs? 'cause I've seen some n56's with 2 USB 3.0 ports and 2 USB 2.0 ports whereas on the site (and I think yours) has 4 USB 3.0 ports.

Oh and this might be a bigger question than the previous ones but, I saw a n56vz-qs71 the difference from the stock ds71 version from what I read was that it had a 1TB 7200 rpm HDD, would this be a better upgrade? or will this upgrade cause higher internal/surface temperature readings?

~Thanks in advance!

 

@nipsen

You are the man!!!

I’m very excited right now because you are real treasure.
Thank you very much for your answers and comments. I never was answered in such precise and prompt way before. Your answers are real and big help for me.

I’m afraid that the rep is not enough to show my satisfaction!
Thank you Nipsen!

 

First of all, I'm a technician and an engineer. So I'm completely oblivious to any sort of flattery, and it doesn't make me embarrassed or warm in my chest - or proud in any way at all, whatsoever. So knock it off!



..but next n-series. I've no idea. The n55 is still being sold. Heard some suggestions that retailers were waiting with picking up the nx6 variants because the n55 was still selling. So it's more that it's not really been phased in yet, than that a new model is being made, I guess. There really aren't any other good options for a graphics card configs coming up as far as I know. With the same power-requirement. 680m is still too hot for that chassis, and would need a larger power-supply, better cooling. Asus seems hell-bent on using intel in their flatter chassis variants as well. ..that was why I bought this laptop now. That it's the most graphics and processing power you can get that also has good, but still quiet cooling. Only thing that might be an option is if there's an apu system with a really powerful dedicated card turning up. A 40-50w card with a wide bus, fast ram, etc. Then you would have very comfortable desktop performance, along with a good backup for games and OpenCL/video-editing performance, etc. But I doubt anyone is actually making some kind of "top segment" combo like that for the package solutions. And since there's nothing in between until you get to the 7970m, you're going to struggle with the cooling on the China-tops, right..

One thing I wish they did was put out a "premium" improved version with higher clocked ram (or, with spd-timed ram and unlocked bios settings, 1866Mhz ram, or 1.35v variants), in a "coal" aluminum composite, and a motherboard with a raid-controller. Also, lithium polymer batteries that would fit in the nx5/nx6 chassis. But knowing Asus, that's not going to happen. So out of all bad choices..

Issues with the trackpad and buzzing - I've no idea how common it is. It is so obvious that you would think it couldn't pass qa, though. And there'd be no problem getting it exchanged afterwards. I haven't talked to any retailers who have said they would avoid picking up the nx6 because it has too high returns either. But that might not mean anything.

I bought mine with default specs, 4 usb3. Turns out it's not a problem towards usb 2.0 devices. It's compatible with those. Where you get into trouble is if you want to install win7 via usb stick (the installer sees the usb port just fine, but the standard usb3 driver needs to disconnect and reboot the device -> disaster. But what else is new. Allegedly only affects "some" win7 installs).

And there's something going on with the "root hub" device, that some programs disagree with. Seen one other example with how that problem will also turn up if you're using a usb2 variant with the same "root hub" device. It's got something to do with how the laptop disconnects and brings the device back up again when you change the id in the driver. Too long pause, requires some other routine, who knows (... isn't windows fun?). So you would get that problem with the usb2.0 variant as well.. It is completely backwards-compatible with usb2.0 though. No worries about that. ..besides, they're blue. And.. can transfer information ten times as fast.

HDD upgrades. Imo, on this chassis, you shouldn't pick a 7200rpm drive, even if you had some other reason to do that. Which you probably don't, since 5400rpm drives are cheaper. Or if similarly priced as the 7200rpm drive, then they will have larger cache and better build quality almost always. And tend to be less noisy and cooler, as well as use less power. But specifically on this chassis, the hdd is put under the palmrest. So if it gets to 60 degrees, the thin aluminum layer will get to about the same temperature pretty much instantly. Same problem as with the heat leaks - the chassis has heat-capacity like tinfoil. So yes, that's a problem.

So if you can pick upgrades, go for a drive that has low acoustic noise, low heat, reasonably large cache (+8mb) and low seek-times. Typical candidates here are the Spinpoint drives. Those are extremely good, and you can use the tools from Samsung to adjust the acoustic noise (the seek-clatter) down even further, in exchange for marginally higher seek-times again. The reason I'd easily recommend you doing that is also because the difference between a 7200rpm and 5400rpm drive is too small to be significant in any way. Basically there's no hdd that can max out a sata 2 bus except when using the cache (which never will fetch you anything useful in the real world - that data will always be in the ram already, if you have enough for a cache hit of any size). In fact you will consistently see Spinpoint m drives in 5400rpm outperform more expensive 7200rpm drives on average transfer speed as well as seek times. Because it takes longer to get to peak transfer speed on a 7200rpm drive. Nothing strange going on there.

...

(By the way, anyone have any good tips for getting rid of a cold?)

 

Ahh I see, because there was a n56vz-qa71 that had a 1tb 7200rpm HDD but it replaced 2 USB 3.0's with 2 USB 2.0's, I guess I'll go with the stock HDD! By the way, if it's not too much to ask, what are the samsung "spinpoint" HDD's that will be compatible with this notebook, and is it easy to install the HDD? (Sorry this will be my very first notebook! :S)

 

Any 9.5mm high, 2.5inch drive will fit. ..this one, maybe? Costs practically nothing nowadays It's a bit tight, could be you need to shift the rail some mm to get the hdd in. But essentially the same as on a desktop, with the rail, and so on.

Another option might be something like this, and an external usb3.0 disk to store the on.

 

That SSD.. *drool* I forgot to ask you this but was your wi-fi weak on arrival? I heard it could be fixed with a driver update, I hope it isn't a long term defect.

 

It even /looks/ fast.

Let's see.. I think the default driver disables the "n"-band by default. You can enable it just fine, but usually not much point unless you're alone with an industry grade router in a cave.. this goes for wifi-n in general. You might see very high transport blips, but it'll drop down to compensate for noise very quickly. And all you really accomplish is generating noise for all the other devices elsewhere. Signal reception seems to be above average in the noisy environments I use it in. No weird "insulation" effect of the kind you might have seen on some phones, or certain aluminum chassis laptops. Possibly owing to the rubber strip on top of the edge of the laptop (was a problem with that on the Asus Transformer Prime) -- not sure. And it's difficult to say if you're really going to notice it as any better or worse than other devices - and you really shouldn't be sitting as far away from the receiver as possible anyway. I haven't tried the modem xotic offers as an extra, so I've no idea if there's something about it that might give you higher throughput in specific circumstances.. bigger buffers, some instruction tweaks... It could be. Nothing particularly sub-par about the standard modem, though. (.. probably the same $10 chip from the same factory that makes everything).

 

Ohh okay, I guess that's all I need to ask for now! Do you think I could pm your if there are anymore questions?

 

No, sorry, I'm in love with someone else, you see.