Warning: stay away from the Asus C90s

I bought my Asus c90s about 2 months ago. And so far it's been nothing but problems.

To start off the C90s comes with Windows Vista preinstalled. And besides from being pretty to look at Vista has few other advantages. For example copying one gig from one partition of your HD to another takes about 7 times as long as it does on XP. But enough about Vista.

The C90s likes to to stay hot. Bear in mind that the first weeks or so everything is just fine and dandy, and then it strikes. The general consensus on this forum tends to lean towards a GPU idle of about 75 - 85 C.
I've tried about 4 diffrent version of XP and so far only one of these have been able to cope with the C90s overheating issues. And even then it like to stay around 90 -95 C whilst gaming.

Using the overclocking mode on your fans makes the entire laptop basicly useless since you can't hear yourself think and you suddenly realize the horror people working at airstrips have to live thru on a daily basis.

The battery life on this laptop is about 25 minutes, and that's when it's brand new. I knew this laptop wouldn't be a very portable one when I bought it, but I thought.. hey! the gaming expirence alone should cover those draw backs. But since gaming on this garbage is a full time maintance job you might aswell buy a desktop.

Another reoccuring problem is the wireless connections. On all the OS's I've tried it's the same thing. Disble the wireless connection, and then try to re enable it again, you'll get the blue screen and the only possible way to get it back on, is to reinstall your OS. Updating drivers is not going to help you.

The placement of the HD is another thing, right under where you place your left hand to type, you'll be sweating all day long thanks to this little treat.

I'd also like to thank Asus for making one of the few european Laptops I've come across to place the Fn button where the CTRL button is suposed to be. Rebinding this key is impossible, so that pretty much throws any Half Life engine gaming exprience out the window.

So what else does this powerbook have going for it? Oh yeah! They've designed it so that half of the cables you put in it stick out from the side! Brilliant! Who doesn't enjoy looking at a network cable, an E-sata cable, an HDMI cable all day long? Oh and by the way The HDMI and E-sata loves to mess with you. The HDMI is ocnfiguered to alter the resolution settings on it's own whenever it feels like it regardless of what OS you're using. And the E-sata I'm afraid to say does not work at all. Perhaps I should spend 4 hours looking for drivers on some obscure website? Or maybe Asus should have fixed that crap for me since I payed the equivalent of 2016 dollars for this laptop.

As people have previously pointed out: yes the webcam looks like it came out of a serial box. And yes the laptop cover likes to get dirty on the first day.

So if you want to pay 2000 dollars for a laptop that makes you sweat, is loud and noisy. Renders itself useless during gaming, HDMI use, Wireless connecting and E-sata connecting etc, This is the laptop for you. If not? Buy something else, please!

 

Well...

- 80-95C for a GPU is normal.

- You did know it has a desktop CPU when buying didn't you?

- Hence the battery life and fans...^

- Vista is MS' problem not the C90

- hdd? My notebook is on the right palm rest and I have no problem with it, so are most notebooks actually.

-Fn & Ctrl placements, you could have just looked at the picture of the notebook before you bought it......

- With the cables...yeah you could have just looked at the pictures lol...

Looks like you didn't bother researching about the notebook at all before you bought it. So maybe you have now learnt your lesson...



So pics posted back in July '07 found on the 1st page of google image search and NBR

 

For any manufacturer, there will always be a few that will go bad. Have you actually consider that you got a bad unit? Like a poster above said, you have no right to claim all C90s are bad just because yours is. I don't see any other C90s owner whining about theirs, so I would take it that your case is an exception rather than a trend.

 

Sir Travis. Wonderful, But you're probably not using yours to the extent that I am.

As for JohnnyT
- 80-95C for a GPU is normal
wonderful thanx

- You did know it has a desktop CPU when buying didn't you?
I did, yes. As I mentioned in my previous post.

- Hence the battery life and fans...
Quite, I knew this on beforehand aswell. And had it performed as promised these things would not pose a problem.

- Vista is MS' problem not the C90
Lol, that's why I brought up the lack of options having it pre
installed with Xp instead

- hdd? My notebook is on the right palm rest and I have no problem with it, so are most notebooks actually.
Then it's probably a europan thing, and it keeps getting warmer for each day that passes. Try gaming an avarage of 5 hours a day for 6 weeks and feel the heat increasing.

-Fn & Ctrl placements, you could have just looked at the picture of the notebook before you bought it......
I did extensive research for about 3 weeks before finally deciding on the c90s. None of the countless websites I visited, inculding this forum bothered to inform me about this fatal flaw. But yeah sure, no research is perfect. And no most laptops have the Ctrl at the very edge in scandinavia. And I'm hardly alone in pointing out this flaw in the design.

- With the cables...yeah you could have just looked at the pictures lol...
Lol, I did actually. I just hadn't planned on using Sata or HDMI at first. And I guess I was stupid enough to actually believe that they'd even work! Aswell as not contemplating this problem before buying the damned thing. But then again you'd have to agree that the people who designed the Asus were even more ignorant for putting them where they actually did.

-Looks like you didn't bother researching about the notebook at all before you bought it. So maybe you have now learnt your lesson...
Mmmyes lesson learned, never be to honest to people who become loyal to a product simply by the mere fact that they spent alot of money on it and can't admit it's flaws as a consequence.

As for f4ding's comment I don't believe this to be a bad unit, since I'm hardly alone in pointing out the multitude of flaws the c90s carries. Albeit I might belong to a minority on this forum. But as I pointed out before, people tend to stick to a product they've payed alot of money for and often hesitate to critize it so not to look like uncapable consumers. Just watch the slander I've been put thru in here for critizing obvious flaws in the design. Nothing short of a monetary investment can make people defend flaws so willingly.

 

Thats probably the reseller you bought from, in the US, resellers such as XoticPC can have the C90S with XP preinstalled.

Very very true...(i dont own a C90S by the way )

 

Sure you don't. I'm not trying to compete in the special olympics here. I've said my 2 cents and I'm done.

 

He doesn't. He uses a Compaq piece of junk which I estimate is at least 3 years old.

No offense JohnnyT

 

I thought JT had HP?

BTW,

This is why there are forums. No offense, but was it not ur responsibilty to research this before the purchase?

 

Since he mentioned HP/Compaq, I'm more inclined to think Compaq. Generally HP owners just say HP.

I think JohnnyYuma had some valid arguments. The original users who adopted the C90s had a huge number of teething problems. I'm sure you remember the huge RAM issues they had.

 

errrrm...Its a HP COMPAQ Plus...its one of the 1st to have a glossy screen, and has Mobility Radeon 9700 woop! All in a 6.1lb 15.4'' package Its old, and I am proud of it.






EDIT: Damit you dug it up

 

I am owner of a c90s since September, and i don't have problems. If you have there is a lot of persons able to help you. And i think that we must see everything about the laptop, or anything in informatics before buy it, because maybe this thing don't correspond to our requirements.

 

On my c90 my wireless works fine, had about 2 hours of battery life when it was brand new, has a gpu that idles around 65, load reaches 98 when playing crysis, is pretty quite when in standard and powersaving modes, has an hdmi port that automatically changes to the max res of my tv's, and stays there, has an e-sata port that works fine, and is still the most powerfull computer in my house.

 

There are so many things wrong with the original post, Im not even going to waste time with it. You guys have been doing a pretty good job of that anyway.

 

we'll get this kind of bad apples once in a while. But you dont have the right to warn people based on problems that are not universal.

 

I'm getting 1 hour and a half of battery life.

Have you updated windows? I'm getting 16MB/s transfer on mine, 14 on XP and 22 on Ubuntu...

 

I didn't notice any problems with my C90S so far.
The only thing I don't like is the lack of GPU upgrades but hopefully this will change in the near future.
I think I would buy the C90S again because the price/performance ratio is awesome!!!

PS: If you don't like loud laptops with bad battery life maybe you shouldn't consider buying a gaming notebook with a desktop CPU!

 

I've been happy with my laptop, from the beginning.

The only issues I've had are a bad x64 driver for the webcam and a hot GDDR3 GPU, which although a bit of an inconvenience, will be remedied soon.

The C90 was never billed as Prêt-à-Porter for the most part and all owners should certainly research the product before buying.

 

WEll man DEMAND YOUR RETURN & REFUND IF YOU DONT" LIKE IT. Period.

system with Desktop processor is not gonna be Cool and Quiet like others.

Another thing is keyboard design with FN button switched around is Asus some what called "flaw" design so probably you haven't expect it when bought the thing. most older asus notebook are built with that kind of keyboard so just try to accomodate with it.


If you want XP installed, why don't buy one copy on ebay and installed your self. Or ask your vendor to do it for you it's better. Tell them that u just need windows and drivers installed for a fully clean no bloat ware computers they would gladly do s o to save time.

Other than that, if you want other people to stay away form C90S is just not right plenty of folks out here are proud of it.

 

For anyone complaining about Vista, three little words...Service Pack One.

Anyways, Vista works like crap out of the box, if you don't have SP1 yet there are a handful of hotfixes in my C90S OS install guide that work wonders in performance...

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showpost.php?p=2617661&postcount=2

 

I have to agree with the OP, the C90S has some major overheating issues, because of ASUS's poor design.
in my opinion, temperatures over 55C are bad for computers, but there is no way that the c90S will ever stay below 80C.
I have tried everything on my friends laptop, its just that it keeps overheating. She went through 4 8600Gt graphics cards in her laptop, and it keeps frying them. A graphics card is not supposed to hit upwards of 125C in any computer, its just wrong. If a component breaks over 80C, than the system has a poor design.
I buy Dell and Clevo for a reason, fan control.
The asus has 4 fans, but they only fool the buyer into thinking it runs cool. Actually those fans are terrible. They are delta fans rated for 12V. the gpu has no control over when the fans turn on. the cpu's temperatures are the sole controller of when the fans come on. In order to get her fans to tun on. we pin modded the socket, so that the processor uses more power. We also leave the overclocking feature running the e6600 at 2.93Ghz. This way, the processor breaks 80C, and causes the fans to come on and cool the graphics card.
But still the maximum voltage from the fan header is around 4.3Volts. The fans are 12V, and rated for 13.6cfm each at 6700rpm. Well at 4.3V, those fans are rated for about 2 cfm at 1800rpm. rpm's are given from bios, voltages are from handheld voltmeter, and the air volume is courtesy of delta electronics for posting a picture of the air volume curves in relation to voltage and static pressure.

The C90S in my opinion looks nice, but it has a terrible design. It does not have proper cooling or large enough heatsinks.
Yeah it has 4 fans, but one of the four fans at 12V would be more efficient than all 4 of them at 4.3 volts.

When I see my friend on a monthly basis crying that her laptop broke again, it is sad. I tried everything I could and it just keeps overheating.
The only thing we had success was, mounting a huge 150mm 322cfm ebm papst fan under her laptop. She unfortunately has to carry it around with her, becase on the fourth card, Ibuypower said that it is enough, and she cannot get another card out of her warranty.

My laptop is a desktop replacement, with much more powerful components in it. Yeah the e6600 is on par with my opteron 185mflops wise, but my cpu uses 125 watts to get that power, not 65. My system uses much more power and runs less than half of the temperatures of her computer.

In my opinion, asus should just stick with laptops, not desktop replacements.
I have taken apart a good deal of laptops over the last few years, and I have to say that the c90s has some major flaws which ASUS should have ironed out before releasing it to the public.

K-TRON

 

Well, like always in life, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.

The C90 has its fair share of problems, and requires a good amount of tinkering and knowledge to get it running reliably. So, those users that do not know, or do not have the time/are unwilling to do that tinkering, should probably stay away.

Also, the C90 release seems to have been rushed without sufficient testing -- I'm saying this because there was new hardware required to get some things working (adapter, motherboard) and some components were pulled out after being released due to problems (DDR3 GPU).

On the other hand, many people are quite happy with the machine, with a main argument being the price/performance ratio. Probably, they are the ones that managed to do the tinkering above and got the computer running smoothly.

 

+1 for using my pictures from my review

Definitely always do your research as told already. This forum has SOOOO much information on the C90 it could almost have its own forum section. There is a "team" of advanced computer users that own C90s here and we have reviews, tweaks, fixes, ect.

Many of us had small problems we had to get past, some of us still have problems. However I think by far the vast majority of us are happy and we knew what we were getting into. This is a DIY kind of computer and you have to have that DIY kind of attitude. Ultimately tho I dont think there is anything that can beat the price/performance ratio of the C90 and that is even further enhanced by the fact that we may see upgrades for it in the future, not to mention the C90P is probably on the way and may have fixed every issue we suffered. This was not just a revised or updated model of an older laptop it was brand new ground to tread on and to be one of the first pioneers there is always a risk to take.

 

Very patriotic speech! I am waving my flag in the background.
Vicious for president!!!

 

Okay I am currently on a business trip and I brought my C90 instead of my dell tog et work done on it. I am a proud owner of over a half a year now and all I can say to the people who whine about it is: It wasn't meant for you. If you don't like the very properties that define this notebook then you aren't going to like it. Yes it runs hot, it has almost no battery life, the 8600gt is currently the best card it has, there were ram issues, there were wireless issues, it only comes in vista. But guess what - it's the fastest 15.4" out there cpu wise, it has some killer looks and the sound from the fans is still awesome. Also the cooling unit on mine must be amazing or something since I can actually feel the laptop get cooler when the fans kick in. My friend has a dell E1505 inspiron and he bought a notebook cooler. He said it made his temperatures to the touch go from hot to warm. I let him borrow my C90 and he described the fans kicking in as "Going from hot to cool...not "no longer hot" but actually "cool to the touch""

I will rip on the OP for one statement in particular because it is outright slander and false.

A) Yes we bought this notebook because we liked the idea. So yes we actually wanted to spend money on this and we like our purchase, what is wrong with that?
B) The C90 is a deal...or was when it first came out at least. I could not get a better performing computer for the dollar. I spent 1500$ at Gentech for mine and I got a 2.13ghz C2D, a 512mb 8600gt which was the best card available for a 15.4" notebook at the time, a/b/g/n wireles card, 160gig hard drive, vista home premium (say what you will, my vista can kick your XP's ass any day), and 2 gigs of ram along with a super high resolution screen and a built in 2.0MP webcam and built in microphone. You couldn't beat that deal in August of last year.

So what about the C90 is a flaw? The cooling system works great when you don't block the fans like a retarded monkey. The 8600gt is fine and dandy so long as you're not playing crysis. The CPU is amazing and dominates the 15.4" category. The only reason I believe what you say is becasue I'm willing to bet you went to ibuypower.com and they are known for terrible quality and have proven it to my friends many times over. If you didn't get it from there well I'm sorry you didn't like your decision but don't tell me what I like and don't like.

Now if I had the cash I would take a sager NP9262 over a C90 anyday...Heck I'd take the sager 5793 even but in the 15.4"/sub $1500 range there's nothing else for me but a C90.

 

That last statement is probably where I stand. It's a great Price/performance ratio and I'm one of those tinkerers, and so far my c90s has been great! Other than the GPU crapping out, but I think I just pushed it too far

 

Is the graphic card the 8600M GT DDR3 version? I heard that card has issues and is the main reason why it was discontinued.

 

well I thought the same about the gpu temps but after putting new thermal paste in it nothing rly changed, my cpu is idling @50C and my gpu @75 with 475/400 clocks on and on games it goes up to 95 maximum with 475/475 clock (except one game that doesnt use my cpu much it up goes too 100) so it seems the temps are normal.

question about the SP1 even if I have no probs I want to have it. if I do the auto update of vista does it gets it automaticall or have I download it myself?

 

SP1 still isn't public, expect it soon though since it is done. In the Windows section on the forum you can find a reg hack that can unlock it via Windows Update or if you have a friend with either a MSDN account or a tech.NET account he can download the standalone or Vista disc with SP1. That said, I have a tech.NET account and it won't let me download it and a friend with an MSDN account can't find it, go figure. I just used the reg hack and it works great.

 

Honestly, I'm having better luck with the c90s that I built myself then my girlfriends 6 month old macbook.

 

My friend Kate has the 8600M GT DDR3 graphics card in her c90s.

The next time the graphics card fries, which is probably next week, should I tell her to get the 8600M Gt DDR2 card?

I know the c90s has some kind of mxm, so she should be able to get the ddr2 8600 to work right?

K-TRON

 

Yep, most of us are running the slower DDR2 card which is readily available. Not having problems at all, but the DDR3 version was known to fail due to heat issues. The 8600m GT DDR2 should work fine.

 

Thanks D3X, the ddr2 graphics card should be cheaper too,
I will tell her the next time I see her.

Hopefully that fixes the overheating issues.

K-TRON

 

Also K-TRON, make absolute sure that the notebook is being used on a surface that will allow for airflow from the fans such as a desk or at least on a notebook cooler of some kind. I know that when the laptop is resting on my bed the fans can not properly ventilate the heat and the turbo engine has to kick in quite often to keep the cpu cool. If she is using it on her bed, that may very well be asource of frying video cards and possibly other components. Or if the laptop is constantly backed against a wall so the fans can not successfully blow out the air like they were designed to.