Zenbook U500 Announced: 15.6" HD IPS, GT650M, Quad-Core i7...

Here is a review of the UX51 DH71 by the laptop mag:

ASUS Zenbook UX51Vz-DH71 Review

Interesting to note that they mention that their review model has a mini DisplayPort. Is it a case of 'stock' review being hastily reused? Or are the newer iterations of this laptop really coming with a mini DisplayPort?

Upon googling more, I found the following retailers having specifications which mention a displayport:
http://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=AS-UX51VH7
http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Asus-Zenbook-UX51VZ-DH71-15-6-inch-Intel-Core-i7-3612QM-2-1GHz-8GB-DDR3-128GB-/281020499697
...

 

It's promising to see there is software that can change the fan speed!

But what did you mean with the above statement? Is the noise we hear in idle generated by the fans spinning at their minimal frequency? You can not decrease the speed other than completely shutting them off?

 

There is a certain cut off point between a fan being on and off and you can't really get between easily.

 

I too wish there would have been displayport, but it's not on any official specs, plus the pics on the review are clearly the same as any others we've seen. No displayport.

 

Strange that the article and their specs list it as .99 to 1.2 inches thick. Official specs and other reviews say 6mm to 19mm (20mm for touch). That translates as .23 to .75 inches thick (.79 for touch).

 

Yeah you are right, I checked the pictures later and found that they had got it wrong.
Also the fact that they got the thickness wrong further leads me to believe that they just used some kind of review template without really updating it thoroughly.

 

Well it may depend on what they count as the lowest measure, strange on the peak though.

 

Correct, and its good like it is. Just let the fans off until they do have to run and then you're fine. Even if they start on 60°C they will not be loud

Btw.: We also recognized that Steam activates the GPU and therefore the right fan directly

 

dvp can u tell me how u set ur fan settings? the probook config works on my envy ithink cause i fidled around with the 0% fan settings (fans still on but slower) but i dont know how to configure it so it speeds up later and i really dont have time to actually figure it out lol

 

Haha, I just realized that Steam thing earlier aswell. Even if I put it on 0% fanspeed it would still spin the GPU fan because of Steam.

 

So, for all of us guys, hestitating with buying just because of the fan noise...
Can you consider the problem as being solved? So is it possibly to use the laptop in idle mode, say writing in a word doc, while the fans are completely off? But then again, as soon as I start watching a movie, they start to spin again? What about this 60-degree-level. Can you increase it, so that it only starts working, when the fans are really needed, e.g. while gaming?
Thank you so much for your effort up to now!

 

Easy, set the first level to 0-0-0 and the second one to 60°-70°C/50°C/Auto fan speed and you're done. Of course it is up to you how high you set the uprising temp. It's no risk but the bottom of the notebook gets warmer until the fans start and then they cool it down pretty fast without much noise. We just suffer from some fan speed ups when the notebook is connected to power so far. Must be somehow related to the power profiles. Lets see what we can find out. Big THX to holzi who came up with the tool and some introduction to set it up!

In the nVidia settings you can set steam to run on the igp but I am not sure if the games lauched via steam will run on 650M either then. Had no time to check that.

 

I've been reading through the posts and haven't seen an answer to my biggest concern when I receive mine tomorrow:
Breaking RAID

I run 100% Linux in our home, with over 10 systems only Linux and one dual boot with Win 7. That dual boot has a very large RAID5 array in it, and Win 7 was a real PITA to configure. I haven't had time to update it to Win8 yet and will put that off for probably another year.

I was going to run Win8 virtually in Linux but decided that perhaps I would set it up as a dual boot. But just saw tonight that it comes configured with RAID0 (What The F..?). So am wondering if anyone was able to cleanly break the RAID and do a clean install of Win8 (I get clean versions under MSDN --yeah, I know. I am Linux propeller head, go figure...)? I saw one member who described his pains and I agree with him, it's likely that he created his own headaches using Partition Magic.

I could go in and wipe it all out using Linux, but then I would load Win8 second and I'd prefer not to then have to go back in and recover the bootsector from MSFT. Also, not sure how the Intel BIOS is dealing with missing RAID.

So I appreciate it if anyone here knows, and perhaps could point me to where that may have been covered.
Many thanks for the fan fix and the memory tip on upgrading to 12GB. And thanks for other bits of info that I wasn't aware of that have been shared here. I hope to be able to contribute something back once I get my hands on it.

I went with the ASUS UX51Vz-XH71 version. I am going with Linux Mint 14 “Nadia” as the main OS. I stick with Debian distros for laptops and desktops while my servers run Red Hat Enterprise Linux. I'll be using this ultrabook in my work in speech recognition. I have been running Win8 mainly to see how their development was going for about a year, but virtualized on one of my laptops, not dual boot.

One last thought, I saw a lot of posters talking about losing data from failing SSDs. I have three laptops/netbooks with SSDs and haven't had one fail yet. But should I, it's not a huge issue. I run a cloud backup service via CrashPlan where I have unlimited storage in a cloud, and it constantly backs up automatically whenever the system is on. Last time I looked, I had 7TB of data backed up. It's very quick to pull down whatever you need should a drive fail.

 

Why would you want to stick to the pseudo RAID0 provided by BIOS?
You can change it in BIOS to present to OS as two independent disks. On disk1 you install your clean install Win8 and on disk2 you install your Linux distro. I allocated 40 GB for Win, and rest of the space from disk1 mounted to my Linux distribution.

 

amazing

no it`s perfect.

however, I notice that the fan sometimes gets on for about 1 sec or so... do you have the same problem?

 

yea, but only when i am on (power) cable. i wrote that already and you even quoted it can you confirm that? could be somehow related to energy profiles in this case.

 

I can confirm that when setting the fan speed to 0% in that program and carefully listening to the fans (putting my ear next to the top of the keyboard) I can hear it start and stop spinning every 5 second or so, sometimes it barely spins and sometimes it spins for a second. IIRC I heard this when the laptop was unplugged, but i am not sure.

 

So we've got a fix for the fans and a guide to setting up a new OS on a fresh raid partition.. This is back to looking like the ultimate laptop for university for me.

 

I don't want to stick with the RAID mess, and you just answered my question about being able to break it in the BIOS set up. I've seen it done so many ways over the years, and since ASUS delivered it with this set up, I wasn't sure if the installed BIOS would allow it to be done that easily. Thanks for the information!

Good to know that it will be that easy. Mine arrives in 5 hours and 30 minutes - got the delivery confirmation time from UPS a few minutes ago through their My Choice service.

I am thinking that I will use most of Disk 1 for Win 8 and all of the latest MSFT apps, as I get them free and this will be a good time to check them out so that I am aware of them.

Off to download a clean copy of Win 8..... uh oh! There is no external DVD with these according to early buyers. I am loading Linux from a 4GB USB, looks like I will have to see if the same is possible for Win 8.

 

It is possible.

 

does anyone know when the touch version is likely to be released?

 

Hmmm this does not sound good to me. It would suggest the fans are stopping/starting all the time-- that can't be good for their lifespan...

Can we please continue to pester Asus for a proper (BIOS-based!!) solution for this? My service person said that Asus HQ said that the fan speed cannot be changed because (get this) it is "an Asus/Intel setting". I replied that this is a non-answer and that we already know the fan profile CAN be changed, so that they should get their act together (but more polite).

 

Has anyone loaded windows 7 on this bad boy?

 

Having the fans off while the CPU (Cores!!) are below 60°C is no problem at all but I also would perfer if Asus would officially work on it. I also received a pretty stupid response from them today telling me that their "sample is acting the same way and they will contact Asus HQ if this is within tolerance"!?!

 

Yes... follow the link in my signature for the details.

@DvP: It's clear the Asus tech support has not been very helpful. To think this is Asus we are dealing with, the company that has made quality mainboards with good BIOSes with proper fan control for years now. The least they can do is to give a little of that love to their premium laptops... right?

 

Everyone seems extremely scared of what people can do with an unlocked notebook.

 

My bad

But no, I have the same problems on battery unfortunately ...

 

Some notebooks don't like a 0% setting, the firmware does not do it properly, or it could be you are hovering right at the cut off temperature.

 

I don´t think this is the problem. At the moment i am listening to music and firefox is running. The average core temperature is 47° C (Without any fan running). The reason why the fans start running shortly is the automatic fan control. Notebook fan control sets the speed to 0. But the automatic fan control updates every few seconds and sets the speed by itself. So the fan gets the signal to start. After 1000 ms notebook fan control updates and sets the speed to 0 again. Thats the cause of the spins. Increasing the update frequency of Notebook fan control is possible. But this do not solve the problem

The only way would be to deactivte the automatic fan control. There sould be a flag for this but know one knows which one it is. The owners of the ux31 have the same problem.

mfg

 

So really there's no way to get it running at like 50% of the original speed? This would happily solve all issues wouldn't it?
What do values higher than 0% yield in the config file?

 

Yeah, encountering the same problem, either on battery or plugged in. Fans are a little bit hyper in starting to spin and stopping again. It's so blissfully quiet with the fans spun down and hovers around 40 degrees which is perfect. But the intermittent spin up an down is a bit irritating. Hopefully asus can provide us with a tuned BIOS anytime soon for this almost perfect notebook to make it perfect. Until them I'll keep the pressure on with support calls and public twitter messages and such. Sad that it's needed.

 

It might not be fixable in software is my worry.

 

I am also worried about this.

1. There seem to be little to none spin levels between the current idle speed and 0% fanspeed, meaning that the current noise volume is the lowest we can get when the fans are spinning (well, you have to compare the fanspeed in Ubuntu/Win7, Win8 currently spins a tiny bit faster).
2. The laptop might take damage from having the fans not spin (?)
3. This on/off issue when its on 0% is weird, maybe it cannot be fixed with software.

 

Fans have a minimum voltage when they will not even spin, it's only when friction is overcome do they actually move, this point is dependent on design.

It wont damage it unless temperatures start to rise.

The other thing it could be is limited steps of the fan controller which could be programmable or fixed, i'm leaning to towards a fixed minimum "on" voltage or pwm level.

 

This sounds like it might be a hardware issue and that we cannot make the fans spin lower/slower than they are at idle now.

Good to hear.

Let's hope that the limit is in the software at that either ASUS or we can change it.

 

Congrats, would love to hear your linux experience with this machine. I have posted some of the issues I've encountered andmy observations in the neighbouring tread

http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu.../695704-asus-u500vz-ux51vz-owners-lounge.html

 

I hope so too, but my experience with other fans would go against it.

 

I began reading the whole thread and found that there are two major problems discussed now: CPU throttling and fans noise.
As far as I'm getting - the noise either not disturbing everyone or could be solved with some tweaks or later patches from ASUS.

But what about CPU throttling?

Also - somebody could please help me to understand UX51VZ-DH71 and UX51VZ-XH71 are having worldwide warranty, right?

Thank you.

 

I think all ASUS warranty is 1-year international and then another year limited to the place of purchase depending on your retailer
For me CPU throttling is not really a problem. Seriously, you can't expect an Ultrabook to really be a gaming machine, right? Throttling doesn't seem to affect any other activity - if anything, it keeps the laptop cool.

 

In my opinion the fan noise is the only real issue with the laptop. I must say that after some time, the idle noise level does begin to bother me. I can't imagine that the sound is produced by slow-spinning fans, so I really hope there is some room for downward modulation somehow...

 

I was wondering if someone on this thread knows whether any stores in the U.S. have the non-touch version on display? I understand that the U.S. non-touch version is UX51VZ-DH71 (please correct me if I am wrong). Would very much appreciate any pointers as I would like to see and handle this thing before I buy.

Another question (potentially for owners): has anyone thought of installing Windows 7 on the non-touch version and if so how did it go?

 

I asked the same but got no reply. I did hear its just a bigger version of the 13 inch model

 

UX51VZ-DH71 is the 256GB non-touch version and UX51VZ-XH71 is the 512GB non-touch version. Either of those could be available for display but I haven't yet tried to find one in a store. Some people have reported seeing and trying them but I don't remember which stores they were in (one was in NYC for sure).
I will definitely go on a hunt once the touch version comes out.

 

Yes, look here: http://forum.notebookreview.com/asu...00vz-ux51vz-owners-lounge-18.html#post8957429

 

Very helpful links - thank you Terpen and DrMcNinja

 

Has anyone from Australia heard anything about this laptop been available down here?

Sent from my HTC One X using Tapatalk 2

 

I've been in Harrods today and can confirm that there is one on display with subwoofer. Looks good and feels expensive but it's larger and heavier than I would expect from an ultrabook. It's a very good looking laptop with very good specs. The colours on display are dark and strong, looks like grey is missing. The antiglare texture is not strong so it's not grainy. Overall in terms of specs, looks and quality it's the best you can get with Windows 8. Boxing day is coming soon so PCWorld should have some deal, 150 pounds off is my guess.

One complain, why the i7 stickers are blue and not silver like on other Zenbooks?

 

So the UX52 has an option for 3610qm and 645m graphics card which sounds awesome. Any idea of pricing based on the UX51?

 

Maybe because it is a full i7 processor and no ULV Just remove the sticker!

P.S.: Eventually you should remove your Windows ID / key from the post.

 

So like many here, I WON'T be buying unless there's a Fan Fix.
And I will be buying something Else unless that fix, or at least public acknowledgement, is announced within one week.

My guess is they won't acknowledge the problem so as not to hurt holiday sales..And
that there is No fix, so better not even admit the problem.

Perhaps another version in Spring with some other enhancement as the excuse for what is really a fan fix.
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