Asus G71 Hardware update

This thread will chronicle hardware upgrades made to my Asus G71-RXO5 (BB Model).


I purchased the laptop new in about a week after it came out in 2009, dealt with the intial thermal downclock problem that plagued these rigs and it has served me faithfully since then surviving a deployment to Afghanistan along the way. When I bought this laptop, I fully intended to keep it until it absolutely needed replacement and it is still going strong. I can max the games I play the most and have no trouble running any software I come across, but like any true nerd, I want more power.

My goals with these upgrades are a 12k 3dM06 score, FPS improvements in games and more raw power for video editing. Now, the upgrades:

Seagate Momentus XT 500 GB for OS, Games and Apps Stock 500 GB Momentus for Storage

Copper RAM heatsinks






Here is my current max bench. This was done at sig clocks

http://service.futuremark.com/compare?3dm06=14944896

 

Yo dawg I heard you like heatsinks so we put some heatsinks on yo heatsinks.

Passive heatsinks on passive heatsinks? lol

I rightfully assume you have an uber cooling pad as well?

 

Are you sure the G71-RX05 supports Raid? I had a G71Gx with 2 HDD's but the BIOS didn't had an option for Raid!

 

sweet I have a g72 and Ill be checking out your progress.


i personally have a 120 gb ssd as my main upgrade in mind.

I have the bb model too.

 

I'm gonna through my extra hdd in really fast and see if a RAID option comes up for me, I am on the latest BIOS (1704) BRB.

I have an 31337 cooling pad, the Cooler Master Notepal U3.

I was thinking of going the SSD option too, but the price/performance and price/GB are still not good enough for me.

 

well I am a shopping fiend and Im going to get a 120 gb one fore around 100 bucks

yes half what they go for. If I told you how it would impede my progress. But basically Im not sure where Im in the shopping phase.

I plan on getting a 750 gb 7200 rpm hd that just reached the market too eventually. PROBABLY ill get that before I get the ssd so I have some time to shop.
I have an open hdd
I got my g72 for 400$ this week btw its brand new to me.

I do like your cpu choice. Is that the fastest cpu available? For the g72 also?

ya thats weird right there

 

Well, I just started back up, put in both drives and no RAID option in BIOS, tried pressing CTRL+I on startup and still no RAID option. So I guess I'll be doing a single 500 GB WD Black Boot drive w/ the stock 500 GB as extra storage

One awesome and unexpected thing though. I took out my CPU/GPU fan and there was a ton of dust between it and the heatsink. Took some compressed air and blew it out and now I am idling 5 C cooler on CPU and 6 C cooler on GPU. Also took the stupid inventory stickers off of the RAM while I had the laptop opened up.

The X9100 is the fastest chip you can find for this laptop, plus its higher binned and has unlocked multipliers ( that you can get to in Windows with ThrottleStop) and 6MB L2 Cache.

Plus great price on your G72, I bought mine brand new for $1200 so I am a little jealous lol.

I had another crazy thought too, the HDD bay right next to the CPU/GPU compartment might be a good place to mount a 2nd fan o_0

 

Thanks this is a store return from the best buy channel.

They have g50s for 250$ btw I almost feel like thats a better deal to be quite honest. It has the 9800 gts gpu c2d... its basically not that far behind a g72 in terms of tech its just a step older

Im pursuing the overstock/ return market for ssds also

 

Wow that is quite good, I may just grab one of those too, especially at that price. It would make a good Linux box.

Could you put a link to where you found the G50.

Technically our 260 GTX's are 9800M GTX's so the G50 really isn't that far behind. The G71-72 chassis has much better cooling though and is a better platform for extreme overclocking. If I got the G50, I would put the P8700 from my G71 into it.

 

Hey I just wanted you to know the g71 aND G72 dont have raid enabled. My old gateway 6831 had raid so that is really lame.


ok well www.cowboom.com is one place to look

ebay is another. Best buy outlet. Overstock auctions as well.

It takes a lot of effort to get one for 250$

Asus G50Vt-X5 15.6in Laptop C2D 2.13GHz 4GB 320GB DVDRW - CowBoom Auction - Ends 10/31/10 2:34:40 PM CDT

however heres an example of one that went during the same day as my g72 for $390.

CowBoom Search Results for g50

the site sells them for 450$ if there is not an auction. Best buy sells their returns and store demos through about 8 different websites and ebay stores you have to watch ALL of them to find the auctions.

Anyhow id say its an involved method but you can buy them and resell them many people do. As far as getting one right this moment you cant you have to stay on it and watch.


edit if I had known that one was going for 250 I would have bought it too, over the one I did buy which is this one

https://www.cowboom.com/auction/index.cfm?P=16&Appsaleid=507810

 

That is an awesome site, thanks a lot Rep+

Maybe, I'll start buying laptops there, pairing them with cases and accessories, loading Ubuntu and selling them on eBay @ 100% markup...

 

it is not just that site but thats where to start.

Its the deal tree series of websites and ebay stores.

at any moment there may be nothing on that site you have to patrol the entire chain. best buy outlet store and etc.

It is involved.

I saw plenty of older eeee pcs going for 70$ there this week as well, totally worth buying and reselling.


This is advanced and will take some research but if you want to you can find deals through it. This is my 2nd gaming laptop i got for a steal if anything my other one was a better deal but it got stolen boo hoo.

Im a laptop buying expert I give this involved method my top pick as far as dollars and cents. There is greater risk in buying returns than buying new
It might have a bad backlight screen ( TRUE) ( I wanted to add people buy best buy machines and return as many as 8 in order to get the cmo screen instead of the auo screen, and they learned to do it right on this board) might overheat, etc. Its true, theres a good chance it was returned for a reason

my last one was brand new as in it wasnt even started up none of the scotch tape was broken on the manuals etc.


THE MOST COMMON RETURN IS: the power supply went bad and the laptop was returned as bad. This often means the battery will be bad too.

 

nobody ever posts that they want a 1100 o6 score gaming machine for $400 in the what should i buy forum here so I dont get to share it

checking the dell outlet and other hp outlets is also a good trail to check out.

I only ever check it out when Im buying a new machine. Ive decided I want to buy a new laptop every year.

hmmmm I need to edit my signature.

 

I'll definitely be going for a G50, I can pass down the CPU from my G71 and if I ever upgrade the GPU in my G71 , I can put the old one in the G50 too.

 

are you sure that works?


Im not sure what can upgrade a g71 gpu i think its a 360 gts.

the reality is though that as soon as the g74 comes out, the g73 through this channel will be 600 or less.

You can currently get a refurb g73 best buy for 870 when they arent sold out.

Whats that mean? well just the screen hd and cpu upgrade is worth 600 nevermind have another box to set up.

Its just a matter of retail vs discount. If youre actually paying retail for a cpu upgrade and dont have a deal on it, buying a whole new machine is going to be cheaper.

Kind of like building a car from parts you buy at kragen. You can buy a used car for less than you can buy an alternator and a starter for your ford pinto. You just have to shop a lot.

I believe a 720 qm i7 cpu is almost exactly the same cpumark as your x9100


take your 400$ upgrade. sell your g72 for 500 buy a g73 right now I knew I was going to tell you that before I even read the thread. Theres never a reason to upgrade a laptop

ps you know alienware still sells the 260 gtx as new, they never even got the 360 gts for their machines. I dont think youll ever find one for sale. What you could do is pursue the broken laptop market and buy a broken one...g51

 

I do think its smart to buy a g50 through this channel.

Ive put bids on all the ones I found.

I dont think its smart to buy a cpu through an ebay store though thats where were losing what we saved. A cpu upgrade costs more than a g50. what MIGHT be a good deal is to actually buy another 8700 for the g50. You could find one of those pulled out of a broken laptop

You could buy a used g50, and then find a broken g71?

 

Another cosmetic mod that I will be doing is relocating/putting case badges for Windows 7, Cooler Master, Western Digital, Intel Core 2 Extreme and Logitech on the area of my G71 where higher end models have an OLED display.

 

Just bought a few things on eBay:

-G71 HDD Caddy
-24 RAM Heat sinks
-2 Core 2 Extreme Stickers

Will be getting a Momentus XT, AS5 and Core 2 Extreme X9100 next month.

 

Decided that I don't really "need" the X9100, the extra speed would be nice but the added temps and power usage wouldn't, instead I will be repasting my stock CPU. I came to this conclusion after being at a LAN party and utterly dominating every other laptop there in load times and FPS.

 

I'm getting my g71gx-rx05 this week and i just wanted to confirm that a q9000 and a X9100 quad would work in this laptop correct? Also would i nees some kind of particular heatsink for it, i would like to keep temperatures good and overclock a little bit as well.

Also btw how many harddrive expansion slots are there and what interface should i be looking at as well as dimensions.

final question is, this laptop has mxm 3.0b so i wouldn't have problems putting in a gtx 280m or a 460m or 480m, but what about the TDP

 

A G71Gx with a quad has another motherboard as one with a duo. A X9100 is a duo, not a quad.
ASUS uses a proprietary gtx260m so I don't believe you can upgrade it with another GPU.

 

I'm hearing conflicting stories now, somebody said it has MXM 3.0b slot, also some say they've got q9000/q9100 to work with the laptop as well. To many contradictions, so the only thing upgradeable is adding harddrives? what type of drives do i need and how many drive bays.

That really sucks, i was hoping to get atleast a quad, i hear all G71GX use same bios even quad versions, i understand that best buy might have a revision, but i remember that being an issue for g51 any actual facts with this model, or is alot of this all speculation.

 

I'm also gradually upgrading my G71GX from BB. The first thing I changed was the factory 5400 RPM Seagate which gave me bad sectors from the very beginning. Replaced it with 500 GB 7200 RPM Hitachi and the improvement was noticeable. A few days ago added a 120 GB Intel SSD in the second bay.

Next step is upgrading the P8700 CPU with a X9100. Read that the final revision of the chip gives low temps for an extreme CPU of course.

I'm just wondering if there are any BIOS limitations that would prevent the OC of the X9100.

 

no it doesnt use a quad.

 

no but asus own turbogear software wont work with it.

 

I've read that Quad core is possible in this laptop, i just can't confirm, so there's only 2 drive bays? i was thinking of adding a 1TB samsung 5400 rpm for storage and ssd for primary. I'm also interested to know about the video card upgrading, i hear it use's MXM 3.0B so we should be able to do that also?

 

the g71gx-a1 version uses quad and again the bios from what i hear are used for all, do you guys have absolute facts or is this guesstimation? I hate being guinea pig, it's expensive.

 

no the 12.5 mm hd will not fit

you need 9.5 mm drives.

You could get a fairly cheap device remove the optical drive and then put 12.5 mm hd in there

search the forum for it, its like 20$ on ebay.

the two hd bays are 9.5 mm

it comes with a 54k 500 gb hd

you cannot upgrade the video card.

 

you dont need to be a guinea pig, it will not work. will not post will not work, tested does not work.

If you have the version with the q9000 however you could upgrade it to a qx9300

 

well i guess the only thing is the overclocking potential, what is the common overclock for the processor? 3.1ghz i hear?

 

3.1 is pretty lame for a dual core. go for 3.5. you dont need a BIOS to overclock extreme CPUS.

You can upgrade the graphics if you can find an extremely rare Asus MXM card.
I don't know if you guys are still talking about the g71 and g72 or what, but even the g73 uses MXM, it will likely be able to use g74 cards.

 

asus uses reverse mxm

only compatible with asus.

you will be completely unable to put a 5870 or above in a g71 possible but extremely unlikely.

In the event you even ever find one.

Your best bet would be to buy a ruined g73 and take it out. However its likely the cooling and the fans of the g71 would not keep it cool if it even posted.
In short just forget about it.

 

the p8700 goes to about 3ghz

the x9100 goes to about 4 ghz

 

yea i was referring to the p8700, are there any aftermarket heatpipes/sinks available or must one start carving copper. also the x9100, is it usable with the stock heatsink/pipe or must an alternate be purchased as well?

 

stock and there are aftermmarket things.

 

the g73 has two fans

the g72 has one fan

the card itself would PROBABLY fit

a 5870 actually uses less power than a 260 gtx so no problem there.
Some sort of advanced thermo engineering would be involved.

In theory though if you could get a x9100 and a 5870 in a g72 you have a g73

the x9100 is about like an i5. much more power and heat though.
all you are missing is the ram speed which means nothing.

It would be nice. I fully support you trying it out I just know it usually doesnt work out.

keep in mind a refurb g73 goes for 850.

I dont know of a cheap source for a x9100 but its 250. spending 500 and a lot of pain and reading to turn your g72 into a g73 makes no sense. at all. youll need to get the g73 lcd too although thats about 100$

but someone should do it. I think the g72 looks cooler.

 

This is not new information. Thats I said youd have to find an ASUS card.

You are wrong about putting the g73 gpu in a g71 or g72. Regardless of the ASUS proprietary pinout, the g73 and more importantly the 5870 will always use the newer MXM 3.0 format.

ASUS g73 series and g72 series graphics cards are not at all compatible

Actually its a fact that the older MXM 2.1 cards are reversed, but the new ASUS MXM 3.0 cards to not seem to be reversed or proprietary at all. No one has tried a NON Asus card in a g73 that I have heard of as of yet. That is what someone should do as opposed to wasting ridiculous amounts of money on an Asus 5870 just to find that the pinout is quite obviously an entirely different interface than their g72 or g71.
stop jumping to conclusions and giving answers without explanation or evidence, some people do actually want to learn about things and reach their own conclusions.

 

hahahaha

heed your own advice please. 4 posts earlier you gave the advice that the g72 would take the g74 gpu.

When you obviously have no idea at all what you were talking about.

And probably still dont. But please keep on researching.

just remember not to give any advice until you have some idea what youre talking about.

if it doesnt fit then thats the end of the road.
most of what you just posted shows you have a LOT OF READING TO DO before you need to share anything with anyone on a notebook forum about mxm and gpu upgradeability.

please stop jumping to conclusions and giving out a lot of uneducated advice.

 

RIGHT.

I said that the g73 will likely be compatible with g74 gpus. Talk about reading.

You think you have some higher understanding of MXM than I do? Not that I have any idea how to rate something so general.

I just dont see where you are getting your facts from.

Please read about the g73 and g72 gpus. Look at pictures. They are not compatible, you are the one who said they were.

No 5870 has ever been made for MXM 2.1 which is the interface used by the g72 and g71. those g72 cards are both MXM 2.1 and reversed, not an entirely different interface electronically.

Please look up another picture of the g73 GPU pinout if you believe the above is fake. You can clearly see that the pinout is not reversed.
Asus G73jh Info Thread!!! ...

 

it says right here you can upgrade the graphics and then later you researched more and found out you couldnt.

LOL and then like 4 straight times i wrote you cant do it. Ive been following the asus forum for years and in general you cant ever upgrade a gpu.

Beyond that in the few cases where you can, it makes absolutely no sense financially and takes advanced electronics fabrication.

the likelihood that a g73 will use a g74 gpu is almost none.

Dont worry about it.

Its likely that a g73 could upgrade a 5870 to a 460 gtx however its possible it couldnt.

People buying a laptop with the thought of upgrading the gpu are usually pretty ignorant of whats involved and they need some reality.

g50s have been upgraded from a 9800 gts to a 260 gtx. It makes no sense and cant be done without advanced electronics skill.

Dont tell people they can upgrade their notebooks gpu if you dont know what youre talking about. Read about it and learn and have a nice day. Tell everyone who ever asks the same thing i did that in general you cant do it.

 

Could you provide me with some links in regards to the aftermarket heatpipes and cooling designed for these type of notebooks g71 72 73 etc, also i wouldn't consider a x9100 such a great upgrade compared to a i5 lack of cores, big issue but i guess in the g71 case it's as best as it get's with out bios support, no doubt these motherboards lack quad support due to bios. I guess that's it, i'm guessing future asus based cards would work with previous g7 models, pinout might be the only obstacle.

 

an i5 and a x9100 are both dual core
no actually it is the p43 motherboard does not take quad core. the p45 does. .somehow the model with the q9000 takes quad cores, or its possibly actually a p45 I dont know because i dont own one..

In the g72 owners thread someone put a lot of little copper heat things on his heatsink.

No idea where he got them or anything.

the t9900 is a part that should generate less heat and use less power, is more expensive and overclocks less tthan a x9100. But if you found one it is also a 3.06 p series chip

 

no, i didn't, i've known that you can upgrade asus graphics forever

Im going to ignore a lot of the nonsense you said and get straight to the point.

 

wow you are entirely ignorant about what mxm is.

Mxm is not standard. mxm cards are totally incompatible with eachother. asus mxm is not compatible with any other mxm.

Some asus machines use standard mxm like the c90 did and a few others. You can look it up on ice teas site, mxm upgradability.



go ahead and check out ice teas site on mxm upgrade. Hes about the biggest expert on mxm upgrading, and there are a lot of explanations about what its about.

clevo uses mxm. but clevos own machines arent compatible with eachother. some use a standard mxm and some use propietary.
mxm in general just means upgradable board based. some of the connectors go at 90 degrees even some of the cards are long.

quanta machines seperate the video bios from the card making upgrade almost impossible ( macbook, many hp ) even though the cards fit.

mxm go ahead and go to nvidia and read about what it means. wikipedia etc.

upgrading your laptop with a cartrige board? Ive read about 50 times what you have on the subject which is why my opinion is pretty well educated while yours still has a reasonably large chance of being out there and not having anything to do with reality. Ive read a lot on it which is why my opinion is educated. Once youve read the same amount on it yours will be too. Unfortunately you havent yet, so right now your opinion is ignorant.


as far as upgrading the g50? whats needed is a switch of heat sinks etc. Im not looking it up for you but if youre interested its here on this forum use the same search function you looked up other stuff.

more hassle than the average person should want to go through.

I dont necessarily have time to link you to the things you are researching. If you are in a bind though I can give you my paypal and we can work out an hourly rate.

 

People who ask questions about whether they can upgrade there "average" gaming machines aren't ignorant there just not f*cking rich as you to buy brand new laptop from scratch or feel like souping up what they have, people might have parts lying around, anyways this thread is getting off topic. I build bleeding edge desktop pc's and tune the crap out of them, with custom phase units anyways....

Core i5 is also quad core as well as dual core

Intel Core i5 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

ok

but the i5 quad chip is not a laptop chip.

upgrading a desktop is not like upgrading a laptop. Theres no real upgrading to do. There are sort of fun little projects people do like upgrading cpus etc

I got a message from someone who upgraded their asus a8js with a 9650 gt, something like 3 years old. Only they could buy a computer today with a much better gpu for less....
Just fun stuff ... most people shouldnt really bother thinking about it.

people with a asus g50 can upgrade to a 260 gtx if they find one. not worth the money but you can do it.

you can get a device to use a desktop gpu externally someday. Possibly worthwhile.

In a g71 though theres an open hdd slot thats something to upgrade right away.
You wont be upgrading it much unless youre doing it as a hobby. cpus are priced way above their value. A x9100 costs 250 at a discount. my whole machine cost 400$ Its never going to make dollar sense to upgrade anything in it....

Im considering upgrading the screen to wuxga. Those Ive found for 100$

 

You are completely and totally insane. I don't know what made you think this is about opinions. This is about facts, data and the nature knowledge.
Why you think you can advise people on upgrading graphics card when you think MXM is not a standard is totally beyond me.

MXM is by definition nothing but a standard.

Sure, I'll send you an invoice and you can continue your banter.
Some of the cards are long, oh really??? Yes, please tell me more so I may bask in your multitude of knowledge!

No macbooks have removable graphics anymore. Absolutely not.

Oh really, clevo uses MXM? and HP cards are proprietary?

I sold 5 HP 8710w 3600m cards to users with Alienwares. I flashed the vbios to 9800m and none of these users have any idea they aren't stock alienware cards.

I tested 5 hp 8730w 3700m cards in one of my 3 Clevos, some of which I flashed to GTX 280m. Clevo hasn't had proprietary graphics interface since socket M, all clevo cards have been totally compatible with each other since then.

I have 8 1600m cards which have an eeprom incompatible with nvflash, but the cards are not proprietary because nvflash detects the correct model number while running them in my clevo.

I'm currently running a 3700m form a Lenovo w700 in my Clevo.

So before you believe that a site has all the information on MXM just because the title is MXM-upgrade, consider that no lenovo or HP machines are listed.
You could easily use a lot of Clevo, Acer, MSI or other unbranded MXM cards in HP 15.4-17 and Lenovo 17" workstation models in the same way I have done the opposite, although it wasn't necessary. GTX 280m, 260m, 9800m will all work with an HP 3700m BIOS because they are based off the same g92 core.

You appear to have a major misconceptions about reality. Research does not equal reading and neither have a lot to do with real experience and knowledge.

And who said cartridge board? Explain to me what the hell you are talking about, where it came from and how you think it is relevant. Cartridge boards, seriously who suggested that? Perhaps you are bit behind the times?

"youve read a lot which makes you educated and more in touch with reality", that just really makes me laugh.

You only know by doing. Read no more! That is all you need to know!

Have you even looked at the DIY vidock thread? probably 100 people are successfully running desktop cards with their laptops!

This has nothing to do with money, just stop saying that laptops aren't upgradeable because you cant find well priced components.
Seriously.

 

Features & Benefits


mxm is a standard they sell to the manufacturers. Like compal. You can look at the acer section here most acer aspires are made by compal which largely now uses whats called standard mxm. Theres a useful thread there on the models that are and the cross compatibility. Acer is a super good example of cross compatible models because all of there models are made by two companies and they have a lot of models.

The orignal manufacturer whether its quanta or asus or whatever uses the standard the want.

Cross compatible is up to the manufacturer. No link thats on your time.

Some hps are made by quanta some are made by wistron etc some are probably made by asus.

MANY quanta machines put video bios in the machine. You can read about it on that site. Quanta makes more laptops than any other manufacturer including many apple hp dell whatever.
some you can upgrade some you cant.

MXM Upgrade Home Page

Next read about which companies manufacture laptops.

does having mxm mean a laptops gpu is upgradeable? No absolutely not obviously.
Even the ones that are arent realistically for the average person.
Someone buying and selling junk laptops for parts certainly. The average buyer no.
Theres no store bought upgrading, unless its from clevo or alienware in which case the new gpus are ridiculously overpriced.

No actually many older clevos dont use a standard mxm they used clevo mxm you can read about it on that site.

All the data and complicated stuff is there for you to figure out.

Now the key point.... can you upgrade a g71 gpu to something? No. You could downgrade it probably.

If you were extremely good and fabricatiion you could I guess.

 

What the hell? Who are you trying to convince here? I just listed some high end HP graphics card models that you said were incompatible, and you try to tell me about Acer, that has no high end models, and that everyone already knows uses standard MXM cards.

Its the low end cards and the cards advertised as alienwares that are overpriced.

Dont tell me to figure it out again. F U. I've figured it out more than you have.

You keep talking about the average buyer, do you have some obligation to keep everyone here within your definition of an average buyer, simply by lying to them and saying nothing is compatible with their laptop?
You just want everyone to bow down to you because you act like you've got everything figured out.

I just dont understand how you can possibly think you are so cool.

And seriously, 'really good at fabrication', LOLed at this so hard, what could you possibly mean by this? Lets transform into TMSC plants, shall we? Man, I'm sorry that really goes to show your stupidity.

You could do it with an SMT machine and any g92 (including desktop) BGA. I know completely third party MXM manufacturing companies that will do it.

 

By the way, I am interested in installing RAM heatsinks on my copper heatpipe for my laptop video card. What compound would you use to keep the RAM heatsinks on the heatpipe?