Source
r/ZephyrusG15•
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Just got Zephyrus G15 2021 R7 5800HS + 16GB RAM + RTX 3060 in UK - thoughts & info, laptop doesn't sleep, thermals seem curious? Extremely blown away overall. If you have ANY questions ask me here!

My model information:

Windows 10 Home 64 Bit 2004 19041.867 - BIOS version 403

Clean installed to Windows 10 Enterprise 64 Bit 20H2 19042.906 just now.

ASUS ROG Zephyrus G15 Grey GA503QM-HQ008T 15.6" Thin Bezel Quad HD 165Hz Display (AMD Ryzen 7 5800H Processor, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 6GB Graphics, 16GB RAM, 1TB PCIE-SSD, Windows 10)

###Everything I saved from the laptop before wiping it and why

###Resources link

Please open the included Info.txt in that link. If it's too small, click the + at the bottom to zoom in

Contains:

  • eSupport folder from my model (If the extraction takes a while don't worry - I used Ultra 7-Zip compression to minimise the download size as much as possible)

  • Photos of the Desktop and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive at 1080p and 1440p

  • The screenshots I saved before wiping the laptop

Main post:

Let me start of by saying, holy jesus. This laptop is INSANE. Insane means insane. Insane does not mean cool and runs well. Insane means INSANE. This thing is really as fast as my main PC and gets very similar frames which is currently this (assuming the second GPU is not used on main PC): https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/K9JMcq?flavor=full

I was using a MacBook Pro bootcamped to Windows 10 before this, a hand me down from someone (not my choice).

Let me first preface this with - I am a VERY critical person and most people here would consider me to be a miserable sack in the way of reviews. I looked down and doubted on posts here that said "its all perfect" with the QC issues flying around, and I've done this for every product I purchased, pre-emtive doubt. I was expecting a cheap plasticy product. What I got was 100% the opposite.

I aim to NOT tell you what you already know from YouTube reviews and ONLY tell you stuff which you CANNOT know from YouTube reviews and only first hand experience.

I have watched every single review of this laptop on YouTube and followed this sub closely since January so know what to address here!

Also - if you have ANY questions at all ask me here in the comments and I will happy to answer ASAP. I'm saying this because A. there is very little reviews or info on this laptop yet and B. stock is scarce

Questions & Issues:

[q1] (Figured out why) I'm stuck on BIOS 403 - what can I do?

  • It's because I'm on GA503QM, not GA503QR. The QM only has BIOS 403 currently.

  • I've checked for updates in Armoury Crate multiple times and rebooted but it says everything is up to date, and it doesn't show any bios updates. Is there any way I can do it manually?

  • Also checked via MyAsus app and it does not find any updates

  • As a result I cannot sleep the laptop (powercfg /a reports that no Sx states are supported and the GUI entry even disappeared from the start menu after reboot) and I think the iGPU mode isn't working correctly as that was a known issue, which might be causing the higher than normal temps below.

[q2] (Answered) How are people setting all their iGPU modes and stuff to get thermals down? What are your idle temps?

  • SOLVED

  • Seeing the exact same behaviour as this person -- low CPU usage but high idle temps. But then gaming seems fine:

  • I played CS:GO at 1440p for around 2 hours on Turbo mode (the fans are actually a touch quieter than the MacBook at full blast in this mode), and the CPU never went above 85C, and the GPU never went above 80. They hovered at around 83 and 79 respectively for the duration of the session.

  • This seems amazing, but when I was setting up the laptop (I only had Edge with two bing tabs open and MSI afterburner installer running) the CPU was hovering at around 53-57C in Silent mode with a high of 60C, and in Performance mode it was pretty much the same temperatures. When the Windows setup was still running the fans were really loud. On full idle, temps are around the same too, with a low of 50C. It doesn't seem to go below 50.

  • Is this normal? Because I've followed this subreddit since January and people regularly report 30-40C on silent mode idle, with fans not running for hours. However since gaming temps seem absolutely fine, I'm thinking this is due to some bad update - thats what others have reported here - that they would get 30-40C on silent idle, but then one day its just not going below 55-60C after either sleeping the laptop or updating. I think ASUS needs to look into this because most reports here say the same thing. Thoughts?

[q3] (Answered) What charging adapter should I use for the USB-C charging? Which ones are you buying or which wattage should I look out for.

[q4] What kinds of accessories are you getting? Here's what I am. Thoughts?

  • Sleeve

  • Monitor - I can't stand using small laptop screens for extended time and the extra screen space is hugely beneficial for my studies, also planning on sticking 1080p cause it's enough for me and I wanna go easy on the laptop. I actually already have it and can highly recommend it, it has zero ghosting (less than my AOC AGON AG241QX 1440p 144hz monitor at home) and colours are fine after a small tweak. Super smooth fast monitor

Positives:

[+1] I either won every QC lottery, or there just isn't one anymore (and my theory as to why):

  • UPDATE AFTER A FEW HOURS OF USAGE: My touchpad is slightly lower on the left side. Are there any easy fixes for this?

  • No backlight bleed, screen has very even backlighting.

  • Speakers are perfect at all volumes, cannot tell an immediate difference coming from a MacBook Pro. However, I do believe that the common theory here that the volume, bass, etc was simply reduced to mitigate the popping issues could be true since the laptop doesn't get super super loud. Still, 60 volume is way more than enough for any setting imo and you won't have any issues.

  • Thermals are great. I played CS:GO at 1440p for around 2 hours on Turbo mode (the fans are actually a touch quieter than the MacBook at full blast in this mode), and the CPU never went above 85C, and the GPU never went above 80. They hovered at around 83 and 79 respectively for the duration of the session. When I switched to performance mode, I saw basically no drop in performance or temperatures but the fans got a tiny bit quieter. There is little difference between the two modes imo.

  • Screen is top quality - no grey areas, spotty areas, etc. It get's very bright indoors, outdoors might not be so amazing though.

So here's why I think I might not just be lucky, and that the issues could actually be solved:

  • I bought this laptop just 3 days ago via the official ASUS website after it finally came in stock in the UK store after an eternity. It wasn't in stock on basically any UK seller including ASUS themselves for atleast a full month, I've been checking every day. So this is almost certainly a brand new stock. I think its possible they might be taking a better focus on QC this time around - its too early to tell until more people get their laptops and share their experiences but it is seeming hopeful right now. The reason I say this is because theres too many QC lottery elements for me to just get everything perfect by luck.

[+2] Build quality is through the roof:

  • The entire package literally feels so durable and like full metal in my hand. Please do not be sidetracked by what reviewers are saying because even though they are factually correct in practice the laptop feels super durable. Its really premium feeling and looking and there is ZERO compromises due to budget or whatever. It feels just like those proper expensive laptops, if not, better that you see at PC World that aren't cheap gaming laptops and don't have any body compromises.

  • Keyboard is lush to type on - keys are perfectly stabilised, they look great.

  • Lid flex, keyboard flex, body flex is essentially non-existent. It's essentially the same as my Mac. You have to REALLY try to get even 0.5cm of flex on the lid / keyboard / anywhere. There is no general body flex at all either.

  • All the ports on the laptop are very firm and don't wiggle about.

[+3] Yes, the R7+3060 is quite capable at 1440p and if you find a game in which its not - dropping to 1080p actually scales really well

  • In CS:GO at 1440p with everything low except shadows high (this is the proper way to get high fps but not lose fps by maintaining GPU usage) and the shader + visiblity stuff on auto / on, I was getting around 260-300FPS with bots, and you can expect much more in online play. It was running really well and butter smooth.

  • 1080p on the 1440p 15" screen scaled really well and didn't look too different, so if you're worried about needing to do that on demanding games on this machine, don't worry. I have a good perception because I have a 1440p 24" monitor which I often play games on as low as 800x600 (goldsrc, etc)

  • So getting this device over the G14 is a no brainer unless you need MacBook like portability - they're the exact same price and you get a free 1440p screen, a bigger chassis which means better cooling, etc.

[+4] When people say the laptop isn't perfect perfect, don't be discouraged:

  • The LED indicator lights being at the front potentially being distracting doesn't actually mean much in practice. In a bright room it's not distracting, and in a normal seating position they are angled downwards into the chassis instead of facing you directly. I don't see an issue with them.

  • For most average use, RAM will not be an issue and you won't have to close anything to do light work and game at the same time. I had Blender, CS:GO, a few browser tabs, Armoury Crate etc open and my RAM usage didn't go above 45%.

  • When the YouTube reviewers like The Digital Digest say at the end of their video rounding up the issues that they are minor in comparison to the full package and overall the laptop is amazing, they really mean it. Don't doubt them like me because this exceeded my expectations by a LOT.

General Information:

[i1] Things have been stable for me and I've not had any BSODs, fans randomly going max, etc - but I updated everything before testing. You should update (no specific order, can do all at once):

  • Everything in Armoury Crate and reboot

  • Everything in Windows Update

  • This should be automatic via Windows Update or something (it happened when I rebooted the laptop) but there is a BIOS update that you get too.

[i2] Keyboard layout appears to be British English

  • Do note that the Enter key is small and the hash key is where the big chonky bit usually is. You might wanna do what I am planning on doing - remapping the hash key to Enter with SharpKeys since I barely use that key anyway. It's a good solution since it uses windows registry to remap keys and doesnt run in the background at all

[i3] Trackpad doesn't click on every point, only bottom left and right.

[i4] If you want to make a normal local account, DO NOT CONNECT TO THE INTERNET DURING SETUP:

  • If you do, it will force you to use a microsoft account which can do things like import your funny registry tweaks from 2015 you did as a kid (yes this happens, my friend did it and his blue box highlight you can draw on the desktop turned red).

  • If you accidentally did connect, just use the aeroplane mode button on the keyboard then hit back in the top left, and it will make it local. Don't hold down the power button to reboot because it kinda fucked up my system for a bit and it had to repair itself.

[i5] Want to show CPU temperature in MSI Afterburner RTSS?

  • For AMD Ryzen processors, you need HWINFO64 (Free) and keep it running. Then click the 3 dots under the "Monitoring" tab of MSI Afterburner and enable hwinfo64.dll and click OK. Then make sure its enabled for OSD. THEN go into HWINFO64 and I forgot the specific way but you click on Sensors somewhere and you scroll in the table to CPU temperature and enable it in the OSD.

  • Also unrelated side note, for RTSS overlay to work in CS:GO you need the launch options: -untrusted -insecure +sv_lan 1 (you only need untrusted, but using it online can lower trust factor so I restrict myself offline with these) - and, note that you will get more FPS in real world online usage than with bots, since the bots are heavy on the CPU and decrease FPS by quite a lot.

[i6] Remember that if you are planning on wiping the laptop like I am (I'm putting Win10 Enterprise on it), you need to save the eSupport folder before you wipe, and its a good idea to note down stuff like software and take pictures of the about sections of the PC. Posts: [1] [2] [3]

This is all from my first few hours using the laptop alone. I might update the post later and it'd be cool if some of the information could be added to the wiki!

Thanks u/Other-Worldliness-61 and thanks u/Crostle and thanks (links to this post) u/Lategrunt and thanks u/heythere_68-1!

Posted Apr 2, 2021, 9:14 AM UTC · edited

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