Once upon a time, I wasn't an ASUS fan boy, but I knew them back when they made quality stuff, literally build rigs with all their stuff and it was awesome. I have been away from PC gaming for a long time now, my generic work laptop was ancient and ASUS, never had any bother unless and windows update screwed over settings and such.
Fast forward the past year, console shortages, scalping left right and centre... the PS5 running hotter than it should and looking like a tank in your room. I think to myself, hell, I'll get a new laptop. A gaming laptop. I never specifically went for the ASUS brand but when I saw OCers pre order for a Tuf gaming A15 FA506QR with the new 5800H and a 3070... the price was £1500, more than I wanted to spend, but with those chips and a 240hz 100% SRGB screen... worth the investment I thought.
Cue Nvidia hiding the whole Max Q/P names and you basically have to go looking at the GPU TDP, which I got stung by at a pathetic 95w GPU in what seemed like a really powerful machine. Anyway, when I first got this machine I was over the moon. All shiny up to date and "powerful".
I got a gaming laptop because I move about so it was advantageous to have a good laptop over a rig and well I don't have space for a rig and all the peripherals. I avoided much heavy gaming until I build my own cooling tray. For those who are interested:
Aluminium tray with 3 fold out legs for height and angle adjustability.
2x 12v 140mm high pressure fans. Linked together and fed by a USB 5v to 15v transformer(small form factor).
Holes drilled and ported for airflow in the desired position under the laptop, fans mounted with antivibration gaskets and dust screens.
As you can imagine, this is a beast of a tray, if runs to full potential from a USB 3 socket on the laptop, or from any typical USB 2 phone charger. It knocked a few degree off of the temps underload. Playing Forza 7 and Horizon 3 with high settings at HD because the laptop screen is only HS still gave me CPU temps in the 90cs and GPU temps very similar.
My biggest bug bear is that without the tray I would likely have hit throttling temps, the fact Tuf models give no fan controls at all and the only Armoury crate profile that does actually have ambient fans is Turbo on mains only. Not a problem you say? Try having the laptop doing nothing in silent mode getting to 60-70c because is just bakes itself and only at 70c do the fans come on to move some of that heat.
I gave feedback to ASUS on this and got the "We'll forward this to developers", did anything change? was I given an update to BIOS to allow fan control? No, I got an update that wrecked the keyboard lighting FN key shortcuts. Yay for ASUS.
With this I took matters into my own hands to fix the cooling on this would be power house. My tray really is amazing and the proof of concept is coming so hear me out a little longer.
The chassis of this model much like the one before it is massively restrictive. Dangerously so.
So I took my dremel and I cut out several honeycombs that are "vents" on the underside and glued a plastic dust screen over the new vents. When I was looking at the inside of the laptop I notice there are 3 heatsinks, 2 over the exhausts at the top of the laptop with the fans aiming at them and one off to the right(as it sits in use), so really there is no way I can force more air in properly when it can't actually get back out. Looking at the top of the bottom shell I notice the smallest slits between the main exhausts. This won't do, so I cut the sections out, widen and deepen them, chamfer the edges for easier flow and put glue a screen over that too.
Last night I did some tests. The game used and game settings are unchanged through all 3 tests. All on mains power. All with stock pastes and pads.
Forza 7
QHD res.
Dynamic settings aimed at ultra.
Test 1: Silent mode, no FPS cap
CPU 77c
GPU 82c
Better than the 80s and 90s I had seen previously but still room for improvement.
Test 2: Silent mode 60FPS cap (TV is a max of 60hz so no point in any higher anyway)
CPU 74c
GPU 78c
Better still, but still not good enough.
Test 3: Turbo mode, No FPS limiter.
CPU 62c
GPU 66c
This is an amazing result, the biggest difference is that on turbo mode the cooling fans actually do something before the machine roasts itself.
My conclusion.
ASUS did the worlds worst job on airflow through this chassis, much like the original A15 that they messed up to make Intel look better by blocking vents on the same chassis.
Although my tray forces a lot of air through the chassis, the system fans that don't spin on anything but turbo, blocking key airflow to the main heatsinks and just accumulate heat. Proof being that when the fans were on when in Turbo, the temps dropped dramatically, because all that cold air being fed in can pass through those heatsinks and the surplus can cool the heat pipes and flush the internal atmosphere to keep it cooler. The pathetic cooling solution is why this machine has a 95w GPU.
I honestly think these flaws are intentional to keep AMD machines held back, because there aren't many gaming laptops from ASUS that are AMD that don't have these issues. Some randomer with too much spare time and a braincell just made the cooling on the A15 do an amazing job with stock TIMs.
If ASUS sorted fan controls on these models they would be much better. My machine now would easily handle more power to the GPU thermally. After learning all this, and the responses I got from ASUS themselves I would genuinely avoid their products in future.
My next step is a repaste and better pads, spacers on the 140mm fans so they can push through more of the holes drilled by making a pocket of air before the tray and finally, undervolting the GPU to further reduce heat.
If you stuck with me this far, thank you for reading!
Fast forward the past year, console shortages, scalping left right and centre... the PS5 running hotter than it should and looking like a tank in your room. I think to myself, hell, I'll get a new laptop. A gaming laptop. I never specifically went for the ASUS brand but when I saw OCers pre order for a Tuf gaming A15 FA506QR with the new 5800H and a 3070... the price was £1500, more than I wanted to spend, but with those chips and a 240hz 100% SRGB screen... worth the investment I thought.
Cue Nvidia hiding the whole Max Q/P names and you basically have to go looking at the GPU TDP, which I got stung by at a pathetic 95w GPU in what seemed like a really powerful machine. Anyway, when I first got this machine I was over the moon. All shiny up to date and "powerful".
I got a gaming laptop because I move about so it was advantageous to have a good laptop over a rig and well I don't have space for a rig and all the peripherals. I avoided much heavy gaming until I build my own cooling tray. For those who are interested:
Aluminium tray with 3 fold out legs for height and angle adjustability.
2x 12v 140mm high pressure fans. Linked together and fed by a USB 5v to 15v transformer(small form factor).
Holes drilled and ported for airflow in the desired position under the laptop, fans mounted with antivibration gaskets and dust screens.
As you can imagine, this is a beast of a tray, if runs to full potential from a USB 3 socket on the laptop, or from any typical USB 2 phone charger. It knocked a few degree off of the temps underload. Playing Forza 7 and Horizon 3 with high settings at HD because the laptop screen is only HS still gave me CPU temps in the 90cs and GPU temps very similar.
My biggest bug bear is that without the tray I would likely have hit throttling temps, the fact Tuf models give no fan controls at all and the only Armoury crate profile that does actually have ambient fans is Turbo on mains only. Not a problem you say? Try having the laptop doing nothing in silent mode getting to 60-70c because is just bakes itself and only at 70c do the fans come on to move some of that heat.
I gave feedback to ASUS on this and got the "We'll forward this to developers", did anything change? was I given an update to BIOS to allow fan control? No, I got an update that wrecked the keyboard lighting FN key shortcuts. Yay for ASUS.
With this I took matters into my own hands to fix the cooling on this would be power house. My tray really is amazing and the proof of concept is coming so hear me out a little longer.
The chassis of this model much like the one before it is massively restrictive. Dangerously so.
So I took my dremel and I cut out several honeycombs that are "vents" on the underside and glued a plastic dust screen over the new vents. When I was looking at the inside of the laptop I notice there are 3 heatsinks, 2 over the exhausts at the top of the laptop with the fans aiming at them and one off to the right(as it sits in use), so really there is no way I can force more air in properly when it can't actually get back out. Looking at the top of the bottom shell I notice the smallest slits between the main exhausts. This won't do, so I cut the sections out, widen and deepen them, chamfer the edges for easier flow and put glue a screen over that too.
Last night I did some tests. The game used and game settings are unchanged through all 3 tests. All on mains power. All with stock pastes and pads.
Forza 7
QHD res.
Dynamic settings aimed at ultra.
Test 1: Silent mode, no FPS cap
CPU 77c
GPU 82c
Better than the 80s and 90s I had seen previously but still room for improvement.
Test 2: Silent mode 60FPS cap (TV is a max of 60hz so no point in any higher anyway)
CPU 74c
GPU 78c
Better still, but still not good enough.
Test 3: Turbo mode, No FPS limiter.
CPU 62c
GPU 66c
This is an amazing result, the biggest difference is that on turbo mode the cooling fans actually do something before the machine roasts itself.
My conclusion.
ASUS did the worlds worst job on airflow through this chassis, much like the original A15 that they messed up to make Intel look better by blocking vents on the same chassis.
Although my tray forces a lot of air through the chassis, the system fans that don't spin on anything but turbo, blocking key airflow to the main heatsinks and just accumulate heat. Proof being that when the fans were on when in Turbo, the temps dropped dramatically, because all that cold air being fed in can pass through those heatsinks and the surplus can cool the heat pipes and flush the internal atmosphere to keep it cooler. The pathetic cooling solution is why this machine has a 95w GPU.
I honestly think these flaws are intentional to keep AMD machines held back, because there aren't many gaming laptops from ASUS that are AMD that don't have these issues. Some randomer with too much spare time and a braincell just made the cooling on the A15 do an amazing job with stock TIMs.
If ASUS sorted fan controls on these models they would be much better. My machine now would easily handle more power to the GPU thermally. After learning all this, and the responses I got from ASUS themselves I would genuinely avoid their products in future.
My next step is a repaste and better pads, spacers on the 140mm fans so they can push through more of the holes drilled by making a pocket of air before the tray and finally, undervolting the GPU to further reduce heat.
If you stuck with me this far, thank you for reading!
once the user bins their warranty and replaces them it's all groovy. guess asus like forcing people to ditch their warranties, not that they seem to stand over them anyway!