Best products from r/ASUS

First, congratulations on the set up, sounds very cool.

I've never built with that particular Thermaltake case, but from my understanding the 3 fans it comes with have a proprietary cable that plug into a special controller. Basically, most normal case fans have a 3or 4-pin cable that plugs into a corresponding fan header on the motherboard, and the motherboard is then able to control the fans (Asus's AI suite in your situation). RGB lighting is a separate 3 or 4-pin cable that plugs into special RGB headers on the motherboard too.

The fans that come with that Thermaltake case have both power and RGB combined into one proprietary 5-pin cable. This only plugs into the built-in fan/RGB controller in the case. I don't think it will plug into anything else, such as a motherboard. So the controller (and by extension the ThermalTake case) control both fan speed and RGB lighting, and the case comes with 3 fans you can add to it (you can purchase more if you want, the controller can support 8 fans I believe).

So unfortunately, If you want to control the fans and RGB lighting through the motherboard you will need to get different fans, the ones that come with the ThermalTake case can only be controlled by the built-in controller. I feel for you, the Thermaltake fans look great, and I actually purchased their Floe Riing CPU cooler but ended up returning it because it was incompatible with Asus Aura Sync. But yes, unfortunately if you're interested in RGB fans controlled by your motherboard your going to have to purchase them separately (and make sure they're compatible with Aura Sync).

Regarding addressable RGB strips, your motherboard comes with 2 non-addressable and 2 addressable headers, I believe. Any non-addressable or addressable strip will work, just make sure you have the proper adapter to match your motherboard. For example, the 3-pin addressable header on your motherboard could work with Cablemod's addressable RGB strip because the strip with comes with an adapter for Asus motherboards. Your motherboard might also come with an adapter as well. Most RGB strips marketed towards PC builders will come with an adapter, but if you get it from somewhere like Amazon you need to double check and make sure.

For example, I saved some money buying these Chinly RGB strips. These are generic addressable strips that could be used in any lighting system. Since I had an adapter already (came with my Asus Z370 motherboard) I didn't need anything else. This was also half the price of a Cablemod strip.

Anyways, hope that helps, good luck!

No worries. That doesn't really help but if you could show me where you found it I might be able to dig deeper.

For clarity, a PCI Express (or PCIe) slot is where expansion cards like your graphic card go. They are very fast when it comes to transferring data. A PCIe slot has "lanes" of data it can transfer. An x1 slot has one "lane". An x16 slot as 16 "lanes". Each lane can transfer 8Gb/s, if I remember correctly. That's some background info.

Now let's talk drive types. You've got Hard Disk Drives or HDDs, which come in different capacities and physical sizes. The two common sizes these days are 2.5" (usually found in notebook computers) and 3.5" (usually found in desktop computers). Larger physical size does not necessarily equate to larger capacity. Capacity is usually expressed in gigabytes (GB) or terabytes (TB). An HDD is one of the slowest forms of media commonly used today, but it's cheaper per GB/TB than solid state drives. (SSDs.) HDDs today use the SATA "bus", which is a specific way to transfer data. Your PCIe slots are another way to transfer data, but we'll come back to that.

Then you've got SSDs. The most common size still being produced is 2.5". These are much faster than HDDs. SATA SSDs are roughly 5 times faster than HDDs for reading and writing data. This means faster boot times for your system, faster game loads, and faster file copies.

A few years ago, M.2 SSDs came out. M.2 is not necessarily faster than 2.5" SSDs. This depends on which bus they use. If they use the SATA bus, they're around the same speed as 2.5" drives. That said, they're far smaller and use less power, so they're better for laptops and, frankly, everything else except for speed. That said, we also have M.2 NVMe drives. NVMe is a special type of memory (like your computer's RAM) that doesn't wipe itself each time you reboot your computer, which means it can be used for storage. Also like your RAM, it's very fast - about 4 times faster than a SATA SSD, which is about 5 times faster than an HDD. That means an M.2 NVMe SSD is roughly 20 times faster than an HDD.

Because of this faster speed, the SATA bus just isn't fast enough, so they use the same bus as your PCIe slots. They can use 4 lanes of the PCIe bus. They can be plugged into an M.2 slot if your motherboard supports them, but you can also buy an inexpensive PCIe card (which will fit into a PCIe slot, if you have one available) if your motherboard does not have an M.2 slot. Here's an example of a cheap card that I've found to work well. You mount the M.2 SSD to the card, then install the card in a PCIe slot. That said, if the only PCIe slot you have available is x1, it's kind of pointless to do so. Remember how I said it is roughly 4 times faster than a SATA SSD? And remember how I said it uses 4 PCIe lanes? Well, if you only use 1 PCIe lane, you're not going to see those same performance gains. At that point, you're better off using a SATA SSD. They do make them in the M.2 size/format. The Samsung 850 Evo is an example of a decent one. (Note: the 850 Evo is also made in the 2.5" size/format, so be cautious which one you buy if you go that direction. Also, note that many PCIe cards (and M.2 slots on motherboards, for that matter) only support NVMe/PCIe M.2 SSDs OR SATA M.2 SSDs but not both. The PCIe card I linked above will only work with NVMe/PCIe SSDs, for example. Therefore, the Samsung 850 Evo I just linked wouldn't be compatible with it.

I hope that helps to clarify. Feel free to respond with more info or questions if you have them.

I'm not an expert on mobo amplification I do know they have one (otherwise you wouldn't be able to hear sound at all) but generally they're tuned for 80ish-ohm or less headphones. Some headphones can benifit from amplifation even if they have low impedance. Not sure why it wouldn't be showing up in the front port but if you genually need a good headphone amp then buying an external DAC/amp combo is the best thing you can do. The SMSL 793 is a great choice. Cleaned up my audio quite a bit, gave me volume control next to my keybaord and even though my headphones didnt really "need" amplification they certainly gave them an extra umph and bite. Z reviews did a YouTube video about it if you're interested in that. What kind of headphones do you have?

Edit - One last note. If you ARE interested it seems like your mobo has an optical out. That makes the SD793II perfect as it pretty much only accepts optical audio as an in.

Yeah, the whole hassle is just annoying. Waste of time + money (shipping if you had to pay that). It was a lot easier to guild you, than do what you did haha. Sorry. That sucks. I feel bad.

What were your issues again? I don't think you ever said. Working on an external?

I wouldn't get the surface 3, personally, especially if it's something you'd be using as your main, until prices dropped on parts for this one. Something like this one? Idk, that's a lot of $$ imo, for what you are getting. I can do a ~10.6" screen/keyboard on a portable, but it's not something I could use day in/day out.

I typically always buy used, laptop-wise, depending on what your looking for. I probably wouldn't buy a 2nd hand gaming laptop (although I don't game, so no need haha), but, better deals to be had. I had gotten the ux303-ln for..$640 (i7), and the LB (i7) for $720. While there may not be a massive difference between the 2 hardware wise, that price difference more than justifies the bump to the LB. I had sold the LN, LB is what I'm working on, and now I'm rocking my old asus q550lf. It's a nice laptop, just bulky as f'. I do use a tablet (ipad) however, and lg g4 (phone) can help handle the load.

Anyways, now, what you could do. I doubt you really want to spend $700, when you have a laptop that can likely be fixed (assuming). What you could do, and this might be something I may end up doing.

Let's say our laptop takes the "ltn133yl01-l01" lcd, which it does. I haven't had the time to do a lot more looking into it, but the Lenovo 2 Pro, uses the same one. I'm seeing 8gb/i7 4th, pulling in...I'd have to watch ebay listings. Personally, I probably wouldn't pay much more than/if any...$400 (used, it'll have to be).

If the ux31e display had worked, I was scoping out a buy for the ux31a. Price-wise, made sense. You could spend $100 on a used lcd assembly, or $250 for a used laptop (31a had FHD), and more spare parts than you need. More for your dollar imo. But, not always the case.

But there's an idea. And in no way am I encouraging you to buy that in the hopes it will work, be compatible etc,. for my sake haha. Personally, I may hold out for parts, etc., etc. What I have now is good for the time being. In all honesty, not sure if the yoga 2 pro @ even $400 is worth it, if your just going to gut it. But, ~$200 for just the LCD vs ~$400 for a whole laptop (condition of LCD depending). Just make sure you don't break it haha, or then you'd be royally fucked haha. And again, if your buying ebay, and for higher dollar. Wait for ebay 4x, 5x, whatever buck days to roll around. You could save another $30, $40, $50, bucks on it all, etc.

And if your serious about a replacement laptop. What's your ideal budget? Usually I'd say, take your budget (let's say it's $500 for argument sake). Search for $700+ laptops retail. Hone in on what you want, wait for some auctions (newegg can also have some pretty good prices as well)..more laptop for the same price, less, etc.

OR

Google computer places in your area, take it in, get it professionally looked at, pay the price, and stop spending time, money, etc., on a laptop. There's always more important shit to do and computers can be confusing as hell, haha.

And congrats on the finishing up grad school. The loans tho....ughhhhh.

Might have luck checking the service manual: https://www.asus.com/support/Manual/3/931/0/3/

However can you return? I usually don't recommend this laptop, I think it's a pretty bad option for the price and in general. The screen is a low quality TN (viewing angles and contrast are a fair bit behind other laptops, and considered poor for $800). ASUS also tends not to have particularly good cooling and build quality in their gaming and multimedia oriented laptops (/u/D2ultima you might have some things to say on this too). I would consider the FX53VD to be among the bottom-tier as far as 1050 / 1050Ti laptops go.

This Acer is a better option for $800. IPS display, 256GB SSD, empty slot for HDD (you'll need to request the mounting brackets and cable from Acer, it's free), and same 1050 GPU. https://www.amazon.com/Acer-Aspire-Gaming-GeForce-VX5-591G-5652/dp/B01N11JKA3

BUT -- the ASUS FX53VD is $800 and the upgrades you're planning are about $120, if I'm not mistaken. Instead of upgrading HDD and RAM now, I might go $899 for the Dell Inspiron 7567 IPS model. http://www.bestbuy.com/site/dell-inspiron-15-6-laptop-intel-core-i5-8gb-memory-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1050-ti-256gb-solid-state-drive-black/5872507.p -- The GPU and build quality are far better on this one, it only takes one screw to open, and it has a 1050 Ti rather than a 1050. Just make sure you're going for this one, or one of the other ones that offer IPS and you're taking the upgrade. Base $799 model only includes a low quality TN, and doesn't offer IPS as an upgrade.

Or you can go $899 for the 1050 Ti + 16GB RAM version of the Acer here: https://www.amazon.com/Acer-Aspire-Gaming-GeForce-VX5-591G-54VG/dp/B01MR82G0W/ -- battery life isn't as good as the 7567, and it takes more screws to open, but it's still decent.

Finally: All these have 7300HQ CPUs rather than 7700HQ, but don't let that sway your decision. Part of the reason a lot of ASUS' options are so bad for their prices, aside from build quality concerns, is they prioritize 7700HQ CPUs over decent displays, in order to get that "Core i7" label for marketing purposes. 7300HQ is already pretty good, low-quality TN not so much. Seek to improve upon something that's pretty bad, before something else that's already pretty good. You won't really notice the difference between 7300HQ and 7700HQ for most games on this level of GPU since the GPU will be the limiting factor, but you'll notice the display.

And if you need a 7700HQ for something, this Clevo has one -- just be sure to select the IPS display on the top (stock display is low quality TN, and Clevo added the IPS option because nobody was buying it), and select Windows under Operating System. It'll be $844 with IPS, Windows, 8GB RAM, and no SSD -- then you can add the SSD yourself -- watching to make sure you don't get too close to $1049, in which case this Clevo has a 1050 Ti, a 512GB SSD, 16GB RAM, and an even better display (72% NTSC IPS).

I was looking into the 1.4 DP cables earlier too. I'm not sure if my monitor would work with a 1.4 cable though because I think it has a 1.2 DP port on it... I'm not terribly sure if that's how displayport works or not though. Completely new to it, so I'm just not sure.

I am at 1920x1080 and I did just try using the HDMI cable the monitor came with. Someone on r/Monitors suggested switching the two. But all it did was drop my refresh rate from 144hz to 120hz and disabled a couple of settings in the OSD.

I would much rather just order another DP cable then jump right to sending the monitor back. Although I need something a little longer than 6 feet, so I might try this cable instead. Although I can move my monitor mount to the other side of my desk if you think I should definitely go with the one you mentioned to be safe.

Oh, I saw you other comment about switching around the displayport cable ends too lol. I tried that, didn't work either sadly. Thanks for the help though. I really appreciate it :)

This one which is actually pretty good. I use it with the computer and nintendo switch, since it's much more portable than the dock and the experience is fantastic (except for the charging issue).

So, if I connect the hub to the AC on the usb-c port, it all works perfectly.

My working machine is a dell precision 5520 and the hub works flawlessly on it. But the Dell doesn't allow PD charging.

I strongly recommend AGAINST buying a chrome book.

Chromebook is just the worst no matter how you put it, from build quality to performance to appearance, just the worst everywhere except it is cheap thats it.

Their only selling point is cheap.....

Since you are looking at a chrome book I assume you do not need anything graphic intensive, that opens a lot of options for other laptops.

I just did a quick search of cheap laptops, heres one that looks pretty promising for people who wont need any graphic related work done.

its a bit more expensive but i'd say considering the speed and versatility from a windows machine is worth that extra bucks. Not to mention it looks a lot better imo lol.....

it also has a touch screen just in case you want that as well.

anyways my point is unless you absolutely need the water resistance for outdoor work, id get this one instead of a chrome book.......i honestly have not seen a single quality chrome book even the higher end ones, its like.....android's gimp cousin.

I never felt like the refresh rate is to be blamed for the eye strain, on the other hand the high brightness of it (no matter the general tint color of the display I adjust on my driver's settings) is causing me the eye strain after I stare at its harsh bright colors for a few minutes-hours (and then it leaves dark mark shapes on my sight as if I stared at the sun and looked away) so I think I need a low power display that emits as less light as possible but still has clear enough image, is there such a thing?

​

Yeah, I stumbled upon this one of BenQ :

https://www.amazon.com/BenQ-proprietary-borderless-Brightness-GW2480/dp/B072XFFQ4K/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=BenQ%E2%80%99s%2BBrightness%2BIntelligence%2BTechnology&qid=1574090008&sr=8-1&th=1

It has a brightness Intelligence Adaptive technology but I am not sure how effective their eye tech is against the eye strain I have, what do you think about it?

It sounds like you currently have a normal HDD and an m2 SSD, and just purchased an SSD. Then it sounds like you have only two spots, the m2 and the normal 2.5" bay.

If that is correct, for like $10 you can find a usb>sata connection (I in no way endorse this, was just the first I found https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-2-5-Inch-Adapter-Optimized-EC-SSHD/dp/B011M8YACM/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1525968376&sr=8-5&keywords=usb+sata)

You will need a dvd or a usb drive, burn whatever flavor of disk copier you like (the Acronis rep here probably would say their product, but clonezilla or others would work as well). You'd boot from the usb/dvd (whichever you use), and would start the clone from your source drive to your new one.

I've done it numerous times (though I have an external 2 drive dock, as I do this pretty often, cloning drives that is) and works pretty flawlessly.

No problem, the other guy is right to a certain extent most of the basic cheap power banks only supply 5v. But if you look at this one

(https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07L93V1VJ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_f26WCb1YDC8M6)

You’ll see the AC outlet is listed as 110v/100W
It should be what youre looking for but I recommend doing a bit more research into which brand is going to be the best for you, the one I linked was one of the first results on amazon after searching “power bank with AC outlet”

If it helps, I did a quick Google of your laptop model, and while I don't know if you can order THAT one (or what shipping would be), at least according to an Amazon Seller you should be ok with a keyboard saying it's compatible with: Asus Models: R505J R505L R510C R510D R510E R510J R510L R510V R510W R510Z R513C R513E R513L R513M R513V R513W R751J R751L .

Good luck!

I don't have that game, so I can't do that exact benchmark. I've heard that pretty much across the board that with Intel cpu and RTX card combo (not just with Asus laptop), dual channel RAM gives a 10-15% increase in performance.

Here's the ram I got: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071KP8CGJ/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_U_x_WSNmDbJQCB4HE

I'm not sure since it is so new. If you can take it back to the store that's probably your best option on getting a new board. This would be to save a possible rma and downtime while you wait on ASUS reps. The cost of the item is like 12 bucks. https://www.amazon.com/Organizer-EEPROM-CH341A-Programmer-Module/dp/B07R5LPTYM/ref=sr_1_1?crid=ITD2T6C0D9D5&keywords=ch341a&qid=1563824279&s=gateway&sprefix=ch3%2Caps%2C271&sr=8-1

i've used it 3 times now to fix bad flashes

flashrom is free and works in linux (off of a live usb even) you just have to get the chip clip on the legs properly which isn't super ez but can be done with a little fiddling.

​

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y06x1f22B0&t=601s

https://www.tomsguide.com/us/best-wifi-6-routers,review-6115.html

According to this article its coming out this Fall? But on Amazon it will be available to ship sometime in June https://www.amazon.com/ASUS-AX6100-WiFi-Tri-Band-Routers/dp/B07RBBX5ZW/ref=pd_ybh_a_2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=HFP2KBY8J7QACDFENJ4P .

​

I just heard about this mesh system and I was all set to order the Netgear AX8 sometime this week or wait for the new Orbi Wifi 6 mesh router set to be released in late summer. But I've had good experiences with previous ASUS routers so I'm definitely getting the ASUS AX6100/RT-AX92U over anything else.

Amazon... https://smile.amazon.com/dp/B07NKGW8H1 You don't need the ASUS one, just get a generic with higher gain.

It seems that your comment contains 1 or more links that are hard to tap for mobile users.
I will extend those so they're easier for our sausage fingers to click!


Here is link number 1 - Previous text "$15"



----
^Please ^PM ^/u/eganwall ^with ^issues ^or ^feedback! ^| ^Delete

If you have a pcie slot open, there are pcie to m.2 adapters you can get for $15