ASUS TUF FX705 Owners' Lounge

[njs-nbr404]

https://www.nbrchive.net/xfa/asus-reviews-and-owners-lounges.1056/ASUS TUF FX705 Owner's Lounge/

 

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Meta
Starting this Owner's Lounge as I've recently purchased an ASUS TUF FX705GM-EV101T for work purposes, and hope to create here a defining resource for all information and discussion pertaining to FX705 variants.

This main post is to be considered a work in progress; I'll review other Owner's Lounge threads and continue to amend and improve this as time goes on. All suggestions and contributions welcome!

If you're an owner, don't be afraid to say hi The more of us there are here, the better we can support each other. No apologies for links being UK localised

Links
Official

• Asus - Features
• Asus - Specifications
• Asus - Gallery
• Asus - Support:
  • Drivers & Tools (Windows 10 x64)
  • BIOS & Firmware
  • FAQ
  • Manual & Document:
    • GD/GE/GM English Upgrade Guide (v. 14252, 2018/10/19)
    • GD/GE/GM English User Manual (v. 14249, 2018/08/13)

Unofficial

 

• Forum.NotebookReview.com (Search All SubForums: FX705*, Order By: Date)

Variations - TBC!
GD vs GE vs GM
DY vs DD vs DT vs DU

Reviews - TBC!
Text
Video

 

• Tech ARP @ YouTube - "Official"(?) Product Showcase

Random

 

• Back Panel Screw Placement

Self - Justifications
I purchased this laptop after having started a new job, and saved up a small bankroll, where the April 2019 price of £1,100 (£400 discount!) + £80 self-upgrade (RAM, re:below), was an acceptable hit.

My previous laptop of 5 years+ is an Acer TravelMate B113-M, which has served me very well for the £250 it initially cost me, but needs to be retired, as my productivity is being limited. UserBenchmark: i7-8750H vs i3-3227U = +236%, so the bottleneck is now sitting between the chair and the keyboard.

The price for this laptop looked very good for the details on screen, and in particular:

 

• Homogenised Components: "Industry" seems to have settled on the Intel i7-8750H, HM370 and Nvidia GTX 1060 6GB as standard components in the ~over-£1500~ bracket for Q4 2018 laptops. Thus I have (perhaps unfounded) confidence in long-term support being offered either commercially or through communities (i.e., later on in life through Linux).
• Ease of Disassembly: It's 11 screws for the bottom plate, and that's it. Memory, battery, cooling is all exposed for maintenance, replacement or upgrade. Brilliant. Queue current hardware plans to double the RAM to 32G.

I'll keep Windows 10 Home, for now. Debian would almost certainly be my choice desktop OS to go to, but I'd like to maximise hardware support for now, and potentially see how the next Windows iteration behaves. This laptops main purpose for me is virtualisation, not gaming, and fits my needs perfectly thanks to these stock specs, easy upgrade and competitive cooling system.

Self - Aftermarket

 

• Flashed BIOS to v304 - all went smooth, external drive had to be FAT32 (not available in Win 10 formatting options ), Intel RST as a new feature.
• Installed 16GB RAM module, a duplicate addition to the factory installed module.

To Do:

 

• Define Variations
• Discover Reviews
• List (Asus UK) Stock Software
• Ideate Improvements from Other OL Threads

 

[njs-nbr404]

Yes then the people.

I'll be honest and say my initial aspirations faultered probably out of personal initiative and focus.

But my Asus FX705-GM is still my only, and still going strong, despite some hiccups over the past three years.

 

I've reposted my initial OP, as I'd like to make it known there is atleast one owner dedicated to this Series/SKU.

I am genuinely saddened to see the loss of the original NBR forums, but also very, very happy to see they've been archived.

There simply wasn't another 'Laptop Series/SKU' community as well grown, knowledgable and experimental like it.

I can't pretend to have ever been apart of it, but I have dremmeled slots in the lower housing in the name of decreasing temps.

 

Trying to reverse engineer the upgrades from cerebral memory... I think one of the first actual major issues was Win 10 Pro drivers really, really faulting the OEM WiFi card way back in Q4 2019, so I upgraded to AX/6 the moment a Chinese chip came out.

 

Right now I'm running Win 10 LTSC 1809 17763.2628, and whilst I'll always have UI gripes, the OS performs magnificently, although I don't game.

Over the past 3 years, I've kept the BIOS up to date, and have allowed Win 10 LTSC to upgrade the firmwares/drivers as dictated by Update - as I like it.
 

The only driver I update out of my own responsibility is the dedicated Nvidia 1060m, using the Studio Ready driver, as this then gives me the option of ignoring Nvidia Experience or whatever their account nonsense is.

 

About a year ago, I upgraded the SSD to a Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2TB, and the HDD to a WD WD20SPZX. Shocked to find that HDD technology had plateud at the 7mm(/9mm?) market, and that SSD has now overtaken in terms of price-density at this thickness.

 

This led to alot of BSoDs and I was like... "either an OS reinstall fixes it, or I'll 'spares-or-repairs' it" on eBay... I suspect that BIOS settings were the culprit, specifically having Intel RST control memory-drives instead of AHCI, but I don't want or dare to return to troubleshooting it.

Still on the todo list is a RAM upgrade to 32+32=64GB, although, I've not researched mobo compatabilities and market offerings, so... maybe this is simply peak.

 

I really don't dare upgrade laptops due to various supply chain faults and harware shortages. Looking back at my original post, I'm certain I bought the right laptop at the right time, although I know this is debatable.
 

Thanks to all involved in the NBR revival 🙂
njs-nbr404

 

[Edit]

 

1x32GB SODIMM DDR4 3200ghz = £110+... na m8.

[mujtaba]

I have an Asus Tuf A17 (Ryzen). I am very happy with the device but I also had to swap out the Realtek Card for something else. Going to soon upgrade the RAM to 32GB (16GB is too little). I am very saddened by the forced "modern sleep" feature in the newer iterations of these laptops.