ROG Zephyrus G GA502 - Asus frame drops in games

[zZurf]

When I set the Temperature limit to 76 degrees and re-apply ryzenadj periodically to 25 seconds, it has massively improved the throttling for me with very little to no drops. I haven't changed any other settings.

[zZurf]

On 12/18/2019 at 9:22 PM, DrZet said:

Hey guys, I bought this laptop recently and I've also been facing this issue. I admit I am not very knowledgeable when it comes to this kind of stuff, so I just did some research and I believe I have found a solution that works, at least for my case. I have not tried any other solution proposed in this topic, so you can maybe see this as an alternative solution. I just followed animakozak's post on this thread:

 

https://community.amd.com/thread/244625

 

He basically did the following:

• Nvidia drivers,
• installed all the missing Asus software, including Armory Crate, 
• updated BIOS to 208,
• chipset drivers (at this point it got a bit better),
• enabled V-sync, 
• set in power management 99% CPU min/max usage
• and forced Nvidia card to be used with application.

He's not sure which one did the trick (neither am I, the only thing I did not do was updating my BIOS), but it seems to have worked for me so far. The frame drops I had while playing The Outer Worlds were extremely annoying, but this seems to have fixed it. I suggest looking at animakozak's post over on the above link.

 

Edit: Ok, turns out this fix is not perfect at all, I still get frame drops from time to time. But it's a lot better than before.

how to you enable v-sync and set in power management to 99%? Sorry I'm pretty new to this.

[zZurf]

On 12/19/2019 at 9:40 AM, Siker said:

Not sure at all, there's some people who got their store to send em three laptops, and every single one had the same exact problem, but then theres people who never experienced this. No idea at all.

it's so weird how only some people are affected.

[Churrucaman]

2 hours ago, zZurf said:

it's so weird how only some people are affected.

I'm guessing not everybody games or notices the throttling but I think every unit is affected. If anybody here has this same model, has put the unit under stress and has not experienced this issues please feel free to correct me.

[lamername]

I think v207 is much more stable, I'm not surprised if some people with that version never hit this bug or do it so rarely they don't even notice.

[AmberSand]

On 12/26/2019 at 9:18 AM, lamername said:

I'm also getting this issue, in this case in linux. Surprisingly, after installing v208 I get it when I leave the laptop mostly idle for 1 min or so, while I can keep playing videogames for hours without issue. Seems like a combination of underventilation when being idle plus not being able to recover from the throttling. I hope somebody in the community discovers a way to patch the bios with a different preset, it was a very good deal I got... otherwise I'm going to need to ask for a refund, because it's not fun having to put a youtube video playing all the time so the laptop does not become idle and the performance goes to hell forever.

have you tried this on linux ? https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1879437#p1879437,

 

I also have one GA502 with this issue but I only use windows, maybe those changes work for windows users too, I hope.

[lamername]

9 hours ago, AmberSand said:

have you tried this on linux ? https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1879437#p1879437,

 

I also have one GA502 with this issue but I only use windows, maybe those changes work for windows users too, I hope.

I saw it, but seems a bit risky... What I ended up doing: downgrade to bios 207 (removes issues on normal usage) + setting some limits on the ryzencontroller app as recommended by Bobbydigital (removes issues while gaming). I set temp limit to 80ºC and STAPM, PPT fast, PPT slow to 45W. Sometimes I get throttled to 1.4GHz, but at least the most annoying throttle seems to have disappeared.

[zZurf]

On 12/28/2019 at 8:48 PM, Churrucaman said:

I'm guessing not everybody games or notices the throttling but I think every unit is affected. If anybody here has this same model, has put the unit under stress and has not experienced this issues please feel free to correct me.

I asked some guy on reddit with the same model who mainly plays esports games such as CSGO and Dota2, and he said he hasn't experienced any.

[Churrucaman]

8 minutes ago, zZurf said:

I asked some guy on reddit with the same model who mainly plays esports games such as CSGO and Dota2, and he said he hasn't experienced any.

I wouldn't say we have enough samples to jump to a conclusion but having more details on his config, bios version, etc may give us a lead. Anybody else that may be aware of other users not getting the problem could also be of use, just to know if we may help us understand if this is happening in all cases or if it may depend on the batch or whatever.

 

As users that have made several RMAs are still facing the same problem I was thinking it would be a general issue but who knows...

 

Still, CS:GO and Dota2, though at least in the first case causes throttling when maxed, there's some fps oriented configurations that may not stress the system enough. What I mean is that we would need more testing from this users that say they're not getting the problem before we can place this as a model defect or just limited to some batches.

[Siker]

19 hours ago, Churrucaman said:

I wouldn't say we have enough samples to jump to a conclusion but having more details on his config, bios version, etc may give us a lead. Anybody else that may be aware of other users not getting the problem could also be of use, just to know if we may help us understand if this is happening in all cases or if it may depend on the batch or whatever.

 

As users that have made several RMAs are still facing the same problem I was thinking it would be a general issue but who knows...

 

Still, CS:GO and Dota2, though at least in the first case causes throttling when maxed, there's some fps oriented configurations that may not stress the system enough. What I mean is that we would need more testing from this users that say they're not getting the problem before we can place this as a model defect or just limited to some batches.

On a spanish forum, a guy w latest BIOS, drivers and Windows 10 didnt experience any issues during long gaming sessions. He didnt have to remove any fan cover or do any thermal pasting so idk anymore what to say on this issue w this laptops :////

[Churrucaman]

10 hours ago, Siker said:

On a spanish forum, a guy w latest BIOS, drivers and Windows 10 didnt experience any issues during long gaming sessions. He didnt have to remove any fan cover or do any thermal pasting so idk anymore what to say on this issue w this laptops :////

I'm also from Spain and getting the issue, at least you can discard moving to Spain to fix it. Better than nothing I guess 

 

Tbt I've seen shorter posts regarding thermal throttling of product lines that I would think have sold a lot more. I say we're looking at a general issue with perhaps some lucky ones here and there but who knows. For the dirt cheap price I got this for, at least for me it's still worth it as long as it keeps working.

 

This last days I've been fiddling with some configurations and so far, using bios 208 with the STAPM and PPT fast limit set to 45W and temp set to 75º I haven't got any more throttling just using Turbo mode and can get it to give a decent performance using just a cooling pad, kudos to Bobbydigital for taking the time to look into this. 

[NightRaven109]

This problem drove me insane for the first week I had the laptop, i scrubbed around 20 fourms and found a solution. I tried diffrent bios versions provided by the Asus bios download pg. V207 and v208 have this bug, but v206 did not, if you go to the website right click on the (blue) download button of v207 or v208 then copy link address. Paste that into the search bar, change the "207/208" (in the link url, towards the end of the URL) to "206" press enter and ittl download v206. Asus doesn't show it as downloadable (you've just gotta manually change the URL), but it is on its servers. I think v206 is what fixed it for me but it might've been v205

 

Happy New Year!

[Churrucaman]

Tried 205, 206 and 207 and seems to throttle exactly the same for me. Less 10 minutes of maxxed GTA V is enough to trigger it no matter if I use Performance or Turbo modes.

 

Will check if there's any noticeable difference between them but I sincerely doubt it.

[zZurf]

21 hours ago, Churrucaman said:

Tried 205, 206 and 207 and seems to throttle exactly the same for me. Less 10 minutes of maxxed GTA V is enough to trigger it no matter if I use Performance or Turbo modes.

 

Will check if there's any noticeable difference between them but I sincerely doubt it.

I also play GTA V and for some reason I don't really experience any throttling on it. The game I experienced throttling on was Rainbow six(heavily) and Fifa(Not as bad as r6 but still annoying).

[NESHAY]

Hi all, 

 

Did anyone managed to find any fixes for this?

[Rkes608]

@NESHAYI'm still working fine after just removing vent covers. 

 

Not sure how Asus didn't find an issue when you did. 

 

Maybe they're QC isn't up to scratch when compared to other models or something. 

 

But weirdly I'm working fine after no further mods just removing vent cover. 

[VNVinh]

I think this is a power management AND thermal issues

CPU clock speed come down when I/you run a GPU+CPU stress test

I tried repasting, remove vent blockage and it still working pretty OK (by OK I meant sometimes it still throttle a bit when doing ultra/high setting AAA games)

[VNVinh]

24 minutes ago, VNVinh said:

I think this is a power management AND thermal issues

CPU clock speed come down when I/you run a GPU+CPU stress test

I tried repasting, remove vent blockage and it still working pretty OK (by OK I meant sometimes it still throttle a bit when doing ultra/high setting AAA games)

ASUS might have done this on purpose, blocking vents, to force users to buy Zephyrus M

Suggest you guys try out what I've done, and also use Armoury Crate to set fan speed to 100%

+ A cooling pad might help as well

(I'm from VN, still not really good at English, so...)

[VNVinh]

1 minute ago, VNVinh said:

ASUS might have done this on purpose, blocking vents, to force users to buy Zephyrus M

Suggest you guys try out what I've done, and also use Armoury Crate to set fan speed to 100%

+ A cooling pad might help as well

(I'm from VN, still not really good at English, so...)

http://forum.notebookreview.com/threads/asus-zephyrus-g-ga502-owners-club.829788/

check out how to remove things

[Kanishkveer]

So, after researching a bit I ended up removing the metal paper thing which is blocking the fan intake and it has greatly improved the thermals. Now it runs games 10°C cooler and is giving much better performance as well. Now I'm wondering if this is going to cause any problem in the long run like if there will be excessive dust accumulation in the fan ruining the thermals again. correct me if I'm wrong.

[zZurf]

18 minutes ago, Kanishkveer said:

So, after researching a bit I ended up removing the metal paper thing which is blocking the fan intake and it has greatly improved the thermals. Now it runs games 10°C cooler and is giving much better performance as well. Now I'm wondering if this is going to cause any problem in the long run like if there will be excessive dust accumulation in the fan ruining the thermals again. correct me if I'm wrong.

I'm very new to laptop gaming, how do you exactly remove the metal paper or other vent covers as some people have suggested? I'm worried I might end up breaking something.

[Kanishkveer]

19 minutes ago, zZurf said:

I'm very new to laptop gaming, how do you exactly remove the metal paper or other vent covers as some people have suggested? I'm worried I might end up breaking something.

remove the back panel of your laptop and you will see there are two vent on the back panel which are blocked by the metal paper. You can use knife or blade to cut the openings. 

[VNVinh]

8 hours ago, zZurf said:

I'm very new to laptop gaming, how do you exactly remove the metal paper or other vent covers as some people have suggested? I'm worried I might end up breaking something.

It's okey bro

And once you guys remove those covers, make sure to clean up the fans regulary

I believe BIOS push the hardware too much + fan covers = throttle like crazy

 

[Kanishkveer]

53 minutes ago, VNVinh said:

It's okey bro

And once you guys remove those covers, make sure to clean up the fans regulary

I believe BIOS push the hardware too much + fan covers = throttle like crazy

 

Any idea on how to clean the fans? as they are covered with some plastic material

[VNVinh]

2 minutes ago, Kanishkveer said:

Any idea on how to clean the fans? as they are covered with some plastic material

a blower?

I just blow the dust out :V