REVIEW - ASUS ROG Strix G531GU 1200€$-ish Gaming Notebook

crosstiger · October 28, 2019

So I bought a new notebook a few weeks ago. I did so because on the weekend I'm not at my place and wanted a portable device to play games on. I used to have a Clevo notebook with an I7 6700hq and a gtx 1060. However I sold it because of the 60hz screen, lack of up to date drivers, dying battery and noicy fans (most of which is due to driver issues that wont be fixed anymore...)

So I bought the ROG Strix G for the following reasons:

New 9th gen cpu
A gtx 1660ti (which is supposed to be on paar with the 2060)
120 hz ips screen

So in general a nice hardware upgrade but most of all because it was on sale for 1150€. So it seemd like the best price / performance deal at the time. So does it hold on?

Kurzgesagt (tl:dr)

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In no paticular order

Pros

+ All USB 3.1

+ CPU doesn't thermal throttle

+ Silent opperation (in silent mode)

+ Thin display bezel

+ No webcam (sue me Linus)

+ Pretty good internal speakers

+ Easily servicable

+ The performance of course

+ 120hz ips screen

Cons

- No fingerprint sensor

- Gsync "unusable" it is technically speaking always on, I dont see any screen tearing but there is no option to check.

- No SD card slot

The missing fingerprint sensor is a bit annoying because its such a nice feature but not such a big deal to be a deal breaker. Gsync seems to be always on because I cant see any screen tearing but there is no way to turn it off or check if its actually turned on. The screen is directly wired to the igpu.

Appearance and build quality

Everything you touch has a brushed aluminum finish and feels high quality. The RGB is not too overwhelming and the touchpad is very smooth and quick to use thanks to up to 4 finger movements.

Usability:

The internal speakers sound very good for what they are. No ratteling even at max volume. They can be very loud, dont have much base (as expected) but also dont have a high pitch ear rape. The screen is bright enough and very sharp. There is some ghosting to it but hardly noticable during game. The keyboard is ok. I do miss a few keys here and there and the small return key is a bit annoying.

Performance:

Undervolting the cpu is required to get optimum performance. Using Intel XTU makes it very easy and after doing it I enjoy the increased performance and reduced power consumption.

Maintanance:

Taking the notebook appart is very easy. Only 11 screws that need to be removed and thats it. After removing the bottom part you get access to nearly all components that someone might wanna tinker with. Cooling, RAM, storange, battery, rgb, fans ...

Appearance and build quality - Sleak, high quality

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The entire chassie has a brushed aluminum finish to it which makes for a nice feeling when touching it. Everything you can touch feels high quality. Not on Apples standards but for a 1200$/€ device its really good. The RGB lighting of the keyboard is very even and not annoyingly bright. The strip around the bottom however isn't very well designed. There are four leds in each corner. The light is diffused by a strip around the device. But it's clearly vissible where the leds are because the light gets rather dimm in betweene them. You can't turn off the strip on its own. Either no rgb or all of it.

The hinge of the screen is a little stiff, you cant open it with a single finger but there is no wobble to it at all. Opening and closing the lid feels premium. The back of the lid has a reflective rog logo but no illumination or other gamery aspects to it.

Overall the device looks sleek and the rgb elements can be tweak to not be super wierd.

There are no connection options on the right side of the device. I like that because then there are not cables in the way of your mouse. However there is one exhause hole for the gpu fan but the airflow aims towards of the back side so there is very little to no hot air coming towards your mouse.

The touch pad has a number mode where you can use it as a 10 key extension. By pressing and holding the top right corner for one second you switch between number and mouse mode. If number mode is enabled the touch pad is iluminated and show the numbers, math options, enter and back key. There is some getting used to typing numbers fast but whoever can use a calculator on a phone can use this.

Very unfortunate is the missing fingerprint sensor. While I like the fact that there is no included camera, a fingerprint sensor is very nice to have. I dont understand why ASUS didnt include one. They are super cheap and dont use much space. Could, no should have been included in the power button or somewhere else. Shame...

Pictures

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Internals - This is what you pay for

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CPU: Intel I7 9750H

- 6 Core HT

- 4.5 GHz single core Turbo (rarely seen because more than one cores are active most of the time)

- 4.0 GHz all core Turbo (Drops to 3.6 if power limit kicks in)

RAM: 16 GB DDR4

- 2666 MHz

- Two slots, no solderet ram

- Up to 32 GB possible

GPU: NVIDIA GTX 1660TI

- Boost 1700-1900 MHz

- 100 MHz factory OC

SSD: Intel 660p (ssdpeknw512g8)

- m.2 NVME

- 1500MB/s read

- 1000MB/s write

Display: Mat 15.6" IPS 1080p (Sharp LM156LF-GL02)

- 120 Hz

- 45% NTSC

- 141,21 ppi

- Brighness 282

- gsync

Keyboard: Chiclet RGB Lit 10-key-less

- Multifunktion Keys

- No full sized arrow keys

- No full sized enter button

- Function keys easy to reach but uncoventional position

Touchpad: Windows 10 compatible multi gesture

- glass top finish

- Up to 4-finger gestures

- Number pad mode

Connectivity - A lot for 2019

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Right side

- Pretty much nothing

Back side

- 19V Power connector

- 1x USB 3.1 Type C

- 1x HDMI 2.0b

- 1x RJ45 gigabit Ethernet

Left side

- 3x USB 3.1 Type A

- 1x combo audio jack

Usability - Display, audio, keyboard, touchpad - that stuff

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Display

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I cant really tell whether or not the display is super colour accurate because I dont know what I'm talking about. But since I'm used to a tn pannel on my main rig it's nice to have some powerfull colours again on this ips screen. The 120hz refreshrate is a very nice thing to have. Playing games feels smooth and they look good.

You notice some brightness adjustment going on when switching from something white to something black. If the majority of the screen shows something dark the screen gets a little dimm. When the majority is white the screen brightens up. This can be disabled by adjusting the power plan in the intel control pannel.

Quick and dirty ghosting test

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Not good but not terrible.

Audio

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I'm not an audiophil. If something sounds nice to me I like it. I'm a simple man.

The speakers of the notebook are actually pretty good. They are located at the bottom of the device so the audio doesnt sound like its comming directly from the notebook. It bounces of the table making it hard to locate. But the quality is nice and there is no distortion, ratteling or anything like that. The speaker can be very loud without loosing much quality. At 100% volume there is a bit of vibrating that you pick up through the keyboard but compared to the volume its very very neglegeble.

Have a go (recorded with lg g6). Playing yt at max volum, Windows set to 40%.

The audio processor does a good job at delivering good quality. Comparing the Asus G531 to the Astro Mixamp (2014) and a Creative SoundBlaster X USB soundcard the audio sounds a bit more bass heavy. Same goes for the microphone on my headset. A bit to much bass and required +10 amp to get some decent volume out of it.

As for build in mic. There is a mic array (stereo mic) at the bottom of the screen. It's a build in microphone with all the goods and the bads. The good: Sounds good. It's not direct and picks up everything around it but good. The bad: You hear everything. EVERYTHING. Every key, the fan (if they spin) all of it.

Keyboard

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I'm writing this review on the notebook. So far the keyboard feels good enough. The keypress is a little too stiff for my liking and I do miss a few keys here or there due to spacing. A bummer is the small return key. As a german I do hit the #-key above it to often because I'm not used to it being so far away from my pinky and so close to the return.

Every key is well balanced an there is no wobble on them.

Touchpad

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The touchpad has a very nice feel to it. It's very smooth and there is a very small bump at the edges so you notice if you hit the boarder. The full compatibility with Windows 10 makes for some very quick movement with multiple fingers. The size is perfect for me. Any bigger and I could accedentially hit it with my thumb on the space bar. The location is also in a good spot between my two hand so no accidential touch. The touchpad can be deactivated through a function key.

There are dedicated hardware buttons for left and right click.

By pressing and holding the top right corner for one second you can enable a number key extension. With this mode enabled you no longer controle the mouse but instead have a full number pad with all math options a return and delete "key". Im not as fast typing numbers as on hardware keys but much faster than with the row above the regulard keyboard. It's a good compromise if you have a 10-key less keyboard.

Battery

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Battery last around 3 hours of 1080p youtube videos at the silent settings. Set it to performance or turbo at you drop down to 2 hours.

Performance - Undervolting is key

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The G531 performs out of the box as expected. This is the main reason why someone would buy this machine. There is no thermal trottlling thanks to the massive copper cooling system. However the cpu is being held back by a power limit. At stock values the cpu would run into a current limit after a few seconds of cinebench. Using Intel XTU to inspect the performance while testing we can see that after a few seconds of Cinebench the cpu will hit the Current Limit Throttling. This results in the core clock to drop from 4 GHz down to 3.4 to 3.6 GHz. Not a huge drop but it does decrease performance.

Luckly the fix is pretty easy. All we do is add a negative core voltage offset of 90mv. This greatly reduces power consumption and nearly eliminates all current throttling. Unfortunatly we cant reduce voltage far enough to avoide throttling at all because the system becomes unstable. I did get a successfull cinebench run at a negative offset of 100mv (without any current throttling) but superposition wouldn't load anymore and the system would bsod.

After a day of testing I got the following result:

All test except Cinebench (stock) were done with these settings

Core Voltage Offset -90mv
Turbo Boost Short Power Max 95W
Turbo Boost Power Max 95W
Cache Voltage Offset -90mv

Thermals

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Thermals on notebooks is a bit funny. Because the cpu and gpu share a maximum power budget being available at all times. Depending on what component is maxed out the other will adjust its clocks and therefor thermals. So if the cpu load increases during game the gpu can't draw any more power and wont clock very high resulting in a lower temperature. Therefor the gpu temps are a bit all over the place and not very fixed.

Also the cooling solution is shared between all components. (see maintanance for pictures)

At stock settings the cpu would hit aroud 84°C before the current limit kicks in

At the tuned settings the cpu stays at around 78°C

The gpu hovers in the high 68°C to low 73°C depending on clock and load

Cinebench R20 (Stock)

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Settings

Windows Power Plan set to high performance
ASUS Fan and Performance profile set to "Turbo"

3 back to back runs

2827
2769
2762

You see where the clocks and voltage drops. It's worse on the 2nd and 3rd run compared to the 1st.

Screenshot

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Cinebench R20 (Undervolted)

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Settings

Windows Power Plan set to high performance
ASUS Fan and Performance profile set to "Turbo"

3 Back to back runs

3014
2991
2992

Screenshot (From thermal testing, not back to back run but same settings)

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Superposition

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Settings

DirectX, 1080p, Extreme preset

3 Back to back runs

3091
3098
3094

Screenshot

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GTA V

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Settings

1080p Fullscreen, MSAA 8x, everything maxed out, no TXAA

Avg out of 3 back to back runs

Min: 34,64 FPS

Max: 95,2 FPS

Avg: 61,30 FPS

Forza Horizon 4

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Settings

1080p Fullscreen, 8x MSAA, FXAA, everything maxed out

3 Back to back runs (avg)

74,2 FPS
73,8 FPS
73,7 FPS

Screenshot

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Maintanance and accessebility - Cant complain

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To open the device you have to remove 11 screws at the back. There are 3 different types of screws, so keep track of them. The back cover opens easily after removing the screws. There are a few plastic clipps around the cover so its a good idea to use some sort of plastic card (or one of those plastic cover opening thingys that come with every repair kit) to push the clipps in. The bottom part is one big cover and reached around the heat sinks as well.

This grants you access to: