Question Zenbook Flip ux362FA noisy. to return or not?

whatever61

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I am a bit disappointed because the Zenbook Flip ux362FA (i7 whiskey, 16gb, 512GB ssd) overall is quite noisy.

My CPU usage is the regular 2%-10% most of the time and the temp is 50-60c averagely, however the fan will go off and on and it's mostly on. It is not a wild fan noise, but it is still much worse than my previous laptop, that was quiet unitl at least 20%+ cpu usage.

There there's an app called ASUS FAN QUIET, which will make my laptop about 3 times slower and slower than my previous laptop. why would someone use that..

Any normal solutions for this?

Thanks
 
50 Celsius is usually around where the fans begin to kick in. Your notebook is running just hot enough to constantly warrant low RPMs. This might be bad thermal paste application, a poor cooling system design, or both.

There there's an app called ASUS FAN QUIET, which will make my laptop about 3 times slower and slower than my previous laptop. why would someone use that..
Makes you wonder if it really is a design issue for them to include that. 😕 It sounds like it uses passive cooling (slows processor instead of revving fans).
 

whatever61

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it's worse than I thought.. it's constantly goes between 50c do 60c and a bit. On 60c it goes much louder and it becomes really unpleasant. this happens every 2 minutes or so.
This is not progress. Such laptops should not be sold.
 
A few things you can try are:
  • Fan speeds are controlled by the BIOS. Usually the manufacturer tweaks them a bit in new BIOS releases. So you can try upgrading or downgrading the BIOS.
  • Lift the base of the laptop so there's better airflow. Or if you always use the laptop at the same desk, buy a laptop cooler (basically fans which blow air into the bottom vent grilles.
  • Disable hyperthreading. There should be a BIOS setting for this. Hyperthreading mostly helps with video encodes, data compression, encryption, and a few games. For other tasks, turning HT off usually results in a 5%-15% performance hit, but a significant power reduction. You can always turn it back on if you need to do something like encode videos for a few hours.
  • Undervolt the CPU. This requires a lot of tweaking and testing to get right, but can result in substantially lower heat generation if you happened to win the processor lottery. I kinda doubt there's much headroom for undervolting on your U processor though. https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/24075/Intel-Extreme-Tuning-Utility-Intel-XTU-
  • Disable Turbo Boost. That is, limit your processor to its base clock speed. Unfortunately for this processor that's 1.8 GHz vs the max boost speed of 4.5 GHz. So you probably don't want to do this. But if you wanted to, it's in Power options -> Change plan settings -> Change advanced power settings -> Processor power management -> Maximum processor state. Set it to 99% to disable Turbo Boost. Set it at a lower percentage to limit SpeedStep (which in your case would max it out below the 1.8 GHz base clock speed).
 

whatever61

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A few things you can try are:
  • Fan speeds are controlled by the BIOS. Usually the manufacturer tweaks them a bit in new BIOS releases. So you can try upgrading or downgrading the BIOS.
  • Lift the base of the laptop so there's better airflow. Or if you always use the laptop at the same desk, buy a laptop cooler (basically fans which blow air into the bottom vent grilles.
  • Disable hyperthreading. There should be a BIOS setting for this. Hyperthreading mostly helps with video encodes, data compression, encryption, and a few games. For other tasks, turning HT off usually results in a 5%-15% performance hit, but a significant power reduction. You can always turn it back on if you need to do something like encode videos for a few hours.
  • Undervolt the CPU. This requires a lot of tweaking and testing to get right, but can result in substantially lower heat generation if you happened to win the processor lottery. I kinda doubt there's much headroom for undervolting on your U processor though. https://downloadcenter.intel.com/download/24075/Intel-Extreme-Tuning-Utility-Intel-XTU-
  • Disable Turbo Boost. That is, limit your processor to its base clock speed. Unfortunately for this processor that's 1.8 GHz vs the max boost speed of 4.5 GHz. So you probably don't want to do this. But if you wanted to, it's in Power options -> Change plan settings -> Change advanced power settings -> Processor power management -> Maximum processor state. Set it to 99% to disable Turbo Boost. Set it at a lower percentage to limit SpeedStep (which in your case would max it out below the 1.8 GHz base clock speed).

Thanks for the ideas.

  • It's latest BIOS
  • airflow is fine, it's not about that
  • No HT option in my bios. It's a very basic BIOS like from the 90s or something
  • I am not going to undervolt my CPU :)
  • Why would I want to use a 1.8GHz laptop.. then it is better to use my older laptop. don't understand this idea

I bought this laptop a week ago. I need to know if it's a known problem of this model or not. I don't see such complaints online. So either I return it or I send it under warranty.
 

whatever61

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today I brought it to office the first time, it's like a water boiler is working in the background with 2%-10% (exactly same load as it was with my previous laptop). Sorry, I just can't stop being disappointed..
 
Last edited:
Jun 30, 2019
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Hi, I have bought such model a few days ago and also conclude it is noisy and hot (at least comparing to several laptops I used before). I have the model with i5-8265 CPU and 8GB of memory.
Right now I have only Chrome with 8 tabs opened and the temperature is 50 C running on a battery. Connecting power supply makes it to go up to 55 C and more than 60 C when I opened video on Youtube.

I have not tried updating BIOS but indeed it is very simple and does not allow to manage hyper threading or Turbo Boost features. The product page at asus.com mentions UEFI BIOS but there seem to be only Legacy one.
 

whatever61

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I am still using it, but I always use it in QUIET MODE and I work on my server directly via REMOTE DESKTOP.

Of course, it's not an option for everyone, but working with the noise is not an option for me..