ASUS G53SW-XA1 Republic of Gamers 15.6-Inch Gaming Laptop
ASUS G53SW-XA1 Republic of Gamers 15.6-Inch Gaming Laptop
- Intel i7-2630QM (2.0 GHz Quad-Core with Turbo Boost up to 2.9GHz)
- 8GB DDR3 1333MHz, 4 SODIMM Sockets, up to 16GB
- 500GB HDD (7200RPM); Super-Multi Optical Drive
- 15.6-Inch FULL HD (1920×1080) LED Display; Nvidia GTX 460M Graphics with 1.5GB GDDR5 VRAM
- Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium
15.6″ FHD (1920×1080) (LED) / Intel Core i7-2630QM (2.0 GHz Quad-Core) / 8GB DDR3 RAM / NVidia GTX 460M 1.5G GDDR5 VRAM / 500GB HDD (7200RPM) / DVD Super Multi Combo Drive / Illuminated Keyboard / Windows 7 Home Premium (64bit) / 802.11BGN / 2.0M Pixel / Bluetooth / 8 Cell battery / 1 USB 3.0 port / 3 USB 2.0 ports / 8-in-1 card reader / 1YR Global warranty / 1YR Accidental Damage Warranty / 30-Day Zero Bright Dot / 2-way FREE shipping / 24-7 tech support They’ll Never Know What Hit’em List Price: $ 1,299.99 Price: $ 999.99
A great piece of hardware, with some major flaws,
I’ve had this computer for about 3 days, and my feelings on it went from wanting to defenestrate it, to pure love. For starters, I ordered a separate 256GB corsair solid state drive so I can have fast boot and load times for the OS and apps. Now, installing an additional hard drive in most laptops requires mostly just removing the bottom plate, but not for this laptop. With this laptop, I had to remove the keyboard by prying it out and then carefully unlatching the connectors from the computer. Then, I had to remove the the piece with the touch pad and unscrew a set of screws that are holding the bottom plate in. Then, I’m finally able to remove the hard drive cover underneath the laptop after the last bit. Why did Asus have to make such a trivial thing so complicated?
Anyways, after I finally got to the hard drive bay I found out that the second empty bay has no bracket to hold a hard drive in. I looked online and nobody was selling them. Yes, that’s right: this computer IS ADVERTISED as having the capability of storing an additional hard drive, but the company is not including or even selling any bracket to allow me to do it! I couldn’t find them anywhere! So luckily, my drive was a solid state, with no moving parts. What I ended up doing is taping some business cards underneath the solid state drive and letting it rest evenly on those, and then folding one of them between the space that the drive and the bay would occupy so that it doesn’t wiggle around. No issues so far, I’m pretty furious that I’m being put in this situation, and I’m definitely giving Asus a call and demanding that they ship or sell an extra bracket to me. There is absolutely no reason at all why I have to do this.
Lastly, once I got everything in place I decided to use the recovery cd’s that I created in the beginning to reformate/unpartitian the primary drive and install windows 7 on the solid state drive… but guess what? The recovery cd’s do not have the capability of reformatting. What I had to do was hunt down an .iso of windows and burn that to a disk, then use it as my windows install… because the recovery cd is not a ‘true’ windows. I don’t understand why Asus doesn’t include a generic windows dvd since, you know, I PAID for the licence and it costs them next to nothing. They did include a driver CD, which is generous.
So that’s all the bad stuff out of the way. Once I got everything up and running and with the right setup, things got much better. For starters, the performance on this thing is top-notch. With a solid state drive as the main OS, this laptop boots up in 20 seconds. It handles everything I throw at it with ease. I have the laptop outputting to a second 24 inch monitor as an expanded desktop and it runs starcraft at full resolution and mostly high settings at around 40-60 fps. Best of all, it doesn’t ‘downclock’ to cool down like most of the laptops out there do. The reason for this is an extremely efficient cooling system in the back that blows air out one vent and sucks in air at the other. This keeps things relatively stable, and quiet. I’m not waking up my GF while I game on starcraft after she goes to sleep, and in comparison the Envy 17 I had and returned before this (which cost a beefy 2300) sounded like a jet engine.
This is a top-notch gaming rig, and I’m very happy with it so far. Would I recommend to anyone else? Well, it depends. If you’re going to be happy with the measly 500GB of storage, then yes. However, if you want to do what I did or install a larger capacity hard drive, then I recommend you tread lightly or have a certified technician do it for you.
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|Had trouble in the beginning, but i’m loving it now!,
At first, the asus live update kinda threw me off, because it kept getting rid of my ATK driver. ATK driver is for hotkeys such as fn button i believe. I had to re-install ATK driver from the asus support site and now it works fine. After that i just got rid of the asus live update, since most people told me it causes many problems. I’m not a intense gamer, however, this baby does run all the games i throw at him at max settings. The computer itself does not overheat, and it is not even loud at all. Keyboard is really nice to type on and it doesn’t flex much. Overall, i am really shocked how well built this thing is.
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|DC Power Connector weak,
While this laptop has exceptional performance, when it works, there is a fatal flaw in this entire series.
ASUS uses a sub-par power connector… the central pin in the DC power jack has broken twice in the last 6 months on my machine. They repaired it the first time (a process that required sending the machine to Milpitas, CA twice, because on the first repair they forgot to reattach the antenna for the wireless), at a time without my laptop of about 1 month. Now, after three months, it has happened again (and I have been very careful with it this time).
It is inconceivable to me that they would scrimp on a $2 part for a $1300 performance laptop, but they have. You would have thought that the industry would have learned from Apple!
The other issue I have had (which is minor in comparison) is that it is larger than most 17″ laptops, making it difficult to find a bag that fits it.
So, my suggestion is to not buy this laptop… instead by an Alienware or a Dell (yes, I know alienware is owned by Dell).
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