Brand new Strix Scar 18 died after only 2 weeks, should I keep it?

[bluan]

Hi All,

After much research and comparison, I winded up purchased the 2025 Asus ROG Strix Scar 18" laptop (RTX5080, 32MB, 2TB SSD), for its large screen with min-LED display.  I almost went with MSI Titan 18" Dragon Edition (for its overall tech and performance such as the 4K mini LED display and Intel Ultra 9-285 CPU) or Lenono Legion 9i 18" (for its 4K 18" display) after did a lot of comparison of the 18" laptops, but I winded up bought the ROG Strix Scar 18" when Walmart had a sale for only $2,899 during Labor Day.  I loved the Strix Scar mini-LED display, and it seems not getting hot when in normal office use for business apps (MS Office and web surfing with Chrome).  I was very happy and excited about getting this laptop, until after merely 2 weeks of light use...

I installed my old copy of Call of Duty MW3, and started playing it on this Scar 18. I was playing in a single player mode for about 15 min, and all of the sudden, the screen went dark and then started flickering, and I couldn't click on anything on the screen to stop it.  I thought it must be the game program as hosed, and I should just killed the program by ending its process. So I tried to start the Task Manager with the Ctrl-Alt-Del key, surprisingly, the Task Manager didn't even start.  So I thought maybe the Windows OS is messed up by the crashing of the game, let's reboot the machine. I pressed the power button to shutdown the machine.  Then I pressed the power button again trying to restart, and to my surprise, the machine didn't start. I tried a few more times, and it still didn't power up.  I thought, great, maybe I should do a cold boot by pressing and hold donw the power button for a few seconds to do a reboot, but it still couldn't power up. 

I went to my other computer to search on the web for the "Strix Scar won't start" problem, and I saw a few posts mentioned that I should disconnect the power cord and then hold down the power button for 1 min to let it drain any residual power in the system capacitors, and then try to start again. So I did that for a few times, but still no luck. I then let the machine sit there over night and tried to start it in the morning after, and it still won't power up, as if it just became a brick. 

I contacted Asus customer support, and they gave me a RMA to ship it to the service center named "CHEM USA" in Newark, CA.  Even though I didn't have to pay for the shipping, I had to spend more than $35 for a shipping box and packing foams to package the laptop in a shipping container to ship it. 

After it arrived at the service center for about a week, I got a message from them saying that they could  powered up the laptop with no problem, and asked me if they should proceed to do some testing but I'll risk losing all the software I installed on the SSD, or they could ship it back to me for doing a SSD backup and then ship to them again to check for problems. Since I didn't have the chance to do a backup of the SSD before sending the laptop to them as I wasn't able to turn it on, I asked them to ship the machine back to me, so I can least back up the software I bought & installed on the machine. 

Now the machine is on its way back to me, I have the option to either: 1) buy a new SSD and do an image copy of the curent SSD so I do a back up of the Windows SO and the software on it, and playing the game again to see if the crash happens, and if so, ship the machine to the service center again, or 2) Given that Walmart still allows me to return the laptop to get a full refund, I should just return the machine to the store, since it could potentially have the same problem happen in the future to cause the machine to be bricked again, just to avoid all the headache in dealing with such crashes and have to ship it to service center, etc.  

I am leaning towards option 2 right now, since it could be something wrong in the memory, SSD, or other parts of the hardware, as I was unlucky got a lemon, or maybe even worse such as there's a design bug in the system that could cause it to freeze and not able to power back on again under certain conditions, and this type of bugs are hard to nail down and get fixed, unless Asus would just give me a new machine by swapping this one out, but I highly doubt Asus would do that, so I feel that I should not take the risk of dealing with a dead machine again at some raondom time in the future.

If it was you, what would you do? 

 I am very disappointed that Asus service center wouldn't even simply swap a SSD on the machine to do some diagnose and testing when the machine is in their shop, and after diagose and repair, put the original SSD back so I won't lose the software I purchased and installed on the machine. But instead, we have now wasted nearly two weeks time for shipping the machine back and forth and they did nothing in trying to find the problem.  I asked the technician if there's anything special he did to turn the machine on, so I can do the same if it won't start again, but my question was not answered.  

Now I am really regret that I bought this Asus ROG Strix Scar 18 machine, as it seems to be flaky in terms of its reliability and overall quality control, and it wouldn't even last for a month before it became a dead machine, and I have never had any machine in the past in many decads of using countless computers that ever had a problem of pressing the power button won't start.  There definitely is something wrong with this machine or this model.  Oh, well, maybe I should have bought the MSI or the Lenovo machine in the first place, espeically Lenovo for their much better quality reputation.  Sigh.  

Your comments and suggestion much appreciated!

Thanks!

Bill

[Eugene98120]

I have the same exact laptop. No issues, except for the display adapter crashing on ultimate mode when using exclusively the discrete GPU. I got this laptop as a prize for a giveaway since April 2025, and have been using it since and have had no problems with anything except for the aforementioned issue. Might have been a bad apple that you got in silicon, I would suggest contacting ASUS at executivecare@asus.com
That's all I can provide since this is the highest tier laptop for the price they have.

[bluan]

When you said "display adapter crashing", did you mean the display messed up or frzone, and you can kill the process in Windows Task Manager and get back to normal, or was the entire computer or Windows OS crashing, which require you to reboot?  Can you repro the same problem reliably?  Did Asus executive care provide you any help in resolve the issue?

I think you maybe right that I just got a lamon machine that had a bad chip somewhere.  After I get my machine back next week, I will try to reproduce it to see if it will be hosed at the exactly spot in the game play. If I can reliably repro the problem, I can ask Asus to see what they can do, but if it's a readom problem that can not be reliably reproduced, then that's an iffy situation, and I am afarid that if I keep the machine, which I very much like to do, it may happen again at any random time, which will suck if it crashes in the middle of my work session, such as in the middle of editing a video. 

I am guessing that it could be that the RAM memory module or the SSD was messed up due to heat when playing the CoD game, and one thing I could try is to swap the memory and SSD to see if the problem can be reproduced or the problem will go away.  I was thinking getting a new 64MB RAM to swap out the 32MB RAM, and get a new 4TB SSD to replace the ones on the laptop at some point as an upgrade, and maybe do that now as a troubleshooting step to see if I can pingpoint the problem whether its in the RAM or in the SSD. But the risk is that even if I do that, and the problem persists, then I am really having a faulty machine, and if Asus won't replace it for me, I am stuck with a lemon, and that's why I am thinking "the hell with it, and just return it back to the store to get a full refund while I still can", and just buy a Lenovo Legion or MSI Titan.  

But thanks for the email suggestion, and I will ask them to see what they would do... 

[Silent_Scone]

That’s definitely an unlucky experience. If CS could boot it fine, it could mean the issue was temporary (such as an EC or BIOS lock-up) or triggered by something specific in your setup (power strip, AC grounding, etc.).

Personally, I’d back up your data first. If it’s stable, you may have hit a one-off firmware crash. I'd test with gaming workloads again. If the issue persists, let's go from there.