Major Issues with Asus ROG Strix G18

[ccamfps]

This laptop is absolute trash DO NOT BUY this or any other laptops that use the same BIOS. There is some buffoonery going on with respect to Windows 11, power plans, power modes, Asus BIOS, Asus perf modes, ArmouryCrate, GHelper, and display brightness with the root cause of the issues being Asus BIOS I believe (and by extension, AC and GHelper) interacting with Win 11 powerplans/modes. I've spent well over 100hrs on this thing in the last 4 weeks trying to make it run consistently, not even trying to max it out, just to make it run consistently. My temps never get hot while using it and am constantly CPU throttled from EDP Other even after removing a bunch of throttles in Throttlestop. Apart from TS, documentation on all of these things is god awful; for a consumer based tuning software, the documentation is appalling. As a distributed systems software engineer, never in my life have I worked with more obtuse software and technology.

I have reset to defaults everywhere numerous times. Cleared CMOS, reset BIOS, reinstalled drivers, etc. I have done the troubleshooting on Ghelper and read many a thread. This laptop has barely been used. I bought it at the very end of 2023 for some travelling and light usage, then didn't use it for over a year as I had a different machine. CMOS battery is fine. It had maybe 20hrs of usage on it before I started it up again last month. I wish I would've used it more heavily last year as I would've sent it right the hell back while it was under warranty.

List of issues per my understanding
- Most recent BIOS 331 has issues and can't be reverted once you have 331. There is no warning or notice about this.
- BIOS is locked down harder than Fort Knox. Can't change anything of importance.
- Laptop will get stuck at 45w, 55w, and max power CPU will draw is 65W, even while boosting, while doing anything other than benchmarks. If it gets stuck at 45w or 55w, only fix I've found is reset BIOS again but maybe there's something easier. While doing CPU benchmarks it can draw really high power (?????). Using GHelper alone I don't believe I ever got it back to 65W once my PC was limited to 45/55. Only Armoury Crate let me get back there after a BIOS reset.
- After restarting or sleeping, power is significantly limited to even lower than 45W sometimes and cache/turbo ratios will get stuck at around 30. A hard shutdown is required. Hilariously, the laptop can draw insane power while it's sleeping and get very hot unless you setup the fans for it, but once it comes out of sleep it can't draw that same power.
- None of the specified custom PL1 and PL2 limits in Armoury Crate, GHelper, or Throttlestop seem to ever actually get applied because BIOS seems to have ultimate say. HWInfo, XTU, etc all read from intel and are misleading on this Asus BIOS.
- Cant tune fans on ArmouryCrate except for Manual Mode but Manual Mode seems to have issues being stuck at some random power limit at boot.
- No setting values, display, or documentation in Armoury Crate on any power limits, PL1, PL2, etc for each of the Asus perf modes.
- If you do manage to get it to 65W, simply opening GHelper and trying to change the fans for any Asus perf mode, GHelper will change power mode regardless of if you have apply power limits checked or not (these only apply to pl1 and pl2 I guess) and then laptop will be stuck at 45W/55W again. If you try to change power plan/mode back to what it was prior, doesnt matter, still stuck at 45W/55W. <- this just happened to me again a few minutes ago. You can custom set some power plan GUIDs for each Asus Perf mode in GHelper config but this seemed to cause other issues. Either way, regardless if there's a json config fix, by default, GHelper should not overwrite the Power Mode just when changing fans. Oh and again, can't tune fans in Armoury Crate for any mode that's not Manual Mode.
- GHelper and Armoury Crate have different Windows power plans for the same Asus Perf Mode.
- While I appreciate the GHelper devs for their efforts, the majority of settings in GHelper config have 0 documentation even in the Power Users page on GHelper Github. Every setting should have documentation, especially for consumer facing tuning software.
- The most bewildering thing of all, primary and secondary display brightness will get slightly brighter after every reboot and the only controls when dGPU is on, are through Nvidia but you end up running out of slider to tone down the display brightness. I think this is related to power plan/mode at boot changing when windows comes up but am not sure. It gets bad enough to hurt my eyes and gives me a headache.

I'm not sure all of the problems are Asus' fault, however, if the BIOS wasn't so locked down and opaque in setting power limits/values, power plans, and power modes from AC/GH, I believe any win 11 power issues could get worked around. Things are so opaque, and I can't even see any of the actual power limits being applied from BIOS and AC, it's hard to get a certain understanding of what's going on. What I am certain of though, is that this laptop is a POS.

Throttlestop has been great to work with though. It has helped me a bunch with this PC but unfortunately it's just limited in what it can do in this PC from the BIOS.

This is all rather unfortunate because in 2013 I bought an Asus ROG laptop and absolutely loved it. It worked great, and never even had to manually tune it. It just worked. I even got some buddies to buy that laptop back then and they all loved it. The hard drive in mine finally crapped out in it in 2022 but afaik, everything else in it still works. Unfortunately, after dealing with the Asus ROG Strix G18, Asus is never getting a single dollar from me again. Spending $3k on this laptop is the equivalent of throwing your money in the dumpster, which is where the laptop belongs.

[mifernandez]

I am sorry to hear you're frustrated with this system. I am as well, the reduced performance is notable and Asus is suspiciously silent on Bios 331. I am guessing they're not monitoring these forums with the amounts of complaints that are levied against them. If I were to speculate, it would be that maybe Microcode 13B was more of an issue than intel let on, and they felt compelled to lock down the system to avoid an influx of warranty claims, or, it could be negligence on their part. We will never know as they are simply absent from the conversation. I share a similar stance to you, I'll not be purchasing Asus products in the future. But consider that the bad press they've received in  this and other online platforms has not gone unnoticed, and some of us in this space represent considerably more than a singular purchase. 

[eXplode]

Yes you explain the problems very good and in the end Biggest problem is the newest Bios and the limited power optimization that come from the newest bios ... I have Scar 16 rtx 4080 and i9 13980HX and work perfect no BDOS no black, blue screen or other problem and this is thanks to BIOS 318  also i disable all bios updates to prevent bios 331  so all users are FFFFF from asus whit the newest bios 

[TurboManiac]

Hello.

I have similar issues with the G6 model. I don't get any responses from ASUS,seems noone care. Why I didn't read your post few days earlier! I am trying to send it back but in my third world EE country it is not easy. This laptop was marked as the best on the whole list of notebooks with this GPU - RTX 4070 on a big electronics shop network, noone tested anything, just a stupid bunch of clowns offering leasing. What a stupid mistake to fall in this trap.

Since Asus are not going to help what remains than trying to help each other. Strix with RTX4070 is performing 2 times worse than TUF with RTX3050TI and NItro wuth RTX3060. Even worse than RTX2070!

I also tried everything to fix the performance all the available and not-working tools - G-Helper, GPU Tweak, Armrory Crate. TRying switching off vsync, other options in NVIDIA Control Panel. It would not solve any performance issues. The worse is when the CPU and GPU are loaded beyond certain limit and both start to heat up, so the power control can't figure out how to distribute the power. So when I have very low CPU usage, GPU manages to work for certain time, not at what is expected, but lets say decently. Once CPU is also loaded, not so much, I can see in G-Helper rather low temperatures, about 60 degrees, but something shuts down both CPU and GPU anyway. I can't figure out is it a software or hardware problem? Increasing memory/GPU frequency in GPU Tweak, custom fan plans and etc. did not fix the problem. It is unbelievable but I got 4 times worse performance than Acer Nitro with RTX 3060 and 6 MB RAM! How Asus could screw up this notebook so much.

I also installed latest Bios-331. Can I roll it back? Is there people here with the same Sitrix model that have no such issues?

Is it possible this to be result of issues with the GPU card thermal cover? I almost have the feeling that the sold me a notebook with used GPU.

[Drapo]

I have the same issues on my g18 4080, maybe I need to create a new post about this issue but I'm legit falling in depression because of that ..

I bought this laptop open box on ebay less than a month ago and it keeps having issues, first the keyboard just stops randomly for 5s to 1min or more randomly but after doing some research it seems " normal " and is a known issue in recent Asus laptops. 
Then core 2 and 4 had especially bad temps ( around 95 to 100, while other cores stayed around 70 for efficiency and 85 for the performance cores ). After a Nvidia driver update everything was even worse, glitchy and laggy, games also ( mh wilds for exemple ) and I kept getting crashes and stutters on OBS.

I formatted/reinstalled win 11 with all updates, installed My asus, did all updates there too and those issues kinda went away. I also thought that the LM spilled/oxyded because of normal use so I sent to to a professional repair shop to get a cleaning and repasting and now it's even worse. I'm constantly thermal throttling on games because all cores spike to 100 ( performance not E-cores ) and TVB throttle, also reaching EDP while just idling on chrome. Then 5 days ago I had a minor heart attack because all fan stopped spinning after I woke the pc from deep sleep, temps were at 100 on all Pcores and 95 and Ecores !! This never happened before. Restarting did nothing and Myasus diagnostic only woke the fans up, but the issue kept happening. Only doing an electrical reset worked, a solution I found thanks to a random post on reddit.

I bought a cooling pad and this helped at first but since yesterday I'm having micro stutters in games, I can see some core clock dropping to 800mhz at the same time I'm stuttering .. I didn't have that issue the first week of buying and trying the laptop. I tried to undervolt core/cache to -75mhz, changed power plan in Ghelper to agressive efficient, changed the fan curve to be more agressive ( full 6000/7200/7000rpm at temps higher than 75 ) and this did nothing, core 0 is still idling at 96 even while gaming on the cooling pad at max fan speed, other p cores stays at 80 to 90 max, while efficiency rarely pass 80/85.

Could someone advise me ? I've spared a lot of money for a long time to buy this laptop, it was kinda my dream laptop since I've laid eyes on it and it was the first time I bought another laptop since my old rog G751jy which lasted me 11 years with minor issues.
I'm wondering if all of this is normal for this model or if I have a faulty unit, the device isn't in warranty anymore but I still have 4 days to return it to the seller. I'm even hesitating to buy a strix g18 2025 with a 5070ti instead and getting rid of this stress inducing device, but I fear they have the same issues.

Thank you for reading ! any help would be very much appreciated

[mifernandez]

What you're describing sounds as if the paste missed a portion of the cpu die, particularly where those physical cores are located. I recognize this is probably not what you'd like to consider, but youtube how to disassemble your cooler and verify that the liquid metal was applied correctly, to both CPU and GPU.

It's ultimately just screws and plugs, it's not difficult, but the liquid metal cannot come in contact with the motherboard.

Another thing to factor is the Bios, which bios #are you currently on? Some of these issues may have been addressed, but make an effort to avoid Bios 331.

I used this guide, fairly easy but not without risk. Proceed cautiously...

https://youtu.be/JE0ySg-rQH4?si=Rj6KS8VmB-f55TQx

[Drapo]

Thank you for replying ! Yes that is what I thought, maybe the repair guy just didn't apply the lm correctly and frankly he was very fast when working on the laptop, I gave it to him around 4pm and by 7:30pm he was done and told me to come and take it. I didn't want to do the repaste myself as I'm not confident working with lm. I asked him to take me some pictures of the metal before reapplying and it was a mess, there was even a dry spot in the middle of the cpu die, the rest of the lm had spilled around the die ( still in the safe area thankfully ).

I'm on bios 331 sorry I forgot to mention it in my previous post, the laptop was already at bios 331 when I received it. As it has the microcode fix for 13th/14th gen I thought it was great choice by the seller, now I'm not so sure.

[Zalevskiy]

Since you wrote that everything was ok at first, is it possible not to update the BIOS and drivers? In my case, this device worked perfectly in the 2023 state, I just banned all driver and Windows updates.

But now they imposed 331 BIOS on me, which in combination with the armory crate did not work, the fans did not work after waking up from sleep (not the first time I read about this bug on the forum) It seems that all laptops are initially well-configured from the factory (with the exception of the armory crate) and after a while they are spoiled by updates.

Maybe this is the idea of ​​marketers, so that laptops are updated more often?

[Drapo]

I'm not so sure no.. Apparently it's not possible to rollback from bios 331 and i'm not keen on messing with the bios itself.
But yes it was working kinda fine, games were very smooth but there was this issue with the keyboard going off randomly and both cores 2 and 4 that had high temps compared to all other cores. Then I did that nvidia update from the 16th of april and I began having those stutters/crashes with obs right after, with very high temps. That's when I reinstalled windows and all drivers/updates in a clean way. I really hope the lm is the issue but still, it's behaving strangely for a new device .. 

( as for the microcode issue it's a very complicated subject, I'm not even sure if laptops were concerned - some say they did, some say they don't - but bios 331 came with the fix that prevented cpu cores from reaching the 1.6v mark that damaged those cpus. Intel did a whoopsie with 13th/14th gen and this was kinda a big deal last year, maybe it still is but i'm not sure  ) 

[Zalevskiy]

for the microcode, in my opinion, it is complete nonsense, something like a loophole for special services. For example, I installed Linux, my microcode is 313 bios = 115h version, but the microcode 12C works in Linux. That is, they can be anything, it's just marketing that we always use the latest, but new does not mean quality

ucode 12C