Thinking about buying a ROG Strix Laptop. Have a few questions.

[Simon551]

Ok. so I am thinking about buying an ASUS laptop. The ROG Strix 16 or the 18. I have a few questions though about Thunderbolt, USB 4, and PCIe passthrough. I also have some questions regarding the Strix compatibility with Linux as an Intel laptop, specifically how well Linux and other more exotic OSes work with your specific implementation of the EFI firmware.  I would prefer an AMD laptop, but they don't have Mini LED or OLED.  OK. Maybe I should be more specific. I would like to know if this thing can add efi paths easily from the UEFI setup utility. I don't like using efibootmgr as it is easy to destroy the NVRAM configuration on some computers, such as by deleting entries for removable device boot which are already set in NVRAM by default, making it impossible to boot a computer from a flash drive.  If I could add EFI paths to the partition on removable drives such as /EFI/GRUB/GRUBX64.efi and add it using your setup utility that would simplify things.   Also on Intel boards, years ago there was this SPI bug in the kernel that affected UEFI Intel boards. It also causes the boot order to become locked. The devs didn't get a heads up from Intel that their driver could cause this. Haven't used Linux (or FreeBSD) on an Intel since. Only on AMDs.  What's the situation on the Intel side of X64 now? Has anything like this happened with newer CPUs with newer platform architecture? Any ASUS Intel's have this kind of problem? I haven't heard anything about it but maybe I just haven't asked the right people lol.

[Simon551]

*Bump*

Ok. so apparently no one knows much about the BIOS/UEFI or it's bugs.

What about something more simple. Is the thunderbolt over USB C the version 4 in the 2024 models? Or will it be? It appears some ROG AMD laptops can be upgraded to USB 4 (or USB4 can be activated) by a BIOS/UEFI update. I ask because it appears PCIe passthrough is possible with USB 4 according to Microsoft.

[murphious]

FWIW, my new G16 has thunderbolt 4, all i really know about it----so far. Ordered a week ago from Bestbuy online and took a week from Cali to get to MO/IL

[paulksi]

I have ROG Strix G17 (2023) G713PV 7845hx and 4060 when i set up closing lid that it should sleep it does not untill i disconnect power cable, many times i found that it was dead after i took it from my bag, or it does not go to sleep at all, not only that, i cannot get audio work on windows 10 because there are no drivers for it so i`m stuck using windows 11 which is a nightmare, then screen sometimes flickers i believe its a driver issue cause it is a completely random thing, after i installed "recommended" nvidia driver randomness got infrequent, which is mind blowing that it cannot get proper latest geforce experience driver and call it a day, then one time it got stuck no cooling, i`m guessing armory crate did this, and it overheated and turned off, i rebooted same thing, then uninstalled armory crate, fans came back after restart. If you want to use windows 10 there are even no freakin drivers for it, i`ve tried to install linux on it linux mint to be exact, had no audio, then downloaded nvdia drivers and it crashed, i`m not very familliar with linux but i`m just guessing it would run easier on some msi or lenovo laptop.