Quad Core Gaming Rig 16GB RAM. Review on Asus G74SX

At this price point (USD 1800) you might as well put in another $200 and get a dell laptop instead. Dell has standards and provides proper international warranty. An engineer will come to your residence and fix the laptop for you in your presence. Dell also has much better logistics. Parts take 4-5 days max to arrive rather than 25 plus working days for ASUS laptops

Review of after sales service and support. . .

Asus has contracted vendors locally and their standards are rather low. They do not even know how to open the laptop and get really offended when I politely show them how. . .

Furthermore, it takes 25 working days to procure replacement parts.

So my HDD has conked off. Seagate's seatools clearly indicates that the hdd is defective.

The hdd bay is user accessable and I have installed two hdds in the available space which are working fine. Since these are working fine, it confirms that my hdd needs replacement not my motherboard.

Yet, the engineers at Rashi Peripherals tell me that they will have to open the motherboard to perform their testing. Since the rest of the laptop is working perfectly fine, and the hdd and it's connectors can easily be accessed from the hdd bay, I does not make sense to me to tinker with the motherboard.

I see no merit in their argument for disassembling my laptop. When the motherboard is working perfectly fine, there is no point tinkering with it. It's performance will not improve, instead there is scope for complications.

Yet, the engineers insist that they need to test the motherboard by disassembling my laptop.

Furthermore, they have informed me that it takes around 25 working days to get a replacement component for ASUS laptops.

They also have a problem since I've installed an SSD in there and another hdd for troubbleshooting, even though this is user configurable as per the ROG website.

I am supposed to have received 1 year accidental warranty + 1 year global warranty.

But asus website indicates that I only have 1 year warranty.

Futhermore, they have options to purchase extended warranty but those links do not work.

When I called up the US support number, the agent was kind enough to listen to my problem and extended my warranty by 3 months since it is near expiry.

He further informed me that warranty extension is provided by the dealer and not ASUS.

Honestly, if I had known about their state of affairs, I would have purchased a dell instead.

Perhaps ASUS as a company is going through troubles or is not well organized. Anyway, the consumer suffers.

== Review of the actual product==

NOTE:

1. I purchased this product from amazon.com while I was in the US. It cost me around $1700. Worked out to around 80K INR.

1. I also plonked in a samsung ssd SATA2. Now it takes 15 seconds after bios logo for me to reach the login screen. You need an SSD to jump from 6.0 to 7.2 in the windows experience index.

   
   




2. This is a desktop replacement. This is not an easily portable laptop as most people expect.

   
   




3. If you are planning to buy this laptop in india, please confirm the specs first and do not blindly buy just cause I said so :)

   
   

PROS:

1. I got 16 GB of RAM!!!

   
   




2. GEFORCE GTX560M with 3GB RAM!!!

   
   




3. The keyboard is good and nicely backlit but will take a little while getting used to.

   
   




4. I really like the true 1/2 HD screen with a native resolution of 1920 X 1080.

   
   

If a computer monitor does not support a resolution natively, it automatically downscales it to fit it within it's predefinied hardware characteristics.

1. User accessable HDD bay which supports two HDDS. Yes. This laptop supports two hdds. You can run them in a RAID 0 setup if you want. I simply migrated to an SSD and use the OEM drive as a secondry drive in here.

   
   




2. Laptop does not get hot at all no matter what games you are playing and for how long. When I first got it, I ran torture tests using BOINC so that if it were to conk off, it would do so in the US and I would get a refund. I stressed all 4 cores, and the graphics all at once by running 6 simulations at once. As promised, it does blow it out of the rear and the fan is whisper silent too.

   
   

Games run perfectly well without stuttering.

Please note that you need an SSD if you want to run this laptop at it's max power.

This will cost you another 10K approx.

CONS:

1. Sentelic Trackpad: Ever heard of it? NO? Cause it is garbage. I always use a MS wireless mouse, but I would have happily paid another $100 if I could have had this with a Synaptics trackpad instead.

There is a hardware issue with the trackpad's grounding cable not being shielded or insulated properly. This causes the mouse pointer to dance around on it's own from time to time.

1. This laptop is really bulky. I mean very very heavy. Cannot carry it in one hand.

   
   




2. At 17.8 inches diagonally, it won't fit in a backpack without some struggle. With it's weight you better be careful or you could rip your backpack.

   
   




3. I am not sure if you will get proper service and support for this laptop in india. The keyboard for instance is rather unique, and so is the trackpad. . .

   
   

OTHER THOUGHTS:

If only I had waited 2 days. I could have gotten the same config with a 3D capable monitor for only $200 extra.