“Hi, I would like to know how the cooling system works under stress, compared to its two brothers which have the raised underneath called AAS. Is there any noticeable deviation of thermal performance among these models?”
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It depends on what you play. With Rocket League on 120 FPS and max settings, I was getting mid-70s temperatures. That was with undervolting. Otherwise, I'd get mid-80s and even a bit higher. Check out the Intel XTU tool for undervolting, and read some guides on how to do it. It's perfectly harmless. It lowered my temperatures as much as 15 degrees in some games. Usually, I'd get maybe 10 degrees savings, though. I think it helps that this model has only a GTX 1060. It doesn't run as hot as the 1070 or 1080. The full Zephyrus M does not have a Max-Q 1070, so it will run hotter. Also, this model does not come stock with an NVMe SDD. It is M.2 SATA. NVMe runs significantly hotter due to its high speeds. It's actually a good thing ASUS only provided an M.2 SATA, as an NVMe really needs a dedicated fan to not overheat things. I know that people with last year's full Zephyrus model were reporting battery bulging and meltdowns due to the NVMe SSD being right next to the battery. In this model, it is the HDD that is next to the battery, and the M.2 SATA SSD has some space away from the battery. That is a very, very good thing. If you choose to replace your M.2 SATA SSD for more storage, I highly recommend you stick with M.2 SATA instead of going NVMe. Unless you do video editing, you aren't going to notice much of a performance gain anyway. You will, however, keep your laptop cooler with the M.2 SATA. And, you might just prevent a battery bulge/meltdown.
Sorry, there was a problem. Please try again later.The previous person who answered this question seems to have a different model of this laptop than the one being sold in Q3 2018. The laptop I just received from my local Best Buy certainly has a 128GB Kingston NVMe drive installed (along with a 1TB Seagate 2.5" 5400rpm SATA). The M.2 slot is an M-keyed NVMe connector. NVMe (PCIe) and SATA are two different interfaces. Everything I've read suggests that they are not compatible. Additionally, there are different numbers of pins on the "M" end of the slot. Finally, ASUS support states that the bay only accommodates NVMe drives up to 512GB in size. Based on this, I wouldn't recommend trying a SATA drive in your machine. Yes, they are cheaper, however, time is money and you'll lose a lot of it when you go through the process of cloning your drive only to find out that you're going to have to return the SATA drive and purchase an NVMe, then go through the process again. Not worth it.
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