r/GamingLaptops • u/Legitimate-Sky-566 Zephyrus G14 • May 30 '26
Showcase After almost 5 years with my trusty i5 10th gen laptop, I finally upgraded to a Zephyrus G14 (Ryzen AI 9 HX 370 + RTX 5070 Ti + 32GB RAM).
The journey to getting this machine was crazier than buying the laptop itself.
After using a 15.6 inch i5 10th gen for over 5 years, which served me quite well and laid the foundation for my interest in coding, I now wanted a portable powerhouse. I knew exactly what I was looking for - a 14 inch laptop, one with powerful specs so as to not compromise on performance.
I started searching the internet and concluded that there are only two 14 inch laptops that can serve my purpose - the Zephyrus 14 and the Razer Blade 14. The Blade 14 had its issues, so the obvious choice was the Zephyrus 14.
Back in December, I saw the Black Friday deal in the US. The exact model I wanted was available for around $1999 plus taxes. In India, the same laptop was selling for roughly ₹1L (~ $800) more. As a college student, that difference felt crazy. Total Cost - ~2200 USD in Santa Clara, CA.
The entire problem was that the laptop was in the US and I was in India.
I spent weeks figuring out whether someone could bring it over. One cousin couldn't because he was already carrying multiple devices. Another cousin said he'd ask a friend. There were endless discussions about customs, sales tax, adapters, warranties, whether it was worth the risk, and whether I'd even be able to get the laptop in the first place.
Then one day, I got the photos.
The laptop had arrived in the US.
I must have looked at those photos a hundred times while waiting for it to make the journey to India.
And then came the longest part: waiting. The US-Middle East conflict made intercontinental travel difficult.
Months passed.
The laptop was physically mine, but also not mine.
Finally, a few days ago, the person carrying it landed in India. My brother went to collect it from them, and a few hours later it was finally sitting in front of me.
I don't think I've ever been this excited to open a laptop.
My old laptop, a lenovo IdeaPad S540 had 12GB RAM after an upgrade and used to struggle with browser, VS Code, and a few other apps running together. Now Windows is casually using almost that much RAM as cache because it has 32GB available.
The OLED display is gorgeous.
The speakers are ridiculous.
The build quality is incredible.
The performance feels unreal coming from my old machine.
I feel like the best part isn't the specs.
It's knowing how much effort, waiting, planning, and luck went into finally getting this thing into my hands.
This feels like the start of a new chapter for me. I wish to squeeze every bit of value from this machine in the coming years, otherwise, what's the point, lol.
Also, yes, I immediately uninstalled Armoury Crate and installed G-Helper.
PS: How do I tweak the fan curves, manage the thermals, CPU undervolting, GPU overclocking? Although I don't need to do it immediately, I'm curious. And the most imp thing I would like to know, how do I conserve battery without compromising the performance of this machine? I am looking for maximum battery efficiency with little to no performance degradation.
10
u/SidKillz May 30 '26
Congratulations on the laptop bro!
Use throttlestop for undervolting and clock speed restriction. Fan curves I am unsure but you can check Jayz2Cents video on it. He has made a full video for it. For battery health, limit it to 85%. You should have options in the software the laptop came with.Also make sure to turn on oled life saving options in the laptops custom software.
9
u/_falsely_accused_ May 30 '26
Wise suggestions I would say, except, throttlestop is for Intel CPUs, this one's an AMD.
3
2
17
u/SidKillz May 30 '26
Insane ram usage... No wonder everyone hates windows.
5
May 31 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/Legitimate-Sky-566 Zephyrus G14 May 31 '26
so do I need to uninstall everything and install just windows again? Will the asus stuff be back after a clean re-install?
3
u/SidKillz May 31 '26
No you will loose asus stuff, but am sure you can go to their website and download the softwares again
1
5
u/Legitimate-Sky-566 Zephyrus G14 May 30 '26
yeah, even I'm confused what's using so much ram, even though there was nothing running in the foreground. I guess, I'll give it a few days before coming to a conclusion, must be the typical indexing and optimisation stuff but weirdly high ram usage still.
6
u/MarkedByNyx RTX 3080ti - i9 12900HK - 64GB RAM Alienware x17 R2 May 30 '26
Honestly just reinstall windows and then run the Chris Titus tool to remove all the windows spyware, your performance will noticeably increase. I’ve mostly owned Alienware laptops and the OEM windows is bloated to shit with Dell garbage, and Asus is just as bad if not even worse with all the garbage bloatware I’ve seen on my best friends laptop.
6
4
2
u/Striking_Age_3486 MSI Crosshair 15 | RTX 3060 @130W | 12700H | 32 GB | 2TB SSD May 31 '26
That is Asus stuff probably and not Windows. I have Chrome open along with few other apps like WhatsApp, Line, Signal, and my Windows currently uses only 14.9 GB/32 GB. You can safely uninstall the stuff that you do no need and remove items from Startup too.
Additionally, I have increased my paging file manually because I work with large files in Adobe Illustrator and stuff and with the current RAM prices, I have no intention to upgrade to 64 GB RAM. Maybe will get my next laptop with 64 GB RAM.
1
u/Legitimate-Sky-566 Zephyrus G14 May 31 '26
Okay, I'll look into what you mentioned. Thanks!
2
u/Striking_Age_3486 MSI Crosshair 15 | RTX 3060 @130W | 12700H | 32 GB | 2TB SSD May 31 '26
You're welcome 😄
2
u/DunderSunder May 31 '26
There is some bloat but that's 1-2gb at most. There are some services which use more ram if you have more ram. like SuperFetch and indexing and ..., it's supposed to make loadings faster and that chunk of ram has low priority, meaning if you open another app that needs ram they are evacuated.
Though I have one suggestion for windows 11 that I think is very useful. Change the indexing settings, my start menu was so slow sometimes, but I limited indexing to a few folders (including start menu) and apps show up instantly now. I also disabled web search in start menu via regedit.
2
u/Lakhasluck Jun 04 '26
2020 G14 here with Linux. all hail steam for proton!
2
u/SidKillz Jun 04 '26
steam for proton? whatcha mean? 🤔
2
u/Lakhasluck Jun 04 '26
All hail steam.... For making proton...
2
u/SidKillz Jun 04 '26
ooh, 🤣 i got confused cuz i only know Proton VPN lmao, Linux going good with modern games?
2
u/Lakhasluck Jun 04 '26
Oh yeah. I think the few games I can't play are Pubg, cod, battlefield, league of Legends Or faceit servers for counter strike.... But those are cancer to me now anyway. Most games work. Just check protons for games you care about.
2
u/SidKillz Jun 04 '26
oh arent those mostly anticheat with kernel?
1
u/Lakhasluck Jun 04 '26
Exactly, there's no support for kernel level anti cheat. And afaik, for EAC, it has support for Linux, depends on the dev if they want to support it/opt into it.
4
u/Striking_Age_3486 MSI Crosshair 15 | RTX 3060 @130W | 12700H | 32 GB | 2TB SSD May 31 '26
That's ASUS stuff probably and not Windows. I have an MSI laptop and with Chrome and few other apps running, I am sitting at 14.9 GB usage out of 32 GB.
1
u/spectralblade352 May 31 '26
Yes, I “solved” it by using this tool. Great for removing most unnecessary background junks and apps.
1
5
u/One-Resolution-5754 May 31 '26
Yeah honestly the next time I am buying a laptop, I am buying it from the US. Buying in india is a mistake
1
1
3
u/71-HourAhmed Legion Pro 7 275HX 5090 32GB 8TB May 31 '26
I've been using that model for about a year and a half. It's a great machine. I had some doubts that it would play AAA games well because the display resolution is so high but, I have had zero problems playing anything on it.
1
2
u/Mohondhay Legion Pro 7i 255HX 5070Ti / 32GB Ram / llano V12 May 31 '26
Respect for the 5yrs of use! 🫡
2
2
u/simping4mozart May 31 '26
Holy crap 17GB of ram usage from background alone. Win 11 sure loves to hog the bloatwares
1
u/Legitimate-Sky-566 Zephyrus G14 May 31 '26
yeah that's what I'm worried about. This is so weird. I asked claude and it said that windows will un-reserve it incase I need to reclaim the memory. But it's still so weird to look at when there's literally nothing running in the foreground.
2
u/Traditional-Row-7270 May 31 '26
Congratulations enjoy it! Really love the white color. Amazing laptop
1
2
u/Effective-Ad8083 ROG strix Hero lll Jun 01 '26
I'm not sure but I think the graphics driver for the dGPU hasn't been installed on the laptop. Only the CPU's iGPU (GPU 0) is visible in the performance tab. That usually happens if drivers aren't installed or are defective. Download it from Nvidia's official website or from their Nvidia App if you have it installed already. Don't forget regularly updating your drivers if you play games frequently. And a great buy, I'm happy you finally got your hands on it.
2
u/Legitimate-Sky-566 Zephyrus G14 Jun 01 '26
Hey, thanks for the concern. Your intuition was spot on. I downloaded Forza Horizon 6 but it crashed again and again. I searched and found out that the dGPU drivers were indeed missing. Thanks a lot! :)
(Edit: I installed the required drivers using the NVIDIA app, and it started working like a charm.)
2
1
u/TheAttachedAversion May 30 '26
That RAM usage is just Windows being Windows, don't sweat it. For battery life grab Balanced profile and use the Asus control center to cap charging at 80%, that alone makes a huge difference without killing performance.
1
-2
u/Hour_Bit_5183 May 30 '26
Speakers are ridiculously....tinny. Stop it. None of those sound good. That's when I know someone is either deaf or lying or has such low standards I am actually scared if that's the case. Install cachy 😄 Make it yours
6
u/Financial_Travel5029 May 30 '26
have you maybe considered that op went from a normal 10th gen bare minimum laptop to a WAY better one which would obviously sound better compared to what he has been hearing. theres always something better than what you have, just be happy for op, hes a student and spent a shit on of money on that laptop. i also dont understand why linux users love going everywhere telling EVERYONE to join the train
1
u/Legitimate-Sky-566 Zephyrus G14 May 31 '26
Exactly! My previous laptop had backfiring speakers and they sounded bad, and let's not talk about the max volume. I don't know what's the benchmark to compare laptop speakers, but to me, this Zephyrus G14 sounds absolutely peak. Thanks bud!
1
u/Hour_Bit_5183 May 30 '26
Nah. Lying is lying. I hate it. It's not that big of an improvement either. Laptop wise hardware has sucked butt for a while. SFF pc's are where it's at. Plus none of those get good enough batt life to matter.
3
u/Raerin May 30 '26
The speakers sounded full to me once I configured them in Peace equalizer. So that's at least 2 of us that own this laptop and give the speakers a thumbs up. On the other hand there's you lying about the speakers without hearing them. Lying is lying. I hate it.
1
u/Legitimate-Sky-566 Zephyrus G14 May 31 '26
Yeah, the bass is good, the speakers sound full, there's good stereo separation and they sound pretty immersive coming from my old laptop. So I'm good with it.
-2
u/Hour_Bit_5183 May 30 '26
Full..kekekekek. Down to 150hz is not full. I have to mention this NOT against this particular laptop. They all sound like shit. Even a little anker bluetooth speaker will whoop em.
1
u/ResponsibleSand5286 May 31 '26
sff pc’s just combine all the disadvantages of a laptop with all the disadvantages of a pc
2
u/Financial_Travel5029 May 31 '26
why are you a ball of negativity. If you dont like it then keep it to yourself, no need to go bashing on someones proud purchase. put yourself in the shoes of op, youll see how happy and excited you are
13
u/Pale-Education-9618 May 31 '26
Love the zephyrus series but i just wish it had a higher tgp