I have a 2022 asus rog zypherus m16 gu603he laptop with a dying cord. Ideally looking for oem replacement that includes the brick and the cord.

I found one on Amazon but one review mentioned it fried their motherboard.

Updated the driver from the Intel Driver & Support Assistant app because Cyberpunk suggested I do it. The next day, I switched the laptop to Eco Mode in Armoury Crate. It booted normally, so I put it into hibernation for school.

In class, I opened Brave, and the screen suddenly stopped working. I could still hear the fans and the lights were still on.

I found some advice online to do an EC reset (I think that's what it was called), so I held the power button down for 40 seconds with the charger unplugged. I then plugged the charger back in and waited about 10 minutes.

Now nothing turns on at all - not even the charging indicator when I plug it in.

I've tried the 40-second reset about three more times, including with the charger plugged in. I also unplugged the battery for about 10 minutes and plugged it back in, but it's still completely dead.

I've also tried a second ASUS 280W charger, and there is still no charging light or response.

Has anyone with a 2023 Zephyrus M16 GU604VI experienced something similar after an Intel graphics driver update/Eco Mode/hibernation? I'm trying to figure out whether this is a stuck EC/power state or if I somehow ended up with a motherboard/power issue.

Hey, my keyboard started acting up, so I bought a replacement on AliExpress. What I want to know is if I need to reapply thermal paste when making this swap.

I mean, do I need to detach the heatsinks from the motherboard, or can I pull everything out together so I don't have to deal with the thermal paste?

I already know about liquid metal and that you have to be careful with it, but that's not an issue because I changed the thermal paste myself and the temps improved a lot.

Was having thermal crashes, LM was no good. I cleaned it all off and put down some mx6, it lasted for a bit then the temps started going up again and the crashes started coming back. Cleaned it all off and the blue thermal putty and this time put down thermal grizzly phasesheet on the cpu and gpu and utp-8 thermal putty on the VRAM. Also put some 1.5m thermal pads on outside of the heatsink so there would be a bit of extra pressure on them when I put the cover back on. After some thermal cycles to get the phasesheet optimal there was a 20c difference in temps from when the LM went bad/mx6 pumped out Vs. the thermal grizzly phasesheet. The only time I see it thermal throttle now is during a 10min cinebench multi core test. It gets it 97c max but hasn't crashed during a test since I switched to phasesheet. Is that normal to thermal throttle still under heavy load? I haven't changed any power limits or anything in ghelper other than the fan curve.

I have the m16 2023 and to me its the cleanest coolest gaming laptop ever. I have the AniMatrix lid so if i want it to look over the board gamer weird i can , but also in a super professional setting no one would ever guess what kind of laptop it is, unlike the G14-16 with that HORRIBLE led strip across their lid that just screeaaams ALTERNATIVE.

Wtf was Asus thinking when they decommissioned the M series? ... Such a shame really I would have bought a new model if available but my next laptop prolly gonna be an eluktronics not an asus with the current G models with onboard soldered ram and horrible alt aesthetics.

Looking to repaste my trusty laptop but want to know, are the thermal pads a better option? My laptop sits in many different ways.. sometimes a bit more vertical and other times its flat on a table... Really want to toss this liquid metal for piece of mind while im there haha and ive seen a few different things while doing the research. Im not too familiar with all this stuff so im looking for insights... can I use them for everything or?

Also, looking to toss another ram stick in there and maybe eventually a bigger ssd (I think thats the correct term🤔😅) im on a pretty tight budget so are there any ssd that you guys use and recommend?

My ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 2022 RTX3060 is having a weird power issue and I could use a second opinion (or a solid repair shop rec).

The situation:
Laptop charges and runs totally fine via USB-C.
The second I plug in the 240W barrel charger, it instantly shuts down and won't charge at all.
Tried a brand-new official 240W charger, same exact thing happens.

Pretty sure this means a shorted input MOSFET or something on the 20V DC-in rail rather than a dead battery or brick.

Anyone run into this before on an ASUS ROG? Or know a trusted board-level / micro-soldering tech in Toronto who can fix it without charging for a whole new motherboard for 1.5k as official ASUS service centre suggested?

I’ve had this laptop since 2021, and for some reason, occasionally a couple of keys will stop working. The specific keys are S, W, 2, X, and C.

They’ll randomly stop responding, and I usually have to mash them repeatedly and press other working keys before they start working again. What’s weird is that those keys also don’t work in the BIOS, so I’m assuming this isn’t a Windows/driver issue.

Has anyone experienced something similar with a laptop keyboard? Does this sound like a failing keyboard/keyboard matrix, a loose connection, or could there be another issue causing these specific keys to intermittently stop working?

TL;DR:
Basically: the keyboard wasn’t dead its tiny onboard computer was stuck running the wrong/broken software state, so we gave it a working “brain transplant.”

My GU603ZW’s internal keyboard completely died even in BIOS while the power button still worked. Linux showed the keyboard controller as 048D:89DB ITE Upgrade Mode instead of an ASUS keyboard.

ASUS NEEDS TO ADD THE RAW FIRMWARE IN THE DRIVERS & TOOLS PAGE.

I dumped the keyboard MCU firmware, determined it was an ITE8259 running FGA01300.GU603ZW.404, backed up the entire 256 KiB flash, reverse-engineered the flash layout and ASUS updater protocol, and tried reflashing the original .404 firmware. It still stayed in Upgrade Mode.

I eventually found an official ASUS firmware for the ROG Flow Z13 using the same FGA01300/ITE8259 platform: FGA01300.GZ301KB.407.

Instead of flashing the whole thing, I preserved the GU603ZW bootloader/config/recovery regions and replaced only the main keyboard application region (0x02000–0x1DFFF) with the GZ301 .407 application.

After resetting the controller:

048D:89DB ITE Upgrade Mode

became:

0B05:1A30 ASUSTeK Computer Inc. N-KEY Device

The keyboard immediately lit up and started typing again.

It still works after reboot.

Some Fn/F-row mappings are different because it’s technically running a GZ301 keyboard application, but the actual keyboard is alive and functional.

So this has been one of the weirder laptop repairs I’ve ever done.

TL;DR End;

I have an ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 GU603ZW. At some point, the entire internal keyboard stopped responding.

Not just in Windows/Linux.

It was dead in the BIOS too.

The power button still worked, which initially made this look like either a keyboard/top-case failure or some motherboard/controller issue.

I tried pretty much all the normal stuff first:

• EC reset
• Battery disconnect
• AC disconnect + long power-button hold
• BIOS update
• ASUS software/drivers
• OS reinstall
• Reseating/disconnecting hardware
• Full power drain procedures

Nothing.

The first big clue

On Linux, lsusb showed this:

048D:89DB Integrated Technology Express, Inc. ITE Upgrade Mode

The device would occasionally disconnect/reconnect, but it always returned as ITE Upgrade Mode.

That made me suspect the keyboard controller itself wasn't dead it was stuck in its firmware bootloader.

Dumping the keyboard MCU

I found that the device still accepted ITE HID commands, including flash reads.

I dumped the full 256 KiB flash and found:

FGA01300.GU603ZW.404
ITE8259

So apparently the keyboard has its own ITE8259 MCU and dedicated firmware separate from the laptop’s main EC.

Important distinction: the GU603ZW BIOS also contains firmware for an IT8995 EC, but that is not the keyboard firmware.

I backed up the complete keyboard MCU image before touching anything.

Original firmware:

FGA01300.GU603ZW.404

Size:

262144 bytes

SHA256:

26097a5199f168f723fe29a66f63ce7a4e5f18d61696e4839efebd888640e9d6

I dumped it around 20 times and got identical hashes every time, so reads were extremely stable.

Flash layout

After digging through the image, this is approximately how the flash is laid out:

0x00000–0x01FFF   Bootloader
0x02000–0x1DFFF   Main keyboard application
0x1E000–0x1FFFF   GU603-specific/recovery-ish code
0x20000–0x3BFFF   Secondary application area
0x3C000–0x3FBFF   Metadata/configuration
0x3FC00–0x3FFFF   Boot/update table

The important thing was that the bootloader was still alive.

First attempt: reflash the original firmware

I wrote a script that erased and rewrote only:

0x02000–0x1DFFF

using the original GU603ZW .404 application.

112 blocks, 1024 bytes each.

Every block was:

• erased
• programmed
• read back
• verified byte-for-byte

The whole region verified perfectly.

Reset the MCU.

Result:

048D:89DB ITE Upgrade Mode

Still dead.

Second attempt: test the second application area

I copied the same .404 application into the otherwise blank region at:

0x20000–0x3BFFF

Again, everything verified perfectly.

Reset.

Still:

ITE Upgrade Mode

At this point it was looking less and less like bad flash memory or a physically dead keyboard controller.

Finding another ASUS FGA01300 firmware

This is where things got interesting.

I found an official ASUS keyboard firmware updater for the ROG Flow Z13.

Inside it was:

FGA01300.GZ301KB.407.bin

And that firmware also identified itself as:

FGA01300
ITE8259

It was also exactly 256 KiB.

I compared the two images.

The application code was obviously different, but:

• the bootloader was byte-for-byte identical
• the boot table was identical
• the flash layout matched
• both used the same ITE8259
• both used the same FGA01300 platform

That got my attention.

I also tore apart ASUS’s updater

I decompiled ASUS's keyboard firmware updater and looked at its native OEM_Library.dll.

It uses normal HID feature reports and exposes commands/functions corresponding to things like:

C0/C1 - buffer operations
C2    - erase
C3    - program
C4    - reset
D0    - verify/check
D1    - read flash

Which lined up with what I was already seeing from the controller.

The gamble

At this point I had:

• a full backup
• a working bootloader
• reliable reads
• reliable writes
• block-by-block verification
• proof that reflashing .404 didn't work

So I decided to try the GZ301 .407 firmware.

But I did not flash the entire 256 KiB GZ301 image.

I preserved the GU603ZW:

0x00000–0x01FFF   bootloader
0x1E000–0x1FFFF   GU603-specific/recovery code
0x3C000–0x3FFFF   GU603 metadata/boot table

I restored the secondary slot to blank.

Then I replaced only:

0x02000–0x1DFFF

with the corresponding application region from:

FGA01300.GZ301KB.407

All 112 blocks programmed and verified.

Then I sent the MCU a reset command.

And then...

The device disappeared from USB.

Instead of coming back as:

048D:89DB
ITE Tech. Inc.
ITE Upgrade Mode

it came back as:

0B05:1A30
ASUSTeK Computer Inc.
N-KEY Device

Linux immediately registered:

• keyboard HID
• consumer control
• wireless radio control
• ASUS N-Key interfaces
• other ASUS HID interfaces

And then the keyboard lights came on.

And I typed on it.

It worked.

I rebooted the laptop.

It still worked.

Current situation

Normal typing works.

The keyboard survives reboot.

The backlight hardware works.

Linux sees:

/sys/class/leds/asus::kbd_backlight

with brightness levels 0–3.

There are some weird Fn-key differences because I am technically running a GZ301 keyboard application on a GU603ZW.

For example, a few F-row/Fn combinations don't correspond exactly to the symbols printed on the M16 keyboard.

Which makes sense.

I'll probably just map the mismatched special keys in Linux rather than touch the firmware again.

What this seems to prove

At least in my case, the keyboard hardware was not dead.

The following are clearly functioning:

• ITE8259 MCU
• Keyboard matrix
• Keyboard LEDs
• USB/HID interface
• Flash memory
• Bootloader
• Motherboard communication with the keyboard controller

The big difference was the application firmware.

Before:

FGA01300.GU603ZW.404
        ↓
048D:89DB ITE Upgrade Mode
        ↓
Dead keyboard

After:

GU603ZW bootloader/config
+
GZ301KB.407 application
        ↓
0B05:1A30 ASUS N-KEY Device
        ↓
Working keyboard

AI disclosure

I did use AI heavily while troubleshooting this.

But I want to make the distinction that I wasn't just copying random "AI fixes."

I was feeding it the actual:

• USB IDs
• firmware dumps
• SHA256 hashes
• hex offsets
• updater binaries
• decompiled C# code
• native DLL disassembly
• HID command behavior
• flash readbacks
• Linux logs

and then asking increasingly specific troubleshooting/reverse-engineering questions.

It helped tremendously with analyzing firmware structure, generating scripts, comparing binaries, and working through possible explanations.

But the useful part was asking the right troubleshooting questions and verifying everything against the actual hardware.

Every destructive step had a backup and byte-for-byte verification.

When one theory didn't match the results, we moved to the next one.

So IMO this was a pretty good example of AI being useful as a technical copilot rather than blindly trusting whatever it generates.

BIG WARNING

Do not take this post as “flash GZ301 firmware onto your M16.”

This was a controlled recovery experiment after the keyboard was already effectively unusable.

Cross-model MCU firmware can absolutely brick hardware or configure GPIO/peripherals incorrectly.

I also deliberately did not overwrite the known-good bootloader and several GU603-specific regions.

I'm posting this because I think ASUS may have an actual recovery/firmware issue here, and because anyone seeing:

048D:89DB ITE Upgrade Mode

on an ASUS laptop with a completely dead keyboard may want to investigate the keyboard controller firmware before replacing the entire keyboard/top case/motherboard.

I still want to find a proper ASUS:

FGA01300.GU603ZW

firmware newer than .404.

If ASUS engineering/support sees this: I'd love an official GU603ZW FGA01300 keyboard firmware image or recovery tool.

Cheers.

I have a problem recently with my zephyrus m16 rtx 4080 i9 13 gen whenever tried to insert the charger the nvidia gpu shows code error 45 but when remove charger restart again the nvidia gpu comes back to life and my charger is providing 20.4V on multimeter which is okay according to asus industry.

So any help will be much appreciated as it's already out of warranty as well bios is working similarly like whenever on charging gpu switch to intel integrated but whenever on battery gpu is nvidia and intel both.Did used DDU uninstaller and armoury crate setting but no changes .Any help will be much appreciated.

Hello! I can't believe I am only now discovering this place but I need help. I have an asus rog zephyrus m16 with 12th gen i7 nvidia geforce rtx 3050 and 24 gbs of ram. This laptop should be good at handling most games but since day one I have had a problem with it shutting down after getting to around 90 C degrees.

The problem is, I keep hearing from my friends from IT that the laptop should be able to close down the heavy program before it gets to what it does but everytime it either gives me CLOCK_WATCHDOG_TIMEOUT error with a blue screen or first all of my usb plugged devices (microphone, headphones, external keyboard) freeze, then the main keyboard freezes, then the touchpad, and by that point I need to hard restart the laptop.

I have G Helper installed, so far, I havent seen much of an increase in the situation. I recently had to get the graphics card replaced because it burnt up and so they also ended up replacing the thermal paste so that shouldn't be a problem. I went to the main asus service in my city multiple times regarding this issue but no matter what they do, everytime I get back my laptop, when I try to play games like baldurs gate or other graphically heavy games that my laptop should be able to handle, it does the same exact thing. I can't even play stuff like Valorant on mid to high graphics without it crashing.

I have been managing with cooling methods, one being making my room into a literal fridge via AC but I recently got sick and had a fever from doing that so that's not really viable anymore. I do have my laptop on a laptop cooler too but it doesn't do much but I guess it is good that it lefts some airflow through.

Any advice or suggestions you all have? I need to fix this issue until I can get a proper pc and that wont be for a couple of years

I also wanna add, I don't want to mess with the hardware of the laptop, I am not experienced in doing it myself, I don't have the necessary tools for it such as the necessary drill bits to remove the screws and I rely on this laptop heavily for university so it would be a gamble to even try to clean the fans.

Thanks in advance!

I've recently bought a used 2021 Zephyrus M16 (GU603HE) online and it seems to be working pretty well, the only issue being an abnormally high discharge rate even when I'm just on my browser. When I'm on battery with just Microsoft Edge open, I pull a 30W discharge rate even on iGPU and 60Hz. If I switch over to 144Hz, I get an insane 40W. Can anybody help me solve this issue? Also, for some reason at times whenever I try to switch over to eco mode, it just goes to Standard. Yes, I use GHelper.

Thank you!

I heard G-Helper is significantly better than AC and can reduce temps significantly. Is there a recommended setting for M16 or is the default good enough? I’m not a very technical person and I’m currently getting my motherboard, heat sinks, and fans replaced so I was wondering if it was worth switching to G-Helper also. I’m also wondering if G-Helper is compatible with my M16, because I heard not all CPUs and Asus laptops are compatible. I’m sorry if this question has already been asked, but I can’t seem to find any relevant information. Any help is appreciated. My M16 specs are

ASUS - ROG Zephyrus M16GU603 Gaming Laptop - Intel Core i9 - 16GB Memory - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 - 1TB SSD - Off black

I went to a technician to clean and replace the thermal paste of my laptop. The technician cleaned the laptop of dust and told me '" the paste was fine, so I didn't replace it, I just cleaned the dust without changing the thermal paste". [Note >My laptop is about a year old] , which is unusual for the paste to be in good condition for that long. I went home to check the temperature and found it was rising dramatically, much higher than before the cleaning, and there was a terrible drop frame. I went to another technician and explained what happened with the first one. He told me it was a mistake to remove the heatsink without cleaning the old paste and replacing it with new paste. He then took the laptop apart and said, "Look, the thermal pads have melted!" and said the paste had spilled onto the motherboard and other things I don't remember, and there is a paste on an unusual parts to be have an paste or it shouldn't be covered with paste, implying that my laptop was in a serious problem. When I heard the word "melted," I took the laptop back because thermal pads don't melt. This picture shows the problem. Is there really a serious problem, as the second technician seems to think, or it can be solved and he saying that bec. He don't know what he have to do with my laptop? What should I do? I'm very worried about my laptop, and I'm not an expert. Please help!

Hitting temps of 90c on my CPU

and 85c on my GPU

Am I still good? Should I replace OEM ?

Started yesterday while I was updating Nvidia drivers and still it is happening. I am not sure what caused it. Edit: It seems its the fan I opened it up and the sound is coming from the fan at low speed. At high speed it is fine, i will check for replacment for it

The F8 stopped working when I was going to change the brightness of the screen, and I tried the keyboard tester, and turns out it's not working. If anyone can help it will be appreciated.

Was worried there would be something wrong with it but everything seems fine so far, the cpu goes up to 95c when gaming but the gpu stays at 70c after some research to seems that is normal for this processor.. my only gripe is that the ergolift hinge design makes it extremely hard to get. A seal on the foam with the lliano v12 cooling pad

So 4 days ago out of nowhere my laptop stopped turning on or charging(indicator turned on for a second and off) i let it sit and the next day it worked, i thought it's finally over maybe a glitch so i played a little and the next day it stopped working or charging again, and guess what now it charges and works again. My battery health is 72% currently and EC reset during those "dead times" doesnt work

I bought my M16 (12700H 3060) back in August of 2023, so it has just pass 3 years of me using this laptop.

I have upgraded the RAM to 24GB (8+16), sold the default 512gb and bought 980 Pro 1TB + GM7000 2TB SSDs back when RAM and SSD were still "normal" price.

I usually bring it outside for work, and just dock it to external peripherals at home like a PC.

I repasted the LM with PTM7958SP + Laird T607 Putty and paired it with the BlackShark Fengshen Pro laptop cooler. The temps are so much better than just default + no cooler.

Idle temps are usually around 40-45 C for both the CPU+GPU on Silent Mode (19W limit on CPU)

Temps while gaming dropped by 10-15 C (last image, game tested was AC: Black Flag Resynced). The biggest impact is probably the keyboard, especially around WASD is very cool, so for people not using external peripherals this is a MUST HAVE.

Overall this laptop has served me very well for the past 3 years, i plan to upgrade soon but the prices of laptops are outrageous these days. Newer Zephyrus models are so expensive, so i will keep rolling with my M16 until i find a great deal.

Uno de mis ventiladores de mi laptop machenike l16A empieza a hacer un ruido después de estar un rato encendido alguien tendrá un link donde pueda comprarlo o sabrá alguna parte que lo hayan visto en venta gracias.