The new ASUS TUF FX505DU gaming laptop is a bit different, it’s got an AMD CPU with
Nvidia graphics, so just how hot does this combination get? In this testing I’ll be
taking a detailed look at thermals and seeing how much we can improve performance with some
simple tweaks.
The new ASUS FX505 is available in different configurations, I’ve got the DU model, which
means there’s an AMD Ryzen 7 3750H CPU, 80 watt Nvidia GTX 1660 Ti graphics, and I’ve
upgraded to 16gb of memory running in dual channel. You can find updated pricing for
different models linked in the description.
On the bottom of the laptop there are some air vents, however these aren’t actually
above the intake fans. If we look at the panel on this angle we can more easily see where
the vents are located. There also appears to be some air vents just above the keyboard,
and the lid apparently has this cut out to reduce it covering the air exhausts when open.
In terms of heatpipes we’ve got the standard two shared pipes between processor and graphics,
so a change in temperature of one will affect the other. We can pick between three modes
in the Armory crate software, silent, balanced, and turbo, and I’ll note which is in use
throughout the testing, basically these just affect CPU TDP limits.
Thermal testing was completed in an ambient room temperature of 21 degrees Celsius, so
expect different results in different environments. I’ve tested idle down the bottom with the
silent profile enabled and it was fairly cool. The rest of the results are from combined
CPU and GPU workloads and are meant to represent worst case scenarios.
The gaming results towards the upper half of the graph were tested by playing Watch
Dogs 2, as I find it to use a good combination of processor and graphics. The stress test
results shown on the lower half of the graph are from running the Aida64 CPU stress test
and Heaven GPU benchmark at the same time to fully load the system. I’ve tested these
with either the balanced or turbo profile in use, basically turbo boosts the CPU TDP
and increases the fan speed to help with cooling.
Let’s start with the stress test results on the lower half of the graph. I wasn’t
really seeing a difference in terms of thermals with either the turbo or balanced profile,
but once we add the Thermaltake Massive 20 cooling pad it was possible to lower the temperatures
a little. The cooling pad made less of a difference than usual due to the bottom panel having
minimal air ventilation holes. Moving up into the gaming results I was getting a slightly
bigger improvement to thermals with turbo mode enabled, but again almost no difference
with the cooling pad.
These are the average clock speeds for the same tests just shown. Whether under stress
test or while gaming, we see the largest improvement to CPU clock speed by enabling turbo mode.
This is because it boosts the CPU TDP from 30 watts in the balanced profile to 35 watts.
More power typically means more heat too, which is why we didn’t see much change in
the temperature graph previously, despite the fans going faster, as you’ll hear soon.
I didn’t notice thermal throttling during any of these tests, however there appears
to be power limit throttling on the CPU while under combined CPU and GPU loads, at 30 watts
on the CPU when in balanced mode, or 35 watts in turbo mode, while the 80 watt 1660 Ti was
showing as sitting at 80 watts under load in Hardware Info. No CPU undervolting was
done as that doesn’t seem to be a thing with these AMD mobile chips at the moment,
there’s no utility available to do it. The TDP reported by Hardware Info seemed incorrect
too, I used AMD’s uprof tool to measure that here.
These are the average CPU clock speeds while under a CPU only workload. With the Turbo
profile enabled there was just a slight boost, getting to 3.9GHz on all 4 cores in this test.
The turbo profile only lowers the temperature by one degree though, the fans get faster,
but the CPU TDP also rises as a result, from 30 watts on balanced, to an average of 33
in turbo mode.
To demonstrate how this translates into performance I’ve got some Cinebench CPU benchmarks here.
Turbo mode was only giving a little improvement, as we saw earlier we’re getting similar
performance with either mode. Here are the results from the newer Cinebench R20, and
again a little boost with turbo mode. I’ll be comparing the 3750H against a number of
other CPUs in future videos, so if you’re new to the channel get subscribed for those
videos.
So how do these performance boosts actually translate into games? I’ve tested with the
exact same Windows, Nvidia and game updates installed.
Far Cry 5 was tested using the built in benchmark at 1080p. At ultra settings there was a 5.6%
improvement to average FPS when using turbo mode rather than balanced, and a 7.3% boost
to 1% low. Interestingly I actually got worse results by overclocking the GPU by 100MHz
on the core and 500MHz on the memory, likely as it was already power limit throttling at
stock. I tried undervolting the GPU, but still got around the 66 FPS mark.
If you’re after more gaming benchmarks from the ASUS FX505DU, check the card in the top
right where I’ve tested 19 different games.
As for the external temperatures where you’ll actually be putting your hands, at idle it
was about average, except for a warmer spot a little right from the center. While gaming
with the balanced mode it was still quite cool, however that hot spot was quite warm
to the touch, getting to the mid 50s. With the stress tests going there was a similar
result, if it wasn’t for that one hot spot this would be quite impressive, but still
nice that the WASD keys are cool.
As for the fan noise produced by the laptop, I’ll let you have a listen to some of these
tests.
At idle with the silent profile the fans were just slightly audible. While gaming or under
stress test in balanced mode it just a little below average when compared to other gaming
laptops I’ve tested. With turbo mode enabled the fans go to maximum and get a little louder,
but nothing too crazy, again similar to most other laptops.
Overall the ASUS FX505DU gaming laptop doesn’t get too hot, well at least compared to the
Intel laptops I’m used to dealing with. I honestly haven’t compared too many other
Ryzen based laptops yet, so I’ll have more data to compare with in the future, but we’re
not getting to high 90 degrees under load which seems good. I wasn’t observing any
thermal throttling in my tests, the CPU power limit appears to be hit in turbo mode at 35
watts, so a power limit throttle as per the spec of the 3750H CPU. The only strange thing
was the bottom panel of the machine having minimal air ventilation, that was a bit weird,
I suppose it wasn’t required in the end but I think it could have been improved more
by having more and better positioned vents, and this is why our cooling pad doesn’t
seem to help much.
I’m not sure if the 180 watt power brick is enough for long term gaming, after half
an hour the battery had drained from 100% to 95% while plugged in and playing Watch
Dogs 2, performance didn’t seem to be affected, but I may look into this more for the upcoming
full review.
These differences in performance shown aren’t hard and fast rules, there are different factors
which will vary results, primarily the temperature of the room you’re running in, application
of thermal paste, and even the specific hardware which comes down to the silicon lottery. Basically
not all components are perfectly equal, and different environments may differ results.
It may be possible to further improve temperatures by swapping the thermal paste, however as
this is a review unit that I have to send back I’m not able to change the paste, otherwise
the next reviewer will unknowingly report different results due to what I’ve done.
Activating turbo mode or using a cooling pad are much easier for most people to do anyway,
and as we’ve seen these simple changes did help improve the performance of the ASUS TUF
FX505DU gaming laptop.
Let me know what you thought of the thermals in the FX505DU down in the comments, overall
I thought it was running fine despite the odd bottom panel design choice, but I’ll
have way more information in the upcoming full review video, so if you’re new to the
channel you’ll definitely want to get subscribed for that one.