G53SW for RM4890 is a good deal. I suppose it comes with i7-2630m and GTX 460m and 4 pieces of 2GB RAM.
Was thinking of getting a G73SW at first but end up getting a Sager NP8170-S1. By the way, nice price for G53SW.

G53SW is very much identical to Sager NP8130 in term of the specs. Of course Sager NP8130 is cheaper, around RM4k to RM4.5k.

This post has been edited by jimmykvt: May 25 2011, 09:36 PM

Here is a video guide for those who want to clean their Asus G73, it's a good guide to disassemble your Asus G73 to clean the fans in it. Warning, mind the screws and connectors in the laptop :]

It's a good to let people to know what they need to do to maintain the G73 before purchasing it. :]

By the way, watched your video on G73 review. But I can't agree the Asus G73 wins on performance over price ratio as compared to Sager notebook lol, they should be around the same though I agree that Sager is kinda conservative on the exterior of their laptops.

Anyway, where did you get the chiclet keyboard skin for your Asus G73? Might want to get one for my Sager NP8170 since their keys' locations are kinda similar.

Wonder if I can find a good G53 disassembly guide since the one on youtube has camera angle problem :[

This post has been edited by jimmykvt: May 29 2011, 10:03 AM

I suggest you guys who is interested in Asus G53 or G73 to hold your purchase until Asus replaces its current GPU (GTX 460M) on Asus G53 and G73 with Nvidia Geforce GTX 560M.

Sager has already replaces the GTX 460M on its product line with GTX 560M. The cheapest NP8130 comes dual fans (one for CPU and one for GPU) with GTX 560M is selling less than RM 4500 including shipping cost.

So, why not wait for the GTX 560M on Asus too?

Huhu, if it isn't RM 4999, might need to import then though there will be a waiting time but the price might turn out to be the same or a little cheaper.

Yes, possible to upgrade depending on the power your AC Adapter can supply.
Note: This only works for Asus G series, don't think this can be applied to Asus A/K/N/U series.
GTX 460M/485M/560M and AMD HD 5850M/5870M/6970M are MXM cards.
The only problem for Asus is that you need to disassemble the whole laptop to take out the graphics card and replace with new one.
But for Sager, it is much easier because just take out a few screws then you can see the CPU, GPU, Fans, RAM, Harddisk, so it's easier.

This post has been edited by jimmykvt: Jun 1 2011, 11:41 AM

Ah, thanks for the correction :]
At 10:48, he said "the video card cannot be modified even though it is modular."
Hmm..., that makes Sager better then :\

The air can only helps a bit, because instead of blowing the dust out, some dust might still be inside. The most effective way is to disassemble your laptop, then clean the fans. I know it's not easy to disassemble Asus G Series laptop, but youtube video does show you how to disassemble. Sager ones are easier to be cleaned because easy to access the fans.

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Added on June 7, 2011, 5:50 pmAlienware M17X is more powerful than the two and also the most expensive one among those 3.

GPU Comparison
Alienware M17X-R3 has no dual GPU option, only M17X-R2 has it.
But Alienware M17X-R3 can be upgraded to ATI HD6970M (performance quite close to GTX 485M).
ATI HD6970M is much stronger than GTX 560M.
Both Asus G74SX and MSI GT683R come with GTX 560M.
So, Alienware M17X-R3 is the winner in term of GPU comparison.

Size and Portability
To be frank, I don't know why you are comparing MSI GT683R with Alienware M17X and Asus G74SX. But all come with FHD (1920x1080p)
Screen size:
MSI GT683R: 15.6"
Alienware M17X: 17.3"
Asus G74SX: 17.3"

One thing I'm surprised is that MSI GT683R can stuff 2 harddisks and one optical drive at the same time which Asus G53 and Alienware M15X cannot do. Normally, they need to sacrifice the optical drive to use a caddy case for 2nd HDD.

This post has been edited by jimmykvt: Jun 7 2011, 07:08 PM

EDITED:
Can support 2 HDD, just checked xoticpc :]

This post has been edited by jimmykvt: Jun 7 2011, 07:09 PM

Yes, edited my previous post, just checked xoticpc and thanks for the correction.
Both Asus G53 and MSI GT683R can fit 2HDD without sacrificing ODD

I think M15X cannot fit 2 HDD, just read it from here.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-...d-question.html

So, at the moment, as far as I know for 15.6" laptops, only G53 and MSI GT683R have 2 HDD Bay, so no need to sacrifice the ODD Bay.

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Added on June 7, 2011, 9:07 pmBetter check it out here yourself so that all your questions be answered :]
http://www.xoticpc.com/custom-gaming-lapto...-95_51_163.html

Just take note to import Asus from XoticPC, the shipping cost is around USD 200+ from U.S. to Malaysia.
And assume the conversion rate is USD 1 = RM 3.06

And I only know Asus G53SW is selling RM 4999 in Malaysia. Not sure you can get others or not, maybe the shop in Malaysia also need to import from elsewhere and they might charge you more expensive. Might as well import it yourself.

For Alienware, just go to the link below and customize it yourself to see the price:
http://configure.ap.dell.com/dellstore/con...ienware-m17x-r3

Remember, you can upgrade from GTX 560M to ATI HD 6970M for buying Alienware, but for Asus, you are stuck with GTX 560M.

This post has been edited by jimmykvt: Jun 7 2011, 09:08 PM

Unless you are willing to maintain your laptop instead of depending on the warranty, then Sager is better.
You can look at my siggy, my Sager NP8170 specs and the price I got it.

Or else, Asus is still better since you have 2 years global warranty, just that you can only get GTX 560M.

This post has been edited by jimmykvt: Jun 8 2011, 09:32 AM

Better order from XoticPC

wah, repasted 2 times, means you disassembled your Asus laptop twice 0_0

huhu, the disassembling of asus G-series laptop involves a lot of screws. Well, Sager makes its laptop parts easily accessible and even the fans too. Still +1 to the coolness of Asus G-series laptop. Might consider one in future since I'm sort of a techy guy who doesn't mind to disassemble my own laptop provided there is a tutorial on how to disassemble it. BtoTech one is nice, the G73 disassembly guide is very clear but the G53 one is not that good because the shooting angle is bad :[

@Bushido
Grats on purchase and nice pictures.
Mind showing your laptop backpack and how is it difficult to fit your laptop into it?
And yeah, the USB ports on the right is a minor turn off, would prefer them to be just beside the LCD monitor near the edge close to the vent.

I realize they rely on the sides to fit in all the ports. I wonder next time if they can come up with a design to place some ports at the back like the power port, VGA-port, HDMI port.

This post has been edited by jimmykvt: Nov 4 2011, 05:17 PM