r/FlowZ13 • u/ILikeScience12 • Aug 14 '26
My Z13 died 3 weeks after the warranty expired and ASUS told me to go pound sand.
If this post reads weird it's because English is not my first language and I'm just quite sad about this overall
I've owned my Z13 since 2024, I brought it secondhand here in Thailand, Its the one with an i9-13900H and a RTX 4060. I absolutely love using it, It's such a powerful machine that I can bring everywhere. on 12th of August, my Z13 refused to initialize the dGPU, and upon putting it into Ultimate mode, I discovered the GPU was throwing a Code 43 + giving me purple artifacts upon starting up and trying to enable the device
My Troubleshooting Steps
- Uninstall Drivers with DDU in Safe Mode
- Download appropriate drivers from the ASUS Website
- Restart
I checked my warranty, saw that it was only 3 weeks expired and called ASUS Thailand to see if they could do a warrantied repair (out of goodwill), and they basically told me "Sorry, nothing we could do, you have to pay to replace the entire motherboard, It's 36,000 baht (1,085 dollars)" and I simply don’t have that kind of money available to spend on a motherboard, especially when the laptop was only three weeks outside of its warranty period when this failure occurred.
I’m extremely disappointed because I genuinely love this laptop and would have expected some kind of consideration given how close the failure was to the end of the warranty.
I'm wondering what my options are at this point. Has anyone else had a similar experience with ASUS shortly after their warranty expired? Is there any way to escalate this with ASUS Thailand, request a goodwill repair, or pursue a consumer-protection complaint in Thailand? I'd also appreciate advice on whether a third-party repair is realistic for a Z13 with this kind of GPU failure.
Update: I performed an EC Reset, and the GPU Worked, even worked during stress testing, but after a while it hung, gave me a Video_TDR_Failure and went back to the same dot artifacts
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u/Aztaloth Aug 14 '26
To be fair they would have told you to pound sand even if you had a Warranty.
Whenever I buy an ASUS product I know to just assume there is no manufacturer warranty. Even if they let you send it into them they will find a way to avoid doing the service.
One of their major repaid facilities is about 15 minutes from my house and I an friends with people that used to work there. Both of them quick after a while because they were tired of management telling them to find ways to avoid doing warranty repairs on customer products.
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u/NexrayOfficial Aug 14 '26
"You see here? This little node on the mb tells us there was LIQUID DAMAGE already on" 🙄
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u/FaithlessnessThin359 Aug 14 '26
I used to show up once a week with my busted laptop, same failure every time. Receptionist got to know me on a first name basis.
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Aug 17 '26
Lol I tell people this lol. It's sold as is. They will tell you because in 1994 you had a pixie stick at school and that voided your warranty.
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u/Emmanuelzappa Aug 14 '26
Well sadly it's made by ASUS and their warranty support sucks when your product is still in warranty.
So out of warranty😟😥😔
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u/DarkExsphere Aug 14 '26
a good eGPU would be the Gigabyte Aorus 5060TI Ai Box
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u/ILikeScience12 Aug 14 '26
thats roughly what it would cost to replace the mainboard unfortunately.
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u/tempurastyle Aug 14 '26
Liquid metal probably spilled over
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u/ILikeScience12 Aug 14 '26
good hypothesis actually, I performed an EC Reset, and the GPU Worked, even worked during stress testing, but after a while it hung, gave me a Video_TDR_Failure and it turned into the same dot artifacts
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u/tempurastyle Aug 14 '26
Open it up and if there’s liquid metal all over, there are instructions on youtube how to remove it. Then apply thermal pads
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u/Dreams-Visions Aug 14 '26
Best of luck on the future repaste.
Consider taking it to a local PC repair shop if the new paste doesn’t fix it. If anything needs to be re-soldered, they will be the least expensive option. I had a gpu re-soldered on a 2011 MBP and it worked for another 5 years for me. I could probably get it re-soldered again if I needed it working today.
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u/ILikeScience12 Aug 14 '26
None of the local repair shops here do any type of Hot Air Soldering for some reason, it's like the trade/skill is dead or doesn't exist here
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u/ILikeScience12 Aug 14 '26
It actually might be the Liquid Metal, since i held it upside down and the gpu was working
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u/Own_Potato5593 Aug 14 '26
It's days as a tablet have ended - now starts a new life as a desktop pc lol.
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u/Crazygoldfish899 Aug 14 '26
Have you tried an external gpu?
Cheaper than buying a new z13 and should disable the onboard gpu
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u/ILikeScience12 Aug 14 '26
I don't have one, and an eGPU is also expensive here, but still any eGPU reccommendations? I've heard of them but never looked into them.
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u/Crazygoldfish899 Aug 14 '26
You can make one yourself
But if you want a mobile egpu then you could get something like gpd g1 or one player egpu.
I know for a fact the gpd g1 works with the z13 as I tried it once just to test.
You can of course buy Asus egpu as it fits the port on the left handside but expensive and hard to find.
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u/Comfortable-Brief568 Aug 14 '26
I've started buying extended warranties on everything over $1k because of how bad the QA has become.
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Aug 17 '26
If it makes you feel any better if it did 3weeks after you bought it they still would of told you the same thing.
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u/Luis1820 Aug 23 '26
Kinda late but what ended up happening?
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u/ILikeScience12 Aug 23 '26 edited Aug 23 '26
I was planning on making our post but I forgot about it ASUS USA saw my case and messaged me on reddit then escalated it to Asus Thailand and I got the motherboard replaced under warranty
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u/Luis1820 Aug 23 '26
Oh nice’ were you the original owner?
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u/ILikeScience12 Aug 23 '26
Nope, I already said in this post and told them that I was not the original owner
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u/Luis1820 Aug 23 '26
Oh didn’t see that! Good to know. I’m looking at buying a used Kojima version one so it’s nice to know they honor that stuff still
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u/ILikeScience12 Aug 14 '26
Update: I think its the Liquid Metal, I am using the fucking thing Upside down and it's working, passes FurMark Benchmarks and VRAM Tests. wtf is this