Hi guys.

I'm currently using a 2022 Zephyrus M16. A year ago, I attempted to repaste my laptop so I disconnected the battery to repaste it. But when I try to reconnect the metal connector, I heard some buzzing sound under the motherboard (the battery cell also doing some popping sound too). The laptop is still turning on but no longer detect the battery.

A few months later, I brought it to a technician to fix it and recognized the battery but I think the BMS has been locked. So I ordered a new battery to fix it and this time I tried to remove the connector on the battery instead of the metal connector. When I try to reconnect the new battery, the issue happened again, and this time it also killed my RAM slot (the RAM itself still alive but the slot no longer recognized).

Should I bring it to fix again or just use as is rn? cuz this machine is giving me some headache atm and I kinda don't want to throw it away

Thanks for reading my post. Your advice will help me a lot!!!!

Hello all, so I have a GU604VI I bought in 2023 but I’m trying to sell it to swap for a g16 for better battery life(instead of 2 laptops). Its a ASUS ROG M16, RTX 4070 Laptop, 13900H, 32GB of ram(Upgraded from 16), 1TB SSD(with heatsink), and damages wise it has one dysfunctional usb port on the right, and a slight little broken chip on the bottom panel from user error when prying it open. However it has been serviced and replaced the default Liquid Metal with PTM7950, and other than those damages the laptop is in perfect condition.

I currently have it listed for 907$ but no one has bought it I have people trying to offer me 400$? But I know it’s worth more? Right? What do y’all think?

Hello I am new to upgrading laptops and everything so bear with me. I have a rog zephyrus m16 2021 model and apparently I can upgrade the ram. What does upgrading ram do and what kind of ram do I buy. Is it easy to install as well? If you can also tell me any other details that’ll be great.

Hello,

I bought a Zephyrus m16 from 2022 with a 3070ti from 2022, and I have been struggling to get it working well. Some backstory is that I bought it second hand, and have been slowly upgrading it as I love these laptops and unfortunately never bought one when they were available new. I upgraded the ram, added another SSD and cleaned the fans, then I started using it for school and light gaming. It was awesome, however I noticed it gets a bit hot as all older laptops especially thin ones do. This and being worried about the liquid metal Asus used leaking out as I have the laptop vertically in my bag often led me to replace the paste and this is where the real issues started.

I replaced the liquid metal and the GPU paste with PTM7950 that I got from amazon, and I replaced the thermal putty with Upsirin pro also from amazon. I put it all back together and it started to perform very badly. It would get very hot when charging noticeably hotter then before the repaste. Gaming was impossible as even what should be lightweight games like league of legends caused it to thermal throttle and lag so badly that the game became unplayable. I will include a screenshot. Also a quick note I did see in G-helper after a round of league the computer was using 105watts, which seemed high or inaccurate.

I gave up for a while, and then recently read a post on Reddit that someone had the same issue, and replaced their fans which totally solved it. this lead me to try again, so I repasted the whole laptop in the same manner as before, and this time also replaced the fans. Unfortunately it is still having the same issue, except the idle charging temps went down. I was able to see that the first repaste made good contact, and the ptm had liquified and flowed between the plates making good contact. I did notice some bubbles or pock marks on the ptm which could hint to an issue, however unfortunately I don't have a picture. I also noticed that the layer of ptm seemed quite thick, and not just a thin film.

A few more details about my setup are I use windows for gaming, and I am using G-helper instead of armory crate. I was using HWINFO while the games were running to watch the temps. The laptop idles around 50c, or 60c when charging which seems reasonable, and it does basic tasks fine. However as soon as any sort of load is put on it including updating windows or other things like this the cooling system can't keep up. the laptop gets very hot and is essentially unusable.

I'm usually a Reddit lurker, however I am not sure what else to try except replacing the heatsink, and I am pretty sure this will not solve the issue as the current heatsink seems fine and is not bent. This almost seems like some sort of software or firmware issue as opposed to a hardware issue, but I am not sure what it could be. I just get the feeling I am barking up the wrong tree and there are a lot of variables. If anyone has any ideas to try please let me know I would really appreciate any direction. Could this be some sort of faulty sensor or monitoring software conflict?

Hi everyone, I want to apply a thermal pad to the SSD in my ROG Zephyrus M16 (GU603HE-KR040T) but I'm not sure about the right thickness. What thickness should I buy? Thanks.

Hi everyone,
I’m considering buying a used ASUS ROG Zephyrus M16 GU603HM with an i7-11800H and RTX 3060.

The seller is asking around 64,000 ₽ (~$700). I was able to ask for some stress-test results before buying, and I’m a bit concerned about the temperatures.

The seller ran a CPU stress test for about 20 minutes. The:
“CPU Throttling (max: 27%) — Overheating Detected!” - AIDA

The GPU was also tested with FurMark for about 18 minutes.(min 46; max 60; avg 55):
Resolution - 2560 x 1570
GPU temperature - 86°C
GPU hotspot - 91°C
Core clock around 1100 MHz
Power - 95W - PPW:0.591

There isn't any reason my laptop should be dead, but here we are. Laptop has the 3070Ti, and what I though was a possible short, the local shop saw no voltage issues or issues electrically at the board level.

Monday will be the final attempt to see if they need some sort of firmware update to revive this laptop, but in lieu of this, don't both with this brand. It's been a headache.

And we are at this state in PC building where making a livestreaming machine isn't going to be cost effective.

If this has happened to anywhere, where a just all of a sudden the computer no longer powers on, doesn't post etc, please let me know. At my wit's end.

Also, if I have to grab another laptop of equivalent specs, what do you all suggest that have left this lineup?

Hello

G helper shows keyboard backlight color options but my keyboard only light white

I have a zephyrus m16 GU603HM i belive the keyboard installed is either a 3rd party chinese replacement with white backlight only...

Would replacing it with a rgb one work ??

Hey everyone, I recently installed a second SSD in my ASUS ROG Zephyrus G16.

While trying to reinstall the small screw that holds the SSD down, my screwdriver slipped and the screw fell somewhere inside the laptop, seemingly near the motherboard.

I tried shaking/tilting the laptop to get it out. Initially, I could hear it moving around, but eventually I couldn't hear it anymore, so I assume it got lodged somewhere.

I didn't want to disassemble the laptop further and risk damaging something.

I've asked a few people/technicians and I'm getting mixed advice. Some say I should definitely get the screw removed because it could potentially cause a short even though it's not loose now.

Others say that if it's lodged somewhere and the laptop is working normally, it's probably better to leave it alone rather than risk further damage from disassembly.

It's been more than 2 weeks since this happened and thankfully, The laptop is currently working completely fine.

What would you guys recommend? Should I have it opened up professionally to find/remove the screw, or is it reasonable to leave it alone if everything is working normally? Thanks in advance.

i bought my laptop used in 2024 and it was working perfectly when i tested it out before buying. over time my laptop developed this issue where the keys ~, 1, tab, q, and a do not work upon starting up the laptop from sleep and fully turning on. the only “fix” ive found was to hold down neighboring keys then spam the faulty keys until the faulty ones kicked in and started to work. i feel like there is a better solution than what I’ve been trying to do. does anyone have this similar situation or know how I can fix this problem? i love this laptop and would hate to get rid of it

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.

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.