Internal Examination
The Asus G51J 3D has the same physical design as the Asus G51J we reviewed here on PC Perspective earlier. Here is what we wrote in the earlier Asus G51 article:



After removing 12 screws of various sizes (keep track of them if you’re doing this), the cover reveals the user serviceable components of the Asus G51J. 

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You have: 
  • two 2.5” SATA drives
  • two sticks of RAM
  • The wifi adapter
  • The i7 CPU under the dual heatpipes
  • A fan blower assembly
  • And finally the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260M
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The copper heat spreaders on the GPU covers both the RAM and the GPU die and uses a purple thermal interface material. Some of you brave souls out there may consider replacing this with better conductive material, but in our testing the GTX 260M performed just fine the way it is. 


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Now here’s an interesting bit about the bottom cover of the G51J. What looks like a fan grill or a speaker, is actually, well, nothing! Flipping over the cover shows that the grill has been taped over with foil tape as if the original design meant for it to be open. 

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I suspect that covering the grill actually improves cooling by forcing more air through the vents near the CPU and the GPU. If you’re brave, you can remove this and see how it affects your thermal performance but I don’t see a reason to do this as the G51J performs perfectly fine the way it is (as you’ll see in our thermal testing later). 

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