About Me – Timothy
I’m Tim. Everything on TechonRamen comes from 1 laptop, an ASUS Zephyrus G16 I haven’t stopped tweaking since the day I got it.
I’m a college student on a budget that doesn’t leave much room for upgrades, and I have a bad habit of tweaking things I’d probably be safer leaving alone. When I first got the laptop it lasted about 3 hours off the charger, the battery was already down to 90% health from the previous owner, and it came loaded with manufacturer software I never asked for. So I started digging into what could actually be changed, and it turned out to be quite a lot. That same laptop now gets 7+ hours on a charge, and every setting that got it there is somewhere on this site.
Why “TechonRamen”
The name is a joke about my budget, and it’s also how I run the site. Almost everything I write about is free or close to it, because buying a better laptop was never an option for me. What I could do was see how far software would take the one I already had, which is where the site’s tagline, Software is the upgrade, comes from.
A few things I’ve found so far
- My battery life went from 3 hours to 7+ at about 13 W of drain, using the 3 G-Helper profiles I still run.
- Armoury Crate’s Turbo mode got me no extra FPS over Performance in Cyberpunk 2077, and louder fans.
- Uninstalling Windhawk the normal way left 67.5 MB and all 11 of my mods on the drive.
- I counted 26 ASUS processes running after reinstalling Armoury Crate, 11 of them Armoury Crate itself.
- Keeping the charge limit at 80% held my battery wear to about 0.7% over 2 months.
What I write about
Most of what’s here is ASUS laptop tuning with G-Helper, undervolting and Armoury Crate, plus Windows customization with Windhawk. If you’re not sure where to start, my best G-Helper settings guide covers the 3 profiles I run day to day. When I do cover hardware, I try to be straight about who needs the upgrade and who’s better off saving the money.
Software reviews, and what to send me
Beyond the guides, I’ll review pretty much any software that might make a laptop nicer to live with, whether that’s a debloating tool, a power management app, or some niche program that only fixes 1 problem. If it’s free and does something Windows should have done itself, I’m probably interested.
This is where you guys come in. If you’ve run across a tool you think is worth a look, drop it in the comments on any post and I’ll look into it. Some of the best apps I use every day came from stumbling across a random forum thread at 2 am, so I’d like to hear what you’ve found. I’d rather test a reader’s suggestion than write another roundup of the same 5 apps everyone already covers.
How I test things
Everything I write about runs on my own laptop first. The numbers in my guides, whether that’s battery discharge in watts, benchmark FPS, or temperatures under load, are ones I measured on my own machine, and every screenshot is one I took myself. When something didn’t work for me, or I’m not sure a result would carry over to different hardware, I say so. Your laptop won’t land on my exact numbers even if it’s the same model, so compare your results to where you started.
If a guide here saves you from buying something you didn’t need, it did its job. Questions and corrections are welcome on any post, and I keep these articles updated as things change, so don’t be afraid to mention new information in the comments.