ASUS ROG Ally Setup Guide (9 Essential Tips)

Setting up the ASUS ROG Ally can be a little tricky, since it's a Windows machine without a mouse and keyboard. In this video I'll show you nine tips and tricks to properly set up your new device.
Written guide with links: retrogamecorps.com/2023/06/16...
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Timestamps:
00:00 introduction
00:50 essential accessories
02:30 upgrade the SSD
03:40 start over from scratch
05:19 initial Windows setup
06:34 update update update
10:24 personalize Windows
12:41 Armoury Crate
16:34 install apps and games
22:39 advanced options
26:39 summary and conclusion
Find me on Discord! / discord
Theme song written by Jim Gray of Our Ghosts:
ourghosts.bandcamp.com/track/...
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This video is for entertainment and educational purposes only.
#ROGally #pcgaming #windows

[@bfums]

When you replace the SSD, it’ll automatically go to the boot device selection screen. Alternatively you can always hold the volume down button to boot into bios

[@melxb]

nice and since u seem knowledgeable, do u by chance know if you play wired wouldn't it be better the device is fully charged rather than 80%, that way when u are plugged in the energy would just start coming from the outlet and not the battery anymore...or is that not possible/the rog not able to do that? wonder also why 80% extends battery life

[@johnm-cb1mn]

i did it by accident too press the volume down

[@melxb]

@@johnm-cb1mn oh so that can happen anytime? i thought u would only be able to hold down the volume and have the bios come up when the device is restarting...but either way in armory crate settings if i remember correctly it was eta prime or might have been the phawx that showed u can change all those quick access commands to whatever buttons u want or turn them off if u feel ull accidentally press them during gaming and such

[@melxb]

oh and i just found out rog ally does have by pass charging when wired, sweet!

[@chryoko]

When upgrading the SSD, make sure to have the actual correct date set into the BIOS, or it will fail with the original bios and cloud recovery software.

[@TheTexasArsenal]

This is the most comprehensive breakdown I’ve seen. You covered every item I’ve encountered so far and it’s awesome. Subbed. Keep up the great content. ❤

[@futfut007]

Saved my day bro Nice video

[@HeartPliz]

Bless up, been waiting for a video about the ally from you about this

[@darrenwilliams5615]

Just got mine this morning, currently following your awesome instruction to get it going. You're the man russ

[@kevinwelchhhh]

Exactly what I’ve been looking for. Thank you.

[@sephiroth4543]

Absolutely phenomenal video and an awesome guide. Thanks mate

[@aaronbrooks4159]

Thanks for this video. I ordered one and before watched about 15 other videos, all by benchmarking pros, etc....comparing to everything on the planet....this was more informative than anything else.

[@robertweeks7022]

Great video. This was extremely useful for me. Thanks for putting this together.

[@kunalnn017]

I was just waiting for this video on the ROG Ally from my go to gamer retrogamecorp ! Thank you 🙏

[@martinshaw2385]

Excellent. Thank you for the detailed walkthrough and tips.

[@craigmarsden2188]

Looking forward to your emu video. You have made retro gaming easy thank you! Can’t wait to try it on the Ally

[@fladagreat]

Emu doesn't work well on Windows and is still being updated... I would only expect a Emudeck tutorial on a windows device after development for Emudeck on windows is done.

[@GoalieNinja03]

@@fladagreatwitch emulation with yuzu will be pretty sick ngl

[@douglasv5385]

Thank you so much for this video. I just ordered my Asus Ally and will be going through your video step by step when i set up the device.

[@bryanalexismusic]

YESSS, been waiting for this. I love this channel.

[@dexterlau7102]

This is the best setup guide, it’s detail and has many useful tips, thank you!

[@jakedarbyson4308]

Really appreciate the guide, had to like and subscribe

[@GarvitronZ]

Perfect Timing, Thanks!

[@HornetInstinctLP]

Best guide so far! Thank you so much, you helped me a lot! 😍

[@OpoSai]

I don't think you understand how much of a beast you are! I love that i can follow step by step because i was so lost with updates

[@BF-rp6wd]

Really helpful video. This should come installed with every ROG ally.

[@nelsonbalmaceda7046]

I bought the rog ally , this video really help me , thank , great Job !!!

[@blind_neighbourhoodNerd]

Dude!! This was excellent!! Thanks so much!

[@mwapb8100]

Dude the keyboard shortcut- THANK YOU!

[@lordrahl7033]

The bottom middle screw will actually lift the shell away from the front of the case, which leaves an easy spot to pull the case apart without even needing to use anything to pry it apart.

[@crystalskyes815]

Was just about to type this. Used the triangle spudger from the iFixit kit and dragged it like a zipper and it popped right off. Cleanest open I have ever come across.

[@chryoko]

Asus Ally is pretty well designed in terms of mechanical solution. Kuddos to Asus engineers there 👍.... wish the software is on par to that .... (SSD upgrade "checking" bug...😤)

[@lavender188]

legit impressive design

[@Lavendy7731]

i want to know if i should buy xbox series x or rog ally, i want to play pc games and i dont know if i can gmod and modded Minecraft

[@TheVoyagers.]

Omg that taskbar one is what I needed thanks

[@rpay8881]

Awesome video Retro. Cant wait for the EmuDeck tutorial!!!

[@conchobar]

Great Video. I wished I had started by using the recovery. From all that I hear, it saves so much time compared with the ridiculous amount of updates and reboots using the out of the box software.

[@DeanSmith84]

Cloud Recovery is way slower than just installing Windows and doing all the updates

[@originalboxelder]

Really helpful, great tips. Thanks!

[@Cbrowns72]

Love your videos thank you!!!

[@GurpsSingh01]

Dude I swear your tutorials are award winning 🏆 keep it up 👏👏👏

[@philipc05]

Thanks for all the great info

[@drake5803]

GREAT video. really helpful for me

[@cmilton32]

Best Guide I have see so far… wish you would have cam out with this day one…. But it has also let me know I have some more things to change in settings that I didn’t even touch the surface on… Thank you and looking forward to you Emudeck video for ROG…

[@JamesTechJackin]

Once again quality content. Thanks bruh.

[@LennyLacey]

Also, you made an amazing and helpful video - thank you. This old man appreciates it

[@samsoulee]

22:52 Never heard about that ! that's good to know . Thanks mate ! 👍

[@darrengaynor4966]

Amazing video - thank you

[@kuzuriii]

This dude is awesome . Thanks for the video !!!

[@anthonym6119]

This guide really helped a lot especially setting up the sd card I looked online and nobody had the right answer.

[@Why_Usernames]

Great video! For the fingerprint reader mine also didn’t recognize it well so I think it’s just the sensor. Dead zone hasn’t bothered me either but I did see people complaining. Per game profiles seem handy! My only complaint is the fans whining when spinning slowly. Loving it so far!

[@Kateyangyuqing]

My fingerprint reader plays up too sometimes, but I wonder if it's a Windows Hello thing. My Surface Pro's face reader is always running into trouble, to the extent that I chose to turn it off in favour of a PIN because it was becoming a headache. The fingerprint reader is a heck of a lot more reliable - and faster - than my Surface Pro's face ID. The fingerprint reader itself is really nice actually, just the quickest lightest touch and it recognises it. The problem is sometimes when I turn it back on after standby or hibernate I think, which is also where the Surface's Face ID plays up. If it's the recognition itself you're having trouble with, maybe try redoing the fingerprint recognition process in settings, maybe it hasn't mapped it optimally? The fans are noisy but that's not totally unexpected for small fans that need to push a lot of air around.

[@jackkaminski3001]

Very helpful, thank you!

[@02stampede]

Woohoo! I was looking forward to this video.

[@deuxforever13]

thanks for the walkthrough Russ, I just swapped out the ssd to a 1tb and going through the motions as I type.😀

[@TuffyDK]

Very nice video - Thanks dude 🙂

[@rocketpowerist]

Great content ! Keep it up!

[@0Leewal0]

Great Tips, thanks alot !!

[@LennyLacey]

hell of a good video, subbed

[@FaffyandJus]

And for someone like me who struggles with tech but wants to play I ONLY use your channel! This is brilliant sir. Thank you!!!!!!

[@mfreddy22]

Awesome content as always. I was about to comment on emudeck and a windows retro guide but you addressed it at the very end while I was typing this. CAN'T WAIT for that one. I think we are all in need of a windows retro guide like the other awesome ones you've made for Android, steamos, etc.

[@garycornhouse4276]

Really details video thanks.

[@Rhysie44]

This was a great video, cheers

[@alexp320715]

Thanks for the help

[@zakmilas]

Fantastic tips!

[@colorfuljosh]

Incredible thank you

[@ilpastor]

Great one!

[@My_Alchemical_Romance]

Great job.

[@clintthurman4359]

Thanks very helpful

[@SubjectSeven]

Great video

[@djwoody249]

Many thanks

[@mackiewiczmaciej]

Awesome video, very informative!

[@skateecho]

Super helpful as always! my setup felt fairly easy as i have a usb-C monitor setup for work so i just docked the ally up like my work machine and it connected to all my peripherals. windows is good and bad! love all the tips, i did miss some of these on my setup. would love more videos on emulation setup or tips and tricks, maybe some accessory guides? got the offical ROG case and im really not in love with it. only other one ive seen was the Waterfield design. curious for any other options you would recommend!

[@dreno360]

Yes!!!! I just commented about this a few days ago!

[@BristolMatt]

What a brilliant video RGC, thank you so much bud. So helpful, so, so helpful.

[@Juggernaut-IV]

10/10 walkthrough

[@LadySamurai88]

I ordered one, I hope to get it tomorrow and probably will need this video again cause i’m not use to Windows lol 😂 Thanks for making this.

[@1099whiskey]

Thanks!

[@manuyt7438]

The best video on yt about ally💪

[@junaidsmj]

Great video. I need to optimal settings of Yuzu on Rog Ally. thanks

[@Maykil107]

thanks so much

[@MosesKReh]

Dammmit I didn’t know about cloud recovery haha. Thanks for the info 10/10

[@jaycee1870]

Thanks for this guide! I just set up my Ally using your guide. Do you plan to do an EmuDeck set up guide specifically for the Rog Ally?

[@AhmadCycro]

Thank you for this! A quick tip for the microSD card is to format it to NTFS before using it. I found mine was exFAT by default and was extremely slow. After changing it it was significantly faster

[@DeanSmith84]

NTFS is slower than exFat because of journaling

[@hidden_name7469]

​@@DeanSmith84on the Ally it's much faster

[@Stalinfalcon]

I don’t know about speed, but I do know that the same files on exfat will take up more disk space than ntfs. Unless you’re swapping an external storage solution between consoles, Androids, and Apples (which I do) you’re best off using ntfs.

[@laserlotus5]

how many of you have a cooked SD card now? seriously asking, I don't want to buy one if it'll just be useless.

[@GreenLeefMusic]

​@@laserlotus5yeah one of mine corrupted in the SD card reader (1TB A2 Silicon Power) and so far is unrecoverable. Trying to "repair" it ends up freezing my Ally seemingly indefinitely and forces me to reboot, which probably is what fully put it out of its misery there. The SD card is a very widespread issue so I would not trust it with any card you would mind losing. Personally I just upgraded my SSD to 2TB instead and when needing to use an SD card I just use a USB SD card reader instead. With a regular card reader you may not be able to charge but they do make some that can also pass through the power caboe through an extra port on the card reader. It is a real pain that it is an issue with the Ally but besides that is a great device, as someone who rocked a Steam Deck since launch but just got an Ally 2 months ago for $500 New Complete Open Box from Best Buy.

[@serhiimykhalchuk9350]

Дякую за це відео. Мені дуже допомогло!

[@DivjotSingh]

Thanks for the video! Immensely helpful. Do you think you can make an updated setup guide given that a lot has changed over the last 6 months? Thanks

[@brdg4276]

About time someone made a video on just set up and tips, all the other videos were SD comparisons like cool but let’s focus on the Ally

[@PrometheusD12]

First of all, I love this setup guide! I love my Rog Ally and I am definitely going to use this when my new SSD arrives for it. Out of curiousity, what is that electric screwdriver your using? I need a small phillips head screwdriver and I was just going to get a regular one, but an electric one seems convenient.

[@rebekahamber]

you showing destiny 2 and seeing blasphemous in your library kept me here lol thank you for the content while I set up my ally

[@reeeformat3843]

Great video! thanks for this! I've been using ninite for years and its such an easy way to get new builds going. I am curious, has battery life been terrible on your unit? i feel the need to have the charger on me all the time its like i can only fiddle around and play games for an hour and a bit then id have to charge it. Compared to the steam deck where i'd charge it twice a day, the ally i'd have to charge almost constantly through the day

[@CWT-op3ty]

Hi Russ ,thanks for the very informative setup guide. do you plan to do do a quick video : how to boot batocera from an sd card or a hard drive on ally?

[@yoitsmegabe]

I went to return mine due to a loud left fan and grindy analog stick and the employee said "another one?" I plan on picking it up again but I'll wait for it to stabilize a bit more. I got the steam deck once it was stable and it's been a pleasant experience. I feel like the Ally can get there too

[@hida_berserker]

I'm late to the party, I just bought the ROG Ally. - Specifically for playing Destiny 2 and you've caught my attention in the first few seconds. Not only is this the best guide after having watched the around 10 guides on YT. Final Shape here we go!

[@zerocal76]

Same! Got mine a couple days ago. Sub to this guy. Been here since like 30k subs, I knew his channel was gonna get big 👌

[@Fraser1746]

Great Video, Russ … love it when you shown us your devices and talk about it. 🥰 I don’t know, if you done it already, but I am thinking about buying one handheld: Valve Steam Deck or ASUS ROG Ally … I wanna have the best performance and easiest way to gaming (offline, cloud and retro too) additional to media and maybe office to. So I am really don’t know: Windows or Linux (both are good for media and office too but the Steam Deck is in his own galaxy and ASUS has a usual Windows 11 under deck.)… Greetings from Germany… to Hawaii 🌺🥰

[@GregTooReal]

I LOVE YOU BRO 🔥🔥🔥

[@TheOswald04]

I hope Asus creates a way for users to share their preferred settings.

[@justinramirez8663]

Great video! Curious on what I should do to make my sticks more sensitive. I feel like it takes a lot of room to actually get them to react. Other times they react and I am other aiming everything. I have not touched the deadline settings.

[@vitali2127]

Great video, please people don’t forget that gamepass streaming is not in every region

[@z808flashz6]

New subscriber here. Just got my Ally today with my 2T Internal storage. Do I have to do an initial set up first or can I just swap the storage out? Not too sure if I can just do that. Really helpful video here. Please let me know if you can. Thanks!

[@QuantumKatmusic]

Thanks for this, was wondering how to use desktop mode for controller

[@LuccaRPG]

Wish this video came out a few days ago. It took ages to set it up (and I still am). Had an issue where it would be stuck on the republic of gamers splash screen then automatically turned off when I was updating armory crate and had to reboot. I realized it was overheated and it would automatically turn off. So I waited a while and bam, worked. There's also an armory crate bug that says you don't have optimum display/performance if you use a 3rd party dock. This is a known bug that ASUS says they'll fix.

[@breedofone23]

You dont have to reload Windows when you replace the SSD. You can clone the drive. I personally use macrium but there's others out there.

[@TheSixthSLoT]

I hear a lot of people complain that their setup process was super painful. Mine was super simple. I don't know why, but I had none of the common issues that a lot of KZbinrs complained about. In particular, people said that their keyboard wouldn't appear during setup, so they had to plug one in. Mine worked with no issue.

[@Negativvv]

My setup was the ultimate in pain to the point where a Windows update broke it and left me in an infinite boot loop with no way of repairing it.

[@TheSixthSLoT]

@@Negativvv Really? I've set mine up 3 times, zero issues. - Once because I accepted a floor model from Best Buy (got it for 559.99 woot!) and it needed a restart. - I restarted it a second time just to make sure, since mine was a floor model. - And I had to reset everything a third time when installed a 1tb SSD. I don't know why I'm not having issues when everyone else is. My experience with the ROG Ally has been purely positive across the board.

[@Negativvv]

I've bought an SSD reader and I'm going to format the entire drive to see if that fixes it...

[@TheSixthSLoT]

@@Negativvv If anything, you're still inside of the return period. I'd just exchange it for another one. It's a really good handheld once you get a good one.

[@Negativvv]

@@TheSixthSLoT My Ally is completely dead it seems. Even with a completely blank, formatted SSD it doesn't Cloud recover or even boot to a USB. It either cycles a boot loop with the USB or just goes back into the BIOS after Asus Cloud recovery.

[@Broadstreet231]

you are the man. Walk thru on how to play ps on it would be cool

[@dannypassion]

Great peirce of tech

[@hobsonsaffiliatedllc8028]

I'm also planning on using it as a handheld pc as well and not just for gaming

[@viktornaroznoi1370]

Would be awesome, if you made a video about tips and tricks with regards to bass guitar ;)

[@gx1995gx]

God tir set up thanx !!!!!!!!!!!

[@WuFluChan]

I’ve been using manual mode 13/15/25 on battery power seems to work a lot better than silent mode 10w just isn’t enough, could probably get away with 12w instead of 13 since it seems to run at 12 with these settings anyways. Then I just have it cranked all the way up for ac 30/43/53

[@I.M.T.S]

Got mine on 12th. Quite happy with the performance so far. My only complain is that I wish there was TDP and fan control slider in the command center so that you could adjust on the fly without having to go to armory crate. Now a days I predominantly use the manual mode because the asus preset tends to run hot. For same tdp my ally runs 15° cooler with more aggressive fan curve.

[@wanted247ha8]

The fan curve resets on manual and it’s super annoying. Go and take a peek it literally is going to be damn near flattened. At the end of the day I just run turbo mode or if I feel it’s beating up too much I got and grab the 70 degree slider and crank it to 100% on both fans. 🤷🏾‍♂️ if they die I got a warranty and it seems they don’t spin too fast to get loud anyway.

[@I.M.T.S]

@wanted247ha8 You need to make separate profile for battery and plugged in. After setting up tdp and fan curves, make sure to press the check mark ✅️ on the right side of the profile name. I set up two profiles on battery and two on plugged in. Once set up, neither tdp nor fan curve changes.

[@wanted247ha8]

@@I.M.T.S TFP stays the same but I promise the fan curve does change. I’ve set it 100 times at this point. It’s super annoying.

[@Tyler-hs9eu]

My personal experience- i had to open windows up and do bios updates with original drive first. I tried doing it the other way before that with the new ssd first and i literally watched the windows screen and another screen load for hours on end. However, it was VERY lengthy

[@StayPeace69]

for the SSD replacement, if you’re using Sabrent SSDs in particular and own an SSD enclosure, you can use acronis for Sabrent, then you can clone and transfer the previous SSD to the new one. it’s pretty straightforward, i’ve used this method, it’s easier and faster, and don’t need to do any setup after the clone

[@joao_silveira]

Which hardware or adapter did you use to connect the new ssd to the rog to clone? Or hiw did you clone with acronis fir Sabrent?

[@StayPeace69]

@@joao_silveira I used a cheap ssd enclosure I found on Amazon when it was on sale, and I put Sabrent’s ssd inside it, then I plugged it in to the ally and used the acronis for sabrent app to do the cloning. Once it was finished, I replaced the old one, and you’re good to go!

[@Johnlmooring]

Great Video! Quick question, do u recommend any specific video / power settings when streaming remote games from XBox Series X to Asus Rog Ally?