ASUS at Computex 2016: The 10 Years of the Republic Of Gamers (ROG) Booth Tour

The battle between ASUS and MSI for the best gaming ‘laptop’ is blurring some very thick lines. Both vendors now look at laptop water cooling as the top option, which drags the ‘laptop’ side of the equation heavily into a portable desktop scenario, depending on how heavy you think a portable system should be. At this point one might realize that the main difference between one of these systems and actually moving a desktop system is having to move a monitor, however I am told that high-end gaming notebooks, despite the investment, have a reasonable return and offer a flagship product at the top of the gaming notebook stack. At Computex we saw the next iteration of ASUS’s design, the GX800.

The ASUS ROG GX800: A Dual-GPU Liquid Cooled Laptop

On the last page we saw a 20L desktop design with dual GTX 1080s. The GX800 by comparison takes the higher efficiency GTX 980 MXM modules designed for laptops into the cooling loop, along with a Skylake based Core i7.

Click the image for the full resolution

The GX800 will come with a mechanical keyboard, offering 2.2mm of key travel, under the ‘MechTAG’ name. ASUS says they are using a custom type of switch, one they’re not willing to divulge at this time, but it should be akin to brown/red switches. It’s worth noting that by comparison to the main competition, ASUS has the keyboard in ‘the usual’ place for a notebook, whereas MSI has it at the bottom of the design as most gaming environments would necessitate a separate mouse.

On the sides we see a Thunderbolt 3 port, a USB 3.1 Type-C port (10 Gbps, and with TB3 indicates they are using the Intel Alpine Ridge controller), a USB 3.0 Type-A, separate mini-DisplayPort and HDMI ports, and a full-sized Ethernet port. There’s also an antenna segment, for users to have an external WiFi antenna, however it is worth noting that this in on the right-hand side of the system, which might cause a wire to interfere with anyone using a mouse on the right-hand side.

Obviously a system using dual GTX 980 graphics with a Core i7, even a 45W one, and a 4K display is going to be drawing some power. To that extent, ASUS uses two power supplies for the system. In order to use the discrete graphics, the power cable on the left in the image above needs to be in place as the system starts up. The system is designed to be overclocked, and if I recall correctly both power supplies should be around the 300-330W variety, allowing for a 600-660W system.

ASUS has not been discussing the GX800 that much in terms of exact specifications as of yet, though I would expect it to hit shelves in the second half of the year.

External Graphics: The XG Station 2

Back at CES in January we saw a number of external graphics solutions from ASUS, Razer and AMD. The latter two were using AMD’s solution over a Thunderbolt 3 PCIe based connection in a surprise collaboration between AMD and Intel, and the goal was to handle things like graphics hot-plug over TB3 appropriately. ASUS’ solution was to use a proprietary signal over TB3 to their XG Station, which would limit its usefulness to approved GPUs and approved ASUS laptops. For Computex, ASUS has dropped their custom solution and going with the recommended external graphics solution via Intel/AMD.

The XG Station 2 itself gets a design upgrade for the ROG 10-Year, featuring the Mayan design similar to the other ROG desktop products. The Station itself looks a little bit larger than before as well, with ASUS intent on physically supporting as many single GPU graphics cards as possible.

In opening it up, it is worth noting that the cooling methodology for this revolves around the three small fans at the top of the XG Station 2, drawing air in through the top and forcing it through the GPU. The exhaust then comes out the rear. Despite all the GPU action being on the left hand side of the device, the right hand side has some electronics so the dock can also be used for expansion ports.

In this case we have a USB 3.1 hub to allow for more ports, another network port (an Intel NIC), and additional Thunderbolt 3 connectors for other storage devices. It is worth noting that all the data goes through the single cable back to the main PC, and I’m unsure at this point which elements of the design have data priority (PCIe, networking, USB, or Display).