ASUS water-cooled gaming notebook PC "ROG GX700VO"
This is Jisa Tripei.
By the way, water-cooled PCs are cool, aren't they? Compared to general air cooling, water cooling is an effective means for efficiently cooling the CPU and GPU by circulating a special solution and improving performance by overclocking. It also has the advantage of making the radiator fan quieter and making the operating noise quieter. My PC "Daikorenmaru" also has two Xeon E5-2697 v2 with 12 cores / 24 threads operation and high heat generation, so the CPU part is water-cooled and stable operation with a design that can withstand the rise in room temperature in midsummer. I am. However, since the equipment is inevitably larger than air cooling, water cooling is unrealistic for notebook PCs due to the limitation of internal space. Even so, the idea of "I want to improve the performance of notebook PCs by water cooling" has been around for a long time, and in 2002 Hitachi introduced a notebook PC equipped with a water cooling system called "FLORA 270W Silent Model". It was a hot topic at the time because it had a completely water-cooled mechanism built into the PC. About 14 years later, ASUS announced the world's first water-cooled gaming notebook PC "ROG GX700VO" with a removable water-cooling mechanism. The expected actual selling price is 549,800 yen excluding tax, and 591,784 yen including tax.
"Hey! You can buy Xeon E5-2699 v3 with 18 cores / 36 threads! You can buy 7 cheap GeForce GTX 980Ti!"
Although it is a fairly high price for a notebook PC, I visited the recital to worship the world's crazy (praise) notebook PC with this bullish price setting and a concept that disregards profitability. I came.
ASUS gamer brand "REPUBLIC OF GAMERS" (ROG for short) is also 10 years old this year
At the beginning of the recital, we learned that the ROG brand is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. Various devices such as graphic boards for motherboards, desktop PCs for notebook PCs, LCD displays, headphones for sound boards, and various devices have been developed to make PC games more comfortable.
It seems that a new brand called STRIX has become the mainstream for the company's graphic boards these days, but ROG will continue to be a premium brand on high-end lines. ROG GX700VO has a peaky specification that seems to symbolize such a premium brand, and I felt that the future of the brand is bright.
The mechanism inside is exposed by removing the water cooling unit.It has a pump in the center and one radiator on each side.
ROG GX700VO is a mechanism that allows you to remove the water cooling unit with one button while the power is on. The button is on the water cooling unit side and is located near the back of the PC top plate. If you look inside the water cooling unit, you can see that the pump and the two radiators occupy most of the space. There was a fan on the back of each radiator. The size of the fan is 9 cm.
The joint part of the PC body was like a quick release fitting that is often used for water cooling of homebrew PCs.
There is a uniquely shaped joint with the PC body, the red part in the middle is the power supply part, both sides are the lines through which the coolant passes, and the rods that fix both ends so that they do not come off. The coolant does not leak due to a mechanism like a quick release. The total capacity of the coolant is about 200 ml, and maintenance of ASUS support is required in 2 years. When the PC body is removed from the structure, it seems that about 10 to 30% of the coolant remains in the pipe on the PC body side. In other words, it is calculated that 20 ml to 60 ml will remain, and the weight of the PC itself will change, but the officially announced weight is about 3.6 kg, which is quite heavy in the first place, so it does not bother me much.
By the way, if you bring a water cooling unit, it's quite heavy. When I checked the product page of asus.com, it weighed 4.8 kg. Good news for those who think, "This is a laptop, but it seems difficult to carry." This ROG GX700VO comes with a special suitcase. Repeat. What a special suitcase is attached.
A special suitcase that comes with the ROG GX700VO.The suitcase is also a pinch, but it seems that it will cost about 30,000 yen just for this.
Pretending to be returning from overseas, you will want to spread it out with Starbucks and make a face. Well, I don't have to do anything in particular, so even with 3DMark Fire Strike, if I hit one, it will disappear immediately. However, there are times when I have trouble operating with Starbucks. It is to secure the power supply.
How about this visual impact! The size of the PC is 429.2 (W) x 309.9 (D) x 33-35 (H) mm. The water cooling unit is 417.1 (W) x 368.76 (D) x 114.3 (H) mm
In fact, the water cooling unit of ROG GX700VO does not support battery drive, and AC power adapter drive is essential. By the way, two AC adapters are included, one for the water cooling unit and one for the PC itself. In addition, the AC power adapter dedicated to the water cooling unit can also be supplied to the PC body side through the water cooling unit, and it is an excellent one that notifies you with a buzzer that the terminal is halfway inserted.
The large AC power adapter on the top is for the water cooling unit, and the bottom is for charging only with the PC body.
There is a good reason why the power supply is special like this. After all, the ROG GX700VO is a notebook PC that can be overclocked (OC). Moreover, it supports CPU, GPU, and memory OC. The specifications that overturned the common sense of notebook PCs are so fascinating that it makes me want to say, "This is a desktop anymore!"
CPU increased from 2.7GHz to 4GHz, memory increased from 2133Hz to 2800MHz. The operating clock of the GPU is unknown, but it seems that the performance will increase by 43%.
CPU is Core i7-6820HK, which is a special SKU for unlocking magnification among notebook PCs of 6th generation Core (development code name: Skylake), GPU is a high-performance model that can be installed in notebook PCs even for desktops, GeForce GTX 980 Is adopted. The Core i7-6820HK is originally a CPU with a rated operating clock of 2.7GHz and a maximum operating clock of 3.6GHz during turbo boost, but it can also be driven at 4GHz by OC.
The memory uses DDR4-2133 (capacity is 32GB!), But it can also be driven at 2800MHz with OC. The GeForce GTX 980 originally has a rated clock of 1126MHz and a boost clock of 1216MHz, but since it can be operated at an operating temperature that is up to about 33% lower than the air cooling mechanism, it is said that it can operate without impairing performance. In this area, I would like to actually operate it and observe the behavior of the operating clock.
OC can change the mode with "Turbo Gear" in the dedicated software "Gaming Center" that can set the profile for each PC game.
OC can be set from the item "Turbo Gear" of the software called "Gaming Center". There are four operation modes, and "Standard" and "Optimized" can be selected for the PC itself. "Standard" is a mode in which OC is not performed, and "Optimization" is a mode in which the clock is increased as much as possible according to the temperature condition (temperature inside the PC) at that time. By the way, this setting is automatically changed to the "highest" mode when you connect it to the water cooling unit and restart it. In addition to this, there is a "manual" mode, in which the clock can be finely adjusted by the user.
In "manual" mode, the CPU base clock is displayed in a pull-down menu. 100MHz (rated), 105MHz, 110MHz can be selected
According to the company's explainer, even if the "manual" mode is set higher than the "highest" mode, the performance may actually decrease depending on the temperature conditions. Probably the main cause is the sudden clock down due to Thermal Throttling, but it seems safe for users who are not familiar with OC to use the "best" mode.
I'm pretty full up to this point, but the ROG GX700VO is fascinating even with specifications other than the CPU, GPU, and water cooling mechanism. First of all, it is a liquid crystal display, but it is a 17.3-inch IPS panel with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 dots, which is normal, but it is compatible with "G-SYNC". This allows you to immerse yourself in the game without stuttering or flickering.
Compatible with NVIDIA G-SYNC.By the way, a single G-SYNC compatible full HD LCD display costs about 50,000 to 60,000 yen.
In addition, the storage is equipped with two NVMe-compatible 256GB SSDs in a RAID0 configuration (that is, a total capacity of 512GB). When the company measured it with "CrystalDiskMark 5.0.2", it was about 2842MB / s for sequential read and about 2482MB / s for sequential write. In this case, it seems that you will not feel stress when loading PC games that are caused by storage.
Equipped with NVNe SSD with RAID 0, the sequential speed is explosive with read and write exceeding 2400MB per second!
The keyboard is an isolation type that supports simultaneous pressing of 30 keys, and the keystroke is 23 mm, which the company considers optimal for game response. The macro key at the top can also be set to launch a specific application.
The keyboard has a macro key at the top, and the palm rest is wide.
The sound circuit is equipped with a DAC and amplifier for headphones from ESS Technology that supports 384kHz / 32bit. There are also many functions such as "Sonic Rader" that displays in-game enemies and gunshots on the screen, and "Sonic Studio" that optimizes the sound for the game.
Built-in Saber headphone DAC and amplifier from ESS Technology
Enliven the game around the sound
It's not cheap at all, but there are plenty of commitments and specifications for the price. If you make your own PC, you can make a higher-performance water-cooled PC for 600,000 yen, but the company, which is the world's number one motherboard maker, knows 100 such unsophisticated Tsukkomi. So why did you make such an ambitious product? I'm sure it's "romance".
Of course, I think it's an approach that every company thought about once, but didn't consider it technically, budgetarily, and marketing. However, ASUS will actually act, announce it to the world, and officially launch it on February 19th. This may have been caused by the enthusiasm to chase the romance of the developers or the team. Well, when I actually interviewed, there is a possibility that I will be told "somehow nori and www", but I think that the company that can move with such nori is still economically affordable as a company, "ASUS I think it's true even if it says "to let the world know about our high technology."
With the evolution of CPU, memory, storage, OS, software, and web services, modern PCs are almost no problem except for extremely heavy work. Also, most of the work can be replaced with smartphones these days. In today's world where the number of PC users who do not need such performance continues to increase, I really fell in love with ASUS, which has thrown a huge stone in the industry in the field of notebook PCs, where it is difficult to improve performance. It was such a product.
USB3.0, HDMI, mini DisplayPort, Thnderbolt3 (USB Type-C shape) USB 3.1 (USB Type-C shape), Gigabit LAN on the right side
USB3.0 x 2, microphone input, headphone output, SD card slot on the left side
The back is the water cooling unit joint, but the center also serves as the AC power adapter port.
There are 4 holes for mounting the water cooling unit on the bottom.The geometric pattern is a ROG-like design.
■ Related site ASUS ASUS GX700V0 Product page (English)
