CES has always been a playground for ASUS and this year’s event of the year was no exception. The Taiwanese computer maker has announced a ton of stuff, but really, there was only one that caught our attention because of how ridiculous it is. We are talking about the ASUS ROG Mothership GZ700 Gaming Laptop. It is not quite a laptop per se because it is really, really big. How big? It is a 17-incher (!) that measures 410 mm across, 320 mm deep and 29.9 mm thick (16 x 12.6 x 1.2 inches), and tips the scales at a hefty 4.7 kilograms (a whopping 10+ lbs!).
Now, that is one ‘laptop’ you don’t want to be on your lap. However, on the contrary, it is one suited to be on anyone’s laps because of an unconventional design that reimagined how a laptop should be. You see, in regular laptops, the bulk of the components, save for the display, are packed under the keyboard which goes onto your laps. Needless to say, the laps will take the blunt of the heat generated, but the Mothership, on the other hand, has the key components (mainboard, processor, GPU, and practically everything) behind the display.
In this way, the keyboard section that supposed to be on the laps remain cool to do so. That’s in theory because, it is still heavy and too cumbersome to be sitting on the thighs. Anyways, this components-behind-the-display reminisces of All-In-One PCs, which the Mothership probably is. The design while making the laptop top heavy, does have its boon in the area of cooling and thus, it is able to keep the temperatures in check for longer which translates to better performance. Here’s some interesting bits about the Mothership:
“ROG Mothership is housed in an exquisitely machined aluminum chassis, built from solid slabs of aluminum using a precise CNC milling process involving 114 individual tooling stages and nearly 20 hours of precision carving. It features a jaw-dropping Full HD G-Sync display with a 144Hz refresh rate and 3ms GTG response time and is powered by the latest NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 graphics and Intel® Core™ i9 processor. ROG Mothership also comes with Hyperdrive Extreme, which uses ASUS-exclusive technology to combine up to three NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4 SSDs to provide the world’s fastest RAID 0 storage in a gaming laptop for ultra fast data-access and write speeds.“
Other details include a 17.3-inch FHD “IPS-level” panel, Intel Core i9-8950HK processor, up to 64 GB DDR4 2666 MHz SDRAM, 3x M.2 NVMe PCIe 2.0 x4 512 GB SSD, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2090 8GB GDDR6 VRAM, Intel WiFi 6 AX200, 2×2 802.11ax WiFi, Bluetooth 5.0, detachable per-key Aura Sync RGB keyboard with wired or wireless modes, 4 x 4W speakers with Smart Amp technology, array microphone, and a host of I/Os, which includes the usual suspect like Thunderbolt 3, VirtualLink, HDMI, SD card reader et cetera.
ASUS said G Mothership GZ700 Gaming Laptop will make its way onto the market in Q2 2019.
For those not eager to be weighed down by a desktop replacement laptop, there is also the ‘more handy’ ROG Zephyrus S GX701 Gaming Laptop. The Zephyrus S here is also a 17-inch gaming laptop, but it is way, way more portable then the Mothership. It shares the same display as the behemoth, but weighing a lot less at 2.7 kilograms (around 6 lbs). That’s still quite some heft there, but it should be more manageable than 10 lbs heft. Size wise, it is touted as the most compact 17-inch gaming laptop with a thickness of just 18.7 mm and it is also the only gaming laptop on the market with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 with Max-Q Design graphics.
Some of the notables include 8th-gen Intel Core processor, 4x DDR slots for up to 24 GB RAM and a 1 TB PCIe SSD. Interesting, this laptop is one rare laptop that does not sport a built-in webcam. Instead, ASUS will offer an optional ROG GC21 external camera for those who needs a webcam. At this point, no words on when it will be available, or how much it will cost.
All images courtesy of ASUS.
