Asus' $4,300 giant liquid-cooled gaming laptop looms over US
If you want to blow a huge wodge of cash on a gaming laptop packing liquid-cooled, desktop-grade hardware that will let you play games at the highest settings, look no further.
There are only two places in Asia at the moment where the mighty liquid-cooled Asus ROG GX700 gaming laptop will be sold: Taiwan and Singapore. But fret not, as the Taiwanese company plans to sell this over-the-top machine in the US and other countries too, though no launch date has yet been revealed. In Europe, Asus will be selling the laptop in Germany, France and Switzerland and other countries in the region for around 4,299 Euro. Do check with your local Asus distributor for more information about pricing and availability.
The 17.5-inch ROG GX700 has a special dock that connects to the back of the laptop enabling it to be liquid-cooled. The dock houses the radiator, and when connected the laptop performs 40 percent faster, Asus claims, thanks to the extra cooling allowing the GPU and CPU to ramp up its performance. When disconnected, the desktop-class Nvidia GTX 980 graphics chip drops to laptop-grade GTX 980M performance to prevent overheating.
The liquid-cooling feature also lets you tweak the performance of the laptop to be even better. In particular, the Intel Core i7-6820HK processor is overclockable, and reportedly can be up to 48 percent faster. The Nvidia GTX 980 chip can also overclocked to run up to 43 percent quicker.
You can undock the unsightly cooling unit and leave it at home.
If this isn't cool enough for you, the laptop also comes with a 24-inch suitcase with special foam padding for transportation. If you're heading off on vacation and want to play games on the beach while sipping a beverage with a little umbrella, this will come in handy. Otherwise, you'll probably have trouble fitting the laptop and its enormous dock in a normal bag.
You may be wondering just how much a system like that will cost you. In Singapore, the ROG GX700 will retail for a starting price of S$6,200, which converts to around $4,300, though expect that to go upwards if you're adding more RAM or even a 4K display. Final US pricing has yet to be announced.
Be sure to check out CNET's in-depth hands-on with the GX700 for more information.