ASUS GL703GI hands on preview

When it comes to gaming notebooks that pack a nuclear punch, ASUS is at the top of the innovation chain. With Republic of Gamers series, ASUS won truckload of awards in gaming products. The new ASUS RoG GL703GI is the new flagship model that packs Intel’s top of the line Core i9 chip and NVIDIA GeForce GTX1080 GPU. We got a chance to play with this laptop for half a day at NVIDIA’s India HQ. In this post, we do a preview of this laptop. Read On about our first impressions!

Key Specification

1. Intel Core i9-8950K @ 2.9GHz (turbo up to 4.8GHz)
2. Intel HM370 chipset
3. 64GB of DDR4 2666MHz RAM
4. NVIDIA GeForce GTX1080
5. 8GB GDDR5 RAM for graphics
6. 17.3” FullHD 144Hz Gsync supported display
7. 2x 512GB M.2 SSDs in RAID mode
8. 2TB 5400 RPM Hybrid HDD (FireCuda)
9. Ports:
   1. 1x SP thunderbolt 3 port
   2. 1x HDMI
   3. 1x USB Type-C
   4. 1x mini display port
   5. headphone/mic
   6. Kensington lock
10. Windows 10
11. 71Wh battery, two 280W AC adaptors
12. RGB 16.8 milllion color keyboard with 2.5mm key travel.
13. 4.70 kgs weight
14. Dimensions: 16.7 x 12.5 x 1.87 inches

Key Features

Intel Core i9 Flagship Performance
The 8th generation Intel Core i9 overclockable CPU, through ROG, is able to stably overclock to the 4.8GHz scale, making it the most powerful esports laptop for AAA titles.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Beyond Limits
The CPU + GPU dual overclocking and NVIDIA GTX 1080 graphics card 1974 MHz boost clock challenges the limits of desktops.
Hyper Drive Extreme Technology
Going beyond the past, we made the first laptop that provides three PCIe 3.0 x4 channels, forming the Hyper Drive Extreme, which increases the continuous read speeds to a max performance of 8700MB/s.
144 Hz High Refresh-Rate Display
The 17.3-inch wide viewing angle display has a refresh rate of 144 Hz and 3 ms response time for fluid gaming.17.3 Patented Anti-Dust Cooling (ADC) Technology
Two 12V fans and 0.1mm thermal fins coupled with three fan modes maintains the highest cooling efficiency for various situations.
>Laptop to Xbox in One Key
Integrating Xbox Wireless, gamers can connect Xbox controllers and fire up the Xbox game bar with the Xbox hotkey to record and broadcast gameplay.
Esports Keyboard
2.5mm travel distance, 0.3mm keycap curve, and durable, anti-slip palm rest.
Trinity Display
Supports ThunderboltTM 3, Mini DisplayPort 1.4, and HDMI 2.0 for a truly immersive gaming experience.

Design

The ASUS RoG G703GI feels massive, looks massive and is massive. At 4.70 kgs, this laptop is not for those who like their backpack to feel superlight. Not to forget the dual power adapters adding to cable clutter on your desk. This laptop is made with a different purpose. Message! This is ASUS message to the world. This is the way ASUS shows what it can achieve. Getting three hard drives, top of the line CPU and top of the line GPU into a laptop form factor is not an easy task. Biggest challenges are packaging and cooling and ASUS did a wonderful job here.

The top of the laptop has shiny metallic finish, with RoG logo etched in red towards the left side. At nearly 2 inches thick, the laptop looks really really thick. There are no ports or slots on the front side. All LED indicators are placed on the base along the rim. There is a massive air vent on the left side. There are RJ45 LAN, USB Type-C, USB 3, audio in/out ports on the right side. Right side too has similar huge air vent along with two USB ports and one card reader. Switch to the back, there are two massive air vents, two power adapter inputs, a mini display port and a HDMI port. Bottom of this laptop is clean, with couple of screws and an easy to remove panel cover to change RAM.

Open the lid and the big 17.3” display urges you to put some content on it. The keyboard is a full size one with number pad. The trackpad is tiny, by modern laptop standards and this is a bummer, given the amount of space available for trackpad.

Cooling and heat dissipation
G703 GI uses dedicated copper tunnels for independently cooling the CPU and GPU to keep the temperature steadily below 85 to 99°C to prevent overheating and its result, underclocking. This ensures gaming performance and a longer system lifespan. The new generation G703GI Core i9 processor upgrade increases performance as well as the number of cores, thus, it requires a more efficient cooling module. While the previous generation used three heat pipes, the new version uses four heat pipes for better cooling. These heat pipes divide the heat generated by the CPU and GPU and move it through three tunnels towards the thermal fins at the outlet. The ROG G703GI thermal fins are only 0.1mm thick, which is half that of conventional fins, allowing for more fins to occupy the same space and increase the cooling surface area by 16% and reduce air resistance by 7%, making it one of the key factors affecting laptop cooling.

The ROG G703GI features two 12V fans to efficiently eject heat from the four outlets located on the laptop’s left, right, and back. Compared to conventional 5V fans, the 12V fan is 20% faster and increases air flow by 42.5%. With the exclusive patented Anti-Dust Cooling (ADC) technology, dust and particles are ejected through the tunnels by the outer edges of the fan, preventing the accumulation of dirt on the thermal fins from affecting heat dissipation.

There are three fan modes; the default mode is Balanced. When overclocking, the gamer can press the function key + F5 to switch to Overboost mode, which will increase the speed of the fans to enhance heat dissipation, preventing the CPU and GPU from instability due to rising temperatures; Conversely, when not running intensive programs, set the fans to Silent Mode and the fans will run quietly at low speeds.

Display

A good gaming laptop needs a display that elevates gaming experience. The 17.3” FullHD IPS display does exactly does in great way. The bummer though is that the display is 1080p, not 2K or 4K. Given the price tag on this laptop, ASUS should’ve provided a higher resolution panel. Also, the bezels should’ve been smaller, given that more and more laptops are now coming with edge to edge displays. After all, this is the top of the line product from ASUS. The display supports NVIDIA G-Sync to ensure that display and GPU are in perfect sync to ensure stutter free and tear-free gaming performance. The display has up to 130% sRGB color gamut.

Keyboard and trackpad

The keyboard is perfect. The keys have 2.5mm key travel and comes with sRGB backlight color effect support. Each key can be individually configures to have specific backlight color. There is a full number pad and there are 7 hot keys at the top. The power key is tugged far away from the keyboard which is a good thing.
Trackpad is a disappointment. It is tiny and has limited functionality. The palm rest area has soft touch anti slip coating.

Performance

After looking at the specifications, you should not have any doubts with respect to performance. We have tried playing a few games and the G730 wouldn’t even sweat. The overclocked Core i9 and GTX1080 can play any modern game at 60fps.

We did not have enough time at hands to perform synthetic benchmarks. Here, we are including benchmarks that are provided by ASUS. Do note that we had no part is running these benchmarks and we will perform our own benchmarks once we get hands on a review unit.

Test model: G703GI
CPU: Intel Core i9-8950HK
GPU: NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1080 8GB GDDR5X VRAM
RAM: 16GB DDR4-2666*1
SSD: M.2 PCIe x4 512G
OS: Windows 10 Pro 1709, build 16299.15, High performance Fan: Overboost

CPU Performance

Storage Read&Write Speed Test : MB/s ( Operating System Disk )

Battery

You are joking, right?

Conclusion

From a targeted consumer point of view, this is a very capable machine (if one is ready to shell out that much money). If you are not exactly looking for a full fledged gaming notebook, there is another notebook that we previewed, something that costs around 80k and comes with a pretty good CPU and GPU.