Excited to see if this thing overheats just like the Razer and MacBook Pro.

Oh wow this will throttle like mad

Captain_TomExcited to see if this thing overheats just like the Razer and MacBook Pro.

Origin must have slammed a shot of the Apple courage juice. o_O

egg fryers these will be, unless they've somehow hidden a secret liquid/Ln2 cooling system in there somewhere....

No love for the Intel / AMD abomination?

People don't want solid laptops with noisey fans anymore. They see it as clunky... ...as though "wow look at how hard this computer is working to do this, the fans are so LOUD!"

It's a stupid impression, but a lot of people really think there's some kind of voodoo tech magic that allows these companies to cram high-power components into a tight space and have them run cool. They think somehow they just don't need the cooling because they're supposed to be the best of the best, and that when things need cooling, it's a bad thing. Just look at the marketing on stuff like this. They always go on and on about efficiency, as though its equivocal to performance, when we all know those are two sides of an unavoidable compromise. If you want cool and quiet, you have to give up some performance - lower power components or power limiting. Or more recently, thermal throttling <_< If you want performance, you have to go bigger and louder to keep things from burning up. What they're really selling is the idea that there's a way around this. But what they don't talk about is where the compromise shifts to when you simply ignore it... ...which is longevity. Don't hear a lot of them advertising that.

Apple probably has a lot to do with it. People have this strange, almost mystical view of "Apple Engineering." It's as though people think they're doing some revolutionary game-changing stuff under the hood that simply can't be understood by mere mortals.

It's just so glaringly obvious. There is a fundamental physical hurdle in front of it. To get work done, you need power. Wattage is a measure of how much work is done. You need the watts to do the work. With those watts comes heat that has to be dealt with. There is only so much you can do to improve efficiency and reduce the amount of energy lost as heat. We would have to fundamentally re-envision how circuits work, and the materials we use to make them. If you're putting power to something that carries current across metals and making it do work, it's always going to generate heat. And that's probably never gonna change, in spite of what some people want you to believe. It's not magic.

Also, screw all of the reviewers out there who gush over things like bezel and thinness. They're part of the problem. Part of the reason we have literally notebook-thin notebooks packed with top-tier components without a shred of space between anything and cooling non-solutions is because reviewers push for and highlight features that basically make it impossible to both have the best components and the best cooling. They want the best stuff inside, but they don't want it to be big, and it has to look sleek, and it can't make any sounds. I dunno, maybe I'm crazy, but if you're going to sell me a notebook with a power-hungry CPU for big money, I want a sufficient amount of that money to go towards making sure it lasts and performs at its best for the entirety of it's lifespan. Figure out how to make it look good. I'm sure there's more to good looks than size - that's just a trend. Designs like this, I'll never understand. Waste of money.

Didn't take note of Mac book thermal failures I see...

enxo218Didn't take note of Mac book thermal failures I see...

Seems to be the going trend. Copy everything that makes Apple products bad...

3 words: quality cooling pads. ;)

Ideally they should be a few mm thicker to allow for decent air flow, the area given on the base for ventilation may be adequate in ideal situations, but useless for normal usage on a desk, table or even worse, a bed.

Caring1Ideally they should be a few mm thicker to allow for decent air flow, the area given on the base for ventilation may be adequate in ideal situations, but useless for normal usage on a desk, table or even worse, a bed.

Probably all it would take... ...just a little room for more volume to pass through. There comes a point where the enclosure itself is so tight and full of resistance points that you could have pretty wide open exhaust and ridiculous intake, but no air will move because the whole inside of it is a choke point. There will be pockets of heat being trapped inside. I bet making it a little thicker and working in some thoughtfully routed channels from point to point would make a big difference, maybe then they could fit fans that actually move air without being too loud for people, too.

Bottom airflow is nice, but like you suggested not always practical. Though Prima.Vera makes a good point about cooling pads. This one is a good candidate. Still, without a reasonable path for heat to transfer to where those openings are, it might not affect internal temps as much as one would hope. Hard to say without looking inside, but just looking outside says that even with that wide open bottom, not a lot of air is entering or moving in the first place.

That aside, if you need a cooling pad to keep it from throttling, then why not just make the frigging thing a little thicker in the first place? That way it's more convenient, without the need to carry extra stuff, and the whole setup actually takes up less space during use.

You know, I don't have problems with thin consumer laptops. If people don't mind typing on hot keyboards as they make facebook posts, so be it. Stuff with lean components inside designed for basic, everyday stuff doesn't need to be heavy duty. Even the lower-level components can handle basic tasks even when bogged down by thermal limitations, and they'll hold up longer than the user will wait to upgrade. So that's fine. But this is for gamers and content creators. It's supposed to be a workhorse, but it's not built like one. It's more like a trinket. An accessory. A display piece. It's supposed to hold up to the max workload, perform consistently across long sessions, and do so over a longer service life. That's supposed to be what you're paying more for. Anything else is, like I said before, a total waste of cash.

Thickness (or lack thereoff) aside, this is probably the best looking gaming laptop out there. They have a tendency to either look like transformers or they have horrible glowing logos on them. This looks just like a laptop should look like: slightly boring.

Don't get me wrong, I think it looks nice, too :P

Looking at the 4 vents at the sides and back along with the large mesh vents and tall rubber feet on the bottom I would expect this to cool a lot better than the Apple offering.

robot zombieDesigns like this, I'll never understand. Waste of money.

We live in a world now where "stylin' 'n' profilin" means everything, and young people go to great lengths to shame their peers for having thick, chunky hardware - anything much thicker than the latest iphone, ipad, or mac book inspires snide comments about the '80s, makes you an instant social outcast, a "rando". And don't even mention desktop PCs, they'll look at you like you just stepped out of a time machine - unless it's got 500 RGB LEDs, and they can see it lit up, then it might pass the style test, even though "OMG, it's huge!". God forbid anyone buy things for performance or convenience, that's so nerdy as to be beyond belief! Can you imagine, he still has a flip phone! Don't touch him, it might be catching!
The older you get, the less you care about crap like that - but don't worry, the admen and hucksters will do their best to turn any misguided youthful notions into mainstream revenue sources, and make it so people feed into these schoolyard emotions long into their supposed adulthood.

HoodWe live in a world now where "stylin' 'n' profilin" means everything, and young people go to great lengths to shame their peers for having thick, chunky hardware - anything much thicker than the latest iphone, ipad, or mac book inspires snide comments about the '80s, makes you an instant social outcast, a "rando". And don't even mention desktop PCs, they'll look at you like you just stepped out of a time machine - unless it's got 500 RGB LEDs, and they can see it lit up, then it might pass the style test, even though "OMG, it's huge!". God forbid anyone buy things for performance or convenience, that's so nerdy as to be beyond belief! Can you imagine, he still has a flip phone! Don't touch him, it might be catching!
The older you get, the less you care about crap like that - but don't worry, the admen and hucksters will do their best to turn any misguided youthful notions into mainstream revenue sources, and make it so people feed into these schoolyard emotions long into their supposed adulthood.

LMAO, it's funny you mention flip phones. For years and years into the smartphone era, I continued to use disposable flip phones. And that was in my early 20's! If I could, I'd still be using one.

But yeah, I can see that. Seems like it's an all-ages affair at this point now, though. For some reason, my mind goes to power tools, and how they all look like the transformers action figures and hot wheels cars of our boyhood days.

You know how you get me? Make it just as badly designed, but also make it look like an IBM thinkpad :P

robot zombieLMAO, it's funny you mention flip phones. For years and years into the smartphone era, I continued to use disposable flip phones. And that was in my early 20's! If I could, I'd still be using one.

I AM still using one, it's cheaper. Soon Samsung is releasing a flip smart phone -

throttle, throttle, throttle...

robot zombiePeople don't want solid laptops with noisey fans anymore. They see it as clunky... ...as though "wow look at how hard this computer is working to do this, the fans are so LOUD!"

It's a stupid impression, but a lot of people really think there's some kind of voodoo tech magic that allows these companies to cram high-power components into a tight space and have them run cool. They think somehow they just don't need the cooling because they're supposed to be the best of the best, and that when things need cooling, it's a bad thing. Just look at the marketing on stuff like this. They always go on and on about efficiency, as though its equivocal to performance, when we all know those are two sides of an unavoidable compromise. If you want cool and quiet, you have to give up some performance - lower power components or power limiting. Or more recently, thermal throttling <_< If you want performance, you have to go bigger and louder to keep things from burning up. What they're really selling is the idea that there's a way around this. But what they don't talk about is where the compromise shifts to when you simply ignore it... ...which is longevity. Don't hear a lot of them advertising that.

Apple probably has a lot to do with it. People have this strange, almost mystical view of "Apple Engineering." It's as though people think they're doing some revolutionary game-changing stuff under the hood that simply can't be understood by mere mortals.

It's just so glaringly obvious. There is a fundamental physical hurdle in front of it. To get work done, you need power. Wattage is a measure of how much work is done. You need the watts to do the work. With those watts comes heat that has to be dealt with. There is only so much you can do to improve efficiency and reduce the amount of energy lost as heat. We would have to fundamentally re-envision how circuits work, and the materials we use to make them. If you're putting power to something that carries current across metals and making it do work, it's always going to generate heat. And that's probably never gonna change, in spite of what some people want you to believe. It's not magic.

Also, screw all of the reviewers out there who gush over things like bezel and thinness. They're part of the problem. Part of the reason we have literally notebook-thin notebooks packed with top-tier components without a shred of space between anything and cooling non-solutions is because reviewers push for and highlight features that basically make it impossible to both have the best components and the best cooling. They want the best stuff inside, but they don't want it to be big, and it has to look sleek, and it can't make any sounds. I dunno, maybe I'm crazy, but if you're going to sell me a notebook with a power-hungry CPU for big money, I want a sufficient amount of that money to go towards making sure it lasts and performs at its best for the entirety of it's lifespan. Figure out how to make it look good. I'm sure there's more to good looks than size - that's just a trend. Designs like this, I'll never understand. Waste of money.

I just got an incredible deal on a laptop. It has a 4K touchscreen, a quad core i7, an MX150 (GT 1030), 16GB of ram, and an 500GB Msata SSD with 1800MB/s of read/write. I got it for $750, and it is smaller than the MacBook Air.


It has 9 hours of battery life after I finished undervolting it. Yeah - we have come a VERY long way in 5 years lol. This thing is 1/3rd as big as my old gaming notbook (which was already an "ultraportable" and it has over double the battery life.

I hope engineers at these companies keep focusing on the perfect compromise between performance and portability in the laptops they design. If you want a GTX 1080 - buy a desktop, because otherwise you will have a laptop that can't be moved anywhere easily.... And that is a desktop lol.