If Asus was challenged to go big or go home with its newest gaming laptop, it definitely chose the former. Everything about the company's new ROG GL703 laptop is big, from its 17.3-inch display size to its $3,499 price tag.
The price is likely to scare many people off, and the Full HD 1080p (1920x1080) resolution help justify the MSRP. However, it is a high-quality ISP panel with a fast 144Hz refresh rate and Nvidia G-Sync support.
Asus equipped this laptop with a 7th generation Core i7-7820HK processor that comes overclocked "up to 4.3GHz," which is referring to the boost clock. At stock settings, this 4-core/8-thread CPU has a 2.9GHz base clock and 3.9GHz boost clock.
The discrete GeForce GTX 1080 GPU with 8GB of GDDR5X memory is also goosed to hit a maximum clockspeed of 1,974MHz, so Asus is squeezing every bit of performance out of these parts as is responsibly possible. There is probably headroom to go higher on both components, but going nuts with overclocks on a laptop is a surefire way to ensure instability.
To keep the parts cool, Asus employs an "Anti-Dust Cooling (ADC)" system designed to eject dust, dirt, and particles through two dedicated tunnels. The GL703 also uses two 12V dual-outlet fans that spin 20 percent faster and improve airflow by up to 42.5 percent compared to 5V fans, according to Asus.
Here is what else Asus has to say about the cooling scheme:
"The cooling fins measure just 0.1mm thin—half the thickness of regular fins. This ultrathin design enabled ROG engineers to add more fins to increase the total surface area for heat dissipation by 16 percent, while leaving a larger gap between fins to reduce air resistance by 7 percent.
"A unique heat-pipe design cools the CPU and GPU independently to avoid thermal throttling, and keeps chipset power component temperatures below 80C to increase system stability and extend component lifespan."
Moving on, the GL703 is loaded with 32GB of DDR4-2800 RAM, two 256GB M.2 PCIe SSDs configured in RAID 0, and a 1TB hard drive (5,400 RPM).
The rest of the spec sheet is pretty standard—the laptop has 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2 for wireless connectivity, four USB 3.0 ports, a USB 3.1 Type-C port, HDMI 2.0 and mini DisplayPort 1.4 outputs (one each), a GbE LAN port, two audio jacks, a Kensington lock, and a memory card reader.
Audio is served through a pair of 3W speakers powered by an ESS Sabre DAC, and the keyboard features keys with 2.2mm travel distance with RGB backlighting and specially marked WASD keys.
The Asus ROG GL703 is available now at Amazon, B&H, ExcaliberPC, HID Evolution, and XoticPC.
