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Buy an unlocked Intel 4th gen Core i7 or Core i5 processor and get a free copy of

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Rome 2: Total War. Click now to learn more. Welcome to my unboxing of

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something a little bit on the different side. Well, I'm not really unboxing it.

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It's here in the boxes here. They've already been unified, but anyway. This

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is the Aoris X7, which is one of the

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most interesting gaming notebooks that I've ever had the pleasure of checking

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out. So, let's start with the general specs. It's got a Haswell 4th gen Core

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i7 4700HQ. That's a quad core that's

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clocked at 2.4 GHz nominal and up to 3.4

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GHz with a single core running at maximum boost. It has 16 gigs of RAM and

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is configurable with up to 32 gigs of

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RAM. So, it has four slots. It has dual

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GTX 765M 2 gig graphics cards and a 17.3

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in LCD display. So, that's 1080p. It's 8

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millisecond response time, LED back lit, all that good stuff. For storage, it has

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two 128 gig MSA SSDs running in RAID

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zero and a 1 TB 5400 RPM drive. So, that

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is a 2 and 12 in standard drive. So, that's up to three storage devices. It

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uses wireless 802.11 AC and it has

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Killer branded gigabit onboard LAN.

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There we go. So, that has their um prioritization engine and all that good

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stuff. And then finally, it has a 73.26 WH lithium polymer battery.

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Fascinating Linus, you might say. That's an awful lot of specs, but they're not

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that amazing. Well, they are a little bit amazing when you consider that they

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are crammed into a 22.9 mm thick

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chassis. So, that's only marginally thicker than the P34G that I liked so

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much. And it's actually quite similar to the GS70 from MSI. It's 2.9 kg, making

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it lighter than your standard gaming notebook, but not super light due to the

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sheer size of it and the all aluminum

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construction. It's got uh okay, well, I guess we'll do like a bit of a port tour

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here. So, on the left hand side, it's got the aforementioned gigabit Ethernet,

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HDMI, a first HDMI port, VGA, one USB

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3.0 port, and headphone and microphone ports. You've also got a speaker grill

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here on the lefthand side. On the front, you've got a whole lot of nothing. Then

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on the right hand side, you find another speaker grill, an SD card reader, two

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more USB 3.0 ports for a total of three,

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another HDMI out, and DisplayPort out.

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So, that's kind of cool. Moving around to the back, we catch a glimpse of one

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ventilation hole. We've got another ventilation hole, two more USB 2.0

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ports, power in, and that pretty much

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rounds it out. On the top and the bottom, you will, as normal on a

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notebook, not find a whole lot of IO. Now, the speakers, they're using Aurora

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Aurorus, I don't even know how to pronounce it, Aoris Plus branding. So,

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there are two two watt speakers in the front and then there are actually two

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woofers on the bottom. It in practice sounds much better than most notebooks,

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but of course, here are these speaker ports on the bottom. They're not going

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to blow your socks off or eliminate the need for a proper desktop speaker system

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by any stretch of the imagination. And in fact, there's one thing that I would

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have liked to see changed in the audio implementation, and that's maybe put the

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speakers up here instead so that they're somewhat pointed at my ears. I found

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that if I had my head like on the same plane as the bottom of the notebook,

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that was where the best listening experience could be had. The touchpad is

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a little bit unique. So, we can make our way to the inside here. And that is that

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it is a glass touch pad. It is completely smooth, which actually would

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have bothered me not that long ago. I'm I'm used to it now because of

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smartphones and I think I'd still prefer a frosted glass touchpad, but it tracks

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well and that's the most important thing and it doesn't actually bother me. It's

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a bit of a fingerprint magnet, but not as bad as I necessarily would have

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thought. The keyboard is automatically backlit, although you can manually

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override it with function space, so you can have off, 50% or 100%. And it is a

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chicklet keyboard, which is not necessarily my favorite, but as far as

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chicklet keyboards go, it's about as good as it gets. There is absolutely no

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flex to the entire keyboard area at all.

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Again, due to the metal construction of the notebook. So, in spite of its size,

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really, really impressed there. It's also got some other cool features. So, your full complement of keys, including

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properly laid out arrow keys, a full number pad, all the function hotkeys

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that you could possibly want, and finally da programmable macro keys. So,

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there's a color-coded G up at the top here, and you can use the included

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utility to program any number of different functionalities to each of the

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five keys. And then you have five different profiles for all of the five

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keys combined for a total of 25 functions. Not least, but definitely

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last is the fact that the keyboard also supports anti- ghosting. So, you're not

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going to have any accidental random triggering of random keys, even in a

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gaming scenario. Oh, actually, no. The true last thing is that it does have a

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Windows key lock, but that's actually done in software as opposed to being

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done in hardware, which is a little bit of an unusual thing for me to see. Now,

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of course, you go, "Okay, well, it's super slim. It's an SLI gaming notebook,

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but come on, Linus. What are the temperatures like?" Honestly, I am

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incredibly impressed. At idle, we

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weren't able to measure temperatures that were above, you know, like normal

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skin temperature. The thing barely felt warm to the touch, only around 22° max.

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And it was actually quite quiet. I mean, there my mic is here. The exhaust fan's

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right here. It's very, very quiet at idle. Under load, yeah, the fans do

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start to ramp up a little bit. You can actually control them manually. you can

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set it up to go, okay, well, no, I want 40% fan speed max. And there's a couple

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different things you can do in the software, but under load, it did get a little bit um louder, but what it didn't

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get was much warmer. Even though this room is only about 18°, so it is a

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little bit on the cold side, it is still very impressive to see a dual graphics

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card gaming notebook deliver temperatures under

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27°, even directly above where the GPU

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heat pipes are. or not is partly due, well probably entirely due to their

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unique cooling setup on this thing. So there are two fans here and here at the

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back. You can actually see the intake grills here. And then rather than having

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restrictive exhausts like you would find on most notebooks, there are two full

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sets of exhausts for each of the fans. And you can feel the heat really coming

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out of them. The fans are very effectively cooling it to the point

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where it doesn't get noticeably warm. And this was the hottest spot I could

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find up here on the keyboard itself toward especially towards the bottom.

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It's just barely warm to the touch. So that's really really impressive and

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probably probably the coolest thing about this notebook, so to speak. All

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right, so who's the competition for a product like this? I'm going to fire up

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Crisis. Actually, maybe I'll give you guys some idea of what it sounds like

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under load here. So we'll go ahead and There you go. Can it run Crisis? Yes,

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absolutely. that is maxed out crisis at 1080p uh running at about 75 frames per

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second in a fairly non-demanding environment. But don't worry, that'll give you a very playable experience. And

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that is of course those speakers that are quite loud. Uh there you go. Anyway,

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so who's the competition for a gaming notebook like this? The obvious ones are

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going to be the Razer Blade Pro and the MSI GS70. Now, the Blade Pro has an

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offset touchpad that drove me absolutely crazy. And regardless how of how awesome

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the display on it might be, that is a dealbreaker for me. The GS70 is a much

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more interesting option to me personally and is actually quite comparable to this

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one. It offers similar storage options, fewer memory slots, however, only two

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memory slots, but it is in a slightly slimmer form factor. The big difference

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between the Aoris and the GS70 is on the

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GPU side. This guy contains two GTX 765

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2 gig graphics cards whereas the GS70 contains only one. So I would go as far

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as to say based on the ID of this overall, that is to say the industrial

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design and the performance. I haven't seen pricing yet though. So guys, you

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can check out the link and once this thing is actually available somewhere that'll be live. I would say if you're

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looking for the ultimate thin and relatively light gaming or workstation

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notebook for maximum bragging rights, this actually might just be it. Thank

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you for checking out this unboxing and overview of the Aoris X7. Like the video

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if you liked it, dislike it if you disliked it. Leave a comment and let us

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know how you feel about thin and light gaming notebooks versus regular gaming

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notebooks, which tend to be very uh brick-like in their overall form factor.

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In fact, I have one here that I can just grab and hold up for comparison. I mean,

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here's a more a more classic gaming notebook side by side with the Aoris X7.

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Do you would you consider a gaming notebook if they were all slim like

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this? Would love to know your thoughts. And as always guys, don't forget to

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subscribe to Linus Tech Tips for more unboxings, reviews, and other computer

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