ASUS G750JZ Gaming Notebook
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2014-05-07
·
1,847 words · ~9 min read
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the CM Storm sf7 uses a massive 18 cm
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fan to cool your gaming notebook and it adds a four port USB hub click now to
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learn more now with all the recent hype about thin and light gaming notebooks it
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might be easy for you the viewer to assume that more traditional gaming
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notebooks aren't relevant anymore but it's time for a bit of a reality check
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heat is a beach and the fundamental laws of the Dynamics haven't changed lately
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so if you want more processing power you're also going to need to cram more
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cooling capacity into it otherwise thermal throttling or Worse the eventual
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degradation of your components can occur
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not likely to be a concern here this is
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ASUS's latest and greatest from their Rog series The g750 Jay-Z an
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aggressively styled gaming notebook that aims to deliver power without compromise
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in a mobile form factor let's start with a physical tour the top has the same
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classic black soft touch finish that we've seen in the last few generations
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of G Series models a plastic Chrome ASUS logo and a white illuminated Republic of
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Gamers logo beneath it I liked this the first time I saw it and I still like it
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now rather than putting colorful LEDs all over it that say OMG look at me I'm
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high performance ASUS takes a more subtle approach and lets aggressive
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lines and raw benchmarks do the talking instead speaking of aggressive let's
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move around to the back where we find two independently controlled cooling
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fans each with it its own copper heat sink and heat pipe system connecting it
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to either the CPU or the GPU in theory
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it provides great Cooling in practice it provides great Cooling and surprising
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Acoustics as well it's pretty much silent which means a lot coming from me
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under light workloads and stays reasonable even when you're gaming I
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mean I'm gaming right now here's my microphone look at that very very nice
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moving around to the left side we find a Kensington lock two USB 3 ports a DVD
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writer and Blu-ray reader combo drive and a full-size SD card reader while the
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front features indicator LEDs for The Usual Suspects that can be viewed with
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the lid open or with the lid closed then on the right we find headphone and
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microphone jacks two more usb3 ports for a total of four HDMI hardwired gigabit L
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VGA power in and I yes the one I glossed
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over that is not mini DisplayPort although it'll work with a DisplayPort
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monitor just fine and even daisy chain NOP that is a Thunderbolt Port this is
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one of the few PC notebooks with Thunderbolt making it a fantastic option
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for non-gaming folks like creative professionals as well imagine as a
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photographer packing something like this to a a wedding all the CPU power IO and
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Cuda acceleration you need with nice fast photo and video offloading as well
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nice on the bottom we find a removable battery and a dedicated subwoofer to go
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with the effective albeit cryptically placed front speakers that seem to fire
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out of the rear vents as much as the base of the the screen here and then
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finally there's an easy to access door that you can open up to change your RAM
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hard drive or either of the two m.2 ssds
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that are included I think it's great that it uses a self- retaining screw by
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the way that's basically impossible to lose so yay but there's not much else of
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note down here and now it is time to
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open this baby up on the inside we find
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more classy styling the bezel surrounding the g750 JZ 17.3 in screen
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is a reasonable size and has no adornments other than a stylized webcam
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peephole another plastic Chrome ASUS logo and some protective rubber stoppers
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and while the 1920x 1080 resolution TN
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panel may be a point of contention among folks expecting an IPS panel with a
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resolution greater than 1080p ASUS isn't the first manufacturer to sacrifice
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viewing angles and resolution for the sake of not having to deal with Windows'
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terrible DPI scaling better pixel response times and the ability to
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actually run your games at Native res on a mobile GPU so I guess I see where
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they're coming from even though it's not a tradeoff I would personally make if
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given the choice speaking of trade-offs if only I could have the beautiful looks
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of brushed aluminum on my wrist rest without feeling like I have to clean it
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every 26 seconds but there is good news
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too the chicklet style keyboard embedded in this brushed aluminum finish here is
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a very solid implementation with longer than usual travel distances for the keys
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a vibrant white backlight so you can see what you're doing in the dark and a
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pretty darn standard layout that other than lengthening the right control
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doesn't try to do anything crazy just the way I like it the nice big touchpad
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is also thoughtfully made with a great texture on its plastic surface a stylish
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Chrome beveled edge and a very satisfying hear that mechanical click to
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the dedicated non click pad buttons
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again something that I prefer so with the physical tour out of the way let's
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talk about the specs of the g750 J I mean all that babbling about processing
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power and cooling during my intro I better be ready to back it up with some beefy numbers right yeah don't worry we
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got beefy numbers first up is Intel's core i7 4700hq a quad core 8 thread
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monster that runs at 2.4 GHz Bas and up to 3.4 GHz with turbo boost it's matched
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with 24 gigs of DDR 3600 RAM so whether
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you're using this machine for gaming hardcore Chrome tab abuse or even video
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editing you will have CPU power and RAM to spare and next up is the other big
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star of the show an overclocked NVIDIA GTX
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880m this graphics card has a fully enabled GK 104 GPU in it that actually
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runs at darn near the same specs as NVIDIA's desktop Enthusiast grade GTX
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770 one key difference though is that our mobile graphics card trades some
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memory speed for a larger 4 gig frame
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buffer this will be a boon when running higher quality textures but it will
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reduce performance somewhat in other situations but of course when I talk
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about performance reductions I mean compared to graphics cards that are
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about as thick as this entire notebook and go in a desktop PC so yeah there you
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go the rest of the unit ain't too shabby either and as I was going through making
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a little list for myself so I didn't miss anything you know you got your dual 128 gig ssds that can be configured in
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raid for boot although strangely they came unrated out of the box for me um a
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1 terab mechanical storage Drive onboard killer and wireless I started thinking
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to myself how does this compare compare to buying a desktop in the old days a
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gaming notebook was Heavy loud sucked battery like there was no tomorrow and
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finally didn't even perform very well well now that's changed a fair bit and
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aside from the 4770k being a fair bit faster than the 4700hq that's in this
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notebook the rest of this stuff is actually pretty close to the hardware
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you'd use in a typical custom desktop I mean not exactly mind you I'd make some
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different choices for sure but I still thought this would be an interesting
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exercise so here's what I came up with I decided to put together a desktop
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configuration that in spite of some approximations so for example I went
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with an 18-in LCD and the cheapest reasonable quality UPS I could find as
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an equivalent for the notebook's 17.3 in screen and built-in battery and then I
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took all that stuff and like threw in a $50 charge like what NCI charges for PC
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assembly and with the overall goal not of achieving perfect equivalency in
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every detail but rather of building a desktop that was of similar spec
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features and quality compared to my notebook I wanted to see what the
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difference in price came out to be and what the difference in performance came
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out to be surprisingly for performance par with similar grade components it was
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only about a $200 difference or about 10% and here are a couple of little
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performance benchmarks so when you look at how closely it performs I mean yeah
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it's not as good let's be realistic here
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a gaming laptop is not going to be as
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good as a desktop from a price performance ratio but compared to the
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way it used to be if you're willing to sacrifice that upgradeability for
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portability it's not nearly as bad as it used to be which I guess leads us
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naturally into our conclusion who is this product for does the g750 JZ fill a
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useful niche as an in between option
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amongst the sexy slim gaming notebook and big non-portable gaming desktop
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options out there I'd say yes yes it does at 4.8 Kil
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it's not light enough that I'd want to go backpacking up a mountain with it but
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it sure beats the heck out of trying to Lug desktops around if you're like us
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and frequently filming on location and if you combine that with the fact that
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it's much less expensive quieter and runs cooler than high-powered slim
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gaming notebooks out there and is much more portable than that value gaming
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desktop whose performance it came surprisingly close to I think we've got
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ourselves a serious Contender for your money if you want a portable workstation
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/ gaming rig that you don't need to carry around with you all the time
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anyway guys thanks for watching my team and I worked hard on this video we hope
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