1070 SLI in a Slim Laptop – Is it Stupid? Aorus X9 SLI Review
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2018-05-06
·
1,376 words · ~6 min read
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here in front of me i've got the aorus x9
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the thinnest lightest most powerful and
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perhaps most RGB 1070 sli laptop ever
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as for whether anyone was actually asking for an RGB 1070 sli laptop
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but maybe this is one of those things that we didn't know we wanted until we
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had one or maybe it isn't
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the only thing i know for sure is that sennheiser gives you the best their pxc
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550 wireless headphones feature up to 30 hours of battery life noise guard hybrid
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adaptive noise cancellation and more learn more at the link below
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consider the lamborghini veneno it's not everyone's favorite lamborghini
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aesthetically but like it's still a lambo and the styling of
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the aorus x9 is similarly polarizing
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other than the muted black exterior it's one of the most gamery looking laptops
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that's been through the lab in a while meaning that it'll definitely turn heads
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at your next lan event but showing up to a meeting with this
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would be about like showing up to a hockey game in a wetsuit some kinds of
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head turning aren't necessarily positive i do have to give it points for build
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quality though the aluminum around the keyboard and the chassis itself are both
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extremely rigid and at 7.9 pounds it's
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not the easiest thing to carry but it's not unreasonable given its power and it
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makes it so that it's not going to move around accidentally on your desk plus
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it's got enough io on it to make it look like the flying spaghetti monster if you
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actually plug everything in that's something you can't take for granted
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these days and this over-the-top build philosophy
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makes its way to the internals as well
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our model sports a core i7 7820 hk 32
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gigs of ddr4 RAM two 512 gig NVMe ssds
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not configured in raid on our model curiously and two gtx 1070 gpus
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this is a really unusual graphics
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configuration the disadvantage is you've
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got to deal with the usual performance scaling and power issues that are
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associated with sli the potential advantage is higher frame
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rates than a gtx 1080 currently the best
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performing single mobile GPU in supported games and then maybe the
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ability to spread out your heat generating components to make it thinner
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on the subject of heat generating components the i7 7820 hk CPU is
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notorious for overloading the thermals of basically every laptop that we've
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tested it in even that water-cooled one from ASUS
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so then has Gigabyte's four-fan design been able to tame the beast
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at stock clocks actually yes
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i mean it's a thin and light for what it is notebook
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so it wasn't particularly quiet but it also doesn't have an annoying tone to
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the sound and the CPU maxed out at around 75 degrees while maintaining 3.5
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gigahertz turbo on all four cores this is a great result let's move on to
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gaming performance this one is a bit of a mixed bag since
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the year is now 2017
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and sli scaling is as inconsistent as
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it's ever been at its best the arsx 9 with its two 8
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gig gtx 1070s destroys a desktop with a 1080
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but at its worst it actually gets beaten
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by a max-q gtx 1070 in a laptop a
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quarter its weight due to sli driver nonsense and yes we double checked that
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result so this is kind of disappointing for
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prospective buyers but it's also expected and without giving away too
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much about our conclusion for this video it reinforces our belief that a single
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better GPU is in the vast majority of cases
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a better option than two lesser ones even at 4k resolution
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though that's nothing against the x9s display
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it's got a matte finish it comes with x right pantone calibration out of the box
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and looks really good though with that said i would personally
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have gone for the 1440p 120 hertz version which is a wva
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rather than an ips display but would deliver a much smoother gaming
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experience without again this is in my opinion giving up anything meaningful in
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terms of image sharpness i'm really glad that Gigabyte has that option now the
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keyboard has custom mechanical switches with a long travel but i can't say that
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i really enjoy typing on them the tactile bump feels more like a tactile
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hitch which means that unless you press pretty
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hard naturally you might find yourself missing keystrokes from time to time
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i personally wish that they had stuck to something more like what is on the aero
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15x that one is a much better keyboard for
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both typing and gaming in my opinion the good news though is that the quality of
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the trackpad is similar here and you get a bonus falcon graphic on it it has
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solid tracking and a tactile feel in the click even though it does seem a bit
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small given the size of the rest of the laptop flipping the x9 over to open it up i
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will admit that the way that they made a bird out of the vents looks pretty darn
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slick whatever i might have said aesthetically earlier and then that
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taking it off reveals a completely free two and a half inch drive bay two empty
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sodium slots two filled m.2 slots a very
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generous application or thermal compound and a very high capacity
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94.2 watt hour battery that would give you great battery life
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on a less power hungry machine as for the x9 well
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let's just say it's a gaming laptop so those leds under the logo well you can
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set them to things like fan speed or CPU
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or GPU temps but you should probably use them to monitor the battery
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the webcam is pretty good and it includes a feature called smart cam
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which allows you to remove the background while you're streaming like
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this guy from the reviewer's guide and you can tell he's really pumped on
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smartcam and the speakers though this is somewhat predictable on a larger machine
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sounded pretty darn good so it's not bad
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it's just a little misconfigured the x9 as it is next to me here costs 3
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800 us dollars and with a lower resolution and higher
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refresh rate display maybe a 1080
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a single SSD to save a buck and then maybe we could drop some of the RAM it
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might still fall behind the ASUS g701vi
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in terms of its bang for the buck but it would be thinner and much sexier
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than that one with a more sensible display as it is unless you only play a
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couple of games that you know are super well optimized for sli
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and you value resolution over refresh
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rate the ars x9 doesn't make the most
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sense but what might make sense for you is
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so thanks for watching guys if you disliked hit that button but if you liked the video hit the like button get
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the link in the video description and while you're down there you can check out our merch store which has cool
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