A new Republic of Gamers (ROG) Mothership from the house of Asus; a desktop-replacement gaming notebook with a bit of hardware into a genuinely unique form factor. It is a 17.3-inch gaming laptop with a vertical design, Surface-style pop-up kickstand, and detachable folding keyboard. It’s a Microsoft Surface taken to the logical gaming extreme.
The ROG Mothership of Asus is one of the first gaming laptops to use NVIDIA’s RTX 20-series GPUs, including the most powerful model, the 2080 Max-Q. It’s powered by the newly announced mobile version of Nvidia’s RTX 2080 GPU and Intel’s top-of-the-line Core i9-8950HK processor, both of which Asus says are overclocked beyond stock speed due to the better cooling that the vertical design offers.
For any gaming PC, heat is the primary concern for all, so by essentially putting everything vertical; it’s far easier for Asus to vent that heat instead of trapping it between a keyboard and a desk. The keyboard connects either with low-latency 2.4GHz wireless tech or via USB-C. Other features include curved keycaps and an integrated touchpad.
Asus also has another new model of its ROG series Asus Zephyrus S GX701, which keeps the same ultra-slim design and terrible keyboard and trackpad placement as last year’s model, but it upgrades the screen from 15.6 inches to a 17.3-inch panel, while still offering the same 144Hz refresh rate and Nvidia G-Sync features as its smaller counterpart. Asus says that the Zephyrus S GX701 is the most compact 17-inch gaming notebook available, and at 18.7mm thick, it’s also the thinnest in that size class, making it the polar opposite of its bigger and brawnier Mothership cousin.
The launch of the ROG Mothership will take place during the first quarter of this year at the CES event, and the pricing is yet to be known.
