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Asus reckons that the ROG GX800VH could well be the most powerful consumer-level laptop in the world - and I it may well be right. The spec on this gaming laptop monster borders on the insane. An overclockable mobile Intel i7 K chip is paired with twin GTX 1080s in SLI, which works in combination with an 18.4-inch 60Hz 4K display. As long as the game in question is reasonably optimised for SLI, the bottom line is this - the GX800VH offers even more gaming power than a desktop i7 system paired with an overclocked Titan X Pascal. Other dual 1080 gaming laptops are available to challenge the Asus's crown - but to the best of my knowledge, none of them come with a liquid cooling dock to guarantee performance and stability. And yes, you can overclock it too.The GX800VH has a premium finish virtually everywhere you care to look. Our review sample came with a ludicrous 64GB of 2400MHz DDR4 system RAM, capable of overclocking up to 2800MHz. There's 1TB of NVMe solid state storage in RAID-0, split into two drives (a straight copy of game directories from one to the other yields a 1GB/s write-speed - that'll do nicely). The matte finish 18-inch 4K IPS screen offers crystal clear clarity and a preposterously small pixel patch, and audio is taken care of with a top of the line ESS Sabre DAC capable of 32-bit/384kHz output. Oh, and while the Core i7 6820HK is a 2.7GHz quad-core part with specs suggesting a single core turbo boost to 3.6GHz, our review sample happily locked all cores at 3.8GHz out of the box with headroom to spare.
The unit itself is large, bulky and very heavy but has a premium finish from top to bottom - though we're looking at a mixture of plastics and metal as opposed to a full aluminium finish. It's also rich in functionality - traditional USB 3.0 is joined by a brace of new Type-C ports, the latest Thunderbolt technology offering cutting-edge expansion while also serving as a DisplayPort output - a nice complement to the HDMI 2.0 port also present. Gigabit Ethernet is joined by an SD card reader and even an antenna input for boosting WiFi reception. The keyboard uses what Asus describes as its MechTAG technology, which it describes as a mechanical keyboard. It feels great, but don't expect the travel and 'click' of a standard mechanical keyboard - it feels somewhat different. Of course, programmable RGB lighting is standard via the ROG Aura app.
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