AORUS X Project: World’s First Laptop Upgrade Program

Stumbled on this one recently, didn't hear of it before or read it on their website. While the footage is a sales pitch and offers little information, it does seem quite interesting if they indeed offer this as a service. While obviously there will be limitations, I for one are excited by the notion of perhaps being able to upgrade to a Skylake Intel and 990M SLI at a later stage.

In some respect they confirm this future possibility by the trailer, on another note they already confirmed to Aorus X7 owners the ability to upgrade to ProSync by way of motherboard replacement. Someone asked them and got that as a reply along with pricing details. I'll be keeping my eye on this, as it does bring quite an interesting upgrade option for what previously looked impossible given the ultra thin form factor of their line-up.

 

Very interesting
That video is worth watching just for disassembly
But i wish they had upgraded the screen


It seems to be just upgrade the motherboard
It gets the cpu gpu. Switch over the wifi card and the m2s and you upgraded.
Put on thermal paste.
Definitely for the x7 already to somehow get the 765 model 970 m g synch id actually buy one because they are still available.

 

Unfortunately the service centers in for example europe from Gigabyte arent like that at all. and the way they apply thermal paste in that video is abysmal.

I hope Gigabyte can groe though so that the service centers in Europe will be on the right level.

 

I cannot comment on all service centers, my personal experience has been good. I don't think a promotional video speaks for how an engineer will apply thermal paste to the processors, the producer, director or advertising firm of this footage does probably also make video's for McDonalds. In the end the purpose of that video is not around how they apply paste, nor is it the main essence or worry when you upgrade, it's not going to be any worse over stock I think and you can always repaste with special compound which is always recommended over stock, the fact that you CAN upgrade is key here. I also think several resellers that do customization (e.g. Exotic PC, HIDevolution, etc) are also going to offer upgrade programs, but that's speculation.

 

That's a nice touch by Aorus. The program's attractiveness will depend on the quality of the work done, average service time, and, of course, pricing. It's good to know that upgrading is at least an option, especially for those that wouldn't be compelled by a non-MXM gaming laptop under normal circumstances.

I expect the TDP that's configurable from 100 to 185W to be a limit by itself. In fact, the high TDP makes GTX 990M SLI challenging even in the thickest of gaming notebooks.

 

This program can both promote Aorus and help to clean out some stockpiles.

 

Put GTX990M in SLI, Aorus will probably need a thicker chassis to deal with the heat. Unless they're planning to put a external water cooling system to help with heat. And a bigger power brick to support.

 

It's to my knowledge certainly unique among soldered laptops and considering the slim form factor.
Try that with slim MSI, Razor or Asus laptops.

I wonder how long Aorus is going to keep it's form factor or chassis.
I love the fact that I have the option to upgrade to the latest revision of my model, that's a very comforting thought.

 

They seem quite committed to the slim and lightweight design, maybe they'll just skip directly to Pascal and avoid the high TDP on the GTX990m. I'm keen on how they are going to proceed.

 

It could be, HBM is coming next year. Maybe there isn't much of need to update the hardware.

 

They make it appear a do it yourself project level

I also have the first x5
So likely id have something to upgrade 2 off in the distance future.

If there are 4 more revisions from here.

 

I would have preferred a DIY option. Ship me the motherboard and cooler if the layout has changed. The downtime would have been significantly less! They probably want to keep the old mobo though, but the old mobo could have been used for another project, like making a powerful G-Sync all-in-one.

Ideally, they would have a DIY storefront where you could also buy a new chassis and battery pack when either starts to show signs of wear.

 

Don't think that's the way to go for Aorus, they are niche and cranking such specs in very slim form factor, I'd rather have them keep on going at that over becoming another Clevo. The biggest bummer about them was the upgradability, it still remains to be seen what form it will take as time passes, but it does take away that headache a bit.

 

I'm saying it would have been nice to help enthusiastic end-users perform upgrades or refurbishing already offered through the X Project themselves, not that straying from an in-house only policy would be a viable business plan. Besides, offering users to replace used parts with new parts of the same model or of a new revision does not make Aorus into a modular brand like Clevo. I would also like to see Aorus focus on refining their niche rather than going down a different path.

 

Gigabyte and clevo are likely going out of business. 50 percent stock loss just in one year
Laptops in general in free fall

 

I don't think of it as doom & gloom. A decline of the general PC market was estimated between 2014 and 2016, that's just what we see this year. Thanks to ultramobile devices however, the PC market will actually grow slightly, from 318 million in 2014 to 321 million in 2015 according to analysts. Look around, we never had such a broad range of gaming laptop brands and model selection ever, nobody is going out of business.

 

Do you ahve a source for this, i would like to know more.

Laptops in general are not in a free fall though. Its less popular than a few years back, simply because tablets took over the entry level of users that just browse.

 

You can type the stock value for clevo
And gigabyte
Into google and it wikk show you the value change for the last year
Laptop sales are decreasing every year at a huge rate. Much faster than anyone would call breakneck. Last year being the largest fall ever
Gigabyte stock value in particular has reached emergency levels in the last year. You can investigate closer if you are investing but a quick guide would be this stock is rated F minus

 

Well
As thr laptop market is down to a fraction of what it was 5 years ago
Mass market companies like compal
Lose their advantage over a bit player like clevo or gigabyte. Or msi. But gigabyte especially is a small bit player in terms of volume.

So quanta had actually 50 percent of the market at one point and now it has 30. It could not make a laptop like this because it needs to make a billion. Like a macbook. As the market shrinks new companies will go to take over where mass production gives up

 

As far as going out of business these are not healthy companies at all they are very volatile. But theres no current news
I just say likely their investor profile lists them both as likely to go out of business.

Going just on what shareholders think msi is where its at

 

That's all speculation. Everyone knows tablet have dominated recent years, though that rate of growth is in decline. Past years such as 2013 showed the worse PC market decline in history, but analysts are positive again since early 2015. In short, it's an industry thing and not a Gigabyte or MSI phenomena. But anyway, this thread is about the Aorus upgrade program not the stock market.

 

Eh, remind me of the MSI guarantee upgrade program of something similar. sure it is upgradeable, but it cost an arm and a leg.

 

On the aorus forun the rep posted this


Hi everyone,

To address this we'll start by explaining some specifics.

Firstly the AORUS X upgrade program is a case by case system. Not everyone will obviously have the same model laptop, the same cane be said about generation or version of said laptop. Therefore each upgrade will be different in regards to parts existing and also what parts you'll want replaced. With that said the cost of each upgrade will be subject to change as well.

If you're interested in utilizing this upgrade service you are than welcome to contact us in the support section of our main website. www.aorus.com or check the link below. Customer service can get all the relevant information about your upgrade and get it to our product department for them to put together a quote of the cost of upgrade.

http://support.aorus.com/Question/TechQuery

We hope this clears up any questions anyone has regarding the upgrade.

We are always here if there are more questions.

As always, thank you for your support!

AORUS Gaming

 

Nice addition to the thread, thanks!
With the level of customization one can do, a case by case concept seems logical.

 

I've been told by aorus that this project was designed for sli laptops (x7 specifically) and is not available for the x3 models. Sad.

 

That's indeed unfortunate, Aorus designed the program probably thinking the audience for for the bigger more desktop replacing X7 is more upgrade hungry ;D