Computex 2014: Aorus X3 & X3 plus, 13.3 & 13.9" gaming laptop!

Folks,

Looks like Aorus gonna surprise us once again!

To be seen @ Computex 2014:


With a very cool setup:
QHD (2560x1440) for the 13,3" X3 / QHD+ (3200x1800) for the 13,9" X3+
4700MQ
16GB
GTX 870M
2 x M2 sata port
Weight: 1,87kg!

More in details (thanks to Red Line):


All info at: Computex 2014 : Portables Aorus X3 et X3 Plus, de la bête de course sur batterie - Ordinateurs portables - CowcotLand

Difficult not to be tempted, especially if they say they put a great battery in it!

 

O.O

Wowzerz! That thing looks epic! Can't wait to see what this little guy can do.

I'd love to have a 14" machine with specs like that. o.o

 

Hmmm looks nice. Great screen resolutions on both. 4700MQ and 870M might make it a blast furnace in there though. Besides running hot and/or loud, M.2 instead of mSATA is also pretty disappointing. Means we'll be severely limited in terms of DIY SSD upgrades, probably have to be gouged by the OEM up front a la Apple/Razer.

 

Here's an article in English with a table specs
TweakTown Enlarged Image

We're looking at $2k+ laptop in here, that's for sure. If they put at least 2x256Gb SSDs and 16Gb of RAM it's gonna cost probably closer to 2300USD. My main concern is the heat. Looking at Razer Blade 2014 and MSI GS60 pro with 870M 3Gb in a tiny shell makes it heat up to 90C+ during gaming. Specs look great for such a small laptop, that's for sure, but how about real world system loads without frying the notebook...

 

Nice, thanks for the specs.

Well that's a middling battery.

 

Speak looks great (OP updated), biggest battery I've ever seen in such a form factor - I think I'm pretty much sold.

 

Holy crap is that even possible? WOW!

 

According to mobilegeek.com, the x3 will be available in q3 from 2099$ and the top model x3plus with 3200x1800 will go for 2599$.
Btw, they added a page for it on the aorus website, size is 330x263x23

Inviato dal mio Galaxy Nexus utilizzando Tapatalk

 

^

PCWorld gave the price. Too expensive for 14" machine IMO

Gigabyte puts 3200x1800 '3K' screen on 13.9-inch gaming laptop | PCWorld

 

Wow, good thing I didnt settle for the Lenovo y40, thanks to them for being slow in releasing their stuff. This beast is expected to be released somewhere in July-August and Im gonna buy it right away...

 

Yeah well the y40 is like half the price even with the 512GB ssd. I'm going to wait for reviews on both on them before choosing

Inviato dal mio Galaxy Nexus utilizzando Tapatalk

 

Very nice!
This can give the 2014 Razer Blade some competition.
Really love these new thin lite and powerful laptops.
I hope HTwingnut can get these units and do the things he does...that is amazingly detailed reviews.

 

Awesome, the more the merrier!

 

Why does the 13" and 15" always get the love all the time? That high res display, I want it

Anyway, cool notebook. Dual fan and pretty powerful hardware there inside that small chassis. Looks good and will probably be very popular.

 

Aorus should do battle in the 15" arena next!

 

Love the look of this notebook.

According to GB only 3 to 4 hours battery though which is quite disappointing considering the size of the battery.

I thought IGZO panels were supposed to be pretty good on the power usage front.

 

Probably the entire unit consumes around 18w+ under normal load which is quite a feat that clevo can do

Meanwhile power Sippers like the x220 consume less than 10w

Sent from my XT1058 using Tapatalk

 

Just concerned about heat, period. Blade 14 is borderline if even considered acceptable. Smaller chassis and same components. If all goes well I should get one or the other for review. 13.9" sounds like a good option though. But on their site system dimensions are the same. Does this mean they put the 13.3" LCD and 13.9" LCD in the same laptop?

 

The blade is still cooler than the gs60

I do still hope for a better cooling than what we were given on the x7 and off course something to put the blade to shame as well


Sent from my XT1058 using Tapatalk

 

It looks that way. The 13.9" panel does have a very narrow bezel.

Yeah which according to GB is because of the QHD+ screen. Not sure where all that IGZO power saving has gone then, surely it should at least offset the increase in resolution.

 

Found a first look of the X3 here. AORUS X3 Plus 13.9" QHD Gaming Notebook Hands On - YouTube

Looks pretty sweet specwise. I like that it has macro keys. Not too excited about the look since I'm looking for something more discreet (like the Gigabyte P34G perhaps), though the color scheme and everything isn't too outlandish and is well balanced.
Q3 is just around the corner!

Here's a very amateurish picture I made to help me get a grip on the different sizes of similar laptops (only 4 laptops at the moment) and the battery capacities if anyone is interested (the mm shown is thickness):



Edit: I should note the P34G battery capacity is the larger one and not the regular 11.1V, 47.73Wh that most people have right now. From what I know the larger capacity one is not available in the U.S. yet.

 

I don't believe that at all.

The great push for the igzo panel is the power consumption

Let's be simple Razer blade 2013 consumes around 11w, the 2014 model does around that as well (user feedback not reviews they botched with optimus along the way for sure)

You can add more power consumption due to the ram banks and more storage however 18w is quite a lot. That's what larger systems aka 15 and 17 gaming notebooks use

Basically they are consuming almost or double (18w 4h or 24w 3h) what the blade uses

Its a simple matter that they didn't develop the thing enough.

I do hope the figures are wrong, since I do want more competition and better designs than what we have now

I'm really keeping an eye out for this one I had scratched the gs60 due to heat and battery life and unless I take a trip north the blade ain't going to happen


Sent from my XT1058 using Tapatalk

 

I think she said "Bad a55" about four or five times... Classy.

 

That's how you tell if she is a true gamer girl.

 

Oh boy this is what I'm exactly waiting for!! I think this beats out the Razer, having sweet looking vents, more storage, cool logo ( I don't like that snake logo of Razer's), and it has more ports. Can't wait to get my hands into one of these

 

Yeah.. I was left wondering if it was badazz, not sure.. with that GTX eight seven M...

 

As excited as I am to hear about this new laptop, I fear that heat will be a big problem until we the Maxwell version of the GTX870M (which will probably be next year's GTX970M) becomes available. I'm probably going to buy a P34G V2 very soon in preparation for Dragon Age: Inquisition and then upgrade to an X3/X3 Plus or Razer Blade in 2015. Hopefully there will also be more choice in m.2 SSDs next year, in particular a 1Tb capacity drive.

 

That sounds like a good plan actually. Though for me, the next laptop I pick will be stuck with me for at least 3 more years I'm going to wait on when the X3 Plus comes out, now I'm interested in seeing how it fares with cooling/fan noise.

Here's another HD preview of the X3 Plus:

 

There should be some 1TB M.2 drives announced at Computex. I agree that M.2 is not the best move. I know M.2 is "next gen" but you can buy 1TB mSATA drives for reasonable cost, and they're actually available and have some history so you know what you're getting. I have a 256GB boot drive and a 1TB general purpose app, storage, game drive and it's the right amount for me. Anything less will be cramped. Unless there's a reasonable priced 1TB M.2 drive, it will be difficult for me to even consider the X3.

I also find it funny that Aorus is really looking to not be considered a Gigabyte brand, they want to be known as Aorus, not Gigabyte's Aorus. But everyone keeps calling it Gigabyte Aorus, and this thread is even in the Gigabyte sub-section. I guess it'd be like calling an Alienware a Dell Alienware, then again there are people that call them Dellienwares... Maybe they should call it Gorus.

Good comparison. There used to be a website where you could enter the dimensions of things and it would spit out a 3D image and top, bottom, and side view to compare. I think it was sizeasy.com but it no longer exists. In any case, if you look at those sizes, the X3 may have better opportunity for better cooling than Razer if you check total volume of the laptop:

Razer: 345x235x17.8 = 1443135
X3: 330x263x22.9 = 1987491

Which is 38% more volume. As long as that 38% is taken advantage of for optimized cooling, it should help significantly. This has been my issues with Razer all along. They're so infatuated with having it so thin, yet the Aorus weighs less and should cool better, and still under an inch thick. If Razer added 30% more volume and dedicated most of it to cooling potential, it would be one "kick-azz" system.

 

I know this is off topic but can someone please open a thread with all the computex 2014 announcements? I tried but I don't have permissions..

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

 

The best thing about that laptop is the bezels. Damn the slim bezels make the design shine. I am not a big fan of the air vents, though. They are design killers for me.

So far, I think the viewing angels are far better than the Razer. Makes me re-think my decision...

Too bad it does not have touchscreen, I am a big fan of the touch screen on the Razer.... Maybe the only fan too.

 

hdmi + displayport, 16gb ram, two m.2 sata slots, 73 whr battery capacity - looks like "Gorus" is going in the right direction! I just hope they found a proper thermal solution. in the future, nvidia's (Maxwell/Pascal) and Intel's new chips will be more power efficient to make this less of an issue (and hopefully extending battery life). Here's to the future of "ultraportable" gaming notebooks!

@jeffaw thin bezzels are sexy =). hopefully air vents in the X3/X7 is designed to increase surface area for the radiator.

 

You know I never thought I would care about the touch screen on the Razer but I've actually used it a few times it's growing on me.

 

Just sent a message to Aorus Customer Support regarding release time of X3. Here's their response:

 

I have a Sony Vaio Pro 11 with a 1080p touchscreen. I used it at first, just for the novelty and seeing if I could get used to it. But now, never. I hooked up a bluetooth mouse and haven't looked back. For a laptop it's so gimmicky IMHO. It's no substitute for a decent touchpad or mouse. There is a little benefit to just touching something to activate it, but the time I take to move my hand from the mouse or touchpad to touch the screen, I could have done that already with the mouse or touchpad. Not to mention the fingerprints an smudges.

 

I'm with hfm about touch screens on laptops, first I was like "whatever, nice to have but I'll probably never use it" to " this is actually pretty good and much better than I thought " yeah it's sort of a novelty but at least it works pretty good.
But to each his own and it's all subjective.
While the X3 models look really nice I would love to see a 15" model from AORUS too ( X5?) with Broadwell CPU and Maxwell 870M/880M GPU maybe next year or whenever they are released. I do like to dream!

 

Let's not get crazy, I still rarely use it, but when I do I'm glad it's there.

 

using figures from these press releases an x7 is actually cheaper than an x3 plus.
and it has 860 sli or 2000 points 3dmark difference.

no offense but this model is overpriced. it will not beat the razer blade.
or the msi gs60 3k really thats much cheaper too

 

depends o the storage config and how the cooling fares.

to put mildly I think that the "cooling" in the gs60 pro is short of atrocious. Because the ambient temps people are fiddling with the machines are much lower than I usually experience around here

 

The aorus x3 look amazing. However, 2000 bucks is too much. Especially for a 13 inch laptop. There are other 870gtx ones priced a few hundred dollars below that.
I mean really?
...That being said, of course i would pay 2000+ to get my hands on this. Simply beautiful :3

 

Its simply because of the size
Its like saying that they need less rd and the materials will cost less because its smaller

It simply doesn't work this way.

Though you have the w230ss and the g34v2 if you want more affordable options

Sent from my XT1058 using Tapatalk

 

I sure hope some M.2 1TB SSD's become available very soon. I wouldn't mind spending $2k on a machine with the 3200x1800 screen and a single fast 256GB M.2 SSD and add my own 1TB M.2 SSD.

 

apparently samsung is already making one and crucial

 

I could just imagine the price...

 

If it's close to the same price per GB it should be fine. I'm still ok with 512 for now.. By the time I need 1TB they well be commonplace.

 

When comparing both res 13.9" QHD 2560x1440 Wide Viewing Angle LCD vs 13.9" QHD+ 3200x1800 Wide Viewing Angle LCD, for gaming I'll obviously downscale to 1080P (1920x1080) will the image quality still be good like a normal typical native 1080P panel?

I only ask because I remember back then when you're not on your native res, everything looks bad

 

It should be worse because neither of those resolutions are a flat multiple of 1080, so there should be pixel stretching. To scale down to native 1080p you've have to have 4k, or 2160p

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Actually it looks fine for gaming, I tried it on my BLADE (3200x1800) and 1080p looks fine.

 

Downscale to 1600x900, it's half 3200x1800.

 

That works too....
Both resolutions look native to me on the RB screen, but I might not be as picky as other members.
But the screen is fantastic !