Today at CES, Leo sat down with JJ and Sascha from ASUS to discuss all of the latest hardware. From the all new RTX 2080Ti Matrix edition, to the ROG Mothership laptop, ROG Dominus motherboard and new monitors.
We've covered quite a few ASUS announcements this week already, with dedicated news posts on the RTX 2080Ti Matrix with all-in-one liquid cooling and a preview for the ROG Mothership– which seems like an absolute beast.
The ROG Dominus is something we have talked about a bit less. This extremely high-end motherboard is set to be a technical showpiece, with support for Intel's upcoming 28-core Xeon. It has a 14-layer PCB, which is typically reserved for server and workstation grade hardware. Beyond that, as JJ puts it, the motherboard is heavy, in large part due to the use of aluminium across the entire board, with full length heatsinks for the VRMs with four active fans under the hood. As we reported yesterday, EKWB will have a custom waterblock to replace this is you really want to push things to the absolute limit.
The Dominus has six channel memory with support for up to 192GB, there is a ton of power delivery baked in. The I/O shield includes a Live Dash display, which we first saw on the new Asus ROG AIO coolers and much more. Another interesting tidbit is that the board includes dual 24-pin connectors, to get the full benefit of Intel's new Xeon platform, you'll want dual power supplies.
A new all-in-one liquid cooler is joining the family. The Ryujin and Ryuo will be joined by the ROG Strix AIO, which will be cheaper than the other two while retaining the awesome Live Dash screen on the CPU block.
Three new ROG monitors were announced this week. In the video above, Leo takes a closer look at the new ROG Swift PG35VQ, which is the 35-inch, ultra-wide, HDR, 200Hz beast. There is also a new 4K and a new 1440p HDR monitor on the way, which we discussed in detail, HERE.
What we didn't see earlier in the week was the brand new ASUS ProArt PA32UCX display, which Leo is very impressed by. The panel MicroLED with 1,000 zones of lighting, 4K resolution and HDR support. In all likelihood, this will end up being the most expensive monitor in the current lineup but spec-wise, it is also above and beyond the rest.
We have a preview up for the new Asus ROG GZ700GX ‘Mothership’ & 17.3-inch ROG Zephyrus S GX701GX laptops. This video goes in to a bit more detail on specific specifications. The Zephyrus S will utilise an RTX 2080 Max-Q, a 17-inch 1080p/144Hz G-Sync display and beyond that, it is the slimmest 17-inch laptop in the world. Battery life has been improved thanks to a new ‘Optimus' mode, which puts the RTX 2080 to sleep and deactivates G-Sync when you are running on battery and not playing games.
The ROG Mothership is even more exciting. The keyboard/base of the laptop can be completely detached from the display and used wirelessly. Alternatively, you can keep the display propped up and plug in any other keyboard/mouse of preference. Under the hood you'll find a fully fledged (non Max-Q) RTX 2080, and an Intel Core i9-8950HK to boot. There are four memory slots, so you can pack plenty of RAM in. All in all, it is an absolute beast.
KitGuru Says: There was a lot to see from ASUS this year. We'll be looking forward to getting more hands on in the coming months and preparing reviews.