As loud as it is beautiful
G-SYNC laptops are coming thick and fast, so it’s with great pleasure that we introduce the Aorus X7-Pro Sync. Unearthed from the heart of Gigabyte’s notorious Aorus factories, comes this marvelous wonder of a tiny gaming powerhouse. Arguably the noisiest dual-GPU laptop ever witnessed, the X7 packs two Nvidia GeForce GTX 970M processors alongside an Intel Core i7-5850HQ, 16GB of DDR3L RAM, and a RAID 0 setup. This is the kind of laptop dreams are made of.
Let’s start with the good. The design of the Aorus is stunning. It’s clean, it’s sharp, and it’s low. All traits we normally see from the Ultrabook side of the divide, as opposed to the pro-gamer. That being said, the Aorus is a total of 0.9-inches thick, in comparison to the Asus ROG G751JY, which comes in at more than 0.8-inches thicker when closed. The keyboard, although featuring the scissored variety of key switch, is backlit, and contains five dedicated macro keys to top it all off—it’s quick, responsive, and easily set to purpose.
And now, the bad. If you’re looking for a silent stealthy laptop, this isn’t the one for you. Although the X7-Pro packs a wonderful amount of hardware into its sleek, stealthy body, the one thing it hasn’t managed to control is the fan speed. The fans are so phenomenally loud and sporadic, that even when sitting on the desktop, they have a habit of whirring into life as soon as you open any program worth its salt. At first glance, this seems to be due to the method Gigabyte has used to chill those mighty processors. Both GPUs and the CPU are cooled using one single system, heatpipes and all, meaning that if the CPU temp ramps up, the fans that are designed to cool both of the two GPUs also spring into life, regardless of the temperature of the graphics processors.
Gigabyte has included a fan controller, but unless you enjoy switching back and forth between the two constantly, you’re going to encounter some serious thermal throttling in-game. Headsets, headsets, headsets, and closed back ones at that—that’s what you’ll need. Although God forbid anyone else is in the room with you at the same time as you do anything with this wee beastie. And, finally, back to the good. The screen—it’s stellar. In short, Aorus has thrown in a 17.7-inch 1080p AH-IPS G-SYNC panel, and it sure does look good. It’s crisp, easy to use, and comes with plenty of screen real estate to really take advantage of that dual-GPU SLI solution. The two GTX 970Ms are a powerhouse when it comes to gaming. If you’re looking for that perfectly smooth gaming experience from today’s latest AAA titles, the Aorus won’t let you down.
This makes the Aorus X7-Pro a stunning all-round laptop, jam-packed with enough hardware to make your eyes bleed. It could easily run as either a workstation or a gaming laptop, depending on your preference. And that really brings us round to who exactly this laptop was designed for. It’s the gamers (duh!), but more specifically the streamers. If you’re the kind of person who travels a lot, but just can’t resist the temptation to get yourself out there into the digital stream, the Aorus X7-Pro Sync is a solid choice. It’ll act as your rendering station, your gaming platform, and your traveling partner. Just remember to make sure your microphone is facing away from the cacophony that is the X7’s fans, and you’re all set. – ZAK STOREY
SPECIFICATIONS
CPU Intel Core i7-5850HQ
RAM 16GB DDR3L 1,866MHz
Chipset Intel HM97
GPU 2x Nvidia GeForce GTX 970M SLI
Screen 17.3-inch, IPS, 1920x1080, G-SYNC
Storage 2x 256GB RAID 0 mSATA SSDs, 1TB HDD
Weight 6lb 10oz