Gadgetory

hey how's it going Dave QD here so a little while ago Nvidia announced max Q which was the new design approach to building laptops that would keep them thin and light and quiet and on paper it seemed almost too good to be true because these were GTX 1080s in a laptop that was 19 millimeters thick and we're running at 40 decibels which is incredibly quiet and one of the ways they achieve this was through reduced wattage to the GPU the more power you give to a GPU the better performance but it hits this point of diminishing returns and once you hit that sweet spot the extra waters that you feed it doesn't get used efficiently so Nvidia caps the power consumption right at that point now you get reduced performance right you can't tap into that last 15 percent or whatever but you use way less energy and you get better thermals so my initial reaction was hey that's kind of cool but there were a lot of enthusiasts that were like hmm is nvidia trying to pull a scam on us because these could just be under clouds GPUs and just relabeled as this whole max-q certification thing and I understand where the concern comes from because these are not cheap gaming laptops these are two or three thousand dollars a pop and at that price point you want to make sure that you're doing the right thing with your money so that's what this video explores are these max-q laptops can in front of me are three fairly different max-q laptops the acc Zephyrus the ARS x5 md and an alienware 15 max q and these all have gtx 1080s inside them and they're all max Q design laptops the ARS x5 MD is running some very early software but whatever so all three of these are very strong performers in firestrike they score less than a regular laptop with a gtx 1080 but better than a laptop with a regular gtx 1070 and the variants you see between these three max q laptops is mostly a difference in just the clock speeds of the GPUs okay when you look at this graph you might notice how close these three max Q laptops are to the GTX 970 laptop we're talking like a seven to ten percent difference and some gtx 1070 laptops can be overclocked and those will actually outperform these alien were put up a video showcasing how their gtx 1070 laptop could be overclocked and could actually outperform at a cheaper price their gtx 1080 max q laptop and so the question pops up why is nvidia pushing these max q laptops when you can get a GTX 10-7 that has very similar performance or even better performance if you overclock it and the problem is actually that some companies don't take full advantage of the whole max-q design approach so if you look at a lien where they put a lot of effort into the designs and they're made really well they bring out new laptop designs every three or four years they're not going to design a whole new chassis just for some max-q stuff on the other hand a company like Asus they put out new laptop and PC designs every year so for them they can put out a brand new ultra thin maxi laptop right away they can take full advantage of the max-q design because that's just how the company rolls so back to the alien or 15 they're running their GPU the max-q GTX 1080 at 110 watts which is the highest level you can run it at for a max Q design laptop and they're able to push their GPU hard like this because this chassis was designed to handle then overclocked gtx 1070 it's got a ton of thermal Headroom so is this laptop still good I mean yeah it's designed well it's built well and it's very powerful but it's not impressive to me this is the same chassis as was in their regular ngon max-q laptop and honestly I love Alienware I think they make some of the best laptops in the market but this feels like a me-too product like we looked at everyone else making max-q laptops and I thought hey we should make one too but they just didn't put it into a new chassis so you're stuck with this so when people look at this product max Q does not look like a compelling thing it's just why would you buy this gimped GTX 1080p version when you can buy the cheaper gtx 1070 version that performs just as well if not better and then you take a look at the opposite end of the spectrum the asus f-first this thing was built specifically for max q design it's not as durable as an Alienware laptop but it's still really well-made it's thin it's light and the fans are incredibly quiet it's not a traditional look the keyboard down the trackpad is on the right and things are a little weird when you first use it but to me this is impressive this is a thin and powerful laptop that is super quiet and I kind of want to touch on the whole thing about fan noise decibels are a logarithmic unit right so an increase in 10 decibels is double the perceived volume so if you're starting at 40 decibels if you hit 50 decibels that's double the volume and then if you hit 60 decibels that's double the volume again so gaming laptops can easily hit 50 Souls unload if you have a gtx 1070 or 1080 in there they can sometimes hit 60 decibels this thing has a max Q 1080 in there and hit 39 decibels when you're playing games so yeah you can get a 1070 laptop that has very similar performance to this but it's going to be so much louder I also want to talk about this thing the aorist x5 SMD they didn't change the chassis it's their regular x5 chassis not super thin but to me max Q is perfect for this laptop it still has great performance with the GTX 1080 and the max Q design keeps it quiet stays really close to 40 decibels when it's gaming and has a ton of expandability there's 4 drives in there max Q design allowed this really great laptop to get even better three months ago the thinnest laptop with a GTX 1080 was this thing - Razer Blade Pro and everybody down plot their GPU a little bit just to kind of keep the thermals in check it's a very good performing laptop but it's super loud 60 decibels when it's under load now there's nothing wrong with this device I mean it's a very powerful machine but if all you think they're doing is down clocking their GPUs to kind of make max Q laptops that's not the case there's just so much more going on like the hardware the software it's all combining together to be able to make something this then this light and this quiet so in conclusion no I don't think masks use a scam it's not a new GPU and like the technology isn't like the super crazy but they're combining something that's in the software component and a hardware component to make something that you know is really impressive as long as you're doing it right now the other thing to keep in mind is nvidia isn't forcing you to buy these max-q things the regular GTX laptop still exists if you want to buy those things I have little more power and a little more fan noise you're more than welcome to you don't have to buy these but for people that want to spend a little more money to get something that's like a little more elegant you have that option as well