Asus STRIX G15 Laptop Review – AMAZING 3070 + 5800H COMBO
Finally, a laptop I can happily recommend! This is the Asus STRIX G15, specifically the G513QR, an RTX 3070 (laptop) based machine rocking a Ryzen 5800H, 16GB of 3200MHz DDR4 (which is upgradeable!) and a 1TB SSD with a spare M.2 for you to upgrade later. Oh, and a stunning 300Hz display that finally made me interested in ultra-high refresh rate panels. And all of that for under 2 grand. Wow. Lets take a look at this beast – But first, if you haven’t already, consider subscribing for more videos like this one every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
The first ‘next gen’ laptop I got my hands on was Asus’ Zephyrus Duo, an incredible machine, but rocking an “RTX 3080” that, while named the same as it’s desktop counterpart, wasn’t even the same chip, and only offered HALF the performance. The next one was the TUF Dash F15, a more budget friendly machine that had an “i7” that had just 4 cores and left so much performance on the table from it’s RTX 3070 that it was, in some games, almost unplayable. So, when I finally got the chance to test out this, the STRIX G15, not to be confused with the Zephyrus G15, I jumped at the opportunity since on paper, this is a much more well rounded laptop.
It’s Ryzen 7 5800H CPU offers 8 cores and up to 4.3GHz boost clocks, and a well rounded performance profile. Pair that with the RTX 3070, the 115W TDP model aka “Max-P”, and you get a killer gaming experience, especially on the stunning 1080p 300Hz display. Seriously, playing on this actually made me feel a noticeable difference in how I was playing games, analysing things better, and feeling like the “1337 Pr0” I’m… not. I can’t explain how good of a gaming experience playing on this was. Words like “snappy” and “responsive” don’t quite do it justice. Lets just say, I’m a fan.
In terms of performance, you get a lot out of this. You can either leave it in “performance” mode, in the Armoury software, or if you don’t mind a bit of extra fan noise especially as even in ‘performance’ mode there really wasn’t much, you can stick it in “turbo”, mostly for extra CPU horsepower. In CPU workloads, the 5800H smashes everything but it’s higher power brother, the 5900HX. Take a look.
In gaming, it’s amazing too. With Turbo mode enabled, you can even get 60FPS in Cyberpunk on ultra settings, which is quite a feat, and compared to the TUF DASH F15 with it’s 80W TDP variant 3070, and weak 11370H, it struggled to hit 40. Mental.
Temps and power draw are the main drawback here with the CPU, even in performance mode, peaking at 100°c, and sitting at around 94°c in games. In turbo mode it doesn’t do much better, despite the much higher fan speed. It’s still the same temps, but now pulling 80W through it, instead of the stock 65W. It does thermal throttle in performance mode on longer tests like rendering in Blender. Even in the BMW render, which only takes around 3 and half minutes on this, you can see the orange line (temp) dropping as the package power (grey) drops, despite the constant 100% load still being applied. In Turbo, that doesn’t happen, although the temps are more quick to rise and stay constant just shy of 100°c.
Happily though, there is next to no heat transfer to the keyboard plate. The whole of the keyboard was usable while gaming, and even the bit above the keyboard didn’t get much over 40°c, which is a welcome change from some I’ve tested recently.
Speaking of the keyboard, it’s alright. It’s nothing too special, but offers a good layout, including full size media keys which are a big plus, smaller hotkeys for audio level too, and offers a good, if a touch soft for my taste, typing feel. The key travel is reasonable, as is the actuation, meaning it works well for gaming too. The track pad is massive, I did have an issue with it not doing palm rejection while typing, but other than that works as well as a Windows trackpad can.
Then there is the display. Like I said, it’s stunning. I always like to commend accurate marketing, and again Asus has done that here as the sticker right on the display says it’s a 3ms panel – which it is. In fact, it could even be closer to 2ms, so even better. Sadly the white to black response time is slower – as it always is – at near 12ms, but that didn’t result in basically any ghosting. Seriously look at the UFO, there is next to no trail at all! I also like to test total system input lag, as in the time between you clicking your mouse and having a gun fire in game on screen. Most laptops score relatively badly here compared to desktops, in the 50-60ms range. This though? Closer to 30. Oh and it covers, pretty accurately, 100% of the sRGB spectrum. I’m genuinely pleased with this machine.
Taking a look inside you’ll see the decently beefy cooling setup – still technically a little underpowered for the hardware inside but I’d argue that’s down to the insanely quiet fan profile on the ‘performance’ mode. Either way, you’ve got 2 DDR4 SODIMM slots which are user replaceable, although come populated with 2 8GB 3200MHz sticks, a reasonable choice for this CPU. You’ve also got an empty M.2 slot, should you want to add more storage later, always a nice touch.
So beyond it running a bit hot – which you can fix with a fan profile adjustment – this is possibly the best gaming laptop you can buy right now. It’s powerful enough to run any game you like at ultra settings, or if you want to make use of the 300Hz panel drop that down and enjoy. It’s thin and light enough to be portable, and it’s got plenty of horsepower for creative workloads too. All for, currently, £1,700. That’s not the cheapest, sure, but what you are getting is an incredible experience and a well balanced machine that should last you a fair while.
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TechteamGB Score
