The Asus ROG Zephyrus goes to the Max(-Q) with an Nvidia GTX 1080

Max-Q designed laptops have been coming out of the woodwork since Nvidia made its announcement at Computex 2017, but out of the lot, the Asus ROG Zephyrus looks like the most impressive out of them all.

At just 17.9mm (0.7-inches) thick, the 15-inch Zephyrus might be no taller than an American 10-cent coin but it packs an overclockable Nvidia GTX 1080 inside. This is only possible thanks to engineering tweaks Nvidia has made to its GPU and Asus’ efficient cooling system.

The coolest (both literally and figuratively) of the Asus ROG Zephyrus is its Active Aerodynamic System, which drops down part of the laptop’s underside to raise the machine at a slight angle and reveal an exhaust vent.

Asus claims this mechanism helps increase the air-flow volume by 20%, fixing a common problem with thin-and-light laptops choking on thin vents. All the while, the Zephyrus stays relatively quiet and shouldn’t get over 42 decibels even while running the most demanding games.

Another quirk about the Zephyrus you might notice is the keyboard has been positioned towards the bottom of the laptop – similar to the Acer Predator Triton 700 we saw recently – and this has also been in service to cooling. The trackpad meanwhile sits to the right of the keyboard and can be toggled into a virtual number pad, something we’ve saw first on the MSI GT80 Titan.

Aside from the Nvidia GTX 1080, the Zephyrus' other specs include an Intel Core i7-7700HQ processor, 256/512GB or 1TB SSD storage options. The screen also looks looks like an impressive offering with a Full HD panel that supports both G-Sync and a 120Hz refresh rate.

Asus has yet to announce availability and pricing for the ROG Zephyrus, but we’ll update this post as soon as the information is release.