It’s how we fill a quiet moment and how we hang out with friends. It feeds our need for the thrill of victory and the wonder of exploration. Gaming is part of everyday life now. If you like to unwind with a round of your favorite competitive shooter or any of the other endless titles that fill out the PC catalog, there’s a gaming laptop with your name on it. No two gamers are exactly alike, so there’s something for everyone in our ROG and TUF Gaming lineups. To help you navigate our latest and greatest machines, we’ve created this spring 2020 gaming laptop guide so you can find the winning combination that’s just right for you.
The new TUF Gaming A15 and A17 are just the ticket for people seeking attainable laptops that don’t compromise on gaming essentials. ROG laptops offer the highest-performance components, the most portable designs, and the most innovative features. The Zephyrus Duo 15 and its unique secondary touchscreen will turn a lot of heads this year, as will the bold colors of the ROG Strix G15 Electro Punk laptop and its bundle of matching accessories. Our slim Zephyrus machines are more portable and powerful than ever, especially the AMD Ryzen-powered ROG Zephyrus G14. For those seeking esports glory, ROG Strix SCAR laptops continue to set the performance standard.
The new chips on the block
The CPU is the beating heart of every laptop, and we’re excited to bring the latest Intel 10th Gen Core and AMD Ryzen 4000 families of CPUs to our gaming laptops. 10th Gen Core CPUs boast up to eight cores and 16 threads of processing power for multithreaded prowess, paired with sky-high single-core clock speeds to run games as fast as they can go.
AMD’s latest Zen 2 CPU architecture has come to laptops with the Ryzen 4000 family of mobile CPUs. For select TUF Gaming and ROG Zephyrus laptops, we offer CPU options ranging up to a Ryzen 9 with eight cores and 16 threads that packs impressive frame rates plus multithreaded muscle for highly parallel workloads and serious multitasking. The top-of-the-line chip doubles the power available in the previous generation, and we pair it with especially swift DDR4-3200 RAM to further improve performance for both productivity and gaming.
Gamers know that no single component affects gaming performance more than the GPU. ROG and TUF laptops unleash the latest GeForce RTX GPUs from NVIDIA, including the GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER and the range-topping RTX 2080 SUPER in select models. NVIDIA has already carved out new performance territory in desktops with its SUPER series, and now it’s time for gaming laptops to benefit from a performance boost.
Based on the latest Turing architecture, these GPUs take NVIDIA’s already-successful formula and dial it up another level. Armed with augmented CUDA cores for programmable shading, RT cores for ray-tracing, and tensor cores for AI-powered functions, GeForce RTX GPUs provide dedicated hardware for the acceleration of real-time, lifelike lighting, shadows, and reflections. Advanced DLSS technology uses the tensor cores and NVIDIA deep-learning algorithms to maximize performance in games that put a heavy load on the GPU.
Cooling designs ready to beat the coming heat
Gamers insist on hardware that performs up to its full potential even in the heat of battle. We thoughtfully plan out the best mix of cooling hardware for each of our systems, and then tie it all together with software tools that adjust acoustics and performance depending on the task at hand.
It all starts with a chassis thoughtfully designed to accommodate effective fans and heatsinks. A special liquid crystal polymer lets us fit 83 fins in each of our advanced n-Blade fans, increasing airflow by up to 17% compared to traditional designs. That cooling air flows through heatsinks with ultra-thin fins that maximize airflow and surface area alike to ensure the best heat dissipation. Dust is the worst enemy of fans and heatsinks, so we designed self-cleaning thermal modules that use centrifugal force to catch dust particles and eject them from the chassis.
Since cooling and performance requirements can vary quite a bit based on the task at hand, we developed simple and intuitive controls for balancing the speed and acoustics of our laptops. With a keyboard shortcut, you can toggle between three different Operating Modes. Silent Mode prioritizes quiet operation by lightly restraining performance. It’s perfect when you’re studying at the library or streaming some Netflix. Performance mode balances gaming grunt and acoustics, giving you the power that you need for victory while keeping fan noise low. Our peak noise targets vary a bit by model, but overall you’ll find that the latest TUF and ROG laptops are unobtrusive companions in the Performance and Silent Operating Modes, even under load. Turbo Mode gives you full access to the system’s processing potential for when every Hertz counts.
Our Armoury Crate software provides a one-stop shop for controlling your laptop’s essential settings, but don’t think that you’ll need to fiddle with hardware settings every time you open up a new program. Our new Scenario Profiles feature in Armoury Crate lets you identify a group of settings that you want the laptop to automatically load whenever you launch an associated game or application. In addition to specifying an Operating Mode for each Scenario Profile, you can switch between display and audio presets and even switch to a different preset Aura Sync RGB LED lighting pattern.
Your window to countless digital worlds
Whether you’re a competitive gamer or a committed creative, there are many reasons to be excited about the new displays that we have on offer in this year’s fleet of gaming laptops. We insist that high-refresh-rate displays provide the best gaming experiences, and year after year we’ve backed up that claim by offering gamers fast panel options. We were the first to bring 120Hz screens to laptops, and we’ve led the industry’s adoption of high-refresh laptop panels ever since. This year, we’re introducing the first 300Hz laptop displays. These panels provide lightning-fast, crystal-clear visuals that heighten your immersion and enable you to respond to gameplay as fast as your reflexes will allow.
Typically, you have to choose between NVIDIA’s G-SYNC and Optimus technologies when you’re buying a laptop. It’s a tough choice. Do you want to have smooth, tear-free visuals in your games? Or do you want the battery-saving ability to power down the GPU and rely on internal graphics whenever you don’t need the extra pixel-pushing power? With our proprietary GPU Switch technology, that’s a choice that you don’t actually have to make. A few quick clicks and a reboot is all it takes to switch between the two modes.
Cutting-edge connectivity
Between smartphones, laptops, smartwatches, and devices of all kinds, the average wireless network has become a rather crowded place. It’s time for a wireless revolution. Wi-Fi 6 (Gig+) routers and devices are here, and they’re packed with technologies that alleviate congestion and limit interference from nearby networks. As you replace the household router and devices that connect to it with hardware sporting Wi-Fi 6 (Gig+), you’ll reap the benefits of this new generation of wireless networking.
You’ll find dual-band Wi-Fi 6 (Gig+), also referred to as 802.11ax, across our entire 2020 lineup of ROG and TUF laptops. While there’s something to be said for an old-fashioned Ethernet cable, we think that our gamers deserve low latency and high bandwidth no matter how they’re connected to their networks.
Hassle-free upgrades
When gamers buy a new PC, they like to know that they can come back later and add in a crucial upgrade. We’ve made a few key adjustments to our laptops to ease the upgrade process. Whether you’re adding a stick of RAM or another storage drive, you’ll find it more convenient than ever to upgrade your system.
For starters, we made our laptops easier to open by updating the material for some of the hooks that hold the bottom panel to the chassis, making it easier to pop the panel loose. We also created a pop-up screw mechanism. As you loosen a special captive screw, the bottom cover automatically pops up so you can remove the panel with only a fingernail or credit card.
Once the bottom panel is open, you have immediate access to memory slots and storage bays. We don’t make you loosen a second panel or remove the keyboard. We also give you an easy opportunity to expand the storage of your system down the road by including at least two M.2 slots in most ROG and TUF laptops, and three in Strix systems.
TUF Gaming laptops wield the latest AMD Ryzen CPUs
ASUS TUF Gaming laptops have long delivered high performance and dependability to gamers looking for solid, attainable machines that can survive the rigors of life on the go. Our 2020 lineup introduces an all-new family with more performance and versatility than ever before. The 15-inch TUF Gaming F15 and A15, along with their 17-inch TUF Gaming F17 and A17 siblings, provide an unprecedented experience for the price.
Potent processing power lives inside thanks to a choice between 10th Gen Intel Core processors and AMD Ryzen Mobile 4000-series CPUs. NVIDIA Turing-based GPUs up to the GeForce RTX 2060 feed frames into fast displays that refresh at up to 144Hz and use Adaptive Sync technology to ensure smoother, tear-free gaming across a wide range of titles. Armed with bigger battery options ranging up to 90Wh, the latest TUF Gaming notebooks give you the flexibility for long hours away from an outlet. Their more compact chassis are easy to carry, and updated military-grade durability testing demonstrates their ability to survive in the field.
We offer the TUF Gaming A15 and A17 in two finishes. Fortress Gray features a metal lid that’s sandblasted to bring out a fine texture in the material before it’s finished in its namesake gray. Exposed concentric screws anchor the four corners and echo the rugged DNA of the TUF Gaming family. Bonfire Black, on the other hand, brings multiple textures to a more aggressive look designed for extroverted gamers. Large trapezoidal cuts in the center of the lid evoke the hexagonal pattern used throughout the chassis, and they draw your eye to the inlaid TUF Gaming logo.