What an important year this is for ASUS as its Republic of Gamers (ROG) line of laptops reaches it’s 10th year anniversary. In lieu of this special event, they announced a number of gadgets and gizmos under the ROG brand which was held last June 8, 2016 at Nobu Restaurant in City of Dreams Manila in Pasay City.
Present at the event is George Su, ASUS Philippines System Country Manager and Eason Lin, ASUS Philippines Open Platform Country Manager . Also gracing the event were Jerome Matti Ang, NVIDIA Philippines Consumer Sales Lead, and Calum Chisholm, Intel Country Manager.
The event began with Mr. Su giving the opening remarks. According to him, the ASUS ROG laptops has the highest market share of GTX gaming laptops in the Philippines with around 36.9% market share, followed by Dell at 23%, Acer at 5.8% and Lenovo at 2.5%. Soon after, they immediately took wraps on 2 of the newest members of the ROG family, the ROG GT51 and the Strix GL502.
The former is a humongous beast of a CPU gaming rig while the latter is one of the thinnest gaming laptops to also contain one of the strongest mobile GPUs in the market.
ASUS ROG GT51: Beastly specs, killer chassis
The GT51 is one huge desktop, as in REALLY REALLY Huge. I don’t have the exact dimensions of the thing, but I think it has around 30 inches in diameter. Design wise, it looks like a big space ship ready for battle with it’s big metal gray casing with red accents, with the ROG logo at the front and a big robotic-looking eye reminiscent of Transformer’s Megatron at the bottom that turns bright red when it’s turned on.
The desktop supports ROG Aura Light Effects which enables the user to customize the led light of the motherboard, adding an extra personal touch to your rig. The GT51 is powered by an Intel Core i7-6700K processor that can run up to 4.2 GHz. According ASUS, the GT51 supports full-Core CPU overclocking which can be overclocked up to 4.6 GHz. When it comes to graphics processing, the GT51 has a NVIDIA GeForce Titan X 12GB DDR5 2 way SLI GPU inside it.
For those who aren’t aware, the Titan X is easily one of the strongest, if not the strongest GPU out there, and in the GT51, there’s two of them inside! When it comes to ports, there are a lot of USB 3.0 ports in front and at the back of the device. It even has a USB Type-C port on the front that you can use for charging smartphones.
It has an E55 Hi-FI port for those audio junkies out there. Lastly, they introduced the ROG Band, a bracelet that if placed near the GT51 would automatically overclock the whole system so there’s no need to tinker on the bios for that. Besides overclocking, the ROG Band can also unlock a shadow partition which you can store “important files” that you want to keep from other humans hands.
All in all, this is one of the strongest PCs ever built right now and one of the best looking case designs at least in my opinion. Refer below for the full list of specs:
ASUS ROG GT51 specs
| Description | ROG GT51 |
| Processor | Intel Core i7-6700K Processor (8M Cache, up to 4.20 GHz) |
| Graphics | NVIDIA Geforce GTX TITAN X 12GB DDR5(2 way SLI) |
| Memory | 64GB DDR4 Ram |
| Storage | 3TB HDD + 512GB SSD |
| Features | CPU liquid cooler & Air tunnel for VGA |
Strix GL502: Ultra-sleek GTX 970M / 980M powered mobility
If the GT51 is aimed at the highest end of the gaming spectrum, the Strix GL502 is for those who want a really strong gaming laptop on the go. The main selling point of the Strix is how thin it is considering it’s specs. With a height of only 23.5 mm and a weight of 2.2 kg, this is a huge improvement over the usual gaming laptops whose height and weight is sometimes double that of Strix.
Under the hood, it runs an Intel Core i7-6700HQ processor which runs up to 3.5 Ghz, 8 or 16 GB of DDR4 Ram, an NVIDIA Geforce GTX 970m or 980m (depending on your configuration), a 1 TB or a 2 TB HDD with either a 128 GB or up to 512 GB SSD, also depending on your configuration.
All of this runs on a 15“ either FHD or UHD IPS screen. This is a real best designed to run even the most demanding games at the highest settings all the while maintaining it’s sleek profile. The GL502 supports NVIDIA’s G-Sync technology which aims to remove the screen tearing that gamers usually notice while playing their games.
Besides that, it also has an intelligent thermal design which helps in dissipating the heat away from the laptop more efficiently. Overall, this is a very solid laptop for those who want to game or does multitasking a lot. For the full list of specs, refer to the table below.
Strix GL502 specs
| Description | Strix GL502 |
| Processor | Intel Core i7-6700HQ Processor 2.4 GHz(6M Cache up to 3.5 GHz) |
| Graphics | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970M 6GB DDR5 Ram or GTX 980M 4GB DDR5 Ram |
| Memory | 8GB DDR4 RAM up to 16 GB |
| Storage | 1 TB – 2 TB HDD + 128GB – 512GB SSD |
| Display | 15″ FHD(1920 x 1080) – UHD(3840 x 2160) IPS panel |
ROG Swift PG248Q: 180Hz glory
Besides the GT51 and GL502, ASUS also introduced a monitor, a motherboard and a video card. The ROG Swift PG248Q is a 24 inch G-Sync monitor designed for competitive e-sports gaming. It has up to 180Hz refresh rate and a 1 ms response time, perfect for first person shooters like the Overwatch.
The ROG Strix X99 Gaming is a gaming focused mother board. it features a redesigned processor socket which aims to overclock your pc more efficiently. It has a SupremeFx and Sonic Radar II audio setup for an improve audio experience. It also supports the Aura RGB lighting so you could customize the led light of your motherboard.
They also introduced the GameFirst Technology which hopes to improve your internet connection by redirecting some of the services you use on other frequency bandwidths to reduce network traffic.
Strix GeForce GTX 1080: The GPU we’ve all been waiting for
The Strix Series Geforce GTX 1080 is a GPU based on NVIDIA’s own Geforce GTX 1080. According to ASUS, it’s 1080 has an improved cooling compare to others by around 30% and also 3x quieter when running. it has an enhanced durability and efficiency thanks to it’s ASUS Auto-EXTREME Technology. Like the Strix X99, the the Strix Series Geforce GTX 1080 also has the Aura RGB Lighting for added customization.
Price and availability
The ROG GT51 and GL502 is slated for release later this year with prices starting at Php 229,995.00 for the GT51 and Php 99,995.00, while the Strix Series Geforce GTX 1080 will retail at Php 42,290. The Strix X99 and Swift PG248Q are also slated to be released later this year, but no official prices were given at the moment.
The prices are pretty steep especially for the GT51. But if you really want one of the best-spec’d PC out there not to mention one of the most well designed full tower desktop chassis, the GT51 is your best bet. As for the GL502, I’d say it’s a priced competently especially if you factor the cost of each individual components and portability compared to competing solutions from other manufacturers.