back to article Sorry, Californians, you can't have this: Asus to build WATER COOLED notebook

Asus has unveiled a gaming notebook that comes with its own water cooling system. The GX700, shown off by the company ahead of the IFA conference in Berlin, connects to an external cooling system that pumps water through the notebook to cool off its overclocked Intel Skylake CPU. Asus GX700 laptop with dock Is it still a …

  1. phil dude
    Coat

    grill...

    I thought the docking adapter was a grill!!!

    P.

    1. mafoo

      Re: grill...

      it serves that function as well

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: grill...

      No it's a steamer, or possibly a smoker if things don't go to plan

    3. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

      Why water?

      Add a coffee* filter to that dock, they could probably get Starbucks to sponsor it to keep the price down.

      * yes yes, I'm well aware of the faint relationship between Starbucks and coffee, but the target market here is probably the US.

    4. JLV
      Coat

      Re: grill...

      In a pinch it will also work wonders to enlive an airport security check.

      Yeah, yeah, my coat as well.

  2. MrT

    Looks like Hotblack's laptop...

    ...what's the sound system like?

  3. Metrognome

    Sneer all you like; ASUS gear is usually both top notch and pretty good value for money.

    1. RNixon

      I've got some Asus stuff, and been quite pleased with it.

      That said, I've had several friends who had to deal with Asus support, and all of them quickly got lost in a Kafkaesque nightmare. So their stuff is generally good but if you DO need help with it, pray.

      1. goldcd

        I've had a load of Asus stuff over the years

        none of it has ever gone wrong. Ever.

        I'm now not concerned so much for their customer support 'sucking', but for hearing that their products have declined to the extent they're required to provide customer support.

        1. Archaon

          Re: I've had a load of Asus stuff over the years

          ASUS typically offer a very comprehensive range allowing you to pick the right features at a reasonable price, so they are hard to resist sometimes. That said all of the ASUS stuff I've purchased had issues out of the box. Anything from something simple like needing to reset the BIOS before use (or no boot at all) through to a completely dead memory channel, I have never had an ASUS motherboard without some kind of issue out of the box.

          Admittedly that is a small sample size of a few boards - but after 3 or 4 completely different boards all having issues there's a reason the sample size isn't getting any bigger! Would probably buy Abit if they hadn't packed up years ago, so I'm generally using ASRock at the moment and find them to be just as good, with an equally comprehensive range of board types and features. Generally a little cheaper as well, which doesn't hurt.

    2. Haku

      I also have a liking of Asus products, but I (and a lot of other people) have discovered a small flaw with the Asus MemoPad HD7 ME173X, whilst it's a good tablet with a great screen, accidentally dropping it can cause the touchscreen to stop working properly/altogether.

      Why? Because they engineered it with tight tolerances, so any flexing of the unit can cause the touchscreen ribbon cable to be pulled out of its sockets.

      It's easy to fix, simply pop the back off and re-insert the cable, but this leads into another potential problem, if you forget to remove the MicroSD card beforehand it can irrepairably damage the socket when prying the back off.

    3. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Until it doesn't work properly through some design flaw and then ASUS will studiously ignore you and even resort to deleting forums if there are too many user complaints.

  4. Michael Habel

    Probably just as usefull as a dive ship too

  5. elDog

    It also has an adapter to plug into your hot water heater

    If you want really scorching showers, try playing Minecraft for a few hours.

    It's amazing what the poor vendors will do for eyeballs. I would expect the next announcement to involve molten sodium heat transfer - do not use within 100M of flammable structures.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: It also has an adapter to plug into your hot water heater

      try playing Minecraft for a few hours.

      Given the graphics of Minecraft are worse than the original Wolfenstein on floppies, I wouldn't have thought that the processor would break a sweat on it. But the point is moot, because now Microsoft own Minecraft, it will soon diminish to nothing.

      1. joeW

        Re: It also has an adapter to plug into your hot water heater

        Turn up the view distance a couple of notches (heh), you'll start straining any given CPU pretty damn quick.

  6. CrosscutSaw

    Pfft!

    Nitrogen is the way to go fellas.

    LOL

    1. DropBear
      Joke

      Re: Pfft!

      Well my desktop is certainly Nitrogen cooled (in a proportion of about 78%...) but I never thought of it as being particularly special...

  7. dogged

    What's water-cooled?

    The CPU or the external GPU?

    The latter seems more likely to me.

    1. Charles 9

      Re: What's water-cooled?

      If it is an external GPU, meaning the water-cooling is confined to the dock unit, it'll be extremely interesting to know just how it connects to the laptop.

      1. Greggles

        Re: What's water-cooled?

        Alienware has a product like this available now, though not water cooled, an external dock to improve graphics.

      2. Steve Gill

        Re: What's water-cooled?

        I've got an old Sony with an external GPU - connects through a USB3 port

  8. John Savard

    Another news article on this particular laptop says that only the GPU, which is an as-yet-unreleased chip from Nvidia, is cooled by the water-cooling system.

    I do have to agree this is overkill, and will have limited appeal. However, a few people with severe space constraints may well find this laptop to be preferable to a desktop. Apparently, also, some laptops already exist that use heat pipes or closed-loop liquid systems for extra cooling; that might be less exciting, but it would perhaps have been more reasonable.

    1. frank ly

      "... some laptops already exist that use heat pipes ..."

      I think most if not all of them do. My old Dell laptop (it died ten tears ago) had a heat pipe inside, as I found when I dismantled it as a matter of interest. The thing about water cooling is that water is cheap and safe and you can take the heat outside of the laptop and then use a big radiator/fan system to dump it. A major limiting factor in laptop heat dissipation is the volume of air that you can force over the radiator fins and the size of the fins themselves.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Water is safe except when it comes to electricity, not so much because it can itself conduct electricity but because it can readily dissolve stuff that can (it has high potential as a solvent, particularly under certain conditions such as high temperatures). So you always have to be mindful of a potential leak. Thus you usually need to be able to get inside the machine in case something like that happens.

        1. Lionel Baden

          Water is perfectly safe in contact with electricity, as water does not conduct electricity.

          1. illiad

            Only PURE water is an insulator...

            It is the impurities in it that conduct electric.. I think you will find 'pure' water DOES NOT come out of your kitchen tap!!!

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Only PURE water is an insulator...

              Not only that, pure water doesn't stay that way for long because it's an excellent solvent and only gets better as the temperature goes up. That's one of the reasons you have to be careful with water-cooling a PC: there's a risk of it finding some weak point and dissolving the pipes or seals, causing a leak.

              1. This post has been deleted by its author

              2. Alan Brown Silver badge

                Re: Only PURE water is an insulator...

                "pure water doesn't stay that way for long because it's an excellent solvent and only gets better as the temperature goes up."

                Which is the primary reason why using it as the primary coolant/moderator in nuclear reactors is a spectacularly bad idea. You'll find the others once it finishes dissolving things - like pipework.

            2. Peter Johnstone

              Re: Only PURE water is an insulator...

              Wrong. Even pure water will conduct electricity. H20 ionises to H+ OH-. At any given time a small fraction of water will exist in the ionised form, allowing it to conduct electricity. Furthermore, more water will ionise in the presence of an electric current.

          2. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Water is perfectly safe in contact with electricity, as water does not conduct electricity

            elDog's molten sodium cooling idea is brilliant!

            Mind you, it was quite impressive when my mercury-cooled power supply sprung a leak.

      2. Alan Brown Silver badge

        "A major limiting factor in laptop heat dissipation is the volume of air that you can force over the radiator fins and the size of the fins themselves."

        And the tendency of said fins to catch dust particles.

        I've had to deal with a sizable number of overheating laptops over the years which when dismantled appeared to have a block of felt between the fan and the heatsink fins - which wasn't there when shipped from the factory.

        When you find out how felt is made (or used to be at any rate), the similarity shouldn't be overly surprising.

        The Sandia cooler can't come to market soon enough.

  9. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

    Not because it's Asus

    I'm not a cynical about this because it's Asus, I've had a few Asus motherboards and they were great. I'm a tad cynical because it's a laptop with a big-ass external radiator you've got to carry around with it.

  10. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    So it's a scorcher, then ?

    External GPU ? I can't believe that performance is not going to take a hit for that. And frankly, lugging that humongous box around plus the laptop is rather ridiculous, but if it rocks your boat, good for you.

    I'll stick to upgrading my desktop box. Watercooling that is not a problem, there are no more space constraints and besides, LAN parties are in the past for me. Much easier and more practical to game with my friends over the Internet.

    1. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: So it's a scorcher, then ?

      " I can't believe that performance is not going to take a hit for that"

      Why? If the docking connector has a PCIe x16 in it then there's nothing to take a hit on.

  11. Trixr

    What is the point of a "laptop" like that? Ok, I'm sure you can detach it from the cooling tower and run it in non-overclocked mode on the go, but really, just buy a PC if you need that much cooling.

    Also, where's the styling from? Some sci-fi movie circa 1982? It's as fugly as hell.

  12. stucs201

    Not necessarily as silly as it sounds.

    Not everyone uses their portable PCs while actually on the move, some use them mostly at a limited number of fixed locations - quite possibly involving a desk at each location and a car as transport. For this use just having one or two boxes and minimal cables is sufficient portability, it doesn't necessarily have to be light - what used to sometimes be called a luggable is enough.

    A couple of example use cases:

    1) LAN parties. Yes games can be played over the internet these days, but everyone in one room with beer and snacks is more fun.

    2) My work laptop spends almost all of it's powered on time in a docking station at work connected to multiple external monitors. It does however get undocked most evenings in case there is a need to work from home the next day. Given everything except the laptop itself stays in the office I'd not turn down an extra bulky docking station that gave a performance boost (though I can't see work going for this particular model).

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Not necessarily as silly as it sounds.

      Totally agree. The idea of a gaming machine that I can still use as a commuting device appeals to me.

      1. Steve Gill

        Re: Not necessarily as silly as it sounds.

        The concept works really well - lightweight laptop for commuting, add the gaming GPU when needed - though I would suggest going for something a little bigger than the 11" screen I went for

    2. This post has been deleted by its author

    3. Alan Brown Silver badge

      Re: Not necessarily as silly as it sounds.

      "2) My work laptop spends almost all of it's powered on time in a docking station at work connected to multiple external monitors. It does however get undocked most evenings in case there is a need to work from home the next day."

      We recently had a complaint from one our users with such a setup.

      He'd left his laptop at home and was complaining loudly that the docking station wouldn't boot up.

  13. MarkB

    It's so fast...

    That it's got into the news a full 7 months early - it was planned for April 1st 2016...

  14. TheNeonSpirit

    I can see a market for this, it's a dual use device, when docked its a gaming laptop with all the bells and whistles enabled for maximum performance. When undocked its a standard(ish) laptop for web browsing, video streaming etc...

  15. Jon Massey
    WTF?

    California?

    Am I missing the joke?

    1. stucs201

      Re: California?

      Yes, listen to the whoosing noise as it flies over your head. They have a shortage of water at the moment...

      1. Jon Massey

        Re: California?

        Yeah, but it's almost certainly going to be a closed loop system so won't require filling by the user.

        1. Cirdan
          Pint

          Re: California?

          Whoosh x2...

          Or the best deadpan humor ever!!!

          Have one on me, Jon :-)

          ...Cirdan...

  16. Unicornpiss
    Meh

    All it is is a show piece

    It might some day be a collector's item, if you don't mind waiting 30 or so years. I'd love to see a benchmark compared with a Dell Precision or Alienware mobile workstation or some other high-end laptop to see if all the hype amounts to anything though.

    It's obvious that it was done just to ignite interest in Asus' product line. And frankly, Asus stuff has always been good to me. The last several motherboards I've used were Asus, I have an Asus tablet which I'm very happy with, etc. But this is a farce, like when you see someone's vision of the future at an auto show.

    Re. water and conductivity, I'm sure this would use distilled water or some kind of hybrid coolant to prevent clogs/corrosion.

  17. Unicornpiss
    Coat

    Obligatory "But will it run Crysis?"

    Well actually, I reckon it probably would...

  18. naive

    Gaming laptops rule !!

    Gaming laptops are actually the only innovative and well built products in an otherwise featureless desert of sub $1000,- landfill laptops and other cheaply manufactured IT stuff.

    The amazing engineering of my MSI GT70-2QE is just magic, this kind of equipment rekindled my passion for hardware. The ASUS machine is interesting, the new 4K display standard is a challenge for current graphics hardware due to the required frame rates for gaming. The required NVIDIA 980M class cards in SLI mode will probably generate considerable amounts of heat, so water cooling might be necessary, specially when also a power guzzling I7 is thrown in for good measure.

    1. teknopaul

      Re: Gaming laptops rule !!

      Word. If you can put that fat gpu to use compiling code.

      gcc -j 2048...

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Gaming laptops rule !!

        gcc -j 2048...

        You can try that, but gcc will likely complain:

        gcc: error: unrecognized command line option ‘-j’

  19. Mike 125

    Just why.

    I love how the marketeers turn energy inefficiency and waste into desirable features (for morons). Same with cars.

    1. JLV
      Flame

      Re: Just why.

      Don't be an ass.

      Water heating is not a totally unreasonable solution to getting heat out of a GPU and/or CPU. ASUS gear is solid. I use an ROG laptop for dev work - few "business" laptops will go up to 32GB RAM/17" at 1920 screen for that price and I need multiple large VMs. This thing will only heat under load, efficiency is likely quite good at low revs.

      If you don't like gaming hardware or their price, that's totally OK.

      If you think gaming contributes significantly to emissions, as opposed to cars, planes and other inherently high-emission items, then you need lotsa basic remedial math.

      (Flames, because)

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    It's undockable, so let's hope those seals hold…

    If they don't it'll seal the laptop's fate.

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