Asus's Republic of Gamers division has
been on a bit of a streak this year, launching a number of gaming
laptops at different price points as well as keyboards, mice, monitors,
and audio products. The company as a whole is doing a good job of
diversifying away from motherboards and PC components, and today has one
of the most diverse product portfolios in the entire industry. The
focus on gaming in particular is great news for consumers, since most
other companies seem focused only on pushing out low-cost or ultra-slim
laptops which aren't really suited for power users.
Those who
want serious power for gaming and choose a laptop usually do so because
they are compact and easier to buy than a full-sized desktop tower.
That's also part of what makes consoles so popular. However, gamers lose
out on the flexibility, upgradability, and sheer power of a gaming
desktop. Asus is trying to bridge these worlds with the new ROG G20CB, a
relatively compact desktop with absurd amounts of power. Read on to
find out all about it, and if it's worth the rather steep asking price.
Look and feel
The
ROG G20CB is certainly unique in terms of its shape and size. It
doesn't use any standard PC form factor, and Asus is one of the very few
companies that can fabricate all the parts it needs to pull this off.
It isn't quite small-form-factor either; Asus says the total volume is
9.5 litres, whereas mini-ITX PCs tend to be between 14 and 28 litres,
but the shape is highly irregular. Its design is angular and bold,
stopping just short of being aggressive. It can only be stood up
vertically, which might be a problem for those looking for an
unobtrusive living room PC.
The first thing you'll notice about
it is the tribal pattern on the front and top. It's all plastic, and
serves the dual purposes of ventilation and looks. There's RGB LED
lighting which shines through when the unit is switched on. The ROG
G20CB is sure to be noticed no matter how or where you place it.
The
main body looks like it's made of two halves, with a red spine down the
centre of the front joining them together. This is where you'll find
the laptop-style pop-out optical drive, two USB 3.0 ports, and
independent 3.5mm mic and headphones sockets. The power button is
integrated into the design on the inside left.
You'll notice that
light is cast out from the base of the ROG G20CB, through hidden cutouts
matching the pattern on the front. There are three independent lighting
zones in all, which can be controlled with Asus's bundled software. The
back of the unit has all the ports - there's a cluster with two USB 3.1
ports, two USB 3.0 ports, two more USB 2.0 ports (all Type-A only),
Gigabit Ethernet, six 3.5mm audio sockets, and an HDMI port. You can
tether the G20CB to prevent theft thanks to the Kensington lock slot. We
would have liked to have seen USB Type-C and S/ PDIF audio ports.
There's
also a cutout with what is clearly the back of a discrete graphics
card, with its own two DVI-D ports, one HDMI port, and one DisplayPort,
plus its own vents. We aren't sure why Asus bothered exposing the
motherboard's integrated HDMI port at all - on a purpose-built PC like
this it's completely redundant and anyone who uses it by mistake won't
be harnessing the power of the graphics card.
Similarly, there's
another completely inexplicable design touch: the ROG G20CB has two
separate DC power inlets right next to each other, and two separate
external power bricks. The two come physically joined together in a
plastic caddy, but you'll still need two power sockets and two wires
running to the back of the PC. The combined unit makes for a massive and
inconvenient extra box that has to be dealt with. What's worse, the two
mains cords supplied with the ROG G20CB are of different lengths with
the shorter one unusually stubby at just over two feet long.
One
of the power bricks supplies 230W and another supplies 180W, which just happens to be
exactly as much as the graphics card requires on its own. It seems as
though Asus was either trying to recycle laptop parts, or is planning to
offer a variant without a discrete graphics card and therefore needed
to keep its subsystems completely independent. Either way, this is
terrible design, and console users are not likely to be impressed. We
did not try to see what might happen if one of the power supplies was
connected without the other.
Asus bundles a keyboard and mouse
with this PC, and while the company sells some fairly fancy input
devices under its Strix brand, these are not of that calibre. The
keyboard is most notable for its orangish-pink backlighting and
pseudo-mechanical look, but it's actually quite mediocre. You can't
customise the backlight; the only options are on and off, and the right
Windows key has been sacrificed for this purpose. There are no extra
shortcut or media keys, even with a Fn modifier. There's only one rotary
volume control which doesn't even have an accompanying mute button.
The
mouse is also extremely basic. It's a shiny black, while the ROG G20CB
itself and keyboard are more grey, and it has only the standard two
buttons and a wheel. It feels just like any barebones office mouse. It's
comfortable enough, but the buttons are loud and clacky. We don't think
Asus should have bothered bundling these peripherals with a PC aimed at
serious gamers, but at least they let you get started.
Finally,
we found one very short SATA cable and one modular power supply cable
with a 6-pin PCIe plug on the end. The specific use cases of these
aren't clear, but they bode well for upgradability and expandability
going forward.
Specifications and software
Asus clearly
wanted to outfit the ROG G20CB with only the best possible parts.
There's a desktop-class Intel Core i7-6700 CPU that has four cores
running at up to 4GHz depending on the workload at hand, plus
Hyper-Threading support. There's also a surprisingly generous 32GB of
2133MHz DDR4 RAM. For storage, you get a 256GB PCIe SSD as well as a 3TB
hard drive, which together should be more than enough for all the games
you want to install plus a healthy collection of music and movies.
In
addition to the physical connectivity described above, the G20CB has
built-in Wi-Fi 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.0. That discrete graphics card is a
desktop-class model with one of Nvidia's spanking new GeForce GTX 1080
GPUs. You could run multiple 4K monitors or a high-end VR headset.
All
this power in such a small package requires a custom cooling solution,
and Asus promises that it has engineered the G20CB to run cool and
quiet, incorporating copper heatpipes multiple fans, and natural
convection. Hot air is blown out the top, so there are no vents on the
sides.
The G20CB has a ton of pre-installed software, which was all
a little overwhelming at first. There's the main Asus Aegis desktop
app which is sort of an overlay that can run on top of other apps. It
has modules for monitoring resource usage and basic overclocking
controls, which you can't do much with given the locked CPU and platform
controller. This is also where you'll find the RGB lighting controls.
Another section lets you change screen resolutions on the fly and record
stills or video of gameplay. On top of all of that, for no reason at
all, there's a world clock.
When we reviewed Asus' RGB-infused
B150 Pro Gaming/Aura motherboard and Strix GeForce GTX 1080 graphics
card, we were surprised to see disparate lighting controls. The ROG
G20CB introduces a third, completely different UI. The LEDs
are arranged in three zones - the left and right lips of the front panel
are independent, and the bottom-rear lights are together considered the
third zone. You can assign a static colour to each zone, or enable
effects that apply to all zones. Effects include colour cycling,
pulsing, or changing to match your PC's volume. Asus says that eight
million colour combinations are possible, but you can't really tell the
difference between points that are close together on the on-screen
colour wheel.
There's also Asus App Box, which is like an app
store pointing to a few programs you can download, AI Charger II which
triggers a high power delivery mode for the front USB ports, Asus Web
Storage, an update tool, Asus Command for quick shortcuts, PC Cleaner,
Ai Booting, Audio Wizard, Backup & Recovery, support links, and
manuals. That's in addition to McAfee Internet Security, assorted
Windows Store apps, and a control utility for Asus' ROG GX900 gaming
mouse for no apparent reason.
Performance and usage
Setting
up the ROG G20CB wasn't much of a problem, except for the awkward power
brick situation. We tested it with our Asus PB287Q 4K monitor, which is
all that was needed apart from the box contents. It boots quickly and
users don't really need to do anything other than the initial Windows 10
personalisation routine.
We immediately noticed a high-pitched
whine coming from the pair of power bricks. This was annoying, and it
persisted throughout our review period. The PC itself runs silently
except when under heavy loads. Interestingly, the CPU cooler is much
louder than the graphics card's blower - we could tell by the whooshing
noise whenever CPU-specific tests were running. We also ultimately
settled on dimming or disabling the LED lights, were too distracting for
a PC placed right next to the monitor on our desk, though your mileage may vary.
General usage
is pleasant, and one of the first things we noticed was how fast data
could be copied off an external storage device to the SSD - PCIe SSDs
are still extremely new and uncommon. Our observations were confirmed
with CrystalDiskMark, which reported 2222Mbps sequential reads and
1243Mbps sequential writes.
We ran a variety of other tests
targeting overall performance as well as specific subsystems. PCMARK 8's
home, work, and creative runs threw up scores of 3862, 3291 and 7967
respectively, while Cinebench R15 showed 137fps in its OpenGL graphics
test and 786cb points in its CPU-bound test. POVRay ran its ray-tracing
benchmark in 2 minutes 46 seconds, and HyperPi took only 13.812 seconds
to calculate the value of Pi to a million decimal places across all
eight CPU threads.
As far as gaming and graphics go, we ran the
standard 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra test that is designed to stress the
highest-end GPUs, and got 4,854 points. For the sake of comparison,
Asus's own Strix GeForce GTX 1080 running on a standard test bench with
similar components gave us 5,200 points. We also ran the brand new Time
Spy test that uses the DirectX 12 capabilities of new graphics cards
and Windows 10, and got a score of 6,049. Unigine Valley and Star Swarm
gave us averages of 97.2fps and 85.74fps, again below the values of
105.4fps and 104.73fps respectively. This definitely shows that the ROG
G20CB's performance is dependent on more factors than specifications
alone.
We then moved on to simulated game runs using the built-in
benchmarks in some of today's most demanding games, which allows us to
compare scores against other hardware. Metro: Last Light Redux ran at
averages of 21.55fps at 4K and 52.7fps at 2560x1440, which is pretty
impressive. We ran Ashes of the Singularity in DX12 mode, and got
49.8fps at 4K and 62.2fps at 2560x1440.
Finally, we recorded a few
organic game runs with FRAPS in order to determine frame pacing, which
shows how far the minimum and maximum fps scores deviate from the
average. Smoother graphs with tightly packed dots indicate less
variance, whereas more scattered dots represent those frames which
skipped or lagged and caused visible tearing on-screen. Battlefield 4
ran beautifully at 4K with Ultra quality settings, at an average frame
rate of 65fps, average frame timing of 15.4ms, and 99 percent of all
frames coming in under 19.5ms indicating no significant problems.
Rise
of the Tomb Raider is a bit more demanding. At 4K, using the Very High
preset, we saw an average frame rate of 39fps, average frame time of
25.7ms, and 99 percent of all frames coming in at 30.6ms. This is still
good enough for most people, though settings will have to be dropped a
little if you want butter-smooth 60fps quality.
Far Cry 4 also
did well at 4K and with the Ultra preset. We got an average frame rate
of 49fps, average frame time of 20.3ms, and 99 percent of all frames
coming in under 25.3ms. There was more variation, as evidenced by the
jagged line and relatively greater number of outlying dots, though
everything still stayed well above the 30fps threshold.
If you're
thinking of buying a gaming desktop, chances are you're at least
somewhat interested in the prospect of upgrading it down the line.
Cracking open the ROG G20CB proved to be difficult, and we would not
recommend that users do so themselves, even though it is possible to do
so without damaging the warranty void sticker on the bottom. A service
professional should be able to swap out the hard drive, SSD and RAM, but finding a replacement graphics card that works with this device's space, airflow and thermal constraints could be more difficult.
Verdict
Asus
definitely knows how to build PCs, and it's clear that the company has
drawn on the strengths of its various divisions in creating the ROG
G20CB. The idea of a compact, stylish desktop aimed at gamers is
definitely good, and on paper, there are no mistakes of the sort that
many companies make when prioritising cost or style. However, the
overall package still didn't come out perfectly baked, in our opinion.
This is clear in the ridiculous dual-power-supply arrangement, the
amount of unnecessary software, and the comically mismatched keyboard
and mouse. Performance, while fantastic, is measurably lower than that
of a similar set of standard PC components.
You could consider
buying the ROG G20CB if you're looking for the latest and greatest
hardware, and don't have any budget constraints. In fact, there aren't
many other branded choices when it comes to high-end PCs in India. You
could also pick one up if you just want to show off - its looks and the
RGB lighting will certainly serve that purpose.
On the other hand,
it really isn't that compact all things considered, and it won't
replace your living-room game console. You can build a regular desktop PC capable of playing all current games for far less money. Plus, bear in mind that anything less
than a 4K monitor is a waste of this hardware's potential - and those
don't come cheap either.
Price (for configuration reviewed): Rs. 1,85,000
Pros
- Compact and good-looking
- Top-end components
- Great for 4K gaming
Cons
- Requires two power bricks
- Mediocre bundled keyboard and mouse
- Expensive
Ratings (Out of 5)
- Design: 4.0
- Performance: 4.0
- Value for Money: 3.0
- Overall: 3.5
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