The new 'more powerful' fans are kinda cool tho. Will have to wait for real user reviews before we can see if its simply a hot mess like the Prime 15 was.
I'm hoping for the same reviews as you do. That being said, the only justification for such new fans are:
- To cope with the
new thermal specs of the RTX Mobility GPUs that utilizes
variable TGP instead of the fixed TGP used in Pascal Mobility GPUs and earlier, meaning the power draw of the GPUs built inside depends on how much power the game played needs from the GPU itself, hence the base TGP of 80w for RTX2060-2080 with the upper TGP limit differentiating the three.
- To increase the airflow of the chassis for more efficient cooling, given the P96 chassis's narrow vapour chamber (which makes the entire notebook 19.9mm thin in the first place), again demanded by the more powerful RTX GPUs built inside, while keeping the noise to barely-audible levels (a Nvidia requirement for ALL notebooks that includes a Max-Q Spec GPU as the main graphics driver), as such the only things that can mitigate the higher TGP requirements are the fans and heatsink, as well as the materials of the chassis used.
In addition, the reveal of the SLATE (P960ED)'s internals on Aftershock's FB page only confirms the PRIME-esqueness of its design, right down to the placement of the three upgraded "Crystal Moulded Fans" in a 2+1 (single twin fans + single solo fan) formation, twin fans cooling the RTX GPU with the solo fan cooling the Coffee Lake-H CPU. In actuality, SLATE is basically a reworked PRIME with RTX and upgraded to cope with the new demands of the RTX GPUs, with a bigger battery to boot, in fact both "siblings" of the RTX Notebook Chassis, the P96 (SLATE) and the yet-to-be-released here PB5 (a likely S-Series successor) both have been reworked upgrades of their predecessors.
And speaking of the unreleased PB5 Chassis, German Clevo Builder XMG Schenker have "leaked" the possible
interesting specs (in bold) of this P65 Successor (they sell that as the
XMG Pro 15 2019 model) on their site too, for those who prefer the more functionally-flexible P65-based S-Series chassis.
-
15.6" Slim Bezel 144Hz FHD Display
with G-Sync
-
2x m.2 2280 SSD via PCIe x4 interface
with RAID 0/1 support
- 1x
7mm HDD/SSD bay
- GPU Options: RTX2060 6GB (PB50ED-G) or RTX2070 8GB (PB50EF-G)
Notebook GPU
- Precision
Glass Touchpad with Fingerprint Reader (same as the P96/SLATE 15)
- Per-key RGB Lighting Keyboard (same as the P96/SLATE 15)
- 2x USB3.0 Type-A (1x powered port), 1x USB3.1 Gen 2 Type-A, 1x USB3.1 Gen 2 Type-C, 1x
USB3.1 Gen 2 Type-C with Thunderbolt 3, both Type-C ports are mDP-capable
-
1x HDMI 2.0 and 1x MiniDP 1.4
- 1x
Combi Audio Port (which can plug in Smartphone-use headsets) and 1x
2-in-1 Audio Port, on the left side of the chassis.
- Dimensions:
359 x 257.8 x 29.9 mm, Barebone Weight:
2.5 kg with battery pack (slightly thicker than P650HS-G sold here as S-15 with GTX1070 Notebook GPU)
- Battery: 66WHr
removable Li-Ion battery (via screw-accessible Service Lid)
- Power Adaptor: 180w for PB50ED-G (RTX2060), 230w for PB50EF-G (RTX2070)
In summary, the TRULY rebuilt from the ground up PB5 Series takes what's already successful with the P65 and revamps it with new hardware to cope with the RTX Notebook GPUs, and given the larger vapour chamber it possesses, up to a FULL Notebook RTX2070 can be installed inside. One interesting thing to note about this PB5 chassis is the
re-arrangement of literally all of their I/O ports due to the inclusion of the
quad air vents (compared to the dual air vents on the P65 chassis) which sees
airflow coming out of the rear and side vents on both sides, as
opposed to the left side and right rear-end for the P65. This new chassis is design-wise a
smaller but thicker re-design of the P65 Chassis made possible by the 15.6" slim bezel display, with a number of I/O ports shifted to the rear of the notebook, resulting in
no more than 3 I/O ports on each side of the notebook with the rest re-located to the rear of the chassis. According to XMG Schenker, units based on this chassis should be made available in
March 2019 for actual order and assembly. So we may expect a release here around the time
IT Show 2019 (7-10 March) comes up, should Aftershock decides to bring this chassis over here.