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Recently, got a chance to try out the G20 over a few weeks! Was very excited to try it out, as I’ve always thought of getting a gaming machine, yet with slim form factor. How does G20 fare? Let’s take a look
Form factor
I must say one thing: G20 is pretty slim. Of course, not as super slim as its GR6/8 cousin, but hey, it’s a full fledged gaming machine - should be comparing amongst the likes of its other ROG cousin, the G11 series. It occupies only ⅓ of what a traditional full tower gaming desktop will occupy on the desk.
Do not get fooled by its slim form factor, though. The power brick is outrageously huge, and that it powers the G20 requires two power sockets.One 230W, the other 180W. That’s crazy! It probably alludes to high power consumption! Thankfully, it auto scales according to load, and will consume at nominal power when not gaming.
Even if space is not your concern, the design is seriously very cool. Let the picture do the talking:
Functionally, the G20 has a unique design which channels the heat generated by the machine from the bottom towards the top. Indeed, the sides and the bottom feels cool, with heat only felt on the top of the machine. This unique cooling design is also very silent, a breakaway from the traditional gaming machines. It’s also very sturdy: throughout the three weeks, I left it on, and the machine did not buckle even under constant load.
Upgradability
Apparently, from various online sources, it seems that the G20 is very much upgradeable, unlike its GR8 counterparts. As such, I tried to see whether this is true or not. Apparently, it is easily detachable.
However, I was stonewalled by this:
Hence, I backed off. Though, from online sources, seemed that one can upgrade just like a desktop (except for motherboard and PSU of course), however, the replacement graphic card should have reference cooler.
Performance & Gaming
Now, onto gaming. The machine that I got to test are of these specifications:
GPU:
To be honest, I’m not always concerned about benchmarks. I’m more interested on how the machine performs in real life.
Thus, I played mainly two games throughout:
Both games played pretty smoothly, even with settings maxed out. Yes, even Rise of Tomb Raider. FPS is about 40-50+ for Tomb Raider, though at certain areas with huge environmental detail, it may momentarily drop somewhere below 30. Amazing thing is that the machine did not stutter even when playing for a long period of time, such as 7 hours continuously. Indeed, the 32GB RAM did help keep the gaming in memory for long, reducing the number of memory swaps.
Of course, gaming is not everything for some people. Some may want to use the desktop as a high performance workstation. Well, this machine also works well as a powerful workstation. If Windows is not your cup of tea, you can just load any major Linux variant and you can do just fine (minus the ability to control the hue lights). It has a Nvidia GTX 980, so prototyping CUDA stuff is also possible.
I also did a stress test on the G20
Intel Burn Test
Stress Level: Maximum, 10 iterations: 97.664-99.917 GFlops
Conclusion
Let’s recap what I have wanted to get earlier:
I believe I found a winner in G20. It may not be the most powerful machine when compared against other slim form factor, but hey, it looks really cool and slim. And powerful enough for latest games.
Now, the thing is: anyone else over here who owns a G20?
Form factor
I must say one thing: G20 is pretty slim. Of course, not as super slim as its GR6/8 cousin, but hey, it’s a full fledged gaming machine - should be comparing amongst the likes of its other ROG cousin, the G11 series. It occupies only ⅓ of what a traditional full tower gaming desktop will occupy on the desk.
Do not get fooled by its slim form factor, though. The power brick is outrageously huge, and that it powers the G20 requires two power sockets.One 230W, the other 180W. That’s crazy! It probably alludes to high power consumption! Thankfully, it auto scales according to load, and will consume at nominal power when not gaming.
Even if space is not your concern, the design is seriously very cool. Let the picture do the talking:
Functionally, the G20 has a unique design which channels the heat generated by the machine from the bottom towards the top. Indeed, the sides and the bottom feels cool, with heat only felt on the top of the machine. This unique cooling design is also very silent, a breakaway from the traditional gaming machines. It’s also very sturdy: throughout the three weeks, I left it on, and the machine did not buckle even under constant load.
Upgradability
Apparently, from various online sources, it seems that the G20 is very much upgradeable, unlike its GR8 counterparts. As such, I tried to see whether this is true or not. Apparently, it is easily detachable.
However, I was stonewalled by this:
Hence, I backed off. Though, from online sources, seemed that one can upgrade just like a desktop (except for motherboard and PSU of course), however, the replacement graphic card should have reference cooler.
Performance & Gaming
Now, onto gaming. The machine that I got to test are of these specifications:
- Intel Core i7-6700 @ 3.4 GHz
- NVIDIA GeForce GTX980 4GB DDR5
- 32 GB RAM
- 1 TB SATA + 256 GB SSD
GPU:
- 3DMark Fire Strike normal: 11480
- 3DMark Cloud Gate: 28448
To be honest, I’m not always concerned about benchmarks. I’m more interested on how the machine performs in real life.
Thus, I played mainly two games throughout:
- Fallout 4
- Rise of Tomb Raider
Both games played pretty smoothly, even with settings maxed out. Yes, even Rise of Tomb Raider. FPS is about 40-50+ for Tomb Raider, though at certain areas with huge environmental detail, it may momentarily drop somewhere below 30. Amazing thing is that the machine did not stutter even when playing for a long period of time, such as 7 hours continuously. Indeed, the 32GB RAM did help keep the gaming in memory for long, reducing the number of memory swaps.
Of course, gaming is not everything for some people. Some may want to use the desktop as a high performance workstation. Well, this machine also works well as a powerful workstation. If Windows is not your cup of tea, you can just load any major Linux variant and you can do just fine (minus the ability to control the hue lights). It has a Nvidia GTX 980, so prototyping CUDA stuff is also possible.
I also did a stress test on the G20
Intel Burn Test
Stress Level: Maximum, 10 iterations: 97.664-99.917 GFlops
Conclusion
Let’s recap what I have wanted to get earlier:
- A gaming machine
- Must be slim form factor
- Performance must not be compromised
- Upgradeability is prefered, but not mandatory.
I believe I found a winner in G20. It may not be the most powerful machine when compared against other slim form factor, but hey, it looks really cool and slim. And powerful enough for latest games.
Now, the thing is: anyone else over here who owns a G20?
