Review of my Aorus X5 V6

Here's a small review of my latest toy

I was in the hunt for a gaming laptop for my needs. Both work and play.
And as usual, my requirements are pretty steep:

a) Needs to be mid-high end in specs.
b) Upgradable storage.
c) IPS and G-sync
d) Slim & light form factor that I can easily lug around on my travels.

VR:
I am currently using this baby with my HTC vive VR setup in my living room.
Vive VR works in the x5v6 just as good as it does on my PC. Which is also has a GTX 1070.
It is simply too inconvenient to bring out my PC to the living room when I VR.
So I purchased the x5v6. Anyway, my aging alienware needs to be replaced.

My PC's steam VR performance score(11):

Aorus x5 v6 steam VR performance score(10.5):

From the benchmarks, the scores are pretty close. 11 vs 10.5

CPU:
The aorus X5v6 come equipped with a i7-6820hk.
The major difference between the i7-6820hk & i7-6700hq is that
the i7-6820hk is easily are readily overclockable.

Cooling:
The fans are powerful enough to keep the laptop running cool. There are 2 huge vents at the back of the laptop.
The noise from the fans are expected but I like that I can adjust the fan speeds via the Fan Control app within the "Command & Control"

Storage:
For it's slim form factor, this thing has a massive amount of upgrade slots for storage. 4 in total:
a) 1 x 2.5” HDD/2.5“ SSD
b) 3 x M.2 SSD slots.
Of which 2 slots support Gen3x4 (one is empty and the other has the pre-installed 256GB SSD).
The other M.2 slot supports Gen3x2 which is pre-installed with the Avermedia Live Steam Engine.
Allows you to live stream your game plays without affecting your system resources.

I upgraded mine with an additional 500GB SSD. A Samsung 950 pro.
Unlike the 2 other gaming laptops I was looking at, Aorus/Gigabyte allow their customers to self-upgrade their laptops.
With a reasonable caveat that you do not cause any damage to the unit during your upgrade. The warranty of 2 years
is well worth it, so do be careful not to void it if you're planning to do your own upgrades.

I'm unsure why Aorus included in a 2.5" 1TB HDD(7.2k rpm).
In this age of SSDs and their prices coming down, this does not make sense for a high end gaming laptop.
Feedback for the v7 Gigabyte.
Anyway I took mine out. Made my laptop 110grams lighter Weighs at 2.4kg now.

Aorus x5 v6 with the back cover removed:

RAM:
My unit came with 16GB of DDR4 (2x8GB). These are installed on the backside of the motherboard which are not easily accessible.
No worries as the other 2 free ram slots are on the front side of the motherboard.
Like the storage slots, these are immediately accessible once you unscrew the backplate of the laptop.

Screen:
The 3k screen has both IPS and Nvidia G-sync. It delivers a crisp and tear free gaming experience
Simply awesome.

Keyboard:
If you like razer blade chroma lighting, then you will love Aorus Fusion too,
Aorus Fusion - Keyboard lightning
My favorite is the "Neo Animation". That progressively changes the colours from green to blue to purple to red to orange to green
And like razer blade's chroma, you can customize each key's RGB light.

Drivers Update App:
Here you can easily update all the Aorus apps and drivers. Including nvidia.
No need to hunt down for updates individually.

Price: S$2,999 during the last sitex 2016 fair.

---

Last edited by acc; Today at 02:52 AM.. Reason: images

Let's block ads! (Why?)

Review of my Aorus X5 V6