The Coffee Lake gaming laptop guide: Meet ROG’s latest from ultra-slim to overclocked

The arrival of six-core processors based on Intel’s 8th Generation Core has spawned a fresh collection of gaming laptops with more horsepower than ever before. Otherwise known as Coffee Lake-H, these chips boast 50% more cores than the previous generation, giving gamers and power users extra headroom for mixing gameplay with streaming, content creation, and other workloads.

While the CPU is extremely important, it’s just one part of a system of components that defines how games look and feel, so our latest lineup of ROG gaming laptops also has upgrades in other areas. High-refresh displays with ultra-fast response times are standard issue across all the models coming to North America, and efficient cooling ensures consistent performance when you stretch playing “just one more round” over several hours. With easily customized Aura Sync lighting and wicked-fast Intel Gigabit Wi-Fi, our new gaming notebooks raise the bar throughout.

Despite sharing many key features and components, the members of our Coffee Lake series have distinct personalities. The beastly G703 desktop replacement bulks up to beefcake dimensions to pursue peak performance, while the Zephyrus GX501 slims down to ultrabook proportions without sacrificing your gaming experience. Its sibling, the all-new Zephyrus M GM501, tweaks the formula with a more versatile design that mixes NVIDIA’s G-Sync and Optimus technologies. Finally, there are the esports-ready Strix Scar and Hero Editions, which balance portability and performance with affordable pricing that starts at only $1,099. Keep reading to see which one is the best Coffee Lake gaming laptop for you.

Desktop-grade hardware with amped-up cooling

Six-core processors are available across the entire lineup, right down to the entry-level Strix. Budget-conscious shoppers are especially likely to use the same system for work and play, and we want everyone to be able to enjoy Coffee Lake’s prowess with multitasking and multithreaded workloads. With a peak Turbo frequency of 4.1GHz, the Core i7-8750H found in most models also has exceptional single-threaded performance, allowing it to efficiently execute simpler tasks like web browsing and day-to-day productivity. The Core i9-8950HK on select G703 configurations is even faster, and its unlocked multiplier enables easy overclocking.

While the CPU has a big impact on how well laptops juggle gaming with other demanding tasks, actual frame rates are largely dictated by the graphics chip. We use discrete GPUs from NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 10 Series, which bring desktop-class performance to laptop-friendly power envelops. The lineup starts with affordable Strix models equipped with the GTX 1050 Ti and ends with laptops based on two flavors of the GTX 1080: one hot-clocked for the G703 and the other Max-Q for the Zephyrus.

It’s not enough to squeeze powerful chips into a laptop. Turbo and Boost mechanisms scale CPU and GPU frequencies based on thermals, so effective cooling is needed to maintain top speed. Each of our gaming laptops has a different solution optimized for its chassis. Most of them come with powerful 12V blowers that generate more airflow than conventional designs. We’ve also implemented anti-dust tunnels that help prevent airborne particles from accumulating on radiator fins and compromising long-term cooling. The Zephyrus and Zephyrus M think further outside the box with an innovative Active Aerodynamic System that opens a massive air intake as you lift the lid.

Raise the refresh rate and lower the response time

Serious gamers and esports professionals demand displays with high refresh rates and low response times, so even the baseline Strix comes with a tournament-grade 120Hz display that doubles the number of visible frames produced by typical laptop screens. Panels that push up to 144Hz are available with laptops featuring more powerful graphics, and the displays don’t sacrifice viewing angles or picture quality in the name of speed.

Higher refresh rates make first-person shooters and fast-paced action feel gloriously fluid, but the speed of individual pixel transitions is what makes graphics look clear and crisp in motion. Typical IPS-type laptop displays have sluggish pixel response times in the 25-ms range, which produces noticeable blurring in games and even when quickly scrolling through web pages. We’ve lowered response times to just 3 ms, resulting in a much cleaner picture that’s free of the ghosting of pixels past.

The G703, Zephyrus, and Zephyrus M all add NVIDIA G-Sync technology to match the refresh rate of the display with the frame rate of the GPU. This close cooperation heightens your connection to the game by removing distractions that disrupt immersion. G-Sync smooths out performance dips that would otherwise be perceived as stuttering, eliminates visual tearing that cuts across your view of the world, and reduces the input lag that defines much of your physical connection to the game.

Stacking the deck inside and out

The keyboard is critical to control, so anti-ghosting tech with n-key rollover is implemented in all the gaming laptops in this guide. Each keystroke and corresponding action registers with perfect precision, regardless of how much you’re mashing the keyboard in the midst of battle. Our new desktop-style layouts put the essentials comfortably at your fingertips, and RGB backlighting adds a personalized glow for late-night visibility. Aura Sync lets you match lighting colors and effects with compatible ROG peripherals, including the mouse and headset you take on the road.

Under the hood sits faster DDR4-2666 memory enabled by Coffee Lake CPUs. Almost every model comes with a blazing NVMe SSD, and most also include a 1TB Seagate FireCuda SSHD that’s perfect for large game libraries. The hybrid drive has 8GB of flash-based cache that accelerates access to frequently used data like games. For something more extreme, the G703 combines up to three SSDs to reach insane speeds with NVMe RAID.

Connecting to fast wireless networks is easy thanks to Intel Gigabit Wi-Fi integrated into Coffee Lake’s accompanying chipset. The 802.11ac Wave 2 solution supports MU-MIMO and offers substantially higher throughput with compatible routers like the ASUS RT-AC86U. It also incorporates Bluetooth, which combines with an assortment of USB ports and display outs capable of driving a complete battlestation. The G703 and Zephyrus laptops even include Thunderbolt 3 for external graphics docks like the XG Station Pro and ROG XG Station 2.

Unleash Coffee Lake’s potential with the unlocked G703

Most notebooks aspire to thinner and lighter bodies, but the associated cooling limitations conflict with the G703’s quest for maximum performance. This monster of a desktop replacement actually bulked up recently to make room for an extensive cooling system that weighs 1.6 lbs all on its own. The combination of eight heatpipes, four radiators, and two 12V blowers dissipates enough heat to take the underlying silicon beyond stock speeds.

We’re so confident in the cooling that we factory-overclock the GPUs in configurations with GTX 1080 graphics. The top models are available with Intel’s flagship Core i9-8950HK processor, whose unlocked multiplier lets you increase clock speeds with just a few clicks in our Gaming Center software. Even at stock frequencies, the i9’s 4.8GHz Turbo peak leaves most desktop CPUs in the dust.

The G703’s hardcore hardware is capable of sustaining triple-digit frame rates that take full advantage of the 144Hz G-Sync display. While the peak refresh rate is unchanged from the previous Kaby Lake version, we’ve reduced the response time by more than half, from seven milliseconds to just three. Despite being turbocharged for speed, the IPS-type AHVA panel still has vivid colors that retain their lushness over wide viewing angles.

Core i9 variants of the G703 support new NVMe RAID arrays that bypass the chipset’s interconnect bottleneck and hook directly into the CPU. The chassis has room for three M.2 SSDs, two of which have a direct line to the processor, enabling sequential speeds up to a staggering 8700MB/s for a 3 x 512GB RAID 0. There’s also a 2.5” bay filled with up to 2TB of additional storage.