Performance and Thermals

There are three master variants of the Asus ROG GR8 II on the market right now:

  • Intel Core i5-7400, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD – $896
  • Intel Core i5-7400, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD – $970
  • Intel Core i7-7700, 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD + 1TB HDD – $ane,197

All models also come up with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 with 3GB of GDDR5, plus an Intel Wi-Fi ac and Bluetooth 4.0 combination. All come with Intel H110 motherboards, and as I stated earlier, neither the CPU nor GPU can be upgraded in this organization.

My review unit was configured slightly differently to the models currently available. Information technology packs an Intel Cadre i7-7700 and 16GB of RAM, simply it has a single 256GB Thou.ii SSD rather than the 512GB + 1TB SSD/HDD philharmonic in the model you can actually purchase.

The Core i7-7700 is the highest-performance locked Kaby Lake CPU in Intel's current line. It packs four cores and 8 threads clocked at three.half-dozen GHz, with a maximum single-cadre boost frequency of 4.2 GHz. It has 8 MB of L3 cache and a 65W TDP. For those that closely follow the desktop CPU space, you'll notice that these specs aren't equally impressive as the unlocked i7-7700K, which sports a four.2/4.5 GHz base/boost clock speed and a higher 91W TDP.

As the i7-7700 is a locked processor, unfortunately it cannot be overclocked, which is disappointing for those wanting to squeeze a bit more performance out of their arrangement. Similarly, the i5-7400 institute in cheaper GR8 II models cannot be overclocked either. Those opting for the cheaper model will get 4 cores and four threads at three.0 GHz with a 3.v GHz boost, plus six MB of L3 cache in a 65W TDP.

Information technology's likewise disappointing to note that Asus has opted for the GTX 1060 3GB model, which isn't as fast as the GTX 1060 6GB. The 3GB model features a GP106 GPU with 9 SMs instead of 10, which cuts the core count downwards to 1152 with 72 TMUs and 48 ROPs; the 6GB model comes with 1280 cores and 80 TMUs. The GTX 1060 3GB is however clocked at 1506 MHz with a rated boost frequency of 1708 MHz. Memory wise we're looking at 3GB of GDDR5 at 8000 MHz on a 192-scrap bus for 192 GB/s of bandwidth.

I'm non going to spend a whole lot of time discussing the verbal performance of this system, because it performs basically exactly every bit you'd expect for a system with an i7-7700 and a GTX 1060 3GB inside. We have plenty of articles that already illustrate how this GPU performs, including a full review, which you should check out if you want more detailed data nearly this hardware. We also accept some useful benchmarks using the i5-7400 which you should check out if you're interested in the cheaper model.

Nosotros do normally test desktop graphics cards with a faster CPU than the i7-7700 or i5-7400, but as yous'll be mostly GPU bottlenecked with the GTX 1060 3GB, I've found the results in our previous review coverage to be very close to how the GR8 2 performs. In fact for the most office, you won't notice a difference in gaming functioning between the model with the i7-7700 and i5-7400, and then if yous're on a upkeep or simply want to save coin, the i5-7400 model will be fine.

Where you volition see benefits from the higher-clocked i7-7700 is in workstation workloads like video encoding and simulations, where the extra clock speed and hyper-threading support volition pb to a faster feel. But I suspect most people volition exist buying a GR8 Two for gaming.

For those that are curious nearly what sort of games you can play on the GR8 II and at what settings, I managed to hitting an average of 55 FPS in Deus Ex: Flesh Divided while playing at 1080p using the High quality preset. Pushing up to the Very Loftier preset, the game dropped to an average of 47 FPS, which is in line with what we've seen with the GTX 1060 3GB on our exam bench.

I besides played a decent chunk of Lookout man Dogs 2 on the GR8 II, and achieved frame rates in the twoscore-50 FPS range. I tested on the Very High preset at 1080p, with the Ultra preset dropping the FPS rate past ten on average. Equally this is ane of the most intensive games out at that place, which hits both the GPU and CPU, it'south pretty indicative of what experience you'll get with the GR8 II: it'southward adept for 1080p gaming at around 60 FPS at high or very high quality presets in virtually games.

The GR8 2 is a pretty loud system nether load, which is a byproduct of its limited cooling solution. The GPU fan makes a loud whine when information technology spins up, which can exist heard over game audio if the system is placed besides close to you. Well-nigh standard gaming PCs built in tower cases will be quieter than the GR8 2 in games, though these systems volition naturally be much larger with better cooling.

Luckily the GR8 II is reasonably silent under idle or depression usage, however whatsoever time the fan decides to spin up for moderate or heavy usage, you'll notice.

Crushing the GR8 II in AIDA64's stress exam leads to CPU temperatures above 90°C, which leads to throttling, although the GPU sits at a rather comfortable 68°C. In Watch Dogs 2, though, CPU temperatures sat at a more reasonable 78°C with 70°C on the GPU, which is perfectly fine for a mini PC. Again, it's pretty loud at these temperatures.

Overclocking the CPU is out of the question, but with GPU temperatures at 70°C under load, I thought I'd cheque out whether the GTX 1060 can be overclocked to whatever reasonable extent. Setting a ability target of 116%, I was able to button upwards the GPU'south core and memory clocks to 1746 MHz and 2147 (8588) MHz respectively. This lead to a 52 FPS boilerplate in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided at its Very High preset at 1080p, which was a small-scale 11 per centum improvement.

With this overclock practical, the GR8 Two was slightly louder and the GTX 1060 hit 73°C. This is well within what I'd consider reasonable operating ranges, so it'due south worth playing around with GPU overclocking if y'all purchase a GR8 II.