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Asus' GX700 gaming laptop sure turned a lot of heads when it was introduced at the IFA trade show, but the reason wasn't the hardware—or at least, it wasn't the type of hardware that people usually fawn over.
Sure, the GX700 has an overclockable, quad-core Skylake Core i7-6820HK CPU, Nvidia’s bad-ass GeForce GTX 980, a buttery-smooth G-Sync panel, and up to 64GB of DDR4 RAM, but the real story on this laptop is the water-cooling.
Yes, a water-cooled laptop. We’ve known about the water-cooling existence since the laptop's first unveiling, but Asus is starting to finally spill some details on how it works.
The water-cooling dock contains two 90mm radiators, fans, a pump and reservoir.
How it works
If you’ve seen pictures of the GX700's bulbous rear-end, you know the water-cooling's not exactly portable. Asus knows this, of course, so the water-cooling can come undocked. The question is how did the company pull it off?
The dock itself contains all of the liquid-cooling components. There are two 90mm radiators and fans under the vents, along with a pump and reservoir. The liquid-cooling dock connects to the laptop using a pair of quick-disconnects. You can see them in the image below.
Here’s a close up of the power and liquid inlets on the GX700.
To mate the laptop, you slide it onto several guidance pegs and then push it down, where it locks in place. Asus said it spent extra engineering resources to make sure you can’t screw it up, and the company doesn’t expect people to be able to.
The dock insludes the nozzles and more pegs to ensure proper alignment with the laptop.
Once once you’ve locked the laptop in place, the quick release nozzles open up and the liquid flows into the laptop. One question I have is how well those quick release nozzles seal. I’ve used them on custom water cooling loops in the past and there’s usually a drip or two leaking out after they're disconnected. On the GX700 I decided to see if I could reproduce that by doing removing and inserting the GX700 from the dock 10 to 15 times. Even after that many attempts, I couldn’t get one single drip to spill.
The GX700 is, of course, a Republic of Gamer laptop.
Still, Asus does anticipate possible maintenance at some point: Even without the liquid dripping out on occasion, water goes away over time. Asus officials said the laptop will be able to alert you if the reservoir gets too low.
When it does get low—and this will chaffe customers—service is not something it wants customers to perform. Instead, the dock will have to sent back to the company for servicing. That’s a bummer, but fortunately the laptop still works perfectly fine without the dock.
Inside the GX700
The GX700 relies on a pair of conventional heat pipes for cooling inside the laptop itself. It’s easy to confuse a heat pipe with a conventional water-cooling system, but they’re not the same, and the water from the dock doesn’t actually flow through the system inside the GX700. If Asus did that, the cooling on the laptop wouldn’t be effective when not docked.
So Asus used a hybrid system that features dual heat pipes for the GPU and CPU and some kind of proprietary thermal interface that helps the water cooling system suck as much heat out of the heat pipes as possible when you're docked. Here’s a look inside the GX700 that helps you understand that the water doesn’t actually mix with the heat pipe. This shot also gives you an idea of how the radiators are arrayed in the dock.
The cooler in the GX700 is actually a hybrid system using heat pipes and water cooling.
Will a hybrid system like this work? Asus seems to think so. With the laptop docked, the company says you can achieve a 20 percent overclock on the GPU as well as healthy overclocks out of the CPU, as both are water-cooled.
Here’s the reservoir for the dock, which Asus said will eventually need maintenance.
What we still don’t know about the GX700 is the price or availability. It’s expected to hit the streets in time for the Christmas shopping season but the price? Expect it to be pretty penny. This kind of system appeals to a small, select crowd of gamers who want to be cooler than everyone else—and with the GX700, they can actually be water-cooler than everyone else. (Sigh--Ed.)
Dota 2 has a lot of great qualities. The lack of a surrender option isn't one of them.
Rival MOBA League of Legends lets teams surrender after 20 minutes, roughly the halfway point for matches. Valve hasn't shown any desire to incorporate a similar feature into Dota 2. Director Erik Johnson explained the decision in an interview a couple years back (via Reddit):
One of the things we never want to lose is the amazing comeback, like the game we just played - both sides probably would have surrendered in that game at certain points. That would have been a robbery of fun.
This is a compelling arguments. Any MOBA veteran has seen their share of comebacks and knows they feel incredible. There's nothing better than hanging onto a game by your fingernails and then clawing your way to a victory. Even when you're on the losing end of these types of matches, you have to appreciate the roller coaster of emotions.
Let's be real, though: some bad games start bad and end bad. Dota 2 and other MOBAs reward players that are doing well with experience points and gold, allowing them to out-level and out-gear their competition. In addition to playing better, the winning team becomes objectively stronger than the losers. The odds are stacked in their favor. This is especially true in Dota 2, where players lose money from dying.
Yes, a group of skilled players can overcome these long odds by working together and not losing their cool. However, you can't count on having teammates like that. Some players don't have the knowledge or talent to turn a game around. Others will quit as soon as the game sours. Even the players that do stay around until the end might decide to just berate their teammates or feed kills to the enemies. Then there are the people who genuinely disconnect or remember they've got class in 20 minutes. With teammates like this, you're not going to mount some kind of miraculous comeback.
In short, some matches are hopeless. Dota 2, however, makes you stay until the end out of principle. The lack of a surrender option means you have to endure an extra 20 minutes or so of the enemy team smashing through your defenses, swatting away your counterattacks and eventually leveling your base. If you're unlucky, your opponents will be the sort who hang out in your base and wait for you to come out of your spawn point so they can score some easy kills.
There's no one in this situation that wouldn't benefit from a surrender option. The losing team would be able to concede and save themselves some aggravation. The winners still get the satisfaction of a win without the tedium of mopping up opponents that can't muster competition. Everyone saves time.
Comebacks are a satisfying part of any MOBA but they still exist in games that let you surrender. Will players potentially bow out of games they could've turned around? Sure. But they'll definitely escape games that they had no chance of winning. The reason that comebacks are such satisfying games is that they're balanced. Each team has a shot at a win and knows that the match could hinge on the very next play. A surrender option lets players leave the hopeless matches behind and potentially find one of those legendary bouts decided in the last five minutes. What's so bad about that?
After teasing it at the Apple Watch event in September, Facebook has finally delivered the watch version of its Messenger app.
The social network quietly rolled out the Apple Watch app in an update to the Messenger app Thursday. The update also adds support for iOS 9 features, including universal search and multitasking for iPads.
The watch version of the messaging app supports watchOS2, the latest version of Apple's software for the Apple Watch. It actually manages to squeeze in quite a bit of Messenger's functionality into it.
You can't type out full responses to messages but you can choose from a list of canned answers, send your location, "like," post stickers or record a voice message with the watch's built-in microphone. On the receiving side, you can also check out photos, videos and voice messages.
Though the app supports Facebook's stickers, animated stickers and animated GIFs will only appear as static images on the watch app.
While not technically Facebook's first watch app — that distinction belongs to Instagram — Messenger will be a welcome addition for many users. Apple teased what appeared to be a watch version of the main Facebook app back in March, but such an app has yet to appear.
For Android users, Messenger is also compatible with Android Wear. The Android Wear app, which rolled out earlier this year, also allows you to record and send voice messages and send "likes" from your wrist.
Sony has dropped the price of the PlayStation 4 in the US from $400 to $350, and that includes a copy of either Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection or Star Wars Battlefront.
Starting Friday, the PS4 will be on sale at the new price, which will put Sony's console at the same price as the Xbox One in plenty of time for Christmas.
The price drop was expected, given that there was a similar cut in Japan in September. Sony says it has nothing to announce regarding prices in the UK, elsewhere in Europe or Australia. The Japanese company will have a presence at the Paris Games Show later this month, which it could use as an opportunity to address regional differences in price.
Sony's PS4 and Microsoft's Xbox One both made their debuts in November 2013, and the two consoles have been in fierce competition with one another ever since. From April this year onward, the PS4 has been outselling the Xbox One, GameSpot reported last month, but the run-up to the Christmas holiday is the most important time of year for console sales.
Microsoft, meanwhile, has been busy packaging up Xbox One bundles. In August, the company said, Xbox One sales in the US rose by 26 percent compared with the same month a year earlier.
Several other console and game bundles have also seen reductions in the US. The PS4 with Limited Edition Call of Duty: Black Ops III or NHL 16 will set you back $430 and to get hold of Limited Edition Disney Infinity 3.0: Star Wars or Star Wars Battlefront you'll have to shell out $400.
This past weekend saw Dota 2 descend on New York City’s Madison Square Garden theatre for the eSports tournament ESL One. One thing that surprised a lot of Dota 2 fans was the return of Alchemist, a hero who hasn’t had a huge impact on the game’s pro scene for a while now.
Alchemist is a melee fighter in Dota 2 who was recently buffed in a curious way. The humongous 6.84 patch that was released back in April gave him a unique and very powerful method of using one specific item in the game known as “Aghanim’s Scepter.” Normally, the way Aghanim’s Scepter is it supercharges their abilities. It’s the same effect when Alchemist has and uses the scepter, the only difference that was introduced in 6.84 is that he can cast it on his allies as well as himself.
Alchemist is one of the best heroes in Dota 2 when it comes to farming gold, meaning he can accumulate a lot of currency in a (relatively) short amount of time if he wants to and then use it to buy himself bigger and better in-game items and equipment. The idea post-6.84, then, was that Alchemist players could potentially outfit their entire team with crazy aghanim’s buffs.
Or at the very least since Aghanim’s is relatively expensive (4200 gold), Alchemist could strategically apply it to his teammates that he knows would use it most effectively.
You can see how Team Secret used this exact technique to their benefit in one of their games against CDEC this week at Madison Square Garden, as captured in this highlight video by the YouTuber NoobFromUA:
The specific highlight comes very late in the game, when team Secret is chasing after a single hero named bristleback who looks sort of like an angry, anthropomorphised porcupine:
Notice how the commentators shout excitedly that the kill is proof of “the late game potential of the Reaper’s Scythe with the Aghanim’s upgrade.” The Scythe is a powerful stun move used by an undead hero named Necrophos that adds 30 seconds to an enemy’s death timer if they’re killed with it. Already a pretty killer move, right? But when it’s upgraded with Aghanim’s Scepter, it becomes bonkers: An opponent who’s killed by a Scythe can’t buy themselves back into the game, which makes the supercharged special ability absolutely devastating late in a game when everyone’s death timers are already super long and being a man down can make the difference between victory and defeat.
The tl;dr version of this that I had my Dota 2-playing friends explain to me in painstaking detail is: Alchemist’s upgrade for Necrophos let him take an opponent out of the fight for a whole two minutes late into the game, a play that the commentators described as basically sealing the deal for Team Secret’s victory.
It’s not like a single pro game or individual hero pick is going to change the course of the entire pro Dota 2 meta, so I’m not sure how much of an impact Alchemist will end up having. The other major game from this past weekend that featured Alchemist didn’t go as well for Invictus Gaming, the team doing the picking, as it did for Team Secret.
They ended up losing the match to Vega Squadron, who emerged as the tournament’s champions at the end of the weekend. And there’s always the possibility that Dota’s next game-changing update, which is expected to come out soon, could end up knocking Alchemist down a few pegs before he ever has a chance to become a top-tier character — if he’s even capable of such a think in the first place.
Giving a MOBA hero an ability to essentially donate an ultra-powerful item to even one of his allies strikes me as a ludicrous thing to do, but I’m looking at this from the perspective of playing a whole lot more of League of Legends and Heroes of the Storm than I have Dota 2. Adding to an enemy’s death timer would also seem like an insane thing to introduce to League or HOTS as well, I’m sure. So if you’re a seasoned Dota 2 player and eSports fan, I’d love to hear your thoughts on what Alchemist’s performance this past weekend could mean.
CALL of Duty news this week includes Advanced Warfare's latest update that brings changes to Zombies mode and some rather unusual new content for fans.
Advanced Warfare is getting a new patch that will help bring fixes for a range of COD game features, including the popular undead spinoff.
Exo Zombies Updates revealed by developers Sledgehammer Games (fixes):
Weapon upgrade cost shown wasn't being subtracted correction in Double Feature mode on the Descent Exo-Zombies map.
The music when attempting the Easter Egg on the Descent Exo-Zombies map was not present.
Map exploits where players could remain in place and not be attacked by zombies on the Descent Exo-Zombies map.
Other game modes, map exploits and scoresheet updates have also been added and can be found here for Xbox One, PS4 and PC.
Fans on last-gen consoles will have to wait longer for their own platform fixes.
Today also saw the release of the new M1911 & MP40 weapons in Supply Drops and Advanced Supply Drop on Xbox One.
Coming later to PS4 and PC, Sledgehammer decided to go back to the roots of the Call of Duty series to introduce the new secondary pistol as well as the returning SMG.
Advanced Warfare fans should also be on the lookout for the new Legendary gear that has been added to the game, including five new sets.
Want to look like you're fresh out of a shark tank? The Combat Diver has you covered, you can also check out the Bomber, Bank Heist and Pilot gear that has been included with a steampunk inspired 'Proton' suit.
Sledgehammer say they're committed to providing fans with new content like this well into the future but have drawn the line at providing it for the PS3 and Xbox 360.
Explaining why it isn't possible to continue supporting the last-gen devices, studio head Michael Condrey explained: "We have hit a hard memory limit on last generation consoles. This memory limit prevents us from adding more weapons to those platforms.
"We don’t like it any more than you, because we care about Advanced Warfare players on all platforms, but it's a limitation that is outside of our control.
"People far smarter than I spend a lot of energy trying to solve this hard development limit, and we simply can’t deliver new content at the rate we’re currently producing it for next generation devices (Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC)."
