The ASUS Mothership flips the traditional laptop design on its head in order to prioritize
cooling and thermals. Rather than having all the hardware under the keyboard, it’s all
behind the screen. On top of that we’ve got some seriously high end specs here too,
so let’s see just how hot this machine gets and if we can improve performance with further
tweaks.
Let’s start off with the specs. There’s an 8 core 16 thread overclockable i9-9980HK
CPU, RTX 2080 graphics, definitely no Max-Q here, 64gb of memory in dual channel, and
a 17.3” 4K 60Hz screen with G-Sync. You can find examples of other configurations
and updated prices linked in the description.
The Mothership is different compared to your standard laptop design, all of the heat generating
components like the CPU and GPU are behind the screen. Air is pulled in through the back
and exhausted out of four vents, two near each of the top corners, all of which have
thick heatsinks. Inside there are 8 heatpipes which cover both CPU, GPU and VRM, and apparently
ASUS are using liquid metal here, so we’re expecting some good results.
This design improves airflow as fans aren’t trying to suck in air with a small gap between
the desk, as is the case with a traditional laptop. This does come at the expense of requiring
a stand and meaning that you can only really use it on a flat surface, the trade off is
improved thermals, which are going to be needed with these top tier specs.
As you can probably imagine, these specs need some serious power, and that’s why the Mothership
uses two 280 watt power bricks. You can use one just fine for most tasks, but for full
performance when gaming you’re going to need both.
The ASUS Armoury crate software allows us to disable Nvidia Optimus for G-Sync, and
I’ve done all my testing with Optimus disabled. We also have the option of swapping between
silent, performance and turbo modes. These adjust things like power limits and perform
overclocking, and I’ve tested all modes out here. You can swap between these modes
through software, or by using the function and F5 key, the one with the fan icon.
Thermal testing was completed in an ambient room temperature of 21 degrees Celsius, so
expect different results in different environments.
At idle both the CPU and GPU were looking fine.
The rest of the results are from combined CPU and GPU workloads, and are meant to represent
worst case scenarios as I ran them for extended periods of time.
The gaming results towards the upper half of the graph were tested by playing Watch
Dogs 2, as I find it to use a good combination of processor and graphics. The stress test
results shown on the lower half of the graph are from running the Aida64 CPU stress test
with only the stress CPU option checked, and the Heaven GPU benchmark at max settings at
the same time to fully load the system.
Whether gaming or under combined CPU and GPU stress test, the temperatures were lower both
in silent and performance modes, as these restrict the power limits, as we’ll see
soon. Turbo mode raises power limits and performance at the expense of additional heat and fan
noise, as you’ll hear later. By default turbo mode overclocks all 8 cores to 4.9GHz,
in my best case test I pushed this a little further to 5GHz and applied a small undervolt.
This didn't really help the thermals in the stress tests, and lowered them by 1 in this
particular game.
These are the average clock speeds for the same tests just shown. Silent mode had the
lowest clock speeds as the power limits were the lowest, performance mode steps up clock
speeds a bit, then turbo mode saw the largest increase. The 9980HK has a 4.2GHz all core
turbo boost speed by default, so although the 4.9GHz all core overclock in turbo mode
is not being hit, we’re still seeing excellent results and above best case stock performance.
My additional undervolt helped improve things by over 100MHz more, I couldn’t push it
too far though as the CPU needed pretty much all the power it could get at this speed.
These are the average TDP values during these same tests. In silent mode we can see the
CPU TDP is capped to 45 watts, then 55 watts in performance mode. In turbo mode we’re
capped to 90 watts, and this was our limitation preventing further performance. I was not
able to boost the TDP higher in Intel XTU when under a combined CPU and GPU stress test,
90 watts on the CPU seemed to be the limit. Otherwise we can see the GPU was performing
extremely well, averaging 195 watts in the stress test and hitting 200 watts at times,
pretty crazy stuff.
Here are the CPU clock speeds while under a CPU only stress test, the results are higher
as the Nvidia graphics are now idle. Turbo mode was able to hit the 4.9GHz all core overclock,
and my manual tweaks got us to 5GHz over all 8 cores, pretty impressive. Here’s what
we’re looking at in terms of temperatures, it looks like my extra 100MHz overclock to
5GHz is being offset by the small undervolt. This is shown when we look at the average
TDP reported by hardware info, the CPU was drawing around 115 watts in both tests, so
higher than the 90 watt limit that was observed in a combined CPU and GPU load like gaming.
To demonstrate how this translates into performance I’ve got some Cinebench CPU benchmarks from
these same modes. For reference, a good i7-9750H can get to 3000 points in this test, so we’re
seeing significantly higher performance with the 8 core i9 in turbo mode, as this overclocks
all cores to 4.9GHz.
So how do these different changes actually affect game performance? I’ve tested a couple
of games to find out.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested with the built in benchmark at highest settings.
There wasn’t really much difference at all, my changes only gave us 1 FPS extra, which
makes sense given the undervolt is minor and 100MHz extra isn’t really much at all, especially
when we’re usually GPU bound here.
Far Cry 5 was tested with the built in benchmark at ultra settings, and the results were similar
in terms of average frame rate. What I took away from these tests was that we can still
get high levels of performance from silent mode, and while not silent the fan was definitely
quieter compared to turbo mode, as you’ll hear soon.
If you want to see more gaming benchmarks from the Mothership, check the card in the
top right where I’ve tested 13 games at 1080p, 1440p and 4K resolutions.
As for the external temperatures where you’ll actually be putting your hands, at idle the
keyboard was cool. Normal laptops are around 30 degrees in this test, but as there are
no heat generating components underneath this one is a cool 20, the screen does get to 30
though. Looking around the back it’s also around 30 degrees too. With the stress tests
going there’s no major change to the keyboard, though the screen is about 10 degrees hotter
now at about 40 degrees. Looking on the back we’re seeing around the mid 40s, while the
exhausts are obviously hotter still.
The screen was a little warmer than most others, but as I saw at CES, ASUS are placing a metal
plate between the heat generating components and the screen to shield it so they have obviously
considered this.
Here’s what the fans sound like during these different tests.
At idle in silent mode the fan was definitely still audible. With the stress tests running
in silent mode it was actually quieter than most other gaming laptops while still destroying
them in performance as we saw earlier. In performance mode it’s close to many other
gaming laptops, and then in turbo mode it’s very loud at around 59 decibels, you’ll
definitely want to use some headphones here.
The results from the ASUS Mothership are extremely impressive. In turbo mode, ASUS overclock
all 8 cores of the 9980HK CPU to 4.9GHz, and I was able to push this further to 5GHz stable
in a CPU only workload. In combined CPU and GPU loads like gaming the CPU was capped to
90 watts, at least long term. The power limit would dynamically change down from above 100,
90 was where it eventually settled after about 15 minutes.
The RTX 2080 also runs up to 200 watts, which is also fairly crazy. If you saw my gaming
benchmark video it’s no surprise that it’s able to outperform the Alienware 51m even
though that has the desktop 9900K CPU.
Despite packing all of this hardware the Mothership didn’t get too hot either, temperatures
peaked at 90 degrees Celsius worst case on the CPU and 80 for the GPU. Ok sure that’s
getting a little warm, but when you put it in perspective with the performance compared
to other laptops it’s very impressive. This is obviously a result of the custom cooling
solution, by bringing air in through the back there’s less resistance compared to a traditional
laptop design which has less room to breathe. Combined with 8 heatpipes, 4 thick heatsinks,
liquid metal, and two 12v fans, this machine is well equipped to handle this hardware.
The downsides are of course that unique design and loud fan noise. To be fair you can still
get pretty good performance with lower fan speeds, but maxed out they do get loud. The
custom design means you can’t actually use this as a laptop, it’s basically an all-in-one
desktop replacement that sits on your desk so it’s less flexible in that regard. It’s
still easier to pack up and travel with than many PCs, though it is on the heavier side
and there’s definitely a price premium associated with this machine. Here in Australia we’re
looking at almost $10000, which converts to around $6000 USD without taxes, yikes.
These differences in performance shown aren’t hard and fast rules, there are different factors
which will vary results, primarily the temperature of the room you’re running in, application
of thermal paste, and even the specific hardware which comes down to the silicon lottery. You
may not be able to undervolt or overclock your hardware the same as me, it depends on
the chip and its specific power requirements, so don’t just blindly copy my settings and
do some testing to find out where your stable point is for best results.
It may be possible to improve temperatures by swapping the thermal paste, however considering
ASUS are using thermal grizzly liquid metal, that’s going to be fairly unlikely.
Raising fan speed and undervolting are much easier for most people to do anyway, and as
we’ve seen these tweaks did help improve performance and temperatures with the Mothership.
Let me know what you thought about the thermals from the ASUS Mothership down in the comments,
and if you’re new to the channel you’ll definitely want to get subscribed for the
upcoming full review to see everything this machine has to offer.