ASUS ROG GX501 Gaming Notebook Breaks Cover With GeForce GTX 1080 At Just Over a Half-Inch Thick

Although it will likely be announced next week at the Consumer Electronics Show, the ASUS ROG GX501 has already leaked. However, the first thing that your eyes lock in the apparent lack of a trackpad and palm rest. Both have been tossed aside to make room for the keyboard which takes up that prime real estate on this notebook.

What we’re left with is a rather awkward-looking notebook with a huge blank space above the keyboard. Given what’s lurking beneath the surface, we understand this odd design choice. The ROG GX501 packs in a full-fledged NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 GPU, and does so within a chassis that is just over a half-inch thick. That would explain the shuffling of components and ASUS’ likely desire to preserve key travel on the keyboard.

asus rog gx501

The mobile version the GeForce GTX 1080 differs little from its desktop counterpart, as it features the same GP104 core and has a TDP of 150 watts. It has 2560 cores and base/boost clocks of 1607MHz and 1733MHz respectively. You’ll also find a 256-bit memory interface and 8GB of GDDR5X onboard. You can read Marco’s excellent review of the GPU here.

Powering the gaming notebook are Intel’s most potent Kaby Lake processors (rumors point to either a Core i7-7700HQ or Core i7-7820HK), while there’s a generous 15.6-inch 4K (3840x2160) display that the GeForce GTX 1080 should be able to handle with aplomb when it comes to gaming. Other specs include support for PCIe x4 NVMe SSDs and up to 24GB DDR4 memory.

Unfortunately, we don’t have anything else to go on with regards to additional specs, availability or pricing on the ASUS ROG GX501. But come next week, we should have all of those details readily available for you.