Gigabyte’s fanatic gamer brand, Aorus, has by no means skimped on hardware for their probably the greatest laptops. The latest Aorus X5 v7 isn't any exception: it brings an overclockable Intel Kaby Lake CPU, powerful GeForce GTX 1070 portraits or even a excessive-decision display to a swish and compact chassis. While it doesn’t qualify as an Nvidia Max-Q laptop, the greater length that pushes it simply above Max-Q spec has ensured an uncompromised gaming experience.

Read More : >For hardware, we’re searching at a quad-middle Intel Core i7-7820HK processor; and yes, that is a K-suffix, indicating the CPU may be overclocked. GTX 1070 portraits with 8GB of GDDR5 is paired with a excessive-decision G-Sync display: either 2880 x 1620 or, in the case of our Laptopunit, 4K decision. 16GB of RAM is trendy, but again Aorus went all out with their Auroraunit, kicking that as much as 32GB. Storage accommodates of an m.2 SSD and a tough force.

The Aorus X5 v7 isn’t a Max-Q computer, however that doesn’t mean it’s outrageously huge. In truth as some distance as GTX 1070 laptops pass, this machine is on the smaller facet with a thickness of twenty-two.9mm and a weight of two.5kg. It’s a 15.6-inch unit, too, so the overall footprint isn’t big which makes it easy to hold around. Although preserve in thoughts you’ll additionally want to hold the 600 gram strength brick if you want to make complete use of the beastly hardware internal.

While some aspects to the X5’s chassis have changed on this iteration, the bottom creation is basically identical. The lid and keyboard surround, which are key regions to the build, are crafted from magnesium with a matte finish. The cloth feels strong and looks pretty proper, even though the construction is far from seamless: the rims and a few components of the display meeting appear like plastic, and lots of areas are shaped by way of becoming a member of collectively numerous distinct portions. You’re now not getting the identical top rate unibody design as a pc just like the Razer Blade, although the Aorus X5 still seems quite accurate.


The visual design is a mixture of gamer factors, like aggressive vents and ordinary angles, as well as more understated sections. The lid, for example, appears notable with its diffused adorned peak and the striking illuminated Aorus brand. I’m not as eager on the vents above the keyboard, which appearance a bit messy. And that tremendous shiny Aorus emblem printed on the trackpad? I’d prefer that wasn’t there.

The X5’s cooling answer includes many vents to offer enough airflow to the i7-7820HK and GTX 1070, but perhaps now not as many as seem before everything look. Fans on the pinnacle left and proper corners draw air through vents at the top and base of the laptop, that is exhausted thru the returned and aspects. The vent that surrounds the illuminated Aorus logo energy button, in addition to the aspect vents at the the front of the laptop, are used for the multi-speaker setup.

The speakers used inside the computer aren’t some thing notable. They’re desirable extent, but they lack intensity and bass, in order that they’re now not exceptional for tune playback. They are serviceable to watch YouTube movies, however for gaming I’d advocate a headset or external speakers.

The X5 v7 is ready with a exquisite array of ports. The left has an HDMI 2.zero port, USB three.zero ports and an SD card reader; the right has a mini DisplayPort 1.three port, two three.5mm audio jacks, a Thunderbolt 3 port, and a USB 3.1 Type-C port; and the again has the electricity port, Ethernet and two more USB three.0 ports.

I simplest have two minor court cases here. It’s hard to inform the distinction between the Thunderbolt three and USB three.1 Type-C ports without looking at the tiny emblems printed next to them. Also, the placement of the HDMI port is a little bizarre, as attaching a HDMI cable will encroach on mouse area. Having the show outputs alongside the rear might be higher.

The keyboard used at the X5 v7 is Gigabyte’s new pc layout I first noticed at the Aero 15. Its tour distance is good for a gaming pc, with a nice clicky reaction to the rubber dome keycaps. The quantity of force required to spark off every key makes it a incredible option for both typing and gaming. The layout is ideal, mainly the large size for the left modifier keys. The numpad is a welcome inclusion, even though it is a bit close to the primary keyboard.

Aorus consists of RGB backlighting with the potential to personally customise the colour of every key. You can achieve first rate effects via the Gigabyte Fusion utility, and you can also create profiles for every game that light up just the keys required for the sport. The software and customizability isn’t as nicely featured as Razer’s competing offering, though it’s best to look some other computer with full RGB keyboard lighting fixtures.

The trackpad is a garbage ELAN unit. I’m not going to spend a good deal time on it due to the fact, specifically at excessive resolutions, its tracking performance is poor. You’ll need to use a mouse with this computer.

The display is one of the best factors to the Aorus X5 v7. Most gaming laptops prefer to use dull 1080p shows, which often don’t get the most out of the hardware inside them. The X5 v7 is available in show alternatives, and neither are 1080p. You can get a 2880 x 1620 WQHD+ show, or a 3840 x 2160 UHD show, each G-Sync and each IPS. My evaluation unit become the UHD version, so it became no marvel to discover it had just a maximum refresh charge of 60 Hz, however G-Sync right here is highly important for a smooth gaming enjoy.

Like the Gigabyte Aero 15, the Aorus X5 v7 show is X-Rite Pantone licensed, because of this this computer comes with an sRGB-accurate show profile that can be toggled in the Command & Control software. Most gaming laptops are negative in terms in their display accuracy, but way to the X-Rite Pantone profile, the X5 v7 is without a doubt quite respectable on this regard. Not as excellent as the Aero 15, but under a dE2000 fee of two.zero throughout our color exams and with an average shade temperature that’s close to accurate.

Calibration comes at the cost of brightness: the X5 v7 is most effective capable of 265 nits of brightness, and the IPS’ panels assessment ratio of 1041:1 is best okay. For people who require a totally-calibrated show, I became able to achieve remarkable results with SpectraCAL CALMAN 5, pushing a dE2000 common of underneath 0.7 throughout the board. That’s useless correct as some distance as I’m worried.

System Performance

The Aorus X5 x7 includes slightly unique hardware than what we typically see in gaming laptops. Most gaming machines choose Intel’s Core i7-7700HQ, that is a locked quad-center, 8-thread processor with a base clock of two.eight GHz and a most boost clock of 3.8 GHz. The X5 v7 makes use of a higher-quit Kaby Lake quad-core: the Core i7-7820HK, that is clocked at 2.nine GHz with a boost to three.9 GHz.

Normally a a hundred MHz clock velocity boom isn’t anything to get enthusiastic about, however the i7-7820HK is a K-collection processor, so it may be overclocked. Out of the field, the Aorus X5 v7 uses this capability, pushing the clock accelerate to four.2 GHz for unmarried-center workloads, and round three.8 GHz for all-core workloads. Sometimes I located all-core clock speeds dip to 3.6 GHz at some stage in sustained usage, but that’s nonetheless a 100 to 300 MHz overclock, that's nothing to sneeze at in a laptop form issue.

The GPU is a GTX 1070 with 8GB of GDDR5. As has constantly been the case, the laptop GTX 1070 is slightly distinct to the laptop element, with extra CUDA cores (2048 as compared to 1920) at a lower height rated clock pace (1645 MHz as compared to 1683 MHz). The performance of each chips is very comparable.

My assessment unit changed into kitted out with 32GB of g.skill Ripjaws DDR4-2400, although I trust 16GB is the norm for this laptop. Inside the pc are m.2 slots, though handiest one is occupied, in this situation with a Toshiba THNSN5256GPU7 SSD, that's a 256GB NVMe PCIe unit. So you may installation greater than simply three video games, the X5 v7 additionally consists of a 1TB HGST 7200RPM difficult force.

Storage overall performance is decent, although nothing extremely extraordinary as maximum gaming structures in recent times include speedy m.2 drives with sequential overall performance above 1 GB/s. A larger force could be fine, even though as I referred to earlier than, there’s a spare m.2 slot interior for upgradeability.