At CES 2023, we went hands-on with the first set of RTX 4090 laptops and came away mightily impressed. Now, we’ve taken the past few weeks to use the latest ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 17 which boasts the most powerful AMD processor yet as well as the most powerful NVIDIA GPU, pairing together to deliver an extremely well-made desktop replacement. It’s powerful, user-upgradable, and can handle anything you throw at it with ease. However, all of that power does come at a cost, and the payment is battery life. If you’re not concerned about battery life, though, keep reading to find out our thoughts on packing a 16-core 32-thread processor that hits 95W and an RTX 4090 that can push 175W into a laptop.
The ROG Strix SCAR 17 makes a better portable desktop than laptop
That headline might not make a lot of sense, but by the end of the review it will. We’ll start off by talking about the tech specs and capabilities of this monstrous portable computer. Leading the way is AMD’s most powerful mobile processor with the Ryzen 9 7945HX. This CPU packs a full 16 cores and 32 threads of power, 64MB of L3 cache, and up to a 5.4GHz max boost. In our testing, we were able to push the CPU up to 95W of power draw when plugged in. That’s a lot of power for a CPU, especially one in a laptop. To put that into perspective, the desktop-class Ryzen 7 7700X processor pulls a max TDP of 105W. That’s just 10W more than this laptop.
Add to that the RTX 4090 graphics card, which packs 16GB of GDDR6 memory, a ROG boost clock of 2090MHz, and the ability to pull up to 175W (which we did see it reach), and you have a gaming powerhouse here. In fact, there wasn’t a single game that we tested where this laptop failed to impress, even when compared against our RX 6750 XT system that’s rocking a Ryzen 9 7900X.
Further pushing the spec limit, you’ll find a 17.3-inch 1440p 240Hz G-SYNC display here that has 100% DCI-P3 color coverage ensuring you’re ready for both fast-paced gaming and content creation. There’s also the ability to flip between integrated and dedicated graphics, though there’s a reboot required to switch. And, on the storage and memory side, you’ll find a pre-installed 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD and 32GB of DDR5-4800 RAM, though there’s a spare M.2 NVMe slot for additional storage and you can upgrade the RAM to 64GB if the need arises. For ports, this laptop almost has it all, with 3.5mm audio, HDMI 2.1, two 3.2 Gen 2 USB-A, two more 3.2 Gen 2 USB-C with DisplayPort and G-SYNC support, and 2.5GbE LAN. However, the biggest missing link here, I think, is no Thunderbolt 4 or USB4 support, as that really limits the docking applications of this desktop replacement and is one of the biggest drawbacks for me on this premium computer.
Rounding things out is the 720p camera (which I really wish was 1080p), Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3, and a 90Wh battery that’s charged by the 330W AC adapter included in the box. That’s a lot of specs to get out of the way, but we really just wanted to lay the groundwork for just how powerful and impressive this computer is in many regards. In fact, this is the most powerful laptop that we’ve ever used, and comes in at one of the most powerful portable computers on the market in many regards.
Now with all that out of the way… how does it actually work? Let’s take a look at some benchmark results before we dig in any further.
Forza Horizon 5 absolutely shines in turbo mode
Being a laptop, there are a few different power and fan curve modes that you can put the ROG Strix SCAR 17 in. Thankfully those modes can be switched with the simple click of a button. We tested Forza Horizon 5, which supports DLSS3 frame generation. All of our tests were run with the GPU turned to Ultimate inside of Armory Crate to ensure we could get the most power possible out of this laptop, with the graphics in the game on the Extreme preset.
Leading the way is the turbo power/fan setting, and we were able to achieve a staggering 199 FPS average across three runs. That’s… very impressive. Like, insanely impressive. For comparison, when we reviewed the RTX 4070 Ti, it only hit 124 FPS in Forza Horizon 5, with the RTX 4090 in this laptop nearly doubling that number.
Stepping down to the performance power/fan preset, we hit an average of 190 FPS with the ROG Strix SCAR 17. And then, we just had to test out the silent power/fan preset, and performance did tank quite a bit by “only” achieving 111 FPS on average, while remaining much quieter than the other two runs. Yes, we say “only” because the desktop RTX 4070 Ti hit 124 FPS, and the RTX 4070 was at 107 FPS. And I do know that those are RTX 4070-series, but also, they’re desktop-class graphics cards with the ability to draw up to 200W of power, just to put things into perspective.
Flight Simulator 2020 is also impressively good on this laptop
A notoriously hard game to run, especially at max settings, is Flight Simulator 2020. There’s just so much going on in the game, and it has a lot to render with high quality assets. This time around, instead of using a built-in preset in the game, we opted for letting GeForce Experience optimize the graphics settings, and it did a pretty great job. Turning most things to max, and at a 1440p resolution, we were able to see around 80 FPS on the ground and in the air hit about 100 FPS.
That’s not only playable, but extremely playable. It was a joy to play, and with a computer that can push Flight Simulator 2020 at that frame rate and graphics quality, you can be sure that I’m going to be playing the game much more.
Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is no match for the ROG Strix SCAR 17
While it might not be the newest game (I eventually need to pick up Jedi: Survivor), Jedi: Fallen Order is still a solid game all around. But it was no match for this laptop, as on max settings at 1440p, we were pushing basically a solid 144 FPS across the board, which is actually the max the game allows.
Cities Skylines runs great even with slightly larger cities
Cities Skylines is quickly becoming one of my favorite PC games, and while I don’t have cities nearly as large as some other content creators, my city also isn’t the smallest ever, either, but this laptop easily handled whatever I threw at it with ease. Running on max settings at 1440p, we were seeing on average over 100 FPS and up to 150 FPS in most of our testing, which was extremely playable and very much outpaced our RX 6750 XT system that I typically game on.
Cinebench R23 shows impressive performance across the board
Cinebench might not be the most realistic workload test, but it does have a place for people to be able to compare performance across a wide range of systems. For the Ryzen 9 7945HX in this laptop, we came away quite impressed overall. This processor packs a punch in the power department, coming in 1,864 for the single-threaded score while our desktop Ryzen 9 7900X only clocked in at 1,991 during our official review. For multi-threaded workloads, the Ryzen 9 7945HX scored 32,612, while the Ryzen 9 7900X in our review hit 28,297, making this laptop more powerful than one of the best desktop CPUs on the market.
All of this performance makes the ROG Strix SCAR 17 and the Ryzen 9 7945HX/RTX 4090 among the most powerful laptops on the market
With all those performance metrics out of the way, it’s easy to see how this laptop is among the most powerful portable computers on the market. The Cinebench scores blow away the Ryzen 9 7900X in multi-threaded workloads, and the RTX 4090 is immensely powerful. If you’re looking for a solid system to use on the go, this would be a highly recommended one from us.
The processor has more than enough power to handle intense 3D rendering workloads, video editing, and photo manipulation. The graphics card has about as much juice as you could want to play games at 1440p at near 200 FPS in many instances, meaning that you could also push 4K at 60+ FPS ultra settings with relative ease once connected to a compatible monitor.
With great power comes bad battery life
However, all of this performance does come at a cost: battery life. You see, one of the key components of any laptop is being able to use it, well, not tethered to a wall. With a processor that can use 95W of power, and a GPU that can suck 175W itself, there’s a lot of components not just sipping, but guzzling battery life here. At full tilt, when we were playing Cities Skylines on battery (and really just letting the system and city idle and grow, only interacting as needed to keep things alive), the laptop fell from 100% to 25% battery in just 43 minutes, and at that point, throttling kicked in and the FPS was around 3-10 and unplayable, so we concluded the test.
Using PCMark 10, under the “modern office” preset for battery testing, we saw a battery life of just under 1 hour 20 minutes. So, even when you’re not gaming, this laptop doesn’t really push an hour and a half unplugged. Granted, both of our tests were run on high brightness with the keyboard backlight on, but that’s because I use laptops that way no matter what’s going on. When I’m running my 14-inch M1 Max MacBook Pro, I use it under the same circumstances, as I’m sure many of you do as well.
Now, if you’re doing ultra light office work, or doing something in a simple design program, you can get 2+ hours of battery life when unplugged from the wall. However, that’s about it. This laptop just isn’t made for great battery life, and it kinda can’t be. With the power that’s housed in this compact computer, it just isn’t feasible to think you’ll get 3, 4, or 10 hours of battery life on a single charge under normal usage. Sure, maybe turning the keyboard backlight off, disabling all wireless connections, and putting the screen at 10% brightness you might be able to hit metrics like that. But, under normal usage conditions, expect to hit around 1.5 hours before you’ll need to plug back in. And, honestly? That’s okay.
This laptop I see more as a portable desktop than an on-the-go computer. The fact that I can have this much power in a machine at home, unplug it, bring it to church or the coffee shop, and have that much power there is… mind blowing. I can have more power thank my high-end desktop in a laptop with a high-quality display attached and bring it anywhere and use it. Sometimes even on battery! This is honestly something that I’ve been wanting for a long time.
When laptops first came out, they had barely any power and also barely lasted an hour on battery. Then, we got more power and longer battery life, but desktops still won the races for how fast a computer could be. Now, the scales are turning and we’re getting laptops that are more powerful than most desktops, and battery is tanking again. It’s only a matter of time before battery life catches back up, and, at that point, power will tip it back the other way again.
The ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 17 2023 laptop carries a high price for high performance
We’ve talked about how much performance this laptop has at length, and all of that power doesn’t come cheap. If you want to bring basically an ultra-high-end desktop anywhere you go, then it’ll cost $3,299.99 to own. That price gets you the Ryzen 9 7945HX processor, the RTX 4090 graphics card, a 17.3-inch 1440p 240Hz display, 32GB DDR5 RAM, 1TB NVMe SSD storage, and all the power you could want for on-the-go working and gaming. While $3,300 might not be all that affordable, but if you compare it to a similar system then, well, it’ll actually cost you more to build a desktop. Spec-for-spec, with desktop equivalent parts, you’d be spending nearly $3,500 to build a system. That system would be slightly more powerful, thanks to the desktop-class RTX 4090 and the Ryzen 9 7950 X processor, but at the end of the day, cost an additional $200 over this laptop. And, you couldn’t bring it with you.
9to5Toys’ Take
The ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 17 is extremely powerful, there’s no denying that. It’s helped to improve my 3D CAD workflow in Fusion 360 as well as other CAD/CAM programs, and it allows me to basically bring a gaming desktop anywhere I go. Truly, this laptop is the portable computer I’ve been waiting for when it comes to gaming thanks to AMD’s top-tier processor and NVIDIA’s ultra-powerful graphics card.
I’m going to get a lot of use out of this computer, and, if you need to have a portable desktop that you can bring anywhere, you will, too. No matter what task I threw at it, from photo editing and exporting in Lightroom to gaming at home or on-the-go, it was able to handle the task with ease. I also love that there’s a spare M.2 slot and you can even upgrade the primary drive if storage is a problem for you in the laptop. Plus, upgradable RAM makes it even more accessible and easy to use should you need a bit more power as well.
My biggest complaint, which also is a completely understandable limitation, is battery life. This laptop guzzles down battery life when you run it at full tilt, which, like I said, is understandable. While I’m coming from a 14-inch M1 Max MacBook Pro, which I typically get 3-5 hours of battery life out of at full tilt, and up to eight or more when I lower brightness and close battery-heavy programs, that’s just not as easy here. The MUX switching to go from iGPU to dGPU requires a reboot, and the computer itself is just power-hungry all around. I’d be lucky to get 2-3 hours of battery life out of it, and while that’s enough for most tasks, sometimes it just dies at the least convenient time.
Add to that the fact that it comes with a 330W power brick; you won’t be traveling light here. However, all that said, I don’t see that as a major drawback. For me, I’m rarely somewhere that doesn’t have a plug, even if I’m traveling. Whether I’m in the airport, visiting family, at church, or even a coffee shop, there’s likely a plug somewhere that I could use. It might not be the most convenient, but when you consider just how much raw power this laptop has, the convenience starts to fade a bit.
I could begin a video editing project at home on either my desktop or the laptop, and then move that to an external drive (or leave it internal if on the laptop) before leaving home. Then, whenever I get to my destination, simply pull out the computer, load up the files, and then be ready to continue the editing process with the same amount of power I had before leaving the house. This is a game-changer for me, and honestly, I think it’ll be a huge quality of life improvement for many as well. For years, we’ve had “capable” laptops that were pretty powerful, for all intents and purposes. However, desktops still ruled the roost when it came to the most power possible.
While you could build a desktop to be more powerful than this system for sure, it would cost a pretty penny and still not be portable at the end of the day. If you’re looking for an ultra-powerful, premium computer, then the ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 17 is a solid choice. AMD’s top-tier Ryzen 9 7945HX processor has insane performance for both single- and multi-core workloads, and the overall power this laptop processor has really blown me away. Then, add to that the impressive nature of the RTX 4090 graphics card from NVIDIA? You have a match made in heaven for the ultimate portable computer.
Buy the ASUS ROG Strix SCAR 17 2023 Laptop
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