Review and testing of the ASUS ROG Strix G15 G512LI laptop based on the Intel Core i5-10300H processor and the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti graphics card

ASUS Republic of Gamers products combine high performance with high-quality cooling and stylish appearance. ASUS ROG graphics cards are frequent guests in our reviews, now it’s time to talk about gaming laptops from the ROG Strix family.

ASUS ROG Strix laptops are divided into three lines, depending on the diagonal of the device – G14, G15 and G17. Powerful hardware, a fast display with a high refresh rate, and a vibrant RGB-backlit design give them gaming status. The manufacturer offers great variability in the choice of available configurations with different combinations of components. In this review, we will talk about the affordable version of ASUS ROG Strix G15 without the top configuration.

ASUS ROG Strix G15 G512LI-HN058

The variant in question is based on a system with an Intel Core i5-10300H (4 cores 8 threads) running 16 GB of DDR4-2933 RAM and a fast NVMe drive. The graphics card is NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti. The laptop is equipped with a 15-inch screen with a frequency of 144 Hz. All this is packaged in a case with dimensions of 360 x 275 x 26 mm with a device weight of 2.39 kg.

Full specifications in the table.

Options with other processors are available – Intel Core i7-10875H or Core i7-10750H. They can be equipped with more powerful graphics cards, up to the GeForce RTX 2070 Super. The top version of the ASUS ROG Strix G15 is equipped with a 240 Hz matrix. Available with up to 1TB storage or optional SSD.

Contents of delivery

The laptop comes in a simple black box with ASUS ROG branding.

Included is a charger with a cable.

When connected to the mains, the notebook is powered by the 180W ADP-150CH.

Appearance

ASUS ROG Strix G15 is made of plastic with a textured surface that imitates brushed metal. This is a hallmark of ASUS ROG, and a laptop in this case looks very stylish. On the lid there is a non-illuminated ROG logo.

Before us is not the most compact laptop with Intel Core i5-10300H and GeForce GTX 1650 Ti. In particular, Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3i 15IMH05 81Y4 is a couple of centimeters already with the same width and thickness.

It should be borne in mind that the device was originally designed for more powerful components with a serious approach to the internal design and construction of the cooling system. This is clearly seen in the presence of two cooling “turbines” with large compartments for blowing air in the rear of the case.

The bottom of the laptop has a grooved surface with a “louvre” design and small airflow holes. Rubber feet are located in the corners and in the center.

Power is connected from the back, which eliminates additional cables on the sides of the case. Also on the back is an HDMI port and USB Type C, combined with DisplayPort. In an era when laptops are ditching wired interfaces, we see a Gigabit Ethernet network port on the ASUS G15 – a significant plus for fans of online games where speed and low latency are important.

On the left side are three USB 3.2 ports and an audio jack for connecting a headset. There are no connectors on the right side.

The screen is attached with large hinges. Reclines 130 degrees.

There is no camera in the frame around the screen, the microphones are built into the main body.

The working surface is made in the same design as the outer casing.

Island-style keyboard with rounded keys. There is no digital block. The WASD game buttons are made of translucent plastic, which helps to visually highlight them and increase ease of use.

The power button is located separately from the main block of keys to avoid accidental pressing.

On the left side are separate multimedia buttons for volume control, microphone mute, maximum cooling mode selection and one of the ROG performance profiles.

The touchpad with two separate buttons is located in the center.

All keys are backlit. The characters on the surface are engraved, which ensures their clear visibility even at low backlight brightness.

Also, the ASUS ROG Strix G15 has a backlight on the sides of the case. Glow modes and brightness can be changed on the fly using the arrow keys.

Screen

15.6-inch screen with matte surface and anti-reflective coating. The IPS-matrix Panda LM156LF-2F01 is used. Standard Full HD 1920×1080 resolution at 140Hz refresh rate.

Color space coverage sRGB 58%, Adobe RGB 41%. The color temperature is about 7600K, so the overall gamut is shifted towards cold shades.

Brightness is adjustable from 15 to 292 cd/m². The contrast is stable at 1230:1.

As a result of measurements, the Argyll utility shows a high DeltaE color deviation value of about 19 units.

There are no complaints about viewing angles. No flickering was observed. The screen demonstrates good quality for budget IPS matrices, which will suit most ordinary users. But limited color reproduction and lack of high-quality calibration make it a weak solution for those who work with graphics or video content. Also worth noting is the small margin for brightness, this will create some problems in a situation if you had to work in bright sunlight.

Internal organization

The bottom cover of the laptop is fastened with screws and small latches; dismantling is not difficult, but it requires careful disconnection of the backlight cables. After removing the cover, access to the memory slots for replacing or upgrading DDR4 modules opens up, it is possible to install up to two additional SSDs.

A 48 Wh battery is installed.

The cooling system consists of two massive heat pipes and two “turbines” on the sides. The fans force air through the heatsinks and blow it out through openings in the back of the case. VRM and graphics memory are covered with heatsink plates. A small heatsink is provided even for the southbridge chip.

The laptop has two memory slots. In our case, they are occupied by Samsung PC4-3200AA-SA1-11 M471A1K43DB1-CWE brackets.

The SSD NVMe M.2 Intel SSDPEKNW512GB with a capacity of 512 GB is used as a drive. This is an Intel 660p series SSD based on 3D NAND QLC memory chips.

There are also two M.2 seats for additional SSDs. The laptop can be factory equipped with two drives of 512 GB or 1 TB in RAID 0 mode.

An Intel AX201NGW wireless controller with WiFi 6 (802.11ax) support is used.

In the lower corners of the case are stereo speakers of 1.5 W each.

The full specifications of the laptop are shown in the screenshot of the HWiNFO utility.

The Intel Core i5-10300H is the youngest processor in the Comet Lake-H mobile series. The base frequency is 2.5 GHz with a maximum Turbo Boost of up to 4.5 GHz and a low TDP of 45 watts. The processor has four physical cores with Hyper Treading, which allows processing eight threads. 8 MB L3 cache. The processor can be called a modern mobile analogue of the Intel Core i7-7700, the once top gaming processor.

DDR4 RAM operates at an effective frequency of 2933 MHz with latencies of 21-21-21-47-2T.

Graphics processing is done by NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 Ti. Recall that this is an accelerated version of the GeForce GTX 1650 based on the TU117 processor with a full configuration of computing units (1024 CUDA streaming cores). The base frequency is 1350 MHz with an average Boost Clock of 1485 MHz, the effective memory frequency is 12000 MHz. 2D uses the processor’s built-in Intel UHD Graphics graphics core.

Gigabit Ethernet support provided by Realtek RTL8168/8111 controller

Software

The ASUS ROG Strix G15 G512LI-HN058 laptop in question comes without an operating system, but all additional software is available on the official ASUS website. You can start the installation from the My ASUS application, which provides basic information about the device and allows you to track the availability of all updates and additional utilities for a specific laptop model.

ASUS Armory Crate is a key application for operating mode control and parameter control. The application offers three mode profiles with different performance and fan speed settings. In addition to the standard performance mode, Turbo is provided with fan acceleration and a slight overclocking of the video card. Quiet mode toggles priority towards lower fan speeds. All modes can be changed through the ROG button on the keyboard (only works after installing the program).

ASUS Armory Crate also comes with many additional features, including Aura Sync backlighting with different lighting effects and the ability to synchronize different ASUS components.

It should be noted an interesting nuance that installing the full set of software for the correct operation of ASUS Armory Crate leads to a slight drop in performance in some tests and raises the fan speed under light load.

Cooling System Efficiency and Noise Level

The laptop was tested in a room with a temperature of 23 ° C. To create the maximum load, the stress test of the AIDA64 utility was used, the combined loading mode of the CPU, cache, memory and GPU was turned on.

Such a stress test warmed up the processor above 90 ° C, after which a gradual reset of frequencies began. But even with a long load, the cores worked at 3.1-3.2 GHz, and this is a good result against the background of throttling, which is shown by the hotter older Cores in heavy stress tests. The average core temperature in this mode is about 80 °C.

It is more interesting how the laptop will perform under a real gaming load. For this, a long 3DMark Fire Strike stress test was launched.

In this mode, the processor cores operated at a frequency of 4.2 GHz. The video card processor showed Boost in the range of 1600-1700 MHz at a temperature of 68 ° C. We’re used to seeing warmer temperatures in these devices, but it’s a simple gaming graphics card and the cooling is more efficient than the hotter GPUs. At the same time, the overall noise is still high, since the fans spin up to 3000 rpm and above.

You can estimate the case temperature at maximum load in AIDA64 from the bottom illustration.

The case heats up a little in the upper part, which does not cause any discomfort.

Download GeForce GTX 1650 Ti

The standard Turbo mode provides overclocking of the video card with an increase in the frequency of the GPU by 100 MHz and a memory acceleration of up to 12240 MHz. With manual selection of settings, we settled on overclocking the core by 140 MHz (Boost Clock 1625 MHz) with memory acceleration up to 13000 MHz.

Real Boost went up by about 100 MHz without increasing heat. It was not possible to jump higher due to a drop in stability at higher frequencies.

It will be possible to evaluate the benefits of such overclocking based on the results of testing.