The liquid-cooling dock of the ASUS ROG GX700 can actually be cracked open for you to take a peek inside. You'll have to unscrew the two hex screws on the rear lever with a 3mm hex key first, before flipping it over to work on the screws at the bottom.
For more details on the GX700, you can refer to our preview article and performance review.
After quite a tedious process involving hex keys, screwdrivers, and sore fingertips, the top cover of the liquid-cooling dock pops right off to reveal the dual 92mm radiators and liquid-cooling pump.
Here's a look at the connecting parts that interface with the notebook. The red connector delivers power, while the two pipes flanking it supply the coolant.
The dock also features a custom self-sealing valve design to guard against coolant leakage, although ASUS tells us that it is normal to see some trace coolant residues on the valves or the rear of the GX700.
You can't see it here, but the two 92mm radiators sit atop 2mm-thick rubber washers to minimize vibrations and noise. This picture also provides a clearer view of the central pump and the tubing that runs from it to the dual radiators. Pushing the lever at the rear forward also extends the connecting pins that interface with the notebook.
The radiators are actually fairly thick, which explains the stellar cooling performance, especially the drastically reduced GPU temperatures, we saw in our review.
The ASUS ROG logo is printed on the central pump unit. The tubing and connectors look reassuringly solid, and ASUS says there is little risk of coolant leakage occurring inside the dock itself.
A mini circuit board is located at the bottom left of the dock. The dock is able to detect when coolant levels are low or there is an incorrect connection to the notebook, and will emit a series of specific beeps to alert the user.
The notebook itself can also be opened up to reveal its innards. Here's a good look at its eight-cell 90Wh battery, 32GB of DDR4 RAM, and one of the 256GB M.2 SSDs. The other M.2 drive is located beneath the keyboard. You can also see that the liquid coolant doesn't actually flow into the laptop, and it instead uses a hybrid design comprising conventional heatpipes and some kind of special interface that allows the dock to draw heat away from the GPU and CPU. In addition, two blower-style fans use four separate heatpipes to channel heat away while the notebook is undocked.
The two 16GB modules are relatively easy to access and can be upgraded by the user. The notebook supports a maximum of 64GB of DDR4 RAM.
Our review unit features two M.2 Samsung SM951 PCIe SSDs. One of them is located above the battery unit, while the other is located out of sight beneath the keyboard.
As we mentioned before, the coolant doesn't actually flow into the notebook. Instead, the CPU and GPU heatpipes are designed to interface directly with the coolant pipes on the dock itself in order to offload the heat.
The heatpipes connecting the blower fans to the CPU and GPU are a lot more beefy, perhaps to make up for the lower cooling potential.
Now for a look at the receiving end of the dock's interconnects. The outermost ports receive the alignment pins, the middle pair receives the coolant pipes, while the center port takes the power connector.
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