With a desktop processor inside, does Aftershock's W-15 have an advantage over other gaming notebooks? That's what we intend to find out.
Overview
It’s rare to see a notebook with exotic hardware. Sure, once in a while something like the MSI GT80 2QE Titan SLI comes along with its mechanical keyboard and gold topped keycaps but for the most part, laptops tend to have pretty standard hardware that’s specifically created to be used in a laptop. Aftershock being a boutique computing specialist, they've gone out of their way in creating a new portable gaming rig by deploying a desktop processor inside a notebook. Why would they do that? We'll get to that and a whole lot more soon after we break down the specs talk.
The Hardware
Not content to be running basic notebook processors, the guys at Aftershock have gone and added a desktop class CPU to a notebook and the resulting combination is the W-15. Running Windows 8.1 Professional, this 15.6-inch class notebook has got a top of the line Intel Core i7-4790K (4.0GHz, 8MB cache) Devil's Canyon Haswell Refresh processor andeven has an option to outfit with a 4K display (3840 x 2160 pixels) just for kicks. Of course, if that's an overkill, Aftershock's default configuration for the W-15 has a standard Full HD display. Powering it all is a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M with 8GB GDDR5 RAM to support the high resolution display. It also packs 8GB of DDR3L RAM and well as both a 128GB M.2 SSD and a 1TB 7200RPM HDD for storage. The guys at Aftershock know that since most people will be gaming online, a Killer network card is highly sought after, which is why the notebook uses Qualcomm’s Killer 1525 AC Wi-Fi and Bluetooth for connectivity. Aural duties are handled by the usual pair of Onkyo speakers, making use of the Sound Blaster X-Fi MB3 audio suite.
In short, the Aftershock W-15 is looking to be an effective and powerful desktop replacement machine for extreme users without the larger 17-inch or larger screens associated with such machines.
Outwardly, the Aftershock W-15 is unassuming. Its matte black plastic casing is similar to other notebook offerings from the company, though its 3.4KG weight won’t be winning it any lightweight gaming notebook of the year awards anytime soon. While the 386 x 262 x 35.7mm dimensions are relatively in line with Aftershock’s other 15-inch machines, the W-15 is the heaviest of all the company's 15-inch class notebooks. The rest of Aftershock’s offerings of this form factor are about 2.5KG.
The reason Aftershock's using a desktop processor is that they are are much more cost effective, while providing much better performance than their mobile counterparts. The one in the machine is the Intel Core i7-4790K, a processor with a 4GHz base speed. There's absolutely nothing in the mobile processor class that can match that. There are some downsides to using a desktop processor, but we'll touch more on that later.
Aftershock's W-15 has the distinct honor of being the first 15-inch notebook we've reviewed this year that comes with a 4K display. Gigabyte's P35X V3 came close with its WQHD+ (2,880 x 1,620 pixels) LCD display but that resolution is still blown away by the 3,840 x 2,160 pixels resolution found in the W-15. Colors are vibrant and with accurate reproduction on 4K. The only issue we have with the screeen is the same we had with HP's Omen - the screen's glossy coating is distracting if you're viewing it from an angle. Fortunately, if you're going to be the one using the notebook, the glossy screen shouldn't be much of an issue unless you've tricky lighting conditions that cast reflections even when viewed head-on.
If you're watching your friend mowing down someone in a game or if you're sharing a screen to watch a movie, expect to see the surroundings more than what's happening on the screen.
Apart from the hybrid SATA/USB 3.0 port, the rest of the ports are pretty much what you'd expect from a gaming notebook, though there isn't a Thunderbolt port.
There's only the display outputs (one HDMI, two DisplayPorts) and the power input at the back of the machine. If you're constantly swapping storage options in and out, you'll be happy to know there's no USB port at the back.
On the right side (going from left to right), you have the Ethernet jack, a couple of USB 3.0 ports, as well as the SD card slot. The final port is a combo SATA/ USB 3.0 port.
The right side has a lone USB 3.0 port as well as all the audio inputs and outputs.
The W-15's keyboard isn't the usual chiclet based keyboard you would get from a normal notebook. Its squarish keys are similar to the ones found on Aftershock's Titan V2.1. Like the Aftershock Titan V2.1, the thick base affords it to have a greater depth, which allows for a great typing experience. It can't much up to the MSI GT80 2QE Titan SLI's mechanical keyboard, but it's better than the normal chiclet ones that you would encounter in a typical notebook. Aftershock also allows color customization of the backlights on the W-15. The backlights are bright enough that they're even visible under office lighting, so just imagine how bright it would be in the dark.
The W-15 has a programmable keyboard and customizable backlights, but there aren't any macro or shortcut keys. That's probably due to space limitations.
Since the Aftershock W-15 has a numpad, there isn't any space left over for any macro or special shortcut keys at the side. We don't mind the lack of such keys but if you're somebody who prefers them, do take note and consider 17-inch gaming notebooks that have more space to accommodate such keys. On the flip side, you can customize the keys using Aftershock's bundled keyboard customization software, so the lack of these dedicated keys is not a real deal breaker.
The matte trackpad is good enough for basic use and the depth of the buttons make them very satisfying to use.
The fuss regarding the W-15 is that the machine uses a desktop processor, in this case, an Intel Core i7-4790K. The reason most notebook manufacturers don't use desktop processors is because they consume more energy than mobile ones, leading to more heat generated. Consequently, this means that it requires a more robust cooling system, which in turns translates to more space required and leads to a bigger, bulkier machine. On the upside, desktop processors offer better performance at a cheaper price. To accommodate the W-15's desktop processor, Aftershock had to retool the cooling system with thick heat pipes to quickly draw heat away from the CPU and GPU, and then couple these with two massive fans at each ends of the notebook to ensure that the heatsink cools off effectively. This elaborate heatsink and cooling arrangement is one of the key contributing factors to the W-15's above average weight and thickness.
Here's what the W-15 innards look like. You can see how sizeable the fans are, nearly taking a third of the chassis.
Fortunately, Aftershock has intelligently positioned the upgradable components out of the way of the elaborate heatsink and fan components, so you can easily swap out RAM, SSD and HDD without needing to bother with the cooling areas at the top of the machine. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M is a MXM3 module and can be upgraded in the future, but this is something that is best left to the guys at Aftershock since it involves removing the entire heatsink to get to the GPU.
As the W-15 uses an unlocked desktop CPU, it can easily be overclocked for faster performance. In fact, you don't even have to mess around with the BIOS to do it since the machine comes with Intel's overclocking program. Aftershock claims that the W-15 has an overclocking headroom of around 5%. This is not much, but it is decent considering it has to make do with its stock cooling configurations.
The battery on the W-15 is removable, so you can always swap if it dies or runs out of juice.
Not many notebook manufacturers make their notebooks with removable batteries these days so the fact that Aftershock made the W-15 with removable batteries is a nice gesture to ensure longevity of the machine.
Now that we've seen the hardware of the Aftershock W-15, it's time to see if it can deliver on its potential. Head on to the next page!
Testing Setup
Despite the Aftershock W-15 using a desktop processor, none of our benchmarking procedures have changed. We're still using PC Mark 8 for general benchmarks, 3D Mark 2013 to gauge 3D performance, Tomb Raider to measure gaming performance on a older game and Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor to see how the machine performs on new games.
The short version is that we'll be testing the Aftershock W-15 using the programs below:
- PC Mark 8
- 3D Mark 2013
- Tomb Raider
- Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor
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We chose the notebooks above for a number of reasons. We needed a budget machine running a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 900M series, so the ASUS ROG G751JT was a perfect fit. Although it's a bigger machine with a 17-inch screen, it won't matter for most of the performance benchmarks. Next we needed a machine that was a similar size and had a similar GPU. The Gigabyte P35X V3 fit that criteria perfectly with a 15.6-inch screen and a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M GPU. Lastly, we needed a high-end single GPU machine, which is the MSI GT72 2QE Dominator Pro. The machine has one of the fastest mobile processors with the Intel Core i7-4980HQ and while it's still inferior to the Intel Core i7-4790K found in the W-15, it's the fastest we could find among our reviewed notebooks.
We used the Intel Extreme Tuning Utility to overclock the Aftershock W-15. We tried multiple variations, increasing the core multipliers slowly and then stress testing the machine to make sure the W-15 holds up to the strain. In the end, the above setting (multipliers all set to 45x) was the best we could do without risking instability as anything above that crashed the machine every time we tried to stress test it. Note that on 45x multiplier, the Max Turbo Boost CPU Speed is now 4.5GHz, a 100MHz (2.27% improvement) increase from the default 4.4GHz.
PC Mark 8
To be honest, we were surprised to see the Aftershock trailing the MSI Dominator Pro in some of the benchmarks. We'd pegged the desktop processor in the W-15 to actually help it outperform the other notebooks, regardless of test type in the general system benchmarks of PC Mark 8. Instead, apart from its performance in the Adobe and MS Office applications benchmark, the W-15 posted average scores on the other benchmarks. The biggest gap between the W-15 and the MSI GT72 2QE Dominator Pro came from the Creative test suite where the gulf between them was a massive 23% difference - until it was overclocked.
Overclocking clearly improves nearly every aspect of the W-15. The numbers it got from PC Mark 8 were generally much higher than the original numbers. Although the Home test suite sees a 3% decrease, the Creative test segment saw a massive 25% increase along with the Work test suite. Other test segments in PC Mark 8 also saw improvements better than the miniscule CPU clock speed increment would suggest. We reckon that some of these tests are multi-core friendly and by setting a uniform 45x multiplier cap across all four active cores, the system was able to Turbo Boost more than its default configuration where the maximum clock speed is toned down as number of active cores increases.
3D Mark
The Aftershock W-15 proved a much more competent beast in 3D Mark benchmarks. It handily blew away the ASUS and Gigabyte notebooks and delivered scores much closer to the MSI GT72 2QE Dominator. Cloud Gate performance doesn't really matter as it is based on older tech, so delivering decent scores here only means it fares well on older games. Fire Strike is the more pertinent test, which is much more hardware intensive and the Aftershock W-15 performs decently enough there.
Overclocked, the Aftershock W-15 performs even better, not only surpassing its initial benchmarks but also that of the MSI GT72 2QE Dominator Pro. On Cloud Gate, the Aftershock W-15 saw an increase of 12.24% over its initial benchmark. On Fire Strike, the increase wasn't as substantial at 1.4% but it was still enough to give it the highest score out of all the machines compared.
Tomb Raider
The W-15's performance is largely on par with expectations, though the best performing machine here is the Gigabyte P35X V3 instead of the MSI GT72 2QE Dominator Pro. When compared with the Gigabyte notebook, the W-15 was found a bit lacking though the difference can easily be written off as acceptable variation with no noticeable difference in gameplay.
Overclocked, we saw a significant increase in FPS, on both settings. On normal settings, there is an increase of about 5.7%, though that's reduced to a 5.3% on High. No matter what though, the game still saw an increase of at least 5%, managing to overtake the standard set by the Gigabyte P35X V3. While the W-15 performed reasonably on its own, only when overclocked did it outshine itself and its keenest competitor.
Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor
Aftershock W-15's performance on this game is somewhat disappointing and quite unlike the results garnered in earlier tests. In fact, it managed no better than the ASUS ROG notebook on the High quality setting, which is somewhat troubling when you consider that this notebook has a lower class GeForce GTX 970M GPU. Even when overclocked, its results don't quite match up to the Gigabyte P35X V3 and MSI GT72 2QE Dominator Pro.
While the notebook is fast enough that you won't notice the difference in performance in actual gameplay, the difference in percentage from these benchmarks isn't trivial and certainly looks like Aftershock has some work to be done here.
Temperature
Like most of the tested gaming notebooks, the upper part of the Aftershock W-15's chassis is notably warmer, but still cooler than the Gigabyte or MSI machines. In fact, the Aftershock W-15 is generally pretty cool, with even the GPU running at a maximum temperature of 66 degrees Celsius at its hottest. To be honest, we weren't expecting much before it was overclocked. The real test is when the machine is running overclocked.
Even then, the results surprised us. The GPU-Z clearly showed the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M in the W-15 to be running incredibly cool, even when the W-15 is overclocked. We took the readings after letting the Tomb Raider benchmark (set to Ultra) run after 30 mins, same as the other benchmarks and GPU-Z showed that the graphics card was actually running cooler than when the machine is not overclocked. Aftershock's cooling system does work as intended and then some! The Aftershock W-15 is pretty much as warm (or cooler in some cases) as the Gigabyte and MSI machines in the comparison.
As GPU-Z doesn't have a fan speed display indicator, nor does Aftershock have a custom program that allows us to view the speeds, we can't really say if the fans are blowing harder when the machine is overclocked (although the results seems to suggest that). While some notebooks have noticeably loud fans, the ones on the Aftershock W-15 are relatively silent, even when the machine is being pushed to the limit which makes gauging fan speed by ear alone hard.
Next up, we'll assess the notebook's battery performance and power consumption before we dish out our verdict on the next page.
Battery Life and Power Consumption
There's really nothing surprising here. The desktop processor in the Aftershock W-15 is a massive energy hog, a fact we mentioned earlier in the review. That very reason is why we aren't surprised at all that the machine doesn't even last two hours, despite having a 82Wh battery. In comparison, the ASUS machine had a 88Wh battery, the Gigabyte notebook had a 75.81Wh battery and the MSI GT72 2QE Dominator Pro had a 83Wh battery.
A reason for the high energy use is that the desktop Intel Core i7-4790K in the W-15 has a TDP of 88W while the mobile processors in the desktop machines all have a TDP of 47W. The desktop processor has almost twice the TDP of a mobile processor, which the power consumption graph easily backs up.
Battery Life to Weight Ratio
As we've mentioned in the past, the portability ratio takes into consideration the weight and volume of a notebook as well as the battery up-time. As such, the ratios are only really comparable within similar class of machines, such as the 15.6-inch Gigabyte P35X V3. In this comparison, the Aftershock W-15 stacks up poorly as it's clearly not made for portability and it is designed as a desktop replacement machine first and foremost. So the choice of components and build that it's endowed with directly contributes to the outcome in this segment.
Surprisingly, the Aftershock machine didn't come in last, despite its poor portability ratio. The larger 17.3-inch MSI GT72 2QE Dominator Pro was simply too heavy and thus held up the rear.
Conclusion
Aftershock's W-15 might not be the lightest machine ever, but it's one of fastest we've ever tested, especially when overclocked.
About the first thing anyone would be impressed abut the Aftershock W-15 is its price. For S$3,382 (the price of our test configuration) you get a 4K screen, a top of the line NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M and an unlocked desktop processor. While the RAM could be more and the SSD storage more spacious, it's a small issue compared to what you get out of the machine from its price point. The other 15-inch notebook with similar hardware is the Gigabyte P35X V3 and that's $4,299. The W-15 might not be as light or portable as the P35X V3, but this Aftershock machine was made to sit on your desk rather than shuffle it about.
To give gaming enthusiasts the gaming performance they desire at a lower price bracket, Aftershock designed the W-15 to be a desktop replacement notebook and crammed in a desktop processor with beefier cooling capabilities and a deeper keyboard. The downside is that the notebook is now far heavier and it consumes far more powers, but you tend to get the desired performance profile.
If we were to look at the wholesale prices of the various CPUs, the Intel Core i7-4980HQ (2.8GHz, 6 MB cache) in the MSI GT72 2QE Dominator Pro that we reviewed has a quoted price of US$623. The desktop Intel Core i7-4790K (4GHz, 8MB cache) in the Aftershock W-15 comes in at just US$339. A directly comparable mobile equivalent would be an Intel Core i7-4940MX (3.1GHz, 8MB cache, 57W TDP) which costs more than US$1,000. No matter how you cut it, that is a massive price difference.
We admit, PC Mark 8 is definitely not the best compute application to test the proposition of the W-15, but as with most notebooks, we're evaluating mainstream day-to-day performance expectations through PC Mark 8 where the added compute power is unfortunately not highlighted in the best of light. To bring out the best in such a notebook, one will need to run more CPU intensive tasks (like those in our CPU reviews). So for those who want extreme computing performance in a mobile machine to mostly dabble in video editing, design and engineering tasks, the Aftershock W-15 is a great deal as the high-tier unlocked desktop processor has more compute performance to offer.
Even without having it overclocked, the machine posted decent scores, akin to machines with similar specifications. Once overclocked, the machine's performance improved overall. Surprisingly, the Aftershock W-15 manages to keep cool even when overclocked, which is testament to how well designed its cooling system is.
The Aftershock W-15 remains cool, even when overclocked.
We were also impressed that Aftershock has offered users the option of having a 4K display with the W-15 at a small price premium (starts from S$240). The increased resolution makes a huge difference, especially considering most gaming notebooks still sport Full HD screens. Look out for a future gaming article regarding how the W-15 performed at 4K resolution. Similarly, we liked the keyboard installed in the W-15. It's much more comfortable and satisfying to use than the normal shallow chiclet-style keyboards, just like the one found in the Aftershock Titan V2.1. We were also satisfied with the port placements and the removable battery.
Now we come to the bad bits. While the beefy 8GB VRAM in the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980M and the 8GB of DDR3L RAM is enough to run most applications well on 4K, gaming, hardcore design work and running virtual machines might need more than that to perform satisfactorily. So if you're planning on extensively doing any of the above, you're going to want to spend a bit more to upgrade the RAM to at least 16GB.
We also dislike the glossy display because a matte screen allows for more robust viewing angles without reflections getting in your way. Also, the weight of the machine may be a concern but you have to understand that Aftershock has made it clear that the W-15 is a desktop replacement machine and we don't envision gamers buying this for its portable capabilities seeing that Aftershock has comparable machines that weigh less.
Last but not least, raw gaming performance out of the Aftershock W-15 wasn't really outstanding even with a top-end desktop class processor. In fact, even when the system was overclocked, it was only able to match-up the gaming performance in some gaming tests and still lagged other gaming notebooks of its class. It's not held back by a lot, but for a gaming grade notebook, we weren't expecting this discrepancy. It's still plenty fast, just not as fast as the other gaming notebook counterparts with somewhat similar specifications. The saving grace is that the Aftershock W-15 is priced far less than the Gigabyte or MSI gaming notebooks that boast the GeForce GTX 980M GPU.
Is the Aftershock W-15 really for you?
The bottom line is that the desktop processor does bring a performance increase, but not to the extent you might be expecting. While overclocking the processor brings out a bit more juice, we're a bit hesitant to truly recommend it for fear that if done wrong, overclocking can seriously shorten the lifespan of your hardware. Unless you really know what you're doing, you're better off getting a regular notebook or get the W-15 and don't overclock it. If you do know what you're doing though, the W-15 is a gem in the rough. Be meticulous and take your time, and you can squeeze more performance out of the W-15 than a stock unit, despite paying the same price. It's a free performance increase that comes at basically no cost.
The important question you'll have to answer now is if you need a real portable gaming notebook. If you answered yes, you'll have to look at other options from Aftershock or the well endowed Gigabyte P35X V3. However, if you don't particularly need to move your gaming machine and you're really looking for a desktop replacement machine, the Aftershock W-15 offers great value even if it's not the best performer all around. Not to forget, this machine will excel well in compute intensive tasks and you can overclocking it to push it further.
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