In recent years, due to the new crown epidemic, the lack of core tide and the tide of mining, all kinds of PC hardware, game consoles are out of stock, whether it is the latest CPU, graphics card, or Sony/Microsoft sub-era game console, consumers have to bear a premium of thousands of yuan to be eligible to buy. In this context, the game book with reasonable configuration, easy to use and low premium has unconsciously become the most suitable "cost-effective choice" for gamers.
With the increasing number of gamers and the full arrival of games in the next era, people's demand for game equipment is getting higher and higher, and the hardware configuration of game books is also constantly improving. With the improvement of hardware and performance, the heat dissipation bottleneck of the gamebook has become more and more obvious, and even once became a pain point and difficulty of the entire consumer electronics industry. In order to solve this problem, each manufacturer is eight immortals across the sea, each showing its own magic.
On the evening of January 15th, the mechanical revolution of domestic PC manufacturers held a theme with the theme of "World War I Sealing God, Winning the Championship!" "The New Year New Product Online Live Broadcast Conference. At this conference, the mechanical revolution brought you the unbounded thin and unbounded notebook equipped with the 12th generation Core standard pressure processor, the Aurora game book featuring thin and light e-sports, and the highly anticipated water-cooled flagship game book of the Kuangshi series.
Consumers familiar with the consumer electronics field should know that the mainstream games on the market are currently using heat pipes to quickly transmit heat energy to the heat sink, and then the fan will blow cold air to the air cooling heat dissipation of the heat sink. For various reasons, the water-cooled heat dissipation with the highest heat dissipation efficiency in theory has never been on the gamebook. Now the question is, what is the difference between a gamebook that uses water cooling and heat dissipation? Let's take a look.
Give the laptop a defeat to the fire
In fact, the three new products released by the Mechanical Revolution last night are very interesting, and due to space limitations, we focus on one of them. According to the official introduction, the water-cooled version of the Kuangshi series of game books is positioned as a flagship game book that focuses on extreme performance, with the aim of allowing hardware players to squeeze out the performance of hardware in an environment where the temperature is low enough and the noise is small enough. In other words, this product was not designed with portability in mind.
First look at the configuration, the Mechanical Revolution Kuangshi series of games is equipped with Intel's 12th generation Core standard voltage processor, up to 14 cores and 20 threads of i9-12900H processor, with Intel's RTX 3080 Ti notebook graphics launched this year, the maximum can achieve 175W graphics performance release, can be regarded as the top configuration in the current game market.
As the saying goes, hardware configuration can only be regarded as the basis of performance, and heat dissipation ability is the core of performance. In terms of heat dissipation, mechanical revolution has equipped the Vast Series with up to seven heat pipes, while adopting dual-fan four-outlet specifications. Purely from the parameter point of view, the heat dissipation configuration of this product can directly benchmark ROG and MSI top products, which is more luxurious than last year's hottest Lenovo Savior series game.
According to past experience, the cooling configuration of the Mechanical Revolution Series should be able to ensure the performance release of the top game book. But considering that the 12th generation Core standard voltage processor and the RTX 3080 Ti graphics card are the latest products, in order to ensure the release of performance, the mechanical revolution has equipped the top version of the Vast Series with a "glacier split water cooling system", which is where this product differs from other products on the market.
Let's take a look at the water-cooled design of the mechanical revolution. Judging from the product pictures officially given by the Mechanical Revolution, the water-cooled heat dissipation method of the Kuangshi series is very intuitive. In theory, this product needs to be equipped with an external cold pump, the user only needs to connect the cooling water pipe to the connector behind the computer, you can start the water cooling mode, so that the circulating water takes away the heat generated inside the fuselage.
When we open the machine, we can see the internal water-cooled design of the Mysyce series. As shown in the figure, and the current known water-cooled laptop on the market is completely different, the internal design of the Mechanical Revolution Kuangshi series is actually above the heat pipe that should be in the normal air-cooled game, welding a water-cooled pipe that runs through the CPU and GPU areas, and does not equip this computer with specially designed water-cooled heat dissipation.
Some readers may ask, what is the difference between water cooling changed from air cooling and specially designed water cooling and heat dissipation? In fact, the biggest difference is between direct and indirect contact. Normal water cooling design, water cooling pipe is directly in contact with the CPU and GPU, then the Water Cooling Pipe of the Kuangshi series is actually covered in the heat pipe, the heat pipe is directly in contact with the CPU and GPU, and the overall heat conduction efficiency is naturally affected.
In other words, in Xiao Lei's view, the water-cooled design of the Kuangshi series can only be said to be better than nothing. In the case that the water cooling pipe cannot directly take care of the CPU and GPU, the heat dissipation efficiency of the entire water cooling system will inevitably be reduced, and the core temperature can be reduced by about 5 ° -10 ° when actually used. However, compared with the traditional air-cooled heat dissipation, the noise generated by water-cooled heat dissipation is lower, and it can indeed create a playing environment with enough noise.
The problem is that the official price of the Mechanical Revolution to the Kuangshi series is 8999 yuan, the official price of the high-end version of the Kuangshi series that supports the water cooling system is 12999 yuan, and the external water cooling needs to be purchased separately by the user. From the price point of view, the pricing of the Mechanical Revolution Series has touched the threshold of the top game book, and the price of the same configuration has caught up with the level of ROG Gun God 6. Whether the second-tier brand of mechanical revolution can support this high-end flagship product is a matter worthy of attention.
Is water cooling the future of gamebooks?
In fact, before the mechanical revolution, ASUS had already introduced laptops that supported water-cooled heat dissipation.
At CES 2016, ASUS launched the world's first water-cooled laptop ROG GX700, which has three major features, first of all, it is equipped with an independent external water-cooled base, which is the first in the industry; secondly, it is the first gaming notebook in the world to be equipped with a desktop GTX 980 flagship graphics card; here, the domestic price of this product has reached a sky-high price of 49999 yuan.
The water-cooled cooling module that is not easy to carry and the high pricing make the ROG GX700 attract enough attention in the market, but it has not achieved the planned Snapdragon, and soon Asus will quickly cut off the related product lines, and the ROG GX700 has no successor. This makes the product look more like an experimental product than a full-fledged commercial one.
In the following years, under the influence of ROG GX700, there have been many diysus game-based water-cooled molds on the market, and the player base based on water-cooled heat dissipation transformation is also gradually growing, but for various reasons, no serious manufacturer is willing to launch water-cooled game books. It wasn't until this year that there was a story of the mechanical revolution coming forward and breaking the deadlock.
The question is, why is this happening? According to Xiaolei's observation, the small performance difference should be regarded as one of the main reasons. The well-known YouTube video anchor Linus Tech Tips had purchased a domestic Alienware water-cooled cooling module for modification testing the previous year, and from the results, although the core temperature of the game book was reduced after the use of water cooling, the performance of the whole machine was not significantly improved, which was obviously not in line with the original intention of gamers to buy products.
(Before water cooling: 129 frames / After water cooling: 132 frames)
In the "post-pandemic era", after the rapid growth in demand for walk-on entertainment and mobile office, many people will carry a laptop with them to solve the entertainment/work needs that may occur at any time. To this end, how to make laptops more portable, how to make laptops easier to use, free has become an urgent need for manufacturers to solve.
The problem is that in order to achieve water cooling and heat dissipation, players must connect the computer to the external water cooling device, which greatly weakens the portable nature of the laptop. As ASUS said before, if you want to take a water-cooled laptop out of the house, you need to prepare at least one suitcase, which is why Asus has customized a player's country suitcase for ROG GX700 users.
Finally, due to the existence of water-cooled cooling systems, water-cooled games inevitably become thicker, heavier, and look rougher. You know, in this era when any product must pay attention to portable attributes, even the design of the game book is also developing in the direction of lighter and thinner, compared with the mechanical revolution Umi Pro 3, ASUS Phantom 16 and other thin and light game books, such product design is indeed somewhat counterintuitive.
To sum up, Xiao Lei believes that water-cooled heat dissipation is not just needed for the game market, and it is difficult to bring a better experience to users, so water-cooled heat dissipation should not become the future of the game, but become a part of the pursuit of extreme silence / extreme performance of hardcore players to plaything. For ordinary users, a more beautiful and portable thin and light game book may be the best choice.