Do you need a gigantic gaming laptop, so big and power-hungry it can double as a portable grill, in order to get the latest hardware? Gigabyte says you don’t and they built the Aorus 17 to prove it. Despite featuring some of the fastest hardware on the market and a 17-inch screen, it’s small and light enough to fit inside a backpack with ease.
To see the full unboxing from Gordon Ung, check out our YouTube channel:
The latest revision of the Aorus 17 features 12th-generation Alder Lake Intel Core processors (Core i7 H-series in our unboxing, but Core i9 will be available as well) and a brand new chassis. Highlights of the updated design include a 17.3-inch 1080p screen with a 360Hz refresh rate, a maximum of 64GB of super-fast DDR5 memory, dual M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 storage slots, and discrete graphics that top out at an Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti.
Despite the huge screen size and top-of-the-range specs, Gigabyte boasts that the Aorus 17 is compact enough to compete with 15-inch laptop designs. That might be a little generous, but it’s certainly smaller and sleeker than we’re used to seeing with 17-inch gaming machines. Other chassis features include an IR camera for Windows Hello facial recognition, a full 10-key keyboard with RGB backlighting, Intel Wi-Fi 6E, and a dual-fan heat pipe cooling design. Ports are USB-C (Thunderbolt 4) and standard USB-A, a headphone jack, a full-sized HDMI, 2.5Gb Ethernet, and a Mini DisplayPort.
The Aorus 17 is available in an i7/RTX 3070 ti configuration for around $2400. Expect the i9/3080 Ti model to be more than $3000 when it arrives.
Michael is a former graphic designer who’s been building and tweaking desktop computers for longer than he cares to admit. His interests include folk music, football, science fiction, and salsa verde, in no particular order.
