The personal computer market has expanded so much in recent years that it’s just a matter of fact when it comes to assembling a new gaming PC. It becomes a particular headache for those who have never independently selected compatible components for themselves, but really wants a gaming computer that will pull modern projects with beautiful graphics, without brakes and without dancing with a tambourine, and not just “2 cores, 2 giga , game video card “. This is where ready-made assemblies from renowned manufacturers come to the rescue. Today we are just going to talk about one of these.
To the editor GameMAG.ru a gaming computer from the company entered the test ASUS – model ROG Strix GA15 G15DK-R5800X145T… Cost in the official store ASUS starts from 77,990 rubles.
PACKAGING AND COMPLETE SET
The gaming PC comes in a thick cardboard box with a color print inspired by the ROG Strix series with the familiar eye logo. The packaging is large enough, and for easy carrying, there are special cutouts for the hands on the sides.
When you open the box from above, another small square box will immediately await you inside, which contains a network cable. In addition, there is a variety of documentation: quick start guide, warranty card and flyer with information about the MyASUS app. Directly the computer case itself is packed in a bag made of non-woven material, and around it are protected by huge pieces of formatted polyethylene foam.
It’s worth noting that there is enough space between the PC and the box for additional accessories, and for good reason. In some regions, ROG Strix GA15 comes with two peripherals, the ROG Gladius II mouse and the ROG Strix Flare keyboard. We have already told you about them earlier in our reviews. Although we received a top-end configuration for the test, we had to use our own mouse and keyboard, so check with the sellers if they have such bonuses in the kit.
APPEARANCE AND FEATURES
The ROG Strix GA15 G15DK is a mid-tower case in the so-called Midi Tower form factor. Its dimensions are 18.5 x 42.1 x 49.8 cm. The color is black, but the inner walls of the case, as well as the back and bottom of the outside are silver. The body is traditionally made of metal, and the front and top panels have plastic trim. The finish is predominantly matte plastic, but there are also glossy details such as the ROG logo on the bezel and a diagonal line across the top of the case. Their manufacturer, of course, covered them with a shipping film to avoid dust settling and micro-scratches before reaching the user.
On the front there is an RGB backlighting line, which also divides the front panel into two parts from the lower left corner to the laconically inscribed power button, which has received a diamond shape. The panel is divided into a blank part, dotted with many dots with a mirrored texture that shimmers under the light, and into a part with many lines and holes for ventilation of internal components. In the upper right corner of the front of the case there is a special folding hook on which you can hang a headset, according to the manufacturer, weighing up to 3 kg, although I don’t think there will be such heavy models on sale. The front panel has a higher height than the main part of the case, which is why the case stands at a slight slope. This is done so that the fan of the power supply has a place to exhaust air from the bottom. There are also four rubber feet on the bottom to prevent slipping and damaging the surface where the PC sits, be it a table or the floor.
A powerful plastic handle is presented on top of the body, for which it is convenient to carry the body or push it back when cleaning. According to the manufacturer, when carried, it must withstand a weight of up to 20 kg. Specifically, the case with our top-end equipment weighs 9.5 kg, so it will clearly be possible to deliver something heavier and calmly carry it. There are also many vents on the top, hidden behind the trim in diagonal lines. Immediately closer to the front panel there are connectors: one USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A, one USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C, as well as a 3.5 mm audio input for a microphone and a 3.5mm audio output for headphones.
The side panels of the case are dotted with many square-shaped holes. The left panel, under which the main components of the PC are hidden, is blind with small holes, as in our case, and with a plexiglass window. Since the components inside this PC, except for the video card, do not have a backlight, there is no special need for a window. A small LED strip on the video card shines well through the holes.
The power supply is located at the bottom of the case in a special separated compartment and can only be accessed by removing the right panel. All the cables are hidden there, and a 3.5-inch hard drive is located next to the power supply.
In the main compartment of the PC, good cable management is made and there are no unnecessary protruding wires, and a metal plate in the middle separates the space of the video card and the central processor. This is done so that the components do not heat each other, and the many holes in the case allow for sufficient air flow. True, there is only one 92-mm fan installed on the rear wall to remove air from the case, and it is the only one in the case, not counting the coolers of the processor, power supply and video card. The tower mounted on the CPU is capable of dissipating up to 105W of heat.
TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS AND TESTS
The specifications of the sample received for testing are as follows:
- Chipset: AMD B550
- Processor: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 3.8GHz (7nm, 8 cores, 16 threads, 32MB cache, boost up to 4.7GHz)
- Video Card: ASUS GeForce RTX 3070 DUAL with 8GB GDDR6
- RAM: 32 GB DDR4-3200 (2x SK Hynix HMAA2GU6AJR8N-XN 16GB)
- Maximum RAM: 64 GB
- SSD: 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe 3.0 (Western Digital PC SN530 SDBPNPZ-1T00-1002)
- HDD: 2 TB SATA III 7200 RPM 3.5 “(TOSHIBA DT01ACA200)
- PSU: Great Wall E750 (80 Plus Gold, 750W)
- Ethernet adapter: RealTek RTL8168 / 8111 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet NIC
- Wireless Connectivity: Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac), 2-band 2×2, Bluetooth 5.0
- Expansion slots and connectors on the motherboard: 2x PCIe 3.0 x 1, 1x PCIe 4.0 x 16, 2x M.2 SSD slots, 4x DDR4 U-DIMM slots, 4 x SATA SATA 6 Gb / s
- Back panel connectors: 1x RJ45 Gigabit Ethernet, 1x VGA, 1x DVI-D, 1x PS2, 3x 3.5mm audio jacks, 4x USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A, 2x USB 3.2 Gen2 Type-A
- Connectors on the video card: 3x DisplayPort 1.4а, 2x HDMI 2.1
- OS: Windows 10 Home
To test this PC, we used our industry standard benchmarks that measure performance, noise, and heating of major components.
At idle, NWiNFO64 shows the following temperatures on average:
- CPU – 41 ° C
- ASUS GeForce RTX 3070 DUAL – 55 ° C
- WDC PC SN530 SDBPNPZ-1T00-1002 – 47 ° C
- TOSHIBA DT01ACA200 (11EVXP3AS) – 33 ° C
The tower mounted on the CPU does its job well. With a long maximum load in tests, the CPU heats up to 90 degrees, and on average under load for the entire testing period, the temperature was kept at the level of 70-75 degrees. In the multi-threaded test Cinebench R23, the processor was able to score 14491 points, and the frequency kept from 3.6 to 4.8 GHz. In a single-threaded CPU, I was able to earn 1566 points at an operating frequency of 3.6 to 4.8 GHz.
There is no heatsink or thermoplate on the SSD, so under M.2 load, the WD drive heats up to 62 degrees. The disk speed in Crystal Disk Mark was 2449 MB / s for reading and 1968 MB / s for writing. The AS SDD test, as usual, shows the results a little more modest – 2247 MB / s for reading and 1892 MB / s for writing.
As we already said, the hard drive is located in the same compartment with the power supply and heats up to 41 degrees, taking into account the absence of additional cooling agents. Crystal Disk Mark and AS SDD tests showed fairly standard results for HDD:
- Crystal Disk Mark (TOSHIBA DT01ACA200): read – 204 mb / s, write – 201 mb / s
- AS SSD (TOSHIBA DT01ACA200): read – 192 mb / s, write – 186 mb / s
The system performs very well in graphics tests and in-game benchmarks.
In the Superposition benchmark on the Unigine 2 engine, the test was carried out in three available settings – 1080p Extreme, 4K Optimized, 8K Optimized:
- 1080p Extreme – 8391 points (48 to 84 FPS, 62 average)
- 4K Optimized – 10818 points (67 to 99 FPS, average 80)
- 8K Optimized – 4594 points (28 to 40 FPS, average 34)
The second test was the Chinese benchmark Boundary, which is based on the upcoming tactical online shooter of the same name in a space setting. This test uses ray tracing technology. The test was carried out in three resolution settings – 1080, 1440p and 4K – with tracing and DLSS in “quality” and “ultra-performance” modes:
- 1080p, RTX, DLSS Quality – 77.5 FPS (4 to 251 FPS)
- 1080p, RTX, DLSS Ultra Performance – 177.4 FPS (45 to 455 FPS)
- 1440p, RTX, DLSS Quality – 52.3 FPS (from 13 to 169 FPS)
- 1440p, RTX, DLSS Ultra Performance – 124.5 FPS (17 to 299 FPS)
- 2160p, RTX, DLSS Quality – 25.9 FPS (from 4 to 95 FPS)
- 2160p, RTX, DLSS Ultra Performance – 68.9 FPS (from 18 to 213 FPS)
In the already traditional gaming benchmark Final Fantasy XV Windows Edition, the GPU temperature reached 73 degrees during the test. The benchmark was run on high graphics settings at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K. On the tested sample, the following scores were obtained:
- 2160p High – 5719 (Fairly High)
- 1440p, High – 9516 (Very High)
- 1080p, High – 12174 (Extremely High)
Excellent performance was also obtained in the fresh performance test of Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker, which also ran in three common resolutions at maximum settings:
- 2160p Max – 10810 (High)
- 1440p, Max – 19875 (Extremely High)
- 1080p, Max – 24649 (Extremely High)
The system was also tested in the in-game tests of Forza Horizon 4, Red Dead Redemption 2 and Gears 5 in Full HD, 2K and 4K resolutions:
- Race from Playground at maximum graphics settings was able to produce an average FPS of 76 frames per second in 4K, 115 FPS in 2K and 144 FPS in Full HD.
- Gears 5 with ultra settings, maximum GI beams and ultra texture pack installed, averaged 36 FPS at 2160p, 70 FPS at 1440p, and 101 FPS at 1080p.
- The in-game RDR2 benchmark was run on ultra settings with TAA anti-aliasing and ended up with an average of 47 FPS in 4K, 72 FPS in 2K and 90 FPS in Full HD.
The tests above showed that the ASUS GeForce RTX 3070 DUAL is very good for playing in 2K at maximum graphics settings, and for 4K in some tests it was not enough to get a stable 60 frames, so we used a resolution of 1440p directly in the games themselves. For testing, we selected four projects that use NVIDIA DLSS technologies and ray tracing – DOOM Eternal, Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition, Control and Cyberpunk 2077:
We tested last year’s DOOM Eternal on Ultimate Nightmare graphics with ray tracing and DLSS anti-aliasing in Performance mode. The average frame rate in this dynamic first-level shooter Hell on Earth was kept at around 123 frames per second.
Next, we tested another shooter, but more demanding on the hardware. It was Metro Exodus from 4A Games. This is one of the first projects to receive support for ray tracing and DLSS. With the update on Xbox Series X | S and PS5, it has also been improved on PC with ray tracing technology improvements and DLSS 2.0 support. In this game, we used maximum settings with RTX and DLSS in “quality” mode, and also enabled NVIDIA Hairworks and PhysX. In closed spaces, the game averaged about 96 frames per second, and in open spaces the average value was kept around 104 frames.
Third in gameplay, we tested Remedy’s Control, which supports our interesting raytracing and anti-aliasing DLSS 2.0 technologies. We launched the project, as always, at 1440p at maximum graphics settings with RTX and DLSS with a rendering resolution of 960p. With these settings, the picture on the screen looks good, and the average frequency in the game at these settings was kept at around 79 frames. When the rendering was reduced to 720p, the average performance increased to 102 frames, but the clarity of the picture decreased.
Finally, we also tested Cyberpunk 2077. The game was tested at maximum graphics settings with “Incredible” tracing options and DLSS in “Balanced” mode. In the city, the system produces an average of 45 FPS, and in dynamic scenes during battles in closed locations, the average was fixed at around 40 FPS.
The maximum GPU temperature was recorded at around 74 degrees, and the TDP was 230 W.
As for the noise indicators, in a simple PC it is practically inaudible at a room noise level of 30-35 dB. Under heavy loads, the fans of the video card start to work actively, accelerating to 2200 rpm, and the average noise level rises to 48-50 bB. If you play with headphones or with loud acoustics, then this is unlikely to disturb you.
RESULTS
The ASUS ROG Strix GA15 G15DK is a great gaming PC that combines excellent performance for work and play with well-chosen components. Wide range of models allows you to choose a solution for different needs and wallet without the need to spend extra time and nerves on the selection of glands and assembly. Just turn it on, “install all the games” and have fun.
Author: Sergey Dyakonenko (Madnfs)
Read also: Successful experiment: Review of compact gaming keyboard ASUS ROG Falchion…
