ROG Masters 2017 Grand Finals in full swing at KLCC

Amidst the clanging of bells as well as the faux ‘Ho! Ho! Ho!’ chuckles of mall Santas was hustle and bustle of shoppers at the nearby KLCC mall who were attempting to complete their holiday shopping. At the nearby  Kuala Lumpur Convention centre was a clangour of a different sort as a dozen of the world’s best Counterstrike: Global Offensive and DOTA 2 teams vied for something else entirely – the vaunted ROG Masters Grand Finals.

The four-day event began on 7 December and took place at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre Plenary Hall. What was once a sedate, wooden panelled hall given over to concerts was turned into a virtual arena of sorts. Where plushly upholstered seats once house dozens of concert goers were instead filled with hordes of screaming fans who marvelled as the world’s best CS:G0 and DOTA 2 gamers took each other on. Where once was a mahogany and oak hewn stage where orchestras and performers took their turn onstage was transformed into a glossy obsidian coloured gaming arena backlit with red neon and banks of LCD displays.

This arena is the final step in a long road and dozens of matches to cull the wheat from the chaff. Here, a dozen teams  from across the world are competing for a chance at a massive US$470,000 prize pool. Day one saw the teams taking each other one across CS:GO and Dota 2 in best-of-two sets while those that survived will compete in the top four playoffs on Day 2. The last two days on December 9 and 10 will see the grand finals where ultimately two teams – one for CS:GO and one for DOTA 2 will emerge supreme in the championship. We’ll fill you in on the outcome of the Grand Finals once the dust settles. In the meantime you can check out the official ROG Masters site for a rundown on the aftermath of the Grand Finals.

While the Grand Finals quite literally took centrestage, Asus Malaysia also took opportunity to showcase some of their upcoming ROG gaming notebooks that will be arriving in Malaysia in the coming weeks. Unobtrusively placed around a series of experiential centres outside the arena grounds were a trio of Asus’ latest ROG gaming rigs – the ROG Strike SCAR Edition, the ROG Strix Hero Edition and their huge ROG G703.

The first two notebooks, the ROG Strike SCAR Edition and the ROG Strix Hero Edition are unique in that they are specifically designed from the ground up to cater to a particular gaming genre while the ROG G703 itself is a beefy generalist that can tackle anything thrown at it. There’s no confirmation on prices or exact availability yet but they’re slated to arrive sometime near the end of 2017 to January 2018. Here’s a quick run-up of these three gaming goliaths:

 

ASUS ROG G703

The ROG G703 is a massive behemoth with a 17.3-inch UHD display that has a 60Hz refresh rate as well as NVIDIA G-Sync support to tackle even the most demanding gameplay onscreen in a silky smooth fashion. Paired with this is an equally impressive array of hardware with the ability to be equipped with up to an Intel Core i7-7820HK processor that can be overclocked to 4.3GHz, up to 64GB of DDR4 RAM, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX1080 with 8GB GDDR5X VRAM and the option to cram in up to a 512GB M.2 NVMe PCie 3.0 x4 SSD in raid 0 for blazing fast speeds.

One particularly unusual ability that the G703 has is built-in Xbox Wireless that lets you wirelessly connect up to 8 Xbox One controllers so you can have quite a party indeed. It also has a pair of dual cooling fans that also self clean themselves from dust to literally make it quite a cool customer. Throw in a backlit keyboard with customisable zone-based backlighting and you have a portable gaming party on the go.

 

ASUS ROG Strike SCAR

The ROG Strike SCAR edition is an interesting offering in several ways. Its rather unique SCAR moniker is a homage to the Fabrique Nationale Special Operations Forces Combat Assault Rifle or FN SCAR that was originally developed for US Special Forces and is in use in over 20 countries around the globe. As you’d likely surmise from its nomenclature, the ROG Strike SCAR edition is a gaming rig primarily intended for first person shooters like Destiny 2, Player Unknown Battleground and the like.

It appears in various configurations depending on region, though all havea 15.6-inch Full HD display with NVIDIA G-Sync support, either an Intel Core i7-7700HQ or i5-7300HQ processor, up to 32GB of DDR4 RAM, a choice of a GTX 1070, GTX 1060 or a GTX 1050 GPU depending on region that’s been overclocked by 100MHz and storage needs can be maxed out to a 512GB M.2 NVMe PCie 3.0×4 SSD paired with a 1TB Seagate FireCuda SSHD. The W,S,A and D keys which see the most use in FPS games have also been given custom highlighting and the whole keyboard has 4 lighting zones and has been rated to survive over 20 million key presses.

 

ASUS ROG Strix Hero Edition

The ROG Strix Hero Edition is a gaming notebook that’s optimised for Multiplayer Online Battle Arena gaming to the tune of games like League of Legends and DOTA 2.

 

Crammed into a relativy slim 2.4cm machined aluminium casing that weighs 2.5kg is a 15.6-inch Full HD display with a 120Hz refresh rate, up to an Intel Core i7-7700HQ processor, up to 32GB DDR4 RAM, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX1050 GPU that’s overclocked by 100MHz with 4GB GDDR5 VRAM and up to a 512GB M.2 NVME PCIe SSD paired with a 1TB 7200RPM FireCuda SSHD.

In keeping with its emphasis as a MOBA gaming rig, the Q,W,E and R keys are specially highlighted on the keyboard which has four-customisable lighting zones and a 1.8mm key travel distance.  We’ll fill you in with more details on this trio of high-powered gaming rigs once they’ve made an official appearance in Malaysia.