There’s a lot going on beneath the unassuming chassis of EVGA’s new SC17 gaming notebook, revealed at back at CES in January and subsequently given a 3199 EUR pricing (that’s about $3600, or £2500). There’s a GTX 980M from NVIDIA on graphics duty, paired with an Intel Core i7-6820HK, and 32GB of DDR4 RAM. It’s an intense machine, then.
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That i7 CPU is fully unlocked, and can be boosted from its factory 2.7GHz up to 3.8GHZ. Coupled with that 980M, which is broadly equivalent to a desktop GTX 970 if a little behind in raw performance, we’re looking at a serious mobile device here. One with a serious price tag too, granted.
It needs to pack some power beneath the hood too, because the screen has a native 4K resolution. EVGA have assembled this machine specifically for mobile overclocking, and as such it comes with preset profiles in its BIOS for performance boosts, as well as the ability to tweak GPU, CPU and RAM settings manually as you would a desktop machine.
What really strikes me about the SC17 though is how ordinary it looks. It’s very slimline for the spec at a 1.05 inch thickness, but generally at first glance it looks like the kind of laptop your dad would do his spreadsheets on. You know – the one you spilled strawberry milkshake all over, and ever since the spacebar was sticky and the ‘k’ key stopped working, but it was cool because his work just got him another one. Except his didn’t have a GTX 980M whirring away inside it.
There’s something really appealing about a powerful notebook like this that doesn’t look like a gaming device. It’s like a quietly souped-up hatchback that doesn’t have the wide body kit, but does have the V8 engine.
EVGA haven’t released specs relating to battery life, or the specifics of the SC17’s cooling that allow overclocking, but they are taking pre-orders. Units will ship in April, although currently only French and German keyboard models are available, with UK layouts to follow.
Thanks, Guru Of 3D.