Sometimes being located in Southern California can have its benefits, and we’re not talking about the weather here. California being one of the larger states in the US houses most of today’s PC hardware and software companies. One of these companies is Newegg, and if you haven’t heard of Newegg; we have to say… you need to stop hiding under that rock. Newegg is one of the largest electronics e-tailers in the nation today. If you have ever thought about building a PC or looking for some of today’s latest gadgets, the one place you have probably searched is Newegg.com. Newegg houses some of the largest range of products available today in stock in their inventory and its where most of us PC enthusiasts turn to for some of the geek shopping.
Today, at spur of the moment I was notified by a good friend of mine from NZXT (thanks Eric!) that Newegg was hosting a launch party at their new hybrid center. Newegg’s “will call” is located in City of Industry and has housed a space for many local consumers to be able to pick up their online orders; this allowed some of us locals to pick up the items and save some shipping costs if the item isn’t shipped for free. However, the space here was previously pretty empty and houses some chairs and seating in the waiting area and a counter to pick up your packages. But that wasn’t good enough for Newegg and now they have opened the “Hybrid Center,” which has some of today’s latest and greatest tech gadgets on display. This isn’t a store, but more of a fun center for us geeks that are looking to play around and test out some of today’s new gadgets. They had items from Motherboards, Graphics Cards, Monitors, full on Gaming PC’s and more. While at a glance it looks like it store, it’s actually not, since there are no sales guys on the floor. There’s just friendly staff that can help you with questions and maybe look for a new gadget. We thought this was a cool concept and really shows that Newegg cares for its consumers and not just the bottom line. Unfortunately we didn’t have our camera with us, but we managed to get some pics of the Hybrid Center from Newegg’s website.
Take a look…. (click on arrow to view pics)
At this launch part was also AORUS. Who is AORUS? Well… I had the same questions when I first arrived and they are a fairly new sub branch to Gigabyte that has recently joined the PC gaming industry. They have some new products that are unique. While they also supply keyboards, mouse and headsets… The one product that was showcased at the Launch party was the new AORUS X7 Gaming Laptop.
I got to sit down and take a look at the fit and feel of the AORUS X7 laptop and I was impressed with the fit and feel. While I wasn’t able to fully analyze the laptop, I did manage to sit down and play a few rounds of Battlefield 4. Some of the unique features we found with the AORUS X7 is the SLI GTX 765M 4GB Graphics card. Yes! You heard that right… I said SLI. This is the first laptop that I have seen with the support of SLI Graphics. With that being said, even with the SLI GTX 765M graphics, the laptop was not massive in size. In fact, we were quite impressed with how slim and light weight the laptop was. The AORUS X7 is just shy of 7 pounds with a 17.3″ LCD Screen. The 1080P display handled BF4 beautifully and also without any hitches. I averaged about 75-110 FPS in 64 player conquest match. This laptop handled almost better than my desktop PC.
The AORUS X7 was an impressive machine. If you want to learn more about AORUS, you can visit www.AORUS.com/x7.aspx. In the meantime, we have asked the company for one to review. We want to put this little mean machine to the test!
Here are some of the specs:
Specification
OS
Windows 8.1
Windows 8.1 Pro
Windows 7 Home Premium
Windows 7 Professional
CPU
4th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-4700HQ Processor (2.4GHz-3.4GHz)
Display
17.3″ Full HD 1920×1080 LCD backlight
System Memory
4GB/8GB DDR3L 1600, 4 slots (Max 32GB)
Chipset
Mobile Intel® HM87 Express Chipset
Video Graphics
NVIDIA® GTX 765M SLI GDDR5 4GB
Storage
*Supports Triple-Storage System
mSATA 128GB/256GB, 2slot
2.5” HDD 500GB/750GB/1TB 5400rpm , 1 slot
*The storage size may differ between different countries and regions. Please confirm with the local dealers or retailers for the latest specifications.
Keyboard Type
Backlit Keyboard
Optical Disk Drive
N/A
I/O Port
USB 3.0 x3, USB 2.0 x2, HDMI, D-sub, RJ45, Surround port, mini-Display port, SD card reader,microphone-in, earphone-out(SPDIF)
Audio
2 watt speaker*2, woofer*2, Microphone, AORUS Acoustic+ technology
Communications
LAN: Killer LAN Chip
Wireless LAN: 802.11ac
Bluetooth: Bluetooth V4.0
Webcam
1.3 Megapixel
Security
Kensington Lock
Battery
Li Polymer 73.26Wh
Dimensions
428(W) x 305(D) x 22.9(H)mm
Weight
2.9kg (mSATA x 1 + SO-DIMM x 2 + Battery)
Accessories (optional)
Gaming mouse, keyboard, headset
Here are some pictures of the AORUS X7 (Courtesy of AORUS).
Click on Tab to view images
X7-1
X7-2
X7-3
X7-4
X7-1
X7-2
X7-3
X7-4
(more images of the AORUS X7 is available on their website)
This wasn’t the entire event. Newegg also used one of AORUS X7 Gaming Laptop’s to host a gaming tournament and gave away some very nice prizes. They used the game “DiveKick” which is a street fighter like game that only allows 2 moves. Jump and Dive/Kick. This was pretty funny as you only needed 2 buttons to play and 2 players can play on the same keyboard. We have to say, we had a great time with this and on top of this I WON $50 for placing 4th. First place got a $750 Newegg Gift Card, Second place got $500 and Third $200. While the prizes were great and an extra bonus, we just had a great time overall.
We would like to thank Newegg and AORUS (Gigabyte) for hosting such a great event. Despite showing up on a last min spur of the moment it was well worth the trip.