ASUS Mothership Thermals - RTX 2080 + i9-9980HK Running Cool
### Article: ASUS Mothership Review: A Deep Dive into Cooling, Performance, and Design
#### Introduction
The ASUS Mothership redefines traditional laptop design by prioritizing cooling and thermals over conventional hardware placement. Instead of housing all components under the keyboard, the CPU, GPU, and other heat-generating parts are positioned behind the screen. This innovative approach enhances airflow but requires the device to sit on a flat surface, as it lacks built-in legs. Despite this limitation, the Mothership delivers exceptional performance with its high-end specifications, making it a contender for gamers and professionals seeking top-tier hardware.
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#### Specifications
The ASUS Mothership boasts an 8-core, 16-thread overclockable Intel Core i9-9900HK CPU, an RTX 2080 GPU (not Max-Q), 64GB of memory in dual-channel configuration, and a 17.3-inch 4K 60Hz screen with G-Sync support. These specs ensure the device is capable of handling demanding tasks and gaming at the highest levels.
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#### Design and Cooling
The Mothership's design sets it apart from traditional laptops. By placing heat-generating components behind the screen, the system吸入 air through the back and exhausts it via four strategically placed vents near the top corners. Inside, eight heat pipes cover the CPU, GPU, and VRM, while liquid metal is used for enhanced thermal performance. This setup improves airflow compared to conventional designs but requires the laptop to be stationary on a flat surface.
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#### Power and Software
The Mothership uses two 280W power bricks, with one sufficient for everyday tasks and both necessary for full gaming performance. TheArmory Crate software allows users to disable Optimus technology, switch between silent, performance, and turbo modes, and adjust power limits and overclocking settings. Testing was conducted across these modes using the Function key F5.
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#### Thermal Performance Testing
Testing was performed in a 21°C ambient room temperature environment to ensure consistent results. At idle, both the CPU and GPU remained within safe temperatures. Combined CPU and GPU workloads were tested for extended periods, with gaming performance assessed using *Watch Dogs: Legion* and stress tests involving *Prime95* and *Heaven*.
In silent mode, the CPU TDP was capped at 45W, rising to 55W in performance mode, and reaching 90W in turbo mode. The GPU consistently drew around 195W during stress tests, peaking at 200W. Despite these high power demands, temperatures remained manageable, with the CPU topping out at 90°C and the GPU at 80°C.
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#### Overclocking and Performance Tweaks
By default, the CPU runs at a 4.2GHz turbo boost speed. In turbo mode, the Mothership achieved an impressive 4.9GHz all-core overclock. Manual tweaks pushed the CPU further to 5GHz with a small undervolt, improving performance by over 100MHz. However, further overclocking was limited due to power constraints.
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#### Gaming Performance
Gaming benchmarks revealed the Mothership's potential. Running *Shadow of the Tomb Raider* and *Far Cry 5* at maximum settings showed minimal performance gains from manual tweaks, likely due to minor under-volting and a modest 100MHz overclock. Despite this, the device demonstrated high-level gaming performance.
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#### External Temperatures
At idle, the keyboard remained cool at around 20°C, significantly lower than traditional laptops where heat accumulates beneath the keyboard. The screen reached up to 40°C during stress tests, while exhaust vents exceeded mid-40s. Handheld comfort was maintained despite these temperatures.
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#### Fan Noise Levels
Fan noise varied across modes:
- **Silent Mode**: Audible but quieter than most gaming laptops.
- **Performance Mode**: Comparable to typical gaming laptops.
- **Turbo Mode**: Loud at around 59dB, necessitating headphones for immersive use.
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#### Gaming Benchmarks and Beyond
The Mothership was tested across 13 games at various resolutions (1080p, 1440p, and 4k). At 1080p, it outperformed the Alienware 51m despite having a desktop-grade CPU. Its cooling system ensured consistent performance even under heavy loads.
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#### Thermal Paste and Overclocking Advice
While swapping thermal paste could theoretically improve thermals, ASUS's use of liquid metal makes this unlikely. Raising fan speeds and undervolting are more practical adjustments for users to explore. Testing is essential to determine stable overclocking points, as results vary based on hardware variations.
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#### Conclusion
The ASUS Mothership is a powerhouse with exceptional cooling and thermal management, thanks to its innovative design. While it sacrifices portability due to its unique form factor and requires two bulky power bricks, its performance and thermals are unmatched in the gaming laptop category. Priced at nearly $10,000 AUD ($6,000 USD), it offers a premium experience for those willing to invest in top-tier hardware.
Let us know your thoughts on the Mothership's thermals in the comments below! For more detailed reviews and benchmarks, subscribe for upcoming content.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enthe asou smother ship flips the traditional laptop design on its head in order to prioritize cooling and thermals rather than having all the hardware under the keyboard it's all behind the screen on top of that we've got some seriously high-end specs here too so let's see just how hot this machine gets and if we can improve performance with further tweaks let's start off with the specs there's an 8 core 16 thread overclockable I $9.99 a dhk CPU r-tx 2080 graphics definitely no max-q here 64 gig of memory and dual channel and a 17.3 inch 4k 60 Hertz screen with g-sync you can find examples of other configurations and updated prices linked in the description the mothership is different compared to your standard laptop design all of the heat generating components like the CPU and GPU are behind the screen air is pulled in through the back and exhausted out of 4 vents to near each of the top corners all of which have thick heat sinks inside there are eight heat pipes which cover both CPU GPU and vrm and apparently a SUSE using liquid metal here so are expecting some good results this design improves airflow as fans aren't trying to suck in air with a small gap between the desk as is the case with a traditional laptop this does come at the expense of requiring a stand and meaning that you can only really use it on a flat surface the trade-off is improved thermals which are going to be needed for these top-end specs as you can probably imagine these specs need some serious power and that's why the mothership uses two 280 watt power bricks you can use one just fine for most tasks but for full performance when gaming you're going to need both the assess armory crate software allows us to disable in-video optimus 4g sync and i've done all of my testing with optimus disabled we also have the option of swapping between silent performance and turbo modes these are just things like power limits and perform overclocking and I've tested all modes out here you can swap between these modes through software or by using the function in f5 key the one with a fan-like home thermal testing was completed in an ambient room temperature of 21 degrees Celsius so expect different results in different environments at idle both the CPU and GPU were looking fine the rest of the results are from combined CPU and GPU workloads and a meant to represent worst-case scenarios as I ran them for extended periods of time the gaming results towards the upper half of the graph were tested by playing watchdogs turn as I find it to use a good combination of processor and graphics distress test results shown on the lower half of the graph are from running they're a 264 CPU stress tests with only the stress CPU option checked and the heav'n GPU benchmark at max settings at the same time to fully load the system weather gaming or under combined CPU and GPU stress test the temperatures will lower both in silent and performance modes as these restrict the power limits as we'll see soon turbo mode raises power limits and performance at the expense of additional heat and fan noise as you'll hear later by default turbo mode overclocked so late cause 24.9 gigahertz in my best case test I pushed this a little further to 5 gigahertz and applied a small under volt this didn't really help thermals in the stress tests and lowered them by 1 in this particular game these are the average clock speeds for the same tests just shown silent mode had the lowest clock speeds as the power limits were the lowest performance modes steps up clock speeds a bit and then turbo modes saw the largest increase the 99 a th K has a 4.2 gigahertz all core turbo boost speed by default so although the 4.9 gigahertz or Core overclock in turbo mode is not being hit we're still seeing excellent results and above best-case stock performance my additional under bolt helped improve things by over 100 megahertz more I couldn't push it too far as the CPU needed pretty much old power it could get at this speed these are the average TDP values during these same tests in silent mode we can see the CPU TDP is capped at 45 watts then 55 watts and performance murdered in turbo mode where captain 90 watts and this was our limitation preventing further performance I was not able to boost the TDP higher in Intel x2 you went under a combined CPU and GPU stress test 90 watts on the CPU seems to be the limit otherwise we can see the GPU is performing extremely well averaging 195 watts in the stress test and hitting 200 watts at times pretty crazy stuff here are the CPU clock speeds while under a CPU only stress test the results are higher as the nvidia graphics are now idle turbo mode was able to hit the 4.9 gigahertz all core overclocked and my manual tweaks got us to 5 gigahertz overall eight calls pretty impressive here's what we're looking at in terms of temperatures it looks like my extra 100 megahertz overclock to 5 gigahertz is being offset by the small undervolt this is showing when we look at the average TDP reported by Hardware infer the CPU was drawing around 115 Watts in both tests so higher than the 91 limit that was observed in a combined CPU and GPU load like gaming to demonstrate how this translates into performance I've got some Cinebench CPU benchmarks from these same modes for reference a good i7 97 58 can get 3000 points in this test so we're seeing significantly higher performance with the eight core I 9 in turbo mode as this overclocks all caused a four point nine gigahertz so how do these changes actually affect game performance I've tested a couple of games to find out shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested with the built-in benchmark at highest settings there wasn't really much difference at all my changes only gave us 1 FPS extra which makes sense given the under Voltas minor and 100 megahertz isn't really much at all especially when we're usually GPU bound here far cry 5 was tested with the built-in benchmark at Ultra settings and the results were similar in terms of average framerate what I took away from these tests was that we can still get high levels of performance from silo murdered and while not silent the fan was definitely quite a competitor murmured as you'll hear soon if you want to see more gaming benchmarks from the mothership check the card in the top right where I've tested 13 games at 1080p 1440 PE and 4k resolutions as for the external temperatures where you'll actually be putting your hands at idle the keyboard was cool normal laptops are around 30 degrees in this test but as there are no heat generating components underneath this one is a cool 20 the square does get to 30 they're looking around the back it's also around 30 degrees to with the stress tests going there's no major change to the keyboard though the screen is about 10 degrees hotter now at about 40 degrees looking on the back we're seeing around the mid 40s while the exhausts are obviously hotter still the screen was a little warmer than most others but as I saw at CES a Susa actually placing a metal plate between the heat generating components and the screen to shill dirt so they have obviously considered this here's what the fan sound like during these different tests at idle in silent mode the fan was definitely still audible with the stress test running in silent mode it was actually quieter than most other gaming laptops while still destroying them in performance as we saw earlier in performance mode it's close to many other gaming laptops and then in turbo mode it's very loud at around 59 decibels you definitely want to use some headphones hear the results from the asserts mothership are extremely impressive in turbo mode a seuss overclock or late cause of the 99 a thk CPU to 4.9 gigahertz and I was able to push this further to 5 gigahertz stable in a CPU only workload in combined CPU and GPU loads like gaming the CPU was kept to 90 watts at least long-term the power limit would dynamically change down from above 190 was where it eventually settled after about 15 minutes the ITX 20/80 also runs up to 200 watts which is also fairly crazy if you saw my gaming benchmark video it's no surprise that it's able to outperform the Alienware 51 m even though that has a desktop 9900 K CPU despite packing all of this hardware the mothership didn't get too hot either temperatures peaked at 90 degrees Celsius worst case for the CPU and 80 on the GPU ok sure that's getting a little warm but when you put it in perspective with the performance compared to other laptops it's very impressive this is obviously a result of the custom cooling solution by bringing air in through the back there's less resistance compared to a traditional laptop design which has less room to breathe combined with the 4 heat pipes for thick heat sinks liquid metal and two 12-volt fans this machine is well equipped to handle this hardware the downsides are of course that unique design and loud fan noise to be fair you can still get pretty good performance with lower fan speeds but maxed out they do get loud the custom design means you can't actually use this as a laptop it's basically an all-in-one desktop replacement that sits on your desk so it's less flexible in that regard it's still easier to pack up and travel with than many pcs though it is on the heavier side and there's definitely a price premium associated with this machine here in Australia we're looking at almost $10,000 for it which converts to around six thousand US dollars without taxes yikes these differences in performance shown aren't hard-and-fast rules there are different factors which will vary results primarily the temperature of the room you're running in application of thermal paste and even the specific hardware which comes down to the silicon lowering you may not be able to under bolt or overclock your hardware the same as me it depends on the chip and its specific power requirements so don't just blindly copy my settings and do some testing to find out where your stable point is for best results it may be possible to improve temperatures by swapping the thermal paste however considering a soos are using thermal Grizzly liquid metal that's going to be fairly unlikely raising fan speed and under vaulting are much easier for most people to do anyway and as we've seen these tweaks did help improve performance and temperatures with the mothership let me know what you thought about the thermals from the asou smother ship down in the comments and if you're new to the channel you'll definitely want to get subscribed for the upcoming full review to see everything this machine has to offerthe asou smother ship flips the traditional laptop design on its head in order to prioritize cooling and thermals rather than having all the hardware under the keyboard it's all behind the screen on top of that we've got some seriously high-end specs here too so let's see just how hot this machine gets and if we can improve performance with further tweaks let's start off with the specs there's an 8 core 16 thread overclockable I $9.99 a dhk CPU r-tx 2080 graphics definitely no max-q here 64 gig of memory and dual channel and a 17.3 inch 4k 60 Hertz screen with g-sync you can find examples of other configurations and updated prices linked in the description the mothership is different compared to your standard laptop design all of the heat generating components like the CPU and GPU are behind the screen air is pulled in through the back and exhausted out of 4 vents to near each of the top corners all of which have thick heat sinks inside there are eight heat pipes which cover both CPU GPU and vrm and apparently a SUSE using liquid metal here so are expecting some good results this design improves airflow as fans aren't trying to suck in air with a small gap between the desk as is the case with a traditional laptop this does come at the expense of requiring a stand and meaning that you can only really use it on a flat surface the trade-off is improved thermals which are going to be needed for these top-end specs as you can probably imagine these specs need some serious power and that's why the mothership uses two 280 watt power bricks you can use one just fine for most tasks but for full performance when gaming you're going to need both the assess armory crate software allows us to disable in-video optimus 4g sync and i've done all of my testing with optimus disabled we also have the option of swapping between silent performance and turbo modes these are just things like power limits and perform overclocking and I've tested all modes out here you can swap between these modes through software or by using the function in f5 key the one with a fan-like home thermal testing was completed in an ambient room temperature of 21 degrees Celsius so expect different results in different environments at idle both the CPU and GPU were looking fine the rest of the results are from combined CPU and GPU workloads and a meant to represent worst-case scenarios as I ran them for extended periods of time the gaming results towards the upper half of the graph were tested by playing watchdogs turn as I find it to use a good combination of processor and graphics distress test results shown on the lower half of the graph are from running they're a 264 CPU stress tests with only the stress CPU option checked and the heav'n GPU benchmark at max settings at the same time to fully load the system weather gaming or under combined CPU and GPU stress test the temperatures will lower both in silent and performance modes as these restrict the power limits as we'll see soon turbo mode raises power limits and performance at the expense of additional heat and fan noise as you'll hear later by default turbo mode overclocked so late cause 24.9 gigahertz in my best case test I pushed this a little further to 5 gigahertz and applied a small under volt this didn't really help thermals in the stress tests and lowered them by 1 in this particular game these are the average clock speeds for the same tests just shown silent mode had the lowest clock speeds as the power limits were the lowest performance modes steps up clock speeds a bit and then turbo modes saw the largest increase the 99 a th K has a 4.2 gigahertz all core turbo boost speed by default so although the 4.9 gigahertz or Core overclock in turbo mode is not being hit we're still seeing excellent results and above best-case stock performance my additional under bolt helped improve things by over 100 megahertz more I couldn't push it too far as the CPU needed pretty much old power it could get at this speed these are the average TDP values during these same tests in silent mode we can see the CPU TDP is capped at 45 watts then 55 watts and performance murdered in turbo mode where captain 90 watts and this was our limitation preventing further performance I was not able to boost the TDP higher in Intel x2 you went under a combined CPU and GPU stress test 90 watts on the CPU seems to be the limit otherwise we can see the GPU is performing extremely well averaging 195 watts in the stress test and hitting 200 watts at times pretty crazy stuff here are the CPU clock speeds while under a CPU only stress test the results are higher as the nvidia graphics are now idle turbo mode was able to hit the 4.9 gigahertz all core overclocked and my manual tweaks got us to 5 gigahertz overall eight calls pretty impressive here's what we're looking at in terms of temperatures it looks like my extra 100 megahertz overclock to 5 gigahertz is being offset by the small undervolt this is showing when we look at the average TDP reported by Hardware infer the CPU was drawing around 115 Watts in both tests so higher than the 91 limit that was observed in a combined CPU and GPU load like gaming to demonstrate how this translates into performance I've got some Cinebench CPU benchmarks from these same modes for reference a good i7 97 58 can get 3000 points in this test so we're seeing significantly higher performance with the eight core I 9 in turbo mode as this overclocks all caused a four point nine gigahertz so how do these changes actually affect game performance I've tested a couple of games to find out shadow of the Tomb Raider was tested with the built-in benchmark at highest settings there wasn't really much difference at all my changes only gave us 1 FPS extra which makes sense given the under Voltas minor and 100 megahertz isn't really much at all especially when we're usually GPU bound here far cry 5 was tested with the built-in benchmark at Ultra settings and the results were similar in terms of average framerate what I took away from these tests was that we can still get high levels of performance from silo murdered and while not silent the fan was definitely quite a competitor murmured as you'll hear soon if you want to see more gaming benchmarks from the mothership check the card in the top right where I've tested 13 games at 1080p 1440 PE and 4k resolutions as for the external temperatures where you'll actually be putting your hands at idle the keyboard was cool normal laptops are around 30 degrees in this test but as there are no heat generating components underneath this one is a cool 20 the square does get to 30 they're looking around the back it's also around 30 degrees to with the stress tests going there's no major change to the keyboard though the screen is about 10 degrees hotter now at about 40 degrees looking on the back we're seeing around the mid 40s while the exhausts are obviously hotter still the screen was a little warmer than most others but as I saw at CES a Susa actually placing a metal plate between the heat generating components and the screen to shill dirt so they have obviously considered this here's what the fan sound like during these different tests at idle in silent mode the fan was definitely still audible with the stress test running in silent mode it was actually quieter than most other gaming laptops while still destroying them in performance as we saw earlier in performance mode it's close to many other gaming laptops and then in turbo mode it's very loud at around 59 decibels you definitely want to use some headphones hear the results from the asserts mothership are extremely impressive in turbo mode a seuss overclock or late cause of the 99 a thk CPU to 4.9 gigahertz and I was able to push this further to 5 gigahertz stable in a CPU only workload in combined CPU and GPU loads like gaming the CPU was kept to 90 watts at least long-term the power limit would dynamically change down from above 190 was where it eventually settled after about 15 minutes the ITX 20/80 also runs up to 200 watts which is also fairly crazy if you saw my gaming benchmark video it's no surprise that it's able to outperform the Alienware 51 m even though that has a desktop 9900 K CPU despite packing all of this hardware the mothership didn't get too hot either temperatures peaked at 90 degrees Celsius worst case for the CPU and 80 on the GPU ok sure that's getting a little warm but when you put it in perspective with the performance compared to other laptops it's very impressive this is obviously a result of the custom cooling solution by bringing air in through the back there's less resistance compared to a traditional laptop design which has less room to breathe combined with the 4 heat pipes for thick heat sinks liquid metal and two 12-volt fans this machine is well equipped to handle this hardware the downsides are of course that unique design and loud fan noise to be fair you can still get pretty good performance with lower fan speeds but maxed out they do get loud the custom design means you can't actually use this as a laptop it's basically an all-in-one desktop replacement that sits on your desk so it's less flexible in that regard it's still easier to pack up and travel with than many pcs though it is on the heavier side and there's definitely a price premium associated with this machine here in Australia we're looking at almost $10,000 for it which converts to around six thousand US dollars without taxes yikes these differences in performance shown aren't hard-and-fast rules there are different factors which will vary results primarily the temperature of the room you're running in application of thermal paste and even the specific hardware which comes down to the silicon lowering you may not be able to under bolt or overclock your hardware the same as me it depends on the chip and its specific power requirements so don't just blindly copy my settings and do some testing to find out where your stable point is for best results it may be possible to improve temperatures by swapping the thermal paste however considering a soos are using thermal Grizzly liquid metal that's going to be fairly unlikely raising fan speed and under vaulting are much easier for most people to do anyway and as we've seen these tweaks did help improve performance and temperatures with the mothership let me know what you thought about the thermals from the asou smother ship down in the comments and if you're new to the channel you'll definitely want to get subscribed for the upcoming full review to see everything this machine has to offer\n"