Cool Laptop Accessories You’ve Never Heard Of! - Related to accessories, ditched, ryzen, you’ve, ultimate

Cool Laptop Accessories You’ve Never Heard Of!

Let’s say that you get the majority of your work done on a laptop, and. You are looking for some cool accessories to compliment your everyday computing task. Well you are in luck because that is what this article is all about. We went on a shopping spree to find some of the coolest accessories that can come in clutch in certain situations.

Some of the items that you are about to see in this article are actually my personal favorites, and. A few are things that I use pretty much every day. If you are interested in any of these I will make sure leave links down below.

First up on the list is a simple webcam cover, it attaches to the laptop via an adhesive layer at the back. And its primary function is to cover your webcam when it’s not in use. When you need to use it for meetings so you can simply slide the cover to expose the camera and you are good to go. It’s only thick don’t have to worry about closing the laptop lid. I will say that with modern laptops coming with bezel-less displays you might actually have some trouble installing this given the lack of bezels for the adhesive to actually stick onto. A great example would be this Razer Book 13, there is just no way for me to install this webcam cover, and. The same goes for my Dell XPS 15. However, if you are on a slightly older machine or a Macbook then it works really. Really well.

Next up is this USB Type-C to USB Type-A adapter from Nanda. Now this is a 2-pack variant and you can pick it up in different colors, like space gray, silver, rose gold, and yes those are all colours meant to compliment Macbooks. But nothing stops us from using this on a Windows laptop because modern devices these days do come with Type-C ports that support either Thunderbolt 3 or USB Gen2 spec. The transfer speeds are exactly the same, so you are not losing anything in terms of bandwidth. If you have a laptop that only functions USB Type-C ports, something like the Dell XPS 17 that I personally use on a regular basis, then these adapters are excellent and. They will come in super handy.

This next item is something that I consider essential for laptops. It is a laptop and screen cleaner from Oxo, and it comes in this portable form factors so it’s easier to tuck into your backpack. On one side, you this retractable brush that can be used to dust off part of the keys where there is dust particles and debris and things like that. And then on the other side there is this little cap that covers a microfiber cloth, which can be used to simply wipe off the dust on the display. You can also use this to wipe off the smudges on your smartphone, so it’s such an awesome little tool to have as an everyday carry.

Next up is the SanDisk Dual Drive. Which is a flash drive that you can pick up in different storage sizes ranging from 16GB all the way up to 256GB. The main trick up its sleeve is the fact that it has a retractable USB Type-C connector on one end and a USB Type-A connector on the other. So this makes it easier to transfer files between a laptop/smartphone to a desktop or the other way around. Honestly, I just cannot emphasize how many times this has come in handy here at the studio. Especially when transferring data logs from thin-and-light laptops – which only feature USB Type-C for the most part – to my desktop. It’s such an awesome little thing, and the cool thing is that if you have a smartphone and you want to offload some of the data like photos and. Videos to your desktop then this is such a useful accessory. All you need to do is plug this into your smartphone, offload some of the data using the SanDisk Memory Zone app, pop it into your desktop, and then back it up.

Given that most of us work from home these days chances are you might also be working in a poorly lit environment. And given how crappy laptop webcams the quickest and cheapest way to improve your video quality is by adding more light. That is where this selfie LED ring light comes into play. There is a button right next to the port that cycles between different color temperatures to suit your style, and. If you hold that button, you can adjust the brightness level. Now there are a few things to keep in mind before you pull the trigger on something like this. First of all, if you have a laptop with thinner bezels, when you put this on it’s going to cover a portion of the display. Which might be a little annoying. Secondly, if you are wearing glasses like I am and you turn this thing on you are going to see the ring light reflect off those glasses. Which doesn’t look that pleasing. But if that’s okay with you, then I guess that shouldn’t be a problem. Other than that it does get the job done, especially if you are working in a low light environment need to add a little bit of light. You can also use it on a smartphone to take more effective quality selfies.

Next up we have the Jelly Comb wireless mouse. Now you might be asking yourselves “It’s a mouse, what’s so cool about it?” Well if you are tired of wireless mice that only come with a USB Type-A receiver I’ve actually got some good news for you. This mouse actually comes with a pretty low profile Type-C receiver so it’s perfect for thin laptops. As a bonus you also get a USB Type-A adapter, so you can leave that one on your desktop, leave a Type-C on your laptop, and then switch back and forth by just pressing the button on the mouse. Which works really, really well.

There is also a nice little compartment to store these adapters, which is convenient for travel. The mouse is powered by a AA battery, but keep in mind that it does not include one so you will have to arrange that separately. Also, there is no Bluetooth support, which is something that I can live with considering the price. As for the mouse itself, it’s pretty basic, the body is mostly made out of plastic and the primary left and right buttons feel mushy. In other words it’s the opposite of tactile.

Building on these developments, they actually market this as one of their attributes in the product webpage, which is interesting. There is a DPI shift button right beside the scroll wheel that cycles between 1000, 1500, 2400 DPI. And the tracking has been pretty good from my everyday usage. I wouldn’t use this for gaming particularly, but if you just want something for general use this will get the job done. Plus, really the ultimate reason to buy this mouse is that that Type-C receiver is just awesome.

This next item is something that I thought would give you a nice giggle. This is the elec Space wireless mouse shaped like a ladybug. When I saw this on Amazon I thought to myself that I needed to try it out to see if it’s actually any good, but. Also it’s so cute. Now this isn’t a Bluetooth mouse, it only uses a wireless receiver, and there is a nice little compartment where you can store that receiver. And also keep in mind that it’s powered by a single AAA battery. Now this isn’t a practical mouse by any stretch of the imagination because I experienced some weird liftoff distance issues. It was actually pretty horrible, so gaming or just even regular usage is trash. Also, there is a DPI shift button that is hidden in one of the black spots, which I think it’s well thought out. Overall though this is something that I would use as a prop, but definitely not as a main mouse.

Next up we have something called the Mushroom Stand – actually that’s what it says on the box – but. It’s really a portable laptop stand. Basically, you get these two risers that are magnetically attached to each other for portability, and. Once you detach them you can simply place them on your desk and then rest your laptop on top for a slightly elevated angle. This gives you get a more comfortable viewing and typing experience, plus it also helps with airflow, which is a nice bonus. Now the stands themselves are wrapped in the silicon material, so they do a pretty good job of holding the laptop in place. I will say that the stainless steel o-rings do tend to come off easily, so you are more effective off removing them and. Then using it as is. Other than that this is a nice little accessory to have if you want to get a more ergonomic laptop setup.

Moving on we have a USB-C charger from a RAV. What is really cool about this charger is that it elements two USB Type-C ports that support PD charging up to 65W, and. There are two USB Type-A ports that can be used to charge your smartphone or your tablet. Now there are a few things to keep in mind before you pull the trigger on something like this. The first thing is to make sure that your laptop actually supports PD charging. Most modern laptops do come with a Type-C port, but if you want to make sure that your laptop elements it you can just go to the manual or the product webpage for your respective laptop and. Just check to see if it supports PD. The Razer Book 13 that I have over here supports it up to 65W, so this works perfectly. The other thing to keep in mind is that the power output distribution can vary depending on how many ports you actually use at the same time. If are using both Type-C ports at once you are only going to get 45W and 18W respectively, or if you are using all the ports you won’t be able to get the full power delivery for your laptop.

Now the charger itself is pretty compact, it’s smaller than the OEM charger that Razer provides for the Book 13. So that is pretty cool. Keep in mind that you do not get a USB Type-C to Type-C cable in the box to charge your laptop. That is something that you will have to purchase separately. You also have to make sure that you can an E-MARK certified cable like this one that supports up to a 100W. So that’s something to keep in mind.

Next up we have a portable battery bank from RAV Power. Now the cool thing about this power bank is that it comes with a USB Type-C port that supports PD charging up to 60W. Which is nice if you want to charge your laptop when it’s inside your backpack. Now I wouldn’t necessarily use this if you are doing some intensive tasks, because it only supports 60W PD charging. and if you are using something that supports 65W you won’t be able to get the full potential of that CPU. It’s really meant for charging your laptop and not really running something off of it. I think it could do idle tasks if you want to just extend your battery life, but. Nothing intensive.

The last accessory that we have is a laptop fan cooler. Now this isn’t one of those traditional cooling pads where you get this large fan at the bottom. Instead it’s a side mounting solution that attaches to the side vent of your laptop. Out of the box you get the cooler itself, a USB cable to power the fan, a plastic plate for temporarily mounting the unit, a metal junction plate with 3M adhesive and foot pads for a permanent setup. And silicon shrouds for different sized laptops. Setting it up is pretty straightforward. All you have to do is find the right silicon shroud for your laptop that fits appropriately, attach it to the cooler, pop on the plastic plate at the bottom, place it next to the side vent. And then use the pre-installed clips to secure the cooler in place. After all of that you just have to plug in the included USB cable to power on the cooler.

The cooler itself comes with an LED display that exhibits the temperature in either Celsius or Fahrenheit, and. It can be adjusted by holding the M button for 3 seconds. There is also an auto setting that is enabled by default when you power on the cooler, it adjust the fan speeds based on temperatures, but. You can set the speeds manually by pressing the plus and minus button. The RPM range is between 2600-5000, which does get really, really loud. You seriously need some noise canceling headphones because it gets really loud.

One thing to consider is compatibility. Because this is not meant to work with every single laptop that’s out there in the market. It is only specifically designed with laptops with a clear side vent or a rear vent where you can attach the shroud. In fact, if you go through the product page of this cooler, it will tell you what kind of laptops it supports. Obviously you can’t use this on a thin-and-light laptop like the Razer Book 13, but. Anything that is ″ or 20mm and thicker will work perfectly fine. Basically, compatibility is certainly going to depend from one laptop to the other, so make that your laptop is listed on the product page.

I did end up testing this on an ROG Zephyrus GA502. It is a few years old so it’s a good representation of how this thing will actually work. Oddly, the side vent on my laptop is on the right hand side, so when you have it in this position the LCD display is going to be facing the other way around and. You can’t really see the settings. Now if you’re intrigued as to whether this fan actually works, let’s take a look at temperatures over time. As you can see without the cooler installed the CPU temperature spike all the way up to 87°C, and. Then a few minutes later they dipped back around 81°C. With the cooler installed and set to auto mode it still spiked to 87°C, but. As time goes on it dipped down to 79°C, which is a few degrees cooler than before. Now with the fan set to 3,800 RPM it brings down the CPU temps by a few more degrees. When you max out the RPM at 5,000 the CPU temps get even lower at around 75°C.

Now I was curious to see if this would affect clock speeds, but. That didn’t really happen. That makes sense because this cooler’s useful depends from one laptop to the other. If you have a laptop with a CPU that runs really hot and that throttles. Then something like this can help dissipate that heat and potentially help boost those clock speeds. However, in my case with the Ryzen 7 3750H doesn’t run super hot so it made no difference. This is a cool accessory for sure, and I love the fact that even on one of their product pages they made it look like the front grill of a Ferrari sports car. Overall it gets the job done and it’s a cool accessory, but I’m going to let you all make the call on whether you find this thing particularly useful.

That concludes my haul of cool accessories for your laptop. Let me know what you think and if you found any of these interesting. Like I mentioned earlier some of these items that you have seen are things that I use on a regular basis, and if you have come across any cool accessories let me know because I’m already on the lookout more stuff.

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The ULTIMATE Ryzen Gaming Laptop has Landed!

This is the ROG Zephyrus Duo SE by ASUS and it’s by far the most unique laptop that I’ve ever taken a look at. Let me explain why. Laptops are generally portable devices that enable you to take your work with you anywhere you go, and we have covered numerous laptops before. While many of them have surprised us by their amazing performance, especially with AMD’s new Ryzen 5000H series processors. Not a single one of them gave me that WOW factor because laptops are generally just laptops. Manufacturers were just going with the whole “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” approach until ASUS revealed the Dual Series.

Now this isn’t the first dual screen laptop, you may recall the Zenbook Duo, which was launched back in 2019, and ever since then clients have been giving valuable feedback to see what improvements could be made to refine the user experience, and. Here we are with another dual screen laptop from ROG.

This model also happens to have the Ryzen 9 5900HX and an RTX 3080, which is just incredible, it’s the best specs you can find right now on a laptop. Allow me to share my experience with the ROG Zephyrus Duo SE because there is a whole lot of new things to check out with this unique laptop.

Let’s start with that second screen. Which ASUS is calling ROG ScreenPad Plus. I’m sure you have a lot of questions like “How does it work?” and “Does it affect the way you traditionally use a laptop for productivity and gaming tasks?”. And most importantly “Is it a practical solution these days?”. Well the screen opens up at a 13 degree angle when you open the primary display and it’s integrated really well. What really surprised me was how they were able to maintain a relatively slim profile at just inches, roughly 20mm. This will easily fit your backpack, just like any other 15-inch laptop. To give you a little bit of context it’s only inches thicker than the ROG Zephyrus G15 that I checked out in recent times. However, you will have to compromise on the weight of this laptop because it’s around , which is 600 grams heavier than the G15, and I felt that right away when I started handling this machine.

The screen itself is pretty amazing. The resolution is 3840×1100, which is aligned perfectly with the 3840×2160 resolution on the primary screen. It’s really sharp, so when you move apps between 2 displays you won’t notice any weird scaling issues, it’s seamless and I absolutely love it. I also appreciate the matte texture, which cuts off a lot of the reflections, plus it functions touch support so you can interact with your content in a more lively manner.

There are a few configurations that you can go for the primary display in terms of resolution. The first option is 1080P at 300Hz, but keep in mind that it only covers 100% sRGB. The sample that I have over here runs 4K at 120Hz, and from my display analysis test it covers 100% sRGB, 99% Adobe RGB, and. 93% DCI-P3, so it’s an incredibly color accurate display with stunning visuals. If you are a content creator and a gamer this is probably the best of both worlds that you can ask for. Now I do wish it got brighter, because from my test it was only able to hit 380 nits of peak level. By default when you unplug this laptop the screen switches automatically to 60Hz to preserve battery, but. You can actually change it back to 120Hz through the settings. If you want to run it full time at 120Hz that’s obviously going to drain battery life.

Now if you are wondering about the color accuracy of that second screen, I did run my test. But it’s actually not as good as the primary display. As you can see it only covers 100% sRGB, 76% Adobe RGB, and 79% DCI-P3, which is still respectable in my opinion. Brightness levels are pretty much on par with the main display, I got around 380 nits at its peak setting, so it’s pretty consistent and that’s awesome.

What I’m going to do right now is jump into a quick demo for you to show some of the optimizations that ASUS has done with the second display and. Some creative applications. The first app that I want to showcase is Adobe Premiere Pro. Now ASUS’s Screen Expert utility, which is this control center that you’re seeing right over here, does support some of Adobe’s applications. The first thing I can do is adjust the time axis, so if I want precise control over where I want to make my cut I can certainly do that by just simply playing around with the knobs. Or if I want to zoom into my timeline or zoom out to out of my timeline, I can use this screen knob to do so in a really nice and seamless way. Which works really well.

You can actually customize and rearrange these by just going through the control panel. You can adjust the volume playback level, which is pretty awesome, and of course you have undo/redo. It’s handy and quite frankly it is a new workflow that you have to get used to, especially because with Adobe Premiere Pro you can actually program a lot of these keys on the keyboard itself to do a lot of these functions, but. Now you have that extra sort of versatility. Unfortunately, with this control panel you can’t necessarily map this to a specific command that you like for this particular program. It’s very limited, so that’s something to keep note of.

Next step we have Adobe Lightroom, and as you can see the layout has changed once again. But it honestly works really well with this application. I can zoom into the frame and zoom out and it works pretty well, but the cool thing is I can actually adjust the contrast. The exposure, the black levels, the level of saturation. I can also play around with the highlights, the shadows, white levels, and of course increase the clarity to just make things pop out. It all can be done on-the-fly, and it’s so seamless instead of fiddling around with these things using our mouse. This is honestly my favorite thing about this particular application. The only thing to watch out for is if you want adjust color temperature, there is no real-time adjustments. Once you play around with this your image is going to look like trash so I would highly stay away from that temperature slider. I think the same thing goes for tint as well.

This last application I want to showcase is DaVinci Resolve. I have enabled the dual screen layout by default, just because with DaVinci Resolve it actually spans across your secondary display. If you want to go through your imported footage you can simply do that on the second screen. You get a nice live preview and then you can drag-and-drop it right away into your main timeline, which is awesome. You also have your video transitions and your audio effects, and you can simply just drag-and-drop this into your timeline. It all works really, really well, it’s very seamless and I love this sort of integration.

I also want to quickly showcase what you can do with a Window management. If you have a bunch of windows in your main display and you want to maximize or snap them onto your secondary display, you can simply grab your window from the main display and. Then a pop-up menu will easily allow you can simply snap it onto your secondary display. Or you can span it across both screens. I should also mention that that pop-up menu that I just mentioned earlier will allow you to snap this into 3 different windows, so you can have 3 separate windows side-by-side and that allows you to multi-task in a neat way.

Now that you are aware of some of the ins and. Outs of the second screen, I just want to go over a few things. The first thing being the durability of the second screen and that hinge. It’s actually pretty strong and it doesn’t flex when you are interacting with the display. Underneath that there are a few intake fans for cool air to get to the components inside, and. Then it exhausts out the back and the sides. Just keep in mind that when you are closing the display keep clear of anything that might get in the way of the second screen and. The body.

There are a few things that I also want to point out regarding the second screen. The first thing being that 13 degree angle, I wish it was able to elevate just a little bit more because when I’m looking down at the screen I actually noticed some real fatigue on my neck because I’m constantly looking down. So that’s certainly something to keep note of. If you can find a laptop stand that can elevate the laptop, then it will be pretty nice because you now have both screens within your peripheral vision so it’s easier to switch back and forth.

With all of that out of the way. I think it’s time to discuss the other areas that get affected by this second screen implementation. The first one is obviously the keyboard, ASUS had to shift it all the way at the bottom to make room for the display and. That instantly affects the typing experience. This is especially true if you take it everywhere you go. There isn’t any room for your palms to rest, so when you have this on your lap it’s certainly going to cause a great level of discomfort. Not only but the trackpad is positioned to the bottom right-hand side, and. It’s really small to a point where you are just forced to use a dedicated mouse. Now they do include a palmrest in the box for a advanced typing position, but. It’s only practical if you use this thing on a desk 90% of the time. By the way, this layout will take up a larger portion of your desk so if you are working within compact spaces then this whole thing is going to be a problem.

The keys themselves are pretty good, the travel distance is shorter compared to the ROG Zephyrus G15. But it gets the job done. They keyboard aspects AURA RGB lighting, and you can adjust the lighting effects through the Armoury Crate software. There is a numpad integrated within the trackpad, and you can enable that by simply holding the integrated button in the top-left corner. The keys above that can be used to activate Armoury Crate, disable the second display, and. Of course powering on the laptop.

Now if you look at the overall design of the Duo SE I really like how stealth it looks. The top lid is wrapped with a combination of magnesium and aluminium compound, and it does a really good job of resisting fingerprints. This is honestly by far the best finish that I’ve ever come across on a laptop. I think ASUS just knocked it out of the park.

Port selection is pretty respectable for the Duo SE. On the left-hand side you have power-in, audio jack, and a microSD card reader, which honestly doesn’t make any sense for a laptop in this price range, especially if it’s geared towards creators because a lot of them shoot with cameras that take regular SD cards. Including myself. Switching over to the right-hand side, you get a USB Gen2 Type-C port, which also supports PD charging up to 100W and DisplayPort output. You also have two USB Gen2 Type-A ports. Interestingly enough, there are a few more ports at the back, like an RJ45 jack, another USB Gen2 Type-A port, and an HDMI port. I just wish that ASUS relocated the power connector over to the back, because it would have made cable management a lot easier and you wouldn’t have to sort of extend the cable all along the side, which does get a little frustrating at times.

As for gaming on dual screens. I didn’t really find anything beneficial about having both on at the same time, other than having a messenger app enabled that actually ended up being distracting to be honest. I wish the games I played a lot put player stats and other info on the lower screen. But I’m hoping that ASUS can work with some developers to make that happen. I should also mention that this laptop does not come with a webcam, for me that is kind of unacceptable considering how expensive this thing costs, but I’m going to let you make the call on whether or not it’s a deal breaker or not. That’s totally up to you.

In terms of upgradability, you have quick access to one memory slot, which as you can see is already populated. Maximum supported memory is only up to 32GB. There are two slots, which are also populated on my sample, and ASUS has configured these drives in a RAID-0 setup.

The Duo SE has a 90Wh battery, and. It does face some challenges when it comes to battery life. The extra power overhead needed for 2 screens and the GPU resources to run them means pretty poor battery life with both turned on. However, if you turn the secondary screen off things do improve a bit for web browsing. Switching to a heavier load, and you can see the negative effects of ASUS using a higher wattage Ryzen CPU. Even with the screen off and the processor being throttled into a lower performance mode it won’t even hit 2 hours. If you are looking for a combination of battery life, portability, and performance, the G15 is a much advanced option. The Duo SE really just focuses on raw performance.

Before I get into the performance results of the Duo SE. I do want to quickly talk about pricing. Now obviously given how feature rich this laptop expect a very hefty price tag. It starts at $2,200 USD, and for that you get a Ryzen 7 5800H, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD. A 1080P 300Hz display, and an RTX 3060. The sample that I have is fully loaded and it comes with a Ryzen 9 5900HX, 32GB of RAM, 2TB of SSD storage, a 4K screen. An RTX 3080, and it goes for $3,700 USD. And you know what’s really disappointing? Even if you had that kind of money burning in your pocket you can’t physically buy one. At least at the time I’m making this video because it’s out of stock everywhere. We did reach out to ASUS to see what this whole situation is all about, and they did tell us that they are planning on restocking some of these samples, but right now this thing is just really hard to find.

Now there could be a few reasons behind this. Either AMD is scrambling trying to produce enough of these processors, or since people can’t buy components for their gaming desktops they are leaning towards buying gaming laptops. And I hate to say this but crypto miners are buying these laptops too because the Duo SE has a super fast GPU, and. That means excellent profitable hashrates. It’s all really frustrating, I totally get it, but we are living in a very sad reality, especially when it comes to the crazy component shortages.

With all of that taken into account. Let’s take a look at performance. At first glance these results might not look all that impressive, but we do have to remember 2 things. First, the Duo SE is packing a higher wattage Ryzen 5000 series CPU than any other laptop we have seen so far. Secondly, Zen 3 and even Zen 2 were always designed to operate at higher temperatures than Intel chips. So what might look like a worrying temperature actually isn’t. Clock speeds and performance in Turbo Modes are pretty crazy with both leveling out above 4GHz under an all-core load. Performance does have a bit of a wave-like profile, but there is nothing concerning here at all. The power profiles run from just 20W in Silent Mode all the way up to a constant 87W in Turbo Mode. Which is basically as much as desktop CPUs suck down these days. Performance Mode has the best of both worlds, which is why we use it in all of our testing, so let’s see how that leads into performance.

As I go through these results. It’s pretty obvious that running the CPU at such high clock speeds has some serious benefits for performance. in most apps this is simply the fastest laptop we have ever tested. Sure, there are some situations where it doesn’t come out on top, but it’s still very much near desktop level performance. The only real areas where the flagship last-gen Intel CPU win out are in Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve. Both of those seem to really like the way Intel’s cores handle lightly threaded workloads.

Switching things over to the RTX 3080, and. It looks like we will finally see what happens with this GPU when it’s pushed to over 115W. I mean just look at this thing, an average of 117W in Performance Mode and. 124W in Turbo Mode all in a pretty slim chassis is amazing. Silent Mode cuts power to just 90W. Now that higher input power leads to clock speeds that are right near the top of NVIDIA’s RTX 3080 specs. What is more interesting to me is how these silent setting eats down about 90W, but only hits 990MHz. I would have expected at least a bit higher speeds for that kind of power. When you look at temperatures, Performance Mode gets pretty toasty around 96°C, but it is also obvious ASUS is sacrificing thermals for frequencies here. And Silent Mode remains pretty cool too. Even though Turbo Mode has the highest speeds and power input it also gets the lowest temps, and that is because in Performance Mode the system actually allows temperatures to go higher. But that also means lower fan speeds. While in Turbo Mode it just goes all the way out and it gets really loud to be honest. Silent Mode is pretty much whisper quiet, which is what you would expect for that mode.

Gaming performance displays what we have come to expect from the Zephyrus Duo SE, it’s the fastest thing on the block in most situations. But it’s still amazing to see the last generation RTX 2080 Super keeping up so well. Personally, I think this might be due to the CPU bottlenecking at 1080P, but we will just have to see what happens as time goes on and. As we test more laptops with high resolution displays. Speaking of which, the Duo SE still delivers super playable frame rates at 1440P. Which is good news for anyone who wants to push the internal display a bit further. This is the first gaming laptop we have tested with a native 4K display and these results are almost desktop level numbers. Right across the board this thing doesn’t have a hard time playing games at 4K.

So the Duo SE has pretty much everything, insane performance, a super unique screen layout. Good connectivity, and some really interesting elements as well. But are there sacrifices to get that super cool design? Absolutely, I mean the keyboard and trackpad are in a super awkward position, the secondary screen never hits an optimal angle for viewing, and. The price is just really, really expensive. The benefits of a dual screen laptop really aren’t that great for gaming, but if you are a content creator it definitely comes in handy. Like I mentioned in the beginning of this review, I think the Zephyrus Duo SE is one of the most unique laptops that I have ever taken a look at. I think it applies to a pretty niche market and there is nothing wrong with that provided that you can actually find one. On that note, let us know what you think about the ROG Zephyrus Duo SE, are you impressed by its performance and. Also what do you think about that second screen? Is there a particular workflow that you might consider really beneficial?

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I Ditched Water Cooling for THIS!

I knew there would be risks involved when working with a water-cooled machine for my main production station. Especially because whenever you have to swap something out it’s not a simple procedure. However, don’t get me wrong it was a fantastic learning experience. It was super fun working with Hans-Peter and Corsair on my HydroX system, but whenever I experienced any hardware issues it wasn’t a simple fix.

Many times I have had iCUE just completely stop working as it should, so all the fan RPM would be completely out of balance to what I set or the lighting would be completely all over the place, and. This is not something I want to deal with when I’m working on an edit and it’s deadline time. I need something stable.

The clogging of the blocks was an issue because they are transparent all that inside gunk stuff is visible. Really the main challenge here with hardline tubing was the fact that I was receiving so many Blue Screens of Death (BSODs) every single day while editing and while working that I couldn’t just swap out the GPU, I couldn’t just tinker with the hardware to figure out what was the problem because that would require so much extra downtime.

I want to go back to the basics, simple air cooling, no riser cables. Just a GPU on the motherboard, a CPU tower heatsink, and we are good to go. I’m still sticking with AMD, really proud of that for my production stuff, but now with the new X570 platform and a Ryzen 5800X. By the way, the 5800X is regularly restocked and is available to purchase right now. So come along this journey with me, let’s rebuild my editing machine, reuse some components because everything is kind of crazy right now in terms of component availability and. Keep it simple.

Now you just saw how many steps it took to swap out the graphics card from the water-cooled machine. That amount of steps and time was equal to actually build this whole new machine, so imagine needing to swap out the CPU cooler, swap out storage. Or just access the GPU for some reason, or do more cable management. That is the reason why I’m leaving water cooling and going back with air for simplicity sake. Also big thanks to all the partners and be quiet! for supporting us on this project, I am very happy with the system upgrade.

Let me tell you a little about the finished machine, I wanted it to follow a clean white and. Black colour scheme with a little touch of colour via those custom cables from CableMod. You know if you can’t buy a GPU might as well buy pretty cables for one, right? They also have built-in cable combs, which is excellent. I set the illumination of all my hardware to light blue, which looks fantastic. Now we all know that the 5800X is one hot Ryzen because of its core layout and the amount of voltage AMD’s feeding into it, so that brings me to the Shadow Rock 3. But in white. It’s well-priced, fits the theme perfectly, requires none of the maintenance that I was experiencing with my water cooling machine, and most importantly it cools the CPU super well at a lot lower noise levels than most all-in-one coolers, at least in my own workflow.

Having expressed that. I don’t push the hardware for the editing machine to its max because doesn’t need to be. DaVinci Resolve uses the GPU just fine, which is why the RTX 2080 Ti is so critical this build. I wanted to reuse it because it’s a fantastic GPU, even though it’s multiple years old now. While on water I was hitting frequencies of 2GHz no problem on the RTX 2080 Ti, but I don’t need it for Resolve. I just want it to be stable without any crashes whatsoever because the downtime on the ThreadRipper machine that I was experiencing was just unpleasant, and. Not something that I am tolerate long-term. Hopefully it’s the exact opposite with this new be quiet! machine. The case here is the Silent Base 802, which is large, roomy, and super quiet out of the box. I even wanted to install these white Shadow Wings fans to match the colour theme, both with the CPU heatsink and replace the 140mm fans on the case, but they all have slightly lower RPM and I wanted to leave a little bit of headroom for maximum airflow if needed, especially since I’m running the solid front panel instead of the included mesh to eliminate any noise.

I also appreciate the physical fan control on the case, this is something that I normally have to do in the software. To make sure my curve is adjusted based on CPU temperature, but here it’s kind of cool to have the little adjustments. I can go low, medium, high, depending on what I’m doing, and also obviously Auto if you have this connected to a PWM controller. The power supply is probably the most overkill thing in the system, are they even legal at 1500W? But jokes aside I had this available from doing ad spots and decided to use it here.

Now the irony behind this machine was to build it so I avoid headaches in the future of downtime, but. The motherboard, the ASUS X570 arrived wit a BIOS that didn’t support Ryzen 5000 series CPUs. Luckily I had a Ryzen 3000 series Ryzen CPU in a separate machine that I swapped out, inserted it into the X570 motherboard, updated the BIOS. And only then was I able to put back the 5800X and boot up this machine. One of the reasons why I have wanted this X570 platform is because of the PCIe Gen4 storage. Which I want for all my production stuff because the speeds are absolutely insane. However, another disappointment with this X570 motherboard is that it does not have an internal USB-C front panel connector, so that is kind of wasted on the enclosure.

Now just to tease us – I wasn’t even going to bring this up – ASUS sent me an RTX 3080 in white, which would have been a perfect upgrade for this build. But it’s not something I get to keep because the GPUs have so low little availability worldwide. Nevertheless I don’t really need the RTX 3080 for video production, I’m perfectly fine with sticking to the RTX 2080 Ti, it’s been super stable. Especially with those Studio drivers. Now even though I have a dedicated machine for gaming, it’s kind of nice to have this hybrid machine with a 5800X, which is perfectly fine for any games that I throw out at it. Especially with RTX 2080 Ti. With the previous ThreadRipper build my temperatures were absolutely under control thanks to the water cooling, but the CPU just wasn’t as fast as I wanted it to be for certain games that I do have installed on my main machine, so it’s time to move on to something slightly faster and that can serve a dual purpose.

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