New Aorus Gaming Rigs Add Pascal GPUs, Colorful Keyboards

Gigabyte's Aorus line of gaming notebooks is one of my favorites. No matter the size, the company manages to squeeze some seriously powerful specs into a ridiculously slim chassis. And now that Nvidia's new 10-series GPUs are here, Gigabyte is doing it again with the launch of the Aorus X5 v6 and X7 v6 which are now available on Newegg starting at $2,399.

Just like its predecessor, the Aorus X5S v5, the 15.6-inch X5 v6 has a crazy-slim 5.5 pound, 0.9-inch thick chassis. The 17.3 inch X7 DT v6 and X7 v6 are also pretty svelte for their weight class at 7.1 pounds with a 0.9~1-inch thickness. Each of the laptops will be clad in Aorus' sleek, all-black aluminum design.

Each of the laptops is equipped with an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070 GPU, making them ready and able to support virtual reality headsets like the Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. Both laptops will also have overclocked Intel Core i7-6820HK CPUs with 16GB of RAM. Storage-wise, you can choose between 256GB and 512GB SSDs which are paired with a 1TB 7,200-rpm HDD. In addition, Aorus has finally caught up to the competition, by offering customizable backlighting on its RGB fusion keyboard.

The biggest differentiator between the Aorus X5 v6 and X7 v6 lies in their displays. The x5 v6 will be outfitted with a 2880 x 1620 panel or you can go for the 1920 x 1080 iteration with a blistering 120Hz refresh rate. Fans of the X7 will be stuck with only a 1080p option until the 2560 x 1440 (120 Hz refresh rate) launches in November.

Aorus has a few more tricks up its sleeve with the 13.9-inch X3 Plus v6 a. Currently available for pre-order for sometime in November, the X3 Plus v6 (starting at $1,999) will come equipped with an overclocked Core i7 CPU, 3200 x 1800 display and an Nvidia GTX 1060 GPU. Any way you slice, gamers that don't want to sacrifice performance in the name of portability will have a lot to choose from this holiday season.

Sherri L. Smith
Editor in Chief

Sherri L. Smith has been cranking out product reviews for Laptopmag.com since 2011. In that time, she's reviewed more than her share of laptops, tablets, smartphones and everything in between. The resident gamer and audio junkie, Sherri was previously a managing editor for Black Web 2.0 and contributed to BET.Com and Popgadget.