Creative pros and gamers worldwide rejoice, you can now buy the Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 X3D and get it on your lap tomorrow (with optional next day delivery before noon)! Well, that’s if you live in UK where popular online retailer AO.com says that you can get it for a mere £3,649 (about USD4,470, AUD6,940), a price that sadly doesn’t include delivery but includes 20% sales tax.
Where else is it on sale? Sadly, those looking to buy it in the US have to wait: it is still on preorder with no ETA on delivery date, almost two months after it was launched. I checked the laptop SKU (G733PYV) and the following US-based sites have it listed: GentechPC, Shidirect, ShopBLT, Connection and Provantage. Surprisingly, none of the big names (Amazon, Newegg, Bestbuy, Walmart) had it in stock. It is a mixed picture for Europeans; not available at Lambdatek, LDLC, Digitec, PC21, Otto, Materiel, Radium and EasyNotebooks but available from Alternate, FNAC, Darty, Bol, Boulanger and Auchan at the time of writing. Australian readers can also buy it from the likes of JW. Bookmark this page if you want to keep track of stock.
Why is it such a big deal? The Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 X3D contains the world’s fastest processor in a laptop (the AMD Ryzen 9 7945HX3D) and the world’s most powerful laptop GPU (the Nvidia Geforce RTX 4090, 175W version). Combine the two together and add Windows 11 Pro and you get a blazingly-fast gaming notebook that doubles as a mobile workstation, probably the most quickest one ever (that’s of course if you discount transportable 128-core monsters like the EPYC-infused MediaWorkstation A-2XP). Fair to say that it is likely to feature in buying guides that feature use cases requiring sheer firepower. Best laptops for video editing and 3D modelling come to mind.
How good is it? TechRadar hasn’t reviewed the Asus ROG Strix Scar 17 X3D yet (we reviewed the 7945HX version though) but others have: Future sites (Anandtech, Tomshardware, Windowscentral), TheVerge, Notebookcheck, Dexerto and Hothardware.
Anything else? It comes with 32GB DDR5 (4800MHz, not 5200MHz), a 17-inch QHD display, 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD (from SK Hynix) with the option to add a second one, Mediatek Wi-Fi 6E and plenty of connectors (2.5 GbE, four USB ports, HDMI etc), all in a chassis with a footprint that’s a tad smaller than an A3 sheet and weighing 3Kg. Check out the rest of the specs here. It’s not a perfect laptop by any means though. It has only two memory modules (I’d like four ideally to push its memory capacity to 192GB). It still has a 720p webcam, no USB 4 (boo) and at least one reviewer reported coil whining while gaming in silent mode. Of course, this being a gaming laptop, battery life is not going to be spectacular, not helped by the fact that it uses a 90WHr battery rather than a 99.9WHr one as found in the MSI GT77.
The last word? From Monica Chen of The Verge, “When testing this (the Scar 17 X3D), I was reminded of the time when I was testing the ROG Zephyrus G14 back in 2020. I remember checking those numbers again and again. AMD had shattered our understanding of what a gaming laptop could do. And I think it may have just done that again.”
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