reviews Tes Ted. Reviewed. veRdic Tized
october 2007 MAXIMUMPC 75
enough power to go from the kitchen
to the patio or from the living room to
the bedroom.However, the run time isn’t as poor
as we initially expected. We looped the
punishing 3DMark06 test for 80 minutes
before the battery went flat. With a desk-
top CPU and 8-series GPU onboard, that
ain’t half bad.
What’s bad is the noise. The C90S is
able to run a toasty desktop processor
by using a massive four-fan “Turbo” vent.
With the proc overclocked to 2.93GHz
and running a CPU-intensive encode, all
four fans spool up to unbelievably loud
levels. You can set the notebook to quiet
mode, which gives it the acoustics of a
normal notebook, but you can’t overclock
as much.
In the end, the C90S is clearly flawed.
Under a heavy load, it’s loud and hot. The
low- to midrange 8600M GT part is also
pretty lackluster, considering this rig is sup-posed to compete with gaming notebooks.
However, we’d be lying if we said Asus’s
concept behind the C90S doesn’t have
potential. With a slightly larger chassis and
support for quad-core procs and a faster
GPU, we think there’s something here.
—Gordon Mah UnG$1,600, http://www.asus.comasus c90sbrUce lee
Laptop with an upgradeable
CPU and GPU now a reality.brUce banner^6
Won’t take a quad-core
CPU; ships with a midrange
GPU; loud!don’t rub your eyes, you’re seeing an
lGa775 desktop socket in a notebook
and a user-changeable graphics card.removing a single panel provides
access to just about every compo-
nent you would want to swap out
in the c90S.