You may remember the monstrous Asus ROG GX700 laptop, which featured an external station for watercooling its components. A technical feat as impressive as it was cumbersome. But this idea doesn’t seem to be dead, since a Chinese laptop manufacturer has just presented a range equipped with the Intel Core i9-14900HX processor and an RTX 4080 or 4090: the MECHREVO Kuang Shi X and Kuang Shi 16 Super. At present, these models appear to be available only in China
Watercooling for laptops in 2024: is it really worth it?
What’s special is that users can choose whether to have the classic cooling system, or a watercooling system in which most of the “machinery” is integrated into an external component. For the sake of completeness, this is already something we find at XMG, which seems to mean that the 2 brands use the same subcontractor to design this system.
XMG’s version, however, is based on the AMD GPU RTX 3080 CPU cutter, and appears to be of older design. But the principle remains the same: if you want to run your notebook at full power, you need to connect the external watercooling system, incorporating radiator and pump, via tubes that attach to the rear of the PC. This is the same method used on the XMG Neo 15, which uses an external solution called XMG OASIS.
Although both brands feature a dual-fan cooling system inside, an auxiliary system in contact with the CPU and GPU can be connected to a water circuit. We can appreciate the technological curiosity, but objectively speaking, it’s hard to see any real use for this system. Admittedly, the components may be able to express themselves a little better when the external cooling system is connected, but again, at what cost? And of course, with this comment, we’re not just talking about the financial aspect, but also about the interest and the “gas factory” aspect of the solution once it’s fully connected.
