This is the 2022 ROG Strix SCAR 17 with a 12th Gen Intel Core processor and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 30 series laptop graphics card. I have been waiting for this ever since the official announcement a few weeks back. With Intel finally moving away from Skylake architecture, the 12th Gen desktop CPUs has shown excellent performance increment and I certainly hope to see the same on the laptop counterpart.
Video Review
2022 ROG Strix SCAR 17
Design
Starting with the design. The SCAR 17 got a minor facelift for this generation. While the overall look and structure may look the same as its predecessor, what really has changed is the lid design. Gone is the dot matrix ROG motif wall-of-text and replaced with a strip of ROG logos.
The same strip is replicated on the keyboard deck as well, separating the opaque and translucent parts. The plastic keyboard deck will show smudges easily which means you will have to wipe it more often than you’ll like.
The left display hinge cover is removable because it is user customisable.
ROG has included an additional two pieces of hinge covers and you can even download the 3D template to make your own hinge cover.
For those who love RGB, the Strix SCAR is the laptop for you.
Apart from the standard per-key-RGB keyboard, you’ll find more RGB illumination including the RGB strip that covers about 40% of the bottom chassis, and another RGB strip under the display, at the edge of the lid and the ROG logo as well.
There are pros and cons to this kind of hinge design. Limiting the hinge opening angle means you can place the IO ports not just at the side, but also at the rear side of the laptop chassis.
The right side is kept exclusively for hot air exhaust and Keystone 2. It is an NFC-enabled token that you can pair with a specific user profile to it. So whenever you dock the token, it will load the profile. Through the armoury crate app, you can enable shadow drive to keep some of your private files safe.
ROG decides to stay with the default rubber-dome keyboard for the 2022 SCAR 17 after a failed experiment with the optical-mechanical for 2021 Scar 17. There are two reasons why that keyboard failed – number 1, it has a horrible key layout; number 2, they went with a clicky tactile switch instead of a linear switch. Stop giving gamers clicky tactile switches! So I’m glad that they switched back.
The Glass trackpad has a large tracking surface area, excellent to be used for normal web browsing and navigation. The clicking mechanism is one of the best out there for a Windows laptop.
Display
There are two screen variants available for the SCAR 17. Either Full HD 360Hz or Quad HD 240Hz.
Personally, I think the QHD 240Hz screen makes more sense for 99% of the users out there. First of all, I doubt most of you could tell the difference between 360Hz and 240Hz. Secondly, even if you can tell them apart, why would you need a 360Hz screen? Thirdly, QHD has sharper and crispier details compared with FHD.
On top of that, the colour reproduction is excellent, close to 100% DCI-P3. I did not expect this because most of the time high refresh rate displays have subpar colour reproduction. What is missing here is NVIDIA G-SYNC for the internal monitor, so what you get is Adaptive-Sync.
Something noteworthy is ROG finally introduced the MUX switch to the SCAR 17. Through the Armory Crate, you can choose whether you want to use Hybrid GPU or just the dedicated NVIDIA GPU. There are pros and cons, which the hybrid will allow longer battery life while the dedicated mode allows a higher performance while gaming. By the way, you will need to restart the computer if you want to switch between the two modes.
Performance & Gaming
Our review sample has the top-of-the-line configuration:
- Intel Core i9-12900H
- NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti 16GB GDDR6 (150W Max)
- 2x 16GB DDR5-4800
- 2TB NVMe SSD PCIe 4.0
- 17.3-inch 1440p IPS 240Hz 3ms Adaptive-Sync
- Wi-Fi 6E (802.11ax) + Bluetooth 5.2
- WIndows 11 Home
This configuration will set you back for a jaw-dropping RM16,999. Let’s see how it performs.
Starting with the CPU – The Intel Core i9-12900H is one of Intel’s top-of-the-line laptop CPUs built on the Alder Lake platform. It has 6 performance cores with hyper-threading and 8 efficiency cores, a total of up to 20 threads. The base power is 45W and it can turbo up to 115W as long as the cooling is capable of handling the extra heat.
This is simply the most powerful laptop CPU we have ever tested, no matter single core or multi-core performance. This is also my first time getting a 10k score for the PCMark10.
Shifting our focus to the graphics card, the 2022 SCAR 17 have two options for you to choose from, either an RTX 3070 Ti or an RTX 3080 Ti like the one we have in the studio.
Unfortunately, we don’t have any past samples with 150W RTX 3080, so what we can compare is with the Predator Triton 500 SE’s RTX 3080 at 110W. With the unfair advantage, the 3080 Ti leads the synthetic benchmark as well as gaming performance, especially with the higher FPS when gaming with DLSS turned on.
Long story short, the RTX 3080 Ti Laptop is the most powerful mobile GPU money can buy, especially the one with 150W TGP. and that brings us to the conclusion why I’m discouraging you from buying this particular model.
Conclusion
It’s the price. As I mentioned earlier, ASUS MALAYSIA is offering the SCAR 17 in two different configurations, one with RTX 3080 Ti + 2TB SSD and another one with RTX 3070 Ti + 1TB SSD. Both of them share the same CPU Core i9-12900H and the same 32GB RAM configuration. However, the price gap is almost RM6000. RM10999 vs RM16999. I think you understand what I’m trying to say right?
If you got extra money to burn for the best out of the best, sure go ahead, otherwise, I would strongly suggest you get the RTX 3070 Ti variant because it is value for the money. With the RTX 3070 Ti running at 150W max TGP, you are not sacrificing a lot on the performance yet are capable of utilising the most out of the chip.
All in all, ASUS has done all the right decisions with the design of the 2022 ROG Strix SCAR 17. I can easily recommend this to anyone looking for a powerful 17-inch gaming laptop. The cooling has been improved significantly from the last year’s model whereby the CPU and GPU are well balanced despite they pushed the GPU to the 150W range.
Where to buy? (Affiliate links)
- Amazon US: https://amzn.to/3EtyYtO
- Lazada: https://invol.co/clag1j6
- Shopee: https://invol.co/clag1jh
