Asus’ eSports gaming laptops slim down with Intel Coffee Lake CPUs

Asus ROG Strix Hero II & Asus ROG Strix Scar II

Asus is giving its affordable ROG Strix Scar II and Hero II gaming laptop lineups the thin-bezel screen treatment.

On day zero of Computex 2018, Asus announced refreshed versions of its 15-inch ROG Strix Scar Editon and ROG Strix Hero Edition gaming laptops will now feature nearly bezel-less screens. On top of slimming down the machines, Asus has also granted both of its eSports-focused machines new 1080p IPS panels rated with a 144Hz refresh rate and 3ms response time.

Under the hood, Asus has also upgraded both the Scar and Hero Edition with 8th generation Intel Coffee Lake processors – starting with an Intel Core i5-8300H that you can upgrade to a hexa-core Intel Core i7- 8750H. On the graphics side, both machines start with a Nvidia GTX 1060 (6GB GDDR5 VRAM), but only the Scar II can be optioned with a Nvidia GTX 1070 (8GB GDRR5 VRAM).

Onboard is also a minimum of 16GB of DDR4 RAM and an 128GB SSD, though, both can be upgraded to 32GB and 512GB, respectively. Either a traditional 1TB hard drive or 1TB SSHD hybrid hard drive, depending on your preference and SKU, round out the configuration options here.

The ROG Strix Hero will be available starting this later month for $1,699 (about £1,270, AU$2,240). Meanwhile, the SCAR II is available today for $1,999 (about £1,500, AU$2,640).

The Asus ROG Phone was also announced at Computex 2018 - to find out more about it, watch our hands-on video below:

Kevin Lee

Kevin Lee was a former computing reporter at TechRadar. Kevin is now the SEO Updates Editor at IGN based in New York. He handles all of the best of tech buying guides while also dipping his hand in the entertainment and games evergreen content. Kevin has over eight years of experience in the tech and games publications with previous bylines at Polygon, PC World, and more. Outside of work, Kevin is major movie buff of cult and bad films. He also regularly plays flight & space sim and racing games. IRL he's a fan of archery, axe throwing, and board games.

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