Asus ROG Strix GA15 first impressions: Asus nails design, customisation options for this nimble gaming machine

Asus' Republic of Gamers is the company's flagship gaming brand. Products under this label are usually filled with flashy things like RGB, eye-catching colours, the conspicious logo or the liberal use of sharp and soft edges in tandem to get that gamer-ness out of the products.

The ROG Stix GA15 is not much different, though it does get some extra points for being more practical in design. Here are our first impressions for the device Asus describes as the more 'approachable' one, and one of the first in the line of AMD's Zen 2-powered mainstream OEM gaming desktops:

In the box

The ROG Strix GA15 comes in a moderate-sized box weighing around 6 kilos. Depending on your configuration, you will get anywhere up to 16 GB of RAM paired with a Ryzen 7 3700X and a GeForce 1660Ti. Asus has reserved the RTX line of cards for the bigger GA35, though why they could not put in a 2060 is a little puzzling.

The box contains the PC itself, along with a companion box containing a spare SATA cable, a warranty card and a user manual. Pretty standard stuff, nothing too fancy or too empty.

Asus ROG Strix GA15 Specifications

Our review unit came decked out with a pretty impressive list of specifications, with a Ryzen 7 3700X paired with a GeForce GTX 1660Ti, 16 GB of DDR4 RAM running at 3200 MHz (author's note: The memory configuration is a little problematic on our unit in that it's configured in single-channel, though Asus assures us they will have more SKUs with those issues resolved down the line), and an 1 TB Intel 660p series PCIe NVMe SSD.

Here are the full specifications as provided by Asus:

Asus ROG Strix GA15 Design

Asus clearly has put a lot of gamer-y aesthetics in the centre of the practically-focused design philosophy for the GA15. The chassis is big enough to fit a full ATX sized board, though it is fitted with a micro-ATX B450 board.

The chassis has a glass side panel. It's plenty tough, though it can get warm to the touch in extended gaming sessions.

The chassis has a number of holes on both the front and the top, along with grills covering the openings to provide support, though it does lack dust filters.

The extra features on the chassis is the presence of a top handle for easy mobility and a magnetic flip tab to hang headphones on. It's a pretty nifty addition, with actual practical usability.

Asus ROG Strix GA15 Customisation

Asus bundles the GA15 with their Armoury Crate application, which allows easy control of things like performance profiles in-OS, rather than going into BIOS to tinker with things. We still do recommend using the BIOS for more fine-grain control of things like fan curves and memory timings, but this is for more advanced or seasoned users who have better understanding of how settings can influence performance or stability.

The Amroury Crate also has the Aura app integrated for those of you who like to play around with RGB lighting to make it more appealing or better meld with your apps.

The application can certainly take a little getting used to, though it's not a sharp curve by any means.

Overall, the GA15 is a competently designed machine. It looks pretty, is light enough to be carried around for a LAN party and has impressive specifications, with some caveats that we will explore in our full review.

Watch out for DH's full review of the Asus ROG Strix GA15, coming soon.

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