Asus ROG TUF FX504 Gaming Laptop Review – The total Value for money beast

Asus ROG series is undoubtedly the most favorite laptop series of the gamers and more importantly, we’ve reviewed a few of them on our websites like Asus ROG GL552, Asus G20 CPU and many more. I will say the ROG series has almost changed the market value for the Asus and competitors have put into the market for dedicated only for gamers laptop and other peripherals. This is the review for the Asus ROG TUF FX504, which is meant for the extreme gaming.

Specification of the Asus ROG TUF FX504

• Intel Core i7 8750H Coffee lake 14nm CPU Clocked at 2.2 Ghz
• Model Number of laptop: FX504GE 
• 8GB DDR4 2666 MHz RAM (expandable upto 32GB)
• 128GB PCIe Gen 3 SSD
• 1TB 5400 RPM SATA HDD (FireCuda)
• Nvidia GTX 1050Ti with 4GB DDR5 VRAM
• 15.6 Inch 120Hz 1920×1080 Display (94% NTSC Display)_
• HD Webcam
• Integrated WiFi 802.11ac (2×2) Claimed to be world’s fastest gigabit wifi. (Can support more than 100 Mbps )
• Bluetooth 5.0 
• 1920x 1080p FULL HD 120 Hz display
• Ports: 2x USB 3.0 port, 1x USB 2.0 Port, 1X HDMI port, 1X headphone jack and 1X power cable connector 
• Headphone jack supports DTS Headphone X
• 3-cell 48 Wh battery
• Power Adpater:  Input – 100-240V ~ 50-60Hz 2.0 A, Output – 19V 6.32 A Model Number ADP-120RH 

Build of the Asus FX504

I have always admire the material used in the construction of the  ROG series gaming laptop. Things need to match perfect and Asus ROG team never disappointed us in the design. The uper lid of the laptop has a unique metal construction with the angular lines pointing at the center towards the Asus Logo. I wish the Asus logo could have lighten up giving a different look but it doesn’t light up. I’m not disappointed to the build.

The bottom of the laptop has a special construction of the fans. Asus Calls it Anti-Dust Cooling. This was the first time I seen the bottom of the laptop with the asymmetric fans grills with two side triangles and one quadrangle at the center.  It does work good with this logic.

For some reasons they have moved the notification lights at the top of the laptop. So above to the area of power button, there are 4 different white notifications lights. System on, battery indicator, busy light and airplane mode light. So there is an iconic red back light keyboard.

At both the sides, the laptop has a speakers grill which sounds reasonable good enough. One side of the laptop has the ports, and another side of the laptop is immaculate. For all the ports refer to the specification section of the laptop. Overall for the build quality, I will rate the Asus ROG TUF FX504 9.5 out of 10 for the complete construction.

Hardware of the Asus FX504

The main key factor of the laptop is the 1st it should have a good hardware which doesn’t bottleneck and equip with the top of the line best possible hardware for the extreme performance. Indeed This laptop does but the key paper specifications doesn’t justify all the things. It doesn’t justify the overall hardware something like the keyboard, trackpad, actual read and write speed, In some cases windows and drivers optimization out of the box. These all factors are equally important for any laptop.

Overall Details

The only best to do this is to use benchmark and information based software to find out the best results. More important before writing the specification sheet above we did confirm what’s inside the laptop. Here’s the my computer properties screen which does mention the Some information required.

It showcased a few required things which are inside the computer, but it doesn’t showcase everything which is necessary for all of us being the geek in this world.  So below of the image does represents the DxDiag section for the graphics card. 

In-depth details via CPU-Z 

To get to the more detail about the processor we did run the CPU-Z application for more in-depth specification of Asus ROG TUF FX504. This approach did confirm the technology and code name of the processor and even the number cores and threads for your information.

We also ran the benchmark which is inbuilt in the CPUZ app for  CPU Single Thread and Multi-Thread processes, and it did score 367.1 single thread score, and in Multi-thread score, it scored 2381. 

Also we tried to compare it with Intel’s own i7 X series 980. It was just 25 points ahead and similar to the professional grade Xeon W3690 was 35 points ahead. The benchmark score is good and I didn’t expect the processor to be competitor at the desktop grade.

Let’s discuss about the RAM also, I tried to check that via the CPU-Z app. It did confirm its the DDR4. It was only on Single channel that is single strip of 8GB which supports upto 2666 MHz. The screenshot below will clear some more detail about the same. 

Graphics details via GPU-Z

So one thing the specification sheet only mentioned about the NVIDIA GTX 1050 Ti but in the GPU-Z we can confirm there is Intel UHD Graphics 630 is also present for the low process work. The switching between them is done automatically I didn’t do it manually during the test of gaming. Below are the screenshots of the Intel Graphics and NVIDIA as well. The GPU-Z app have special edition for the ASUS ROG laptops, It didn’t come pre-installed but I found it on there official website while downloading it. Only the theme is changed and nothing else.

Now I will share the Nvidia GTX 1050TI details, It does come with 14nm technology. Also with pixel fillrate of 47.8 GPixel/s

Storage Disk Information 

The Asus ROG TUF FX504 comes with the 128GB PCI Express SSD and 1 TB of HDD. We used the crystal disk app to get to know more about these storage devices. I can confirm that the laptop comes with Kingston PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD and Seagate ST1000LX015 1TB Laptop Hybrid Hard Drive inside. To confirm things better we run benchmarks on it to judge the best performance.

The above benchmark are the best I’ve ever seen inside the windows laptop and things are buttery smooth. 

Since it’s an 5400 RPM HDD it does perform the same. It does kind of bottleneck the system but still it’s a secondary storage used for storing less used files.

Performance of Asus FX504

By the hardware section you must be clear about how the beast in class the system is designed. The NVME boots the windows in just 4 seconds and that will increase the overall productivity for sure.  Photoshop is snappy fast. 

Rather than playing games we tried to stream it to twitch and taking the advantage of the storage, processor, GPU and Network. We initially just started with PUBG Mobile and it works like charm while streaming to twitch at high settings.

If Benchmarks is what you care the most, The CineBench scored 105.38 in the test which is really good score for the intel i7 inside. We also seen more than 60 FPS in Tomb Raider. More important the 120 HZ display made the gaming experience the best. It does comes with desktop grade GTX 1050 Ti So there is no compromising done in performace department. 

Keyboard and Trackpad

I think some gaming laptop doesn’t pay attention in some cases but Asus’s attention to each and every detail is just remarkable. This is the same case with the Asus ROG TUF FX 504 laptop. 

Asus does say that the keyboard has 20 million press durability, I didn’t think it is going to be right in my review period. It’s not a perfect rectangular format, but those iconic ROG style of angling the spacebar felt an ideal ergonomics. The keys travel with the just looking at the screen felt normal. More importantly, they even included the number pad squeezing with the great travel. 

The track pad is big and does comes with multi-touch support. I spent time other than gaming using the track pad. I’ve never seen in gaming laptop a good and perfectly nice laptop.

Battery

A 3 cell based laptop, which works at 100 percent it does showcase 2 hours 15 min until 0 percent. I would say it isn’t designed for long enough and hardware is power hungry and that’s the reason why it can’t give a long lasting one.

If you are investing in a gaming laptop you don’t expect a good battery life and overall you are focused towards performance and the display. 120Hz display is also the another reason.

Verdict

The Asus TUF FX504 gaming laptop is the most value for money laptop that to it comes with 6 core CPU for no added money.  The NVIDIA GTX 1050 TI Desktop grade and a great 1080p panel with 120 Hz refresh rate is the best combination. There is no such laptop with such good comination overall.