GTX 1080 On A 18mm Laptop!? – NVIDIA Max Q Launches New Era Of Thin Gaming Notebooks

There’s a paradigm shift happening right now in the gaming notebook space and it is being brought along by a technology from NVIDIA called Max Q. Put simply, the graphics chip company has found the perfect ratio between performance, power consumption, and heat and engineered a thin profile that upcoming gaming devices can use. How thin you say? Well, the first few ones out of the gate are already 18mm thin, which in technical terms should still even rival current ultrabooks. However, these devices will be packing some of the highest-end gaming cards in the market like the GTX 1070 and GTX 1080. Sounds too good to be true? Well, we have proof and more hands-on of them in a video embedded above. Or if you want to learn more, scroll down below!

NVIDIA’s Max Q is based on the philosophy that instead of maximizing performance with no regard for power use, it instead maximizes the efficiency of the power being used. This is akin to getting into the right torque range for your car without overgassing the pedal – a metaphor we’d rather use instead of the brand’s NASA-inspired Max Q terminology. The end effect is the same though – the efficient cards are rated at half the thermal design power of desktop GPUs, but deliver almost the same performance with only around 5-7 percent loss in peak capabilities.

What you gain from this is a huge improvement in cooling possibilities – as lower wattage GPUs will generate less heat. Less heat needs less cooling. Less cooling means thinner designs. NVIDIA is working with it’s manufacturing partners like Asus, Acer, and MSI to bring you laptops that are under 19mm right now, and more brands are definitely following suit.

This basically means that if you’ve always wanted a gaming laptop but just couldn’t justify bringing a brick around for your work trips and even your everyday school life, now you should be able to consider these Max Q-tuned notebooks. And we’re really looking forward to the day when we see more of these instead of the non-gaming capable ultrabooks.

Of course, this doesn’t mean the end for those powerful, performance-minded laptops. NVIDIA says they won’t phase those out as there is still demand for high-end gaming. Max Q is just a new segment that will break into the thin gaming space for consumers who value portability. And if you’re like us, you’d be considering one right now.