The German notebook supplier Schenker basically has powerful gaming notebooks in its portfolio, but the new XMG 15 should stand out a lot: It can be connected to the optional XMG Oasis water cooling, which can dissipate more power than conventional air cooling. It’s not the first liquid-cooled notebook, but the Asus ROG GX700 shown in 2015 (and actually sold in 2016) was a one-shot without a successor.
The all-in-one solution XMG Oasis is an external box with a pump, reservoir and 12-centimeter fan including a radiator. The coolant is fed to the notebook via two hoses; a parallel cable is used to power the pump and fan. The double connection to the notebook has valves that close themselves when the hoses are removed for transport. If you want to be on the safe side, you should then drain the coolant in the notebook.
This can be done up to four times before you have to refill the reservoir in the box. All components are made of aluminum or plastic, so distilled water would be sufficient. To be on the safe side, however, Schenker provides for the addition of EK CryoFuel to prevent algae growth, among other things.
WaKü preparation
The XMG Neo 15 always comes with the connections and the internal pipe loop for the liquid coolant, but the latter is not mandatory: The pipe loop is soldered to a conventional cooling system that transfers the waste heat to the fins and air coolers via heat pipes. The notebook can therefore also be operated without the Oasis box. Even if the water cooling system is connected, the fans are not deactivated, but rotate slowly with them – and take over completely if the water cooling system fails.
The cooling system of the 2022 XMG Neo 15 has an additional pipe loop for the optional water cooling.
(Image: Schenker)
Communication between the Neo 15 and the Oasis-Box takes place via Bluetooth: If the notebook notices that the box is there, it switches to a different BIOS profile. You can adjust the latter yourself, whereby Schenker allows a permanent CPU TDP of up to 115 watts (instead of a nominal 45 watts) and the maximum GPU GeForce RTX 3080 Ti allows 175 watts. Both do not work together because the power supply only provides 280 watts and other components such as mass storage or display need to be supplied. However, there is a possibility of offering an even thicker power supply in the future.
From February
There should be concrete benchmarks for the performance of the notebook with and without water cooling in the next few weeks. The new XMG Neo 15 (E22) will be available for pre-order from the end of January, with delivery scheduled to start in mid-February.
The final prices have not yet been determined, but Schenker does at least name a point of orientation: With the fourteen-core Core i7-12700H, GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, 16 GByte DDR5 memory, a 500 SSD and a 240 Hz screen, around 2500 euros are targeted. Significantly higher prices can be expected in the maximum configuration with GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, 64 GByte DDR5 memory and two PCIe 4.0 SSDs.
The XMG Oasis will go on sale separately for around 200 euros. It weighs around 1.4 kilograms when filled, while the notebook weighs around 2.2 kilograms (without the power supply unit).
(mue)