 I'm really excited about this one guys. Asus ROG sponsored an exclusive look behind the scenes at the creation of their most powerful gaming laptop ever, the ROG Mothership. So our tour starts at the Asus headquarters tower here in Taipei, except that it doesn't. Instead, we took a short walk to a non-descript building that the ROG team described as a kind of secret lab or bat cave. They couldn't show us the whole facility because of the top secret nature of the work being done here. In fact, we're only the second non-Asus staff to set foot in here. And even within Asus, only the CEO and design center employees are allowed inside. But to tell the story of Asus's re-imagining of the desktop replacement form factor, we needed to visit ROG Mothership's birthplace. We'll start upstairs where everything from sketches to material evaluation and even soft goods creation happens. And it's also where we'll see a recreation of the first airflow experiments that kickstarted the development effort. So what you're looking at here is two identical desktop replacement gaming laptops with one of them set up the conventional way with a lot of restriction for the cooling system and a second one propped up like this to give the intake fans, which are here on the bottom, a lot more room to breathe. Now, how much does this kind of configuration affect cooling performance? It turns out quite a lot. With no additional tweaks whatsoever, this unit runs seven to eight degrees cooler than the other one. And with the design of the ROG Mothership, which includes more ventilation cutouts and liquid metal thermal compound, they managed to push performance much further to the point where the machine can be about half the thickness of a traditional Asus desktop replacement while both boosting up higher and running quieter. Now, of course, it's really not as simple as just taking an old laptop design and going like this. Done. So let's head downstairs to the Secret Labs machine shop. Our journey begins back in 2016 with the affectionately nicknamed Grandmaship. So this is Asus's first hard model of a standing high-performance gaming laptop design with the keyboard angled up like this. Now, back then, they were studying how to make a laptop perform better and improve its ergonomics at the same time. So they tried this concept out, but this one is not very perfect. If the keyboard's at an angle like this, it's actually fine for gaming, but they found that it wasn't great for typing. So when this was first proposed, it was rejected by top management, probably for good reason. They still believed in the underlying concept though. So the team used foam rough models to experiment with different form factors. So this one here is actually more like an all-in-one with a kickstand. So you can see it even has some of its IO in the back. That's not very laptop-like. Now, this one is notable though, because it was during this stage that they came up with the idea of making the keyboard detachable. I mean, if the whole system is up in the top piece, why not? With that concept nailed down, they created quite a few rough models experimenting with different form factors. So this one right here showcases an idea where they were going to have the system kind of pop out at the back like this, and then the screen actually slide up. This didn't end up making it to final production, obviously. Now, this one right here in black foam, now we're fast forwarding to 2017. By now, they've moved the keyboard forward, just like the finished one. We've got a proper kickstand, and all the IO is on the sides, more like a laptop. So this is the first model that contains the main fundamental characteristics of the ROG Mothership. At this stage, the concept was accepted, so they got the time and the budget to build a working prototype. Later that year, so we're still in 2017, after a lot of hard work, they had the two units that you can see on the table here in front of me. This one right here is actually a working prototype complete with detachable keyboard. They actually had a bit of a different concept for the detachable keyboard at that time. The cord was kind of like a vacuum cleaner. So you kind of pull it out and you press a little button like that. But like the finished product, it could also work wirelessly. This one over here is more of a prototype of the industrial design. So you can see here they've got their lighting effects that they proposed for the speaker, the thermal tunnel areas. It's really creaky. There you go, thermal tunnel areas, and inside the kickstand. So this is the point in the process where the designers need to really start thinking about the longevity and the usability of the product. So it's here that they caught the issue, where mounting the motherboard directly behind the display like this caused long-term damage due to EMI and they implemented a shield to protect it. And it's also where they discovered that they needed to completely rethink the keyboard. The thing is that the working prototype took up a lot of desk space and it wasn't possible to get closer to the system because the keyboard was simply too big. So they had to make it more portable. Now the original concept is actually, ah, this one right here. They were gonna make it foldable by simply putting a soft bridge in between the two halves. See that? Clearly though, this wasn't gonna be good enough for ROG. So that's where the idea of implementing a hinge came from. The problem though is that's easier said than done. After the first prototype failed, ASUS's keyboard supplier determined that it was impossible to build a hinge the way that ASUS wanted, with the front surface flush, while the hinge mechanism could be protected while you're folding it. So with that feedback in mind, the team here headed back to the model shop and created not one, but two working prototypes to show their keyboard supplier. With these in hand, this one was agreed on and the supplier said that building something like this was in fact possible and also that they could mass produce it. Now we're onto the final mockup. So this right here. With the major technology challenges solved, it was time for them to nail down the aesthetic. So each surface was sketched in 2D, 3D printed to determine how the design would look with depth and then combined into what you see here. Now this one doesn't work, but it's basically representative of the look of the finished ROG mothership. Whoa, okay. That keyboard is only kinda sort of attached to itself. That wasn't my fault. You didn't tell me it wasn't attached. Now that's the design story. But after I expressed so much interest in the manufacturing process of the shell of ROG mothership when I first saw it, ASUS agreed to walk us through some of that as well. So on this table here, we're not looking at every single stage of the manufacturing, but these are the key ones, starting with this nine kilogram, 10 US dollar aluminum slab. You can see it only actually has a few basic cutouts and it includes these fixture points here because it needs to be flipped several times during the manufacturing process in order to access all the faces. At this stage, our bottom panel still weighs more than the finished ROG mothership because we haven't removed the material from the inside yet, but you can see that our side walls and our rear grill are looking a lot more notebook-like and our kickstand cutout is done now. The really cool thing about this stage though is right here. This is where our bottom cover gets put into the injection molding tool to make room for the plastic pieces that are needed for the four included antennas. Now they have to do it this way rather than clipping on a plastic piece at the end in order to get the absolutely perfectly seamless finish. You can actually see here the plastic bits that are gonna get removed that were part of the injection process. Cool, right? Our next sample has most of the internals cut away now, which as you can see, makes a pretty big difference to the thickness and the weight of the material. Now, obviously then, seeing this out of a single piece rather than taking something thinner and bending it up wastes a lot of material, but it has tangible benefits in terms of structural rigidity and also the finish on the end product. So you can see here that for its thickness, this is really smooth and surprisingly strong. It's like very little flex to it. For the next stage, we need a much smaller bit to cut out all the fine details. What's cool here is that you can actually really see the Republic of Gamers ROG branding because it stands out more on the raw aluminum. Then after that, we get into anodization. This is what gives us a durable black finish on the product. And as you can see, we are almost done, except for one small problem. The plastic doesn't match the color of the rear grills. This simply won't do. So the final step then is to paint just the rear grill component. Now, the thing is that paint is not as durable as anodization, but hey, now it matches. And if it does happen to get scratched a little bit, they're still black underneath, so it shouldn't be too noticeable. Finally, every one of the only 650 machines that ASUS builds is gonna get the finishing touches. Now, there's too many of these sorts of things for me to list today, but every unit gets a unique serial number engraved and little accent pieces, like these laser cut Mylar stickers that combined with speaker grills, protect the speakers and give it a nice premium look. Now, the machines that we're looking at right now are suitable for prototyping, but to achieve the speed and detail needed for mass production of the final product, more sophisticated solutions are required. That is, if you can even call 650 units, mass production. Now, I've always said that when the bill of materials cost of a new device leaks and consumers complain that it's a ripoff, that there are many hidden costs that drive up the final sticker price. But even for me, seeing this process today, along with the QC and validation lab, I gotta say, I'm coming away with a new appreciation for the time and the work that goes into creating something as specialized as ROG Mothership. So I wanna thank ASUS ROG for inviting me here and sponsoring this video and you guys for watching the whole thing. Actually, as a fun little reward for making it this far, ASUS ROG is giving away a Strix Scar III gaming laptop to one lucky viewer somewhere in the world. So guys, make sure you check out the link in the video description and show them some love in the comments. If you guys disliked this video, well, you know where that button is. But if you liked it, hit like, get subscribed, or maybe consider checking out where to buy the stuff we featured at the link in the video description. Sometime in the next, what, couple months, we think? Also down there is our merch store, which has cool shirts like this one and our community forum, which you guys should totally join.