Top 5 reasons to BUY or NOT to buy the ASUS TUF Gaming A17 (FA706, RTX 30)

Budget gaming laptops have been getting better and better, with more powerful hardware getting released at more affordable price points. ASUS decided to reintroduce its laptop, which changed the budget laptop game – TUF Gaming A17 (FA706, RTX 30).

The laptop now employs two heavy hitters for its CPU and GPU, from Ryzen’s 5000-series processors and the RTX 3000-series Ampere GPUs. It also features a great display with a quite high refresh rate.

Today we are presenting you with LaptopMedia’s Top 5 picks about the ASUS TUF Gaming A17 (FA706, RTX 30).

ASUS TUF A17 (FA706) 2021: Full Specs / In-depth Review


3 reasons to BUY the ASUS TUF Gaming A17 (FA706, RTX 30)

1. The Performance

The availability of the new Ryzen 5000-series processors and RTX 3000-series graphics cards makes for a great jump in performance. The older 4000-series CPUs are also available, but we would advise going for the newer Zen 3 based processors. The new Ryzen 7 5800H performs quite well, as you will see below.

For the Graphics, the old option of the GTX 1650 is also available, as well as the RTX 3060 and the RTX 3070.


2. The Upgradeability

Upgradeability-wise, once you get down and dirty and get access to the internal components, you can see the two SODIMM slots for future RAM expansion, that support up to 32GB of DDR4 memory, as well as the two M.2 PCIe x4 drives, one of which has a quite weird placement.

If you need help in disassembling the device, you can watch our detailed teardown video, which goes in-depth of safely getting access to the RAM and storage slots.


3. The Battery life

Despite being a gaming laptop, the device has very decent battery life. In our test, the huge 90Wh battery unit managed to last through 10 hours and 41 minutes of Web browsing, and 10 hours and 11 minutes of video playback. In case you don’t know, in our battery test, we turn the Windows Better Performance option on, set the brightness to 120 nits, and close all apps, except the one we test the notebook with.


2 reason NOT to buy the ASUS TUF Gaming A17 (FA706, RTX 30)

1. The Build quality

The entire body of the ASUS TUF Gaming A17 (FA706, RTX 30) remains the same as the 2020 model. This means an all-plastic build, which while doesn’t feel premium, is sturdy enough, and the sheer thickness helps it in that regard. The design is quite subdued with a TUF branding and logo on the lid. As for the dimensions and weight, being that the device has a 17-inch display, it is quite bulky and portability isn’t its strong suit. It has a profile of 24.8 mm at the thickest and weighs 2.60 kg.


2. The Cooling

The cooling solution here is quite beefy, with the laptop utilizing four copper heat pipes. Three of them cool both the CPU and GPU, with a single heat pipe dedicated to keeping the VRMs’ and memory chips’ temperatures in check.

Temps-wise, the laptop gets pretty hot, and while the temperature doesn’t reach critical mass, it rises very quickly. On the outside, the highest temperature that we recorded was around the F-keys and was 49.9°C.

AMD Ryzen 7 5800H (45W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
ASUS TUF Gaming A17 (FA706, RTX 30)3.42 GHz (B+7%) @ 74°C3.34 GHz (B+4%) @ 78°C3.35 GHz (B+5%) @ 84°C
NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 2 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 30 min)
ASUS TUF A17 (FA706) 20211440 MHz @ 74°C @ 95W1465 MHz @ 77°C @ 95W
ASUS TUF Dash F15 (FX516)1389 MHz @ 69°C @ 84W1377 MHz @ 74°C @ 84W


All ASUS TUF Gaming A17 (FA706, RTX 30) configurations:

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Vasiliy
Vasiliy
3 years ago

Its a shame that the origin review does not include display testing results (