★★★☆☆ Reduced original rating by another star due to ASUS tech support and their statements about the unit.After receiving the G712LW, I immediately upgraded it by replacing the 2 - 8gb sticks with 2 - 16gb for a total of 32gb. I also added 2 - 2tb PCIe SSDs to the empty slots. I cloned the OS from the original boot drive to the other drives and checked to see which was the fastest. It turned out to be the Inland Premium (by Microcenter) which booted from start of BIOS to lock screen in just under 7 seconds. So I went back to BIOS and set that drive as boot.After loading my essential programs, I left the system up, but untouched for a couple of days. Then it happened. Here is a copy of the email I sent to ASUS:"I am having a weird problem with my new ASUS ROG G712LW. I have added ram to 32gb, and 2 - 2tb PCIe SSD drives, an Inland Premium (by Microcenter) and a Mushkin Pilot-E (MKNSSDPE2TB-D8). Both additions are recognized by BIOS and Windows and seem to be working well. However, if the system is left up and inactive, after a day or 2 windows stops seeing the 2 non-system drives. That includes the original Intel 500gb drive, and one of the 2 tb drives. The Intel drive is still in its original slot. Currently the Inland is the boot drive. Rebooting Windows does nothing. However, rebooting into BIOS shows all 3 drives and, without any changes, the save and exit F10 into Windows and all drives are there. This has occurred twice so far. Any way you can help me here?"As you can see, everything was as it should be... then it wasn't. After a few days I received this reply from ASUS tech support:"Thank you for contacting ASUS Product Support. My name is Tevon B. I do hope you are having a great day. I would like to welcome you to the ASUS family and I extend my sincerest apology for all the inconvenience that you might have experienced. I am happy to help you resolve your issue by providing you with the best possible solution.I understand that you added a 32GB RAM and a 2TB PCie SSD to your device and the work fine but if the device is inactive for a day or 2, Windows will no longer recognize the 2 drives. Based on the issue you explained, the ASUS ROG G712LW does not support 32GB RAM. Your device supports 16GB DDR4 RAM and a 512GB PCIe NVMe SSD. This might be the reason why the device does not recognize the drives as they are not supported by the device. If you can, please remove the updated drives and then check if the issue persists. Thank you for the opportunity to address this matter with you. We value you as an important ASUS customer and we want to ensure your experience with us is fulfilling."To which I responded:First off, are you kidding me? You are telling me that the latest model that ASUS produces, a high-end ROG model intended for gaming, will not support 32gb of RAM in a 2 x 16gb format? And, that the same notebook, which has 3 PCIe slots internally, will only support ONE stick of SSD storage no larger than 512gb? Are you truly trying to convince me of that? If so, you need to look at your own spec sheet for the G712LW which completely refutes your statement.The notebook does recognize the components in BIOS. Windows 10 recognizes them as well. The question I asked is why does the system shut them down after too long an inactivity. And it is a system problem, not a Windows 10 problem, since just accessing BIOS makes the missing drives accessible to Windows.If you do not know, PLEASE bring in a tech who can understand.I am now awaiting a reply to that. Maybe someone who actually knows the product, or can, at least read the spec sheets, will respond.UPDATE: ASUS TS insists that their latest notebook for gaming doesn't support 2tb of PCIe NVMe SSD storage.My reply:I can't believe what you are still trying to lay on me.I especially can't believe that "this notebook supports 1tb per slot. Does not support 2TB per slot."I have two other, older ROG units, a 10 year old G74sx and a 7 year old G750JW. Both have 3 internal 2tb SATA SSD drives. So you are now trying to convince me that the latest technology can't handle 2tb of storage? I don't remember, and can't find, that in the specs or in any reviews. Please show me that in the computer's documentation.I also can't believe it because a 2tb PCIe SSD is my boot drive and it works flawlessly.As well, both 2tb PCIe drives are seen by BIOS. The same G712LW.310 BIOS that came installed, and which you have told me to upgrade to. Please read my prior communications.I also am having a problem with that statement, since one of the two drives that disappears from Windows is only 512gb, the original boot drive, still in its factory slot.All available updates have already been accomplished, including the optional Intel drivers.Something in BIOS is turning off the non-system drives after 24 hours of computer inactivity. Please stop trying to BS me about this and find the fix.

★★★★☆ Before I got this laptop for the past 6-7 years I had an Asus ROG laptop with a Geforce 860m in it. It finally was on its last legs so I decided to buy another Asus ROG as it had been so reliable and tough to boot. When I got my new laptop I liked the look of it. It booted up and did typical setup things Update windows..install programs I use etc. A few things I noticed that kind of annoyed me about this laptop...usb ports were put on the left instead of right side.(I have many backup/external drives that are on the right side of my desk and due to the position of the chair/leg area I do not have much room on the left for those things.) A minor inconvenience of course..also the reduction of 4 usb ports to 3 is a bit of an inconvenience too as I have both a wireless mouse and headset that I use leaving only 1 port free most of the time. Though to be honest I knew about that to begin with, but it would be nice to have more ports without needing an external hub. Again these are small inconveniences. I do enjoy having the HDMI port on the back so its out of the way of things on my desk, same for the power plug. My one real gripe about the HDMI is that whenever its plugged in the resolution changes to a lower one due to it thinking that my laptop screen is the HDTV that I have connected to it to watch movies/youtube on via my laptop. Once I unplug it though it goes back to the right resolution for both video editing and gaming. This leads to another issue I ran into with this laptop. If you want to play any high end games such as COD: Warzone you have to go into the provided software ARMORY CRATE to change your settings from silent to performance or turbo to get the performance needed or else things tend to lockup or crash.(EDIT - after some driver updated and fiddling with the nvida software which was the problem in the long run as it was fighting for control all the time with the ARMORY software that is provided with the laptop. I like the ARMORY but not enough to fight it so I disabled its control of the graphics decisions and said let windows do it which it in turn said Nvidia can play with things...which is what you really want as they know the graphics chip better than Asus does. So it plays great now.) I'm an experienced IT guy so for me it was an easy find/fix...but for the average gamer it would be a big thing as there is nothing saying to do that. I will also say that though the laptop is thinner..the fans are louder when in performance/turbo mode its so loud you can barely hear things in game(EDIT: When in TURBO MODE/ARMORY) unless you crank the volume up quite a bit so I would suggest again that if you have the time find your way through to disable ARMORY's control of things and just let Nvidia and windows handle gpu controls as they are more efficient in doing it. my last laptop even when the fans were going full throttle did not make this much noise, so that is a little disappointing to say the least. So I will say these are things that they need to address better In the future. Personally I could careless about battery life all together due to my using my laptop as a space saving pc instead of a portable gaming rig. I will also say to you if you are thinking of buying this model...get the one with the 1 or 2 TB drive in it as this one did not have a slot for SSD drive(non M.2/nvme). So the 512GB Intel m.2 2280 one notch nvme that came with this is being eaten up quick and I can't use my recently bought(3 months ago) 2TB non-m.2 SSD drive with this laptop at all. There is no brackets or holding cage for one...there is no ribbon connector...nada! At least include the 1TB or a big notice this only has M.2 ports. (second one is used by your internal wifi card. so between the SSD and Wifi you are left with two NVMe M.2 2280 one notch ports.) You really need one drive for your OS only...then secondary drive for programs and games/video editing temp storage to get the best gaming/video editing performance possible. Again battery life is not a big deal for most gamers. Though if you are traveling sure a bit of battery life is great...but most places have plugs to hook your laptop into..there are even ac to cigarette lighter port adapters for cars/trucks so you have that too. I do not know of anyone who wants to go out into the middle of the boonies to play their games. So again gaming doesn't equal need for battery life. Oh yeah in case you are wondering which M.2 drive is in this laptop its the Intel one..and the read/write speeds are in the 1500 mbps read/write speed. (I've Edited this after fiddling with windows and using Crystal disk test which brought up the performance from what it was as I had to disable the silent mode I had the system on again..fighting ARMORY. smh Asus.) Not the fastest M.2 but a huge leap from the previous write speeds so its better than it was over all. Also would it really kill you to make the upgrading areas easily accessible rather than having to ripoff the whole gosh darn(insert swear words here.) thing off to get access to memory/hard drive for upgrading? While I love the overall quality of the products of the ROG line...I've seen and even talked to other friends who own the 2 steps or so above what I got ($2k to $3k spent of course.) and they are all better laptops than this...so I would say go ahead save up the 2 plus grand for the higher end of the strix if you want a better built and slightly better ease of access for upgrade gaming laptop. Still if you are one who likes to fiddle and mess with stuff builders/tinkerers/hackers..etc... Then go ahead and get this laptop. With just a little bit of user end thoughts ASUS you could have made this into a better laptop than it was...I'm disappointed in you, but I still like (better now that I have fixed the quirks of your software.) the laptop overall...though I'm sure if I break anything taking it a part completely just to install a new m.2 drive you will not cover its warranty...just saying its hard to open and take a part more than it should be for close to 2k that I paid for this. If I sound grippy about this...I think there is fair reason to be so. ASUS DO BETTER PLEASE! I love your products when I was building PCs and would always recommend your MBs and Video Cards to people...do better and think more about the End Consumer more when doing your case for these gaming laptops. That said the looks of the laptop and now the performance at least come close to what I was expecting.

★★★★☆ So the laptop itself is very nice and clean looking. The weight is pretty light for a 17in laptop. The feel of the keyboard is great to me and gaming on it has been flawless. I have had no issue playing any game or watching any movie and the screen quality has been splendid.Noe for the flaw. The rgb keyboard is nice but it isn't per key rbg and for the regular price of 1700, it should have been. The sound quality is horrible and the mic is trash. The sound, sounds very cheap and i been told by many of my friends through discord that they can barely hear me even tho i max out the setting for the mic. I end up just buying a better quality headset for the laptop.Over all i think it is a great laptop to use. If you don't mind not having per key rbg for keyboard and plan to get a headset for this laptop then i think it you're really like the laptop. I got the laptop when it was on sale for 1450 so I'm very happy with what i got but for people who might be paying full price, they should know about the rbg and the sound/mic for this laptop.Beside the 3 issues i mention, everything has been awesome and i would like to have a special mention of the wifi for those who planning to use the the laptop on the go like me. The wifi has been amazing for me. This was actually the second laptop i got because the first one i had to return because the wifi for the first laptop was horrible and kept disconnecting from the internet.