ASUS’s smallest ROG laptop goes to the Flow Z13, a 2-in-1 convertible laptop which targets a small niche that sees very little to no competition. Since its inception in 2022, it has always pack a high-end Intel Core processor with NVIDIA GPUs, but that is set to change next year when AMD’s “Strix Halo” supersized APU enters the market.
Flow Z13 Turns Red
This leak comes from thermal specialist and designer Sam Jiun-Wei Hu (via Videocardz), who published several diagrams of the ROG Flow Z13’s next-gen design. But what’s the deal with Strix Halo? Essentially, this APU is like your regular Ryzen laptop chip on steroids: it packs 16 CPU cores, and a RDNA 3.5-based GPU that allegedly rivals the likes of RTX 4070 in performance, all packed into a single chip. Think of it as PC’s answer to Apple’s M3 Max, if you will.
The interesting part here is the comparison between the current design (from model year 2023, since no refresh is made this year), and the upcoming model year 2025 design – the single APU saved huge amounts of space on the motherboard, which can be very beneficial in space-constrained designs like the Flow Z13. It looks like the new PCB were able to free up extra space for bigger fans to cool one heat source (the APU), which may increase its cooling efficiency.
It is reported that the APU consumes 110W of power, split between 30W to the Zen 5 CPU and 80W for the onboard GPU. The laptop is also said to be lighter, but comes at a slight thickness cost and louder fans. However, it’s not exactly clear if these chips will run its predefined limits, or OEMs are allow to configure TDP as needed, just like its standard Ryzen AI counterparts (which now ranges from 15W to 54W with no clear labeling, unfortunately).
Pokdepinion: The laptop might turn out to be a completely different beast.
