Eurocom Sky X9E2

A portable gaming monster

WE ONCE HEARD the original Xbox described as “Batman’s briefcase crossed with a supercomputer.” Apologies to Microsoft, but Eurocom’s Sky X9E2 now deserves that mantle. This beast of a gaming machine is one of the most powerful portable systems we’ve ever tested. Of course, “portable” is something of a relative term. The Sky X9 itself weighs in at (only) 12 pounds—not bad, considering the hardware inside—but it requires two massive 330W power bricks to run at full juice, and those weigh nearly three pounds each.

Of course, all that weight is well spent. Packed inside the Sky X9’s minimalist black case is more power than most high-end gaming desktops. An Intel Core i7-6700K clocked at 4GHz serves as the brains of the operation, with a turbo up to 4.2GHz supported. We actually managed to overclock the CPU even higher, but more on that later. For storage, our unit was equipped with a single 512GB Samsung SM951 NVMe SSD, but the system can support an additional M.2 SSD, as well as up to two 2.5-inch drives. RAM amounted to 32GB of DDR4-3000, while ports included five USB 3.0 (one of them powered), two Thunderbolt 3, two mini DisplayPort 1.3, and one HDMI 2.0 output. The full-size keyboard features full RGB backlighting, and the touchpad is equipped with a biometric fingerprint reader. But the crowning component is the twin desktopclass GeForce GTX 1080 GPUs in SLI.

It should go without saying that the Sky X9 is more than capable of running any game at 1080p max settings. However, in our testing, we found that GTX 1080 SLI does not play nice with lower resolution formats. Riseof the TombRaider and Far CryPrimal both performed better in 1080p with SLI disabled, pulling in an average of 130fps and 104fps respectively, compared to 101fps and 80fps with SLI activated. The Division, on the other hand, benefitted from the extra GPU at 1080p ultra, performing at an average of 137fps, as opposed to 100 without SLI enabled. 3DMark Fire Strike also enjoyed the extra GPU juice, scoring 20,237 without SLI, and 22,473 with.

But why would you want to game at 1080p when you have two GTX 1080s and, more importantly, a G-Sync enabled 4K screen. (The system can also be configured with a 2560x1440p 120Hz TN screen, also with G-Sync.) We’re usually hesitant to recommend gaming at 4K, as even the GTX 1080 struggles to consistently lock down 60fps without a twin to share the load. But that’s exactly what the Sky X9 has inside, and it does the job swimmingly. Luckily, every game we tested benefitted from the second GPU. More impressively, the pair of cards was able to consistently stay above 60fps in 4K resolution, even with the settings cranked up to the max. We recorded an average of 78fps across Riseof the TombRaider ’s three-part benchmark at 4K max settings, while Far CryPrimal and TheDivision scored 73 and 66fps respectively. Needless to say, it’s incredibly impressive to perform at such a high bar—to do it on a laptop is just insane. SOME LIKE IT HOT With all its stellar gaming performance, the most impressive thing about the Sky X9E2 is its portability. Sure, you’ll never actually use it on your lap, but even with its massive twin power bricks in tow, the Sky X9 can be put in a backpack and lugged across town—or across the country. It would be heavy, yes, but not nearly the weight of carrying a full-size desktop rig. It also doesn’t require an external cooling dock, like the Asus ROG GX800VH we reviewed way back in our Holiday issue. It’s worth noting that, despite being listed as optional, we found the second power brick to be a requirement. The system boots up and charges with only one PSU attached, but as soon as the GPU heats up and the fans start spinning—even with SLI disabled—it draws too much power for the single brick to handle. After a few minutes playing Overwatch (in 1080p with SLI disabled), the brick shut itself down, switching the system over to battery, and massively throttling performance.

Speaking of heat, man does it get hot. Eurocom says the system’s “state-of-theart thermal solution” uses industrial-grade copper heatsinks, centripetal fans, and a layered, socketed motherboard system designed for thermal efficiency. What that means in practice is a trio of crazy-loud fans blasting heat out the back. They keep the components cool, as we didn’t have any internal thermal issues, even when overclocking, but we’d be wary of situating anything heat-sensitive around back.

All the testing (and benchmarks opposite) were conducted without overclocking, but thanks to Sky X9’s Z170 chipset, you can squeeze a bit of extra power out of the CPU and GPUs. The unlocked Core i7-6700K is clocked at 4GHz and listed as overclockable up to 4.2, but we managed to push it as high as 4.5GHz without major instability. The GPUs, similarly, can handle a bit of extra juice, though we only saw an improvement of 2–3fps in TombRaider at 4K. It didn’t really seem worth the effort, but then, every frame matters when trying to eke out 60fps in 4K.

All told, the Eurocom Sky X9E2 is an incredibly impressive system. Could you get equal or better (and quieter) performance out of a desktop build? Sure, but you can’t toss a desktop into a backpack, and take it through airport security. Of course, all that power comes with an equally impressive price tag. Our system, as configured, clocked in at $5,683. But at least your wallet will be lighter.