SUMMARY: Part I - A look at this laptop's specs.

The good guys at Directron were nice enough to help get a loaner of the ASUS C90 Overclocking Laptop (ASUS site here) to me so we could take a close look at what is one of the few true overlcocking-capable laptops available. One of the main attractions I see (in addition to the OC) is that it makes servicing and updating the laptop over time much easier than the not-user-friendly offerings from other manufacturers.

First we'll take a look inside and then cruise the specs that define what this laptop can do.

The back comes off easily by removing five screws:

A closer view shows the area surrounding the CPU socket:

This shows the fan bay - there is a CPU cooler that will fit in the right hand side:

The back view shows the four cooling fans - these are Delta each rated @ 9500 rpm, 13 cfm, 36.5 dBA. At full tilt, these four fans must make a racket; however, there is software in BIOS that controls fan speeds based on temps, so they should be moderated in use.

Asus's website lists part of the features that this laptop should support as shown below:

Key Features:

Processor & Cache Memory	LGA775, Supports Intel® Core™ 2 Extreme processor up to X6800, 4MB L2 Cache, 2.93GHz, 1066 MHz FSB
Support Operating System	Windows Vista® capable
Chipset	Intel® 945 G Chipset + ICH7
Main Memory	2 SO-DIMM Sockets for Expansion Up to 3GB Support up to 3GB Dual Channel DDRII 533/667MHz SDRAM
Video Graphics & Memory	NVIDIA Mobile PCI Express Module up to GeForce 8600M GT 256MB/512MB
Display	Up to WSXGA+(1680x1050) Color Shine 15.4'' LCD
Hard Drive	Supports 2.5" 9.5mm SATA HDD 160GB: supports 7200RPM
Thermal	fan-control & multi-heat pipe thermal module; Four Delta AFB0412VHB fans, each rated @ 9500 rpm, 13 cfm, 36.5 dBA
Optical Drive	5.25" 12.7 mm 8X / 24x24x10x(max.), support DVD Combo, DVD Super-Multi, HD DVD and Blu-ray Drive
Video Camera	2.0 Mega pixels rotate CMOS Camera with Face tracking function
Card Reader	8-in-1 MMC/SD/Mini-SD/XD/MS/MS-Pro/MS-Duo/MS-Pro-Duo
Fax/Modem/LAN/WLAN	Built-in 10/100/1000 Mbps LAN Integrated V.92 MDC Fax/Modem w/ Azalia Ver 2.1 compliant 802.11 a/b/g/n Optional built-in Bluetooth® V2.0+EDR
Interface	1* e-SATA Connector 1*HDMI 1* D-Sub VGA Port 1* Headphone-out Jack(SPDIF) 1* Microphone-in Jack 1* RJ11 Modem Jack 1* RJ45 LAN Jack 3* USB 2.0 Ports 1* TV-Out (S-video/Composite Video) 1* IEEE 1394 1*MCX connector for TV-RF 1*Express Card 34 / 54 Support
Audio	Built-in Azalia Compliant Audio Chip Built-in high quality speakers and 2 internal microphones
KeyBoard	19 mm full size with MS-Windows function keys 2.5mm travel Vista K/B Start Button
Hot Keys	Power, Turbo Gear, Internet, Email, Touchpad Lock
AC Adapter	Output : 19V DC, 4.73A, 90W Input : 100~240V AC, 50/60Hz Universal
Battery Pack & Life	Li-Ion 6 cells: 4800mAh, 53W (removable): Smart Battery, 2.5hrs Quick charge 95% (Power Off) / 4hrs (Power On)
Dimension & Weight	14.4 x 10.5 x 1.3~1.7 inch 6.8lbs (with Battery)
Supplied Accessories	Built-in Bluetooth V2.0+EDR Finger Print Recognition TV Tuner (optional) Carrying bag

The above table tells part of the story - for more details, I went to Intels site and found the following specs from Intel® 82945G Features document:

• Intel® Core 2 Duo, Intel® Pentium® 4 processor in the 90 nm process in the LGA775 Land Grid Array package or Intel® Pentium® D processor (supports 775-Land package)
• Supports Pentium 4 processor FSB interrupt delivery
• 533/800/1066 MT/s (133/200/266 MHz) FSB
• Supports Hyper-Threading Technology1 (HT Technology)

Note that this laptop supports only Core 2 Duo - it would have been better if the other CPUs were supported, especially if you have some CPUs you'd like to recycle.

• 4 GB maximum memory
• One or two 64-bit wide DDR2 SDRAM data channels
• DDR2 400, DDR2 533, DDR2 667
• Bandwidth up to 10.7 GB/s (DDR2 667) in dual-channel Interleaved mode.
• Non-ECC memory only
• 256-Mb, 512-Mb and 1-Gb DDR2 technologies
• DDR2-667 4-4-4 is not supported
• The speed used in all channels is the speed of the slowest DIMM in the system

PCI Express Graphics Interface

• One x16 PCI Express port
• Compatible with the PCI Express Base Specification, Revision 1.0a
• Raw bit rate on data pins of 2.5 Gb/s resulting in a real bandwidth per pair of 250 MB/s

Integrated Graphics Device

• Core frequency of 400 MHz
• 1.6 GP/s pixel rate
• 3D Graphics Rendering Enhancements
• VLD/iDCT for enabling dual Intel® High Definition streams for MPEG playback

Analog Display Support

• 400 MHz Integrated 24-bit RAMDAC
• Up to 2048 x 1536 @ 75 Hz refresh
• Hardware Color Cursor Support
• DDC2B Compliant Interface

• Two SDVO ports multiplexed with PCI Express graphics interface
• Can combine two channels to form one larger interface
• Flat panels up to 2048 x 1536 @ 60 Hz or digital CRT/HDTV at 1920 x 1080 @ 85Hz
• Dual independent display options with digital display
• Supports TMDS transmitters or TV-Out encoders

So far so good - the physical layout is easy to get to and work on and the feature list is impressive. Once I get the CPU to take it for a test drive I'll report back on how much overclocking this laptop allows.