If you’re a fan of ASUS’ Republic Of Gaming sub-brand, you’re probably familiar with the slim gaming beast dubbed as the G20. Originally launched back during COMPUTEX in 2014, the G20 promised to deliver top-tier gaming at a reduced footprint, in a design that’s quite different from the other gaming rigs you see by other brands. ASUS has officially refreshed the G20, and while it still has the same eye-catching design of the original, the internals have been overhauled to reflect the times.

ASUS G20CB specs

• 3.4GHz Quad-core 6th Generation Intel Core i7 6700 (Skylake) processor
• 8GB of DDR4 RAM
• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 4GB GPU
• 120GB of SSD storage, 1TB of HDD storage
• WiFi, Bluetooth
• Comes with keyboard and mouse

Initial impressions: still impressively designed, and comes with multiple freebies

The new, refreshed version of the G20 still looks mighty impressive. Just like its predecessor, the G20CB’s design takes a lot of inspiration of Mayan architecture, which is quite apparent in the Aztec-ish design that hides the tower’s many LED lights. The design is not for show – ASUS positions the G20 line as hard-working gaming desktops that emits little to no noise, and to that end has designed the insides of the gaming rig to efficiently and silently circulate both hot and cool air. Because of this, the G20CB is noticeably slimmer and quieter than most other gaming rigs that roughly have the same specs.

As far as button layout is concerned, the G20CB is almost identical to its older brother. The power button is on the front, near the top of the tower. There’s an optical disk drive on the front as well, along with two USB 3.0 ports and jacks for both a microphone and headphone.

On the back lies six USB ports, two of which are the USB 3.1 variety, two USB 3.0 and two USB 2.0. There’s enough ports on the back for a 7.1 channel surround sound setup should you require it, and an Ethernet port if you want to connect the rig via hardline to your home network.

The big difference between the G20CB and the original G20 that we reviewed many moons ago is the GPU. The G20CB now rocks a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970 GPU with 4GB of VRAM. That’s quite an upgrade over the previous generation, which only had a GeForce GTX 745 GPU.

Aside from the obvious performance upgrade, the main difference in both units is that the GeForce GTX 745 did not require additional power – obviously the power hungry GTX 970 is different, which necessitates an additional power brick aside from the one that supplies juice to the other components. Total wattage of both power bricks is 410 watts (180W + 230W) which puts it a hair under our home gaming rig which uses a 500 watt power supply.

Aside from the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970, ASUS has also stuffed the G20CB with a sixth generation, Intel Core i7 Skylake processor, along with 8GB of DDR4 RAM, 120GB of SSD storage paired with 1TB of HDD storage, WiFi and Bluetooth. ASUS has also included two freebies: a mouse and a nice looking keyboard (that’s sadly is not a mechanical variety) that has a volume adjuster built right into it.

While we’re only just beginning our review of the G20CB, we ran 3DMark’s Benchmark app on the G20CB to get a taste of its capabilities. We’re leaving the scores down below for you guys to see.

We’re loading the G20CB up with games for our full review. The G20CB as configured is set to retail at Php 89,995.