Using the ROG ALLY as a DESKTOP GAMING PC!

oh hey look at that you got it Rog Ally don't you just love playing games on it in your heads wait what are you doing you're you're putting it on your desk and you're plugging in a mouse a keyboard and a monitor what do you think that thing is a desktop gaming PC or something oh you you uh huh well all right then [Music] hello I'm Tech 3 ball Club thanks for clicking out the video today I've Heard lots of reviews and comments online about how the Rog Ally can be used as a desktop gaming PC and I I'm skeptical you know I know it is a PC but when you're sitting at a monitor with a mouse a keyboard ready to game the things that feel sort of okay on a tidy 7-inch screen that you're playing in the bathtub might not translate to the full desktop gaming PC experience so I wanted to know if someone went into this thinking hey I'll get a handheld but I'll also get a desktop PC how happy or disappointed would they be before we get into the gameplay let me show you my setup here I have the Rog Ally obviously this will be the Tower of our desktop gaming PC so uh the base of this setup is the dock this is by Jason docking station which has served me quite well uh plugged into this I have quite a few things I have a usba hub which connects by Bose the Corsair M65 Elite and I have this keyboard the sky loong gk61 mechanical keyboard with red switches and I have an external hard drive this is a four terabyte hard drive that I have packed with games and one new thing that I got for this setup is this monitor I'm pretty excited about this actually it's a 15 inch portable monitor and the main thing that makes this monitor special is that it's an OLED monitor it's just about the highest quality display that you could get on the portable monitor it looks freaking amazing with bright saturated colors and dark Inky blacks 100 000 watt contrast ratio 400 nits brightness 100 DCI P3 color gamut just trust me it looks 10 times nicer in real life than it does on the video and it has a one millisecond response time so it's great for gaming and it's a portable monitor it has this little magnetic stand on the back the uh the company that makes this Ito Sid they said this to be but I honestly do love it and I highly I highly recommend it I'll include a link to this thing in the description below if you would like to pick one up and finally the monitor does have built-in speaker workers said they're all right but not a basic definitely not big boobing loud gaming speakers so I'm using these Logitech portable USB speakers that I've had forever and they sound really good and my controller is the steam controller which is my favorite PC controller so here it is here's the setup it's comfortable with peripherals that I've had for a long time that I know I like within a basic monitor some nice speakers I'll link to this stuff below if you want to pick any of these things up so uh all that's left is to see if the Ally is going to hold up its end of the bargain what kind of games could we play and what settings and how does it feel as a desktop gaming PC well let's find out now starting off as always with shadow of the Tomb Raider this is one of my favorite games of all time but also my favorite game to do benchmarks on it's sort of my standard candle because I always test this game whenever I do PC testing so I know exactly how it runs on a variety of Hardware here we're running a 1080p native medium settings and we're getting 38 FPS on average that's good it's not amazing I I want more than this out of a desktop gaming PC but giving credit where credit's due it this is viable I don't mind playing third person single player action games with this sort of FPS it's a fine experience and the game looks great at these settings even on the bigger monitor you could totally use the Ally to play some really nice looking games at Native 1080p resolution just don't expect to be blown away at how high you could push the graphical settings here's the Witcher 3 next gen 1080p with balanced FSR and this is actually the high settings I thought it was media but after I realized it was high so considering the fact that we're getting 36 FPS on average isn't too bad at all and you would get way more than this if you went down to low again not quite what I'd want for a desktop gaming PC but it works you know especially since this is a third person game so this this feels love sort of like one of those mini gay big PCS obviously it has the benefit of having it all bundled together with a controller and a nice 120 hertz screen and a boom and sound system that you could take with you in the play on the bus or whatever so it's not really a like for like comparison to any desktop gaming PC but if you're planning on using this as a gaming PC I want to keep it in perspective you can get an actual gaming PC that does this for a lot less at the cost of the Ally even if you can't carry that with you in your backpack plague tail Requiem is the most demanded game that I tried today I think I'm running at 1080p quality FSR low settings and I got 32 FPS on average a really nice looking game as you could see probably one of the nicest looking games I've ever seen actually so the fact that it's playing at all on a handheld is pretty impressive it's played by quite enjoyable for most of my gameplay except that this one part of the game where I go to this air area of lots of foliage the FPS dropped out to like 20 FPS so obviously we'll need to go down to 720p and maybe even add some balanced FSR to keep that FPS above 30 FPS the entire time maybe some of you would consider this unplayable but I think it's just on the edge if we could get these dips above 30 FPS I'd be able to enjoy the game like this I didn't bother take Greg with it too much because I had lots of other tests to run like this one Red Dead Redemption 2. a very nice looking game and a pretty darn demanded game but of all the games by steam Library this was the one that I was most excited about because it did run out of the Ally at a red well which I did not expect this is 1080p with a low to medium settings mix but with ultra textures and I got 36 FPS on average now again this isn't what I'd expect out of a full-size desktop gaming PC but it works you know it feels like a legit desktop gaming experience maybe a bit tow doubt but the fact that we're playing at some decent frame rates and really good textures at a mouse a keyboard on a monitor if you let yourself forget that your play got a head held it does indeed do the job of uh dedicated gaming PC I've played this game uh a ton on the PC and this feels really familiar playing it here this Testa load was uh such a good experience that it convinced me to be honest but you should still watch the rest of the video but anyways because there are some fun little Revelations uh like this one here this one is Kingdom Cub Deliverance this game is built on cryogen and when it was launched it was very demanding what are those graphical showcase games that brought lots of systems to their knees and the fact that I'd play again right now on a 700 handheld gaming PC is kinda blowing my mind this is 1080p medium settings and I got 49 FPS on average the game runs well when you're playing on the head held with the controller but it's a first person game so obviously it feels better with the nosy keyboard this is a really good game I I keep intending to put more time into this one remind me to do that okay I wanted to toss it a racing game because I know some people like racing games I like them fight every now and then I get the urge to do some racing I don't have Forza five I know everyone tests that one and it's really well optimized and it runs well lower its systems but I have Need for Speed heat so that's what you're gonna get this is a really good race of gate by the way not as optimized as Forza but it's a great looking game at least a fun racing too I like the feel of the cars and the look of the game engine and that the way the open world and the progression is good I've always liked the Need for Speed series actually this one's ready guys 1080p low settings and I got 52 FPS on average so one of the reasons that many people choose the Rog Ally is that it's a Windows based device it's a blessing and a curse I think because there's lots of annoying Windows bullcrap that you have to deal with from time to time but at the same time you get access to all those games that only run on Windows if you have an Xbox game pass subscription that the Ally is going to play those games very well and there are other games that don't read on the Steep deck like this one fortnite it plays really freaking good I bet 1080p data resolution medium settings and I got 73 FPS on average it's a game that plays okay with a controller but if you want to be competitive then most a keyboard is the way to go I played this game quite a bit on PC and this felt just like a totally normal five gaming PC experience for fortnite for me but what about really high refresh rate Esports style games I wanted to see how well the Ally would work if we had like a 165 Hertz gaming monitor I'm running a 1080p with the lowest competitive settings and I got 178 FPS on average I know CS GoPro as you could probably see but even my Noob fingers could feel how well this place you did Super responsive and then this bothered her it's only 60 hertz but that one millisecond response time is freaking Snappy man CS go isn't a graphical showcase game or anything so it's not surprising that we could get some really high FPS but you do need a decent CPU to push good fragrance and the z-wed extreme that we have at the Ally is definitely capable enough I played a few Indie Games I didn't record everything but this game is one that I really enjoy and I got lots of questions about what game this was the last time I showed it so uh this is morbid the seven acolytes it's like a top-down pixel based retro Revival Style souls-like game really great artwork on this one a great game too but yeah I know I do the Ally wouldn't have issues with Indie Games pretty much any PC would be able to handle a game like this but what surprised me is how different it feels when you're playing on a monitor with a controller versus playing on the Ally by lap it's probably a mental thing but it ends up feeling like like a pretty different game lots of the Indies that I played felt this way the the Ally has a great screen but playing them on a big beautiful Ola display is a much better way to experience them this is one of my favorite games of all time Crusader Kings 3. it could actually be pretty demanding this game lots of these strategy games could be more CPU intensive so you couldn't get this Reddick very well on the steam deck for it's it's not to mention that the Steep Dex 800p screen makes this game difficult to actually play but with a mouse keyboard a desktop mode with a monitor it works well and on the Ally I was able to crank the settings up to the backs it's it's not a game that you need great performance but you definitely notice when you're not running at close to 60 FPS even just like using the menus and stuff which you do a lot in this game this isn't the kind of game that plays well in handheld mode because you need a big screen so if you have this sort of setup if you have an ally you can kind of get the best of both worlds yeah you can play those games that don't run well l in handheld mode on your ally based desktop gaming PC I tended to test it out quick just to record a few gameplay Clips but I ended up playing for like an hour and the entire time I basically forgot that I was playing this off a handheld it just felt like an ordinary desktop ck3 experience and finally I wanted to play an older first person shooter something that we could crank the settings up and get some really high FPS so I chose the goat Half-Life 2 it came out almost 20 years ago but it it holds up mostly because of the tight gameplay and the great story but even the graphics are still really nice looking in my opinion we're running at 1080p maxed out graphical settings and we got 182 FPS on average this is a classic PC game definitely a great mostly keyboard game and it feels great playing like this yeah I doubt you'd find any game from 20 or 50 or even 10 years ago that you couldn't max out the settings that play with over 100 FPS on the Ally I went into this little experiment kind of a expecting to rip out the Ally I was thinking it would feel like a cheap low end desktop gaming PC and it sort of did at times to be honest this is about the performance you get from a pre-built gaming PC with a GTX 1650 for instance which you could get for cheaper than at Ally but you know what you're not missing out on much using this thing as a desktop game big PC yeah it's easy to get bitter that you can't read every game at 1080p with high or even medium settings but the fact that I was having a ton of fun was a reminder that you don't need to go nuts with your Hardware to have fun all you really need to get a desktop gaming experience is this the stuff you need a mouse a keyboard and monitor and speakers and as long as you have a PC that could play some games at settings they are good enough really quickly you forget to be angsty about the performance said you just get a burst of the game and have a good time some things that are annoying on ahead held really aren't that annoying when you have the power of a mouse and keyboard to deal with them I don't think you should buy it Ally if you're are tending to mostly use it docked on the TV or using it on your desktop it's definitely not the best bang for the buck if that's your main use case but if you have an ally I highly recommend at least try this once just to see what it's like because it's a pretty cool trick and that brings us to the end this is going to be my last Ally video unless I buy one for myself I'd like to thank Mark by subscriber who graciously LED this to be I had the pleasure of meeting him and hanging out we played a board game it talked about Head Health he's an awesome dude uh check out his board game podcast so very wrong about games link in the description below I'm actually uh excited to play More Steam deck now that I've spent so much time on the Ally over the last couple weeks that'll be nice to return home to the deck and who knows maybe I'll miss the Ally and get wet at some point we shall see just like how I'll see you again in the next video because you're gonna click the Subscribe button so you don't miss it and also while you're there you might as well click the thumb Thumbs Up Button if you like the video or don't if you didn't and that's it for me I'm Tech dweeb thanks for watching bye foreign

Channel: TechDweeb

Views: 33,955

Keywords: techdweeb, tech, dweeb, rog, ally, rog ally, desktop, gaming, pc, gaming pc, handheld, monitor, innocn, dock, jsaux, docking, steam deck, steam, fortnite, games pass, xbox, epic, skyloong, corsair, mouse, hard drive, external, controller

Id: tTEdXE3G-l8

Length: 14min 55sec (895 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 03 2023