Sascha Krohn smiles when he explains that building a laptop between four CPU manufacturers at the same time can be a headache. “Technically, we are already ready five“he corrects me. “We also have MediaTek chips for our commercial team.”
This single fix, almost tossed aside in a 30-minute talk at Computex 2026, captures something that most laptop buyers — and most of ASUS’ competitors — haven’t fully accounted for. ASUS now sells Windows machines on Intel, AMD, Qualcomm Snapdragon X, Nvidia’s new RTX Spark, and MediaTek. Five CPU platforms in a single OEM lineup. No major laptop manufacturer comes close.
Krohn, global director of technical marketing for ASUS’ PC and notebook business, was tasked with explaining why this is not a story-seeking strategy.
“If there was a monopoly, it would be easier and less work,” he tells me. “Just one chip supplier and that’s all you can do. It would be very easy to build a laptop lineup. You know exactly which chip goes into which device, and that’s it.”
I note that the approach has worked quite well for one of its larger competitors.
“Yes,” he says, “but at the same time, ASUS has always been very passionate. We have passionate engineers and product managers. They’re not going to be happy about it. They’re going to feel disappointed.”
ProArt Arm goes
The clearest expression of this philosophy at Computex 2026 is the new ProArt P14 and P16 built on Nvidia’s RTX Spark platform, Nvidia announced the GB10 Grace Blackwell architecture at the show. The RTX Spark combines a 20-core Arm-based Grace CPU with a Blackwell RTX GPU that carries 6,144 CUDA cores, up to 128GB of unified memory, and nearly a petaFLOP of AI computing. Nvidia is positioning it as a creative-grade platform; ASUS is the first major OEM to ship a flagship creative laptop on it.
Krohn’s personal preference is 14 inches.
“It’s thinner, lighter,” he says. “What’s really impressive is that our engineers were able to fit the same I/O ports and almost the same battery size into that tiny 14-inch chassis. It’s almost the same thickness as a 16-inch chassis. The performance for the volume is just through the roof.”
He asked me what memory configuration I preferred, and I suggested that 128GB would be fine for this kind of machine. This advantage, he tells me, is not unique. “Most media and YouTubers I’ve talked to feel the same way. But there are those who think the 16GB or 32GB version will be popular too – and they’re more on the consumer and gaming side, less on the creative side.”
This answer reveals something about how ASUS has positioned the P14 and P16 internally. The starting memory configuration that matters to the company is not the lowest. This is what sets a creative workstation apart from a thin and light one. If you’re buying ProArt on RTX Spark, ASUS expects you to order at least 64GB.
The more difficult question – and one Krohn was careful about – is what happens to the current x86 ProArt P16. “We’re going to keep selling it,” he says. “Where this takes us in the future, we’ll have to wait and see. Ultimately, the ASUS philosophy has always been this: we follow what customers want.”
This is the closest a major OEM has come this year to publicly hedging the long-term future of x86 creative laptops.
Five chips, one philosophy
This is where the five-platform thesis is put to the test. ASUS is now in a position where it is simultaneously selling a creative laptop on Intel x86 and a creative laptop on Nvidia Arm and asking customers to choose. The Vivobook and Zenbook lines run on three different CPU architectures, depending on the configuration. ROG gaming laptops are based on Intel and AMD. Commercial ExpertBook devices include MediaTek options.
Five platforms means five sets of driver stacks, five software update pipelines, five sets of partnerships, and five different roadmaps for engineers to follow.
Krohn doesn’t pretend it’s easy.
“Is it harder? I think absolutely yes,” he says. “But at the same time, ASUS has always been very passionate about technology. Our engineers and product managers are really passionate about technology. It’s extra work for them, but they’re happy. And I can talk because it’s the same for me. It’s extra work to find all these different platforms and talking points and keep track of features and specifications. But I work harder. It’s also more rewarding.”
It presents a multi-platform approach as a benefit to customers in a fragmented silicon landscape. “From an end-user perspective, it’s definitely a win-win. You want competition. Competition means more innovation. It means you’re going to be able to have more different devices and it’s going to be the right device for you. Everyone has different requirements. All these different platforms have different pros and cons. So it’s really good for customers to be able to choose—that’s true for me.”
So, in fact, ASUS’s elevator pitch for 2026 and beyond: not “buy our chip”, but “buy the chip that’s right for you from us”.
Goal moment
The interview came the same week at Computex that Nvidia officially entered the Windows laptop CPU market — something Qualcomm had been trying to crack for three years with the Snapdragon X. Krohn doesn’t see Nvidia’s arrival as a loss for Qualcomm, even though the two will now be competing for the same socket.
“We have a lot of new devices based on Snapdragon X,” he said. “This is good for all customers who have already gone and bought a Zenbook A14 or 16. And it makes the new Snapdragon X-based Vivobooks and Zenbooks even more attractive. Because now you have Microsoft, Qualcomm and Nvidia – all of them require Windows to run on Arm.”
The implication, which Krohn doesn’t need explaining, is that the developer for Arm just changed the math. When a chip maker supports Windows on Arm, software developers ignore it. The calculation changes when Nvidia comes into play. Whether this is a turning point or another false dawn is a debate that will continue over the next 18 months. Krohn is not going to predict that. But he’s clearly betting on it.
20 years of ROG and the handheld that surprised it
Another important Computex moment for ASUS this year is ROG’s 20th anniversary, which is being celebrated with the Edition 20 series in the showroom – Crosshair X870E motherboard, ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 and Thor 3000W Titanium III power supply in a special alternative finish. The 3000 watt PSU in particular is the kind of statement that makes Computex Computex.
But when Krohn is asked which product in ROG’s 20 years has surprised him the most, he chooses something smaller.
“ROG Xbox Ally X,” it says. “It was priced relatively high when it came out. Now everyone’s really excited about it, it’s as valuable as it is. And I’m still amazed that we’ve been able to keep the price stable when things have gotten more and more expensive.”
Launching at around $899 USD (about AED 3,300), the Ally X has sold out multiple times. “Every time we had more inventory, it kept selling out. Even now, ROG Xbox Ally Xi is not that easy to find in stock. Few markets and few stores have low supply.”
In a year driven by memory supply pressure, it’s been an achievement to hold the line in handheld pricing for the entire product cycle, driving up prices across the entire PC industry. It also explains what ASUS’ most requested overclocking product is right now.
Cosmic particles
The conversation is about sustainability. Krohn could tell me about military-grade testing standards – and to be fair, ASUS runs them in its own in-house quality lab before submitting them to third-party verification. Instead, he arrives at an example of just how deep engineering culture runs.
“In the new ExpertBook B5 Flip G2, we put a metal shield over each memory chip,” he says. “Because there can be interactions from memory chips that affect Bluetooth or Wi-Fi even a little bit. It also helps cool the memory. And it helps against the very rare cosmic particles that hit the memory chip. It can happen. It happens.”
This is, as he puts it, “one of those examples where maybe we overdid it a little bit.” But you hear it when you say engineer in marketer.
What ASUS is really betting on
Five CPU platforms. Two ProArt creative laptops in two different architectures. A handheld device that won’t stop selling. Memory protection against cosmic particles. The emerging picture of ASUS in 2026 is a company that has consciously chosen complexity over efficiency and dares to keep up with the rest of the laptop industry.
The real question is whether the market will reward this approach over the next 24 months. ASUS’s claim is that at a time when silicon is fragmented—between x86 and Arm, between Intel and AMD, between Qualcomm and Nvidia—the buyer who wants a laptop that fits a specific workflow will continue to find the right one on the ASUS shelf.
“It would be easier and less work if it were just a monopoly,” he reminds me at the end. “But we have passionate engineers.”
You can hear the laughter.
