What Is Max-Q?

Borrowing from an aerospace term, Max-Q is a design approach for building the fastest, thinnest and quietest energy-efficient gaming laptops.
by Mark Aevermann

When SpaceX blasts a Falcon Heavy into orbit, it does more than just break payload records. It tests the rocket’s ability to withstand maximum mechanical stress from the physical pressure of pushing against all that air in those first minutes.

In aerospace, that maximum dynamic pressure is referred to as Max-Q. Shortly after takeoff, you might hear those in the rocket launch control center saying, “We’re approaching Max-Q” or “We’ve reached Max-Q.”

What Is Max-Q for Laptops?

Borrowing from aerospace, NVIDIA’s Max-Q is a design approach for building the fastest, thinnest and quietest energy-efficient gaming laptops.

Designing a high-performance gaming laptop that’s thin is one of the toughest challenges in modern computing. Heat, energy use, space and weight all factor into the performance that can be delivered from a slim gaming laptop.

NVIDIA has developed Max-Q as an approach to engineering a laptop for maximum performance from the thinnest possible designs by optimizing every possible aspect for peak efficiency.

Max-Q designs take into consideration chips, drivers, thermal and electrical components, control system and more. The results are sleek, quiet laptops that are a fraction of the size of earlier generation devices while packing much greater performance than similarly sized laptops without Max-Q.

NVIDIA Max-Q partners include Acer, Alienware, Asus, Dell, Gigabyte, HP, Lenovo, MSI and Razer.